BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — David Myers knew it was time to leave when he looked out into the forest and spotted bright red flames towering skyward.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Merriam-Webster's "Word of the Summer" is not even a word. That's something no one can "refudiate." Sarah Palin's attempt to splice "refute" and "repudiate" on a news show and in a Twitter message in July led to more searches on the publisher's online dictionary during the summer than most real words did.

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas (AP) — Tropical Storm Hermine gave a wet and windy punch to Texas on Tuesday but left only minor scrapes in the storm-weary Rio Grande Valley, which is proving resilient this hurricane season after taking a third tropical system on the chin.

CHICAGO (AP) — Mayor Richard M. Daley, who wielded more control over Chicago than anyone but his father decades before, said Tuesday he will not seek re-election, a surprising end — at least for now — of a dynasty whose surname became synonymous with the city's legendary political machine.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The government turned up the pressure Tuesday on the head of a small Florida church who plans to burn copies of the Quran on Sept.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Judges have the right to require warrants before police get cell phone records that could suggest a customer's likely location, a U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Government scientists studying the BP disaster are reporting the best possible outcome: Microbes are consuming the oil in the Gulf without depleting the oxygen in the water and creating "dead zones" where fish cannot survive.

NEW YORK (AP) — The flight attendant accused of onboard antics that captured the nation's attention when he told off a passenger and slid down the plane's emergency chute with a beer will undergo a mental health evaluation with the aim of avoiding jail time in a possible plea deal.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — NASA says two small asteroids discovered just days ago will zip harmlessly past Earth on Wednesday, a double flyby that should be visible through a telescope.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A former soldier accused of demanding mental treatment as he took hostages at gunpoint at a Georgia Army hospital later told investigators he planned to kill President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, federal prosecutors said in court documents filed Tuesday.

GREAT BEND, Kan. (AP) — A 36-year-old factory worker who spent much of his adult life in prison was charged Tuesday with sexually assaulting and murdering a 14-year-old girl whose badly burned body was found behind gravel piles at the asphalt plant where he worked.

ATLANTA (AP) — U.S. smoking rates continue to hold steady, at about one in five adults lighting up regularly, frustrated health officials reported Tuesday.

GLENPOOL, Okla. (AP) — Less than a couple months after Nick Curtin opened a pharmacy in suburban Tulsa in 2008, the store was burglarized twice in one week.

APPLE VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — The California Highway Patrol says a 1-year-old boy has drowned after his drunken father drove an off-road vehicle into a river in the San Bernardino County desert.

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — A wind-whipped wildfire sent flames roaring through a rugged canyon in the Colorado foothills, forcing about 3,000 people to flee the area and destroying dozens of homes — some that belonged to the firefighters themselves, authorities said Tuesday.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A protest over the fatal police shooting of a Guatemalan immigrant turned violent when some demonstrators threw bottles at officers, set trash cans on fire and refused to disperse.

Half-buried in rubble, Bazelais Suy struggled to breathe — a dead woman lay on his chest. He knew he had to get her off, fast. Because he could still move his arms, he somehow managed to remove his belt, loop it around the woman's own belt and drag her off.

NEW YORK (AP) — An imam who has become the public face of a proposed Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero has returned to the United States following a taxpayer-funded tour of the Middle East, his wife said Monday.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hipsters, hustlers, celebrities, thieves, dope peddlers and just about everyone else in gritty, quirky Venice Beach know Boston Dawna.

CHICAGO (AP) — The crowded rooftop bleachers overlooking Wrigley Field stand as proof that no matter how bad the Chicago Cubs played, the ballpark was simply not big enough to hold everyone who wanted to see them play.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Justice Department won't say if the blowout preventer that failed to stop oil from gushing from BP's undersea well into the Gulf of Mexico is on its way to shore.

NEW YORK (AP) — Colleges and universities are buying up chunks of land at bargain prices, sometimes without a clear idea how they'll be used.

CANON CITY, Colo. (AP) — John Brownfield Jr. became a corrections officer following deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Brownfield was later charged with accepting bribes from inmates seeking tobacco at the U.S.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Federal transportation safety officials are using the deadly crash of an overloaded plane in Montana to revive a long-standing debate about whether small children should be allowed to travel on the laps of adults.