Back in the day of chain gangs, Alabama passed a law that gave sheriffs $1.75 a day to feed each prisoner in their jails, and the sheriffs got to pocket anything that was left over. More than 80 years later, most Alabama counties still operate under this system, with the same $1.75-a-day allowance, and some sheriffs are actually making money on top of their salaries.

Federal law gives MySpace.com immunity from a lawsuit over the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl by a man she met on the social networking Web site, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

For thoroughbreds in this U.S. Caribbean territory, being fast enough to win, place or show is a matter of life and death - losers often don't even make it off the racetrack grounds alive. More than 400 horses, many in perfect health, are killed each year by injection at a clinic behind the Hipodromo Camarero racetrack, said chief veterinarian Jose Garcia.

Robert Mondavi, the pioneering vintner who helped put California wine country on the map, died at his Napa Valley home Friday. He was 94. Mondavi died peacefully at his home in Yountville, Robert Mondavi Winery spokeswoman Mia Malm said.

The California Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage will not be the last word.

The leader of a Southern California Indian tribe and a sheriff's department vowed Friday to work together to lower tensions after three people were killed on the reservation in gun battles with deputies.

Olympic gold medalist Tim Montgomery's once-celebrated life continued its long downward spiral Friday when a federal judge sentenced the former "world's fastest man" to nearly four years in prison for dealing in bad checks.

L. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor, announced Friday that he would not seek re-election as Richmond's mayor, likely bringing his storied political career to a close.

President Bush's contentious nominee for the Federal Election Commission removed his name from consideration Friday, potentially ending a lengthy stalemate that had paralyzed the work of the agency.

Danielle Brown stands outside a South Side market at midnight, braving the spring chill for her first chance to buy groceries since her food stamps ran out nearly two weeks ago.

The southwest Alabama town of Coffeeville has been shaken by a small earthquake.

An ailing 81-year-old North Carolina man who escaped from a Maryland prison 43 years ago was taken into custody Friday to face extradition, a move his attorneys decried as a waste of time because he is ill and aging.

A Los Angeles County grand jury has indicted the former head of UCLA's cadaver program on eight felony counts for allegedly trafficking in parts of bodies donated to the university.

A man who wrote hundreds of hateful letters to black and mixed race men seen with white women apparently was motivated by a girlfriend who left him for a black man, the FBI said Friday.

Federal border agents say they will search for illegal immigrants at inland Texas checkpoints even during a hurricane evacuation, a plan state and local officials say could lead to disastrous delays and discourage some people from getting out.

A central California biochemist convicted of killing her estranged husband by knocking him out and stuffing him into a vat of acid has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

As the Earth warms, is it starting to feel a little slow?

Texas mayors and business leaders filed a class-action lawsuit Friday alleging Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff hoodwinked landowners into waiving their property rights for construction of a fence along the Mexican border.

A coalition of Texas community leaders on Friday sued the Department of Homeland Security over the construction of a controversial fence on the Southwest border, saying the DHS trampled the rights of property owners in acquiring land for the project.

The shortage of workers at Ted Blair's three hotels near Yellowstone National Park is so severe that Blair himself might soon be busing tables and stripping beds.

The nation's largest single immigration raid, resulting in nearly 400 arrests earlier this week, violated the constitutional rights of workers at a meatpacking plant, a federal lawsuit says.

In a May 15 story about an Atlanta police officer on trial in a raid that led to an elderly woman's death, The Associated Press erroneously reported the date she was killed. It was Nov. 21, 2006, not Nov. 26, 2006.

A suspected serial predator accused of sexually assaulting four women, killing two of them, was described by co-workers as a polite, soft-spoken car salesman who mostly kept to himself.

A United Nations translator was sentenced to a year in prison for using U.N. stationery and fraudulent documents to smuggle people into the United States from Uzbekistan.