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HEMET, Calif. - They arrived in ones and twos and threes, by plane, by car, from Utah, from Oregon and local neighborhoods in Hemet, some carrying plates of food as if they were offerings.

All came to see the note.

SAN FRANCISCO - A huge swath of wine country, including vineyards where some of the world's best grapes are grown, was quarantined this week after an invasive moth was discovered.

Government scientists tracking 158 desert tortoises relocated nearly two years ago from the Army's Fort Irwin in California to make way for military maneuvers say that nearly half of the animals have died, mostly from coyote attacks.

The death rate, disclosed at a scientific symposium last weekend, raises concern about relocating tortoises, a species threatened with extinction.

WASHINGTON - On the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision this past week to weigh whether the most odious of speech is protected by the Constitution, another test of offensive expression is percolating its way to the justices.

A controversial one-time aide to former Sen. John Edwards goes to court again Friday in Pittsboro, N.C., after a superior-court judge complained he was being untruthful about making copies of a sex tape featuring Edwards and his one-time mistress.

A lonely cave on a cliff in the rugged Pinnacles National Monument is the setting for a story of two love birds who found one another despite unimaginable hardship and decided to bring new life into a world that almost destroyed them.

They are, of course, giant corpse-munching vultures, but wildlife biologists could not be more thrilled if they were Romeo and Juliet.

Charles Turner Harrison has been institutionalized since putting a 9mm pistol to the back of his mother's head in 1984, pulling the trigger and then telling police he thought he could freeze her and revive her at will.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Sarah Palin will take the witness stand here in a case involving a Memphis lawmaker's son and her personal Yahoo! e-mail account.

WASHINGTON - Republicans are so convinced that the fall midterm elections could be a repeat of 1994, the year that ushered them into the majority in Congress, they are reaching into the playbook for the prop that helped propel that victory: a new Contract with America.

A marketing guru whom Quebec City is paying $300,000 to help with its image makeover has given an early report: Quebeckers, he says, are "completely neurotic" and their "sadomasochist" relationship with "the English" means they will never separate from Canada.