In a season that inspires earnest letters about toys, one notable batch is being sent not by kids to Santa's workshop but by parents to the executive suites of real-world toy makers.

It's 6 a.m. and the cowboys are already downing second and third cups of coffee, adjusting to a 35-degree morning. Slowly, a full moon and stars give way to hues of orange sky. And with daybreak, what had been obscured comes into clearer focus: hundreds of shaggy bison standing on an unfenced landscape that looks like it rolls on forever.

In New Orleans, a dire warning to flee emptied the city before Hurricane Gustav in early September. In Houston less than two weeks later, a plea to "hunker down" might have kept evacuation routes from clogging before Hurricane Ike struck.

Rabbinical student Jessica Koss paused in front of the mosque and wrapped a scarf around her head so that her hair was covered.

The Rev. Joseph Illo, pastor of St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Modesto, Calif., has told parishioners in a homily and in a follow-up letter that if they voted for Barack Obama, they should consider going to confession because of the president-elect's pro-abortion position.

The holiday shopping season got off to a surprisingly solid start, according to data released Saturday by a research firm.

Astronomers looking at the spectacular supersonic plumes of gas and dust shooting off one of Saturn's moons say there are strong hints of liquid water, a key building block of life.

Some 15,000 soldiers are heading home to this sprawling base after spending more than a year at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and military health officials are bracing for a surge in brain injuries and psychological problems among those troops.

Few political groups have been as successful in recent years at shaping state policies as the Humane Society of the United States under Wayne Pacelle.

New Jersey Gov. John Corzine on Friday asked the state's residents to support food banks and soup kitchens, whose new patrons include middle-class casualties of the credit and mortgage crisis.

The Rev. George M. Docherty, credited with helping to push Congress to insert the phrase "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance, has died at 97.

The recent spate of drug-related killings in Nogales, Mexico, is driving apart what have long been close-knit communities, discouraging some residents of its Arizona sister city from crossing the border.

Police say DNA taken from a man charged with murdering a Little Rock, Ark., television anchorwoman matches DNA tested in a separate rape case.

Two people were shot to death in a crowded toy store on Black Friday in a confrontation apparently involving rival groups, city officials said.

Shoppers, who had snapped their wallets shut since September, turned out in force Friday to grab early morning deals and hard-to-find toys like Elmo Live, but many said worries about the economy have them focusing on fewer gifts and less expensive, more practical items.