Judge Bennett retirement dinner set

Promising to be flexible in hardship situations, the Napa City Council will require owners of unreinforced masonry buildings in downtown to provide earthquake protection to the public.

After 20 years of ruling in the affairs of all kinds of people, Napa Superior Court Judge Richard Bennett has had an impact that will follow him off the bench when he retires April 1.

They could be lurking just outside your window. Beautiful, dainty and potentially treacherous.

Napa Police officers arrested a Napa man Friday evening for allegedly engaging in sex acts with a teenager.

WASHINGTON -- His wartime powers undercut once before by the Supreme Court, President Bush could take a second hit in a case in which Osama bin Laden's former driver is seeking to head off a trial before military officers.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Each time the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on medical marijuana, the justices have come down against allowing the sick and dying to use the drug to ease their symptoms and possibly prolong life. But the door has never been fully closed.

SELMER, Tenn. -- Members of the congregation planted flowers Saturday outside the Fourth Street Church of Christ as they waited for their minister's wife to be brought home to face first-degree murder charges in the death of her husband.

LOS ANGELES -- Tens of thousands of immigrant rights advocates from across Southern California marched Saturday in protest of federal legislation that would build more walls along the U.S.-Mexico border and make helping illegal immigrants a crime.

SEATTLE -- A gunman opened fire early Saturday in a home, killing six partygoers and critically injuring at least one other before committing suicide when confronted by police outdoors.

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget provides a $3.8 billion increase in education funding, enough to boost average school spending in California to a record level of $11,000 per student next year.

HAYWARD -- The cracks in Elke DeMuynck's ceiling appear every few weeks, zigzagging across her living room, creeping toward the fireplace, veering down the wall. Month after month, year after year, she patches, paints and waits.

UNITED NATIONS -- The Security Council voted Friday to keep U.N. peacekeepers in Sudan to monitor an accord ending a 21-year civil war and authorized planning for the expected extension of the U.N. force's operations to Darfur.

MINSK, Belarus -- Black-clad riot police clubbed demonstrators as government opponents marched Saturday in defiance of a show of force by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko that has drawn U.S. and European Union sanctions.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Under mounting foreign pressure, President Hamid Karzai searched on Saturday for a way to free an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity without angering Muslim clerics who have called for him to be killed.