CHICAGO -- Authorities say an arsonist with a grudge may have caused the fire at Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's Grand Beach vacation home three weeks ago.The house wasn't damaged but a neighbor's home was destroyed and another had a burned garage when winds off Lake Michigan fanned the flames, authorities said.Investigators, who entered the case when it was learned the mayor had received a threatening letter before the fire, said the culprit may be someone ... [full story]

SACRAMENTO -- A California Supreme Court decision overturning the state's ban on gay marriage has reignited a nationwide political wildfire of debate, activists said Friday.The order likely put the spotlight directly on the November presidential election that USA Today says probably will galvanize activists on both sides.The California court's 4-3 decision would go into effect in 30 days but activists against same-sex marriage said they planned to ask that it be stayed until after the ... [full story]

PENZA, Russia -- Authorities were conducting forensic tests Friday on the bodies of two women who died during a seven-month stay in a cave with Russian doomsday cult members.The bodies were exhumed shortly after the last nine members of the cult were persuaded by police to come out of the cave in the Penza region southeast of Moscow, the Interfax news agency said."The exhumation of the second body that laid in the immediate vicinity of ... [full story]

LONDON -- Western analysts on Friday were attempting to authenticate an audiotape thought to be from Osama bin Laden and containing anti-Israel threats.A voice on the tape, posted on a Web site known to be associated with al-Qaida, threatens to take back "every inch of Palestine" and seemed timed to coincide with celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding, The (London) Telegraph reported Friday."We will continue, God permitting, the fight against the Israelis and ... [full story]

LOS ANGELES -- Despite the emotion the Iraq war causes among voters, analysts say the presumptive U.S. presidential nominees have moved toward a pragmatic center on the issue.Republican hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Democratic front-runner Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., are getting close to meeting in the middle on Iraq, with McCain saying he'd like to get troops out by 2013 and Obama pushing a plan that would withdraw all combat brigades within 18 months, ... [full story]

DOHA, Qatar -- The Lebanese government and leaders of the Hezbollah opposition movement were preparing Friday to begin negotiations aimed a producing a unity government.In a deal brokered by Qatar, the two sides agreed this week to end fighting that has resulted in 65 deaths and are moving toward talks that could produce the appointment of a new president for the country and reform its parliamentary election laws, al-Jazeera reported.The crisis was precipitated when the ... [full story]

BEIJING -- Xiang Xiaoling, 13, survived the earthquake in China's Sichaun province, thanks to her classmate Ma Jian, who used his hands to claw her out of the rubble.Hearing the pleas of Xiang as she lay buried in the rubble of her school building, Ma Jian said he couldn't leave her there because "you are the youngest in our class," Xinhua reported."The boy clawed me out with his bare hands," Xiang said from her hospital ... [full story]

BEIJING -- Rescue teams from Russia, South Korea and Singapore will join a Japanese team to help China in its massive relief work in earthquake-hit Sichuan province.The Chinese foreign ministry said Friday the government -- which has already approved the Japanese team's visit -- had accepted similar offers from Russia, South Korea and Singapore.The 31-member Japanese team, the first foreign rescuers approved by the government, arrived Friday in the southwest province, where the death toll ... [full story]

AURORA, Colo. -- A Colorado man could face execution for killing a witness in another killing, Denver authorities say.A jury convicted Sir Mario Owens Wednesday, The Denver Post reported. The penalty phase of the trial begins Monday.The jury found that Owens shot and killed Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancee, Vivian Wolfe in 2005. Marshall-Fields was scheduled to testify at the trial of a friend of Owens.Owens is already serving life with no parole for a ... [full story]

DENVER -- Members of a polygamist sect have been acquiring property in a rural part of Colorado, a county sheriff said.Fred Jobe, sheriff of Custer County, told the Rocky Mountain News the group appears to be the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter-Day Saints.Warren Jeffs, the group's leader, was convicted in Utah of forcing a teenage girl into marriage with her 19-year-old cousin. In Texas, authorities recently raided an FLDS compound and seized hundreds of children.Jobe ... [full story]