RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) - A Southern California man wrongly convicted of murdering his lover two decades ago has been exonerated and new arrests have been made in the case, authorities said Monday. Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin announced the arrests of Googie Harris and Joaquin Leal in the 1998 strangling of Terry Cheek, whose body was found on a lake shore. Harris was Cheek's husband and Leal is Harris' nephew.
SEATTLE (AP) - Paul G. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Bill Gates before becoming a billionaire philanthropist who invested in conservation, space travel, arts and culture and professional sports, died Monday. He was 65. He died in Seattle from complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, his company Vulcan Inc. announced. Gates said he was heartbroken about the loss of one of his "oldest and dearest friends."
HELENA, Mont. (AP) - A grizzly bear attacked an elk hunter who surprised the sow and her cub north of Yellowstone National Park, with the bear sinking her teeth into his arm and clawing his eye before another hunter drove her off, the victim recounted Monday. The mauling of Bob Legasa, 57, in the Gallatin National Forest on Saturday was at least the seventh bear attack on a human since May in the Northern Rocky Mountains.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - After nearly three months without a winner, the Mega Millions lottery game has climbed to an estimated $654 million jackpot. Unfortunately, even as the big prize for Tuesday night's drawing increases to the fourth-largest in U.S. history , the odds of matching all six numbers and winning the game don't improve. They're stuck at a miserable one in 302.5 million.
ATLANTA (AP) - Officials say a cow that hoofed it for two weeks on the lam after a livestock truck overturned on a busy interstate junction north of Atlanta has been caught. News outlets report 89 cows initially escaped when the tractor-trailer wrecked before dawn on Oct. 1 on a cloverleaf linking Interstate 75 with Interstate 285. Eleven cows died in the crash.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - A Jamaican man who authorities said masterminded a lottery scam that defrauded at least 95 Americans out of more than $5.8 million was sentenced Monday to six years in federal prison.
BOSTON (AP) - Harvard University intentionally uses a vague "personal rating" to reject Asian-American applicants in favor of students from other racial backgrounds, according to lawyers on one side of a trial that began Monday and carries weighty implications for dozens of other U.S. colleges.
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - An Alabama man convicted of killing four children by throwing them off a bridge had his death sentence reduced by a judge Monday to life imprisonment, after tests showed the man had an IQ of 51. The state attorney general's office and defense lawyers jointly asked the judge to change Lam Luong's sentence to life imprisonment without parole after agreeing that new IQ tests showed he is intellectually disabled.
NEW YORK (AP) - Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday, with plans to shutter 142 unprofitable stores in the hopes that it can stay in business. The question now is whether a smaller version of the company that once towered over the American retail landscape can be viable. Sears, which started as a mail order catalog in the 1880s, has been on a slow march toward extinction as it lagged far behind its peers and incurred huge losses over the years.
