Abby

Nearly seven months after the San Onofre nuclear power plant was closed because of a leak, officials are grappling with whether it makes financial sense to bring the plant fully back online, and if so, who should pay for the necessary repairs. Fixing San Onofre is shaping up to be an expensive proposition, with the price tag jumping into the hundreds of millions of dollars if the plant's massive steam generators require replacing. But keeping San Onofre shuttered is also proving costly to the two utilities that own the plant.

Initial election results in Compton's hotly contested race for mayor showed former Mayor Omar Bradley - whose 2004 conviction on corruption charges was overturned by an appeals court last year - heading into a runoff with political newcomer Aja Brown. The results could signal an ouster of Mayor Eric Perrodin, a deputy district attorney and former Compton police officer who unseated Bradley in 2001. However, with 1,176 vote-by-mail and provisional ballots yet to be verified by the county registrar, the final results may not be known for another week.

Another one bites the dust. In an interview with the comedy website Splitsider,"Saturday Night Live" cast member Abby Elliott made the surprise announcement that she will not be returning to the long-running sketch comedy show this fall. Elliott first joined "SNL" as a featured player during its 2008 season. NBC declined to comment, but a person with knowledge of the situation but not authorized to speak publicly confirmed the news. PHOTOS: Stars' children follow in their footsteps Elliott is the latest cast member to leave in what is shaping up to be a big transitional year for "SNL.

Rain driven by freezing wind pelted her 40-foot sailboat, but Abby Sunderland was in remarkably good spirits early Wednesday afternoon. That's because the 16-year-old from Thousand Oaks, while friends back home were coming off a refreshing spring break, had just rounded Cape Horn between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula. She had safely traversed a passage known as the Mt. Everest of the yachting universe, a mariners' graveyard fraught with unpredictable gales and gargantuan waves.

Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old solo sailor who ran into trouble in the middle of the Indian Ocean this week, has been rescued. Sunderland was reported to be in good health after being plucked from her damaged vessel 2,000 nautical miles off western Australia by the crew of the French fishing ship the Ile De La Reunion at 7.45pm AEST. The crew of the Ile De La Reunion, a considerably larger vessel than Sunderland's Wild Eyes, dispatched a smaller boat to pick her up. The rescue, coordinated by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's Rescue Coordination Center -- Australia (RCC Australia)

For years, prosecutors say, Lynwood council members lived large on the working-class city's dime. They allegedly billed the city for trips to far-flung places, including Beijing, Bermuda, Rio de Janeiro and Puerto Vallarta. One councilman charged his city credit card to watch Playboy channel movies at a Washington hotel. Another got a $100 daily allowance from the city to play in golf tournaments and attend a Tony Bennett concert and also used his city credit card for a $193 dinner at the House of Blues, prosecutors say. Among the most salacious bills: a $1,500 night out at a Guadalajara strip club, where dancers allegedly performed sexual favors for a council member and city manager - all charged to the city.

On Jan. 31, alarms alerted the control room at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station that a radiation leak was occurring in one of the nearly 39,000 tubes that carry radioactive water in the steam generators. That failure led to an unparalleled shutdown of one of California's two nuclear power plants and triggered more than three months of detective work by Southern California Edison officials and federal nuclear regulators that has yet to determine the problem's root cause or when San Onofre will reopen.

Faced with a massive budget deficit and the prospect of layoffs, the Compton City Council has killed its plan to create a new Police Department. The council, at a meeting last week, rescinded last June's vote to move forward with forming a local police force. The city had disbanded its department in 2000, amid political turmoil and elevated crime rates. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has since patrolled the city on a contract basis. Barbara Calhoun, one of three council members who originally voted in favor of reconstituting the department, switched her vote, effectively scuttling the plan.

Abigael Evans, the 4-year-old Colorado girl who was driven to tears by the seemingly neverending presidential campaign coverage, has received a very rare thing in our modern media age: a formal apology from NPR for making her cry. Abigael became a minor Internet star earlier this week when her mother, Elizabeth, posted a video online of the girl when she became upset after hearing a little too much of "Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney" on...

"Ten more minutes and I would've jumped in the fountain," said John Wayne's daughter, Melinda, after the marriage Saturday of Wayne's youngest daughter, Marisa. Melinda spoke as, praise the Lord, the reflecting pool that decorates the center aisle at the Crystal Cathedral began to hiss with turquoise geysers, sending spray onto sweltering guests (many of whom fanned themselves with Crystal Cathedral postcards during the scorching, 20-minute ceremony).