Wind

WASHINGTON - The surprise resignation of Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina on Thursday could prove to be a marker for a decline in the influence of the tea party movement he has helped lead. His departure from Congress, effective next month, comes as the political winds appear to be blowing against the 61-year-old lawmaker and the movement he has spoken for. Some of the movement's most fiery members lost reelection bids last month, including Reps. Allen West of Florida, Joe Walsh of Illinois and Chip Cravaack of Minnesota.

A 2-month-old Colorado wildfire earlier thought to have posed little threat forced hundreds of evacuations Saturday when it burned through three miles of forest in 30 minutes, fueled by 70-mph winds, officials said. More than 500 residents in Larimer County were ordered to evacuate suddenly in the morning when the Fern Lake Fire overnight consumed thousands of acres of rough terrain and brittle, dead trees killed by beetle infestation. The fire started Oct. 9 and has destroyed more than 4,400 acres, mostly hilly, Rocky Mountain National Park terrain with few homes in the fire's path, said Estes Park official Laurie Button.

It began as a favor. It became an obsession. It was 1996 and screenwriter Gary Ross got a call from a desperate friend. Out of time and money, director David Koepp was in frantic need of a children's story to complete his movie feature debut, "The Trigger Effect. " Acquiring the rights to a known book was out of the question, so Koepp threw a Hail Mary pass to his friend: Write the beginnings of a story about a boy named Bartholomew Biddle, by tomorrow, for free. "How could I possibly say no?

It was almost one year ago when wicked Santa Anas sent hurricane-force winds through Los Angeles County, whipping off roofs, snapping power lines and leaving 350,000 residents in the dark for up to a week. But perhaps the greatest toll was felt by the region's trees, thousands of which were de-limbed, uprooted or snapped in half, their century-old trunks splintered like toothpicks. When the staff at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden arrived back at work in Arcadia, they found 235 trees destroyed and 1,000 damaged.

Kevin Prince has left pieces of himself here and there while playing quarterback for UCLA. He has been in the training room almost as much as team trainers. On Saturday, his career winds down when the Bruins play Stanford. His will be a Senior Day a little different from others. Prince spent the last three years as UCLA's starting quarterback, when he wasn't injured. He returned from a shoulder injury to push the Bruins to a bowl bid last season. His senior season has been spent mostly as a spectator, but not an unhappy one with the Bruins (9-2 overall, 6-2 Pac-12 Conference)

Saturday is the reason they play the regular season all the way to the end. Just when you think you know everything, you know nothing. Kansas State was No. 1 in the Bowl Championship Series standings but now it's not. Oregon was No. 2 but now it's not. Notre Dame was No. 3 in the BCS but will now be . . . No. 1. And the Southeastern Conference, stunned by top-ranked Alabama's loss last week to Texas A&M, is now back in BCS business....

NASA's Curiosity rover has felt what appear to be dust devils pass by as it samples the Martian atmosphere, mission scientists said Thursday. Though the Mars Science Laboratory rover has yet to catch the whirlwinds on camera, its Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) has recorded pressure dips and wind shifts that often signal a vortex's presence, said the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Manuel de la Torre Juarez, the instrument's investigation scientist. Curiosity has been photographing, laser-zapping and even eating rocks since its Aug. 5 landing in Gale Crater.

The prime directive in returning the Beatles' album catalog to vinyl is ridiculously simple. Sean Magee, the Abbey Road recording studio engineer who has overseen the massive project, summarized it: . "We want them to sound as close as possible to what they heard in the studio when it was recorded," Magee said last week during a stop at Capitol Records' famed Studio A in Hollywood to unveil the set. The result is musically and physically imposing:...

NEW YORK--Wet snow and heavy winds thrashed New York City on Wednesday, forcing new  evacuations in areas flooded by Superstorm Sandy last week and knocking out power to some areas where it had just been restored. At an afternoon briefing, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he ordered the evacuations of four nursing homes that together held more than 600 people in the hard-hit Rockaways. Volunteers were going door to door in low-lying areas of the city, including seafront areas in Brooklyn and in Staten Island, informing residents about the availability of emergency shelters.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The long, costly and contentious presidential campaign wound down Tuesday to a series of final stops in a handful of fiercely competitive states, as President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney sought to fortify their positions in the country's few remaining battlegrounds. For Romney, who faces the steeper path,  that meant visits to Florida, Virginia and New Hampshire; for Obama, stops in Wisconsin and Iowa. Both descended on Ohio, which has emerged as the fulcrum of the contest.