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A Chilly Tale of Pre-War Germany

She gained supermom status for her gentle portrayal of June Cleaver, the warm, supportive mother of a pair of precocious boys in Leave It to Beaver. A spokeswoman said Billingsley, who had suffered from a rheumatoid disease, died at her home in Santa Monica, Calif., on Saturday.

NPR producer Art Silverman uncovers New Jersey's filthy situation: the Passaic River. U.S. manufacturing was jump-started along its banks. Now the river is so toxic, part of it is a superfund site, and much of the rest is, as one writer puts it, "a toilet."

A Russian court has cleared the way for the government to sell off land used by a world-renowned fruit research center outside St. Petersburg. Scientists say losing the facility means losing seeds and plants that exist nowhere else. But a Russian agency says much of the research center occupies weed-choked fields that would be the perfect spot for new houses.

Santa Catalina Island has long been known as a lush, idyllic tourist resort. But most of the 76-square-mile island is home to a much wilder crowd: a rich array of fauna and flora. A wildfire now threatens the island's main town and some of its rare wildlife.

Larry Groupé is a local film composer who scored the music for the new thriller "Straw Dogs." It opens in area theaters this weekend.

Two local critics compile a must-read list of the latest releases that includes E.L. Doctorow, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, and Kazuo Ishiguro.

A line of dirty fire engines rumbles off of Southern California's Pine to Palms Highway into an open field, trailing a cloud of brown dust. The drivers' faces are smudged with black soot.

A thousand firefighters battled a growing wildfire in the inland mountains of Southern California early Thursday, trying to save small communities where some home have been lost and an estimated 1,500 residents were forced to flee.

BEAUMONT, Calif. (AP) -- A rapidly spreading wildfire chewed through a rugged Southern California mountain range on Thursday, destroying more than two dozen homes, threatening more than 500 other residences and forcing some 1,800 people to flee.