AP - The White House their goal, Republican presidential hopefuls raced across Iowa on Monday in a final, full day of frenzied appeals for support in precinct caucuses that open the 2012 campaign. "It is the race you make it," an upset-minded Rick Santorum told voters soon to pick a winner.

AP - An armed Iraq War veteran suspected of killing a Mount Rainier National Park ranger managed to evade snowshoe-wearing SWAT teams and dogs on his trail for nearly a day. He couldn't, however, escape the cold.

AP - Syrian security forces are still killing anti-government protesters despite the presence of foreign monitors in the country, the head of the Arab League said Monday. But he insisted the observer mission has yielded important concessions from the Damascus regime, such as the withdrawal of heavy weapons from cities.

AP - Authorities arrested a man Monday in connection with dozens of suspected arson attacks that destroyed parked cars, scorched buildings and rattled much of the nation's second-largest city over the New Year's weekend.

AP - Stuck in a financial pothole, Missouri's highway department has been selling equipment and eliminating employees to scrounge up enough money to repair its roads. Unless it also changes state law, it could lose tens of millions of federal highway dollars as a penalty for not adopting new safety requirements for commercial truck drivers.

AP - A surveillance camera video shows a New York City house being firebombed in what police are investigating as a possibly linked series of bias crimes.

AP - Three children trapped in an upturned car after it skidded into a river were released Monday from a hospital, two days after they were saved by several passers-by.

AP - Aretha Franklin is engaged to longtime friend William "Willie" Wilkerson.

AP - Kirk Cousins gave Michigan State a parting gift — its first bowl win in more than a decade.