In the Nation

WASHINGTON - House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says she doesn't wish to be speaker again.

In an interview published Friday in the National Journal, an inside-Washington magazine, Pelosi, 73, was asked whether she wishes to return to the top job. Pelosi said she did not, pointing out that she has held the post.

"No, that's not my thing. I did that," Pelosi said.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill discounted Pelosi's comments, saying they are in line with her stock response when asked about seeking leadership positions. Hammill said that she's working hard to win back the majority for Democrats and that, if the effort is successful, her colleagues would elect their speaker. "She was simply saying she doesn't 'wish' for things," Hammill said. - AP

NEW YORK - It only took two kittens to stop the city's subway in its tracks. Power was cut to the B and Q lines in Brooklyn for more than an hour after a woman reported Thursday morning that her kittens were loose in the nation's largest subway system, transit officials said.

The woman rushed to a subway station with cat food for transit workers dispatched onto the tracks to use to try to lure them.

Power was suspended between several stops - about half the Q line and the B line's entire service in Brooklyn - on the local and express tracks for 90 minutes, Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman Judie Glave said. The kittens disappeared again before being discovered Thursday evening, seven hours after the search began, under the third rail of an above-ground express track. Police officers removed the kittens in crates, Glave said. - AP

FRESNO, Calif. - Nearly a third of the huge forest fire burning in and around Yosemite National Park was contained Friday and some small communities in the area were no longer under evacuation advisories.

Nearly 5,000 firefighters were battling the blaze, but were expected to be released to go home, said Daniel Berlant, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "We continue to gain the upper hand, but there's still a lot of work to be done," he said.

The two-week-old blaze burning in the Sierra Nevada northeast of Fresno has scorched 315 square miles of brush, oaks, and pine, making it the largest U.S. wildfire this year and the fifth-largest wildfire in modern California records. Containment was estimated at 32 percent. - AP

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked Alaska's Aleutian Islands with a jet-like rumble Friday that shook homes and sent residents scrambling for cover. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries from the earthquake, which occurred in a seismically active region. It was strongly felt in Atka, an Aleut community of 64 people, and the town of Adak, where 320 live. There were multiple aftershocks.