HYGIENE, Colo. -- It sounds like this cow had a beef with the bear.

Residents said the bear climbed an apple tree in the cow's pasture. The cow, named Apple for her love of the fruit, ambled over to investigate.

"The cow, she thinks she's a dog, so she's interested in everything," resident Penny Cox said.

Eventually, the bear took off, with Apple chasing after it.

Apple's owner Nancy Dayton didn't see the confrontation but thinks Apple might have wanted the bear to vamoose.

"We kind of joke she was defending her tree," she said.

Dayton said Apple weighs about 1,200 pounds. There's no sign either animal was hurt.

FRESNO, Calif. -- Federal inspectors at U.S. border crossings repeatedly turned back filthy, disease-ridden shipments of peppers from Mexico in the months before a salmonella outbreak that sickened 1,400 people was finally traced to Mexican chilies.

Yet no larger action was taken. Food and Drug Administration officials insisted as recently as last week that they were surprised by the outbreak because Mexican peppers had not been spotted as a problem before.

But an Associated Press analysis of FDA records found that peppers and chilies were consistently the top Mexican crop rejected by border inspectors for the last year.

Since January alone, 88 shipments of fresh and dried chilies were turned away. Ten percent were contaminated with salmonella. In the last year, 8 percent of the 158 intercepted shipments of fresh and dried chilies had salmonella.

On Friday, Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's food safety chief, told reporters peppers were not a cause for concern before they were implicated in the salmonella outbreak.

"We have not typically seen problems with peppers," Acheson said. "Our import sampling is typically focused on areas where we know we've got problems or we've seen problems in the past, which is why we're now increasing our sampling for peppers."

WASHINGTON -- Two senior senators urged Attorney General Michael Mukasey Monday to delay a change to FBI rules that critics say would weaken checks on the bureau's investigative powers.

Mukasey wants to loosen restrictions on the FBI's national security and criminal investigations, saying the changes are necessary to improve the bureau's ability to detect would-be-terrorists.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., however, asked Mukasey to put those new rules off until after FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies before the Judiciary Committee on Sept. 17.

"The guidelines aim to improve the FBI's ability to gather intelligence and respond to national security matters, but would also provide additional authorities not currently in law, allowing the FBI to employ more expansive investigative practices with limited oversight," the senators wrote in a letter sent Monday.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Parents tempted to treat Junior's misbehavior with a lashing from a tree limb out back or dad's leather belt are being urged to think again.

A study released Tuesday by doctors at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill finds that parents who spank their children with an object -- such as a belt, switch or paddle -- are nine times more likely to abuse their child through more severe means. Also, parents are much more likely to beat, burn or shake their children if they spank frequently, according to the study which is being published by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.

"Parents get angry when they're spanking and it's not working," said Adam Zolotor, lead author of the study and a pediatrician at the UNC-CH's Department of Family Health. "If a child gets spanked so often, they just don't care anymore and will misbehave anyway."

It's the latest finding in a growing body of research suggesting parents should use their voice, not their hands or household tools, to keep children in line. This study rests on anonymous admissions of 1,435 mothers of children from North and South Carolina randomly selected to share details of the discipline they and other caregivers use in the privacy of their own home.

Rates of abuse, the researchers found, are alarmingly high, even in a survey dependent on parents owning up to behavior that could cost them the right to raise their children. Twelve percent of mothers who reported spanking a child's bottom with an object also admitted engaging in behavior researchers classified as physical abuse. Also, 12 percent of those who spanked 50 or more times in the last year admitted abuse such as beating, burning, shaking or hitting the child with an object about their body.

KEY WEST, Fla. -- Two years since a hurricane last lashed at Florida, many residents were taking a wait-and-see attitude Monday as strengthening Tropical Storm Fay swept across the Florida Keys and bore down on the Gulf Coast.

While tourists caught the last flight out of town and headed out of the storm's path, residents in the carefree Florida Keys were putting up hurricane shutters and checking their generators, but not doing much more.

"We're not worried about it. We've seen this movie before," said 58-year-old Willie Dykes, who lives on a sailboat in Key West and was buying food, water and whiskey.

By midafternoon, heavy rains moving ahead of Fay's core were pelting the low-lying Keys island chain. Sustained winds of about 33 mph bent palm trees, and some gusts hit 51 mph.

The sixth named storm in the Atlantic hurricane season was expected to become a hurricane before curling up the state's western coast and hitting Florida's mainland sometime Tuesday.

"There are bad storms and there are nice ones, and this is a nice one," said Becky Weldon, a 43-year-old guest house manager in Key West. "It cleans out all the trees, it gives people a little work to do and it gets the tourists out of here for a few days."