AP - An imam who has become the public face of a proposed Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero has returned to the United States following a taxpayer-funded tour of the Middle East, his wife said Monday.

AP - A combative President Barack Obama rolled out a long-term jobs program Monday that would exceed $50 billion to rebuild roads, railways and runways, and coupled it with a blunt campaign-season assault on Republicans for causing Americans' hard economic times.

AP - Searchers on Monday pulled five more bodies from a mud-covered highway where back-to-back landslides buried bus passengers and then the people trying to save them. The deaths raised the confirmed toll from mudslides in Guatemala to 45 as torrential rains pounded the country.

AP - A wind-driven wildfire broke out in the rugged Colorado foothills and quickly spread across 4 square miles Monday, destroying some homes and triggering evacuations of hundreds of others.

AFP - North Korea asked for rice and cement aid from South Korea before announcing the release of a South Korean boat seized last month for illegal fishing, Seoul said Tuesday.

Reuters - Australia's agonizing wait for a new government is expected to end on Tuesday when independent lawmakers reveal who they will back, but there is still no clear favorite for who will head the minority government.

AFP - French President Nicolas Sarkozy's government faced a showdown with angry trade unions on Tuesday as thousands prepared to march against plans to raise the minimum retirement age to 62.

AP - Forecasters say Tropical Storm Hermine has come ashore in extreme northeastern Mexico.

AP - Forecasters say Tropical Storm Hermine has come ashore in extreme northeastern Mexico.

AP - An Indonesian volcano shot black ash three miles (5,000 meters) into the air early Tuesday — its most powerful eruption since springing back to life after four centuries of dormancy.

AP - A small plane crashed and burst into flames on a street in a southern Nevada residential neighborhood Monday, killing one person and badly injuring three others, authorities said.

AP - Jefferson Thomas was fast and athletic and often played pickup basketball with white students while growing up in Little Rock in the 1950s.

AFP - A senior culture ministry official and the head of a Cairo museum from which a Van Gogh painting was stolen will stand trial on charges of negligence, a judicial source said on Monday.

AP - A sharp series of about 20 aftershocks rattled New Zealand's earthquake-hit city of Christchurch overnight, and earthquake experts warned Tuesday that another powerful tremblor might hammer the region in coming days.

AP - Former Surinamese dictator Desi Bouterse shrugged off questions about his past during his first overseas trip as elected president, saying Monday that he will not interfere in his ongoing murder trial and dismissing a 1999 drug conviction as "almost a joke."

AP - Egypt's leading democracy advocate made a forceful call Monday for the nation to boycott November's parliamentary election, saying they were certain to be rigged and urging his young supporters to be patient and plan for a lengthy struggle.

AFP - US President Barack Obama Monday promised more than 50 billion dollars to create jobs rebuilding roads, railways and airports, targeting huge unemployment and ripping resurgent Republicans.

AP - The lawyer for an Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned on an adultery conviction said Monday that he and her children are worried the delayed execution could be carried out soon with the end of a moratorium on death sentences for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

AP - The Justice Department won't say if the blowout preventer that failed to stop oil from gushing from BP's undersea well into the Gulf of Mexico is on its way to shore.

AP - As New York Indian Nation leaders battle in courtrooms to preserve their tax-free cigarette market, tensions are rising on reservations, where the state's renewed efforts to tax sales to non-Native customers is viewed as yet another attack on Native American rights.

AP - Hallmark Cards Inc., a $4 billion empire built on a demand for printed sentimentality, enters its second century facing a weak economy and what could be an even greater challenge: a generation that has grown up posting its sentiments online.

AP - Hallmark Cards Inc., a $4 billion empire built on a demand for printed sentimentality, enters its second century facing a weak economy and what could be an even greater challenge: a generation that has grown up posting its sentiments online.

AP - More than 80 years ago, Germany sold tens of thousands of bonds to American investors in an effort to recover financially from World War I. Later, Adolf Hitler used some of the money raised by those bonds to build the powerful Nazi war machine that would ravage Europe during World War II.

AFP - Global stock markets rose and the dollar fell on Monday as investors further digested better-than-expected US jobs data which reduced prospects of a return to recession.

AFP - US President Barack Obama will travel to the Midwestern US state of Wisconsin Monday as part of a broad effort to stem ebbing political support over the slowing economic recovery.

AP - The USS Olympia, a one-of-a-kind steel cruiser that returned home to a hero's welcome after a history-changing victory in the Spanish-American War, is a proud veteran fighting what may be its final battle.

AP - The Black Widow of eating contests gobbled up nearly 181 chicken wings in 12 minutes, devouring the national championship record in Buffalo on Sunday.

AP - Oil prices slipped to near $74 a barrel Monday in Asia as traders weighed whether growing Chinese demand can offset weak U.S. fuel consumption amid high unemployment.