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 - Tropical Storm Hermine slammed into Mexico's northern Gulf coast near the U.S. border late Monday with winds of 60 mph (95 kph), lashing Mexico and southern Texas with heavy rains that authorities warned could cause flash flooding.

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

AP - A wind-driven wildfire in the rugged Colorado foothills spread across 5 1/2 square miles Monday, destroying an unknown number of homes and triggering the evacuation of 1,000 others, authorities said.

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 - 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 - Las Vegas police are defending Paris Hilton's quick release from jail after her Aug. 27 arrest on suspicion of cocaine possession, saying they wanted to avoid disruptions in the jail's operations.

AP - Grit was not going to be enough to get Maria Sharapova through this one.

Reuters - The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan has requested another 2,000 troops for the foreign force fighting the Taliban insurgency, despite waning support for the war in troop-contributing nations, NATO officials said.

Reuters - Iran is pushing ahead with its nuclear program in defiance of tougher sanctions and is hampering the U.N. atom watchdog's work by barring some inspectors, the IAEA says in a new report.

Reuters - U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan warned on Monday that a small Florida church's plan to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks could endanger the lives of American troops.

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.

Reuters - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told visiting U.S. congressmen he thinks it could be possible to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians in a year despite huge differences, his spokesman said.

Reuters - China has told the United States it wants to narrow differences that have developed over a range of issues, state media said on Tuesday, aiming to lay the ground for a visit by President Hu Jintao early next year.

Reuters - Emergency services in Guatemala on Monday resumed their search for victims of landslides that killed and buried dozens of people, as further rain was predicted for the Central American country.

AFP - Australia was finally set to learn its new government Tuesday, after more than two weeks of haggling since deadlocked August 21 elections returned the first hung parliament in 70 years.

AFP - Spain's government Monday rejected a ceasefire by Basque fighters ETA as totally inadequate and demanded it renounce guns and bombs forever in its battle for an independent homeland.