IN THE HEADLINES McCain education ideas coming; merit pay and tutoring to be part of talk ... Minnesota gambling authority questions prompt Obama campaign to modify Web offer ... McCain downplays talk of hard timelines...

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama sought Tuesday to send the same message to a critical constituency: They understand that Hispanics share the same economic concerns as other Americans _ and they will...

Sen. John McCain intends to talk about how teachers are paid and tutoring for poor kids when he goes before the NAACP convention next week. The likely Republican presidential nominee wasn't expected to roll out an...

Barack Obama says John McCain's plan to balance the budget doesn't add up. Easy for him to say: It's not a goal he's even trying to reach. Not only does Obama say he won't eliminate the deficit in his first term, as...

Cindy McCain's jab to her husband's back came a second too late Tuesday to keep him from making a wisecrack about the health impact of Iran's main import from the United States: cigarettes. Republican presidential...

The U.S. agriculture secretary expressed confidence in the nation's food safety system, but said the meat processing industry will always face challenges because the bacteria that animals carry evolves. "I don't think...

President Bush on Wednesday hailed the move by G-8 leaders to coalesce behind a global climate-change strategy, claiming "significant progress." "In order to address climate change, all major economies must be at the...

Forecasters say Hurricane Bertha could become slightly stronger in the next couple of days as it heads toward Bermuda. As of about 5 a.m. EDT Wednesday, the center of the storm was about 560 miles northeast of the...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was collecting Bulgaria's highest honor on Wednesday for her help in securing Libya's release of six medics nearly a year ago. Rice played less of a public role than several other...

Police say a man has scaled the side of The New York Times' 52-story headquarters in Manhattan for the third time in two months. Police say the man climbed up the Eighth Avenue side of the building and had reached at...

Wearing T-shirts that read "Pope Go Homo" and "The pope is wrong, put a condom on!," a dozen demonstrators poked fun Wednesday at a new Australian law meant to protect participants of next week's World Youth Day from...

Heavy fighting erupted Wednesday between government supporters and Hezbollah's allies in northern Lebanon, killing at least three people and shattering a fragile truce that lasted just two weeks, security officials...

Police in Naples say they have arrested 44 suspected mobsters in a crackdown on drug trafficking. Police say the sweep on Wednesday followed the capture earlier this year of a convicted boss in the Camorra crime...

Charging bulls plowed into or trampled piles of fallen thrillseekers Wednesday, injuring at least two people at the running of the bulls, including an American who was gored in the abdomen. On the third day of Spain's...

A U.S. Marines commander says his troops have killed 400 insurgents in southern Afghanistan since April. Col. Peter Petronzio, the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, says the figure comes from the...

Oil prices rebounded Wednesday in Asia from a tumble of more than $5 in the previous session after Iran test-fired nine missiles, renewing fears of a conflict that could cut global oil supplies. Iran's elite...

The labor drama gripping Hollywood is now entering its final act after one actors group said its members ratified a new deal and the other prepared to turn down the major studios' final offer. The American Federation...

More than 4,800 dairy cows at risk of carrying tuberculosis are being slaughtered this week in central California, where nearly 16,000 cattle in the country's largest milk-producing region have been quarantined, federal...

Women may not earn as much as men or fly up the corporate ladder as quickly, but they get the last laugh since they live longer. Right? As it turns out, women probably aren't saving enough to bankroll those extra years...

Alcoa Inc., the world's third-largest aluminum producer, ushered in the second-quarter earnings season by posting a 24 percent earnings decline as rising production costs eroded profits, but the results still exceeded...

A 14,500-year-old woolly mammoth skeleton dug up in 1994 has been unveiled at the Milwaukee Public Museum, giving locals a glimpse of perhaps the most intact specimen discovered in North America. Few paleontological...

Tabloid magazines like to reassure us that celebrities are just like us _ they go grocery shopping, take their dogs for a stroll around the neighborhood, even pump their own gas. These days, that can also hold true...

Matthew McConaughey's longtime model girlfriend, Camila Alves, has given birth to the couple's first child, a 7-pound, 4-ounce boy. Alves, 24, gave birth Monday night in California and named the child Levi,...

You wouldn't necessarily know it from last week, but Nielsen Media Research says TV viewership is on the rise. The company said Tuesday that the average American watched 127 1/4 hours of television in May, or the...

Nicole Kidman has described Nashville as a quiet escape, a nice place to raise a garden or grab coffee without photographers in tow. So it really shouldn't be a surprise that it's also where she and husband Keith Urban...

After 10 years and two championships, Tony Stewart appears set to end his relationship with Joe Gibbs Racing to pursue an opportunity to buy his own NASCAR team. Stewart's contract with JGR runs through 2009, but the...

Jair Jurrjens pitched six solid innings, batterymate Brian McCann homered twice and Yunel Escobar hit a three-run double, leading the Atlanta Braves to a 9-3 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday night. One...

Nate McLouth's two-run single in the eighth capped a three-run rally and the Pittsburgh Pirates sent the Houston Astros to their seventh loss in eight games with a rain-soaked 4-3 win Tuesday night. McLouth's line...

Looking decidedly like the Triple-A Portland Beavers, the San Diego Padres came up with a nifty big league result Tuesday night, beating the Florida Marlins 10-1 to snap a nine-game home losing streak. Rookie Chase...

CC Sabathia was a little wild in his debut with the Milwaukee Brewers, but still delivered as advertised in a 7-3 victory over the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday night. Sabathia (1-0) gave up two earned runs and five hits...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)--Archaeology is in the news again. An interesting juxtaposition of news stories concerns what might be the boyhood home of George Washington on the Rappahannock River and the claim that a collector...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)--John Dever, a former professor of church and society at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, died of a heart attack July 4 at the age of 72.Dever joined the faculty of the Louisville, Ky.,...

RIDGECREST, N.C. (BP)--God does not make suggestions, Henry Blackaby said. He gives commands.Every time God speaks, "it is life or death, blessing or cursing. When God has something to say to you, He assigns the Holy...

COLUMBIA, Md. (BP)--Billy Bestofall, pastor of The Church of Everyone's Dreams, announces his resignation and the congregation is devastated. They cry, have a farewell chicken dinner and start looking for a replacement....

SALISBURY, Md. (BP)--Lee Hughart was happily working as a bivocational pastor and assistant curator of a historic fort in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina swept through and wiped out his home, church and...

People trust dentists with their health. Some members of Congress are more skeptical. The dental industry, asked to testify Tuesday about pollution from mercury in tooth fillings, found itself under attack from...

Pressured by desperate parents, government researchers are pushing to test an unproven treatment on autistic children, a move some scientists see as an unethical experiment in voodoo medicine. The treatment removes...

QUACK RESEARCH? The government wants to test chelation, a treatment for lead poisoning, on children with autism _ even though there's no evidence it leads to improvements. WHY? Proof that chelation doesn't work might...

A prostate cancer study that could change how doctors treat some patients found that widely used hormone-blocking drugs did not improve survival chances for older men whose disease hadn't spread. In fact, men given the...

Federal drug safety officials have imposed the government's most urgent warning on Cipro and similar antibiotics, citing risks that they can cause tendon ruptures, a serious injury that leaves some patients...

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., maker of the "Shrek" movies and "Kung Fu Panda," announced Tuesday it will switch from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. computer chips to Intel Corp.'s as it moves toward making all 3-D movies....

In the latest expansion beyond its main mission of organizing the world's information, Internet search leader Google Inc. hopes to orchestrate more fantasizing on the Web. The Mountain View-based company unveiled a...

VMware Inc. abruptly replaced co-founder Diane Greene as chief executive Tuesday and lowered its sales outlook, triggering alarms that pounded the business software maker's shares to their lowest depths since the...

Executives from major Internet players _ Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. _ are due for a grilling about online privacy in a Senate committee Wednesday, but the company likely to get the most scrutiny is a...

More than a year after they were introduced, federal rules intended to keep cell phone towers operating during natural disasters remain in limbo. A federal appeals court on Tuesday put off deciding on the wireless...

A cold front was moving southward over the upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes regions early Tuesday, triggering severe storms including heavy rain, strong winds, hail and possible tornadoes. Storms associated...

A cold front sagging south across the Upper Midwest and another front intensifying over the Northern Plains were to combine to spark scattered showers and thunderstorms across much of the Midwest early Monday, while the...

Showers and thunderstorms were expected Sunday from eastern Colorado through Wisconsin. There was a slight chance of severe weather from eastern Nebraska through Wisconsin. Widespread scattered showers and...

Showers and thunderstorms were expected across the Mid-Atlantic on Saturday. Severe weather was not expected, but the region was forecast to receive heavy rain and strong winds. The Boston area was to remain mostly...

A wet Independence Day was forecast for much of the nation, with showers and thunderstorms projected for the Pacific Northwest, the mid-Atlantic, the Ohio Valley and the Southeast. Clear skies were expected over the...