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...

A man accused of checking out hundreds of books and DVDs from libraries around the Denver area and then trying to sell them will be doing all his library borrowing from now on behind bars. Denver prosecutors say...

President Bush on Wednesday hailed the move by G-8 leaders to coalesce behind a broad climate-change strategy, claiming in a summit valedictory that "significant progress" has been made on global warming. "In order to...

The Army three-star general who for a year led efforts to train Iraq's army and police units says progress is mixed and U.S. help is needed for the foreseeable future. Lt. Gen. James Dubik was expected to tell the...

Thousands of residents north of Sacramento have been told to flee after erratic winds blew embers across wildfire containment lines, the latest setback for already strained fire crews. Authorities ordered residents of...

The Senate finally is expected to pass a bill overhauling rules on secret government eavesdropping, completing a lengthy and bitter debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent...

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

Charging bulls plowed into piles of fallen thrillseekers Wednesday, goring an American and injuring at least one other person during the annual run through the streets of Pamplona. On the third day of the San Fermin...

Despite its name, this year's Group of Eight summit had a cast of more than two dozen _ and leaders said they will keep inviting heads of state from all over the world to give a global spin to its annual meetings. ...

The U.S. nuclear envoy said Wednesday that six-nation talks on disarmament that open Thursday will focus deciding how to verify North Korea's nuclear assets. Christopher Hill noted that there is already some agreement...

The governor of a province in eastern Turkey says Kurdish rebels have kidnapped three German climbers on Mount Ararat. Gov. Mehmet Cetin said Wednesday that the climbers were part of a 13-member German team and were...

Stocks headed for a modestly lower open Wednesday as rebounding oil prices drained away the momentum from Wall Street's big Tuesday rally. A more than $9 drop in oil over two days had pulled the stock market out of its...

The top business news from The Associated Press for the morning of Wednesday, July 9, 2008: Bush Hails G-8 summit's work on climate change TOYAKO, Japan (AP) _ President Bush on Wednesday hailed the move by G-8...

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 U.S. dollar was mostly lower against other major currencies in European trading Wednesday morning. Gold fell. The euro traded at $1.5688, up from $1.5657 late Tuesday in New York. Other dollar rates: _107.52...

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...

A court-appointed psychiatrist took the stand at Christie Brinkley's divorce trial and added a dispassionate, but intimate viewpoint to a case piled high with dirty laundry. The psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Herman, said...

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...

CC Sabathia punctuated his Milwaukee debut with a bellowing scream as he came off the mound after the sixth inning. It was almost as if he was putting the National League on notice. If the Chicago Cubs didn't hear...

A toe injury and related problems knocked 400-meter hurdles world champion Jana Rawlinson out of the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday, the day she officially was selected as part of her third Australian Summer Games team. ...

Coming off two tight wins over their traditional rival, and about to head into the All-Star break, the New York Yankees turned to two of their veterans to beat the upstart Tampa Bay Rays. Derek Jeter came through with...

Cadel Evans knows what it feels like to lose the Tour de France by seconds. That's why, even though he did not win Tuesday's time trial, his dominance of Alejandro Valverde felt like a small victory in itself. Evans...

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...

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...