AP - European Union countries will discuss a possible levy on banks and a tax on financial transactions to better control market forces and protect public finances from the costs of bailouts, as they gather Tuesday in an atmosphere more benign than when they last met in July.

AFP - Afghanistan paceman Khaliq Dad Noori Tuesday said his country was ready to play international cricket in Pakistan at a time when security fears have stopped most teams touring the terror-hit nation.

AP - An Indonesian volcano shot a towering cloud of black ash high into the air Tuesday, dusting villages 15 miles (25 kilometers) away in its most powerful eruption since awakening last week from four centuries of dormancy.

AP - A fire marshal says a wind-whipped wildfire that has sent flames roaring through a rugged canyon in the Colorado foothills has destroyed dozens of homes.

AP - Prime Minister Julia Gillard will lead Australia's first minority government in 67 years after two independent lawmakers threw their support behind her center-left Labor Party on Tuesday, ending two weeks of uncertainty left by national elections that ended on a knife-edge.

AP - The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned Tuesday an American church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book the Quran could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide.

AP - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he has asked the U.S. to settle a dispute with Israel over settlement expansion that is threatening to derail Mideast peace talks.

AP - Oil prices fell to near $74 a barrel Tuesday in Asia as investors mull the strength of the U.S. economy and demand for crude.

AP - Tropical Storm Hermine rolled into south Texas early Tuesday, bringing heavy rains and strong winds to an area battered by Hurricane Alex earlier this summer.

AP - Iran's nuclear chief says Tehran has the right to bar some U.N. inspectors from monitoring its disputed nuclear program.

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.

AFP - Deadly protests that paralysed Mozambique's capital last week were spurred by a text message that went viral on Maputo's cell phones, signalling the power of new technology in the hands of the poor.

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 - 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 - 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 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.