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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 could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide.

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 - AOL is adding talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres to its family of Web properties as it looks for ways to draw more people to its sites.

AP - ABC News President David Westin, the longest-reigning network news division chief, with more than 13 tumultuous years on the job, told his staff Monday that he is resigning and will leave by the end of the year.

AFP - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard retained power by a tiny, one-seat majority Tuesday after winning the backing of two key independent MPs in the first hung parliament in decades.

AP - Turns out politics, for all its focus on the gloomy economy, is a recession-proof industry.

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 - Oracle Corp. has hired former Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Mark Hurd to help lead the database software maker in a pivotal moment in Oracle's 33-year history as it tries to muscle in on more of HP's turf.

AP - The influx of foreign aid after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake significantly increased survivors' trust in the West, according to new research that also suggests hard-line Islamist charities did little to help despite the publicity they generated.

Reuters - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard secured a wafer thin parliamentary majority on Tuesday, ending a political impasse but hardly cheering investors worried about the fragility of her government and its plans to tax mining profits.

AP - The U.S. government's financial commitment to Afghanistan is likely to linger and reach into the billions long after it pulls combat troops from the country, newly disclosed spending estimates show.

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 - San Francisco police have arrested a man who scaled the exterior of a 58-story downtown skyscraper and unfurled an American flag at the top.

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

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

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.

AP - Searchers on Monday pulled five more bodies from a mud-covered highway where back-to-back landslides buried bus passengers and people trying to save them. Yet more mudslides raise Guatemala's official death toll to 45 after days of torrential rains.