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AP - Jefferson Thomas, who as a teenager was among nine black students to integrate a Little Rock high school in the nation's first major battle over school segregation, has died. He was 67.

AP - Former Surinamese dictator Desi Bouterse shrugged off questions about his past during his first overseas trip as elected president, saying Monday that he will not interfere in his ongoing murder trial and dismissing a 1999 drug conviction as "almost a joke."

AP - Mexican authorities urged people to move to shelters while officials in Texas distributed sandbags and warned of flash floods as Tropical Storm Hermine strengthened and headed toward the northwestern Gulf coast on Monday.

Reuters - Tropical Storm Hermine strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday as it approached landfall near the U.S.-Mexico border, but oil and gas operations in the Gulf were unaffected.

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.

AP - The lawyer for an Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned on an adultery conviction said Monday that he and her children are worried the delayed execution could be carried out soon with the end of a moratorium on death sentences for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

AP - Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank's retort was an Internet sensation.

AP - A Taliban suicide bomber detonated a car in an alley behind a police station in a strategically important town in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, killing at least 17 police and civilians in an explosion that shattered the station and neighboring homes.

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 - Brian Matusz won his fourth straight start and Brian Roberts hit a go-ahead single in the seventh inning off struggling A.J. Burnett, leading the Baltimore Orioles to a rare 4-3 win over the New York Yankees on Monday.

AP - They say money can't buy happiness. They're wrong.

AFP - The son of an Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery said Monday that he fears she will be executed shortly after this week's end to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

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.

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.

AP - The U.S. Open welcomed two new faces to the quarterfinals — France's Gael Monfils and Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova.

Reuters - Taliban threats, shuttered polling centers and warnings of widespread fraud are clouding hopes for Afghanistan's September 18 parliamentary election, a key test of an already fragile democracy, observers have warned.

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.

AP - A judge in the Bahamas dismissed charges Monday against two people accused of trying to extort money from John Travolta after the actor decided he no longer wanted to face the pain of a new trial stemming from the death of his teenage son on the island chain.

AP - Huge posters plastered across the North Korean capital hailed the nation's biggest political convention in 30 years as a historic event as the world watched Monday for signs that the country's next leader was making his public debut.

AP - In an unusually blunt warning, the U.N. atomic agency said Monday that its monitoring of Iran's nuclear activities is being hampered because Tehran objects to giving some agency inspectors access to its program.