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...

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

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...

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...

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...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that a strong statement by the Group of Eight nations on Zimbabwe will not necessarily lead to sanctions over Robert Mugabe's widely criticized re-election. Medvedev's...

Sitting at tables with built-in grills, leading South Korean doctors and business executives ate U.S. beef on Wednesday in a bid to dispel public health fears. The 19 physicians and executives ate American sirloin,...

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad warned on Wednesday that Israeli military operations in the West Bank were hampering his administration's effort to improve security in the territory. Earlier in the day, Israeli...

Armed men attacked a police guardpost outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul on Wednesday. Turkish officials called it a terrorist attack and said three officers and three of the assailants were killed. At least one of...

Iran test-fired nine long- and medium-range missiles Wednesday during war games that officials said aimed to show the country can retaliate against any U.S. and Israeli attack, state television reported. Gen. Hossein...

A federal judge has dismissed Delta Air Lines Inc. from more than 19 pending lawsuits involving a plane crash that killed 49 people two years ago. U.S. District Judge Karl Forester said in a 13-page opinion Tuesday...

Nissan is rapidly forging deals with cities and governments on electric vehicles as soaring gas prices and worries about global warming make the green technology surprisingly appealing, a senior executive said...

Andreas Sperl, the former CFO of Airbus and current head of the EADS Dresden plant in Germany, was detained by French police on Wednesday as part of an insider trading probe, his lawyer Christian Curtil said. Sperl is...

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...

Weeks after giving birth to daughter Maddie Briann, Jamie Lynn Spears is showing off the newborn, sharing memories of a "perfect" delivery and longing to be a Southern soccer mom. Spears and fiance Casey Aldridge...

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,...

British sprinter Dwain Chambers is seeking a temporary court injunction against a lifetime Olympic doping ban, in hopes of competing in the Beijing Games. Chambers went to the High Court on Wednesday to appeal against...

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. ...

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...

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...

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...

Storms stretched from the interior Northeast to the Southern Plains early Wednesday, while high pressure kept much of the West hot and dry. A low pressure system tracking across the Great Lakes was to produce a cold...

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...