AFP - Nepal's parliament will Tuesday make its seventh attempt to elect a new prime minister and end a stalemate that has held up vital government spending and threatened the fragile peace process.

AFP - Barclays bank said on Tuesday it had chosen American Bob Diamond, head of its highly successful investment banking unit, to become chief executive in place of incumbent John Varley.

AFP - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard retained power by a tiny, one-seat majority Tuesday after winning the backing of two key independent MPs following inconclusive polls.

AP - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he asked the U.S. to settle his dispute with Israel over settlement expansion.

AP - The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned Tuesday that 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 - North Korea requested a shipment of rice, cement and heavy equipment days after rival South Korea offered relief aid to its communist neighbor to help it recover from recent flooding, the South's Unification Ministry said Tuesday.

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 - 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 - A wind-driven wildfire in the rugged Colorado foothills spread across 5 1/2 square miles Monday, destroying an unknown number of homes and triggering the evacuation of 1,000 others, authorities said.

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 - 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.

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.