Republican presidential candidate John McCain, ridiculing Barack Obama for "the audacity of hopelessness" in his policies on Iraq, said Friday that the entire Middle East could have plunged into war had U.S. troops been...

President Bush spent a second day this week traveling to raise money for Republicans, all out of public view. On Friday, the fundraiser Bush headlined was to help Republican Aaron Schock in his race for the House seat...

IN THE HEADLINES Obama says Iran should accept EU nuclear proposal and not wait for next US president ... In shadow of Obama trip, McCain works battleground states and raises campaign funds ... German leader's office...

Coast Guard says Mississippi River will reopen to limited traffic following oil spill. ...

A written prayer that Barack Obama left this week in the cracks of the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, asks God to guide him and guard his family, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday. "Lord _ Protect my family...

An official at a Christian radio station in central Pennsylvania says police shot and killed a man who had threatened the station. WTLR station manager Mark VanOuse (van-OOS') says police showed up and warned employees...

Three white teens were charged Friday in what officials said was an epithet-filled fatal beating of an illegal Mexican immigrant in a small northeast Pennsylvania coal town. Brandon J. Piekarsky, 16, and Colin J....

Two Michigan sisters surprised hospital staff and themselves by giving birth to daughters on the same day. The Hillsdale Daily News reported that Sarah Sweeter made the trip from Kalamazoo to be with her sister Deborah...

A Milwaukee man was accused of shooting his lawn mower because it wouldn't start. Keith Walendowski, 56, was charged with felony possession of a short-barreled shotgun or rifle and misdemeanor disorderly conduct while...

Call it the un-impeachment hearing. The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Friday it insisted was not about removing President Bush from office. But critics of Bush's policies couldn't pass up the chance to...

A hole the size of a small car in the underside of a Qantas jumbo jet carrying 346 passengers forced the pilot to make an emergency landing Friday after a rapid descent over the South China Sea. The Boeing 747-400 was...

A crowd of 30,000 people, baking in the heat and waiting for up to two days, swarmed a ticketing center Friday as the final batch of Olympic tickets went on sale. Police shoved and kicked them and used metal barricades...

The spokesman for the banned Iraqi Olympic Committee says he still hopes that Iraq can take part in next month's Beijing games. Jazair al-Sahlani says that talks are under way Friday to restore Iraq's Olympic status...

This hardscrabble Mexican border town welcomed 400 soldiers when they arrived four months ago to stop a wave of drug violence that brought daytime gunbattles to its main street. But then the soldiers themselves turned...

More than 50 dissident Catholic groups from around the world have written an open letter asking Pope Benedict XVI to lift the church's ban on birth control. Taking a half-page ad in the Italian daily Corriere della...

The first of 200 ships idled by a massive oil spill began crawling down the Mississippi River Friday after the Coast Guard reopened the waterway to traffic, but it could be days before all of the ships are cleared. A...

Federal officials said Friday that Imperial Sugar Co. should face fines of more than $8.7 million for violations at two plants, including a Georgia facility where an explosion killed 13 people. The fines would be the...

Arch Coal Inc. said Friday its second-quarter profit tripled on soaring global prices and the company boosted its outlook after beating Wall Street expectations easily. The performance, on the heels of similar big...

Wall Street rose moderately Friday after better than expected economic data placated a market pummeled in the previous session by concerns about housing and the financial sector. The Commerce Department's report on...

Oil prices sank to their lowest point in weeks Friday as investors questioned whether crude has cooled enough to reflect a serious deterioration in demand. Prices at the pump eased to nearly $4 a gallon, and AAA said a...

Ed McMahon has a job. The former "Tonight Show" sidekick is reprising his role as pitchman with several comical commercial segments during "Jimmy Kimmel Live." The first of the four spots, which were filmed Thursday...

The creator of "X-Men" bumped into Wolverine at Comic-Con. After happy introductions between Stan Lee and Hugh Jackman, the actor announced that Lee would make a cameo in the upcoming 20th Century Fox movie "X-Men...

Martie Maguire of the Dixie Chicks and her husband, Gareth, have welcomed another addition to their all-girl brood: daughter Harper Rosie Maguire. The baby was born Friday morning in Austin, Texas, weighing in at 7...

Singer Connie Francis is being treated at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York where she was hospitalized after falling ill earlier this week. Her agent, Mike Church, says the 69-year-old singer had been...

The Rolling Stones, the world's top-earning music act last year, have signed a long-term, exclusive worldwide contract with Vivendi SA's Universal Music, dealing a major blow to the group's former recording company, EMI...

American Bruce Vaughan shot par 71 Friday, taking a one-shot lead after the second round of the Senior British Open before heading for therapy on his troublesome left knee. Vaughan, who has undergone three partial knee...

Brett Favre has told the Green Bay Packers he plans to report to training camp this weekend, according to an NFL Network report Friday _ a move perhaps designed to force the team to quickly work out a trade for the...

The Cincinnati Bengals waived running back Kenny Irons on Friday after he failed a physical examination earlier this week. Irons tore a left knee ligament during a preseason game at Detroit in August. The 24-year-old...

Carlos Sastre kept the Tour de France yellow jersey Friday, a day before a time trial that most likely will determine the winner of the three-week race in what the Spaniard calls the "opportunity of my life." Sylvain...

The Pittsburgh Steelers have signed their first-round draft pick, running back Rashard Mendenhall, to a five-year contract. The Steelers announced the deal Friday, but say they have no plans for a news conference or to...

EDITOR'S NOTE: This column by Mike Licona of the North American Mission Board is the final column in a four-part series on the exclusivity of Christianity.ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP)--In the first column in this series I said...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Fuge isn't just a hot weather event anymore.This December, LifeWay Christian Resources will debut Fuge Winter Camp at LifeWay Glorieta Conference Center near Santa Fe, N.M.Fuge Winter Camp is...

GLORIETA, N.M. (BP)--The Centrifuge camp began with a bang -- literally.Thunder shook the mountains surrounding the LifeWay Glorieta Conference Center near Santa Fe, N.M., as students, chaperones and leaders ventured...

WASHINGTON (BP)--Four television ministries still have refused to comply fully with a U.S. Senate committee's probe into their financial records nearly nine months after first being asked.The ministries of Kenneth...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--It's no secret that the homosexual community forms part of Barack Obama's base, and a new Harris Interactive poll shows the presumptive Democratic nominee holding a 46-point lead over Republican...

When there's an urgent need to trace fruits and vegetables in a crisis like the salmonella outbreak, a lot of the pieces for a rapid-response system are in place. But nobody has quite figured out how to put them...

After three surgeries, Judy Sherer still had chronic pain in her left shoulder. She'd lost faith in her doctors, and in despair tried a new health benefit offered by her employer. The service, Health Advocate, is a...

More than 1,000 people died over two years from an illegal version of the painkiller fentanyl, the government reported Thursday in its first national tally of those deaths. The spike of overdoses seems to have ended,...

Scientists will have to take "enormous intellectual leaps" to develop an AIDS vaccine in the coming years, say researchers clearly frustrated by the failure of a once-promising shot. The researchers, including a top...

Scientists will have to take "enormous intellectual leaps" to develop an AIDS vaccine in the coming years, say researchers clearly frustrated by the failure of a once-promising shot. The researchers, including a top...

Italian prosecutors have ended their investigation of four Google Inc. executives over a video uploaded onto Google's Italian site that showed a disabled youth being abused, news reports said Friday. The ANSA and Apcom...

AOL is shutting three data-storage services, including one of the Internet's earliest photo-sharing sites, as it seeks to cut costs and focus resources on its advertising opportunities. AOL Pictures, the year-old...

Nokia Corp., Motorola Inc. and other handset makers rose along with the broader market Friday following Samsung Electronics' report that its mobile phone sales rose 22 percent in the second quarter. Samsung's handset...

With the old gas-guzzler in the garage, you've got your bicycle ready and your sneakers laced up. Now all you need is a map of the quickest, safest routes for riding around town. Well, not so fast. As more commuters...

Bruce R. Chizen, the former chief executive of Adobe Systems Inc., has been named to an expanded board of another software company, Oracle Corp. Chizen, 52, who stepped down as Adobe CEO last year "to take a break"...

The remnants of Hurricane Dolly were expected to continue flooding southern Texas on Friday and possibly spawn tornadoes, while storms were forecast in the Plains, the Midwest, the Southwest, the Southeast and New...

The remnants of Hurricane Dolly were dumping heavy rain over southern Texas on Thursday, a day after making landfall, then weakening to a tropical storm. Flooding concerns persisted as Dolly crept across the state. A...

Hurricane Dolly was expected to make landfall Wednesday near the Texas-Mexico border, bringing up to 15 inches of rain to southern Texas. Flooding was anticipated, especially along the coast, because of the heavy rain...

A cold front hovering over the Ohio Valley early Tuesday was expected to trigger showers and thunderstorms from the Central Plains to New England, while Tropical Storm Dolly threatened Texas. Scattered showers, strong...

Tropical storms Dolly and Cristobal were to continue spinning away in the Atlantic Basin on Monday. Cristobal was to pull away from the North Carolina coastline in the morning, but showers and gusty winds were to last...