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AFP - Australia's conservative leader Tony Abbott picked up a key seat Tuesday as the nail-biting race to form a new government went down to the wire, two weeks after inconclusive elections.

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.

Reuters - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's Labor Party looked close to retaining power on Tuesday after a pivotal independent lawmaker signaled the remaining two unaligned parliamentarians would support her.

AP - Tropical Storm Hermine slammed into Mexico's northern Gulf coast near the U.S. border late Monday with winds of 60 mph (95 kph), lashing Mexico and southern Texas with heavy rains that authorities warned could cause flash flooding.

AP - Grit was not going to be enough to get Maria Sharapova through this one.

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.

Reuters - China has told the United States it wants to narrow differences that have developed over a range of issues, state media said on Tuesday, aiming to lay the ground for a visit by President Hu Jintao early next year.

AP - An Indonesian volcano shot black ash three miles (5,000 meters) into the air early Tuesday — its most powerful eruption since springing back to life after four centuries of dormancy.

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.

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.