AP - Stock futures slipped to start the holiday-shortened week Tuesday after some fresh concerns about the health of European banks rattled overseas markets.

AFP - Bangladesh's president has pardoned 20 death-row prisoners four years after they were sentenced for the murder of a then-ruling party activist, a prison official said Tuesday.

AFP - Rwandans and the international community need to work together to end President Paul Kagame's rule and pave the way for a democratic transition, exiled leaders said in a report obtained by AFP Tuesday.

AP - The top executive at Kia Motors has resigned after the company recalled more than 100,000 vehicles worldwide over defective wiring, the automaker said Tuesday.

AFP - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard retained power by a tiny, one-seat majority Tuesday after winning the backing of two key independent MPs in the first hung parliament in decades.

AP - The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned Tuesday an American church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide.

AFP - The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council have postponed the implementation on Tuesday of a customs union due to disagreement over sharing tariff revenues and problems meeting World Trade Organisation rules, officials said.

AP - Turns out politics, for all its focus on the gloomy economy, is a recession-proof industry.

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 - Prime Minister Julia Gillard will lead Australia's first minority government in 67 years after two independent lawmakers threw their support behind her center-left Labor Party on Tuesday, ending two weeks of uncertainty left by national elections that ended on a knife-edge.

AP - A wind-whipped wildfire sent flames roaring through a rugged canyon in the Colorado foothills, forcing hundreds of people to flee and destroying dozens of homes — some that belonged to the firefighters themselves, authorities said early Tuesday.

AP - The influx of foreign aid after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake significantly increased survivors' trust in the West, according to new research that also suggests hard-line Islamist charities did little to help despite the publicity they generated.

AP - The European Union on Tuesday condemned the stoning to death sentence passed against an Iranian woman convicted for adultery, saying it was "barbaric beyond words."

AP - Strikes hobbled public transit across France and in London on Tuesday, with tourists and commuters bearing the brunt of a wave of discontent over government austerity measures.

AP - Hipsters, hustlers, celebrities, thieves, dope peddlers and just about everyone else in gritty, quirky Venice Beach know Boston Dawna. You can't miss the one-woman crime fighter.

AFP - US President Barack Obama has pledged 50 billion dollars to create jobs in a massive transportation infrastructure campaign, targeting huge unemployment and ripping resurgent Republicans.

Reuters - Change swept through the top of Britain's banks on Tuesday as Barclays said its investment banking supremo Bob Diamond will take over as group chief executive next year and HSBC was expected to announce later that its chairman is going into government.

Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 fell 0.2 to 0.7 percent, pointing to a weaker start on Wall Street on Tuesday.

AP - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he has asked the U.S. to settle a dispute with Israel over settlement expansion that is threatening to derail Mideast peace talks.

AP - A determined Republican stall campaign in the Senate has sidetracked so many of the men and women nominated by President Barack Obama for judgeships that he has put fewer people on the bench than any president since Richard Nixon at a similar point in his first term 40 years ago.

Reuters - Silicon Valley technology giant Oracle Corp has hired Mark Hurd, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co who resigned amid a scandal, as president.

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 - 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.

Reuters - President Barack Obama, scrambling to spur job creation, proposed a six-year plan on Monday to rebuild infrastructure with an initial $50 billion investment and prepared new business tax cuts.

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.

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

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.