WASHINGTON (AP) — The top two national security advisers in President Obama's Cabinet on Wednesday denounced plans by a small church in Florida to burn the Muslim holy book to commemorate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying it would inflame tensions and put Americans abroad at risk.

Secretary of ...

NEW YORK (AP) — Kelsey Grammer is an investor and public face supporting a new network that launched Wednesday with entertainment designed to appeal to political conservatives.

RightNetwork, whose first series, "Running," follows the fortunes of some Tea Party-backed candidates for public office, is also trying a new model to ...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan soon will bring terrorism charges against three men alleged to have helped the failed Times Square bomber meet up with militant leaders close to the Afghan border and to have sent him money to carry out the attack, a senior police officer said Wednesday.

The ...

KABUL, Afghanistan | Afghan election officials said Wednesday that scores of additional polling stations will be closed during the Sept. 18 parliamentary vote because of the deteriorating security situation in the country.

The state electoral commission said 81 of the 458 polling stations planned in Nangarhar province will be shut ...

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's top investigative agency has launched a probe into the emergency landing of a passenger jet that rolled into a forest without hurting anyone, officials said Wednesday.

The Tupolev Tu-154 airliner was carrying 72 passengers and nine crew when it suffered an electrical system failure Tuesday while flying from ...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka's Parliament voted to eliminate term limits for the president Wednesday, a move critics say could lead to dictatorship.

The amendment also will tighten President Mahinda Rajapaksa's hold on power by giving him total control over the judiciary, police and the civil service.

The main opposition group, the United National ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told lawmakers Wednesday he expects Russia to abide by a new nuclear arms treaty, but Russia's not doing so could wreck chances for future agreements.

In a newly declassified letter provided to the Associated Press, Mr. Gates wrote that he and the top U.S. ...

MADRID (AP) — A 49-year-old American woman who lived in the southern Spanish city of Seville was killed, cut up into pieces and thrown into a river, police said Wednesday.

A 30-year-old Spanish man who knew the victim has been arrested, and a police search of his apartment turned up blood stains, ...

BAUCHI, Nigeria (AP) — About 800 inmates escaped a federal prison holding Muslim extremists in northern Nigeria during a sunset attack by gunmen who are believed to be members of a radical sect, a police official said Wednesday.

The attackers went cell by cell at the prison in Bauchi, breaking open locks and setting fire to ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police Chief Charlie Beck pleaded for calm and vowed his department would conduct an exhaustive investigation into a bicycle officer's fatal shooting of a drunken day laborer with a knife.

But his words did little to dissuade demonstrators, who spilled into the streets for a second ...

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — Authorities are searching for eight people who have not been accounted for as a wildfire tore through their neighborhoods this week.

Sheriff's Cmdr. Rich Brough said Wednesday that 20 people initially were reported missing and 12 of them have been accounted for.

It's unclear whether the ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. special operations forces are expanding their training of the Yemeni military as the Obama administration broadens its program to counter terrorism in countries reluctant to harbor a visible American military presence.

That balancing act has become an administration trademark, funneling millions of dollars in aid ...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — Three suspected U.S. missile strikes in less than 12 hours hit militant targets in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, officials said, an unusually intense barrage that followed four other such attacks in the last week. At least 14 suspected militants were killed.

The strikes were ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press has learned that the peanut industry executive whose filthy processing plants were blamed in a salmonella outbreak two years ago that killed nine people and sickened hundreds more is back in the business.

Stewart Parnell, the former president of the now-bankrupt Peanut Corp. ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said Wednesday he was determined to go through with his plan to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11, despite pressure from the White House, religious leaders and others to call it off.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In an internal report released Wednesday, oil giant BP PLC blamed itself, other companies' workers and a complex series of failures for the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the drilling rig explosion that preceded it.

The 193-page report was posted on the company's website, even ...

Countering President Obama's call for tax rates to return to their past levels, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner said Wednesday morning that Congress should strike a bipartisan deal to lower spending to what it was in 2008.

Mr. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said the economy is shaky because ...

The three leading candidates seeking the Democratic Party nod to be the next mayor of Washington are black, yet the issue of race and racial divisions remains an inescapable theme in the campaign as voters prepare for Tuesday's primaries.

Polls show a deep racial divide in the electorate, with the ...

SAN MIGUEL RIVER, Ecuador | Thousands of Colombian peasants have crossed into this Ecuadorean jungle for years to escape what the U.S. State Department describes as a low-intensity guerrilla war involving mostly political combatants.

But these days, Colombian refugees are contending with a new and equally deadly breed of armed ...

The Pentagon is eyeing cuts in a war office thought to be untouchable: the organization that devises ways to foil the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Officials say the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) has done good work in developing jammers and detection equipment to ...