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AP - Prime Minister Julia Gillard's Labor Party will form a minority government to rule Australia after two independent lawmakers back her coalition.

Reuters - China wants to reduce tensions with the United States through quiet talk, not shouting matches, a top diplomat told White House advisers on Tuesday, aiming to pave the way for a visit by President Hu Jintao early next year.

Reuters - Prime Minister Julia Gillard clung onto power on Tuesday, securing support from independent lawmakers to form a minority government after her Labor Party lost its majority at elections last month.

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.

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.

Reuters - Tropical Storm Hermine slammed into northeastern Mexico near the Texas border on Monday, dumping heavy rain on a region still recovering from Hurricane Alex's visit in June.

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.

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.

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.

Reuters - Iran is pushing ahead with its nuclear program in defiance of tougher sanctions and is hampering the U.N. atom watchdog's work by barring some inspectors, the IAEA says in a new report.

Reuters - The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan has requested another 2,000 troops for the foreign force fighting the Taliban insurgency, despite waning support for the war in troop-contributing nations, NATO officials said.

AFP - Spain's government Monday rejected a ceasefire by Basque fighters ETA as totally inadequate and demanded it renounce guns and bombs forever in its battle for an independent homeland.

Reuters - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told visiting U.S. congressmen he thinks it could be possible to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians in a year despite huge differences, his spokesman said.

Reuters - Emergency services in Guatemala on Monday resumed their search for victims of landslides that killed and buried dozens of people, as further rain was predicted for the Central American country.