AP - A 36-year-old man who spent much of his adult life in prison was charged Tuesday with murdering a 14-year-old girl whose badly burned body was found behind an asphalt plant where he worked.

AP - Firefighters ramped up their fight Tuesday against a 3,500-acre wildfire that has forced about 3,000 people to evacuate and destroyed dozens of homes near Boulder, including some that belonged to firefighters.

AP - The flight attendant accused of onboard antics that captured the nation's attention when he told off a passenger and slid down the plane's emergency chute with a beer will undergo a mental health evaluation with the aim of avoiding jail time in a possible plea deal.

AP - Hermine weakened Tuesday but continued dumping heavy rains on a northern crawl through Texas, barely holding on to tropical storm strength but leaving behind a path of widespread power outages and landslides in Mexico.

AP - A Christian minister said Tuesday that he will go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Quran this weekend to protest the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks despite a warning from the top U.S. general in Afghanistan that doing so would endanger American troops.

AFP - Much-vaunted EU plans to tax banks skidded into trouble after moves to clamp down on big-spending governments also hit buffers despite broad agreement on Tuesday to regulate the financial sector.

AP - European Union nations agreed to create new financial oversight institutions Tuesday, hoping to prevent a repeat of the government debt crisis that nearly left Greece bankrupt and brought the European banking system to its knees.

AP - Motorists should see pump prices slide again after they spending a little more to fill their tanks over the Labor Day weekend.

Reuters - China's state-owned chemicals group Sinochem Corp has approached Singapore state investor Temasek to join a consortium that may bid for Canada's Potash Corp , sources with knowledge of the deal said on Tuesday.

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

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 chief executive and HSBC said its chairman is leaving to go into government.

AFP - European rivals are "wasting their time" trying to claw back the 'Thatcher rebate' that returns billions of euros annually to London in place of farm payments to France and Germany, a minister warned on Tuesday.

Reuters - China wants to quell 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 - Wall Street dropped on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 briefly falling 1 percent, after reports on the European banking system reignited concerns about the financial stability of the region.

AP - President Barack Obama will call on Congress to pass new tax breaks that would allow businesses to write off 100 percent of their new capital investments through 2011, the latest in a series of proposals the White House is rolling out in hopes of showing action on the economy ahead of the November elections.

AP - President Barack Obama will call on Congress to pass new tax breaks that would allow businesses to write off 100 percent of their new capital investments through 2011, the latest in a series of proposals the White House is rolling out in hopes of showing action on the economy ahead of the November elections.

AFP - Republicans in the US Congress may be able to handle the country's struggling economy better than President Barack Obama's fellow Democrats, according to a new national poll released Tuesday.

AP - Half-buried in rubble, Bazelais Suy struggled to breathe — a dead woman lay on his chest. He knew he had to get her off, fast. Because he could still move his arms, he somehow managed to remove his belt, loop it around the woman's own belt and drag her off. But his legs were still pinned.

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 - 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 - The crowded rooftop bleachers overlooking Wrigley Field stand as proof that no matter how bad the Chicago Cubs played, the ballpark was simply not big enough to hold everyone who wanted to see them play.

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.

AP - Oil prices fell to near $74 a barrel Tuesday in Asia as investors mull the strength of the U.S. economy and demand for crude.

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.