NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Gov. Phil Bredesen this week voiced support for a Nashville waiter's claim that a new law allowing guns in bars creates an unsafe workplace.

A controversial nationwide conversation has sparked following the proposal of a Muslim-themed community center two blocks away from Ground Zero.

For years, drivers from every U.S. state and Canadian province have reported speed trap locations to the National Motorists Association's National Speed Trap Exchange.

NEW ORLEANS, La. — A mile-long oil sheen spread Thursday from an offshore petroleum platform burning in the Gulf of Mexico off Lousiana, west of the site of BP's massive spill.

WASHINGTON — The former chief of Lehman Brothers told a panel investigating the financial crisis that the Wall Street firm could have been rescued, but regulators refused to help — even though they later bailed out other big banks.

SILVER SPRING, Md. – Police shot and killed a man upset with the Discovery Channel network's programming who took two employees and a security officer hostage at the company's headquarters Wednesday, officials said. All three hostages escaped safely.

WASHINGTON — Despite President Barack Obama's declaration Tuesday of an end to the combat mission in Iraq, combat almost certainly lies ahead.

WASHINGTON — The number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. has dropped for the first time in 20 years as substantially fewer undocumented workers from Mexico, Latin America and elsewhere are crossing the border in search of jobs, an independent research group says.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Federal officials say Hurricane Earl's effect on the East Coast will depend on when it makes its expected turn to the northeast near North Carolina's Outer Banks.

AMSTERDAM – Dutch prosecutors say two Yemeni citizens who arrived in Amsterdam on a flight from the United States are suspects in a conspiracy to commit a terrorist act.