WASHINGTON – Add another election-year hurdle for Democrats: President Barack Obama's forceful defense of the right of Muslims to build a mosque near the World Trade Center site.

SAN FRANCISCO — Gay couples who had been gearing up to get married in California this week had to put their wedding plans on hold once again after a federal appeals court said it first wanted to consider the constitutionality of the state's same-sex marriage ban.

ORANGEBURG, S.C. – A South Carolina mother who claimed her children drowned when their car careened into a river was charged with murder Tuesday after authorities said she confessed to suffocating the two toddlers and then faking the accident.

TOKYO — Japan lost its place as the world's No. 2 economy to China in the second quarter as receding global growth sapped momentum and stunted a shaky recovery.

BOGOTA, Colombia – A Boeing 737 jetliner with 131 passengers aboard crashed on landing and broke into three pieces at a Colombian island in the Caribbean early Monday. The region's governor said it was a miracle that only one person died.

LUCERNE VALLEY, Calif. – The crowd at the off-road race could almost touch the trucks as they hurtled and bounced over the desert sand. They were close enough for one mistake to end eight lives.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Companies using criminal records or bad credit reports to screen out job applicants might run afoul of anti-discrimination laws as the government steps up scrutiny of hiring policies that could hurt blacks and Hispanics.

NEW ORLEANS (NNPA) - It will be five years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on Aug. 29. The impact remains quite painful for many.

An attorney for Fisk University accused Tennessee's attorney general of wanting to close the school during the first day of a trial to determine whether it can sell a share in its famous Stieglitz art collection.
The Nashville-based, historically black university ranked 118 in the country by US News and World Report and is included in the Princeton Review's best 360 colleges.
At issue is whether Fisk can change the conditions the late painter Georgia O'Keeffe placed upon her bequest of 101 works of art to the school. Fisk argues it is in such financial straits that it is in danger of shutting down and cannot maintain the collection as agreed.

(NNPA) - As Fox News and other media under the grip of the conservative right wing continue a steady drumbeat against U.S. Representatives Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters, Democrats and those on the political left grow increasingly concerned that Rangel and Waters are being successfully converted into the new Willie and Wilma Horton.