AP - Iraq and the U.S. pushed close to a deal Thursday setting a course for American combat troops to pull out of Iraqi cities by next June on the way to broader withdrawal from the long and costly war by 2011.

AP - Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved a mystery of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories.

AP - As if a fourth straight day of rain from Tropical Storm Fay wasn't enough, weary residents are now dealing with quintessentially Floridian fallout: alligators, snakes and other critters driven from their swampy lairs into flooded streets, backyards and doorsteps.

AP - Oil prices shot up more than $5 a barrel Thursday, rising to the highest level in over two weeks as escalating tensions with Russia stoked fears of supply disruptions to the West.

AP - A conservative nonprofit group with a past link to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is spending $2.8 million on an ad questioning Democrat Barack Obama's relationship to a founder of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground.