AP - Their control of the House in peril, Democrats are playing defense all across the country. Disgruntled voters, a sluggish economy and vanishing enthusiasm for President Barack Obama have put 75 seats or more - the vast majority held by Democrats - at risk of changing hands.

AFP - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard retained power by a tiny, one-seat majority Tuesday after winning the backing of two key independent MPs in the first hung parliament in decades.

AFP - Suspected members of an Islamist sect that launched an uprising last year attacked a prison in northern Nigeria on Tuesday, authorities said, with residents reporting gunshots in the area.

AP - President Barack Obama's proposed tax breaks for business sound like ideas that have enjoyed broad Republican backing in the past. But in today's toxic political atmosphere, he's unlikely to get much — if any — GOP help.

AP - Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who has presided over the nation's third-largest city for 21 years, announced Tuesday that he will not run for a seventh term.

AP - A 36-year-old factory worker who spent much of his adult life in prison was charged Tuesday with sexually assaulting and murdering a 14-year-old girl whose badly burned body was found behind gravel piles at the asphalt plant where he worked.

AP - An Iraqi soldier opened fire on American troops and killed two on Tuesday, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. They were the first American servicemen killed since the U.S. declared an official end to combat operations in the country last week.

AP - "Borrow me $5 can?" may not be the most graceful way to ask for a few dollars, but it's music to the ears of many Singaporeans.

AP - French strikers disrupted trains and planes, hospitals and mail delivery Tuesday amid massive street protests over plans to raise the retirement age. Across the English Channel, London subway workers unhappy with staff cuts walked off the job.

AP - Firefighters planned to ramp up their battle Tuesday against a wildfire that forced about 3,000 people to flee their homes as the wind-whipped blaze filled the surrounding canyon with heavy smoke and spit flames.

AP - The international crossfire over Iran's stoning sentence for a woman convicted of adultery intensified Tuesday with a top European Union official calling it "barbaric" and an Iranian spokesman saying it's about punishing a criminal and not a human rights issue.

AP - A Christian minister vowed Tuesday to go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Quran to protest the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks despite warnings from the White House and the top U.S. general in Afghanistan that doing so would endanger American troops overseas.

AP - A salvaged 50-ton steel column was hoisted onto a support structure Tuesday at the World Trade Center site, where it will eventually serve as part of the entryway to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

AP - Less than a couple months after Nick Curtin opened a pharmacy in suburban Tulsa in 2008, the store was burglarized twice in one week. And just last year a masked man robbed him at gunpoint, making off with 1,800 pills.

Reuters - Republicans in the Congress showed little willingness to help President Barack Obama approve $350 billion worth of measures to boost the economy with midterm elections less than two months away.

AP - Tropical Storm Hermine gave a wet and windy punch to Texas on Tuesday but left only minor scrapes in the storm-weary Rio Grande Valley, which is proving resilient this hurricane season after taking a third tropical system on the chin.

AP - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he has asked the U.S. to settle a dispute with Israel over settlement expansion that is threatening to derail Mideast peace talks.

AP - Maybe the language lovers who looked up "refudiate" this summer wanted to refute or repudiate its existence as a real word.

AP - A car bomb ripped through a police compound in a northwestern Pakistani city on Tuesday, killing 14 women and children and three officers, the latest in a string of attacks proving that Islamist militants remain a potent force in the country.

Reuters - Millions of commuters across the British capital struggled to get to work on Tuesday as a 24-hour strike by workers on London's underground rail system crippled much of the network, hurting the city's convalescent economy. Passengers took to bikes, buses, walked, or made use of extra boat services on the River Thames that runs through the city in a bid to beat the stoppage, called in protest at 800 job cuts driven by austerity measures.

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.

Reuters - Cuba will soon turn some small-scale manufacturing and retail services into cooperatives as the state retreats from minor businesses in an effort to boost the island's troubled economy, government and Communist Party sources said.

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.