GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said he was still praying about whether go through with his plan to burn copies of the Quran on Sept.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A former Army soldier accused of taking workers hostage at a Georgia military hospital is scheduled to make his first appearance in federal court in Savannah.

DETROIT (AP) — Fire officials say flames have swept through at least two dozen Detroit homes, fanned by strong winds that toppled power lines across the city and knocked out service to at least 113,000 Michigan homes and businesses.

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — Will Esposito describes an otherworldly scene after a wildfire tore through a canyon in the Colorado foothills: Some houses in his neighborhood burning while others stood intact, a propane tank shooting flames into the sky, and an eerie quiet interrupted only by firefighting helicopters and airplanes.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police Chief Charlie Beck pleaded for calm and vowed his department would conduct an exhaustive investigation into a bicycle officer's fatal shooting of a drunken day laborer with a knife.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Investigators found no explosives aboard a Los Angeles-bound Thai Airways flight in which a bomb threat was found scrawled on a bathroom mirror, the FBI said Wednesday.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — Despite two terms as governor of New Mexico and recent visits to 26 states, most Americans have never heard of Gary Johnson.

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas (AP) — It's power spent, what was left of Tropical Storm Hermine was making its way north Wednesday, having drenched parts of northeastern Mexico and south Texas before weakening.

CHICAGO (AP) — Suddenly, the race for Chicago mayor is on. Mayor Richard M. Daley has thrown the competition for the city's top job wide open by announcing he won't run for a seventh term, ending 21 years of token opposition and prompting speculation about who's next in line to lead the nation's third largest city.

NEW YORK (AP) — A proposed Islamic community center near ground zero will include separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, Jews and people of other faiths, the imam behind plans for the facility wrote in an op-ed piece published online Tuesday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Officials hoisted a 70-foot piece of World Trade Center steel at ground zero Tuesday and vowed to open the Sept. 11 memorial by next year, although they acknowledged that the ongoing construction at the site would limit where and how the public could visit.

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas (AP) — Tropical Storm Hermine gave a wet and windy punch to Texas on Tuesday before weakening into a tropical depression, leaving 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.

NEW YORK (AP) — Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is putting up $100 million, one of the largest donations of its kind, to expand Human Rights Watch and help it court more international support.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Merriam-Webster's "Word of the Summer" is not even a word. That's something no one can "refudiate." Sarah Palin's attempt to splice "refute" and "repudiate" on a news show and in a Twitter message in July led to more searches on the publisher's online dictionary during the summer than most real words did.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Judges have the right to require warrants before police get cell phone records that could suggest a customer's likely location, a U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Government scientists studying the BP disaster are reporting the best possible outcome: Microbes are consuming the oil in the Gulf without depleting the oxygen in the water and creating "dead zones" where fish cannot survive.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — NASA says two small asteroids discovered just days ago will zip harmlessly past Earth on Wednesday, a double flyby that should be visible through a telescope.

GREAT BEND, Kan. (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.

ATLANTA (AP) — U.S. smoking rates continue to hold steady, at about one in five adults lighting up regularly, frustrated health officials reported Tuesday.

GLENPOOL, Okla. (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.

APPLE VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — The California Highway Patrol says a 1-year-old boy has drowned after his drunken father drove an off-road vehicle into a river in the San Bernardino County desert.

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.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hipsters, hustlers, celebrities, thieves, dope peddlers and just about everyone else in gritty, quirky Venice Beach know Boston Dawna.

CHICAGO (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.