He says the act would be a 'recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda.'President Obama exhorted a Florida minister Thursday to "listen to those better angels" and call off his plan to engage in a Koran-burning protest this weekend.

The oil company accepts a share of the responsibility for the deadly explosion and oil spill but also takes aim at contractors Transocean and Halliburton, setting off additional finger-pointing.An internal investigation released Wednesday by BP concluded that a series of mechanical and human failures by its own crews and its contractors led to the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 men and set in motion one of the world's worst oil spills.

Imam Muhammad Musri of Orlando meets with the Rev. Terry Jones and says they found common ground in the denunciation of terrorism. Jones, however, still plans to burn the Muslim holy book.Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida in Orlando, emerged from a meeting with the Rev. Terry Jones on Wednesday hopeful that the fervently anti-Islam church leader would call off plans to burn copies of the Koran on Saturday's anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

State security arrested aid worker Alan Gross in December at the Havana airport after he allegedly provided unauthorized satellite Internet connections to Cuba's tiny Jewish community.Alan Gross usually celebrates Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year that started at sundown Wednesday, by playing mandolin in the klezmer band that accompanies his guitar-strumming rabbi in the High Holiday service.

Wayne Treacy, 15, is being charged as an adult in the attempted murder of a teenage girl in Florida. Though many paint him as a vicious criminal, others see a frightened, troubled boy."Monster."

Marie Owens joined the city department in 1891 to enforce child labor laws, a former federal agent says.Her story had been lost amid dusty records that were long ago stashed in deep storage and forgotten.

The powerful business group spends millions on advertisements against the Democratic U.S. senator from California, saying she is 'hostile to the business community.'The nation's largest business organization launched a multimillion-dollar advertising attack in California on Wednesday night on U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, part of a nationwide effort targeting vulnerable Democrats.

By covering more Americans under the healthcare overhaul, costs will increase over the next decade, but not substantially more than if the law had not been enacted, an independent government analysis finds. Pushed by a dramatic increase in the number of Americans who will get insurance under the new healthcare law, total U.S. medical spending will continue to gallop upward, consuming nearly 20% of the economy by 2019, according to a new government estimate.

In an Ohio speech, the president draws forceful partisan distinctions while appealing to traditional values of fairness and opportunity.President Obama laid out a sweeping argument for retaining Democrats and punishing Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections, calling on voters Wednesday to reject economic policies advanced by the GOP that he said favor millionaires at the expense of struggling families.

A new blowout preventer is in place, giving experts time to analyze the gulf well, retrieve a broken pipe and perhaps apply another cement seal for added insurance, Thad Allen says.The ultimate sealing of BP's gulf oil well may not get underway until late this month or early October because experts want more time to analyze the well, fish out a broken pipe and possibly apply another cement seal on the top for "more insurance" against unlikely troubles, a top federal official said.