AP - Anne Rice has had a religious conversion: She's no longer a Christian.

AP - President Barack Obama said Thursday that the racial firestorm that led to the ouster of a black Agriculture Department official was a "phony controversy" generated by the media. He said his administration overreacted by forcing her out.

AP - Raging forest fires encircled a southern Russian city and tore through provincial villages Thursday, forcing mass evacuations as Moscow suffered through a record, weeks-long heat wave and smog cloud caused by peat-bog fires.

AP - Nicaragua deported a U.S. couple to Panama, where they face charges of killing two Americans in a scheme to steal their property on a Caribbean archipelago popular with expatriates.