AP - Cool, damp weather early Saturday helped crews gain ground on the huge wildfire that wiped out this coastal retreat's holiday tourist trade, allowing some personnel and gear to be shifted to a growing blaze farther south

AP - Barack Obama said Saturday that he was surprised at how the media has "finely calibrated" his recent words on Iraq, and denied that he intends to anything but end the war if he is elected.

AP - Dying of cancer, Thomas Amschwand did everything he was told to make sure his wife would collect on the life insurance policy he had through his employer.

AP - Military intelligence agents posing as aid workers and a film crew flew to the jungle aboard a white helicopter, staging a mock humanitarian mission that rebels were told would ferry their hostages to another camp for talks on a prisoner swap.

AP - Iran indicated Saturday that it has no plans to meet a key Western demand that it stop enriching uranium, a day after Tehran sent the European Union a response to an international offer of incentives for halting enrichment.

AP - The knock on Brian Hart's door came at 6 a.m. An Army colonel, a priest and a police officer had come to tell Hart and his wife that their 20-year-old son had been killed when his military vehicle was ambushed in Iraq.

AP - Even folks in the Optimist Club are having a tough time toeing an upbeat line these days.

AP - Riding a green lawn chair supported by a rainbow array of more than 150 helium-filled party balloons, Kent Couch took off Saturday in a third bid to fly from central Oregon all the way to Idaho.

AP - The call girl involved in a scandal that brought down New York's former governor has dropped a lawsuit claiming "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis exploited her image and name on the Internet.

AP - This time, big sister put little sister in her place. Advantage, Miss Venus Williams. She defeated Serena 7-5, 6-4 Saturday for her fifth Wimbledon title and second in a row.

Reuters - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Saturday his plan to end the Iraq war was unchanged and he was puzzled by the sharp reaction to his statement this week that he might "refine" his timetable for withdrawing U.S. combat troops.

Reuters - The Mississippi River, the most important U.S. commercial waterway, reopened to water navigation on Saturday after much of it was closed for nearly a month due to the worst flooding in 15 years.

Reuters - Colombia found explosives set to be used in bombs across the capital in reprisal for this week's rescue of leftist rebels' highest-profile hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, military officials said on Saturday.

Reuters - A film secretly taken by a Zimbabwe prison guard and smuggled out of the country shows the extent of the rigging that took place for the June 27 presidential run-off vote, the Guardian said on Saturday.

Reuters - Venus and Serena Williams returned to Center Court three hours after doing battle in the singles final to secure the Wimbledon doubles title with a 6-2 6-2 thumping of American Lisa Raymond and Australian Samantha Stosur on Saturday.

Reuters - Iran vowed on Saturday to pursue its uranium enrichment program, a day after delivering its response to an incentives package by world powers trying to curb its nuclear ambitions.

Reuters - Leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations meet this week in northern Japan to grapple with a raft of problems from soaring food and fuel prices to African poverty and global warming amid doubts about how much the annual diplomatic pageant can achieve.

Reuters - Lebanese leaders are finalizing a deal on the formation of a national unity government as stipulated in an agreement that ended the country's political crisis, political sources said on Saturday.

AFP - Iran on Saturday offered to negotiate on its nuclear drive but without a freeze on uranium enrichment, in its first comments since responding to an international package aimed at ending the standoff.

AFP - South African President Thabo Mbeki, chief regional negotiator on the Zimbabwe crisis, met here Saturday with President Robert Mugabe and leaders of a breakaway faction of the main opposition party.