AP – Hurricane Earl, now a powerful Category 4 storm, barreled toward the U.S. coast early Tuesday after battering tiny islands across the northeastern Caribbean with heavy rain and winds that damaged homes and toppled power lines.

AP – As President Barack Obama prepares to officially end the lengthy and divisive U.S. combat operation in Iraq, he’ll personally thank some of the soldiers who fought there for their service to a mission he forcefully opposed from the start.

AP – Dutch prosecutors say they are questioning two men arrested at Amsterdam’s international airport at the request of American authorities who found a cell phone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle and a knife and box cutter in checked luggage connected with the men.

AP – Texas-born fugitive Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias “the Barbie,” is the third major suspected drug lord to fall in Mexico in the past 10 months and a coup for President Felipe Calderon in his embattled war on powerful cartels.

AP – Thirty-three men stuck a half mile underground are now the longest-trapped miners in recent history as a huge drill is the early stages of digging a planned escape route.

AP – Tens of thousands of people have marched in Hong Kong to denounce the Philippines. Thousands of tourists canceled flight and hotel bookings. Two Chinese recipients of Asia’s most prestigious award failed to show up for the Manila ceremony.

AP – Americans with the strongest opinions about the country’s most divisive issues are largely unhappy with how President Barack Obama is handling them, an ominous sign for Democrats hoping to retain control of Congress in the fall elections.

AP – The bear that recently killed a caretaker in a Cleveland suburb was the latest example of animal violence in a state that has some of the nation’s weakest restrictions on exotic pets and among the highest number of injuries and deaths caused by them.

AP – Lindsay Lohan wants your respect.