Reuters - Passers-by prayed and placed flowers on a busy Tokyo shopping street on Monday where seven people were killed the day before in a stabbing rampage, as Japan tried to make sense of the attack and others like it.

Reuters - Chinese officials have sent condolences and payments to parents of children killed in a school that crumpled in the country's huge earthquake, seeking to defuse outrage over shoddy buildings and claimed corruption.

AP - Shuttle Discovery's astronauts breezed through their third and final spacewalk Sunday, replacing an empty gas tank at the international space station and collecting a sample of dusty debris.

AP - A Chicago chef known for his ethereal cooking — as well as the tongue cancer that nearly ended his life — was named the nation's top chef Sunday by the James Beard Foundation.

AP - About 300 people turned out Sunday night for the local premiere of a documentary film about how this tiny town was turned upside down by a new neighbor — the president.

AP - A sailor is being praised as a hero for helping get five others to safety at the cost of his own life when a sailboat capsized during a regatta on the Gulf of Mexico.

AP - An additional 120 troops were sent Monday to help soldiers with explosives and anti-tank weapons blast rocks and mud slowing the drainage of a still-rising lake that threatened to flood more than 1 million people downstream.

AP - While many people will work on their tans this summer, or on summer reading lists or on not working too hard, two exceptions — John McCain and Barack Obama — and their underlings will be working.

AP - A man suspected of killing seven people in a knifing rampage foretold the mayhem in a series of messages posted on the Internet, including one just before the attack saying, "It's time," police and media reports said Monday.

AP - Fire investigators are asking for the public's help in identifying who may be to blame for a blaze that badly damaged the historic Texas Governor's Mansion.

AP - The average price of regular gas crept up to $4 a gallon for the first time over the weekend, passing the once-unthinkable milestone just in time for the peak summer travel season.

AP - Wicked weekend storms pounded the country from the Midwest to the East Coast, forcing hundreds of people to flee flooded communities, spawning tornadoes that tore up houses and killing at least eight people.

AFP - Eleven nations that guzzle nearly two-thirds of the world's energy called Sunday for an urgent hike in global oil production as host Japan warned the world could plunge into recession.

AFP - A man went on a stabbing spree Sunday in a busy Tokyo neighbourhood famed for comic-book subculture, killing at least seven people and leaving around a dozen injured in Japan's deadliest crime in years.

Reuters - Spacewalking astronauts slipped outside the International Space Station on Sunday to work on the outpost's cooling system and finish outfitting Japan's newly arrived Kibo research laboratory.