AP - Billy Ray Cyrus says he wasn't around when Annie Leibovitz photographed his 15-year-old daughter, Miley, wrapped in a sheet with her back exposed, for the June issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

AP - Republican Sen. John McCain criticized Sen. Barack Obama's call for a windfall profits tax on the oil industry on Tuesday, despite leaving the door open to the same idea last month.

AP - A car bomb tore through a market area in a mainly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people and wounding dozens, officials said, the deadliest such attack in more than three months.

AP - The rising Mississippi River interrupted travel on two bridges between Iowa and Illinois and forced the helicopter rescue of more than a dozen people sandbagging a levee before it broke, threatening to deluge thousands of acres.

AP - A military judge dismissed charges Tuesday against a Marine officer accused of failing to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis.

AP - Gaza's Hamas rulers on Tuesday said they have reached a long-awaited cease-fire with Israel meant to end months of Palestinian assaults on Israeli border towns and bruising Israeli retaliation.

AP - County clerk offices opened their doors Tuesday to hundreds of gay and lesbian couples with appointments to secure marriage licenses and exchange vows on the first full day same-sex nuptials were legal throughout California.

AFP - Japan on Tuesday executed three people including notorious serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki, a fetishist convicted of murdering four young girls and eating some of their bodies, officials said.

AFP - Police imposed a security lockdown as the Olympic torch Tuesday started its run through China's mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang, seen as one of the most sensitive legs on its nationwide journey.

Reuters - A powerful South Korean labor group on Tuesday announced a one-day strike next month to protest against President Lee Myung-bak's economic reform plans, adding pressure on the embattled leader facing calls for his ouster.

Reuters - China locked down the far-western former Silk Road city of Kashgar on Tuesday in preparation for the passage of the Olympic torch relay through the sensitive region populated by ethnic-minority Muslim Uighurs.

Reuters - Scores of families fled their homes in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday as foreign and Afghan forces prepare to drive out Taliban insurgents who have overrun several villages, officials and witnesses said.

Reuters - The Turkish military said on Tuesday it had opened fire on 21 Kurdish PKK fighters trying to enter Turkey from northern Iraq.