AP - Adrienne Radtke plans to keep riding her bike to work even if gas prices drop. Steve Pizzini got rid of his Cadillac Escalade in favor of a 16-year-old Acura and doesn't expect to have another gas-guzzler.

AP - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sought to reassure an anxious public Sunday that the banking system is sound, while also bracing people for more troubled times ahead.

AP - Officers had been to the white ranch house at 560 W. Longleaf many times before over the past year to respond to a "barricade situation." Each had ended uneventfully, with Joseph Dwyer coming out or telling police in a calm voice through the window that he was OK.

AP - The Pentagon's top military officer said Sunday a specific time frame for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq could jeopardize political and economic progress, leading to "dangerous consequences."

AP - Tropical Storm Cristobal skirted the North Carolina coast Sunday, dumping heavy rain and churning up rough surf, but so far sparing the seaboard of any severe weather.

AP - U.S.-led troops and Afghan forces killed nine Afghan police Sunday, calling in airstrikes and fighting on the ground for four hours after both sides mistook the other for militants, Afghan officials said.

AP - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged steadfast aid to Afghanistan in talks Sunday with its Western-backed leader and vowed to pursue the war on terror "with vigor" if elected, an Afghan official said.

AFP - The group that kidnapped five Britons in Iraq in May 2007 claimed one of the victims has committed suicide, in a video statement released to The Sunday Times.

AFP - Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday urged hundreds of thousands of young Catholics to beat back a "spiritual desert" spreading through the modern world as he closed Catholic World Youth Day in Australia.

Reuters - Pope Benedict, wrapping up his visit to Australia, on Sunday urged a huge crowd of young people to beware the spreading "spiritual desert" that often accompanied modern prosperity.

Reuters - Tens of thousands of people filled Nicaragua's capital on Saturday to celebrate the country's 1979 leftist revolution, giving a lift to President Daniel Ortega as his government faces simmering protests.

Reuters - A foreign airstrike killed nine Afghan policemen in western Afghanistan overnight after a clash in which both sides mistook the other for Taliban militants, Afghan officials said on Sunday.