AP - Conservative political commentator Robert Novak announced Monday he has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, less than a week after he struck a pedestrian with his Corvette and drove away.

AP - Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

AP - British billionaire Sir Richard Branson showed off a key piece of his fledgling commercial space program Monday, unveiling a carrier aircraft designed to launch a passenger-carrying spaceship.

AP - The businessman arrived at the Treasury Department carrying a suitcase stuffed with about $5.2 million. The bills were decomposing, nearly unrecognizable, and he asked to swap them for a cashier's check. He said the money came from Mexico.

AP - The next president will inherit a record budget deficit of $482 billion, according to a new Bush administration estimate released Monday.

AP - Three-time melanoma survivor John McCain had a spot of skin removed from his right cheek early Monday.

AP - President Bush praised Pakistan's prime minister Monday for his commitment to their joint battle against extremists. But neither of the men addressed the latest clash in Pakistan, a missile strike that hit a religious school just inside its border with Afghanistan.

AP - Four suicide bombers believed to be women struck a Shiite pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300 in one of this year's deadliest attacks, police said.

AFP - Suspected US missiles killed six people including three foreign militants in Pakistan's tribal belt Monday, as the country's premier prepared for talks with US President George W. Bush.

AFP - The death toll in a double bombing in Istanbul rose to 17 on Monday, reports said, as Turkey's top court began deliberations on whether to ban the ruling party.

Reuters - Three female suicide bombers killed at least 28 people and wounded 92 in Baghdad on Monday as Shi'ite pilgrims flooded into the Iraqi capital for a major religious event, police said.

Reuters - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit the site of blasts in a communally sensitive western Indian city on Monday as pressure grows on his government to beef up its intelligence apparatus to counter a series of bombings.

Reuters - A suspected U.S. missile strike on a Pakistani madrasa killed six people, including foreigners, on Monday in tribal lands regarded as an al Qaeda and Taliban hotbed, intelligence officials said.

Reuters - A man opened fire with a shotgun in a church in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Sunday, killing two people, including a man called a hero for shielding others from a shotgun blast, police and local media reported.