AP - The Obama administration is trying to jump-start its sputtering attempts to tackle the foreclosure crisis with an effort to assist homeowners who owe more on their properties than their homes are worth.

Reuters - Stocks fell in very light volume on Tuesday as investors seized on renewed concerns about European banks as a reason to sell shares after strong gains last week.

AP - Motorists should see pump prices slide again after spending a little more to fill their tanks over the Labor Day weekend.

Reuters - Hewlett-Packard Co sued former Chief Executive Mark Hurd and asked a court to block him from joining Oracle Corp, saying his hiring by the rival technology firm puts HP's trade secrets "in peril."

AFP - BP has announced it will publish an eagerly awaited report on the causes of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on Wednesday.

AP - Federal scientists are reporting the best possible scenario for BP's leaked oil: Microbes are munching the underwater oil, but not robbing the Gulf of Mexico of much needed oxygen or creating so-called "dead zones."

Reuters - Republicans in the Congress showed little willingness to help President Barack Obama approve $350 billion worth of measures to boost the economy with midterm elections less than two months away.

Reuters - The U.S. National Institutes of Health said on Tuesday it would use $10 million from BP to start a multiyear study to look at the potential health effects from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

AP - Iraqi officials displayed hundreds of recovered artifacts Tuesday that were among the country's looted heritage and span the ages from a 4,400-year-old statue of a Sumerian king to a chrome-plated AK-47 bearing the image of Saddam Hussein.

AP - European Union nations agreed to create new financial oversight institutions Tuesday, hoping to prevent a repeat of the government debt crisis that nearly left Greece bankrupt and brought the European banking system to its knees.

AFP - Much-vaunted EU plans to tax banks skidded into trouble after moves to clamp down on big-spending governments also hit buffers despite broad agreement on Tuesday to regulate the financial sector.

AFP - Republicans in the US Congress may be able to handle the country's struggling economy better than President Barack Obama's fellow Democrats, according to a new national poll released Tuesday.

AP - Today, it's a sprawl of luxury vacation homes where Egypt's wealthy play on the white beaches of the Mediterranean coast. But 2,000 years ago, this was a thriving Greco-Roman port city, boasting villas of merchants grown rich on the wheat and olive trade.