%mlink(STRY:a0781; PHOTO:; AUDIO:%)

An idled tour boat and nearby vessels made repeated, unanswered calls to the tugboat guiding the massive barge that hit and sank the smaller craft in the Delaware River, killing two Hungarian students, according to a preliminary federal report released Friday.

Crews held a wildfire near Boulder at bay Friday, allowing some 2,000 evacuees to return home with a warning to be prepared to flee again.

A surgical team amputated the arm of a conductor Friday to free him from the wreckage of a locomotive that struck a slow-moving freight train on tracks 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

A federal judge said she will issue an order to halt the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, after she declared the ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional.

Iran's president intervened to secure the release of Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans jailed for more than 13 months, in part because of her gender, a news agency reported Friday.

The U.S. was slow to take seriously the threat posed by homegrown radicals and the government has failed to put systems in place to deal with the growing phenomenon, according to a new report compiled by the former heads of the Sept. 11 Commission.

As thousands of Afghans protested a tiny Florida church's plan to burn the Muslim holy book, the church's pastor said he won't follow through with the burning if he's able to meet Saturday with the organizers behind a mosque planned near ground zero in New York.

A new mosque recently opened in this well-to-do suburb of Philadelphia, but not many people noticed.

Convicted killer Cal Coburn Brown was executed early Friday by lethal injection for the rape, torture and murder of a Seattle-area woman, after delivering a statement complaining he was treated unfairly by the legal system.

After three nights of violent protests, calm mainly prevailed over a gritty neighborhood where police fatally shot an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who was menacing officers with a knife.

The co-founder of an Islamic charity has been convicted of charges related to helping smuggle $150,000 to Muslim fighters in Chechnya.

At least three people were still missing early Friday after flooding caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine swept vehicles from Texas roads and overpowered swimmers in the Guadalupe River.

A Metrolink commuter train struck and killed two people who may have been sleeping on the tracks and injured a third in Orange County on Thursday, authorities said.

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was unhurt in a two-vehicle accident near his home Thursday morning and hours later practiced as usual with his team just days before the season opener. He then agreed to a four-year extension that would make him the NFL's highest paid player, according to a person with knowledge of the contract.

If Rahm Emanuel decides to run for Chicago mayor, the White House chief of staff would easily be the best-known figure in the race, with national name recognition that few others could match and invaluable experience from helping engineer the Democrats' takeover of the House in 2006.

Donald Trump offered Thursday to buy out a major investor in the real estate partnership that controls the site near ground zero where a Muslim group wants to build a 13-story Islamic center and mosque.

Five Missouri men are accused of taking part in the sexual torture of a young woman allegedly kept as a sex slave by one of the men and forced to work as a stripper, prosecutors announced Thursday.

The father of a U.S. soldier serving in Afghanistan says he tried nearly a half dozen times to pass an urgent message from his son to the Army: Troops in his unit had murdered an Afghan civilian, planned more killings and threatened him to keep quiet about it.