WASHINGTON – Responding to constituent e-mails about Rep.-elect Keith Ellison’s decision to use the Koran at his ceremonial swearing-in, a Virginia congressman is warning that “many more Muslims” will be elected demanding to use the Koran unless immigration is tightened. Republican Rep. Virgil Goode made the comments in a letter …

WASHINGTON – The United States plans to help train and equip the Lebanese army so it can take control of all of the nation’s territory when warfare between Israel and Hezbollah eases, the State Department said Thursday. The program was approved by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary …

LAFAYETTE, La. – A man shot and killed a Victoria’s Secret employee in a mall Friday evening, and an off-duty police officer fatally shot him in the parking lot as he tried to escape, officials said. Sherika Broussard, 21, was shot in the head in the store at the Mall …

BERLIN – German novelist Gunter Grass admitted in an interview that he served in the Waffen SS, the combat arm of Adolf Hitler‘s dreaded paramilitary forces, during World War II, a German newspaper reported Friday. Grass was asked why he was making the disclosure after so many years during an …

MEXICO CITY – A leftist candidate claiming fraud robbed him of the presidency led hundreds of thousands of marchers through Mexico’s capital Sunday to demand a vote-by-vote recount in the tight election apparently won by his conservative opponent. As a precaution, the Roman Catholic Church canceled Mass at the city’s …

MONTERREY, Mexico – Federal officials have quietly closed a three-year inquiry into the rape-strangulation of 14 women and teenagers in the border city of Juarez, leaving relatives with little hope the killings will ever be solved. The federal Attorney General’s Office intervened in 2003, promising it would try to solve …

PITTSBURGH – In his first two weeks in office, the city’s new mayor announced changes to his staff, readied a budget proposal, attended a handful of news conferences — and laughed it up on the “Late Show with David Letterman.” It’s been a full schedule for the Pittsburgh native and …

McKINNEY, Texas – Police on Wednesday announced the arrest of a suspect in the July slaying of a real estate agent who was found stabbed to death in a model home. Kosoul Chanthakoummane, 25, was arrested on a charge of capital murder late Tuesday in connection with the death of …

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Michigan football greats from Desmond Howard to Dan Dierdorf passed through the tunnel and onto the field at Michigan Stadium. Many slapped the “GO BLUE” banner as they did when they played for Bo Schembechler‘s Wolverines. The band pounded out the school’s famous fight song, “The …

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Tennis great Jimmy Connors has been charged with a misdemeanor for an altercation last week before a basketball game between UC Santa Barbara and top-ranked North Carolina. Connors, an eight-time Grand Slam champion, was charged Wednesday in Santa Barbara Superior Court with disrupting campus activities and …