AP - A federal jury on Thursday convicted the former top accountant at the Cleveland Catholic Diocese of tax charges and acquitted him of more serious charges related to alleged kickbacks.

Reuters - A U.S. judge's order to Google Inc to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom Inc sparked an outcry on Thursday from privacy advocates in the midst of a legal showdown over video piracy.

Reuters - Former U.S. sprinter Tim Montgomery, an Olympic gold medalist now banned from the sport, pleaded guilty on Thursday to distributing heroin.

AP - Federal prosecutors want two more months to file their brief in Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui's (zak-uh-REE'-uhs moo-SOW'-eez) appeal.

AP - A Texas man who spent more than 15 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of kidnapping and robbery raised both arms skyward and collapsed in his mother's embrace Thursday after being told he was a free man.

AP - Federal prosecutors in Miami have indicted two men on charges of illegally providing U.S.-made military aircraft parts to Iranian buyers.

AP - Former track star Tim Montgomery, once dubbed "the world's fastest man," pleaded guilty Thursday to distributing heroin, averting a trial set for next week.

AP - A Vermont man whose 12-year-old niece was found dead near his home carefully orchestrated events and e-mails to make it appear she had gone to see someone she met online, prosecutors said Thursday as they charged him with kidnapping.

AFP - Indonesian police said Friday they were interrogating 10 suspects and examining some 20 improvised bombs after cracking a major cell of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) regional terror group.

AP - Federal prosecutors want two more months to file their brief in Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui's (zak-uh-REE'-uhs moo-SOW'-eez) appeal.

AP - A terrorism suspect alleged to have deep ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida has been set free on bail, British officials said Thursday in the second such case in less than three weeks after courts ruled the men could not be kept in jail indefinitely.

Reuters - Britain has received new U.S. assurances that the CIA did not secretly smuggle terrorist suspects through its territory, but critics said on Thursday the government had failed to ask Washington the right questions.

AP - Sweden will pay 3 million kronor ($502,000) in compensation to an exonerated Egyptian terrorism suspect who was handed over to CIA agents and deported in 2001, the government said Thursday.

Reuters - An Algerian suspected of links to Osama bin Laden and bomb plots in the United States and France has been freed from a British prison after more than seven years but placed under house arrest while he fights deportation.

AFP - Indonesian police said Thursday they had cracked a terrorist cell linked to some of the region's most wanted fugitives after the arrest of 10 suspects with a cache of powerful homemade bombs.

AFP - A suspected Islamist extremist said to have "direct links" with Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been freed on bail in Britain after more than seven years in jail, court officials said Thursday.

AP - Independence Day is normally a booming time for tourism here, with visitors settling into cliffside vacation homes or trekking out to campgrounds nestled among the redwoods. But this year, the only out-of-towners in Big Sur are firefighters working around the clock to save the storied community from flames.

AP - Milwaukee police say four people have died in a shooting outside a house party.

AP - Back on U.S. soil, three American hostages rescued from Colombia rebels are now in the process of reintegrating into a society they've been absent from for more than five years.

AP - Larry Harmon wasn't the original Bozo the Clown, but he was the real one. Harmon, who portrayed the wing-haired clown for more than half a century, died Thursday of congestive heart failure, said his publicist, Jerry Digney. He was 83.

AP - Wish "Yankee Doodle" a happy 250th birthday. Maybe.

AP - Arlan Ettinger will never forget the response he got when he took one of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks' hats to a meeting at the Apollo Theater in New York.

AP - A Vermont man whose 12-year-old niece was found dead near his home carefully orchestrated events and e-mails to make it appear she had gone to see someone she met online, prosecutors said Thursday as they charged him with kidnapping.

AP - A suburban Chicago man locked his two young daughters in a wire cage hidden in the back of his pickup truck because he didn't have a baby sitter, officials said Thursday.

AP - Prospective and current graduate business students who used a Web site to cheat on entrance examinations over the last five years could have their scores thrown out.

AP - Changes in the federal student aid program that took effect Tuesday will lessen interest rates for some students while increasing the amount they can borrow.

AP - Six states are getting the OK to write their own prescriptions for ailing schools under the Bush administration's signature education law.

AP - It's not much of a report card.

AP - The steel fence that the U.S. government wants to build along the Mexican border would do more than slice through the University of Texas' Brownsville campus and cut off the golf course from the rest of the school.

Reuters - Nintendo is banned everywhere but the classroom at Tokyo Joshi Gakuen school in Japan as the ubiquitous DS consoles become the latest tool in English instruction.

AP - A program that gained national attention in 1991 for offering to pay college tuition for 69 second-graders is closing its doors in Cambridge on Friday.

AP - The 92-6 roll call by which the Senate on Thursday passed a bill to pay for war operations, boost college aid for troops, extend unemployment benefits and provide emergency flood relief.

AP - Federal prosecutors want two more months to file their brief in Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui's (zak-uh-REE'-uhs moo-SOW'-eez) appeal.

AP - In the months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Princess Wijdan Al Hashemi and her friend Aliki Moschis-Gauguet noticed that the only depictions they saw of Muslim women showed figures behind veils, oppressed by their cultures.

AP - The head of the foundation building the Sept. 11 memorial told supporters Tuesday it's "essential" to open the memorial by the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, disputing a report that the project couldn't be finished on time.

AFP - Construction of skyscrapers and an underground transport hub to replace the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the September 11 terror attacks will be delayed for years and cost far more than planned, New York officials said Monday.

Reuters - Rebuilding at the World Trade Center, site of the September 11 attacks, is behind schedule and over budget, and major problems mean new cost estimates and timetable must be drawn up, officials said on Monday.

AP - This was a sleepy Navy outpost before the U.S. began using it to hold prisoners in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks — and it may soon become one again.

AP - It will cost another $37.5 million to deconstruct a contaminated skyscraper at New York's ground zero.

AP - Vice President Dick Cheney's top adviser on Thursday refused to claim any responsibility for the adoption of harsh interrogation methods following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks during a combative exchange with congressional Democrats.

AP - As clergy involvement in politics stirs debate, Roman Catholic priests and deacons in the Denver Archdiocese are being instructed not to endorse or donate money to political candidates.

AP - Plans to translate the Bible into patois — Jamaica's unofficial language — have ignited a fiery debate that stretches beyond the shores of this island nation.

AFP - Australia is one of the least religious nations in the western world, research showed Friday, as the country prepares to host Pope Benedict XVI and Catholic World Youth Day celebrations this month.

AFP - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain visited the Basilica of Guadalupe, home to Mexico's most revered icon, a stop likely aimed at Roman Catholics and Mexican-Americans voters in the United States.

AP - A federal jury on Thursday convicted the former top accountant at the Cleveland Catholic Diocese of tax charges and acquitted him of more serious charges related to alleged kickbacks.

AP - Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of a 19th century Belgian priest who ministered to leprosy patients in Hawaii — opening the way for him to be declared a saint.

Time.com - With the economy and Iraq topping voter concerns, abortion has receded into the political background. As a TIME poll shows, that has put the Catholic vote up for grabs

AP - It's a wonder vacation Bible school made it out of the 1960s.

AP - Temporary farm markets deployed in parts of New Orleans recovering from Hurricane Katrina have given residents access to fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and seafood.

Investor's Business Daily - When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ripped through the Gulf of Mexico in 2005, they tore into the Gulf fleet and crippled or destroyed 113 production platforms and 18 drilling rigs. Wave-tossed rigs dragged moorings across the seafloor and ripped up hundreds of miles of pipelines.

AP - One of the nation's largest insurance companies is lobbying Congress for permission to sell policies that cover damage from both wind and flood water, a plan billed as a way for insurers and homeowners to avoid costly litigation after disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

Reuters - There's been no shortage of thoughtful musical responses to Hurricane Katrina, but this album-length elegy by one of the city's foremost voices stands as something like the Mitchell Report of the bunch. "City That Care Forgot" is a righteous service indeed, all rage and soul and careful optimism, a place where the ballads drip and burn as much as the rockers, the barbs come quick and sharp ("Say it's a job well done, then you giggled like a bitch, and hopped back on the Air Force One"), and the best prognosis that the doctor can muster is, "We're getting there." Dr. John has enlisted much help here, including that of Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson and Terence Blanchard, and his own Lower 911 band can churn up bayou funk at the snap of a finger. But though "City" is a vicious rebuke, its greater power comes from its being shot through with a deep love and a deeper sadness.

AP - For the first time since Hurricane Katrina, the 1920s-era St. Charles Avenue streetcar will clack along its entire 13-mile route Sunday.

Reuters - Spike Lee may not be done with Hurricane Katrina yet.

AP - Just as south Louisiana's citrus growers are starting to recover from Hurricane Katrina, they have a new threat: a fatal citrus disease that has infected thousands of trees in Florida and is now in the Bayou State.

AP - President Bush, surveying the aftermath of devastating floods during a lightning-quick tour of the Midwest on Thursday, assured residents and rescuers alike that he is listening to their concerns and understands their exhaustion.