AP - Already in distinctive company as an American president, George W. Bush seeks to join an even more select group: president and top-selling author.

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.

AP - Tiger Woods was a no-brainer as a captain's pick for the Ryder Cup.

AP - A Japanese journalist held hostage in Afghanistan for five months managed to send out a message via Twitter that he was alive when his captors asked him how to use a cell phone.

AP - President Barack Obama's proposed tax breaks for business sound like ideas that have enjoyed broad Republican backing in the past. But in today's toxic political atmosphere, he's unlikely to get much — if any — GOP help.

The Atlantic Wire - When Mark Hurd was fired as CEO of Hewlett-Packard following a mysterious sexual harassment complaint, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison slammed HP's board of directors saying they "just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs." Now Ellison is putting his money where his mouth is, hiring Hurd as Oracle's co-president. "Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he'll do even better at Oracle," Ellison said in a statement announcing the hire. Intriguingly, Oracle is looking to compete in the same space as HP. Will Hurd exact revenge on his former bosses?

AP - The government turned up the pressure Tuesday on the head of a small Florida church who plans to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, warning him that doing so could endanger U.S. troops and Americans everywhere.

AP - The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned an American church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide.

AP - Half-buried in rubble, Bazelais Suy struggled to breathe — a dead woman lay on his chest. He knew he had to get her off, fast. Because he could still move his arms, he somehow managed to remove his belt, loop it around the woman's own belt and drag her off. But his legs were still pinned.

AFP - New opinion polls Tuesday made painful reading for President Barack Obama's Democrats, cementing conventional wisdom that they face a pounding by Republicans in November's congressional elections.

AP - Government scientists studying the BP disaster are reporting the best possible outcome: Microbes are consuming the oil in the Gulf without depleting the oxygen in the water and creating "dead zones" where fish cannot survive.

AFP - Even Roger Federer had to say he was sorry for the way he won the pivotal second-set tie-breaker over pal Jurgen Melzer and advanced to the US Open quarter-finals on Monday.

Reuters - An explosion ripped through a major Mexican refinery on Tuesday, killing one worker and pushing gasoline and diesel prices higher on worries state oil monopoly Pemex will have to import more fuel.

AP - A combative President Barack Obama rolled out a long-term jobs program Monday that would exceed $50 billion to rebuild roads, railways and runways, and coupled it with a blunt campaign-season assault on Republicans for causing Americans' hard economic times.

The Atlantic Wire - A Florida church led by pastor Terry Jones has spent weeks publicizing its plan to burn Korans on September 11. But now that hundreds of people in Afghanistan and Indonesia are protesting the planned event and General David Petraeus has condemned it, saying it will endanger his troops, the U.S. is starting to pay more attention to this fringe but increasingly high-profile event. What does it mean for the U.S. struggle against terror? What are its moral and legal implications? Should the U.S. government try to intervene?