Reuters - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard secured a wafer thin parliamentary majority on Tuesday, ending a political impasse but hardly cheering investors worried about the fragility of her government and its plans to tax mining profits.

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 - The bombers and fighters flew across the English Channel by the hundreds, London in their sights, intent on forcing Britain out of the war, and Hitler's way.

AP - Japan has confirmed the nation's first case of a new gene in bacteria that allows the microorganisms to become drug-resistant superbugs, detected in a man who had medical treatment in India, a Health Ministry official said Tuesday.

AP - The candidate who defeated U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska's Republican primary has been cited for his role in a recent three-car collision in Fairbanks.

The Christian Science Monitor - While tragedies can bind a nation together, the government in charge of recovery often becomes the target of criticism for a slow response, misuse of funds, or any number of things gone awry.

AFP - An evangelical Florida church Tuesday vowed to press ahead with plans to burn the Koran to mark the anniversary of 9/11 despite mounting concern that it may endanger allied troops in Afghanistan.

Reuters - She is known as the significant other to one of Hollywood's biggest stars, but Vanessa Paradis is a triple threat in France, where she has been singing, modeling and acting since her teenage years.

AP - The Coast Guard says a nearly 10-mile-long ribbon of red tide has been spotted in New York Harbor.

AP - World stocks fell Tuesday, particularly in Europe, where concerns about the health of banks resurfaced and EU finance ministers created new financial oversight bodies but failed to agree on a bank or trading tax.

Reuters - An explosion ripped through a major refinery in northern Mexico on Tuesday, state oil firm Pemex said, but officials were unable to confirm reports that several people were killed.

AP - The European Union on Tuesday condemned the stoning to death sentence passed against an Iranian woman convicted for adultery, saying it was "barbaric."

Reuters - A giant bale of hay has killed a founding member of the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) band after it tumbled down a hill and crashed into his van.

AP - When Mike Tyson looks back on his friendship with Tupac Shakur, he thinks about the rapper's big heart, explosive anger — and the one regret he has about their relationship.

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.