Daily News Headlines

AP - Taliban militants attacked a U.S. coalition base in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday with an explosives-laden truck that blew up outside the gates, sparking a two-hour gunbattle and killing two American troops, officials said.

AFP - North Korea test-fired seven missiles off its east coast on Saturday, South Korean officials said, in what appeared to be a calculated message of defiance timed for the US Independence Day holiday.

AP - A top aide to Iran's supreme leader called the country's main opposition figure a U.S. agent and said in an editorial Saturday he should be tried for committing crimes against the nation .

AP - President Barack Obama sought to rally support for his domestic initiatives, while Sen. John McCain called for Americans to support Iranian election protesters. The one-time presidential rivals both cited the spirit of the nation's founders in their Fourth of July radio and Internet addresses.

AP - Manny Ramirez is back in the big leagues, looking like a guy who missed 50 games. Returning from his suspension for violating baseball's drug policy, the Los Angeles slugger barely hit the ball out of the infield in the Dodgers' 6-3 win over the San Diego Padres on Friday night.

AP - A civil rights group on whose board Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor served filed racial bias lawsuits over employment examinations that resemble a Connecticut case in which she ruled against white firefighters, documents released by the Senate show.

AP - Michelle Obama brings her superstar glamor to Moscow this weekend as she accompanies her husband on his summit with the Russian president.

AP - A terrified rural South Carolina community hunkered down over the Fourth of July after the sheriff said a serial killer was on the loose, and longtime residents were reminded of a murderer who terrorized the town in the 1960s.

AP - Questions about Michael Jackson's use of prescription drugs are intensifying after a powerful sedative was found inside his home.

AP - North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles off its eastern coast Saturday, South Korea said, a violation of U.N. resolutions and an apparent message of defiance to the United States on its Independence Day.

AP - Even for a nonconformist, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has defied political logic with her sudden, stunning announcement to leave office more than a year early.

Reuters - North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles on Saturday, South Korea's defense ministry said, in an act of defiance toward the United States that further stoked regional tensions already high due to its nuclear test in May.

AFP - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply disappointed" after the reclusive chief of Myanmar's military junta refused to let him meet pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Reuters - The Organization of American States prepared to suspend Honduras on Saturday after a caretaker government refused to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya and defiantly renounced the OAS charter in an apparent preemptive move.

Reuters - Sarah Palin, the brash, deeply conservative governor of Alaska who crashed onto the U.S. national political scene last year as the Republican candidate for U.S. vice president, announced abruptly on Friday she was resigning as governor.

Reuters - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday rejected U.S. President Barack Obama's charge that he was mired in Cold War thinking, setting the scene for a stormy first meeting at a Moscow summit next week.

Reuters - A U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles on Friday into Pakistan's South Waziristan region, killing 10 militants, officials said, ahead of an expected Pakistani military offensive in the area.