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By The Associated Press

AP Photo/Louisiana State Police via The Daily Advertiser In this photo provided by the Louisiana State Police, various bags and items taken from the tour bus of Country music star Willie Nelson are shown after a traffic stop Monday in Lafayette, La. According to state police, Nelson and four others were issued misdemeanor citations for possession of narcotic mushrooms and marijuana after their tour bus was stopped Monday morning on a Louisiana highway.

Photo by: The Associated Press

Violence across Iraq kills at least 41

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bombers and gunmen killed at least 41 people and wounded dozens across Iraq on Monday, while parliament leaders again put off debate on legislation that some Iraqis fear could threaten the country's unity and bring even more violence.

The U.S. military relinquished control of a second Iraqi army division as Iraqi officials prepared to further tighten security ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when insurgent attacks tend to spike.

In a positive development for Iraq's leaders, predominantly Sunni Arab tribes in a volatile western province have joined to fight insurgents in the region and want the government and the U.S.-led coalition to supply them with weapons, a tribal leader said.

Tribal leaders and clerics in Ramadi, capital of violent Anbar province, met last week and set up a force of about 20,000 men "ready to purge the city of these infidels," Sheik Fassal al-Guood, a tribal leader from Ramadi, told The Associated Press.

"People are fed up with the acts of those criminals who take Islam as a cover for their crimes," he said. "The situation in the province is unbearable, the city is abandoned, most of the families have fled the city and all services are poor."



Iran's supreme leader calls for more protests over Pope's remarks on Islam

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida in Iraq warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that its war against Christianity and the West will go on until Islam takes over the world, and Iran's supreme leader called for more protests over the pontiff's remarks on Islam.

Protests broke out in South Asia and Indonesia, with angry Muslims saying Benedict's statement of regret a day earlier did not go far enough. In southern Iraq, demonstrators carrying black flags burned an effigy of the pope.

Islamic leaders around the world issued more condemnations of the pope's comments, but some moderates in the Middle East appeared to be trying to put a damper on the outrage, fearing it could spiral into attacks on Christians in the region.

On Sunday, Benedict said he was "deeply sorry" over any hurt caused by his comments made in a speech last week, in which he quoted a medieval text characterizing some of the Prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman" and calling Islam a religion spread by the sword.

Benedict said the remarks came from a text that didn't reflect his own opinion, but he did not retract what he said or say he was sorry he uttered what proved to be explosive words.



Equipment failure causes first-ever emergency

HOUSTON - An oxygen generator on the international space station overheated and spilled a toxic irritant Monday, forcing the three-man crew to don masks and gloves in the first emergency ever declared aboard the 8-year-old orbiting outpost.

NASA said the crew members' lives were never in any danger. They cleaned up the spill with towels. A charcoal filter scrubbed the irritant out of the air. And within a couple of hours life, aboard the station 220 miles above Earth was nearly back to normal.

But it was the biggest scare this smooth-running space station has had.

Although it paled in comparison to two fires and a collision on two previous Russian space stations and the nearly fatal explosion on Apollo 13, the incident served as a reminder of how life-and-death emergencies can come out of nowhere. It is why an emergency space capsule is always parked at the outpost in case of a sudden order to abandon ship.

NASA never came close to ordering the crew to leave the station, space station program manager Mike Suffredini said. But astronauts did reveal they were worried.



Bush touts education as a path to democracy

NEW YORK - President Bush on Monday linked his push for democratic reform across the world with first lady Laura Bush's call for governments to embrace literacy programs to improve lives.

"The simple act of teaching a child to read or an adult to read has the capacity to transform nations and yield the peace we all want," the president said at the White House Conference on Global Literacy being hosted in New York by the first lady. "You can't realize the blessings of liberty if you can't read a ballot."

Bush attended his wife's event, which was being held on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly sessions this week. Later in the day, he had bilateral talks scheduled with several foreign leaders to kick off his attendance at the world body's annual meetings.

Like Mrs. Bush, the president made the case that supporting effective literacy programs is a key to improving the economic prosperity of nations and its people.

"You can't have prosperity unless people can read. It's just as simple as that," Bush said. "To be a productive worker you have to be able to read the manual."



Armed man crashes through barricade

WASHINGTON - An armed man ran through the hallways of the U.S. Capitol after crashing his vehicle on the Capitol grounds Monday in the worst breach of security since a gunman killed two police officers eight years ago.

Police officials and congressional aides said the man was tackled outside a basement office after leading police on a chase through the building. They said he was carrying a small weapon but there were no reports of shots fired.

The incident occurred shortly after 8 a.m. EDT, and eight hours later Capitol Police were still not disclosing information. Calls to police spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider were not returned, and her answering machine said it could no longer take messages.

Aides from several leadership offices said they were urging police to brief reporters on the incident.

They said the man, who was not identified, appeared to be having a seizure, possibly drug-related, and that he was transported by ambulance to a Washington hospital.



Mother of kidnapped infant helps prepare composite sketch

UNION, Mo. - Police released a sketch Monday of a woman they believe stole a baby after slashing the mother's throat, hoping to generate new clues in the four-day old case.

Stephenie Ochsenbine, 21, helped police artists with the composite drawing of the woman she said attacked her at her home on Friday and snatched her baby, Abigale Lynn Woods, now 10 days old.

The drawing shows a woman with dark hair wearing a baseball cap. Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke said the suspect is believed to be between 5-foot-4 and 5-8 and weighs about 200 pounds.

"I think the leads are over 250, and we anticipate getting more calls with the release of the composite," Toelke said at a news conference releasing the sketch.

Toelke said Ochsenbine "wasn't completely happy" with the sketch "but it's the best we could come up with."



Farmers told to improve safety nearly 1 year before E. coli outbreak

WASHINGTON - Federal health officials told California farmers to improve produce safety in a pointed warning letter last November, nearly a year before the multistate E. coli outbreak linked to spinach.

In fact, the current food-poisoning episode is the 20th since 1995 linked to spinach or lettuce, the Food and Drug Administration says.

Though state and federal officials have traced the current outbreak to a California company's fresh spinach, they haven't pinpointed the source of the bacteria that have killed one person and sickened more than 100 others.

The FDA is still warning consumers not to eat fresh spinach.

There is no evidence of tampering in the outbreak, FDA spokeswoman Susan Bro said Monday. That leaves a broad range of other possible sources, including contaminated irrigation water that's been a problem in California's Salinas Valley. The area on California's central coast produces much of the U.S. spinach crop.



Willie Nelson cited for marijuana, mushroom possession

LAFAYETTE, La. - Willie Nelson and four others were issued misdemeanor citations for possession of narcotic mushrooms and marijuana after a traffic stop Monday morning on a Louisiana highway, state police said.

The citations were issued after a commercial vehicle inspection of the country music star's tour bus, state police said in a news release.

"When the door was opened and the trooper began to speak to the driver, he smelled the strong odor of marijuana," the news release said. A search of the bus produced 1 1/2 pounds of marijuana and 0.2 pounds of narcotic mushrooms, according to state police.

Nelson's publicist, Elaine Shock, declined immediate comment.

Also cited were Tony Sizemore, 59, of St. Cloud, Fla.; Bobbie Nelson, 75, of Briarcliff, Texas; Gates Moore, 54, of Austin, Texas; and David Anderson, 50, of Dallas.



Dow ends down 6 at 11,555, Nasdaq ends unchanged at 2,236

NEW YORK - Stocks gave up a moderate early advance to close barely changed Monday after oil prices rebounded from their recent decline, rising as much as $1 a barrel.

Investors also moved to the sidelines to wait for Wednesday's Federal Reserve meeting on interest rate policy. Wall Street had been flirting with 2006 highs, but the market remains anxious about the possibility the Fed could raise its benchmark short-term rate, which is now at 5.25 percent. Readings of economic growth and inflation remain mixed; the rise in oil carries with it concerns that inflation will accelerate.

The energy and materials sectors were the day's winners.

"The most significant thing going on today is just the recovery of energy and energy services," said Richard E. Cripps, chief market strategist for Stifel Nicolaus, a broker based in St. Louis. Some of the indexes that track those groups have lost 7 percent this month as oil fell, he said.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 5.77, or 0.05 percent, to 11,555.00.

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