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AP - A businessman and former chairman of a major Egyptian bank was being held on $25,000 bail after being charged with sexually abusing a housekeeper at a luxury New York City hotel.

AP - On his final overseas trip as secretary of defense, Robert Gates will make the case to a gathering of Asian defense chiefs in Singapore that expected budget-slashing in Washington will not weaken America's commitment to Asia.

AP - House Republicans are pushing back against Obama administration efforts to promote healthier lunches, saying the Agriculture Department should rewrite rules it issued in January meant to make school meals healthier. They say the new rules are too costly.

Reuters - Missouri officials continued on Tuesday the process of identifying the remains of bodies recovered from the devastating Joplin tornado and reduced the count of missing people to 10.

AP - Endeavour and its crew of six zoomed toward a middle-of-the-night landing to bring NASA's second-to last shuttle flight to a close, as Atlantis slowly made its way to the launch pad late Tuesday for the grand finale in just five weeks.

Reuters - Bernice King, the daughter of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., has left a suburban Atlanta megachurch that has been at the center of a recent sex controversy, and plans to start her own ministry.

AP - An admitted American terrorist who is the government's top witness in the trial of a Chicago businessman accused in the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks repeatedly lied to the FBI, a judge and even his wife as he cooperated in a plea deal to save his own life, defense attorneys said Tuesday.

AP - Crews raced approaching floodwaters Tuesday to complete emergency levees aimed at protecting South Dakota's capital city and two other towns as the swollen Missouri River rolled downstream from the Northern Plains. Meanwhile, the mayor of Minot, N.D., ordered a quarter of the city's residents to evacuate areas along the flooding Souris River.

AP - President Barack Obama will award the Medal of Honor to a Washington state-based Army sergeant who lost his hand in Afghanistan when he tried to toss an enemy grenade away from himself and two colleagues.

AP - A bus operated by a discount company with a particularly poor record of fatigued driving overturned on a Virginia highway before dawn Tuesday, killing four people and injuring more than 50 others.

AP - Addressing the most explosive charge against him, ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich told jurors Tuesday that he never sought to sell President Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat, but that he kicked around all kinds of ideas — "good ones, bad ones, stupid ones" — over whom to appoint to the position.

AP - Police kept searching Tuesday for a missing Northern California nursing student whose distraught family posted a $20,000 reward after she disappeared during a break from a clinical rotation.

Reuters - The mother of accused child killer Casey Anthony testified on Tuesday that her daughter's car smelled "worse than rotting flesh" when she and her husband found it in an impound lot a month after she had last seen her 2-year-old granddaughter Caylee.

AP - Electrical crews hoisted power poles, small businesses opened in tents and residents snatched up construction supplies as rebuilding got underway nine days after a tornado tore through southwest Missouri. "We are open. Pray for Joplin," read a sign Tuesday outside a pharmacy offering customers free water, coffee and diabetic meters.

AP - A 50-year-old man waded into the San Francisco Bay, stood up to his neck and waited. A Coast Guard boat couldn't get into the shallow water, and fire crews said they couldn't rescue him because of a policy that strictly forbade such attempts.