(AP) — From DigiMon to Tamagotchi, there are dozens of choices for the virtual pet lover. The latest, “Nintendogs,” ($30, rated E) debuts in the United States next week, exclusively for the Nintendo DS handheld game machine. Available in Japan for months, “Nintendogs” is a lifelike digital rendering of perhaps the most universally admired of…

Inmates susceptible to radical Islamist ideology

COLOGNE, Germany (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI had been cautious about making any links between Islam and terror strikes during his four-month papacy, but he chose his first major address to Muslim leaders to issue a stern warning that terrorism risked exposing the world “to the darkness of a new barbarism.” The 78-year-old pontiff urged…

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — The Iraqi government accused Jordan on Sunday of allowing members of Saddam Hussein’s family living there to fund a network seeking to destabilize Iraq. Government spokesman Laith Kubba said the former Iraqi dictator’s relatives in Jordan have “huge amounts of money” to support efforts to revive his Baath Party organizations. Kubba…

By JOHN GEROME / Associated Press Writer Country music legend Dolly Parton relaxes at her office in Nashville Thursday, Aug. 11, 2005. (AP Photo/John Russell) NASHVILLE — It’s almost a given for veteran singers to dust off the American songbook and cut an album of standards. But Dolly Parton does them one better on her…

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s no secret that the Pentagon is eyeing a possible cut in U.S. troop levels in Iraq next year. Less well known is that Army planners are preparing for quite a different scenario: that they will have to sustain, through multiple rotations, the current number of troops for another four years. `We…

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers and wounded three others Sunday as they were patrolling in southern Afghanistan, the deadliest attack on American forces here in nearly two months, the U.S. military said. Militant assaults elsewhere killed a senior pro-government Islamic leader and two Afghan policemen, as Taliban-led rebels step…

By JOHN GEROME / Associated Press Writer Brad Paisley performs in Nashville, Tenn., in a photo from April 11, 2005. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) NASHVILLE — Country singer Brad Paisley has to be feeling a little like a bartender these days. His hit single, “Alcohol,” a series of funny observations about imbibing that he wrote from…

CLEVELAND (AP) — A famous trumpeter who bridged from secular music into gospel has been charged with income tax evasion for allegedly funneling up to $1 million through his various ministries. Phil Driscoll, 58, was named in an indictment introduced in U.S. District Court in Knoxville on Friday. Also charged in the indictment are his…

MEMPHIS (AP) — Three teenage boys, one of them a Cordova High School football standout, have been charged with aggravated rape. Jocques Crawford, 17; his brother, Xavier Crawford, 17; and Randy Harvey, 15, were taken into custody Tuesday in connection with the Aug. 1 incident, said Juvenile Court chief probation officer Barry Mitchell. A victim…