NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — After all the testimonials from relatives and friends, the songs from legends and pop stars, the preaching and even laughter, the raw emotion of Whitney Houston’s funeral came down to just one moment: The sound of her own voice. As the strains of her biggest record, “I Will Always Love You,” filled the New Hope Baptist Church at the end of the nearly four-hour service and her silver and gold casket was lifted in the air,... Read more

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Police Department monitored Muslim college students far more broadly than previously known, at schools far beyond the city limits, including the Ivy League colleges of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, The Associated Press has learned. Police talked with local authorities about professors 300 miles away in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times... Read more

CRANSTON, R.I. (AP) — A national association that says there’s no proof for the existence of God is managing a scholarship fund set up for a teenage atheist at the center of a dispute over a prayer banner at a Rhode Island school. The American Humanist Association says 16-year-old Jessica Ahlquist was targeted with online threats after she challenged the constitutionality of the display at Cranston High School West. It says she stood up against her critics “with class and... Read more

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has set Oct. 21 as the date to make two U.S. saints: Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian who spent most of her life in what is now upstate New York, and Mother Marianne Cope, who began religious life in the same area but moved to Hawaii to care for leprosy patients. Benedict had already approved miracles attributed to the two, the final step toward sainthood. At the end of a ceremony Saturday to... Read more

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has set Oct. 12 as the date to make two U.S. saints: Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian who spent most of her life in what is now upstate New York, and Mother Marianne Cope, who began religious life in the same area but moved to Hawaii to care for leprosy patients. Benedict had already approved miracles attributed to the two, the final step toward sainthood. At the end of a ceremony Saturday to... Read more

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Afghan president met Saturday with a Pakistani cleric linked to Taliban insurgents, a meeting that marked the first public contact between an Afghan official and members of the Afghan Taliban’s support network in Pakistan in Afghanistan’s bid to bring the militant movement to the negotiating table. The meeting between President Hamid Karzai and the cleric was held in Islamabad said the cleric and Afghan officials, and shows how far the Afghan president is willing to go... Read more

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI is bringing 22 new Catholic churchmen into the elite club of cardinals who will elect his successor amid signs the 84-year-old pontiff is slowing down. Benedict is presiding over a ceremony Saturday in St. Peter’s Basilica to formally create the 22 cardinals, who include the archbishops of New York, Prague, Hong Kong and Toronto as well as the heads of several Vatican offices. The ceremony has been clouded by embarrassing leaks of internal... Read more

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — White House candidate Rick Santorum on Saturday questioned President Barack Obama’s Christian values and attacked GOP rival Mitt Romney’s Olympics leadership as he courted tea party activists and evangelical voters in Ohio, “ground zero” in the 2012 nomination fight. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator known for his social conservative policies, said that Obama’s agenda is “not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some... Read more

BEIJING (AP) — Another Tibetan Buddhist monk has set himself on fire in western China amid a wave of such protests against China’s handling of the vast Tibetan areas it rules, overseas groups said Saturday. Tamchoe Sangpo set himself alight Friday during a prayer ceremony at Bongtak monastery in a remote region of Qinghai province, the advocacy group Free Tibet said. It gave no details about his current condition, although U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia said he had died. The... Read more

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Republican lawmakers in a handful of states are opening another front in the war against President Obama’s health care overhaul, seizing on the hot-button issue of birth control with bills that would allow insurance companies to ignore new federal rules requiring them to cover contraception. Measures introduced recently in Idaho, Missouri and Arizona would go beyond religious nonprofits and expand exemptions to secular insurers or businesses that object to covering contraception, abortion and sterilization. “In its... Read more