Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm resigned Friday from his role as GOP presidential candidate John McCain's campaign co-chairman, hoping to quiet the uproar that followed his comments that the United States had become a "nation of whiners" whose constant complaints about the U.S. economy show they are in a "mental recession."

Republican presidential candidate John McCain raised more than $21 million in June and spent nearly $26 million, the campaign reported Friday night.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain pledged Friday to help auto workers rebuild their industry and in the process jump-start the entire U.S. economy.

How old is John McCain? So old, the jokes about it are getting old.

The Army says it's critical to saving the lives of wounded soldiers. Animal-rights activists call the training cruel and outdated.

Republican John McCain launched a new television ad Friday that accuses presidential rival Barack Obama of switching positions on Iraq "to help himself become president" just as the Democratic candidate prepared to make a high profile trip to Baghdad.

John McCain and Barack Obama vow to reform the nation's defense procurement if elected president, yet each is unwilling to take a firm stand against the skyrocketing cost of a plum White House perk: the new Marine One helicopter.

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama intends to sit down with European leaders as well as King Abdullah of Jordan, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as part of a campaign-season trip that aides described Friday as substantive rather than political.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday that U.S. intelligence led Mexican forces to a small submarine captured this week packed with 5.8 tons of cocaine.

A new U.S.-Iraqi agreement raising the possibility of a withdrawal timeline threatens to complicate the war policies of presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.

The United States and Iraq have agreed to a "general time horizon" for further reductions of U.S. combat troops in Iraq, the White House said Friday, the first time the Bush administration has agreed to set any kind of timeline for U.S. troop withdrawals.

TITLE: "Troop Funding."

Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta says a mix up on a terrorist watch list is still wreaking havoc on his air travel five years after the problem arose.

President Bush, in the second half of a Southwestern fundraising trip Friday, backed the candidacy of Republican Pete Olson, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Nick Lampson in Texas' 22nd congressional district.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that the United States still has conditions for negotiating with Iran even though the Bush administration is sending a senior diplomat to weekend talks with an Iranian nuclear envoy.

In some versions of a July 17 story about former Vice President Al Gore's energy proposals, the first name of the president of Securing America's Future Energy, a nonpartisan energy policy group, was misspelled. He is Robbie Diamond, not Robby.

The Bush administration is telling a federal appeals court that it has the authority to detain a Canadian who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 15 and is accused of killing a U.S. soldier.

John McCain is facing an excitement deficit.

An Associated Press-Yahoo News poll found differences in how engaged various groups of voters are in the presidential campaign.

The AP-Yahoo News Poll is a unique study that is tracking the moods and opinions of a group of people throughout the presidential election campaign. The fifth wave of this study included re-interviews of 1,759 people between June 13-23 who were originally interviewed in November or early December. The extensive national survey was conducted by Knowledge Networks of Menlo Park, Calif., under the direction and supervision of AP's polling unit.

Inferior electrical work by private contractors on U.S. military bases in Iraq is more widespread than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to a published report.

During his tenure at the Federal Communications Commission, Jonathan Adelstein has been a fierce critic of government policies that allow big media companies to get bigger. So it came as a surprise when the Democratic commissioner put forth a proposal that would allow the nation's only two satellite radio companies to merge.

It's OK to eat all kinds of tomatoes again, the U.S. government declared Thursday - lifting its salmonella warning on the summer favorites amid signs that the record outbreak, while not over, may finally be slowing.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman says the German leader will welcome U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama to her office in Berlin next Thursday.