NEW YORK -- The National Park Service is considering reopening Lady Liberty's crown for the first time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to documents a congressman released on July Fourth.

BAGHDAD -- Gunmen on a motorcycle assassinated an official of Iraq's biggest Shiite party Friday in the southern city of Basra, police said.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Jesse Helms, the former U.S. senator from North Carolina who for half a century infuriated liberals with his race-baiting campaign tactics and presidents of both parties with his use of senatorial privilege, died Friday. He was 86.

LOS ANGELES -- More than a dozen people, some wearing orange protective gear, pulled rakes and shovels from a dingy shopping cart and started working on a parched patch of land along a busy off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway.

WASHINGTON -- A flurry of recent research indicating that Vitamin D may have a dizzying array of health benefits has re-ignited an intense debate over whether federal guidelines for the "sunshine vitamin" are outdated, leaving millions unnecessarily vulnerable to cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other ailments.

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has extended the tour of 2,200 Marines in Afghanistan, after insisting for months the unit would come home on time.

BAQOUBA, Iraq -- It's Staff Sgt. Edgar Covarrubias's second Fourth of July in Iraq. No family barbecue, no fireworks, but Covarrubias says he'll call his mom, wife and kids to share the day anyway.

NEW YORK -- Joey Chestnut reclaimed the top spot at the annual hot dog eating contest in Coney Island on Friday after first tying with archrival Takeru Kobayashi in a 10-minute chow-down and then beating him in a five-dog eat-off.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Former Sen. Jesse Helms, an unyielding champion of the conservative movement who spent three combative and sometimes caustic decades in Congress, where he relished his battles against liberals, Communists and occasionally a fellow Republican, died on the Fourth of July. He was 86.

JERUSALEM -- Saudi Arabia has invited an Israeli rabbi to an interfaith conference in Spain, potentially the first step in wider contacts between the kingdom and Israel, the rabbi told The Associated Press on Thursday.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt embraced her children for the first time in six years Thursday, saying the thought of them helped her stay alive until a daring rescue plucked her and 14 other hostages from the jungle.

INDIANAPOLIS -- One of the fireworks bursting above the city this year will contain a bit of cremated remains -- a fitting tribute, organizers say, to the man who ran the annual event for 40 years.