WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is considering setting up a diplomatic outpost in Iran in what would mark a dramatic official U.S. return to the country nearly 30 years after the American embassy was overrun and the two nations severed relations.

Like the one in communist Cuba, an interest section, or de facto embassy, in the Iranian capital would give the United States a presence on the ground through which it can communicate directly with students, dissidents and others without endorsing the government, one official said.

It would process visa applications and serve as a center for American cultural outreach to locals, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

WASHINGTON -- Leonard Downie Jr., the longtime executive editor of The Washington Post, is stepping down in September.

According to a company statement released Monday, Downie, who is 66, will become vice president at large and will remain at the Post.

The newspaper's new publisher, Katharine Weymouth, said she plans to announce a successor soon.

Downie came to the Post as a 22-year-old summer intern in 1964. He went on to write investigative pieces on fraud and corruption in the city's court system and on efforts by bankers to cheat inner-city residents through real estate schemes.

He also edited many of the stories written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the Watergate scandal.

CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. -- A jail escapee who set off a manhunt near Virginia Tech's campus by killing a hospital guard and later, a sheriff's deputy, was sentenced to death Monday despite his attorney's pleas for leniency.

William Morva, 26, was convicted of capital murder in March for the August 2006 killings. The jury recommended the death penalty, and Monday it was imposed by Montgomery County Circuit Judge Ray Grubbs.

Before sentencing, defense attorney Thomas Blaylock pleaded for mercy. Morva himself then said, "I think there are very few people in this whole courtroom who understand what that means," prompting an angry outburst from the widow of one of his victims.

"You didn't show no mercy when you killed my husband. ... You deserve to burn in hell," Cindy McFarland yelled before being escorted out of the courtroom briefly.

Grubbs told Morva he was imposing the death penalty because "lives have been shattered" by crimes that were committed "all for no other reason than your own selfish motives."

WINFIELD, Mo. -- With a few days to go before the last stretch of the bloated Mississippi River reaches its crest, people toiled around the clock Monday to reinforce levees already strained and saturated from the pressure of the rising water.

Officials in Lincoln County asked for volunteers to help fill 50,000 sandbags to fortify the 2Ôªø11/82-mile-long Pin Oak levee, an earthen berm that was so waterlogged that it was like "walking on a waterbed," said county emergency management spokesman Andy Binder. Federal officials said they couldn't be sure it would survive through the river's crest at Winfield later in the week.

"They have a serious condition on their hands," Travis Tutka, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chief of dam safety, said late Monday afternoon. "This will be quite a test of that levee."

If it breaches, the river will swamp 100 homes in east Winfield, as well as 3,000 acres of farm fields, several businesses and a city ballpark.

"There is no guarantee of performance, but we're fighting the good fight," Tutka said.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Presidential campaigns use all sorts of sophisticated operations against their opponents, but Barack Obama is also relying on some good, old-fashioned lucky charms.

The presumptive Democratic nominee said Monday that he carries around a few trinkets supporters have handed him at campaign appearances along the way -- including a "lucky poker chip" and a Native American eagle.

"They'll hand it to you and they'll say, 'I want you to be well, but I want you to fight for me,' " Obama said at a campaign stop here, where he pulled some of the items from a pocket. "And they'll talk about not having health care for their family, or they'll talk about being laid off."

He said those are the moments when he knows the exhaustive campaign is worth it.

WASHINGTON -- Sound, for whales, can mean life or death. The Supreme Court will decide how much noise the Navy can make around them.

Acting at the Bush administration's urging, the court agreed Monday to review a federal appeals court ruling that limited the use of sonar, or sound waves, in naval training exercises off Southern California's coast because of the potential harm to marine mammals.

Mid-frequency sonar, which the Navy relies on to locate enemy submarines, can interfere with the sound waves whales use to navigate and communicate underwater. There is also evidence that the extra noise has caused whales to strand themselves on shore.

The Navy argues that the decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco jeopardizes its ability to train sailors and Marines for service in wartime in exchange for a limited environmental benefit.

The Navy says it has already taken steps to protect beaked whales, dolphins and other creatures in balancing war training and environmental protections, officials said.

WASHINGTON -- Using clues from star and sun positions mentioned by the ancient Greek poet Homer, scholars think they have determined the date when King Odysseus returned from the Trojan War and slaughtered a group of suitors who had been pressing his wife to marry one of them.

It was on April 16, 1178 B.C. that the great warrior struck with arrows, swords and spears, killing those who sought to replace him, a pair of researchers say in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Experts have long debated whether the books of Homer reflect the actual history of the Trojan War and its aftermath.

Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, acknowledge they had to make some assumptions to determine the date Odysseus returned to his kingdom of Ithaca.

But interpreting clues in Homer's "Odyssey" as references to the positions of stars and a total eclipse of the sun allowed them to determine when a particular set of conditions would have occurred.