• John McCain held a town hall meeting in Sparks, Nev., where he insisted anew that he would not raise taxes if elected president.
• Back in Washington after a weeklong trip to the Mideast and Europe, Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson discussed the mortgage crisis and steps the government is taking to shore up the faltering economy, his campaign said. Obama also held an hourlong meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Obama then met with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Obama later issued a statement calling their discussion, which included such topics as nuclear proliferation, human rights and terror threats from Pakistani tribal areas, "productive and wide-ranging."
• Testimony began in a federal lawsuit filed by groups who say the Democratic National Convention rules on parades and protests formulated by the Secret Service and the city of Denver will constrict free speech and must be overturned.
• Fundraising for the Democratic national convention next month is off by $10 million.
• U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina won't be attending the Republican national convention. Her spokeswoman said people shouldn't read too much into the decision.
• The nation's largest labor organization mailed 600,000 fliers to swing union voters in four states -- Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- Tuesday in an effort to help Obama correct some rumors about him. The AFL-CIO wants union voters to know that the Illinois senator was born in the United States, occasionally wears a flag pin, puts his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance and is not a Muslim. The flier shows him being sworn in as a senator with a family Bible and not the Qur'an, as persistently rumored.
• A biopsy of a small patch of skin removed from McCain's right cheek showed no evidence of skin cancer, doctors said Tuesday. "No further treatment is necessary," Michael Yardley, a spokesman for the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., said in a statement released through McCain's campaign.
NEWS SERVICES
