NORTENO, Panama — Dressed in sweaty surgical scrubs and grappling with a screaming 6-year-old girl as he pulled her abscessed tooth, dentist Jason Vogt didn’t look the part of a diplomat.

WASHINGTON — Those polluting engine-powered mowers that are a staple of suburban lawn care would become much cleaner under emission limits proposed Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — A top Chevron Corp. executive said Tuesday the push to displace as much as a fifth of the country’s gasoline with ethanol will make it less likely the industry will build new domestic refineries.

OAKLAND — A father convicted of committing a string of Alameda County robberies with his son and daughter was sentenced to 38 years in prison Tuesday.

We always want there to be an answer, except there never is. Something like Virginia Tech happens, people want to know why.

CAMP PENDLETON — The Marine Corps has dropped murder charges and  granted immunity to a sergeant accused of taking part in actions that led to the deaths of two dozen civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha in 2005, a development that could bolster the government’s prosecution of other defendants.

CAMP PENDLETON — The U.S. government’s prosecution against eight Camp Pendleton Marines in the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha in 2005 is fraught with problems, according to sources with intimate knowledge of the case.

NEW YORK — Private donations to build the Sept. 11 memorial have jumped to over $300 million, more than half of it raised in the six months since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took over fundraising.

POTOSI, Mo. — Seven more charges, including attempted murder, have been filed against a former pizzeria manager accused of kidnapping two boys and holding one of them for four years.

TRENTON, N.J. — The sport utility vehicle carrying Gov. Jon S. Corzine was traveling about 91 mph moments before it crashed, the superintendent of state police said Tuesday.

TOKYO — The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki was shot to death in a brazen attack Tuesday by an organized crime chief apparently enraged that the city refused to compensate him after his car was damaged at a public works construction site, police said.

MEXICO CITY — Miss Mexico is toning down her Miss Universe pageant dress — not because it’s too slinky or low-cut, but because its bullet-studded belt and images of hangings from a 1920s uprising have outraged Mexicans.

TOKYO — Evidence submitted to the post-World War II trials of Japanese war criminals shows Japan’s military forced Asian women into sexual slavery during the war, historians said Tuesday, citing newly unearthed documents.

PLENTYWOOD, Mont. — Dave Grimland spent nearly 30 years as a foreign service officer — “telling the U.S. side of the story,” he says — in Bangladesh, India, Cyprus, Turkey and other nations with large Muslim populations.