WASHINGTON (AP) — Sasquatch might as well have traipsed across the White House lawn Friday with a lost Warren Commission file on his way to the studio where NASA staged the moon landing.

Conspiracy theorists came out in force after the government reported a sudden drop in the U.S. unemployment rate one month before Election Day. Their message: The Obama administration would do anything to ensure a November victory, including manipulating unemployment data.

DENVER (AP) — In a showdown at close quarters, President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney sparred aggressively in their first campaign debate Wednesday night over taxes, deficits and strong steps needed to create jobs in a sputtering national economy. "The status quo is not going to cut it," declared the challenger.

Obama in turn accused his rival of seeking to "double down" on economic policies that actually led to the devastating national downturn four years ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney's running mate shot down the need for a breakthrough in the first presidential debate Wednesday, trying to allay Republican concerns that the race is slipping away with five weeks to go and momentum on President Barack Obama's side.

PUEBLO, Colo. (AP) — Mitt Romney led a chorus of Republican criticism of the administration's foreign policy on Monday, accusing President Barack Obama of minimizing the recent killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya as a mere "bump in the road" rather than part of a chain of events that threatens American interests.

White House press secretary Jay Carney called the accusations "desperate and offensive" as Romney and his allies sought to gain political advantage in the latter stages of a political campaign that seems to be trending Obama's way.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Images of angry mobs in Arab cities burning American flags and attacking U.S. diplomatic posts suggest the Muslim world is no less enraged at the United States than when President George W. Bush had to duck shoes hurled at him in Baghdad.

But more than three years after President Barack Obama declared in Cairo that he would seek "a new beginning" in U.S.-Muslim relations, a closer look reveals strides as well as setbacks.

The nation's poverty rate remained stuck at a record level last year.