FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO, Mexico — Hurricane Dean swept across the Yucatan peninsula Tuesday, toppling trees, power lines and houses as it bore down on the heart of Mexico's oil industry. Glitzy resorts on the Mayan Riviera were spared, but vulnerable Mayan villages were exposed to the full fury of one of history's most intense storms.

President Felipe Calderon said no deaths were immediately reported in Mexico, after Dean killed 13 people in the Caribbean. But driving rain, poor communications and impassable roads made it difficult to determine how isolated Mayan communities fared in the sparsely populated jungle where Dean made landfall as a ferocious Category 5 hurricane.

Dean weakened over land but was expected to strengthen as its eye moved over the Bay of Campeche, home to more than 100 oil platforms and three major oil exporting ports. The sprawling, westward storm was projected to slam into the mainland Wednesday afternoon with renewed force near Laguna Verde, Mexico's only nuclear power plant.

"We often see that when a storm weakens, people let down their guard completely. You shouldn't do that," said Jamie Rhome at the U.S. National Hurricane Center. "This storm probably won't become a Category 5 again, but it will still be powerful."

At 5 p.m. EDT, Dean had winds of 80 mph and was centered about 60 miles west-southwest of Campeche. The storm was moving west at 20 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.

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CIA MISSED CHANCES TO THWART AL-QAIDA

WASHINGTON — The CIA's top leaders failed to use their available powers, never developed a comprehensive plan to stop al-Qaida and missed crucial opportunities to thwart two hijackers in the run-up to Sept. 11, the agency's own watchdog concluded in a bruising report released Tuesday.

Completed in June 2005 and kept classified until now, the 19-page executive summary finds extensive fault with the actions of senior CIA leaders and others beneath them. "The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner," the CIA inspector general found.

"They did not always work effectively and cooperatively," the report stated.

Yet the review team led by Inspector General John Helgerson found neither a "single point of failure nor a silver bullet" that would have stopped the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

In a statement, CIA Director Michael Hayden said the decision to release the report was not his choice or preference, but that he was making the report available as required by Congress in a law President Bush signed earlier this month.

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BUSH: IRAQI GOVERNMENT MUST 'DO MORE'

MONTEBELLO, Quebec — President Bush offered a tepid endorsement of the Iraqi government on Tuesday, yet brushed off a Democratic senator's call for the ouster of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Bush acknowledged his frustration with Iraqi leaders' inability to bridge political divisions, but said only the Iraqi people can decide whether to sideline the troubled prime minister.

The Sept. 15 deadline for Bush's next progress report to Congress is fast approaching, leaving the president little time to show that his U.S. troop buildup is succeeding in providing the enhanced security the Iraqi leaders need to forge a unified way forward.

"Clearly, the Iraqi government's got to do more," Bush said at the close of a two-day North American summit with the leaders of Mexico and Canada.

He pointed to some military successes, but expressed disappointment with the Iraqi government's work toward reconciliation in what he termed a "difficult experiment with democracy in the Middle East."

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IRANIAN-AMERICAN ACADEMIC RELEASED FROM PRISON

TEHRAN, Iran — A detained Iranian-American academic was suddenly released from a notorious Tehran prison Tuesday after spending months behind bars on charges of endangering Iranian national security — allegations her family vehemently denies.

Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, had been jailed in Evin prison since early May after months of interrogation. Her 93-year-old mother used the deed to her Tehran apartment to post bail, relatives said.

"I'm very happy. It was unexpected. I thank all those who made efforts to make it possible for me to go home," Esfandiari told Iranian television. The footage showed her walking out of the prison and meeting family members in a car on a nearby street.

Mohammad Shadabi, an official at the Tehran prosecutor's office, said Esfandiari had been released on $333,000 bail, but he could not say whether she would be allowed to leave Iran.

Esfandiari, 67, was detained Dec. 30 after three masked men holding knives threatened to kill her on her way to Tehran's airport to fly back to the U.S., the Wilson Center has said. The men took her U.S. and Iranian passports, making her unable to leave the country, the center said.

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OBAMA: NO MILITARY SOLUTION IN IRAQ

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Democrat Barack Obama said Tuesday the recent increase in American troops in Iraq may well have helped tamp down violence, but he insisted there is no military solution to the country's problems and U.S. forces should be redeployed soon.

Obama spoke a day after his main Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, made similar comments. She said the tactics of the short-term troop increase were working but political progress did not seem to be in sight and the U.S. should begin bringing some troops home.

Obama said in a telephone briefing, "If we put 30,000 additional troops into Baghdad, it will quell some of the violence short term. I don't think there is any doubt about that."

But that won't solve Iraq's critical political problems, he said in the call and again later in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"All of our top military commanders recognize that there is no military solution in Iraq," Obama said at the VFW convention in Kansas City. "No military surge can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region. Iraq's leaders are not reconciling. They are not achieving political benchmarks. The only thing they seem to have agreed on is to take a vacation."

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TEASPOON OF URINE CAN DRUG TEST WHOLE CITIES

WASHINGTON — Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city's sewer plant.

The test wouldn't be used to finger any single person as a drug user. But it would help federal law enforcement and other agencies track the spread of dangerous drugs, like methamphetamines, across the country.

Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of what people are taking.

"It's a community urinalysis," said Caleb Banta-Green, a University of Washington drug abuse researcher who was part of the Oregon State team. The scientists presented their results Tuesday at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

Two federal agencies have taken samples from U.S. waterways to see if drug testing a whole city is doable, but they haven't gotten as far as the Oregon researchers.

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NASA LOOKS AHEAD TO 3 MORE LAUNCHES

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Even as the wounded space shuttle Endeavour brought its seven astronauts safely home Tuesday, NASA is looking ahead to three more launches at risk for the same kind of damage.

There is a striking parallel with the 2003 Columbia disaster in the space agency's failure to anticipate the harm from breaking ice or insulating foam — this time from a new area of the shuttle's fuel tank.

The 3›-inch-long gouge in Endeavour's belly did not put the astronauts at risk. And as soon as the damaged tiles are popped off, engineers will know whether repairs are needed to the underlying aluminum structure. The gash seemed to weather the return flight well, NASA said.

But for the early part of Endeavour's 13-day mission there was an eerie sense of deja vu.

Back before Columbia flew its last mission four years ago, NASA knew it had a foam problem with its fuel tanks but never imagined a piece of the airy insulation could severely wound a space shuttle.

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BARNES & NOBLE NOT STOCKING O.J.'S BOOK

NEW YORK — If you're hoping to buy the new edition of O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It," don't expect to find a copy at Barnes & Noble. Citing a perceived lack of customer interest, the chain said the book would only be available by special order or for purchase online through Barnes & Noble.com.

"Our buyers don't feel there will be enough of a demand to carry it in our stores," Barnes & Noble spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

A rival chain, Borders Group Inc., said Tuesday that it would stock "If I Did It," a ghostwritten, fictionalized account of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. But spokeswoman Ann Binkley said Borders "will not promote or market the book in any way."

"We think it will have some interest in the first week or two, then die down," said Binkley, who added that Borders, which for the original book had planned to donate profits to charity, will not do so this time.

Simpson's book was first scheduled for publication last November by ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins, with an announced printing of 400,000. But "If I Did It" was dropped in response to widespread outrage. ReganBooks founder Judith Regan was later fired and her imprint disbanded.

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WALL STREET CLOSES MOSTLY HIGHER

NEW YORK — Wall Street ended another erratic session mostly higher Tuesday as investors, waiting for the Federal Reserve's next move to steady the markets, made few big commitments to stocks.

Comments from policymakers and government officials tugged at a market looking for any evidence the Fed will cut rates to help contain the credit crisis that began with the failure of subprime loans.

The Fed has taken a number of steps to prop up the nation's financial institutions ahead of its scheduled Sept. 18 meeting, including injecting more liquidity into the banking industry and cutting the discount rate. But many on Wall Street want the Fed to do more, including lowering the more important federal funds rate, and to do it before next month's meeting.

Traders reacted positively to comments from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd who said Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke isn't satisfied with Wall Street's response to his efforts to stabilize markets torn by anxiety about shrinking credit. Dodd, after a meeting with Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, said policymakers plan to use "all tools available" to complete its mission.