LOS ANGELES — Angry over recent raids and frustrated with Congress, thousands of people protested across the country Tuesday to demand a path to citizenship for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

From Phoenix to Detroit to Miami, thousands of people carried American flags in the streets.

Organizers say immigrants feel a sense of urgency to keep immigration reform from getting pushed to the back burner by the 2008 presidential elections.

"If we don't act, then both the Democratic and Republican parties can go back to their comfort zones and do nothing," said Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. "They won't have the courage to resolve a major situation for millions of people."

In Chicago, thousands of demonstrators carried American flags, signs and placards, including one that read, "We may not have it all together, but together we can have it all."

Rice says U.S. making progress in terror fight despite Iraq violence

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claimed "considerable progress" in the global fight against terrorism as she prepared Tuesday to ask skeptical Arab governments to do more and to underwrite democracy in Iraq.

"There's been some real progress on some fronts and in other places the terrorists have continued to challenge democratic governments," Rice said when asked about a State Department report showing terrorist attacks worldwide shot up more than 25 percent last year.

"We'll continue to fight that war. We're making considerable progress," Rice said.

The report Monday said terrorists killed 40 percent more people in 2006 than in 2005, particularly in Iraq where extremists used chemical weapons and suicide bombers to target crowds.

The grim findings on violence in Iraq are expected to underscore the difficulty for Rice as she heads to Egypt for meetings later this week with Iraq's Arab and Iranian neighbors and outside backers.

Giuliani assails Chavez despite his law firm's ties to Venezuelan leader

WASHINGTON — Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, whose law firm represents an American subsidiary of a Hugo Chavez-controlled oil company, said Tuesday that the socialist Venezuelan president is dangerous to U.S. interests.

In a speech to Hispanic small business leaders, the Republican brought up Chavez while discussing ways the United States could become free from its reliance on foreign oil.

"Isn't it annoying, upsetting and even in some cases a matter of national security that we have to send money to our enemies?" Giuliani asked. "We need a president who knows how to get things done so we don't have to be sending money to Chavez."

Giuliani called for the United States to develop alternative energy sources and take advantage of oil already in its control. He said that antagonistic leaders of oil-rich nations, like Chavez, would have "little power" if the United States could stop buying oil from them.

"Who would listen to Chavez if he didn't have all this oil money? Nobody would listen to him," Giuliani said.

A handful of Ga. school districts agree to offer Bible classes

ATLANTA — Georgia's public schools walk a delicate line as they decide whether to offer the nation's first state-funded Bible classes — measuring the difference between preaching and teaching with the likelihood of costly lawsuits looming for those that miss the mark.

The state school board approved curriculum in March for teaching the Bible in Georgia's high schools, but there hasn't been a rush of schools to start up the classes. Only a handful of the state's 180 school districts have agreed to offer the elective classes so far.

"It has been a very thoughtful, healthy process," said Robin Pennock, deputy schools superintendent of Muscogee County, where the school board decided to offer the Old Testament and New Testament classes next fall. "Most people do realize that this is an area that many people can feel very passionate about."

It's difficult to confirm how many school boards have adopted or are considering the classes. However, Muscogee — which borders Alabama and includes the city of Columbus and the Army's Fort Benning — is one of the state's largest districts to have done so.

"It's important to understand religion; it's something we've gotten too far away from," said Jan Pease, whose 15-year-old daughter attends Northside High School in Columbus.

Study links drop in death rates, heart failure in heart attack patients to better treatment

CHICAGO — In just six years, death rates and heart failure in hospitalized heart attack patients have fallen sharply, most likely because of better treatment, the largest international study of its kind suggests. The promising trend parallels the growing use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, powerful blood thinners, and angioplasty, the procedure that opens clogged arteries, the researchers said.

"These results are really dramatic, because, in fact, they're the first time anybody has demonstrated a reduction in the development of new heart failure," said lead author Dr. Keith Fox, a cardiology professor at the University of Edinburgh.

The six-year study involved nearly 45,000 patients in 14 countries who had major heart attacks or dangerous partial artery blockages. The percentage of patients who died in the hospital or who developed heart failure was nearly cut in half from 1999 to 2005.

And the heart attack patients treated most recently were far less likely to have another attack within six months of being hospitalized when compared to the patients treated six years earlier — a sign that the more aggressive efforts of doctors in the last few years are working.

There have been other signs that better treatment of heart patients has been saving lives, but not on a scale as large as this international study, the researchers said.

Comic Tom Poston dies at 85

LOS ANGELES — Tom Poston, the tall, pasty-faced comic who found fame and fortune playing a clueless everyman on such hit television shows as "Newhart" and "Mork and Mindy," has died. He was 85.

Poston, who was married to Suzanne Pleshette of "The Bob Newhart Show," died Monday night at home after a brief illness, a family representative, Tanner Gibson, said Tuesday. The nature of his illness was not disclosed.

Bob Newhart remembered Poston as a "versatile and veteran performer and a kindhearted individual."

"Tom was always the 'go-to guy' on 'Newhart' in addition to being a good and longtime friend," Newhart said in a statement Tuesday.

Poston's run as a comic bumbler began in the mid-1950s with "The Steve Allen Show" after Allen plucked the character actor from the Broadway stage to join an ensemble of eccentrics he would conduct "man in the street" interviews with.