NEW YORK (AP) — Soaring gas prices and weakening job prospects left shoppers gloomier about the economy in May, sending a key barometer of consumer sentiment to its lowest level in almost 16 years.

The New York-based Conference Board said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index dropped to 57.2, down from a revised 62.8 in April. Economists surveyed by Thomson Financial/IFR had expected a reading of 60.

The May reading marks the fifth straight month of decline and is the lowest since the index registered 54.6 in October 1992 when the economy was coming out of a recession.

Economists closely watch sentiment readings since consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the nation's economic activity.

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — President Bush paid tribute today to America’s fighting men and women who died in battle, saying national leaders must have “the courage and character to follow their lead” in preserving peace and freedom.

“On this Memorial Day, I stand before you as the commander in chief and try to tell you how proud I am,” Bush told an audience of military figures, veterans and their families at Arlington National Cemetery. Of the men and women buried in the hallowed cemetery, he said, “They’re an awesome bunch of people and the United States is blessed to have such citizens.”

That provoked a standing ovation from the crowd in a marble amphitheater where Bush spoke. “Whoo-hoo!” shouted one woman, who couldn’t contain her enthusiasm.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere of Mars and successfully landed in the Red Planet's northern polar region on Sunday, where it will begin 90 days of digging in the permafrost to look for evidence of the building blocks of life.

Cheers swept through mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory when the touchdown signal from the Phoenix Mars Lander was detected after a nailbiting descent. Engineers and scientists hugged and high-fived one another.

"In my dreams it couldn't have gone as perfectly as it went," project manager Barry Goldstein said. "It went right down the middle."

Among Phoenix's first tasks were to check its power supply and the health of its science instruments, and unfurl its solar panels after the dust settled. Mission managers said there would be a two-hour blackout period as Phoenix conducted the checks while out of view from Earth.

Phoenix plunged into the Martian atmosphere at more than 12,000 mph after a 10-month, 422 million-mile voyage through space.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. military distanced itself today from remarks declaring al-Qaida in Iraq close to defeat, saying the terror network is "off-balance and on the run," but remains a very lethal threat.

However, Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, a military spokesman, said violence has dropped some 70 percent since a U.S. troop buildup began nearly a year ago.

Underscoring the continuing dangers, a roadside bomb targeted a patrol of U.S.-allied Sunni Arab fighters near a mosque in northern Baghdad today, killing one of the so-called Awakening Council members and wounding three others, a police official said.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — A three-legged NASA spacecraft was closing in on Mars today for what scientists hope will be the first-ever touchdown near Mars' north pole to study whether the permafrost could have supported primitive life.

The time it takes the Phoenix Mars Lander to streak through the atmosphere and set down on the dusty surface has been dubbed "the seven minutes of terror" for good reason. More than half of the world's attempts to land on Mars have ended in failures.

"I'm a little nervous on the inside. I'm getting butterflies," Peter Smith, principal investigator from the University of Arizona, Tucson, said on the eve of the landing. "We bet the whole farm on this safe landing and we can't do our science without this safe landing."

Phoenix is pre-programmed to plummet through the Red Planet's atmosphere, and will rely on the intricately choreographed use of its heat shield, parachute and rockets to slow its descent from over 12,000 mph to a 5 mph touchdown.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress enacted a massive farm bill Thursday with new and bigger subsidies for farmers, plus more food stamps for the poor.

But first Democrats had to eat a little crow that dimmed the election-year victory of overriding President Bush's veto for only the second time during his seven years in office.

Omitted from the $290 billion, five-year law because of a printing mistake was a small amount of money to address a growing global hunger crisis. Democrats only realized the mistake on Wednesday, just before the House voted 316-108 to override Bush's veto.

The Senate joined the override Thursday with a 82-13 vote. Eager to begin a Memorial Day vacation, the issue of helping starving countries was left for another day.

(AP) — Barack Obama is inching ever closer to locking up the Democratic presidential nomination despite another resounding loss to Hillary Rodham Clinton, this time in Kentucky.

Clinton beat Obama by 35 percentage points in Kentucky, after trouncing him by 41 percentage points in West Virginia last week, and has won five of the last seven primaries.

Once all the delegates were allocated from Tuesday's contests in Oregon and Kentucky, however, Obama was expected to be within 60 of the magic 2,026 needed to cinch the nomination. With 80 percent of the vote counted, he was winning Oregon by a 58-42 percent margin.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. discriminates against blind people by printing paper money that makes it impossible for them to distinguish among the bills' varying values, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholds a decision by a lower court in 2006. It could force the Treasury Department to redesign its money. Suggested changes have ranged from making bills different sizes to printing them with raised markings.

The American Council for the Blind sued for such changes but the Treasury Department has been fighting the case for about six years.

"I don't think we should have to rely on people to tell us what our money is," said Mitch Pomerantz, the council's president.

CHENGDU, China (AP) — A government warning of a major aftershock sent thousands of panicked survivors running into the darkened streets Monday night following an unprecedented display of mourning for more than 34,000 people killed in a powerful earthquake one week ago.

In shattered Sichuan province, quake-weary residents carried pillows, blankets and chairs from homes into the open or slept in cars after a statement from the National Seismology Bureau was read on television warning that there was a "rather great" chance of an aftershock measuring magnitude 6 to 7. Such jolts could cause major damage.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama will reach a significant milestone Tuesday as he marches toward the Democratic nomination for president — a majority of pledged delegates at stake in all the primaries and caucuses.

Obama will still be short of the overall number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination, unless he were to suddenly receive an avalanche of endorsements from the party and elected officials known as superdelegates. But the Illinois senator's campaign is touting the delegate milestone as a big step in defeating his rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.