European leaders warmed to President Obama's emphasis on pragmatism and mutual values. Playing ping-pong and visiting Moneygall, Ireland, didn't hurt his popular image, either.

The quality and openness of the selection process for a new International Monetary Fund leader matters as much as the outcome. It will be key not only to the future legitimacy of that institution but to the very notion of cooperative global economic management.

A Christian Science perspective: When all seems lost, God is right at hand.

AP - Scores of House Republicans are heading to the White House for a meeting with President Barack Obama to demand trillions of dollars in spending cuts as the price for providing any increase in the government's power to borrow.

AP - Two rights activists say the bodies of 20 people shot dead in a central Syrian town have been brought to a hospital in the region.

AP - Space shuttle Endeavour and its six astronauts returned to Earth early Wednesday, closing out the next-to-last mission in NASA's 30-year program with a safe middle-of-the-night landing.