Housing and autos may be in the dumps, but the rest of the U.S. economy seems to be holding up just fine, adding 132,000 new nonfarm payroll jobs in November. Breaking things down: The service sector added 172,000 jobs last month, according to a preliminary Labor Department report (PDF), while construction lost 29,000 and manufacturing lost 15,000. Of those departed construction jobs, more than half were related to real estate. Some 7,000 auto-related jobs disappeared as well.
This summer, Michael Evans went private. Only the 924 people he considers friends on Facebook.com, a social-networking website, can view photos of his latest exploits and track his online activities. Evans, a senior at Ohio State University, wasn't trying to keep predators or even obnoxious busybodies at bay; he was hiding from the prying eyes of future employers.
President Bush and his strategists say they are concerned that partisan differences are pulling Americans apart over Iraq, partly because of the harsh political campaigns that ended in the Democratic takeover of Congress in the November 7 election.
AP - Carrying a cache of weapons into a bustling downtown office, a man chained a law firm's doors closed and fatally shot three people before a police sniper killed him as he held a hostage at gunpoint, authorities said.
AP - In its last hours of GOP control, Congress passed a raft of bills big and small, most significantly a sweeping bill reviving expired tax breaks, extending trade benefits for developing countries and protecting doctors from a big cut in Medicare payments.
AP - Iraq's influential Association of Muslim Scholars and the country's largest Sunni Arab political party on Saturday condemned a deadly U.S. military attack they say killed civilians. Separately, a suicide car bomb struck near a Shiite shrine, killing at least five people.
A car bomb explosion rocked the southern Iraqi city of Karbala on Saturday morning, killing at least five people and wounding another 44, Karbala police and hospital sources said.