This week saw Gen. David Petraeus's first press conference since he took over command of U.S. forces in Iraq, and he began it by hammering home a warning that has been repeatedly emphasized by his predecessors as well: Military force alone will not fix Iraq.
Last Friday, we gave you arguments for why John McCain had either a good or bad week on the campaign trail, depending on who you ask. Today, we'll close out with another multiple-choice item from White House Correspondent Kenneth T. Walsh, this time on whether Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama stole the week.
There were early signs, like when her son, Perry, who is 7, started talking seriously about buying a piano. Or when his friends started organizing sled races, even though temperatures in their northern California neighborhood were climbing into the 60s. But GraceAnn Stewart did not use the word obsession until the day a few weeks ago when Perry asked her to make his school day longer.
AP - The first direct, high-level contact in years among U.S., Iranian and Syrian representatives included "frank and sometimes jovial exchanges," Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said Saturday.
AP - President Bush claimed progress on trade with Uruguay's president on Saturday, courting another leftist leader on his Latin American tour. "We care about the human condition," Bush said, trying to co-opt the populism of one influential leftist rival he won't meet: Venezuela's firebrand, Hugo Chavez.
Iraqi militants holding a German woman and her son demanded Saturday that Germany withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. "These people want to kill my son in front of my eyes, and then they'll kill me, if the German troops did not withdraw from Afghanistan," the woman says on a video posted on the Internet.
A woman posing as a nurse walked into a baby's hospital room, told her family she needed to take the ill newborn for tests and then stole her, police said Saturday. Lt. Scott Hudgens of Lubbock, Texas, police begged the kidnapper to drop off 3-day-old Mychael Darthard-Dawodu, who needs treatment for jaundice. Officers are hunting a 5-foot-3-inch woman seen on security cameras in pink scrubs with purple and blue flowers.