Tim Tebow faces another big football test this weekend with a Sunday game against New England. The quarterback has seen the ranks of off-field followers soar, as ‘Tebowing’ in prayer (real or pretended) goes global.

The US Senate â€“ battered by fiscal crisis and gridlock â€“ voted Saturday to fund the government through FY 2012 and extend a payroll tax cut, set to expire on Dec. 31. The House is expected to vote next week.

A congressional deal to preserve a payroll tax cut, approved by the Senate Saturday, contains a provision designed to force President Obama's hand on the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

AP - The last U.S. soldiers rolled out of Iraq across the border into neighboring Kuwait at daybreak Sunday, whooping, fist bumping and hugging each other in a burst of joy and relief. Their convoy's exit marked the end of a bitterly divisive war that raged for nearly nine years and left Iraq shattered, with troubling questions lingering over whether the Arab nation will remain a steadfast U.S. ally.

AP - Tropical Storm Washi blew away Sunday after devastating a wide swath of the southern Philippines with flash floods that killed at least 521 people as they slept and turned two coastal cities into a muddy wasteland filled with overturned cars and uprooted trees.

AP - A woman burned to death in the elevator of her Brooklyn apartment building Saturday after a man ambushed her, sprayed her with liquid and set her afire with a Molotov cocktail, police said.