For nearly three weeks Israel has blocked access to the Gaza Strip. Foreign journalists are challenging the Gaza ban in court, calling it a 'blow' to freedom of the press.
Wednesday's vote on a security pact to allow US troops to remain in Iraq for three more years is being seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Maliki's performance.
President-elect Barack Obama will keep Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates as a show of continuity in a time of war, Democrats close to the transition said.
AP - Seeking experience in wartime, President-elect Barack Obama intends to re-enlist Defense Secretary Robert Gates as head of the Pentagon — if only temporarily — and has chosen a retired Marine general to be White House national security adviser, officials said Tuesday.
AP - With the economy showing further signs that it is headed into a steep swoon, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is pulling more tricks out of his bag to try bolster the country's battered financial sector.
AP - The economy growing weaker, President-elect Barack Obama said Tuesday that recovery efforts will trump deficit concerns when he takes office in January. Yet he pledged a "page-by-page, line-by-line" budget review to root out unneeded spending.
Less than a year after four strangers risked their lives to save Michelle Kehoe and her sons from an icy river, the mother is accused of slashing the two boys' throats and leaving them to die. Cases of moms accused of killing their children grab headlines even while the rates of filicide remain fairly stable. "Why would a mother kill her own child?" one expert says. "It certainly can be insanity, but it's not always the case."
A U.S. Marine and a soldier were shot to death Tuesday while conducting a humanitarian mission north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The attack occurred on the eve of a parliamentary vote on a proposed security pact between the United States and Iraq that sets out the role of U.S. and allied troops in Iraq.
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