 AP - A final agreement nearly in hand, President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders are about to embark on one last sales job that will determine the outcome of the president's signature health care overhaul.
 AP - On Christmas Day, a passenger on a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit tried to blow up the plane with plastic explosives in his underwear. He failed, yet the very attempt shook the U.S. government, set federal agencies against each other and triggered months of political second-guessing.
 AP - Toyota's massive recalls are bringing new scrutiny to the government's auto safety agency, prompting Congress to look at how federal safety officials have lived up to their mission of protecting motorists.
AP - A New Jersey man with apocalyptic visions is accused of years of terrorizing his family, raping his five daughters and impregnating three, beating his children with wooden boards and even moving at one point to avoid child welfare investigators.
 AP - The naming of Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim as the world's richest person — the first from a developing nation — underlines the loosening of America and Europe's stranglehold on the top spots in the billionaires' club.
 AP - The Pashtun tribal leaders picked at the chocolate cake and fruit laid out for them at the conference table. Politely, they listened to speeches touting a new program to release detainees from Afghanistan's largest U.S.-run military prison if community leaders vouch for them.
 AP - A conservative group's bashing of several Obama administration lawyers as the "al-Qaida Seven" has struck a nerve in the U.S. legal community, prompting even some fellow Republicans to denounce the group's attack.
 AP - Georgia's public defender system is still trying to recover its financial footing five years after a courthouse gunman racked up a $3 million taxpayer-funded defense tab on the way to his conviction.
 AP - Michael "Big Mike" Lynche made Kara DioGuardi cry and turned the rest of the "American Idol" judges giddy with a moving performance of "This Woman's Work."
 AP - Alex Rodriguez may soon be talking to federal authorities, and he hopes it will happen close to spring training.
 Reuters - President Barack Obama declared on Wednesday the "time for talk is over" and urged the U.S. Congress to vote on healthcare as his health secretary directly challenged insurers to forgo profits to make coverage more affordable.
Reuters - The Senate on Wednesday passed a $149 billion package of jobless aid and tax breaks, as Democrats continued efforts to lower the 9.7 percent unemployment rate before congressional elections in November.
 Reuters - Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim is the world's richest person, knocking Microsoft founder Bill Gates into second spot, as the wealth of the world's billionaires grew by 50 percent over the last year, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday.
 Reuters - Arab League chief Amr Moussa said on Wednesday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had told him he would not enter indirect talks with Israel, only days after the Palestinian side had agreed to the contacts.
Reuters - Democrats in the House of Representatives moved on Wednesday to limit the ability of lawmakers to tuck pet projects into spending bills amid mounting election-year ethics concerns.
Reuters - A Pennsylvania woman has been charged with plotting to kill a Swedish man and trying to recruit fighters via the Internet to commit violent attacks overseas, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.
 Reuters - With Governor David Paterson enveloped in scandal, New York's lieutenant governor is leading the notoriously difficult budget process and freeing up his boss to fight for his political life, experts say.
Reuters - Federal regulators said they were looking into a report of another runaway Toyota Prius, this one in Westchester County, New York, where police said a woman pulling out of a driveway zoomed across a busy street and into a stone wall.
 AFP - Prospects for indirect peace talks lay in tatters on Thursday after the Palestinians said they would not negotiate with Israel unless it reversed plans to build 1,600 settler homes in east Jerusalem.
 AFP - The party of Ukraine's new President Viktor Yanukovych has formed a majority coalition in parliament which will now appoint a government, the speaker announced Thursday.
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