News

AP - Typhoon Durian tore through the eastern Philippines on Thursday with winds of up to 139 mph, killing at least 109 people and cutting off power to thousands of homes, officials said.

Reuters - The international community needs to
offer incentives to North Korea rather than just apply pressure
for it to return to six-party talks aimed at dismantling its
nuclear program, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency said on
Friday.

AP - A bipartisan commission on U.S. options in Iraq will recommend a gradual reduction of American forces in Iraq and a significant diplomatic shift that enlists U.S. adversaries to stabilize the increasingly chaotic country, officials familiar with the panel’s deliberations said Thursday.

AP - People with employer-sponsored health coverage choose to enroll in traditional plans over consumer directed products, which have been touted as a way to lower health care costs, according to a survey released Friday.

AP - Without notifying the public, federal agents for the past four years have assigned millions of international travelers, including Americans, computer-generated scores rating the risk they pose of being terrorists or criminals.

AP - The former mayor of a tiny coal town who prosecutors say masterminded a scheme to buy votes with beer, cigarettes and even pork rinds, pleaded guilty Thursday to 243 felonies, including vote-rigging and corruption.

AP - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki faced a widening revolt within his divided government as two senior Sunni politicians joined prominent Shiite lawmakers and Cabinet members in criticizing his policies.

AP - Imagine tossing a top-notch laptop into the sea, leaving scientists from a foreign culture to scratch their heads over its corroded remains centuries later. A Roman shipmaster inadvertently did something just like it 2,000 years ago off southern Greece, experts said late Thursday.

AP - President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Thursday opened talks originally set for the day before but canceled following disclosure of U.S. doubts about the Iraqi leader’s capabilities and a Baghdad protest of his attendance.

AP - Japan has the technological know-how to produce a nuclear weapon but has no immediate plans to do so, the foreign minister said Thursday, several weeks after communist North Korea carried out a nuclear test.

AP - A bipartisan commission, under pressure to offer a U.S. exit strategy for the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, has reached a consensus and will announce its recommendations next week, the group’s co-chairman said Wednesday.

Reuters - Mexican conservative Felipe
Calderon takes the helm of an increasingly violent country on
Friday, facing street protests over his razor-thin election
victory, a southern state in chaos and a worsening drug war.