USA
The Supreme Court decided Monday not to intervene in an abortion case, and let stand a ruling by a US appellate court that halted efforts by Michigan and an antiabortion group to revive the state's law banning partial-birth abortions.
Star baseball pitcher Roger Clemens filed a defamation suit Sunday against Brian McNamee, his former trainer, calling McNamee's accusations that Clemens used steroids and human growth hormone "totally false." The suit was filed right before CBS's "60 Minutes" aired an interview with the seven-time Cy Young Award winner in which he said he might be willing to take a lie detector test.
A group of seasoned, high-ranking public officials, including retired Sens. Chuck Hagel (R) of Nebraska and Bob Graham (D) of Florida, came together Sunday in Norman, Okla., to advocate greater bipartisanship. They began working on a core set of principles about political unity but said their meetings are not a third-party effort, despite speculation that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might use them to announce an independent presidential run.
McDonald's plans to move aggressively into head-to-head competition with Starbucks Corp. by installing coffee bars at its 14,000 US stores, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The bars will sell cappuccinos and lattes, as well as smoothies and bottled water.
A new state-of-the-art Orange County, Calif., water reclamation plant can turn 70 million gallons of sewage effluent into drinking water each day, making it the largest such facility in the world, the Los Angeles Times reports. The 20-acre complex, which officially opens Jan. 25, uses an advanced filtration system to purify the effluent and pipe it into a groundwater basin to replenish the drinking supply and combat saltwater intrusion.
Speaking at the annual Inter-national Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Sunday, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said that touch, speech, and vision interfaces will become increasingly important entering the "second digital decade," when developments will go "much faster and much further."
In National Football League first-round playoff games among wild-card teams, the New York Giants, San Diego Chargers, Seattle Seahawks, and Jacksonville Jaguars all advanced in weekend action. For any of them to reach Super Bowl XLII on Feb. 3 in Glendale, Ariz., they'd need to win two more games.
