USA
Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona was set to pick up the endorsement of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Thursday in the race for the GOP presidential nod. California has 173 Republican delegates at stake on Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), or 15 percent of the total needed to secure the GOP nomination.
New rules aimed at tightening border security went into effect Thursday for US and Canadian citizens. People 19 and older must now show proof of citizenship in the form of a passport, birth certificate, or other ID rather than simply declare their citizenship. Border agents have the latitude to provide a grace period.
Rep. Thomas Davis (R) of Virginia, who presided over the hearings examining baseball's steroid problem, said Wednesday that he will not seek reelection in November in order to "take a sabbatical from public life." The announcement gives Democrats a strong opportunity to pick up a congressional seat.
A federal judge threw out a class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the US Army Corps of Engineers over levee breaches that led to massive flooding in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina in 2005. Judge Stanwood Duval said that while the agency failed to protect the city, a 1928 law makes the federal government immune when flood-control projects like levees break.
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) of Detroit emerged from a week-long, self-imposed exile Wednesday to apologize for the "embarrassment and disappointment" surrounding a recent text-messaging scandal with a female chief of staff. The mayor (above) is married and previously denied having a physical relationship with Christine Beatty.
Thousands of moderate Baptists, including former President Carter, opened a conference in Atlanta Wednesday designed to serve as a model of unity and show their tradition goes beyond conservative Southern Baptist beliefs.
Several historical groups filed a request Thursday in a US district court in New York calling for the release of grand jury records in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Unsealing relevant documents, historians believe, might help address whether the government overreached in prosecuting the married couple.
With this week's $3 million donation from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the largest yet from a private entity, $90 million of the $100 million needed for the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is in hand. A ceremonial groundbreaking took place in 2006 on the National Mall in Washington, but now serious construction is about to begin. Below, Lei Yixin inspects a scale model of his sculpture that will be the memorial's centerpiece.
