AP - France and Egypt announced an initiative to stop the fighting in Gaza late Tuesday, hours after Israeli mortar shells exploded near a U.N. school sheltering hundreds of people displaced by the onslaught on Hamas militants. At least 30 Palestinians died, staining streets with blood.

AP - Roland Burris failed to capture President-elect Barack Obama's old Senate seat Tuesday in a wild piece of political theater, but the Democrats' opposition cracked when a key chairwoman said seating him was simply the legal thing to do.

AP - President-elect Barack Obama has approached CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, about becoming the country's next surgeon general, the cable network said Tuesday.

AP - The Capitol rang loud with vows to fix the crisis-ridden economy Tuesday as Congress opened for business at the dawn of a new Democratic era. "We need action and we need action now," said Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Republicans agreed, and pledged cooperation in Congress as well as with President-elect Barack Obama — to a point.

AP - Former Gov. Jeb Bush announced Tuesday that he won't run for the U.S. Senate in 2010 to replace the retiring Mel Martinez, saying that it was not the right time to return to elected office.

AP - Lisa Marie Presley is expressing her condolences over Jett Travolta's death and defending Scientology, the religion that Presley, John Travolta and Kelly Preston follow.

AP - The Grand Canyon, Mount Everest and Loch Ness will vie with more than 200 other spectacular places in the next phase of the global competition for the New 7 Wonders of Nature, organizers said Wednesday.

AP - Aluminum producer Alcoa Inc. is cutting roughly 13 percent of its global work force by the end of the year as it slashes costs in the face of a deteriorating world economy.

AP - The Cleveland Indians and free-agent pitcher Carl Pavano, a four-year bust with the New York Yankees because of injuries, agreed to a one-year, $1.5 million contract on Tuesday.

AP - France and Egypt announced an initiative to stop the fighting in Gaza late Tuesday, hours after Israeli mortar shells exploded near a U.N. school sheltering hundreds of people displaced by the onslaught on Hamas militants. At least 30 Palestinians died, staining streets with blood.

AP - A cease-fire initiative Tuesday to halt the increasingly bloody Israeli offensive in Hamas-rule Gaza won support from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on rival sides to follow up on the proposal.

AP - Israel's fight with Hamas in Gaza, like the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon two years ago, is not just a struggle over the Palestinian issue but a broader proxy battle between Western allies and Iran for the very future of the Middle East.

AP - As of Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009, at least 4,222 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

AFP - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has appointed eight acting ministers days after firing a number of ministers from his ZANU-PF party who lost in the March 2008 elections, state media said on Wednesday.

Reuters - Thousands of Cambodian survivors of the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" marked 30 years on Wednesday since the fall of Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist regime, blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people.