AP - The U.N. Security Council has approved a resolution calling for an immediate and durable cease-fire between Hamas militants and Israeli forces now fighting in the Gaza Strip. Thursday night's vote was 14-0 with the United States abstaining.

AP - A key panel unanimously recommended impeachment for Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Thursday, setting up a vote that could make him the first governor to face such fate in Illinois' sordid political history. Blagojevich should lose his job for abusing power, mismanaging government and committing possible criminal acts, including federal allegations he tried to sell off a U.S. Senate seat, the special committee concluded.

AP - President-elect Barack Obama's proposed tax cuts ran into opposition Thursday from senators in his own party who said they wouldn't do much to stimulate the economy or create jobs. Senators from both parties agreed that Congress should do something to stimulate the economy. But Democratic senators emerging from a private meeting of the Senate Finance Committee criticized business and individual tax cuts in Obama's stimulus plan.

AP - The many Bernard Madoff investors who withdrew money from their accounts over the years are now wrestling with an ethical and legal quandary. What they thought were profits was likely money stolen from other clients in what prosecutors are calling the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Now, they are confronting the possibility they may have to pay some of it back.

AP - In grainy cell-phone videos played over and over on the Internet, police officers force an unarmed black man to the ground and hold him face-down on a crowded train platform. Suddenly one of the officers draws his gun and fatally shoots the man in the back — then looks up.

AP - U.S. policy to win in Afghanistan must recognize the poor nation's limitations and its neighborhood, especially its intertwined relationship with U.S. terrorism-fighting ally Pakistan, the top U.S. military commander in the region said Thursday.

AP - Two Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks couldn't produce a point in the first quarter of the BCS championship game. Tim Tebow and No. 1 Florida and Sam Bradford and No. 2 Oklahoma were scoreless after the first 15 minutes at Dolphin Stadium on Thursday night.

AP - The U.N. Security Council has approved a resolution calling for an immediate and durable cease-fire between Hamas militants and Israeli forces now fighting in the Gaza Strip. Thursday night's vote was 14-0 with the United States abstaining.

AP - The U.N. suspended food deliveries to Gaza and the Red Cross accused Israel of blocking medical assistance after forces fired on aid workers, killing two, as the threat of a wider conflict emerged with Lebanon.

AP - The European Union said Thursday that gas supplies should restart after it struck a deal with Russia on supervising the flow of gas through Ukraine.

AP - Tiny bodies lying side by side wrapped in white burial shrouds. The cherubic face of a dead preschooler sticking up from the rubble of her home. A man cradling a wounded boy in a chaotic emergency room after Israel shelled a U.N. school.

AP - As of Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009, at least 4,223 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.