AP - A key panel unanimously recommended Thursday that Gov.

AP - Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday that he sees no reason for President George W. Bush to pre-emptively pardon anyone at the CIA involved in harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists. "I don't have any reason to believe that anybody in the agency did anything illegal," he said.

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 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 - President-elect Barack Obama implored Congress on Thursday to "act boldly and act now" to fix an economy growing perilously weaker. Leading lawmakers set an informal goal of mid-February for enacting tax cuts and government spending that could cost as much as $1 trillion.

AP - The many Bernard Madoff investors who withdrew money from their accounts over the years are now wrestling with an ethical and legal quandary.

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 - John Smoltz and Brad Penny are on their way to the Red Sox. Rocco Baldelli was already in Boston, holding up his new jersey.

AP - Key Arab nations and Western powers called for an immediate Security Council vote Thursday night on a Gaza cease-fire resolution, after they reached agreement on final wording of the draft, officials said.

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.

AP - Ana Maria Calvo has fought unsuccessfully for seven months to correct her husband's name on her child's birth certificate.