It will be left to the next administration to decide on any sizable troop increase for Afghanistan, the Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday.
Republican John McCain is pushing back against Democratic criticism that he misstated the timing of the buildup of troops ordered by President Bush in early 2007. He says parts of the new strategy began months earlier.
A baby boy who was cut from his slain mother's womb has been released from a western Pennsylvania hospital.
From the solemnity of a Holocaust museum to a dusty village battered by Hamas rockets, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Wednesday professed "an unshakable commitment to the security" of Israel, whether the threat comes from terrorists, Iran or elsewhere.
Hurricane Dolly slammed into the South Texas coast Wednesday with punishing rain and winds of 100 mph, blowing down signs, peeling off roofs and knocking out power to thousands before weakening over land.
Texas authorities on Wednesday began looking for five indicted members of a polygamist sect, in a child sex-abuse case that the group's spokesman alleged was a face-saving move by officials who lost a court battle over their seizure of hundreds of children from a sect-owned ranch.
Congress is moving quickly to pass a housing package that aims to help 400,000 strapped homeowners avoid foreclosures and prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from collapsing.
Radovan Karadzic sent word he plans to defend himself against U.N. genocide charges, but his fellow Serbs were more enthralled with details that emerged Wednesday about his secret life: a mistress, a bogus family in the U.S., and regular visits to the Madhouse bar and its photo of his beardless days as wartime leader of Bosnian Serbs.
Blacks have made great strides in the military since it was integrated 60 years ago, but they still struggle to gain a foothold in the higher ranks, where less than 6 percent of U.S. general officers are African-American.
Republican John McCain on Wednesday credited the recent $10-a-barrel drop in the price of oil to President Bush's lifting of a presidential ban on offshore drilling, an action he has been advocating in his presidential campaign.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama defended his proposal to negotiate with Iran Wednesday and said he would use "big sticks and big carrots" to persuade the country's leaders not to develop nuclear weapons.
Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs, already convicted in Utah of rape as an accomplice and awaiting trial in Arizona on other charges related to underage marriages, is now accused of assaulting a girl in Texas in January 2005.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed North Korea on Wednesday to accept terms to verify the dismantling of its nuclear weapons program, as the two countries held cabinet-level talks for the first time in four years.
Wall Street looked to extend its gains Wednesday as oil extended its retreat and investors turned a bit more hopeful about the economy.
The mother of a missing 2-year-old is a person of interest in a case that is beginning to look like a homicide, prosecutors said Tuesday. Sheriff's deputies said they still hope to find the girl alive.
Rain started to fall along the Gulf Coast as Hurricane Dolly - upgraded in force from a tropical storm - closed in on towns straddling the Texas-Mexico border.
The darkness around Batman has deepened: While audiences were shattering weekend box-office records in the U.S., Christian Bale was in London, where his mother and sister reportedly leveled assault allegations against the star of "The Dark Knight" that have yet to become clear.
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama vowed Tuesday to work for a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations "starting from the minute I'm sworn into office."
Rising prices at the gas pump appear to be having at least one positive effect: Traffic deaths around the country are plummeting, just as they did during the Arab oil embargo three decades ago.
A federal rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could cost taxpayers $25 billion, congressional budget experts said, as the House scheduled a Wednesday vote on legislation that would tap the mortgage giants' profits to cover any losses from saving 400,000 homeowners from foreclosure.
