AP - State Rep. Steve Urquhart said he's abandoning his plan to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch next year.

AP - Civil rights activists argued Wednesday that a 2-year-old Supreme Court decision largely wiped out 40 years of progress minorities have made under the Voting Rights Act.

AP - Amid rising debate over America's legal and moral obligations in the treatment of suspected or potential terrorists, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States will always play by international rules.

AP - Less than two weeks before the election, it looked as if Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick wouldn't be around for a second term.

AP - The across-the-board collapse of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ballot propositions came down to this: They were ideas with narrow appeal, further damaged by a flat-footed campaign and an unpopular messenger, the governor himself.

AP - How could this happen in a state supposedly as reliably Republican as Virginia? A Democrat who objects to capital punishment, had a clear record of backing gun control and even boasted of supporting a $1.4 billion tax increase beat a conservative Republican by six percentage points Tuesday.

AP - Senate Democrats are pressing for extensive records on the participation of Judge Samuel Alito in an appeals case involving a mutual fund company with which he had a six-figure investment.

Reuters - The United States on Tuesday named Asian communist states China, North Korea and Vietnam, as well as military-run Myanmar, as serious violators of religious freedom in an annual State Department report to Congress.

The Christian Science Monitor - Nanoseconds after the '05 elections had concluded, the spin war began.

AP - The White House said Thursday that the bombing of three U.S.-based hotels in Jordan "has the hallmarks of al-Qaida."

AP - The winner of a school board election didn't campaign, attend forums or even go to any school board meetings before the vote — because he was in jail.

AP - The State Department cited Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for denying religious freedom to non-Muslims and found fault to a lesser degree with other allies including Israel, Belgium, France, Germany and Pakistan.

AP - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of information regarding secret CIA detention centers than activity in the prisons themselves.

AP - The GOP's tax cut agenda hit a snag Thursday when the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, lacking enough Republican votes, postponed debate on $78 billion in tax reductions.

AP - President Bush on Thursday condemned the hotel bombings in Jordan, saying the attackers defiled Islam and the United States would help bring those responsible to justice.

AFP - Conservation-minded lawmakers cheered a US House of Representatives decision to scrap a plan that would have allowed oil drilling in Alaska's environmentally-sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fresh on the heels of election setbacks this week, Republican efforts to trim federal spending and advance President George W. Bush's tax cutting agenda ran into trouble on Thursday in the U.S. Congress.

AP - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of information regarding secret CIA detention centers than activity in the prisons themselves.

AP - The House Intelligence Committee will look into a possible leak of classified information about secret CIA prisons but will not heed the request of the panel's top Democrat to restart a 2003 inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq.

AFP - Powerful US Senator John McCain warned that the stakes for America in Iraq are higher than they were in Vietnam and urged the US government to pour more troops into the country.

AP - From the Korean War soldier telling family he had been wounded to the Civil War missive letting a future wife know her letters were his only source of pleasure, the National Postal Museum opens an exhibit of war letters on Friday — Veterans Day.

AP - Liberal groups are planning a new effort against Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito after seeing some Senate Democrats virtually dismiss the possibility of a filibuster and praise the New Jersey jurist in the two weeks since his nomination.

AP - The defense team in Saddam Hussein's trial said Wednesday it will not show up for the next session Nov. 28 unless the court accepts its demands for "neutral international intervention" to guarantee security.

AP - House Republican leaders scuttled a vote Thursday on a $51 billion budget-cut package in the face of a revolt by lawmakers over scaling back Medicaid, food stamp and student loan programs.

AP - An 18-year-old high school student running for mayor held on to a two-vote lead Thursday following an official count by the county Board of Canvassers.

AP - The chairman of the House subcommittee on national security said Thursday he would not be surprised if Ahmad Chalabi, a deputy Iraqi prime minister, gave Iran information that the U.S. would prefer to be withheld.

AP - It may be difficult to envision a Muslim leader today sponsoring Christian religious objects. But 500 years ago the Sultan of Turkey, ruler of mosque and state, shipped luxurious robes from his prized silk mill in Istanbul to Christian countries, robes laden with Christian symbols and an abbreviation for 'Christ is victorious.'

AP - The Senate voted Thursday to bar foreign terror suspects at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from challenging their detentions in American courts, despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that granted access.

AP - President Bush on Thursday signed a $100 billion food and farm spending bill that includes a two-year delay on labels telling grocery shoppers where their meat comes from.

AP - Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito said Thursday he was "unduly restrictive" in promising in 1990 to avoid appeals cases involving two investment firms and said he has not made any rulings in which he had a "legal or ethical obligation" to step aside.

AP - Actor Robert Duvall, 'Miss Manners' and other cultural luminaries joined President Bush on Thursday in celebrating the 40th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

AP - At a time when he is under criminal investigation in the CIA leak case, Karl Rove stepped into the limelight Thursday night, praising failed Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers to an influential group of conservative lawyers.

AP - Attorneys for Rep. Tom DeLay asked his prosecutor Thursday to provide any internal communications from the district attorney's office that had argued against indicting the former House majority leader.