AP - Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are vowing to revive a sweeping budget-cut bill despite an embarrassing setback this week. But they won't have an easy time of it considering divisions within the GOP and a revolt by party moderates over cuts to social programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and student loans.

AFP - Hundreds of earthquake victims in Pakistani Kashmir have acute diarrhoea and doctors are investigating whether they are cases of cholera, the World Health Organisation and the United Nations said.

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

AP - A judge sentenced a former city councilman to nearly two years in prison Thursday for a scheme to overturn a ban on touching dancers at strip clubs but ordered a new trial for another council member convicted in the same scandal.

AFP - The US Senate demanded that the country's intelligence chief brief lawmakers on reportedly CIA-run secret prisons for terror suspects.

AP - Presidential adviser Karl Rove took aim at four of the Bush administration's Democratic opponents in the Senate and received a standing ovation from a conservative legal group, defying his critics as he awaits his fate in the CIA leak investigation.

AP - Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito says he never has violated conflict-of-interest guidelines as a judge, despite questions about two lower court rulings he made involving an investment firm and a brokerage house that handled part of his financial portfolio.

AP - Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are vowing to revive a sweeping budget-cut bill despite an embarrassing setback this week. But they won't have an easy time of it considering divisions within the GOP and a revolt by party moderates over cuts to social programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and student loans.

AP - Why people approve or disapprove of the job being done by President Bush, based on their answers to an open-ended question on their reasons for answers to the job approval question. Results come from an AP-Ipsos poll of 1,006 adults, taken Oct. 31-Nov. 2, that has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. In that poll, 37 percent approved of Bush and 59 percent disapproved of Bush.

AP - An 18-year-old high school student held on to a two-vote lead to become mayor of this southern Michigan town.

AFP - The US House of Representatives put off until next week a bill of crucial budget cuts in the wake of internal Republican party disagreement over its content.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Secretary would gain authority to temporarily ban exports of American-produced gasoline, heating oil and other refined petroleum products during a supply emergency, under legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress on Thursday sent President George W. Bush a $20.9 billion foreign aid bill that gives him more money than he sought to fight the AIDS pandemic and less than he wanted for his program to reward reform-minded countries and for Iraq.

USATODAY.com - It is now much less certain whether New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin could be re-elected - or even whether the election can take place as scheduled.

AP - President Bush said Friday that the United States and its allies will never give in to violent extremists who distort Islam and kill innocent people.

AP - For better or worse, Coleen Rowley the candidate for Congress sounds a lot like Coleen Rowley the FBI whistleblower.

AP - Excerpts of President Bush's remarks on Iraq on Friday at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Tobyhanna, Penn., as transcribed by the White House:

AP - In an unorthodox move, the Senate has confirmed the appointment of Donald Winter as Navy secretary, but he won't formally take over until the current secretary's stalled promotion is cleared in an expected recess appointment by President Bush.

AP - Despite a month-old pledge, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has yet to reopen four of its biggest no-bid contracts for Hurricane Katrina work and won't do so until the contracts are virtually complete. A promise to hire more minority-owned firms also is largely unfulfilled.

AP - Conservative activists in Iowa have a message for 2008 presidential hopefuls: Oppose Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito at your own political peril.

Reuters - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will make an address to the nation on Thursday that may be his last chance to avert a showdown with the United Nations over the killing of Lebanon's former prime minister.

AP - Its voters twice rebuffed President Bush, so New Jersey seems an unlikely place for the president to find a friend. Yet when it comes to key appointments, the White House keeps seeking — and finding — a helping hand in the Garden State.

AP - Vice President Dick Cheney chose someone in his own likeness to be his new chief of staff. Like Cheney, David Addington shuns the limelight. And like Cheney, Addington already has made a large imprint on the Bush White House.

AP - President Bush seems to be turning the clock back to Election Day 2004, parrying with ex-rival John Kerry and harshly questioning his critics' commitment to U.S. troops.

AP - The Senate has signed off on a provision that would strip the security clearances of any government official who knowingly discloses national security secrets, reflecting lawmakers' anger over recent leaks of classified information to the public.

AP - The government plans to maintain indefinitely its faster level of testing for mad cow disease, rather than scaling back testing in December as originally envisioned.

AFP - Any move to refer Iran's nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions would have "unpredictable consequences," the country's representative at the UN atomic agency warned.

AP - Federal court appointments are being held hostage by the abortion issue, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Friday in advocating a briefer, less intrusive confirmation process.

AP - President Bush seems to be turning the clock back to Election Day 2004, parrying with ex-rival John Kerry and harshly questioning his critics' commitment to U.S. troops.

USATODAY.com - The military command leading the global war on terrorism faces three financial misconduct investigations and pointed questions from Congress about its spending. This week, a retired officer who oversaw projects was indicted on charges he tried to bribe a worker at the command.

AP - Five-term incumbent Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, will face a challenge from a distant member of his own family, Green Party candidate Julian Hatch, in the November 2006 election.