AP - With pension funds facing billions of dollars in shortfalls as markets plunge, a range of companies from Ford to Verizon are pushing Congress to suspend portions of a two-year old law they say could force them to make job cuts as they shift scarce money into ailing retirement pools.

AP - The lead-tainted toy scare that hammered the industry and frightened parents last holiday season has eased, but there are still concerns that problem toys may still be out there.

AP - A religious group's fight to place a monument in a public park is at the center of a Supreme Court dispute over governments' power to limit speech.

AP - Rwanda expelled the German ambassador on Tuesday and its president declared that Germany violated his country's sovereignty when it arrested one of his aides in connection with an attack that set off Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Politico - Today’s edition kicks off a new focus by Politico’s Lobbying team on four issues: the economy; defense and security; energy and the environment; and health care. Each Tuesday until the Inauguration, we’ll have the latest news on policy and personnel, with more special coverage planned next year.

AP - World leaders are heading for a clash of expectations at this weekend's summit on the global economic crisis.

AP - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has given President-elect Barack Obama a conditional vote of confidence on handling the war in Iraq.

AP - The U.N. Security Council moved closer Tuesday to approving 3,000 reinforcements for its overstretched peacekeeping force in Congo, as the U.N. chief called for a cease-fire to protect 'at least 100,000 refugees' cut off by fighting in rebel-held areas.

AP - The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is adding his voice to the list of leading Democratic lawmakers pushing for the new president and Congress to make health care a top priority for 2009.

AP - A 26-year-old U.S. Army sergeant will be court-martialed on charges of murder in the deaths of four Iraqi prisoners who were bound, blindfolded and shot before being dumped into a Baghdad canal.

AP - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says a woman would be good for the Republican ticket in 2012.

Politico - Sam Nunn, whose national security expertise drove his selection as a senior informal Pentagon adviser to Barack Obama’s transition team, sits on the board of a major defense contractor that sold critical infrastructure equipment to Iran.

Bloomberg - Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Senator Max Baucus, presenting the first Democratic health plan since President-elect Barack Obama's victory, said all Americans should be required to have insurance once coverage is made affordable.

AP - An American official says the U.S. and Russia will begin talks Thursday on finding a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expires at the end of next year.

AP - Transition officials call it Obama 2.0 — an ambitious effort to transform the president-elect's vast Web operation and database of supporters into a modern new tool to accomplish his goals in the White House.

AP - Michigan Republican Chairman Saul Anuzis is making a bid to head the Republican National Committee.

AP - People want the tax cuts promised during the presidential campaign, but may be willing to wait while President-elect Obama takes on the larger issue of fixing the economy.

AP - The Kremlin has rejected a second set of U.S. proposals offered to assuage increasingly strident Russian criticism of plans for an American missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, news agencies reported Wednesday.

AP - President-elect Obama on Wednesday named a team heavy on experience in the Clinton administration to help guide transition efforts in the State, Defense and Treasury departments.

AP - The Democratic Party faces a smooth transition as President-elect Barack Obama essentially chooses the next national chairman whose initial task will be retiring a $15 million debt. A fight is ensuing on the Republican side as the losing party searches for a new identity — and perhaps a new leader.

AP - Mortgage industry representatives told skeptical lawmakers Wednesday that investors in mortgage-backed securities are not hindering government efforts to stem an increasing tide of foreclosures.

AP - The Supreme Court warily confronted a case Wednesday that mixes limits on free speech with issues of church-state separation.

AP - There's hope again for homely hazelnuts, misshapen mushrooms and grotesque garlic. Not to mention those onions that are unsightly enough to bring tears to your eyes.

AP - Republican governors, down and out after the party's devastating Election Day losses, said Wednesday that the future of the GOP rests with their ranks and not Washington politicians.

Politico - Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago power broker and Daley ally whom some close to the president-elect have been quietly pushing to replace him in the Senate, tells CBS's Judy Woodruff that she's 'not interested' in the Senate but would serve elsewhere.

AP - The national Republican Party wants to make it easier to raise and spend political money and plans to sue the Federal Election Commission to alter a six-year-old law written by John McCain, the defeated Republican presidential candidate.

AP - With oil prices plummeting, the government says people will get a break this winter on their heating bills. And next year's gasoline prices should average $2.37 a gallon.

Reuters - The U.S. Supreme Court appeared divided on Wednesday on whether a city violated a religious group's free-speech rights by refusing to put its monument in a public park near a similar Ten Commandments display.

AP - The evidence appeared to paint a shocking picture. Detectives investigating claims of widespread sexual abuse at a former home for troubled children on the island of Jersey said they found underground rooms, rusted shackles, bone fragments and a piece of a child's skull.

AP - Nicaragua's election council agreed Wednesday to a local review of the Managua mayoral election results, but opposition party members who claimed fraud in the balloting demanded that international observers be present.

AP - Cuba on Wednesday presented a new book by Fidel Castro, who has not appeared in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006 but who authorities claim spent more than 400 hours working on the manuscript.

Politico - If David Axelrod decides to join the Obama White House, he’ll have to do more than move to Washington. He’ll also have to take an enormous pay cut and possibly reveal the extent of his lucrative corporate public relations work.

AP - Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, a titan of Alaska politics convicted of felony charges last month, fell behind by three votes Wednesday as the count resumed in his re-election bid.

Politico - It appears public school is still a possibility for President-elect Barack Obama's daughters when they move from Chicago to Washington, D.C., in January.

AFP - The US Supreme Court Wednesday took up the issue of freedom of speech and religion in a case in which a small sect wants to place its own monument alongside one of the Ten Commandments in a public park in Utah.