AP - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates raised the possibility Wednesday that some of the U.S. forces involved in the Afghanistan surge could leave the country before President Barack Obama's announced July 2011 date to begin withdrawal.

AP - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates raised the possibility Wednesday that some of the U.S. forces involved in the Afghanistan surge could leave the country before President Barack Obama's announced July 2011 date to begin withdrawal.

AP - Suspected militants armed with grenades attacked the offices of an international aid group helping earthquake survivors in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing six employees and wounding several others, police and the organization said.

AFP - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flew into Kabul on Wednesday for summit talks on a visit overlapping with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was in Afghanistan to review a US troop surge.

AFP - President Barack Obama meets Wednesday with Haitian President Rene Preval, renewing his pledge of US support for efforts to rebuild the quake-shattered Caribbean nation.

Without giving specifics, the defense secretary said the withdrawal, "would have to be conditions-based."

Grabbing a populist idea with bipartisan backing in his final push to overhaul the system, the president says he'll bring in high-tech bounty hunters to help root out health care fraud.

AP - Israel's new plan to build 1,600 homes for Jews in east Jerusalem is overshadowing Vice President Joe Biden's visit to the West Bank.

President Obama chided the court for its campaign finance decision during the January address, with six of the court's nine justices seated before him in their black robes.

Mideast rivals Israel and Syria on Tuesday each announced ambitions to develop nuclear energy, with Israel facing the prospect that its plan could bring new attention to its secretive nuclear activities.

Paul Bristol has been jailed in England for at least 22 years for murdering his ex-girlfriend after he saw a picture of her on the Internet with another man.

A 70-year-old grandmother in China was reportedly beaten and buried alive by property developers trying to take possession of her land.

The number of Americans who can call themselves millionaires has gone up in the past year, according to a report released Tuesday by Spectrem Group.

Authorities say a man was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer after asking a woman to silence her cell phone during a screening of the film "Shutter Island" at a Southern California movie theater.

The family of a SeaWorld Orlando trainer who was drowned by a killer whale after a Feb. 24 performance, is gearing up for a legal battle to prevent video footage of the incident from appearing online or on television, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

A network of social justice movements is helping women combat inequality, violence and repression all over the globe, especially in Muslim countries.

In Egypt, political advocacy is being sparked online, on sites like Facebook, but there is significantly less room for movement in Egypt's real world than in its virtual world.

Iranians are not only battling violence and repression at home, fighting for basic rights; refugees of Iran are also under siege in Iraq's Camp Ashraf.