AP - Roland Burris announced Tuesday he was rejected for Barack Obama's Senate seat, in a bizarre rainy-day scene on the Capitol grounds as lawmakers awaited the gaveling of the 111th Congress into session.
AP - The House and Senate have convened for a new Congress that will immediately confront the country's struggling economy.
AP - Palestinian medics said 34 people were killed in an Israeli strike outside a U.N. school in the northern Gaza town of Jebaliya. The United Nations confirmed 30 were killed and 55 injured.
AP - The Social Security Administration, bracing for the coming eligibility of 80 million baby boomers, is introducing an online application that will allow people to apply for retirement benefits in as little as 15 minutes.
AP - President-elect Barack Obama is promising that his economic stimulus plan won't include money for politicians' pet projects and will include provisions aimed at ensuring his administration is open and accountable to taxpayers and Congress.
AP - Wall Street proceeded cautiously Tuesday, with stocks rising moderately following disappointing readings on pending home sales and factory orders.
AP - Nine flight attendants who couldn't meet the weight standards of India's national airlines have been fired, an official said Tuesday.
AP - Actor John Travolta and wife Kelly Preston have returned to Florida with the remains of their 16-year-old son, Jett, who died at the family vacation home in Grand Bahama.
AP - Islamic militants posted sarcastic comments on an extremist Web site Tuesday ridiculing a recent announcement by First Lady Laura Bush that the family's cat had died.
AP - Phillies reliever J.C. Romero and Yankees minor league pitcher Sergio Mitre were suspended for the first 50 games of next season after testing positive for a banned substance.
Reuters - The man named by the scandal-plagued governor of Illinois to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate failed to gain entry on Tuesday when the chamber's secretary rejected as incomplete his credentials for the seat.
Reuters - Israeli tank shells killed more than 40 Palestinians on Tuesday at a U.N. school where civilians had taken shelter, medical officials said, in carnage likely to boost international pressure on Israel to halt a Gaza offensive.
Reuters - The new U.S. Congress convenes on Tuesday under pressure to deal with a worsening economy by passing a stimulus package that Barack Obama could sign into law soon after being sworn in as president.
Reuters - Dire economic data underlined the severity of recession in Europe on Tuesday, while Toyota Motor Corp said it would halt all production in Japan in response to plunging demand.
Reuters - Russia sharply cut gas flows to Europe via Ukraine on Tuesday in a dramatic worsening of a pricing dispute with Kiev that threatened to disrupt supplies as far west as Italy and Germany.
Reuters - China faces surging protests and riots in 2009 as rising unemployment stokes discontent, a state-run magazine said in a blunt warning of the hazards to Communist Party control from a sharp economic downturn.
Reuters - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accused Pakistan on Tuesday of acting irresponsibly, saying November's Mumbai attacks must have had support from some of its nuclear-armed neighbor's official agencies.
Reuters - A 19-year-old woman has died of the H5N1 bird flu virus in Beijing after coming into contact with poultry, health authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong said on Tuesday.
AFP - The heaviest fighting of Israel's war on Hamas raged in Gaza's main city early on Tuesday as the Israeli government fended off appeals to stop the death toll from mounting further.
AFP - US president-elect Barack Obama has chosen former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency, a Democratic Party official told AFP Monday.