CBS: Last U.S. troops leave Iraq as war ends
The last U.S. soldiers rolled out of Iraq across the border to neighboring Kuwait at daybreak Sunday, whooping, fist bumping and hugging each other in a burst of joy and relief. Their exit marked the end of a bitterly divisive war that raged for nearly nine years and left Iraq shattered, with troubling questions lingering over whether the Arab nation will remain a steadfast U.S. ally.
The mission cost nearly 4,500 American and well more than 100,000 Iraqi lives and $800 billion from the U.S. Treasury. The question of whether it was worth it all is yet unanswered.
Capt. Mark Askew, a 28-year-old from Tampa, Florida who was among the last soldiers to leave, said the answer to that question will depend on what type of country and government Iraq ends up with years from now, whether they are democratic, respect human rights and are considered an American ally.
BBC: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il dies
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has died at the age of 69, state-run television has announced.
Mr Kim, who has led the communist nation since the death of his father in 1994, died on a train while visiting an area outside the capital, the announcement said.
He suffered a stroke in 2008 and was absent from public view for months.
His designated successor is believed to be his third son, Kim Jong-un, who is thought to be in his late 20s.
Guardian: Philippines flood deaths hit 650
Rescuers are searching for more than 800 people missing in the southern Philippines after flash floods and landslides swept houses into rivers and out to sea, killing more than 650 people.
The cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan on the island of Mindanao were worst hit when typhoon Washi hit shore late on Friday and early on Saturday, sending torrents of water and mud through villages and stripping mountainsides bare.
The Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC) said 652 people were killed in eight provinces in the southern Mindanao region, which is unused to typhoons.
"Our office was swamped with hundreds of requests to help find their missing parents, children and relatives," Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the PNRC, told reporters. "We're helping co-ordinate the search with local government, army, police and even other aid agencies."
BBC: Vaclav Havel, Czech leader and playwright, dies at 75
Vaclav Havel, the Czech Republic's first president after the Velvet Revolution against communist rule, has died at the age of 75.
The former dissident playwright, who suffered from prolonged ill-health, died on Sunday morning, his secretary Sabina Tancecova said.
As president, he presided over Czechoslovakia's transition to democracy and a free-market economy.
He oversaw its peaceful 1993 split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
CBS: Gingrich: Gov't branches should rule 2 out of 3
Newt Gingrich on Sunday reiterated his argument that there is something "profoundly wrong" with the United States' judicial system, and argued that the balance of power in American government should come down to "two out of three" branches of the government.
In an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," Gingrich continued to defend his controversial position that Congress and the president should have the authority to ignore the rulings of federal judges when they disagree with them.
Citing what he describes as "extreme behavior" on the party of the judicial system, Gingrich proposes a system wherein "it's always two out of three."
"If the Congress and the court say the president is wrong, in the end the president would lose. And if the president and the court agreed, the Congress loses," said Gingrich. "The founding fathers designed the Constitution very specifically in a Montesquieu spirit of the laws to have a balance of power - not to have a dictatorship by any one of the three branches."
CNN: Russian oil rig sinks, leaving many missing
At least four bodies have been found and 49 people are missing after an offshore drilling rig capsized in the Russian far east Sea of Okhotsk, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said Sunday.
At least 14 people were rescued from the rig, which was being towed from Kamchatka, regional Emergency Services spokesman Aleksandr Ivelsky said.
But he insisted that it was too early to declare that the four people spotted in the water without signs of life were dead, since rescuers had not yet recovered the bodies.
There were 67 people aboard the Kolskaya platform, which was subcontracted to a company working for the Russian energy giant Gazprom, state news agency RIA-Novosti reported.
Guardian: Bradley Manning hearing told of lax security at military intelligence unit
Security at the military unit where alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning worked was so lax that soldiers could watch pirated movies on army intelligence computers, it has been revealed.
Speaking on day three of the preliminary hearing regarding Private Manning, a senior officer in his "sensitive compartmented information facility" said it was common for analysts to bring in DVDs brought from Iraqis.
They also stored music and played games on computers used for handling classified information.
The disclosure, by Captain Casey Fulton, is the latest to indicate loose controls within the unit where Manning, 24, served as an intelligence analyst.
AP: US aid a step toward Korea nuke talks
The United States is poised to announce a significant donation of food aid to North Korea this week, the first concrete accomplishment after months of behind-the-scenes diplomatic contacts between the two wartime enemies. An agreement by North Korea to suspend its controversial uranium enrichment program will likely follow within days.
A broad outline of the emerging agreement has been made known to The Associated Press by people close to the negotiations.
Discussions have been taking place since summer in New York, Geneva and Beijing. They already have yielded agreements by North Korea to suspend nuclear and ballistic missile testing, readmit international nuclear inspectors expelled in 2009, and resume a dialogue between North Korea and South Korea, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity of the negotiations.
Suspension of uranium enrichment by North Korea had been a key outstanding demand from both the U.S. and South Korea of the North, which has tested two atomic devices in the past five years. Food talks in Beijing yielded a breakthrough on uranium enrichment, they said.
CNN: Israel to release another 550 Palestinian prisoners
As many as 550 Palestinian inmates are scheduled to be released from Israeli prisons Sunday in the second phase of the deal that won the freedom of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, a spokeswoman for the Israeli prisons authority told CNN.
The deal, signed between Israel and Hamas in October, won Shalit's release from Hamas in exchange for allowing more than 1,000 Palestinians to leave Israeli jails.
A total of 477 prisoners were freed in October under the first stage of the swap.
The release of the remaining 550 inmates is to take part at 10 p.m., according to Sivan Weizmann of the Israeli Prisoners Authority.
MSNBC: Online holiday sales climb 15 percent to $30.9B
U.S. online sales this holiday shopping season are up 15 percent compared to last year, after what may have been the busiest week of the season, said research firm comScore on Sunday.
Shoppers have spent $30.9 billion online from Nov. 1 through Dec. 16, up from $26.9 billion at the same point last year, said the Reston, Va., company, which tracks Web use.
Online sales surpassed $1 billion on four days last week. Total sales for the week climbed 15 percent to $6.31 billion compared to last year.
The five days that ended on Friday "will almost certainly be the heaviest week of the online holiday shopping season," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. Online spending will begin to slow as Christmas draws closer, he said.
BBC: Kazakh Zhanaozen oil unrest spreads to regional capital
Kazakstan's deepest unrest since independence from Soviet rule has spread from the oil town where it broke out on Friday to the regional capital.
Protesters rallied in the west Kazakh city of Aktau after two days of violence over an oil-workers' strike in Zhanaozen left 11 dead and many hurt.
Hundreds of people protested outside the mayor's office in Aktau, capital of the oil-producing Mangistau region.
President Nazarbayev has declared a 20-day state of emergency in Zhanaozen.
CNN: Outrage over woman's beating fuels new Egypt protests
Pro-democracy demonstrators battled Egyptian police for a third straight day Sunday, their anger stoked by images of a military police officer stomping on a woman's exposed stomach over the weekend.
The latest round of street clashes has left at least 10 people dead and 500 wounded since Friday, said Dr. Hisham Sheeha, a spokesman for Egypt's health ministry. An 11th person, a boy arrested Saturday, died in police custody from his wounds, the boy's attorney, Ragia Omran, said Sunday.
Cairo's stock exchange plunged amid the new turmoil, while Saturday's images of the woman's beating appeared to draw more people to the streets.
"I will go down and fight the army and retrieve the honor of this woman and those martyrs killed for the sake of Egypt's future," taxi driver Ahmed Fahmy told CNN.
CNN: Gas prices drop further as crude oil gets cheaper
Gas prices in the United States fell more than 5 cents over the past two weeks as crude oil prices dropped, continuing a decline in pump prices that started in late October, according to a survey published Sunday.
The average price of regular gasoline is $3.24 a gallon, the Lundberg Survey found.
That's down 5.25 cents from two weeks earlier, and down a total of 24 cents in the past six weeks, said publisher Trilby Lundberg.
"In these two weeks, the decline comes from a serious drop in the crude oil price of more than $7 per barrel," Lundberg said.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Recall effort against 4 GOP state senators on pace, groups say
With a month left before the deadline for filing signatures, the four recall campaigns against Republican state senators all say they're on pace to force recall elections in their districts.
Recall papers were filed Nov. 15 against Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and Sens. Pam Galloway of Wausau, Terry Moulton of Chippewa Falls and Van Wanggaard of Racine. Like the recall petitions against Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, they're due Jan. 17 at the state Government Accountability Board.
Brad Wojciechowski, communications director of the State Senate Democratic Committee, said the four Senate recall campaigns have collected about 10,000 signatures apiece. The total number of signatures needed ranges from 14,958 to 16,742 to force elections.
"Everybody's just doing great," Wojciechowski said. "We're keeping the pedal to the metal."
