Poll: Public skeptical of war escalation

President Obama's marks for handling of the Afghan war  jump double digits, but there's no change in the resistance to an escalation, the latest Associated Press-GfK poll shows.

Taliban to release tape of captured U.S. soldier

Poll: Obama approval dips below 50 percent

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that only 32 percent of Americans polled believe President Obama's health care plan is a good idea, but a majority backs the troop surge in Afghanistan.

  Single-payer health care plan dies in Senate

Stocks end mixed after Fed announcement

  Stocks pared their gains Wednesday as the Federal Reserve reminded investors that it would end several of its extraordinary supports for the economy in the coming year.

Big holiday crunch-time sales? Probably not

Bengals WR faces ‘life-threatening’ injuries

  New information is rapidly coming out about Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry's serious car accident. The Charlotte Observer reports that Henry is facing "life-threatening" injuries after falling out the back of a pickup truck in Charlotte Wednesday.

  Mangino gets $3 million from KU in settlement

Swift, Boyle among People’s ‘most intriguing’

Tiger Woods, Kanye West, Chris Brown on magazine’s fallen males list.

Witherspoon and Gyllenhaal reportedly split

Looks buy happiness, but only in the city

When it comes to country girls, looks don’t count so much in terms of overall life satisfaction and happiness, according to a new study in the journal Personal Relationships.

NYT: Smoking rate drops in Mass., drawing attention

Cosmic Log: Alien ‘water world’ found

Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: Astronomers say they have detected a planet just six and a half times as massive as Earth — at a distance so close its atmosphere could be studied, and with a density so low it's almost certain to have water.

10 best PlayStation 3 games of 2009

CityCenter’s centerpiece opens in Las Vegas

  Casino executives prepared to open the newest and most expensive joint on the Las Vegas Strip on Wednesday night — a 4,000 room resort at the heart of the $8.5 billion CityCenter complex.

AAA says holiday travel to rise this year