Feds: Man planned to blow up Ill. mall  —  CHICAGO - A man who authorities said wanted to commit acts of "violent jihad" against civilians was charged Friday in a plot to set off hand grenades in garbage cans at a shopping mall, authorities said.  —  Derrick Shareef, 22, of Rockford …

JIMMY CARTER FIRES BACK AT LONGTIME AIDE OVER BOOK  —  WASHINGTON — Former President Jimmy Carter faced new criticism Friday over his controversial book on Palestinian lands when a former Middle East diplomat accused him of improperly publishing maps that did not belong to him.

Ex-Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick Dies  —  Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a conservative political scientist who became the first woman to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, died at her home outside Washington late Thursday, colleagues announced today.  She was 80.

Report: House GOP leaders neglected to protect pages … WASHINGTON (CNN) — The House ethics committee has found that GOP leaders did not break any rules in handling allegations of improper Internet exchanges between former Rep. Mark Foley and former pages, but they were negligent in protecting the teenagers.

AP Poll: Few Americans expect victory in Iraq  —  WASHINGTON: Americans are overwhelmingly resigned to something less than clear-cut victory in Iraq and growing numbers doubt the country will achieve a stable, democratic government no matter how the U.S. gets out, according to an AP poll.

Bush Backs Away From 2 Key Ideas of Panel on Iraq  —  President Bush moved quickly to distance himself on Thursday from the central recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, even as the panel's co-chairmen opened an intensive lobbying effort on Capitol Hill to press Mr. Bush to adopt their report wholesale.

Sherrod Brown: First We Go After Big Pharma  —  WASHINGTON DISPATCH: The senator-elect from Ohio weighs in on drug-pricing reform, Iraq, the '08 campaign, and (oh yeah, that!) trade.  —  Fresh from victory in Ohio's knock-down drag-out Senate race, Sherrod Brown is happily preparing to exit …

Firefly Reborn as Online Universe  —  Like Capt. Mal Reynolds stumbling in after a bar fight, the short-lived but much beloved sci-fi series Firefly will soon make an unexpected return, not as a TV show, but as a massively multiplayer online game.  —  Now that's shiny.

President slips to all-time low in the Zogby Poll as key demographic groups jump ship  —  The national job approval rating of President Bush has plummeted to 30%, an all-time low in the latest Zogby International telephone poll, sinking below the 31% approval rating he dropped to in early June.

Our Unceasing Ambivalence  —  Why it's so hard to define victory in Iraq.  —  Possibly the most confounding feature of the Iraq war, from the very opening of hostilities to the present day, has been the American government's utter failure to define what victory would be in this war.

THE (NOT SO) INFALLIBLE AP ROBERT  —  THE most powerful media institution in all of human history is the Associated Press.  Its news feed is ubiquitous - used, directly or indirectly, by every U.S. newspaper and TV news program and a vast number of foreign ones, too.