Egyptians open fire on Palestinians  —  Egyptian border guards have opened fire on Palestinians who breached the border to escape Israel's assault on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.  —  An Egyptian security official said there were at least five breaches along the nine-mile border and hundreds of Palestinian residents were pouring in.

Condoleezza Rice: “I'm Not A Type A”  —  Outgoing Secretary Of State Shares Thoughts With Sunday Morning … She's been called the administration's “warrior princess,” the true believer who's visited scores of countries, traveling a million miles to implement, explain, and defend, president George W. Bush's foreign policy.

The Year in Review  —  How weird a year was it?  Here's how weird:  — O.J. actually got convicted of something.  — Gasoline hit $4 a gallon — and those were the good times.  — On several occasions, “Saturday Night Live” was funny.  — There were a few days there in October …

George W Bush's $300m library in danger of becoming white elephant  —  His critics see it as a monument to a failed presidency that may not even hold all his key documents  —  As President George W Bush eyes his legacy, his presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, threatens to be a white elephant.

Anger, sadness over fabricated Holocaust story  —  NEW YORK (AP) - It's the latest story that touched, and betrayed, the world.  —  “Herman Rosenblat and his wife are the most gentle, loving, beautiful people,” literary agent Andrea Hurst said Sunday, anguishing over why she, and so many others …

Cracks in U.S.-China Relations Are Widening Again in Crisis  —  The global recession is re-exposing fissures in United States-China relations that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. spent more than two years smoothing over.  —  Mr. Paulson, 62, who visited China 70 times during his career …

The banality of vacation  —  Just got my fifth pool report of the day, from the Trib's John McCormick , who reports that Obama is at a friend's house, and that reporters could glimpse “a couple jet skiis moving about in the water” and “a group of people watching from shore.”

Laura Bush: Shoe-throwing ‘was an assault’  —  While President Bush shrugged off an Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at him during a press conference, the First Lady said the incident was no laughing matter.  —  “It was an assault,” she said.  “And the president laughed it off …

Goodwin: Say goodnight, Caroline  —  In the beginning, just three long weeks ago, the idea of Caroline Kennedy being a United States senator had a certain ring to it.  The Camelot myth still has shelf life and a merger with the historic Obama presidency provided an intriguing story line.

‘Little Baghdad’ in Gaza - bombs, fear and rage  —  There are many corpses and wounded, every moment another casualty is added to the list of the dead, and there is no more room in the morgue.  —  Relatives search among the bodies and the wounded in order to bring the dead quickly to burial.

An imaginary retrospective of 2009  —  It was the year when people finally gave up trying to predict the year ahead.  It was the year when every forecast had to be revised - usually downwards - at least three times.  It was the year when the paradox of globalisation was laid bare for all to see, if their eyes weren't tightly shut.

Obama bristles as the bubble closes in on him  —  HONOLULU - The media glare, the constant security appendage and the sheer production that has become a morning jog or a hankering for an ice cream cone - it's been closing in on Barack Obama for some time.  —  Now the president-elect appears …