Two senior Hamas terrorists killed in IAF strike  —  Senior Hamas terrorist Hussam Hamdan, who was in charge of Grad-type rocket launches into Beersheba and Ofakim, was killed in an IAF strike on Khan Yunis on Sunday afternoon.  —  Another senior Hamas terrorist, Muhammad Hilo, was also killed in the same airstrike.

Charity homes built by Hollywood start to crumble  —  RESIDENTS of a model housing estate bankrolled by Hollywood celebrities and hand-built by Jimmy Carter, the former US president, are complaining that it is falling apart.  —  Fairway Oaks was built on northern Florida wasteland by 10,000 volunteers …

The End of the Financial World as We Know It  —  AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics.  We've been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our harshest critics have been inclined to believe that we knew what we were doing.

Roland Burris, Harry Reid: D.C. face-off  —  Former Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris and Senate Democratic leaders determined to block his seating in the U.S. Senate plan to sit down Wednesday in the U.S. Capitol for a face-to-face meeting.  —  Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid …

A President Forgotten but Not Gone  —  WE like our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella.  So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down.  Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43.

Franken up 225 with recount complete; focus turns to court  —  The Supreme Court has yet to rule on Coleman's request to consider more wrongly rejected ballots.  —  DFLer Al Franken won an impressive share Saturday of what may be the last ballots tallied in the U.S. Senate recount …

He should get tough with Israel.  —  In Search of the High Ground: In July, Obama got a bird's-eye view of the Holy Land with Livni (right) and Defense Minister Ehud Barak  —  From the magazine issue dated Jan 12, 2009  —  Jews worry for a living; their tragic history compels them to do so.

SURVEILLANCE STATE RUN AMOK.... In July, the Washington Post reported on undercover Maryland State Police officers conducting surveillance on war protesters and death penalty opponents.  Today, we learn that the monitoring was worse, and more pervasive, than first believed.

As My Son Goes to War, I Am Fully Israeli At Last  —  “I just heard on the news that Gavriel's base has been shelled,” my wife, Sarah, said to me last Tuesday, referring to our 19-year-old son, a member of an Israeli army tank unit waiting on the Gaza border for the order to enter.

Obama keeps silent on explosive Gaza conflict … As the clock ticks down to Barack Obama's inauguration, the US president-elect has kept silent on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its latest deadly turn in the Gaza Strip.  —  Obama transition officials have ventured little …

U.S. quashes Arab-backed Gaza cease-fire resolution in UN Security Council meet  —  The United States thwarted an effort by Libya on Sunday to persuade the UN Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza after Israel launched a ground invasion, diplomats said.

Should Congress Put a Cap on Executive Pay?  —  IT'S no wonder that voters' outrage over exorbitant executive pay is mounting.  After all, the government just had to bail out financial firms that paid big bonuses last year to many of the same executives who helped precipitate the current financial crisis.