In Iraq an Islamic militant group claimed that it had kidnapped two U.S. soldiers, 23-year-old Kristian Menchaca and 25-year-old Thomas L. Tucker. The Army sent 8,000 Iraqi and U.S. troops, supported by fighter jets and drones, to search for the missing soldiers,The New York Timesand the Pentagon announced the 2,500th American death in Iraq. “It’s a number,” said White House press secretary Tony Snow.Toronto StarIraqi prosecutors called for Saddam Hussein to be sentenced to death,Daily Mailand President George W. Bush visited Iraq because he wanted to “look at Prime Minister Maliki in the eyes.”The New York TimesIt was reported that …

Lost Souls in Hell, 1875. As the culmination of its $1.4 billion “Return to Flight” effort, NASA launched the Space Shuttle Discovery into orbit. Almost immediately, the shuttle shed pieces of insulation and hit a bird. President George W. Bush watched the launch on a small television and clapped his hands, and NASA grounded all future shuttle flights.NewsdayBoston.comThe Washington PostThe Washington PostRussia offered to send a rich person to orbit the moon in exchange for $100 million.The GuardianNew Mexico announced its first case of bubonic plague in two years. “Plague,” said a New Mexico man who contracted the illness in …

Doctors determined that the mysterious facial disfigurement of Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader, was caused by dioxin, a component of Agent Orange; his blood was found to contain over a thousand times the normal human level of dioxin, and someBBCspeculated that the poison was mixed into soup fed to Yushchenko during a dinner with the Ukrainian security service on the night before he became ill in September.The AustralianColin Powell and Russian leaders squabbled about each other’s interest in monitoring the upcoming Ukrainian election, andNew York TimesHamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first elected president.New York TimesMarwan Barghouti, the …

United States military personnel who worked at Camp Delta, the largest prison camp at Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, revealed that many prisoners there were tortured by being forced to endure strobe lights and cold temperatures and extremely loud recordings of Limp Bizkit.New York TimesMembers of an Army Reserve unit in Baghdad refused to deliver a fuel shipment because they said that it was a “suicide mission.”New York TimesA study found that Gulf War Syndrome was caused by toxic chemicals.New York TimesThe U.S. was bombing Falluja again, and twoNew York Timessuicide bombers penetrated the Green Zone in Baghdad and killed five people.Washington …

Lawyers at the Environmental Protection Agency announced that they were dropping lawsuits against 50 power plants for violating the Clean Air Act, because newly weakened enforcement rules have undermined the cases; theNew York TimesBush Administration previously had promised that the lawsuits would continue after the rules change.New York TimesThe state attorneys general of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, which are downwind from many of the plants, promised to sue the polluters directly.New York TimesA new study found that tiny golden “nano-bullets” could be used in the future to destroy cancer tumors.New ScientistEnvironmentalists sued the federal government to force it …

Bethlehem was empty this Christmas, devoid of lights or trees or public celebrations, having been sealed off by the Israeli army.Jerusalem’sChristian churches endorsed Palestinian demands for sovereignty in East Jerusalem; they condemned Israeli violence against demonstrators and noted that an oppressed people living under a military occupation has the moral right to resist its overlords.The United Nations Security Council rejected Palestine’s request for U.N. peacekeepers; United States Ambassador Richard Holbrooke commented that “this is a resolution that will never be adopted.” The Supreme Court of Zimbabwe ordered President Robert Mugabe to come up with a viable land-reform program, declaring his …