GENEVA, Switzerland - March 25, 2011 - Up to one million Ivorians have now fled fighting in the main city Abidjan alone, with others uprooted across the country, the UN Refugee Agency said on Friday as violence escalated in a 4-month power struggle.

Hours ahead of a U.N. Security Council debate, France announced it had submitted a draft U.N. resolution banning the use of heavy weapons in Abidjan. The United Nations has accused forces loyal to incumbent Laurent Gbagbo of such attacks, which his camp strenuously denies.

LISBON, Portugal - March 24, 2011 - Portugal's prime minister resigned on Wednesday evening after losing a confidence vote on austerity measures in a move that threw Portugal into political crisis and raised the likelihood of it seeking an international bailout.

Jose Socrates was driven to quit his post after failing to win parliamentary support for the latest austerity package, the fourth and most severe put forward by the minority government in less than a year.

WASHINGTON - March 23, 2011 - At the supermarket, most shoppers are oblivious to a battle raging within U.S. agriculture and the illegitimate Obama regime’s role in it. Two thriving but opposing sectors - organics and genetically engineered crops - have been warring on the farm, in the courts and in Washington.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories - March 23, 2011 - Palestinians sent a Grad rocket slamming into the Israeli city of Beersheva Wednesday, injuring a man, after Israeli air strikes and a mortar attack killed eight Gazans.

The Al Quds Brigades, Islamic Jihad's armed wing, claimed responsibility for the attack as well as for the overnight firing of another Grad rocket towards the port city of Ashdod, saying it was in response to a series of Israeli attacks a day earlier that killed eight, two of them minors.

AUSTIN, Texas - March 23, 2011 - For the first time, Hispanics make up the majority of students enrolled in Texas public schools.

The Texas Education Agency reports Hispanic students this school year account for 50.2% of the state’s 4.9 million children enrolled in public schools, including pre-kindergarten and early childhood education.

WASHINGTON - March 23, 2011 - The new health care law will add 32 million people to the rolls of the insured. But that won’t work well if they can't get access to a doctor; and many say the U.S. is facing a growing shortage of physicians.

"That is going to put tremendous pressure on the system to handle all the new people that are enrolled," says Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute and author of "Why Obamacare is Wrong for America."

TEL AVIV, Israel - March 22, 2011 - Former Israeli president Moshe Katsav was on Tuesday sentenced to seven years behind bars after being convicted on two counts of rape and other offenses in a scandal that has rocked Israel.

The judges also handed him a two-year suspended sentence and ordered him to pay compensation of 100,000 shekels ($28,000) to the main victim, known only as "Aleph", as well as 25,000 shekels ($7,000) to a second victim.

SANAA, Yemen - March 21, 2011 - Rival tanks deployed in the streets of Yemen's capital Monday after three senior army commanders defected to a movement calling for the ouster of the U.S.-backed president, leaving him with virtually no support among the country's most powerful institutions.

TOKYO, Japan - March 20, 2011 - At a bustling Tokyo supermarket Sunday, wary shoppers avoided one particular bin of spinach.

The produce came from Ibaraki prefecture in the northeast, where radiation was found in spinach grown up to 75 miles from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Another bin of spinach - labeled as being from Chiba Prefecture, west of Tokyo - was sold out.

TRIPOLI, Libya - March 18, 2011 - The United Nations authorized western-led attacks on Muammar Qaddafi's forces, as he vowed to crush Libya's revolt with "no mercy, no pity" and rebels pleaded for military aid before time runs out.

TRIPOLI, Libya - March 18, 2011 - Libya's foreign minister Friday said the country will abide by the United Nations Security Council resolution calling for military action against Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces and will implement an immediate ceasefire, though reports of renewed assaults against rebel-held towns suggest the fighting continues.

WASHINGTON - March 16, 2011 - The Transportation Security Administration finds itself in Congress' crosshairs yet again, as two TSA officials took to the Hill to defend their agency's use of advanced airport screening machines Tuesday.

The latest TSA testimony comes on the heels of revelations that they made a "calculation error" in safety studies of the screening machines, reports Wired magazine. The flawed results showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.

OSAKA, Japan - March 15, 2011 - News of a serious radiation leak at the Fukushima nuclear plant has sparked panic buying in Tokyo, as some residents started to leave the capital to escape potential contamination.

Several embassies advised their citizens to leave affected areas, including Tokyo, and some multinational companies either told staff to leave or were considering relocating outside the city.

WASHINGTON - March 15, 2011 - As the war in Afghanistan approaches it's eleventh year, nearly two-thirds of Amerikans are saying the conflict is not worth fighting, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll.

TOKYO, Japan - March 14, 2011 - Beleaguered Tokyo Electric Power on Monday said it had begun a power outage in an area covering some parts of Tokyo and eight prefectures, affecting around 333,000 households.

Authorities have announced plans for scheduled rolling power cuts in areas served by TEPCO to make up for the loss of power from crippled nuclear plants, including the Tokyo utility's troubled Fukushima Number One facility.

TOKYO, Japan - March 14, 2011 - Japanese officials confirmed Monday that nuclear fuel rods appear to be melting inside three reactors compromised by Friday’s earthquake, though nuclear experts differ on whether the outer chamber of a reactor melting in fact constitutes a partial “meltdown.”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - March 14, 2011 - More than 1,000 Saudi troops, part of the Gulf countries' Peninsula Shield Force, have entered Bahrain, where anti-regime protests have raged for a month, a Saudi official said Monday.

The troops entered the strategic Gulf kingdom on Sunday, the official said, requesting anonymity.

TAKAJO, Japan - March 14, 2011 - A tide of bodies washed up along Japan's coastline Monday, overwhelming crematoriums, exhausting supplies of body bags and adding to the spiraling humanitarian, economic and nuclear crisis after the massive earthquake and tsunami.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - March 11, 2011 - A security clampdown in the Saudi capital kept a lid on a planned day of rage Friday, while determined police action in neighboring Kuwait and Bahrain appeared to deflate demonstrators' zeal.

Rallies after Friday prayers have proved decisive in popular uprisings that have overthrown the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt. But the heavy police turnout in some major Gulf cities managed to put a lid on discontent that some say has surfaced in the region.

TOKYO, Japan - March 11, 2011 - Japan was struck by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake off its northeastern coast Friday, unleashing a 13-foot tsunami that washed away cars and tore away buildings along the coast near the epicenter. There were reports of injuries in Tokyo.

In various locations along Japan's coast, TV footage showed massive damage from the tsunami, with dozens of cars, boats and even buildings being carried along by waters. A large ship swept away by the tsunami rammed directly into a breakwater in Kesennuma city in Miyagi Prefecture, according to footage on public broadcaster NHK.

TOKYO, Japan - March 11, 2011 - Japan's huge earthquake brought super-modern Tokyo to a standstill Friday, paralyzing trains that normally run like clockwork and stranding hordes of commuters carrying mobile phones rendered largely useless by widespread outages.

WASHINGTON - March 9, 2011 - In testimony to Congress Wednesday, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a startling claim: This year, up to 82% of public schools could fail the government's "No Child Left Behind" standards.

PARIS, France - March 7, 2011 - The French finance ministry shut down 10,000 computers after a "spectacular" cyber attack from hackers using Internet addresses in China, officials and reports said Monday.

The hackers were hunting for documents relating to the Group of 20 (G20) developed and developing nations, which this year is led by France, according to Budget Minister Francois Baron, adding that a probe was underway into the attacks.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - March 5, 2011 - Desperate to avoid mass uprisings against the House of Saud, security forces have deployed in huge numbers across the region.

King Abdullah is also reported to have told neighboring Bahrain that if they do not put down their own ongoing Shia revolt, his own forces will.

WASHINGTON - March 5, 2011 - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security today postponed the effective date of the REAL ID Act until January 15, 2013, a move that avoided causing tremendous disruptions to air travel.

The reason that Homeland Security granted the delay is that, apart from some Republican stalwarts in Congress, this law creating a digital nationalized ID is hardly popular, with critics calling it a national ID card. The National Conference of State Legislatures lists 16 states with laws forbidding compliance with REAL ID and eight states that have enacted resolutions effectively boycotting it.

WASHINGTON (PNN) - March 3, 2011 - An unpopular tax filing requirement for businesses tucked into the new health care law would be repealed under a bill overwhelmingly passed by the House today.

The provision would require millions of businesses to file tax forms for every vendor that sells them more than $600 in goods each year, starting in 2012. The requirement is projected to raise nearly $25 billion over the next decade by ensuring that vendors pay their taxes. But lawmakers in both parties say it could create a paperwork nightmare for businesses and the Internal Revenue Service.

WASHINGTON - March 2, 2011 - The Supreme Court of the United States ruled Tuesday that AT&T and other corporations do not have personal privacy rights under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to make documents publicly available upon request, but contains an exemption for documents that "constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

DJERBA, Tunisia - March 3, 2011 - A major European operation was under way Thursday to airlift out of Tunisia thousands of people who have fled Libya as Washington also offered planes to repatriate Egyptian refugees.

More French and British flights were planned Thursday, with extra aircraft due, including from Spain, and ships from France, Germany and Italy also expected in the coming days.

BREGA, Libya - March 3, 2011 - Libyan jets struck rebel positions Thursday as illegitimate U.S. President Barack Obama stepped up demands that Moammar Qaddafi cede power and his Russian counterpart warned of an impending civil war.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez joined the diplomatic offensive, proposing an international mediation mission to pull the North African country back from the brink, a move rejected late Thursday by the rebels as "too late".

WASHINGTON - March 2, 2011 - The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, in an 8-1 decision, that a church's widely despised anti-gay protests were protected speech.

The First Amendment protects the Westboro Baptist Church's right to picket military funerals, the court said.  Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for the court.

YEREVAN, Armenia - March 2, 2011 - More than 10,000 opposition supporters rallied in the Armenian capital on Tuesday, calling for the government's resignation on the third anniversary of deadly political unrest.

"We are ready to start a dialogue with the authorities, but only on one subject: the conducting of urgent presidential and parliamentary elections," said opposition leader and former president Levon Ter-Petrosian.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - March 1, 2011 - Thousands of demonstrators converged on the state Capitol in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday as the state legislature began hearings on a bill that targets public sector unions.

WASHINGTON - March 1, 2011 - The Pentagon has ordered a test batch of long-range electroshock projectiles from Taser International - call them "Taser grenades" - which will be designed to be fired from military grenade launchers.

NALUT, Libya - February 27, 2011 - Several towns in western Libya have been taken by opposition forces, which are now preparing to march on the capital, a member of a revolutionary committee told AFP in the town of Nalut.

An AFP reporter arriving in Nalut, a town of 66,000 people, 235 kilometers (146 miles) west of Tripoli, found that strongman Moammar Qaddafi's loyalist security forces had entirely disappeared from the streets.

MADISON, Wisconsin (PNN) - February 27, 2011 - A crowd estimated at more than 70,000 people on Saturday waved Amerikan flags, sang the national anthem and called for the defeat of a Wisconsin plan to curb public sector unions that has galvanized opposition from the Amerikan labor movement.

In one of the biggest rallies at the state Capitol since the Vietnam War, union members and their supporters braved frigid temperatures and a light snowfall to show their displeasure.

WASHINGTON - February 22, 2011 - The Justice Department under illegitimate President Barack Obama has quietly dropped its legal representation of more than a dozen Bush-era Pentagon and regime officials - including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and aide Paul Wolfowitz - in a lawsuit by U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, who spent years behind bars without charges in conditions his lawyers compare to torture.

Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, confirmed Tuesday that the government has agreed to retain private lawyers for the officials, at a cost of up to $200 per hour. Miller said “conflicts concerns” prompted the decision. He did not elaborate.