Aaron's Daily WWW Newspaper

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Alabama was colder than Alaska, water fountains froze into ice sculptures in South Carolina and Florida shivered through a brush of Arctic air blast that deadened car batteries in the Northeast and prompted scattered Midwest power outages.

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to prohibit the use of waterboarding and harsh interrogation techniques by ordering the CIA to follow military rules for questioning prisoners, according to two U.S. officials familiar with drafts of the plans. Still under debate is whether to include a loophole that would allow exceptions in extraordinary cases.

NEW YORK - In rapper Biggie Smalls' old Brooklyn neighborhood, the building that once housed a coin laundry is now a plastic surgeon's office. A block away, a wine bar sells "artisanal" cheeses and meats.

OLYMPIA, Wash. - A mixed martial arts fighter and avowed anarchist has been charged with malicious mischief, accused of spraying graffiti on the state Capitol.

TAMPA, Fla. - Jon Gruden is out, replaced by another young rising star as coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel plans to halt its Gaza offensive without any agreement with Hamas, a senior Israeli official said on Saturday. Hamas vowed to fight on.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government extended $20 billion of new aid to Bank of America Corp hours before both the largest U.S. bank, and the country's third largest, Citigroup, reported multibillion-dollar losses from the ongoing global credit crisis.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York feted its latest hero, the pilot who landed a distressed US Airways jetliner on the Hudson River, saving all 155 on board in what experts called a masterful job under life-or-death pressure.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five deaths have been linked to an outbreak of Salmonella food poisoning linked to peanut butter, but the strain involved is not particularly virulent, U.S. health officials said on Friday.

KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide car bomb killed a U.S. service member, four Afghan civilians and wounded 19 others in an attack outside a U.S. military base and the German embassy in the Afghan capital on Saturday, officials and witnesses said.

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Florida money manager is missing and police have opened an investigation into the possible disappearance of "hundreds of millions" of dollars, authorities said on Friday.

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea says it has "weaponized" enough plutonium for four to five nuclear weapons, a U.S. expert said on Saturday after talks in Pyongyang.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican will soon have its own channel on the video sharing site YouTube where the Catholic faithful or the curious will be able to see Pope Benedict or Church events, a Vatican source said on Saturday.

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Israel pummelled Gaza with new strikes on Saturday ahead of an expected unilateral halt to a 22-day-old war on Hamas, which vowed to fight on as long as troops remained in the battered enclave.

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia and Ukraine on Saturday were to hold gas crisis talks in Moscow that the European Union says are the "last and best chance" to end a row which has left Europe struggling without key gas supplies.

HARARE (AFP) - Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Saturday returned to Zimbabwe for the first time in more than two months, ahead of new talks with President Robert Mugabe on reviving a power-sharing deal.

KABUL (AFP) - A suicide car bomb exploded outside the German embassy in Kabul Saturday, killing at least two Afghans and wounding dozens more people including US soldiers and German nationals, officials said.

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea said Saturday it may keep its nuclear weapons even after normalising relations with the United States, staking out a tough position three days before President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese auto giant Toyota Motor Corp. will halve domestic production for three months, reports said Saturday, and will temporarily suspend plant operations to cope with plummeting demand.

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AFP) - Barack Obama warned of "difficult days" ahead before heralding his new era of change Saturday by rolling back the years on a pre-inaugural slow train to Washington.