Fidel Castro, 81 and ailing, announced Tuesday he was resigning as Cuba's president, ending a half-century of autocratic rule. In Washington, the Bush administration said it had no plans to change U.S. policy or lift the embargo on Cuba. Castro temporarily ceded his powers to his brother Raul on July 31, 2006, when he announced that he had undergone intestinal surgery. Since then, he has not been seen in public. On Friday, Castro said he's relieved to be stepping down, complaining that the process of selecting Cuba's next government "had left me exhausted." Castro's rule began in 1959.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to the Bush administration's domestic spying program by the American Civil Liberties Union. The justices' decision, issued without comment, is the latest setback to legal efforts to force disclosure of details of the warrantless wiretapping that began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ACLU legal director Steven Shapiro said his group is in a "Catch-22" because the government says the identities of people whose communications have been intercepted is secret. But only people who know they have been wiretapped can sue over the program.

A missile fired from a U.S. Navy cruiser scored a direct hit on a failing spy satellite Wednesday, smashing the spacecraft into small pieces of debris. The satellite and the kill vehicle collided at a combined speed of 22,000 mph about 130 miles above Earth's surface. Unlike most spacecraft that fall out of orbit and re-enter the atmosphere, this satellite had an almost-full tank of hydrazine fuel. Pentagon officials said the fuel could have posed a health hazard to humans if it had landed in a populated area.

President Bush on Tuesday called on all nations to step up efforts to end "once and for all" the ethnic slaughter still continuing in Sudan's western Darfur region. Speaking in the African nation of Rwanda, Bush said the United States is using sanctions, pressure and money to help resolve the Darfur crisis that he calls a genocide.

Kosovo won the recognition of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Turkey on Monday, one day after declaring independence from Serbia. However, Russia, China, Spain and Greece were among those who refused to recognize Kosovo as an independent nation. Although Serbia rejects Kosovo's declaration of independence, Serbia's government has ruled out a military response. On Thursday a mob broke into the U.S. Embassy in the Serbian capital of Belgrade and set an office on fire.

Pakistan's ruling party conceded defeat to the opposition Tuesdayin parliamentary elections. The party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted in a 1999 coup by President Pervez Musharraf, scored a stronger-than-expected showing with a campaign that called for Musharraf's ouster. On Thursday Sharif's party and the party of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto announced an agreemeent to form a coaltion government.

Consumer prices rose by a bigger-than-expected amount in January, reflecting big increases in the cost of food and health care, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The department said its closely watched Consumer Price Index posted a gain of 0.4 percent last month, matching the December increase and was higher than economists had expected. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, showed an increase of 0.3 percent, the biggest jump in this measure in seven months. In a related development, crude oil closed above $100 a barrel for the first time ever on Tuesday.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday lowered its projection for economic growth this year, citing damage from the double blows of a housing slump and credit crunch. It said it also expects higher unemployment and inflation. Under its new economic forecast, the Fed said it now believes the gross domestic product will grow between 1.3 percent and 2 percent this year. The Fed also projected that the national jobless rate will rise to between 5.2 percent and 5.3 percent this year.

CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledged Thursday that two rendition flights carrying terrorism suspects refueled on British territory, despite repeated U.S. assurances that none of the secret flights since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had used British airspace or soil. Hayden said information previously provided to the British "turned out to be wrong." The spy agency reviewed rendition records late last year and discovered that in 2002 the CIA had in fact refueled two separate planes, each carrying a terrorism suspect, on Diego Garcia, a British island territory in the Indian Ocean.

Barack Obama snuffed out Hillary Clinton's comeback bid in Wisconsin's Democratic presidential primary Tuesday and dominated the Democratic caucuses in his native Hawaii. It was a commanding victory in an important prelude to what shapes up as a last stand for Clinton in Texas and Ohio on March 4. On the Republican side John McCain moved closer to clinching the Republican presidential nomination winning convention delegates in Wisconsin and Washington state.