Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said the administration will not give up testing to evaluate schools as part of the No Child Left Behind law, even if that means the law will not be renewed this year.

Remarks from Ben Bernanke, widely interpreted to mean that the Fed will cut interest rates by a half point later this month, sent the Dow up 117 points yesterday.

The market was also buoyed by Bank of America's buyout of Countrywide Financial.

It could be a rocky day on Wall Street today as the prospect of a big write down by Merrill Lunch – perhaps as much as $15 billion – could send the send the market sharply lower.

The British government has approved plans to refresh the country’s fleet of nuclear reactors. The government said private industry would pay for the reactors and invited companies to offer plans to build and operate the plants. No limit has been placed on the amount of electricity Britain would be able to generate from nuclear plants, but companies would be required to put aside money for decommissioning older plants and pay a share of the cost of managing nuclear waste.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is contemplating a mini-surge of 3,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. U.S. officials have been disappointed that other NATO countries have failed to answer their call for more troops to fight the growing insurgency.