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The Senate votes to cut off debate on an immigration overhaul, moving it a step closer to passing the legislation. With a final vote expected late Thursday, the Senate package is sharply different from the House bill, and there are doubts the two can be reconciled.

The CIA has fired an employee for leaking classified intelligence to the media. Former agency officials say the information concerned alleged secret prisons in Eastern Europe. The spy agency refused to reveal the name of the person. But reports from the Associated Press identify CIA veteran Mary McCarthy.

Last month, Washington accused Moscow of giving military intelligence to Iraq during the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Now, officials in Moscow say the United States is holding up Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization. Deteriorating ties between the White House and the Kremlin in recent months have prompted talk of a new Cold War. Some foreign-policy analysts say that's because Moscow doesn't share Western values -- which Western countries have been slow to understand.

Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a bill Tuesday that would make Massachusetts the first state to require that all of its citizens have some form of health insurance.

A Japanese spacecraft has landed on an asteroid as it hurtles through space. From a distance, the Itokawa asteroid had been compared to a potato, with oblong, rounded ends. But upon closer inspection, Japanese scientists say Itokawa looks more like a sea otter.

Over the weekend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw paid a surprise visit to Baghdad, where they urged Iraq's political leaders to form a government. Sunday, Jill Carroll flew home to her family in Boston, left, after three months of captivity in Iraq.

President Bush calls for an amendment banning gay marriage, saying marriage, as traditionally defined, "is the most fundamental institution of civilization." The president says he favors a constitutional amendment under Senate debate that would ban gay and lesbian couples from being married.

California's primary election Tuesday was the first serious test for a new kind of electronic voting machine. The devices produce a paper-trail record of every vote cast by touch-screen. The major shift in technology was prompted by concerns that the electronic voting machines the state had been using were vulnerable to fraud.

The new Hamas-led Palestinian government creates a new security force in Gaza that includes members of militant factions. The unit will be headed by the leader of a group that has attacked Israel. The office of President Mahmoud Abbas called the move "illegal and improper."

California and Great Britain agree to become partners in the fight against global warming. The deal was sealed at the port of Long Beach, where British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to share clean-air technology and research.