- Governor Schwarzenegger unveils a State budget with 4.6 billion dollars in cuts, a transfer of property tax monies from local to state government, and no new taxes – not even for the state’s millionaires
- Democrats critisize the cuts in health and welfare programs for the State’s poorest children, seniors, and people with AIDS and disabilities – prison reform groups cautiously welcome the plan to cut the state’s corrections budget
- Oakland Schools Administrator Randolph Ward announces a short list of five Oakland elementary schools that face closure – last night Ward held a tumultuous hearing on his plan, attended by hundreds of parents and teachers
- The Nation’s unemployment rate drops in December, not because of job creation, but because frustrated jobseekers have given up looking for work
- The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case of a U.S.-born man captured during fighting in Afghanistan and held without charges
- An explosion rips through worshippers at a shiite Mosque in Baquba, Irak killing 5 people and wounding dozens