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AP - A stray cat has survived two trips to a Utah animal shelter's gas chamber, leading shelter volunteers to seek a switch of its euthanasia method to lethal injection, which they called more humane.

AP - After weathering a full-on assault in Iowa, Newt Gingrich and his allies planned Tuesday to hit back hard at rival Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential campaign pushed east.

Reuters - The commander of Syria's armed rebels threatened on Tuesday to step up attacks on President Bashar al-Assad's forces, saying he was frustrated with Arab League monitors' lack of progress in ending a government crackdown on protests.

AP - The stock market got a big jump on a better year.

Reuters - Hoping for something better than 2011's flat stock market, U.S. investors pushed shares higher on Tuesday to begin the new year, though questions remain about whether a rally can be sustained.

AP - After a lengthy legal battle between a black South Carolina church and members of the Ku Klux Klan, a judge has ruled that the church owns a building where KKK robes and T-shirts are sold.

AP - Hunting for support in a caucus campaign with high stakes for her lagging presidential bid, Michele Bachmann hoped a late-hour trip Tuesday to her Iowa birthplace would help her stave off the last-place finish forecast by recent polls.

AP - Facing a likely defeat in Tuesday's caucuses, Rick Perry encouraged supporters to keep the faith as his advisers cast the coming contest in South Carolina as the first real test of his presidential campaign.

Reuters - Republican candidates criss-crossed Iowa making late appeals to voters, with polls giving at least three - Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul - a shot at winning the first contest of the 2012 presidential campaign on Tuesday.

AP - "American Idol" finalist James Durbin has married longtime girlfriend Heidi Lowe in a New Year's Eve ceremony at the edge of a California redwood forest.

AP - The Afghan Taliban said Tuesday that they have reached a preliminary deal with the Gulf state of Qatar to open a liaison office there, in what could be a step toward formal, substantive peace talks to end more than a decade of war.

AP - A murder mystery with elements of an Agatha Christie whodunit is unfolding at the vast country estate where Queen Elizabeth II and her family gathered in rural splendor to celebrate Christmas and New Year's.

AP - Franky the drug dog's super-sensitive nose is at the heart of a question being put to the U.S. Supreme Court: Does a police K-9's sniff outside a house give officers the right to get a search warrant for illegal drugs, or is the sniff itself an unconstitutional search?

Reuters - British police have launched a murder investigation after a woman's body was discovered on Queen Elizabeth's Sandringham country estate in eastern England.

AP - Iran's army chief on Tuesday warned an American aircraft carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf in Tehran's latest tough rhetoric over the strategic waterway, part of a feud with the United States over new sanctions that has sparked a jump in oil prices.