Blooming magnolia trees are seen along Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House on Saturday. This week, President Obama is speaking out on gun control, and will release his proposal for the nation's budget.
Congress returns from a two-week recess amid reports that a gun deal in the Senate may have gained late momentum; a focus on immigration to include a rally on Capitol Hill; and a budget proposal from President Obama that already has some in his own party fuming.
Around midnight ET Monday, we should know whether something that's only happened once might happen again.
If the University of Louisville's men win the Division I basketball championship — they play Michigan in a game set to start at 9:23 p.m. ET on CBS TV — then there's a chance that this year both the men's and women's trophies will go to the same school.
As an icon of the American conservative movement in the 1980s, it would have been difficult to find a more unlikely figure than Britain's Margaret Thatcher, who died Monday following a stroke.
Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, a full year and a half before Ronald Reagan became president. She hailed from a country seen as a hopeless bastion of socialism by conservatives, many of whom, like Reagan himself, were strongly invested in the idea of American exceptionalism.
A deadly car bomb explosion rocked central Damascus, Syria, in front of the Finance Ministry building (center) and the Central Bank (right) on Monday.
Credit Louai Beshara / AFP/Getty Images
Rescue teams recover bodies from the scene of Monday's car bomb explosion in Damascus. Syria's state television reported that intense gunfire followed the blast.
Editor's note: The author is a Syrian citizen living in Damascus and is not being further identified for safety concerns.
The major blast that rocked Damascus at midday Monday took place in what has come to be called the "Square of Security," an area of about a dozen urban neighborhoods or so that are under tight government security.
It's also home to major government buildings, including the Parliament, various ministries, major intelligence branches and foreign embassies, now mostly closed.