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After a second explosion rocked a Japanese nuclear complex, a third reactor lost its cooling capacity, complicating engineers' efforts to limit the damage of a partial meltdown.

Early last month, President Obama addressed 1,000 people at Penn State about his ideas for reviving the country's economy. A couple of weeks later, he delivered a similar address to about 100 small-business owners at Cleveland State University.

SENDAI, JAPAN - In the center of this city, the economic hub of northern Japan , the traffic lights and vending machines are still working.

The detection of the highly radioactive elements cesium-137 and iodine-131 outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant heralds the beginning of an ecological and human tragedy. The open question is whether it will be limited, serious or catastrophic.

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TOKYO - Overwhelmed by a still-growing catastrophe, Japanese authorities struggled Monday to reach buried survivors and the missing, faced roadblocks in delivering aid and raced to contain an expanding nuclear emergency.

- MSNBC host Joe Scarborough , responding Friday to an assertion by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) that he had been recruiting Scarborough to run for Senate not in Florida but rather in New York. Scarborough remembers things differently, saying Cornyn was "clear and unambiguous" that he was talking about...

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine continues to mull over the possibility of running for Senate in Virginia, with many party observers suggesting that he is 50-50 (or slightly more) on entering the race.

A graphic with the continuation of a March 13 Page One article about the effort to contain the nuclear crisis in Japan misstated the amount of radiation detected at the Fukushima site. The radiation detected was 1.015 millisieverts per hour, not 1,015 millisieverts per hour.

An Orthodox Jewish prayer observance by three passengers aboard an Alaska Airlines flight Sunday alarmed flight attendants unfamiliar with the ritual, prompting them to lock down the cockpit and issue a security alert, officials said.

Chief State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley resigned Sunday after angering the White House by calling the treatment of WikiLeaks suspect Bradley E. Manning "counterproductive and stupid."

President Obama called for more effective background checks for gun sales after the January shooting rampage in Arizona that killed six people and wounded 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Anxiety over Japan's quake-crippled nuclear reactors has triggered calls from U.S. lawmakers and activists for a review of U.S. energy policy and for brakes on expansion of domestic nuclear power.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson maintained a poker face as she spoke at a congressional budget hearing last week.

JERUSALEM - The Israeli government said Sunday that it had approved the construction of hundreds of new homes in West Bank settlements after a couple and three of their children were stabbed to death in their home in a Jewish settlement Friday night.

At least five guards and five inmates were hurt when a riot erupted Sunday in a prison in former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's home city of Tikrit, police and a provincial council member said.

DAMMAM, SAUDI ARABIA - Security forces and protesters clashed in Bahrain on Sunday during the most violent day in weeks, and hundreds marched in Saudi Arabia to demand the release of prisoners who have been detained without charges.

IN BENGHAZI, LIBYA They are two fighters on the front lines of what they say is a battle for freedom and survival. But the paths that Haitham al-Ghaybee and Abu Sultan took to this moment were very different.

TRIPOLI - Libya's government said it had taken over the oil terminal of Brega on Sunday and would press eastward to the rebels' self-styled capital of Benghazi, as Western diplomats remained mixed over intervention in the Libyan crisis.