BAGHDAD (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday, a day after the Iraqi cabinet drafted a law paving the way for British forces to withdraw more than six years after the U.S.-led invasion.

BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bernard Madoff, the longtime Wall Street executive accused of cheating investors around the world out of $50 billion, scrambled to find friends or relatives to guarantee his bond on Tuesday and keep him out of jail.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday called the high U.S. school dropout rate "economically untenable" and said making schools more competitive would be a top job of his education secretary.

ORAN, Algeria (Reuters) - OPEC oil ministers meet on Wednesday to remove a record 2 million barrels per day from oil markets as they race to balance supply with the world's collapsing demand for fuel.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A government bailout for automakers was being assembled as quickly and carefully as possible, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Tuesday as a new ratings report showed that bankruptcy was the most likely restructuring scenario for the industry.

CAMDEN, New Jersey (Reuters) - Five Muslim men accused of planning an attack on a U.S. army base had no intention of following through even though they shared Muslim anger toward America after September 11, defense attorneys said on Tuesday.

MIAMI (Reuters) - Adam Walsh, the 6-year-old son of television crime show host John Walsh, was kidnapped and killed 27 years ago by a drifter who later died in jail, police in Florida said on Tuesday in closing the books on one of America's best-known unsolved crimes.

MIAMI (Reuters) - The United States sent three Algerian-born prisoners to their adopted homeland of Bosnia on Tuesday in the first release under court order from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi journalist who has admitted hurling his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush appeared before a judge on Tuesday and confirmed his action, a judicial spokesman said.