San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi – the first female speaker of the House – was elected to her second term Tuesday, but that milestone was overshadowed by high drama in the Senate.
Members took their oaths for the 111th Congress, with Democrats controlling both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for the first time since 1994. They have two weeks before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in and the Obama era begins in earnest.

New members of the House and Senate were sworn in to open the 111th Congress today, but most of the drama revolved around seats left unfilled.
Roland Burris — who says he is the lawfully appointed replacement for President-elect Barack Obama — showed up at the Capitol but was turned away by Senate officials because his paperwork was incomplete.
The Illinois secretary of state had not signed the certificate of appointment for Burris, whom embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich named to the seat. The certificate is a Senate requirement for admittance.

The final votes are being counted in Alaska’s knife-edge Senate race between incumbent Republican Ted Stevens and Democrat Mark Begich.
With 24,000 votes still to be counted, Mr Begich leads by just 1,022 votes.
Meanwhile, the close senate race in Minnesota is set to go to a recount, and campaigning is under way ahead of a runoff vote in Georgia on 2 December.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Lew Oliver’s McCain-Palin T-shirt advertised his intentions, and the woman in the S.U.V. gave him an opening. “I’m undecided,” said Nicole Ellington, 31, a paralegal with two young children. “You have two minutes. Go.”
Mr. Oliver knew that her family leaned Republican because she was on his get-out-the-vote list, and he rapidly delivered a pitch honed over 22 years of volunteering for local campaigns. “Wow, you’re good,” she said. And as she drove away, Mr. Oliver smiled with satisfaction.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain goes into the campaign’s final weekend a bigger underdog than any victorious candidate in a modern election.
With four days until Election Day, national polls show his Democratic rival Barack Obama leading by an average of 6 percentage points, and battleground polls show Obama ahead in more than enough states to win the decisive 270 Electoral College votes.

JERUSALEM: An Israeli pollster says that if the country were on the U.S. election map, it would be bright red.
A survey of Americans in the Holy Land released Thursday found that absentee voters supported Republican John McCain over Barack Obama by a three-to-one margin.
The survey interviewed 817 Americans who have cast absentee ballots for next week’s presidential election. It was conducted by Vote from Israel, a nonpartisan group that has encouraged Americans to vote.
An estimated 40,000 Americans living in Israel are expected to vote.
Pollster Mitchell Barak said there is no …

Alleging media bias in favor of Democrats, Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin seized Wednesday on The Los Angeles Times’s refusal to release a five-year-old videotape of Barack Obama at a dinner honoring a Palestinian rights advocate.
The video shows a gathering in Chicago for Rashid Khalidi, a teacher, writer and Obama friend who is critical of Israel. Mr. Obama spoke at the dinner, where other speakers likened Israel and Israelis to terrorists. The McCain campaign said the tape could show how Mr. Obama reacted to anti-Israel remarks.

Dennis Ross, former special US envoy to the Middle East, came to this battleground state Tuesday night to use the weight of his reputation and experience to urge fellow Jewish voters to back Barack Obama.
But the first question he was asked had to do with Obama’s associations with another Middle East figure, Rashid Khalidi.
The McCain campaign is using Obama’s link to the Palestinian advocate and former Chicago university professor to hammer away at Obama, and demanded Wednesday that the Los Angeles Times release a video in its possession showing Obama …

The New Mexico Sun News – whose headline read “Obama wins!” – is fortnightly, and will not publish its next issue until November 8. This being four days after the election, the paper decided to take a gamble in advance.
In what it describes as a special collectors’ edition, the newspaper elected to plump for Mr Obama, the Democratic candidate, due to his current lead in opinion polls over John McCain, his Republican rival for the presidency.
Mr Obama is currently 6.7 per cent ahead in a national “poll of polls” …

A NCHORAGE — The Alaska Republican Party on Tuesday found itself in the awkward position of urging voters to return a convicted felon to the United States Senate.
The party is pushing for the re-election of Senator Ted Stevens, who was convicted on Monday of seven felony counts but continues his campaign for a seventh full term, in the hope that his re-election will allow Republicans to hold onto his seat even if Mr. Stevens eventually resigns.