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France, Denmark and Indonesia pledge to contribute to a United Nations mission to Darfur, Sudan. The U.N. will send up to 26,000 peacekeepers to the region in an attempt to end the conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people in the last four years.

His resignation will trigger an internal election to pick a new leader of the Conservative Party, who will also be the next prime minister. He steps down after defections left him unable to govern.

If you panic every time you're asked to "say a few words," former White House speechwriter Mary Kate Cary is here to help. For nervous public speakers, she recommends three books to load onto your e-readers — full of sound advice and quotable anecdotes — so you'll never be tongue-tied again.

Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch threatened to sue Australian news site Crikey for defamation. Crikey says bring it on, though Australian libel laws make such cases much tougher for media companies to win.

This week's fraud conviction of Lee Farkas, CEO of one of the country's largest private mortgage lending companies, has been trumpeted by federal prosecutors. But opportunities for the Justice Department to crow about victories in financial cases are few and far between.

The White House has taken some heat for its slow pace in nominating federal judges. But the administration has quietly pursued candidates who are far more diverse in terms of race, gender and sexual orientation than any of its predecessors, a move praised by many. But that strategy may have a cost.

A federal judge ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for some of the flooding during Hurricane Katrina, and ordered the government to pay more than $700,000 to five plaintiffs. Mark Schleifstein, a reporter at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, says of the 470,000 people who filed claims, about 100,000 are in the two areas where this lawsuit appears to have set a precedent. They will, he says, be able to go back to the court and ask for the case to be turned into a class action.

Alain de Botton returns to a long-standing fascination — the arc of relationships — in his new novel. But despite its fictional trappings, the book seems more like a class on maintaining a marriage.

Wouk was famous for writing The Winds of War, Marjorie Morningstar and The Caine Mutiny, which won a Pulitzer Prize. He also helped popularize themes that writers like Philip Roth later tackled.

Anne Fadiman writes about her father's journey from poor Brooklyn Jew to wine connoisseur. She says, "Along with books, wine represented the sort of cultivated, refined life that he had aspired to."