Top Stories - The Christian Science Monitor

Washington - President Obama's Afghanistan speech announced a new, historic chapter for the mission there, announcing the deployment of 30,000 additional troops in the "epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda" but also promising to begin withdrawing those forces within 18 months. Full Story »

Washington - A group of beachfront property owners in Florida are set to argue on Wednesday at the US Supreme Court that Florida's highest court stripped them of their property rights and undercut the value of their land without paying any compensation. Full Story »

Berlin - The trial of former Nazi guard John Demjanjuk for the murder of 27,900 Jews began in Munich Monday in what is likely to be one of the last major trials of alleged Nazi war criminals and one of the final chances for Holocaust survivors to seek justice. Full Story »

The Tiger Woods car crash has upended one of the most carefully scripted lives in sports. Full Story »

San Francisco - Sunday's shooting deaths of four police officers in suburban Seattle is the fifth such attack on law enforcement this year, adding a grim chapter to a year in which the number of shooting deaths of police officers nationwide is up. Full Story »

Montevideo, Uruguay - A former leftist guerrilla clinched victory in Uruguay's presidential run-off election on Sunday, but he did it by moving hard to the center and purposely distancing himself from Venezuela's radical leftist President Hugo Chávez. Full Story »

Tegucigalpa, Honduras and Mexico City - If ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya ever feared irrelevance, he has probably never felt it as acutely as now. Full Story »

Washington - A high school valedictorian in Colorado has lost her bid for the US Supreme Court to decide whether school officials violated her free-speech rights when they withheld her diploma until she agreed to apologize to the student body for mentioning Jesus in her graduation speech. Full Story »

Washington - The US Supreme Court Monday vacated a federal appeals court ruling requiring disclosure of a cache of photos allegedly depicting abuse of US-held detainees overseas during the Bush administration. Full Story »

Catalina Island, Calif. - Fourteen majestic, shaggy bison were brought to this windswept island southwest of Los Angeles for a film shoot in the 1920s. Left behind, they multiplied to 600 by the 1960s, causing havoc to delicate plants, rolling and tramping vegetation and other protective barriers that keep deer away from threatened ironwood trees. Full Story »