Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that Congress should be as generous to judges as it already has been to itself, by approving an inflation-related increase in their pay.
Alone among federal employees, judges will not receive a cost-of-living allowance in 2009. Members of Congress are getting a 2.8 percent boost, worth $4,700. But they refused before Christmas to give an identical increase to judges.
Federal trial judges are paid $169,300 a year. Appellate judges make more, ranging up to Roberts' salary of $217,400. The salaries pale in comparison to what top lawyers earn in private practice.
Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has called upon President-Elect Barack Obama to "please, say something about the humanitarian crisis that is being experienced by the Palestinian people, by the people of Gaza." McKinney spoke to CNN news from the Lebanese city of Tyre, where she had debarked from the relief vessel Dignity after it was rammed on the high seas by an Israeli patrol boat, early Tuesday morning. Passengers also report the Israelis fired machine guns into the water near their ship. 
Four leading Israeli rabbis have sanctioned the murder of civilian population in the Gaza Strip amid the Israeli onslaught on the region.
An extract from grape seeds can destroy cancer cells, US research suggests. In lab experiments, scientists found that the extract stimulated leukaemia cells to commit suicide.
Israel rejected calls by the UN, EU and France for a ceasefire and instead prepared for what could be "long weeks of combat," as a ferocious air offensive against Hamas in he Gaza Strip entered its fourth day Tuesday. An Israeli defence official said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had proposed to Israel that it unilaterally halt its assault for 48 hours to give Hamas a chance to end its rocket and mortar attacks as well.
