USA

Winding up his European trip in a summit conference with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, President Bush said they agreed that Iran and North Korea should not have nuclear weapons and that the US and the Kremlin "see no alternative" to strengthening their relations. He called their dialogue in Bratislava, Slovakia, "very important." For his part, Putin issued assurances to Bush that Russia had made an irreversible decision in favor of democracy.

The Supreme Court ruled against racial segregation of prisoners Wednesday, all but ending a longstanding policy in California and calling into question restrictions in Texas and Oklahoma. The decision extends the high court's half-century trend - begun with the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case - of ruling out racial classification by the government.

No formal charges will be brought against the marine who shot an unarmed Iraqi to death in a Fallujah mosque last fall - an incident videotaped by an embedded cameraman - CBS News reported. It said military investigators have decided there isn't enough evidence for prosecutors to win a conviction and Marine commanders will make any decision on punishment.

Recent declines in factory orders for durable goods and a slight rise in unemployment followed several months of promising economic trends, the Commerce Department reported. It said orders fell 0.9 percent in January - due largely to a 27.1 percent decline in orders for commercial aircraft.

The parents of Terry Schiavo won another reprieve in their legal fight to keep their daughter's feeding tube in place, against her husband's wishes. A Florida court extended until Friday an emergency stay preventing Michael Schiavo from ordering doctors to remove it.

A full weekend of clear skies was forecast for southern California, giving emergency crews a window of opportunity to clean up after the hundreds of mudslides that have devastated parts of the region following six straight days of rain. The drenching broke a 115-year rainfall record in Los Angeles alone, where more than 100 homes were declared temporarily uninhabitable or safe for only limited entry. Below, an American Medical Response employee works to stop more mud from flowing into a Pasadena residence.