TEL AVIV ? Secretary of State John F. Kerry flew to Israel Wednesday to push for a cease-fire in the 16-day-old conflict with Hamas militants.

Kerry planned to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other officials.

Former Dollar General CEO David Perdue won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Georgia on Tuesday, defeating Rep. Jack Kingston in a close race that went down to the wire.

Perdue will now face Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn in what's expected to be a closely-watched race both parties are expected to contest. They will compete for the seat of retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R).

The man with the diamond earrings passed out black-and-white photos showing the crew?s targets: a liquor store in Southeast Washington and its owner, a Mexican drug dealer. In the trunk of the getaway car were two machetes, three guns and enough wire to tie up the owner before taking off with a pile of cash and cocaine.

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) is flying to Israel tonight on the Israeli airline El Al to protest a Federal Aviation Administration ban on U.S. carriers flying to or from Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.

THE FIGHTING in Gaza has served to obscure developments in another Middle East war that is far bloodier and more important to U.S. interests. In the last week, more than 700 fatalities have been reported in a single battle in Syria, as government troops have tried to retake a gas field seized by the Islamic State, the al-Qaeda entity that now controls much of eastern Syria and western Iraq. Fighting is also raging between regime and moderate rebel forces in the city of Aleppo and between the rebels and the Islamists in the suburbs of Damascus.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down a major part of the federal health-care law Tuesday, ruling that the insurance subsidies that help millions of Americans pay for coverage are illegal in three dozen states.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange penned an open letter to British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who portrays Assange in an upcoming film, praising the actor's talents but slamming his involvement with the film and turning down the actor's invitation to meet in person. Assange, who is currently holed up at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, wrote a letter to Cumberbatch dated January 15, 2013, that was published on Wednesday on the anti-secrecy website ahead of the October 18 theatrical release of Walt Disney Co's DreamWorks film "The Fifth Estate. ...

By Eric Kelsey BEVERLY HILLS, California (Reuters) - Barkhad Abdi, a tall wisp of a man with a narrow face and a wide grin, sat on the sofa in his hotel suite with one eye on the television and another on a view of the Hollywood Hills. The 28-year-old Somali-American, who had worked the past year at his brother's mobile phone store in Minneapolis, could hardly have called himself an actor when he began production in British director Paul Greengrass' thriller "Captain Phillips. ...

By Tom Heneghan PARIS (Reuters) - The French theatre, opera and film director Patrice Chereau, who mounted one of the most famous productions of Richard Wagner's "Ring" cycle in Bayreuth in the 1970s, has died at the age of 68. Chereau, who was preparing a production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It" when he succumbed to lung cancer, was a restless innovator who began directing at high school in Paris and never looked back. ...

(Reuters) - American actress Scarlett Johansson has been named the sexiest woman alive for the second time by Esquire, the men's lifestyle magazine said on Monday. "The Avengers" star was named sexiest woman in 2006 and is the only woman to have been given the title twice by the publication. The annual recipient of the title is chosen by Esquire editors. Husky-voiced Johansson, who rose to prominence as a teenager in the 2001 cult film "Ghost World," stars in three films this fall. ...

NBCNews.com's political cartoonists take a look back at the past week.

This blog is not dead.

Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: If you can't make it to the South Pacific's eclipse zone to watch the sun turn into a "ring of fire" on Thursday, you can still see the spectacle online.

From ?The Daddle? to ?The Freedom Flask?, Willie Geist offers some really bad ideas for dad this year.