NPR News

The number of new homes sold last month soared by 17.5 percent from November, the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Develoment just reported, to annual rate of 329,000.

That's still down 7.6 percent from December 2009, though.

Egyptian anti-government activists pelted police with firebombs and rocks in a second day of clashes Wednesday in defiance of an official ban on any protests. Beefed up police forces on the streets quickly moved in and used tear gas, beatings and live ammunition fired in the air to disperse any demonstrations.

The big report from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is due out tomorrow, and the NYT got a sneak peak. Bottom line, according to the article:

The 2008 financial crisis was an "avoidable" disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street ...

This isn't what you want to have happen when you're the public face of the biggest social networking site:

The State of the Union speech Tuesday night stirred up a lot of talk about the growing federal deficit and how it may weigh on America's future.

But the nation is already paying a price for a health debt of sorts. Americans' passion for smoking decades ago is cutting lives short now, according to a report from the National Research Council released Tuesday.