Violence strikes in Iraq just days after the official end to U.S. combat there. Foreign correspondent for The New York Times, Anthony Shadid reports from Baghdad.

Less than a week after President Obama declared the end of combat operations in Iraq, U.S. forces have exchanged fire with insurgents in Baghdad. American troops helped repel a coordinated attack on an Iraqi base. At least five bombers carrying grenades and wearing suicide jackets attempted to breach checkpoints and killed at least 12 people, wounding at least 20. 

The engagement was the first for U.S. forces since last Tuesday, when President Obama delaclared the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 7 1/2 year war, and the start of Operation New Dawn, in which 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq in a non-combat role to support and train the Iraqi military. 

In the last two years, the world has been shaken by the financial crisis that has affected all corners of the globe. Hugh Pym, correspondent for the BBC, discusses the findings of a study that looked at global recovery in 26 countries. The study focused particularly on how we differ when it comes to budget deficits. The poll asked how citizens felt about their government taking steps "in current economic conditions" to reduce the government's deficit and debt.

As the players ended the first week of the U.S. Open, many familiar faces moved on: Venus Williams advanced in straight sets, and Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal both won. Amy Eddings, host of "All Things Considered" on New York Public Radio, was at the U.S. Open on Sunday. She wraps up all the weekend's action.

President Obama is embarking on a week of focusing on the economy. He will visit Milwaukee to address Wisconsin's union workers; Cleveland, where he's expected to give details on his ideas to improve the economy and spark job growth; and back to Washington D.C. for a White House news conference on Friday.

Dan Gross, senior editor and finance expert at Newsweek, says tax breaks to encourage companies to hire will be the main item on Obama's agenda.

Three Russian soldiers were killed and over 30 officials were wounded yesterday when a suicide bomber drove a car rigged to explode into military installation in Dagestan, a Muslim region of Southern Russia. Although no group has taken responsibility for the attack, Sunday's events underscore the increasing strength of an insurgency movement in the region. Over the last two decades, Russia has fought two civil wars against Islamic separatists in the neighboring Caucasus Mountains region of Chechnya. Yet as violence in Chechnya has drawn down, Dagestan has become increasingly unstable. The region made headlines earlier this year when an attack on Moscow's subway system was credited to two female bombers from Dagestan. For the latest, we speak with New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief Clifford Levy from Moscow.

We’ve all heard of single women in their thirties freezing their eggs for later use. But Gillian St. Lawrence has taken the idea somewhat further.

Gillian is thirty. She’s been happily married for nearly ten years. She and her husband, Paul St. Lawrence, both want children... just not yet. They don’t, however, want to face the potentially lower fertility rates and higher genetic disorder rates that might come if they decide to get pregnant years down the road. They’ve opted to create and freeze five embryos, which they’ll implant in ten or fifteen years, when they feel more ready.

Across the country, there are only nine political primaries left this season, and the race for November’s midterm elections is coming into full swing. 

Craigslist.org, the wildly-popular classifieds site, made news this weekend when they blocked a contentious portion of their site: the section pitching "adult" services.

With summer coming to a symbolic end, we wanted to hear from you as we review the biggest news highlights. We asked you to summarize the summer of 2010 in six words. And we got a lot of clever responses from too short to too hot.

Angela from Oklahoma called to say:

"Way, way, way, way too short."

A listener from Atlanta wrote via text message:

"Hot as a penguin in Africa."

The history of economic development in the United States has always been connected to the messy business of opening up trade routes. Whether it was the Erie Canal, which for many threatened to cut through their quaint home towns, or the thousands of miles of railroad track and highways strewn across the country, the same has been true: new transportation routes brought development, shipping and a lot of change.

A case involving the royal family and one of England's biggest tabloids, News of the World, has resurfaced. In 2005, two newspaper employees were charged with hacking into voicemails, but Scotland Yard didn't pursue the case any further. However, new reports reveal that there may have been a culture of hacking at the paper.

Every year, children go back to school and are asked to write essays on what they did over the summer. As Labor Day approaches, we’re doing the same, with a look at the standout stories we covered over the past few months; from the oil gusher to the economy to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the heat wave.

We're asking you: What event defined the summer for you, personally and in the news? Leave your six-word summary in the comments or text TAKE and your summary to 69866!

Police trucks and barbed wire are being used to secure the main branch of Kabul Bank to prevent a run on the bank, which has had $500 million withdrawn since fears of the institution's collapse began to spread last week. In response, authorities at the bank have frozen the assets of the bank's prinicpal owners; and the Afghan Central Bank is working with the U.S. Treasury Department to outline a rescue strategy. The New York Times foreign correspondent, Dexter Filkins explains whether the bank is really at risk of collapsing and how this crisis affects the country.