Seventeen counts of murder. Six counts of assault and attempted murder. Those are the charges filed Friday against 38 year old Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. He’s the Washington-based soldier accused of killing 9 Afghan children and 8 adults in a massacre earlier this month. If convicted, he could face the death penalty. Correspondent Austin Jenkins explains the next step is an Article 32 hearing.

Religious beliefs and contraception collided today in the Idaho House of Representatives. a majority of state lawmakers voted to send a message to the President and U.S. Congress to reject a new birth control policy.

Former New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine directly ordered that $200 million from a segregated customer account be transfered to cover a $175 million overdraft in a London account. That's according to a memo (pdf) from the House Committee on Financial Services, which is scheduled to hold a hearing next week about the spectacular collapse of MF Global.

Jim Yong Kim, President Obama's nominee to be the leader of the World Bank, is an unconventional choice. As a global health expert, he's a medical doctor who helped start an international health organization. He currently serves as president of Dartmouth College.

"Despite its name, the World Bank is more than just a bank," Obama told reporters during the White House announcement Friday morning. "It's time for a development professional to lead the world's largest development agency."

Since 2009, Idaho lawmakers have tried, and failed, to pass a bill to ban texting while driving. Until today. Senators passed a ban this morning and sent it to Governor Butch Otter. The version that passed was watered down from the original legislation proposed earlier this session. Senator Jim Hammond, (R-Coeur d'Alene,), the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, explains.

Across the country, thousands of people skipped lunch Friday to protest what they see as a threat to religious liberties in the United States.

The protesters' specific complaint was the birth control mandate in the new health care law, but the discontent runs far deeper.

It didn't take much for the Rev. Pat Mahoney, an evangelical minister, to warm up the crowd in Washington. He gazed out at hundreds of people who filled the plaza in front of Kathleen Sebelius' office at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Major Christopher Ophardt at Lewis-McChord says it’s unclear at this point whether the pretrial hearing will happen in Washington or at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. That’s where Bales is currently being held. Ophardt acknowledged prosecutors at Lewis-McChord recently sent four Washington based soldiers to prison for killing Afghan civilians in 2010.