National and International News-Thursday, Dec. 21st

DENVER (AP) - Roads are closed in a number of states and so is Denver's airport as a major snowstorm blasts through the region. As many as three-thousand passengers are stranded at Denver International Airport.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U-S Defense Secretary Robert Gates is spending another day in Iraq assessing the situation there before reporting on it to President Bush. He has been hearing doubts from war commanders about what could be accomplished by a possible increase of U-S troops in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The U-S military says a roadside bomb and combat injuries have claimed three American lives in Iraq. Meantime, police say at least 14 people have been killed and 21 wounded by a suicide bomber who struck a group of police volunteers at a police academy in eastern Baghdad.

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Officials at Camp Pendleton, California, have scheduled a briefing to announce charges against as many as eight Marines in the shooting deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in November of 2005. It's the biggest U-S criminal case to emerge from
the war in terms of people killed.

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - New Jersey is about to become the fifth state to grant gay couples all the rights and responsibilities of marriage. The governor plans to sign the civil union legislation during a ceremony in Trenton this morning. The law is in response to a state Supreme Court ruling.