Mark Memmott

The Texas judge who sparked national outrage earlier this month when he was seen on video beating his then-16-year-old daughter has been suspended with pay while authorities continue their investigation, the Texas Supreme Court has announced.

He's said he'd do something like this before and then not followed through. So keep that in mind when you hear that:

"Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen, has arrived in Saudi Arabia to sign a Gulf power-transfer initiative brokered by the six-member Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), the country's state television has reported." (Al-Jazeera)

Yemen's Foreign Press office has released this statement:

It's Day 5 of the renewed protests in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt.

Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was an adviser and fundraiser for convicted former Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) and also raised money for then-state Sen. Barack Obama before Obama's election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, was sentenced today to serve seven more years in prison.

A small group of Occupy Wall Street supporters who have taken two weeks to walk from New York to Washington, D.C., arrived in the nation's capital today, The Washington Post reports. They're hoping to temporarily occupy a patch of land on the National Mall.

That's one bit of Occupy-related news today. Others:

"I have requested PM Gilani to accept my resignation as Pakistan Ambasssador to US," Husain Haqqani just wrote on his Twitter page.

And he followed that with this statement: "I have much to contribute to building a new Pakistan free of bigotry & intolerance. Will focus energies on that."

Who would want to play "4.74 Degrees of Kevin Bacon?"

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Crowd Gathering Again In Cairo, But Outside Square Life Is Normal

-- Economy Grew Less Than Previously Thought In Third Quarter.

The U.S. economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis just reported.

That's a downward revision from BEA's original estimate of 2.5 percent growth. The agency will issue one more estimate for the quarter on Dec. 22.