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Next week, President Obama is going to Asia, where he'll talk up a proposed deal to increase U.S. trade with that region.

If he succeeds, he could open up huge new markets for U.S. farmers and manufactures, strengthen U.S. influence in Asia and set a path to greater prosperity.

At least, that's what the White House says.

Critics say that cheery outlook is all wrong. They believe the Trans-Pacific Partnership would lead to environmental harm, more expensive prescription drugs and a less open Internet. Worst of all, the deal would have a "devastating impact" on U.S. jobs, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., says.

Everyone agrees on this: The TPP would be a big deal.

Such a trade pact would pull together the United States, Japan, Australia and nine other countries whose collective gross domestic product accounts for 40 percent of all the goods and services produced in the world. The deal would influence geopolitics, the economy and the future of global trade.

The Government Shutdown

Obama's Absence At Asia Summit Seen Hurting U.S. Trade

As darkness fell Friday in the Yellow Sea off South Korea's southern coast, there was still no good news to report about efforts to determine if any of the nearly 270 people missing since a passenger ferry capsized Wednesday might still be alive inside the sunken ship.

The overturned ship's keel, which had been floating just above the surface of the water, disappeared below the waves at day's end. Officials were trying to determine how best to deploy cranes, which are now at the scene, in an effort to raise the ferry. Families and rescuers are holding out hope that some of the missing might have found shelter in air pockets aboard the ferry.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren became an unlikely media star following the 2008 financial crisis.

She was a plainspoken law professor from Harvard, who advocated on behalf of families and consumers affected by the Wall Street meltdown.

Warren was brought to Washington to help monitor the multibillion-dollar bank bailout package.

As part of that work, Warren helped to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a watchdog agency that oversees and enforces consumer finance laws.

Republican opposition kept Warren from being nominated as the bureau's director. Instead, President Obama and others urged her to run for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts that was held by Sen. Scott Brown. She won the seat in 2012.

Violence has reignited in western Iraq, with Islamist fighters taking over much of Anbar province three months ago. A renegade al-Qaida group has set up its headquarters in Fallujah – the city where hundreds of U.S. soldiers died a decade ago, trying to wrest it from insurgent control.

But this time, the enemy isn't the U.S. and it's not just extremists fighting. Ordinary Sunnis in Anbar, furious at what they call years of discrimination by the Shiite-dominated government, have joined the militants' battle against the Iraqi army.

There's another difference: This group has better training and weapons, drawing strength and fighters from the chaos across the border in Syria, where it is also active.

In northern Iraq, I meet a group of young men who are among the 400,000 people who have fled the fighting in Anbar.

They say their brothers, cousins and friends are among those fighting against the army in Anbar — not because they like al-Qaida, but because they hate the Iraqi army so much. They've heeded the call by tribal sheikhs that each family leave one son behind to fight.

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