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Hello, I'm Mellissa Long, here at the CNN Center in Atlanta. It's Tuesday December 16th. Here is a look at some of the stories happening NOW IN THE NEWS.

President-elect Barack Obama wants to put the head of the Chicago school system in charge of the nation's education policy. Arne Duncan has run the country's third-largest public school district since 2001. During his tenure¹, test scores for Chicago students have gone up significantly. "So when Arne speaks to educators across America, it won't be from up in some ivory tower, but from the lessons he has learned during his years changing our schools from the bottom up. I remember a conversation we had about one of those lessons awhile back, we were talking about how he'd managed to increase the number of kids taking and passing AP courses in Chicago over the last few years, and he told me that in the end, the kids weren't any smarter than they were 3 years ago. Our expectations for them were just higher. " The president-elect announced the selection at Dodge² Renaissance³ Academy, one of the schools Duncan gets credit for turning around.

Impeachment⁴ discussions, the Illinois House Committee formed a plan to discuss the fate of Governor Rod Blagojevich. The Democrat⁵ was arrested on federal corruption⁶ charges one week ago. Illinois lawmakers voted to form this committee that could potentially remove the governor from office. Now Blagojevich isn't saying anything publicly about the scandal surrounding him. His defense⁷ attorney says he doesn't believe the governor will resign.

The White House is signaling a short-term help is on the way for General Motors and Chrysler. But so far, there's no firm announcement. Coming back from his trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush said bankruptcy⁸ for the auto⁹ industry "could be devastating¹⁰ for the economy". GM and Chrysler have said that they could run out of cash within weeks without support from the government.

Investors¹¹ are keeping a close eye on the Federal Reserve's two-day meeting it wraps up this afternoon. The Fed is expected to make an announcement on interest rates next hour. Some economists¹² think that Fed will cut rates by half a percentage point in order to help ease the economy. That would take interest rates to a half a percent, that would be the lowest level since July, 1954.

In Israel, a deadly tourist bus accident, at least 22 Russians were killed when their bus flipped¹³ over and plunged¹⁴ some 200-feet down of a ravine. Nearly 3 dozen others were injured when that accident happened near a Red Sea resort. The group had just arrived in Israel from St. Petersburg on holiday.

Dynamite¹⁵ in a Paris department store had shoppers evacuating¹⁶ in the middle of Paris. Hundreds of shoppers left Printemps，after sticks of dynamite were found in a bathroom. The group demanding that French troops leave Afghanistan claiming responsibility and the dynamite wasn't actually rigged to explode, but this group has warned they would return if French authorities don't meet that February deadline.

Those are the headlines making news at this hour. Do stay with CNN and CNN. com for more on these stories and other news of the day.