Fresh after battling to a near draw on Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) returned to Washington to vote on an economic stimulus program, which failed. Clinton and Obama both voted in favor of the bill. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) missed the vote.

McCain told Britain’s Daily Telegraph he regretted the British withdrawal from southern Iraq. Still, he said, the region has remained “relatively quiet” since the change, despite “significant Iranian penetration down there” and “cooperation between the Mahdi army and the Badr Brigades.”

Residents of Obama’s ancestral village in Kenya are paying close attention to the U.S. presidential race, Reuters reports. “Obama is American but also Kenyan,” said Obama’s grandmother. “If he wins I would want him to help Kenya as well, not just me and not just the village but the whole country and the entire world.”