The Labor Department announced Friday that 200,000 jobs were created in December, and the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent. The new hiring came largely in transportation and warehousing. Tens of thousands of other people found jobs in retail and manufacturing.

"Could Typo Rewrite Caucus History?"

That's the headline at the website of Des Moines' KCCI-TV, which reports that one Republican from Iowa's Appanoose County thinks a miscount at a caucus attended by 53 people there might have mistakenly contributed to Mitt Romney's reported eight-vote victory over Rick Santorum.

Now that he's getting his moment at the front of the GOP pack, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is drawing the kind of scrutiny he's escaped during all those lonely months at the bottom of the polls.

This just in!  A summary of the entire Sandia bird count from leader Rebecca Gracey:

Dear Sandia Mountains CBC Participants,

The snow kept many of you from the locations you usually look for birds, but it brought some species that we had not seen on the count in many years to the plowed roadsides in the east mountains. These included the  Western Meadowlark, last reported in 2006, Horned Lark in 2007, and Red-winged Blackbird in 2005.

There were some great finds and a few misses. The finds included four species that had never been seen on the count before:

The nation's unemployment rate edged down to 8.5 percent — its lowest level in nearly three years — as 200,000 jobs were were added to payrolls, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported.

We'll add more details from the report shortly, so hit your "refresh" button to see our latest updates.

Update at 8:45 a.m. ET. Looking Back:

At 8.5 percent, the jobless rate is the lowest since February 2009's 8.3 percent.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Bomb Wreaks Death, Destruction In Damascus.

-- Penn State Ready To Name New Football Coach, ESPN Says.

-- Coming Up: December Jobs And Unemployment Report.

The most-anticipated story of the morning seems to be the December jobs and unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is due for release at 8:30 a.m. ET.

We'll post on the news as soon as possible after it's available.