AP - Residents, tourists and oil workers fled as Gustav swamped Jamaica on Thursday, leaving 59 people dead in its wake. Louisiana and Texas put their national guards on standby, and New Orleans said a mandatory evacuation might be necessary.
Reuters - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan
Karadzic is being asked for a second time on Friday to enter a
plea at a U.N. tribunal for charges of war crimes and crimes
against humanity in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Reuters - Tropical Storm Gustav hit Jamaica with
near hurricane-force winds on Thursday after killing at least
59 people elsewhere in the Caribbean, and was on a path to
reach New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico oil fields as
potentially a powerful hurricane.
AFP - Barack Obama was Thursday to summon America to join his crusade for change, as the Democratic convention climaxes in a historic echo of Martin Luther King's" "I have a dream" speech.
AP - Wall Street barreled higher Thursday after a better-than-expected reading on the gross domestic product and a drop in jobless claims gave investors some reassurance that the economy is holding up. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped more than 200 points.
AP - With Gustav approaching hurricane strength and showing no signs of veering off a track to slam into the Gulf Coast, authorities across the region began laying the groundwork Thursday to get the sick, elderly and poor away from the shoreline.
Reuters - Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc
is looking at cutting some 1,200 jobs in its latest round of
cost cutting, a person familiar with the matter said, as weak
financial markets spur layoffs across Wall Street.
AP - It seems like an easy solution: Americans are looking for more fuel-efficient vehicles, so Ford Motor Co. is bringing over some of the small, gas-sipping cars it's been selling to Europeans for years.
AP - Afghan officials said Thursday that a deadly U.S.-led special forces raid on a remote western village last week was based on misleading information provided by a rival clan.
AP - An art museum in northern Italy said Thursday it will continue displaying a sculpture portraying a green frog nailed to a cross that has angered Pope Benedict XVI and local officials.
AP - Venus Williams and James Blake kept favorites on the fast track at the U.S. Open, with top-seeded Rafael Nadal and Ana Ivanovic hoping to join them later Thursday in reaching the third round.
Reuters - Top U.S. and Pakistani military
officials met this week on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the
Indian Ocean to discuss the presence of militant safe havens in
Pakistan and their role in Afghan violence, officials said on
Thursday.
AFP - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Washington on Thursday of manufacturing the Georgia conflict as tensions mounted with the United States threatening to scrap a nuclear deal in protest at Moscow's actions.
Reuters - Democrats prepared a grand spectacle on
Thursday to celebrate the historic presidential nomination of
Barack Obama, who will take the party reins with a speech that
spells out his vision for change in America.
Reuters - A U.S. appeals court has upheld the
dismissal of criminal charges against 13 former executives at
KPMG, saying prosecutors violated the defendants' rights by
pressuring the accounting firm not to pay their legal bills.
Reuters - An outbreak of an unusual strain of
Salmonella that sickened more than 1,400 people and put 286 in
the hospital appears to be over in the United States, federal
health officials said on Thursday.
Reuters - Russia faced diplomatic
isolation over its military action against Georgia on Thursday,
with its Asian allies failing to offer support and France
saying EU leaders were considering sanctions.
AP - Barack Obama, standing where no black has ever stood before, swept to the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday as thousands of national convention delegates cheered his improbable triumph.
Reuters - U.S. Sen. Barack Obama won the
Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday, making history
as the first black candidate picked to lead a major American
political party.
AP - Union bosses in this region of rural Mississippi have long grumbled that the largest factories here hire illegal immigrants, and that the immigrants were starting to get more overtime and supervisory positions.
Reuters - Tropical Storm Gustav pulled
away from Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Wednesday after
killing 23 people and threatened to become a major hurricane
aimed at New Orleans and Gulf of Mexico oil fields.
AP - Jelena Jankovic's leg cramped so badly, she couldn't take another step. Luckily for the No. 2 seed in the U.S. Open, the agony occurred during her post-match run on the treadmill. Anyone who watched could clearly see she left about everything she had out on the court.
AP - Wall Street posted a sizable advance Wednesday after the government reported a larger-than-expected increase in orders for big-ticket manufactured goods that indicated the economy could be stronger than some investors thought.
AP - Western leaders warned Russia on Wednesday to "change course," hoping to keep a conflict that already threatens a key nuclear pact and could even raise U.S. chicken prices from blossoming into a new Cold War.
Reuters - The top U.S. Marine officer said on
Wednesday he could reduce his 25,000-strong force in the former
al Qaeda stronghold of Iraq's Anbar province to reinforce
military operations against a growing Taliban threat in
Afghanistan.
AP - Conditions in the western Iraqi province of Anbar, where a brutal insurgency once ruled, have improved so dramatically that the United States is handing over responsibility for security in the Sunni stronghold to Iraq within days. Troops freed up in Iraq could shift to Afghanistan.
AP - Police say rap music mogul Marion "Suge" Knight is in a Las Vegas jail on drug and assault charges after he was accused of beating his girlfriend while brandishing a knife.
AP - Talk about an extreme makeover: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.
AFP - Russia accused the West on Wednesday of ratcheting up tensions in the Black Sea with an increased NATO naval presence and warned against isolating Moscow over the conflict in Georgia.
