Reuters - President George W. Bush said on Wednesday that the United States was not planning to build new military bases in Africa and played down the risk of rivalry with China for influence on the continent.

Reuters - Talks to ease the conflict over Georgia's Moscow-backed breakaway regions were suspended until next month on Wednesday after diplomats failed to get Russia and Georgia to agree on who was allowed to take part.

AP - American soldiers killed the alleged No. 2 leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, a Moroccan who trained in Afghanistan, recruited foreign fighters and ran operations in northern Iraq where Sunni insurgents remain a potent threat, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

AP - The economy lurched deeper into the doldrums Wednesday and took the stock market down with it, sending the Dow Jones industrials to a staggering 733-point loss and erasing any hopes that the convulsions that have shaken Wall Street for a month were over.

AP - Prosecutors have DNA tests and hair samples. They have testimony about "the smell of death" in the trunk of the suspect's car. What they do not have is a body. Prosecutors building a case against a single 22-year-old Florida mother accused of killing her young daughter will have to rely on forensic evidence and persuade a jury that Casey Anthony lacks credibility and had a motive, legal experts say.

AP - John McCain sought to change the course of a campaign moving decidedly in Barack Obama's direction Wednesday night in the third and final presidential debate.