AP - A Democratic Congress, unwilling or unable to approve a $25 billion bailout for Detroit's Big Three, appears ready to punt the automakers' fate to a lame-duck Republican president.

AP - Pounded by a fierce financial crisis, the country is sinking deeper into economic despair and is likely to be in the hole well into next year, forcing more Americans into the ranks of the unemployed.

AP - California's highest court agreed Wednesday to hear several legal challenges to the state's new ban on same-sex marriage but refused to allow gay couples to resume marrying before it rules.

AP - Barack Obama is enlisting former Senate leader Tom Daschle as his health secretary, embracing a third Washington insider in the early stages of Cabinet-building by the president-elect who promised change. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the capital's most famous woman for two decades, seemed ever more likely to be his secretary of state.

AP - Animals and plants in danger of becoming extinct could lose the protection of government experts who make sure that dams, highways and other projects don't pose a threat, under regulations the Bush administration is set to put in place before President-elect Obama can reverse them.

AP - A Texas judge has set a Friday arraignment for Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others named in indictments accusing them of responsibility for prisoner abuse in a federal detention center.

AP - The astronaut who lost her tool bag on a spacewalk admitted Wednesday that she made a mistake by not checking to see if the sack was tied down, and said she's still smarting over the whole thing.

AP - King Herod may have been buried in a crypt with lavish Roman-style wall paintings of a kind previously unseen in the Middle East, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday. The scientists found such paintings and signs of a regal two-story mausoleum, bolstering their conviction that the ancient Jewish monarch was buried there.

AP - Paris Hilton and her boyfriend of nine months, Benji Madden, have broken up.

AP - The Dallas Mavericks didn't need Josh Howard as much as the Houston Rockets missed Yao Ming on Wednesday night.

Reuters - A rout in Asia pushed world stocks to their lowest in 5- years on Thursday, while oil fell to below $53 a barrel and safe havens such as the yen gained as economic data indicated a global recession could get even uglier.

Reuters - Chances dimmed that a last-minute plan being crafted by Republican senators, with White House support, to provide $25 billion to bail out U.S. automakers would receive enough backing from Democrats to pass before the end of this week.

Reuters - The U.S. financial system still needs at least $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion of tangible common equity to restore confidence and improve liquidity in the credit markets, Friedman Billings Ramsey analyst Paul Miller said.

Reuters - Federal Reserve officials slashed economic growth forecasts through 2009 and some believed even deeper interest rate cuts may be needed if growth slows further, minutes of their October policy meeting show.

Reuters - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's top choice to lead the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing multiple sources.

Reuters - California's Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a legal challenge against the state's voter-approved ban on gay marriage and let the ban stand in the meantime.

Reuters - Wall Street's pain is rippling through U.S. small businesses, as bankers who once pulled in million-dollar bonuses lose their jobs and cut back spending on everything from parties to home improvements.

AFP - Asian stocks tumbled Thursday as global economic gloom deepened following a plunge in Japanese exports and a warning from the Federal Reserve that the United States could be in recession next year.

AFP - The Saudi owners of the Sirius Star are in negotiations with Somali pirates who have demanded a ransom for the super-tanker laden with 100 million dollars of oil they hijacked at the weekend.