AP - President-elect Barack Obama promised the voters change but has started his Cabinet selection process by naming several Washington insiders to top posts.

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 - A plan to give troubled U.S. automakers billions of dollars in government-backed loans is on life support, leaving the fate of hundreds of thousands of workers and Detroit's once-venerable car companies hanging in the balance.

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 - 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 - Astronauts vowed to double-check, even triple-check, to make sure a bag of tools is properly tied down during a spacewalk Thursday so it doesn't float away like one did earlier this week.

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 - Global economic misery spread on Thursday with the Federal Reserve predicting U.S. recession well into 2009, Japan's exports to Asia falling for the first time in six years and another sharp sell-off on global equity markets.

Reuters - A 6 percent fall in Asia pushed world stocks to their lowest in 5- years on Thursday, while oil fell below $53 and safe havens such as the yen gained on fears the global recession and a financial crisis will get 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 - 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 - A Missouri woman established a fake identity online to torment a vulnerable teenage girl who later committed suicide, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday in a trial that is being closely watched by the burgeoning social networking industry.

Reuters - Oil fell for a fifth straight session to approach $50 a barrel on Thursday as the fallout from the credit crisis hits the global economy, hitting demand for fuel.

AFP - Global markets suffered fresh turmoil Thursday, with Asian stocks plunging as a sharp drop in Japanese exports added to gloom about the outlook for the faltering global economy.

AFP - Russia announced Thursday it would send more warships to combat piracy in the waters around Somalia, as the Saudi owners of the Sirius Star negotiated with the pirates holding their oil tanker.