AFP - US President Barack Obama Wednesday sought to box in his Republican foes on the economy, as the lagging recovery and crippling unemployment threaten Democrats with a mid-term election meltdown.

Reuters - President Barack Obama, fighting to keep Democrats in charge of Congress, will push his latest plan to kick-start the economy on Wednesday and set up an election-year battle with Republicans over Bush-era tax cuts.

AP - The hidden face of the Emirates' economic crunch is in places such as Industrial Zone 18 and the ramshackle compound for about 700 migrant workers within. For more than six months, they have lived on charity, fought off rats and slept amid piles of trash after a construction company abruptly closed and left them jobless.

AFP - Pakistan's cricket chief stressed Wednesday that British police had yet to charge any of the three players accused of spot-fixing and said there was "zero tolerance" against corruption.

AP - Suddenly, the race for Chicago mayor is on. Mayor Richard M. Daley has thrown the competition for the city's top job wide open by announcing he won't run for a seventh term, ending 21 years of token opposition and prompting speculation about who's next in line to lead the nation's third largest city.

AP - Suddenly, the race for Chicago mayor is on. Mayor Richard M. Daley has thrown the competition for the city's top job wide open by announcing he won't run for a seventh term, ending 21 years of token opposition and prompting speculation about who's next in line to lead the nation's third largest city.

AP - Afghan election officials said Wednesday that scores of additional polling stations will be closed during the Sept. 18 parliamentary vote because of the deteriorating security situation in the country.

Reuters - The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose more than 1 percent in afternoon trading on Wednesday, while the Dow and Nasdaq added to gains as worries about Europe's banking system decreased, easing risk aversion.

AP - Fidel Castro's warnings of a looming war between the United States and Iran have Cuba buzzing with fears of nuclear Armageddon. But the revolutionary icon's alarming predictions have barely registered in the place where it might matter most: Iran.

AP - Wind-whipped flames swept through at least three Detroit neighborhoods, destroying dozens of homes, including many that were vacant, officials said.

AP - Oil prices followed stocks higher on Wednesday, as worries about European debt problems eased and buyers returned to the market.

AP - Authorities are searching for eight people who have not been accounted for as a wildfire tore through their neighborhoods this week.

AP - Most of the country will see a colder-than-usual winter while summer and spring will be relatively cool and dry, according to the time-honored, complex calculations of the "Old Farmer's Almanac."

AP - The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said Wednesday he was determined to go through with his plan to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, despite pressure from the White House, religious leaders and others to call it off.

AP - The FBI on Wednesday was trying to determine whether a passenger staged a bomb hoax that prompted a search of a Thai Airways jetliner at Los Angeles International Airport.

AP - In an internal report released Wednesday, BP blames itself, other companies' workers and a complex series of failures for the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the drilling rig explosion that preceded it.

AP - Its power spent, what was left of Tropical Storm Hermine made its way north Wednesday, drenching a large swath of Texas and prompting a search for possible flood victims near Austin.

AP - The senior Sinn Fein politician in Northern Ireland's government acknowledged Wednesday that he did meet a Catholic priest responsible for a 1972 triple car bombing that killed nine civilians but insisted they never discussed the IRA attack.

AFP - The European Union said Wednesday it had suspended a request at the World Trade Organization for the right to impose sanctions on Washington over a controversial US anti-dumping calculation.

AP - Seldom visible in the Yemeni mountains, the elite U.S. commandos training the Yemen's military represent the Obama administration's quest to fight terrorism without inflaming anti-American sentiment.