AP - With gasoline topping $4 a gallon, President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to lift its long-standing ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, saying the United States needs to increase its energy production. Democrats quickly rejected the idea.

AP - Tiger Woods is done for the year, but not without one last major that he said might have been his best ever.

AP - Stocks tumbled Wednesday amid renewed concerns about the financial sector and after FedEx Corp. warned that weakening demand and surging fuel costs would weigh on fiscal 2009 profits. The Dow Jones industrial average fell below the 12,000 mark for the first time since mid-March and, along with the other major indexes, showed a decline of more than 1 percent.

AP - Palestinian militants launched at least 50 rockets and mortars from Gaza and Israel responded with airstrikes on Wednesday, just a day before a truce was set to take effect, illustrating how fragile the arrangement between Israel and Hamas would be.

AFP - Israel confirmed on Wednesday that it had agreed to a truce in and around Gaza but showed little enthusiasm for the Egyptian-brokered deal with Hamas, which it boycotts as a terror group.

AFP - Afghan forces backed up by Canadian NATO troops pushed into villages near the strategic city of Kandahar in a major "clean-up" operation to drive out entrenched Taliban rebels.

Reuters - Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples rushed to wed on Tuesday on the first full day that same-sex marriages were allowed across California, filling city halls with cheers -- and politics.

Reuters - The Boston Celtics captured a record 17th NBA championship by trouncing the Los Angeles Lakers 131-92 on Tuesday to seal the best-of-seven title series 4-2.

Reuters - South African President Thabo Mbeki will meet Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe on Wednesday for talks ahead of next week's presidential election run-off, Mbeki's spokesman said.

Reuters - Israel said on Wednesday it accepted an Egyptian-brokered truce with Hamas Islamists ruling the Gaza Strip but voiced skepticism the ceasefire involving all Palestinian militant groups in the territory would hold.

Reuters - The Olympic torch was paraded on Wednesday through China's sensitive former Silk Road city of Kashgar, home to ethnic-minority Muslim Uighurs, under the scrutiny of soldiers and choreographed cheering crowds.

Reuters - A meeting between the Indian government and its communist allies to break a deadlock over a controversial nuclear deal with the United States has been postponed, a senior communist leader said on Wednesday.

Reuters - The Mississippi River surged up through storm drains and flooded part of an eastern Iowa river town on Tuesday as the worst Midwest floods in 15 years ruined cropland and drove up world food prices.

Reuters - The Afghan army launched an operation on Wednesday to drive Taliban insurgents from villages on the outskirts of Kandahar city in the south , the defense ministry said, but gave no details.

AP - Snow White, Dorothy Gale, the HAL 9000 computer, Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp and Marlon Brando's Godfather share top billing among the American Film Institute's best genre movies.