Reuters - Americans remain gloomy about the future but feel marginally better this month as they adjust to high gas prices and a faltering economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Reuters - President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged Congress to end a ban on offshore oil drilling, responding to consumer anxiety over record-high gasoline prices with a plan sure to anger environmentalists.

Reuters - Democrat Barack Obama has a narrow 5-point lead on Republican John McCain in the U.S. presidential race, but holds a big early edge with the crucial swing voting blocs of independents and women, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Reuters - The swollen Mississippi River ran over the top of at least nine more levees on Wednesday as floodwaters swallowed up more U.S. farmland, feeding inflation fears as corn prices soared to record highs.

AP - Sprint Nextel Corp. will be taking on the iPhone with a lower price for its own touch-screen smart phone, the Samsung Instinct.

AP - The crowd at Tim Russert's funeral Wednesday would have made a great panel on his Sunday morning news show.

AP - Michelle Obama said Wednesday she was "touched" that first lady Laura Bush came to her defense after she was harshly criticized by Republicans for her February comment that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of the United States.

AP - The federal government said Wednesday that 20 to 30 more levees may overflow the Mississippi River from Burlington, Iowa down to St. Louis.

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.