Reuters - Jobless claims jumped last week and the pace of existing home sales tumbled to a 10-year low as slowing growth hit hiring and a glut of unsold homes weighed on the real estate market, data on Thursday showed.

Reuters - U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama urged Europe on Thursday to stand by the United States in bringing stability to Afghanistan and confronting other threats from climate change to nuclear proliferation.

AP - Carlos Delgado hit a tiebreaking, two-run double in the eighth inning and Oliver Perez stifled the Philadelphia Phillies again, helping the New York Mets earn a 3-1 win Thursday that gave them sole possession of first place in the NL East.

AP - Japanese and Mongolian scientists have successfully recovered the complete skeleton of a 70-million-year-old young dinosaur, a nature museum announced Thursday.

AP - Batman star Christian Bale asked for privacy Thursday in his first comments since allegations he assaulted his mother and sister at a London hotel, saying the incident was personal.

AP - About 2 million Americans get a raise Thursday as the federal minimum wage rises 70 cents. The bad news: Higher gas and food prices are swallowing it up, and some small businesses will pass the cost of the wage hike to consumers.

AP - Sales of existing homes fell more sharply than expected in June as the housing industry continued to be bruised by the worst slump in more than two decades.

AP - Ford Motor Co. posted the worst quarterly performance in its history Thursday, losing $8.67 billion in the second quarter.

AP - Before the largest crowd of his campaign, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Thursday summoned Europeans and Americans together to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it" as surely as they conquered communism a generation ago.

AP - Residents across south Texas slogged through knee-deep muddy waters, tiptoed around downed power lines and dug through debris Thursday, but were thankful that Hurricane Dolly didn't pack the wallop they had feared.

AFP - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday called for a peaceful resolution to a dangerous border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia as Asia's main security talks were held here.

AFP - US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama arrived in Germany from Israel on Thursday at the start of the European leg of his week-long international tour.

Reuters - U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Wednesday he had rejected a request from lawmakers that an outside special counsel investigate the case of a Canadian taken off a plane in New York and sent to Syria, where he says he was tortured.

Reuters - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday after talks with North Korea that she believed Pyongyang was under no "illusions" it had to agree to a strong mechanism to verify its nuclear activities.