Reuters - A potential mistrial was avoided in the first Guantanamo trial on Tuesday when the U.S. military judge ruled it was too late to challenge his war crimes instructions to the jury deliberating the case of Osama bin Laden's driver.

Reuters - U.S. President George W. Bush and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak pressed North Korea on Wednesday to agree on a verification plan for its nuclear weapons program or continue to face international isolation.

Reuters - Euphoric crowds chanting "Go Olympics, Go Beijing" cheered the Olympic flame through Tiananmen Square on Wednesday at the end of its troubled global relay.

AP - Fans chanting "Bring Back Brett!" distracted them during practice on Tuesday. Well before that, the constant media questions were wearing thin on them.

AP - For a second straight meeting, the Federal Reserve has decided to remain on the sidelines and leave interest rates alone. In the opinion of many economists, that stance may prevail not only for the rest of this year but well into 2009.

AP - Attention, America: Paris has spoken. Paris Hilton, the blonde, doe-eyed celebrity thrust into the presidential campaign in an ad by Republican candidate John McCain, issued a tart rebuttal Tuesday, albeit in a scantily clad, tongue-in-cheek kind of way.

AP - Republican presidential candidate John McCain opposes the $300 billion farm bill and subsidies for ethanol, positions that both supporters and opponents say might cost him votes he needs in the upper Midwest this November.

AP - The last survivor of the deadliest mountaineering disaster ever to hit the world's second-highest peak was rescued by helicopter Wednesday, nearly five days after the tragedy, a Pakistani army spokesman said.

AP - The collapse of the Crandall Canyon mine one year ago was so extensive, federal officials found no other mining disaster in the last 50 years to compare to it.

AP - A suspected cholera outbreak in a remote southern Philippine township has killed 21 people and sickened at least 50 others, the mayor and the Red Cross said Wednesday.

AP - A Mexican-born condemned prisoner was executed Tuesday night for the rape and murder of two teenage girls 15 years ago after a divided U.S. Supreme Court rejected his request for a reprieve.

AP - The case of the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people in 2001 and alarmed a nation already traumatized by the Sept. 11 terror attacks has been solved — but will remain open for now to wrap up legal and investigative loose ends, U.S. officials said.

AP - President Bush offered poverty-wracked North Korea hope Wednesday that it could share in South Korea's economic prosperity, while warning that it first must take concrete steps to live up to a promise to end its nuclear weapons program.

AFP - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin led hundreds of mourners paying last respects Tuesday to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the dissident writer who chronicled the horror of the Soviet prison camps.

AFP - China declared Tuesday it could guarantee a safe Olympics, even as it announced that Islamic militants were trying to wage a holy war aimed at destroying the Beijing Games that begin in three days.