AP - Baseball umpires and management signed an agreement Wednesday that will allow the sport to start using instant replay to help determine calls on the field. Major League Baseball still hasn't determined when the use of replays will start.

AP - Sheryl Crow is giving away free music — a tactic she calls the "Tupperware" party approach to inspiring young people to vote.

AP - U.S.-led coalition troops battled a group of militants in eastern Afghanistan, killing over 30 insurgents, while three NATO soldiers were killed in a roadside blast elsewhere, officials said Thursday.

AP - Democratic U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the first black woman to represent Ohio in Congress and a strong critic of the Iraq war, died Wednesday after a brain hemorrhage, a hospital spokeswoman said.

AP - China is hoping that American college students watching the Summer Olympics will want to travel there, providing a bump similar to what Australia and Greece enjoyed in 2000 and 2004.

AP - Democratic dominance in presidential elections has been the norm for decades throughout much of the country's union-strong industrial Great Lakes region.

AP - Spain began three days of mourning Thursday for the 153 people who died when a jetliner crashed shortly after takeoff in the nation's worst air disaster in nearly 25 years.

AP - Tropical Storm Fay lumbered offshore for what was likely to be a brief stay over the Atlantic Ocean's energizing waters after flooding hundreds of homes, trapping residents and leaving much of Florida a soggy mess.

AP - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew into Baghdad on Thursday for discussions with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi officials, hoping to iron out remaining differences in a U.S.-Iraq security deal that envisions the withdrawal of American troops.

AFP - Moscow moved closer Wednesday to recognising the independence of Georgian separatist regions, escalating a bruising international row over Russia's assault on the ex-Soviet republic.

AFP - A Spanish tourist jet carrying 173 people careered off a Madrid airport runway and broke up in flames on Wednesday killing at least 146 people, national radio reported.

Reuters - The U.S. military spoke out on Wednesday against a deadly Iraqi special forces raid on the governor's office in one of the country's most restive provinces, saying it was a "rogue operation."

Reuters - The United States and Poland signed a deal on Wednesday to station parts of a U.S. missile defense shield on Polish soil, drawing a sharp response from Moscow.