AP - Losing for the first time since 2000, the U.S. softball team was denied a chance for a fourth straight gold medal Thursday, beaten 3-1 by Japan in the sport's last appearance in the Olympics for at least eight years — and maybe for good.
AP - For a fourth weary day, Tropical Storm Fay continued its soggy march through Florida Thursday, forcing dozens more residents to flee floodwaters and even driving alligators and snakes out of their habitats and into streets.
AP - Two Taliban suicide bombers blew themselves up at the gates to a huge weapons factory near Pakistan's capital Thursday, killing at least 59 people and wounding 70 in one of the country's worst terrorist attacks.
AP - Iraq and the U.S. have reached preliminary agreement to withdraw American forces from Iraqi cities by next June, six years into the increasingly unpopular war, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Thursday after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
AFP - Georgia's South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions planned rallies Thursday to ask Russia for recognition as independent states, two weeks after Russian troops occupied both provinces.
AFP - Investigators on Thursday scoured the wreckage of a Spanish budget airline jet that broke up in flames after a failed take off from Madrid airport killing 153 people.
Reuters - A Dutchman who had been given only a
slim chance of survival after being diagnosed with leukemia won
one of the Olympics most grueling events on Thursday, the
marathon open-water swim.
Reuters - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Thursday and said
the United States and Iraq are close to a deal on the presence
of U.S. troops beyond this year.
Reuters - More than a dozen civilians have been
killed in an air strike by U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan's
eastern province of Laghman, two provincial officials said on
Thursday.
Reuters - Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc , Goldman
Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley may incur
further writedowns, mainly on their mortgage assets, said an
analyst at Citigroup, who cut his third-quarter outlook for the
U.S. investment banks.
Reuters - Assassinated Pakistani prime minister
Benazir Bhutto's widower emerged on Thursday as a likely
candidate to become the next president as a split loomed in the
ruling coalition led by his party.
Reuters - Democrat Barack Obama
and Republican John McCain dodged questions about their looming
vice presidential picks on Wednesday as they renewed their
battle over who has the best judgment on national security and
the economy.
Reuters - Grieving relatives and medical staff on
Thursday tried to identify the badly-burned bodies of victims
of the crash of a Spanish jet in which 153 people were killed
as it took off on a holiday flight from Madrid airport.
Reuters - A column of Russian armor
withdrew from central Georgia on Thursday in what the Defense
Ministry in Moscow said was the start of a pullback of forces,
Interfax reported.
