AP - A student fatally shot a 16-year-old classmate during a dispute Thursday at a Knoxville high school, as other teenagers watched in horror as the victim clutched his chest and fell to the floor.

AP - Tyson Gay stuck his left hand behind him, waiting to feel the red baton's cool metal make contact.

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.