AP - New data from a public health registry that tracks the health effects of 9/11 suggest that as many as 70,000 people may have developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the terrorist attacks.

AP - A scandal involving sex, drugs and — uh, offshore oil drilling. It's a strange mix, and it couldn't have come at a worse time for those in Congress pressing to expand oil and gas development off America's beaches while trying to stave off an election-year rush by Democrats to impose new taxes and royalties on the oil industry.

AP - North Korea's Kim Jong Il had brain surgery after a stroke last month and could have partial paralysis, media reported Thursday, after the South Korean government said he remained in control of his country.

AP - The seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks is supposed to bring the heated presidential race to a screeching halt. But just for a day.

AP - Pakistan's military chief has criticized U.S. cross-border raids from Afghanistan, saying his country's sovereignty will be defended and warning that the assaults could stoke militancy.

AP - President Bush is observing the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on Thursday at a time when he's having to dispatch more U.S. troops to fight rising violence in Afghanistan, the launch site for al-Qaida's assault on America.

AP - Gleaming skyscrapers, the nation's biggest refinery and NASA's Johnson Space Center lie in areas that could be vulnerable to wind and damaging floodwaters if Hurricane Ike crashes ashore as a major hurricane.

AFP - Negotiators for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai opened new power-sharing talks Wednesday amid new optimism for a deal to end the country's crisis.

AFP - North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has suffered a stroke but is still able to run the country and will recover, South Korea's intelligence agency told parliament Wednesday.

Reuters - The U.S. subprime-mortgage crisis has now spurred more federal lawsuits than the savings and loan debacle of the late 1980s and early 1990s ever did, data released on Wednesday shows.

Reuters - On the morning of September 11, 2001, Patrick Smith was walking toward a television set in a Pentagon office to get news of the attacks on New York's World Trade Center when he heard a loud boom.

Reuters - Lawyers for U.S. Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho asked a Minnesota Court on Wednesday to void the guilty plea he made following his arrest last year in a men's toilet sex-sting operation.

Reuters - North Korea dismissed reports on Wednesday that leader Kim Jong-il might be seriously ill, a development that could trigger a power shift in Asia's only communist dynasty.

Reuters - The U.S. military conceded it was not winning the fight against an increasingly deadly insurgency in Afghanistan and said on Wednesday it would revise its strategy to combat militant safe havens in Pakistan.

Reuters - The U.S. presidential campaign erupted on Wednesday in a spat over gender politics, with John McCain accusing the Democrat of a sexist attack on his running mate and Barack Obama denouncing Republican "lies and phony outrage."