Reuters - President George W. Bush secretly approved orders in July allowing U.S. special forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without approval from the Pakistan government, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

Reuters - Hurricane Ike gathered strength as it churned through the Gulf of Mexico's warm waters on Thursday on a track that would skirt the heart of the U.S. offshore oil patch before slamming into the Texas coast on Saturday.

AP - Carlos Pena hit a three-run homer in the 14th inning, then Tampa Bay reliever Jason Hammel escaped a major jam Wednesday night to give the AL East-leading Rays a 4-2 win over the Boston Red Sox.

AP - Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has presented its rescue plan, now it has to convince Wall Street it can make good on its promises.

AP - How's this for a twist: Of all the No. 1 songs in the 50 years of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, Chubby Checker's "The Twist" ranks as the most popular single.

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.