AP - The government pledged Wednesday to tighten Finland's gun laws and keep mentally unstable people from obtaining firearms following the country's second school massacre in less than a year.

AP - North Korea barred U.N. nuclear inspectors from its main plutonium reprocessing plant Wednesday and within a week plans to reactivate the facility that once provided the fissile material for its atomic test explosion, a senior U.N. nuclear inspector said.

AFP - Asian economic growth will slow at some point but demand for raw materials from countries such as China is expected to continue, the chairman of the world's largest mining company said Wednesday.

Reuters - China has brought a tainted milk scandal in which thousands of children fell ill with kidney stones under control, a senior official said on Wednesday, as Premier Wen Jiabao vowed tougher controls.

AP - As of Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008, at least 4,170 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

AFP - The Bank of England on Wednesday made an additional 21.5 billion pounds available to financial institutions on a short-term loan basis.

AP - A police official says a bomb blast in the capital has wounded Kabul's chief criminal investigator.

AP - China on Wednesday pledged strong action in dealing with the widening scandal over tainted milk and issued an apology to consumers in Taiwan as an increasing number of countries boosted testing of Chinese food imports.

AP - The Pakistani army said Wednesday it found the wreckage of a suspected U.S. spy plane near the Afghan border, but blamed a malfunction — not ground fire — for the crash.

AP - The Finnish prime minister says he will push for stricter gun laws following a school massacre in western Finland which killed 11 people.

AP - Outspoken conservative Taro Aso took power as Japan's prime minister on Wednesday after he overcame opposition forces in a split parliament, tasked with rejuvenating the ailing ruling party ahead of elections.

AP - An energy company's decision to cut off electricity to a New Zealand woman's home because of an unpaid bill contributed to her death from morbid obesity, a coroner's court ruled Tuesday.

AP - Nomura, Japan's largest brokerage, said Tuesday it would buy the European and Middle Eastern operations of Lehman Brothers — just a day after disclosing it had acquired the Asian units of the failed U.S. investment bank.