Reuters - A revised $700 billion U.S. financial bailout plan is significantly more likely to pass Congress, the White House said Wednesday, as European leaders scrambled to agree on their own bank rescue package.

AP - The parents of a baby allegedly sickened by tainted infant formula are suing the dairy at the heart of China's contaminated milk scandal, state media reported, as 15 more companies were accused Wednesday of producing spiked products.

AP - A suspected U.S. missile strike on a Taliban commander's home in Pakistan killed six people, officials said Wednesday, a possible indication that Washington was moving ahead with cross-border raids despite protests from the new government.

AP - President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia will fulfill its promise to withdraw troops from areas of Georgia outside two separatist regions.

AP - Somalia will allow foreign powers to use force if necessary against pirates who are holding a ship loaded with tanks for US$20 million ransom, raising the stakes for bandits who are facing off against the United States and soon Moscow on the high seas.

AFP - Australia's competition watchdog said Wednesday it will not oppose BHP Billiton's 120 billion US dollar takeover bid for rival Rio Tinto, saying the deal was unlikely to substantially lessen competition.

AFP - South and North Korea have agreed to hold military talks this week amid a deadlocked nuclear disarmament deal, the South Korean defence ministry said Wednesday.

AFP - Libyans are shaking off decades of deprivation resulting from an iron-fisted socialist rule, international isolation and sanctions to savour the joys of their new market economy.

AP - As of Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008, at least 4,176 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 - Smokers buying cigarettes will from Wednesday be confronted with a series of gruesome images printed on the packets showing how tobacco damages health.

AP - For years, the only thing sold openly in Saudi stores selling women's cloaks were of the all-black, drab covering variety. Now, streaks of vibrant color, bands of glittering crystal — even sheaths of sexy leopard skin prints — are showing up on the racks.

AP - A senior campaign staffer for the governing Conservative Party resigned Tuesday after admitting he wrote a speech for Prime Minister Stephen Harper that plagiarized another leader's address urging support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

AP - Russian troops have allowed a group of European Union monitors to enter a buffer zone on the edge of Georgia's separatist province of South Ossetia despite an earlier warning to them to stay out of the area.