AP - Savoring a rustic lunch of tuna salad, veal stew, and red wine, Benoit Gouez, chief vintner at Champagne house Moet & Chandon, took a long view of the financial crisis rocking the global economy.

AP - Two American journalists vacationing in Lebanon have not been heard from since Oct. 1 and are believed missing, the U.S. Embassy said Wednesday, appealing for information on their possible whereabouts.

AP - Two Americans and a U.S.-based Japanese scientist won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for research on a glowing jellyfish protein that revolutionized the ability to study disease and normal development in living organisms.

AP - Russian forces have pulled out from all but one disputed area outside the breakaway province of South Ossetia, a Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman said Wednesday.

AFP - Thirty-six passengers and crew were injured, some seriously, in a mid-air drama that forced a Qantas jetliner to make an emergency landing, the Australian carrier and police said on Tuesday.

AFP - China will continue to take part in multilateral talks on the Iranian and North Korean nuclear crises despite the country's objections to US plans to sell arms to Taiwan, a US state department official said on Tuesday.

AFP - The security situation in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region is deteriorating, and the UN-African Union force (UNAMID) struggling to maintain peace there is overstretched, UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned Tuesday.

AP - Tropical Storm Marco roared ashore on Mexico's Gulf coast with near-hurricane force winds on Tuesday, prompting a shutdown of some oil platforms.

AP - Turkish warplanes bombed suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq and southeast Turkey early Tuesday in retaliation for an attack that killed 17 soldiers, the Turkish military said.

Reuters - Britain's government is poised to announce a "comprehensive" rescue package for the banking system, the BBC reported on Tuesday, including the possibility of injecting capital into banks.

AP - To supporters, President Mamoun Abdul Gayoom is a hero who turned a poor nation of fishermen into a tourist paradise and the economic success story of South Asia.

AP - The Iraqi foreign minister said Tuesday it will require "bold political decisions" to resolve the major issue standing in the way of a deal allowing American troops to remain here next year — who would try U.S. troops accused of crimes.

AP - Two Japanese scientists and an American won the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for theoretical advances that help explain the behavior of the smallest particles of matter.

AP - Thai protesters demanding the government resign set fire to cars and threw bottles and metal barricades at police, who used tear gas to break through their blockade around Parliament Tuesday. At least one person was killed and more 350 were injured.

AP - Individual European governments issued a flurry of deposit guarantees to shore up their banks but fell short of any coordinated action Monday to deal with the crisis sweeping financial markets, even as stock markets crashed and the euro sank to its lowest level for over a year.