AP - Sen. Ted Stevens' election defeat marks the end of an era in which he held a commanding place in Alaska politics while wielding power on some of the most influential committees in Congress.

AP - Detroit's Big Three automakers are running out of time in their quest to convince skeptical lawmakers that Congress should throw them a $25 billion lifeline.

AP - The first black man elected U.S. president is poised to name Washington lawyer Eric Holder as the nation's first black attorney general — a historic appointment but one with some potential political problems over a 2001 pardon.

AP - A suspected U.S. missile strike hit a village deep inside Pakistani territory Wednesday, officials said, killing six alleged militants and indicating American willingness to pursue insurgents beyond Pakistan's lawless tribal regions.

AP - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton drew about 18 million votes as a presidential candidate. But that doesn't necessarily count for much in the Senate, where seniority rules, and so far not in her favor.

AP - With a trio of once-ferocious wildfires reduced to mostly embers, authorities in Southern California shifted their attention from the blazes to their causes, and said a group of careless college kids was behind the first of them.

AP - Flight controllers were revamping plans Wednesday for the remaining spacewalks planned during space shuttle Endeavour's visit to the international space station, after a crucial tool bag floated out to space during a repair trip.

AP - Doctors have given a woman a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own stem cells, eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs. "This technique has great promise," said Dr. Eric Genden, who did a similar transplant in 2005 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. That operation used both donor and recipient tissue. Only a handful of windpipe, or trachea, transplants have ever been done.

AP - Cody Linley won't be graduating "Dancing with the Stars." The 18-year-old "Hannah Montana" actor and his professional partner, Julianne Hough, were eliminated Tuesday from ABC's popular dancing competition.

AP - Before the Cavaliers' rout of New Jersey, LeBron James said he would not hesitate to leave Cleveland if another franchise offers him a better chance to win multiple NBA titles.

Reuters - Japan's No.3 bank sought to beef up its capital on Wednesday, markets fretted over the stricken U.S. car industry and Britain's central bank said it considered cutting rates even more dramatically than it did this month.

Reuters - World stocks and oil fell on Wednesday while government bonds and the yen gained as U.S. automakers begged for a bailout from Washington, adding to evidence that the credit crisis is crippling the real economy.

Reuters - An Indian warship destroyed a pirate ship in the Gulf of Aden and gunmen from Somalia seized two more vessels despite a large international naval presence off their lawless country.

Reuters - A suspected U.S. drone aircraft fired two missiles at a house in northwestern Pakistan Wednesday, killing at least four suspected foreign militants, intelligence officers and a government official said.

Reuters - China will impose a long-awaited fuel tax "very soon," the head of National Development and Reform Commission's (NDRC) Energy Research Institute said in comments reported on Tuesday by the China Daily.

Reuters - Congolese Tutsi rebels were pulling back south "in the hundreds" from frontline positions in North Kivu province in a gesture to support a United Nations peace initiative, a U.N. military spokesman said on Wednesday.

Reuters - Former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian returned to jail on Wednesday from almost three days of hospital care following a hunger strike, as supporters prepared to protest his arrest, which they call a political plot.

Reuters - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and members of Congress clashed on Tuesday over the best use for the $700-billion financial bailout fund, with lawmakers demanding money to stem a national wave of mortgage foreclosures.

AFP - An Indian warship destroyed a pirate "mother vessel" in the Gulf of Aden, the navy said Wednesday, as bandits demanded a ransom for a Saudi super-tanker seized in the most daring sea raid yet.

AFP - Germany was set Wednesday to extradite a Rwandan presidential aide to France to face anti-terror judges probing the downing of the former Rwandan president's jet, an attack which triggered a genocide.