AFP - US President Barack Obama Wednesday threw down the gauntlet to Republicans on the economy, as the lagging recovery and crippling unemployment threaten Democrats with a mid-term election meltdown.

AP - Suddenly, the race for Chicago mayor is on. Mayor Richard M. Daley has thrown the competition for the city's top job wide open by announcing he won't run for a seventh term, ending 21 years of token opposition and prompting speculation about who's next in line to lead the nation's third largest city.

AP - The peanut industry executive whose filthy processing plants were blamed in a salmonella outbreak two years ago that killed nine people and sickened hundreds more is back in the business.

AP - Shares in BP PLC tracked slightly higher after the release of an internal report on the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that deflects much of the blame onto rig owner Transocean Ltd. and contractor Halliburton Co.

AP - Oil giant BP PLC laid much of the blame for the rig explosion and the massive Gulf of Mexico spill on itself, other companies' workers and a complex series of failures in an internal report released Wednesday before a key piece of evidence has been analyzed.

Reuters - President Barack Obama will push billions of dollars in new business tax incentives and spending on big construction projects on Wednesday, as he tries to convince a balky Congress to pass measures intended to spur the economy and create jobs.

Reuters - Stock index futures rose on Wednesday tracking a turnaround in European stocks and ahead of comments from the Federal Reserve on the state of the economy.

AP - The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said Wednesday he was determined to go through with his plan to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, despite pressure from the White House, religious leaders and others to call it off.

AP - Seeking to give anxious Democrats a boost ahead of the November elections, President Barack Obama is pitching a trio of economic initiatives Wednesday and voicing unwavering opposition to Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthy.

AP - House Republican Leader John Boehner onWednesday proposed a two-year freeze on all tax rates and a cut in government spending to the levels of 2008, before a deep recession took hold of the economy.

AP - Suddenly, the race for Chicago mayor is on. Mayor Richard M. Daley has thrown the competition for the city's top job wide open by announcing he won't run for a seventh term, ending 21 years of token opposition and prompting speculation about who's next in line to lead the nation's third largest city.

AFP - Suspected members of an Islamist sect have attacked a prison in northern Nigeria and fought a fierce gun battle with authorities, with one guard saying nearly all inmates escaped.

AP - Shares in BP PLC moved higher on Wednesday ahead of the release of the company's internal report on the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and after a credit ratings agency upgrade.

AP - Despite two terms as governor of New Mexico and recent visits to 26 states, most Americans have never heard of Gary Johnson.

AP - Two suspected U.S. missile strikes hit militant targets in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, officials said, bringing to six the number of such attacks in the region in less than a week. At least 10 suspected members of a group attacking NATO forces in Afghanistan were killed.

AP - About 800 inmates escaped a federal prison holding Muslim extremists in northern Nigeria during a sunset attack by gunmen who are believed to be members of a radical sect, a police official said Wednesday.

AP - Five years ago, Lebanese thronged the streets of Beirut to protest Syrian control over their country in a movement that quickly ended decades of military domination.

AP - An Austrian woman who was kidnapped at age 10 says she was repeatedly beaten, starved and forced to do housework half-naked during her 8 1/2 years at the mercy of a man who admired Hitler and considered himself an Egyptian god.

Reuters - Foster's Group Ltd , Australia's largest brewer, rejected a private equity offer worth up to $2.5 billion for its wine business as too cheap, sending its shares up as much as 6 percent on hopes of higher bids.

AP - Trying to smooth over recently rocky relations before a visit to Washington, Chinese President Hu Jintao told American officials on Wednesday that he wants to see healthy and stable ties between the two countries.

AP - John Demjanjuk attends most sessions of his trial in a hospital bed set up in the courtroom, wearing dark sunglasses and a hat pulled down over his face.

AP - Will Esposito describes an otherworldly scene after a wildfire tore through a canyon in the Colorado foothills: Some houses in his neighborhood burning while others stood intact, a propane tank shooting flames into the sky, and an eerie quiet interrupted only by firefighting helicopters and airplanes.

Reuters - Australia's fragile Labor government suggested on Wednesday it could adjust a planned profits-based tax on mining companies to bend to demands of the independent MPs giving it a slender grip on power.

AP - Afghan election officials said Wednesday that scores of additional polling stations will have to remain closed during the Sept. 18 parliamentary vote because of the deteriorating security situation in the country.

AP - Police Chief Charlie Beck pleaded for calm and vowed his department would conduct an exhaustive investigation into a bicycle officer's fatal shooting of a drunken day laborer with a knife.

AP - Investigators found no explosives aboard a Los Angeles-bound Thai Airways flight in which a bomb threat was found scrawled on a bathroom mirror, the FBI said Wednesday.