AP - Imperiled automakers and their union worked feverishly Wednesday to sell a skeptical Congress on a $34 billion aid plan, promising labor concessions and restructuring. The Senate's Democratic leader said there still weren't enough votes to tap the $700 billion federal bailout fund to prop up the foundering Big Three.

AP - Barack Obama, soon to be the first black U.S. president, is on the road to making good his pledge to have a Cabinet and White House staff that are among most diverse ever, although some supporters are asking him to go even further. He added to the minority representation at the top of his administration Wednesday when he named New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Hispanic, as Commerce Secretary.

AP - Gov. Sarah Palin has added to her financial disclosure forms two free trips that she took nearly two years ago but failed to report. Palin, who was Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate, made the disclosures last month, but after Election Day when she and McCain lost to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The trips were first revealed in a story by The Associated Press in October.

AP - Theological conservatives upset by liberal views of U.S. Episcopalians and Canadian Anglicans formed a rival North American province Wednesday, in a long-developing rift over the Bible that erupted when Episcopalians consecrated the first openly gay bishop.

AP - An officials says India suspects that two senior leaders of a banned Pakistani militant group masterminded the deadly Mumbai attacks.

AP - After being held captive for about a year, an emaciated and shackled 17-year-old boy climbed out a window in the home of his captors and walked into a nearby gym in search of help, police said Wednesday.

AP - More than 400 years after Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe challenged established wisdom about the heavens by analyzing a strange new light in the sky, scientists say they've finally nailed down just what he saw.

AP - Lil Wayne — the most prolific, ubiquitous and successful performer on today's music scene — was the most rewarded by the Recording Academy on Wednesday, receiving eight Grammy nominations including album of the year for "Tha Carter III."

AP - The one that didn't get away held an unlikely surprise for a Texas man. The blue-stoned class ring of Joe Richardson, engraved with his name, turned up inside an 8-pound bass 21 years after he lost it while fishing on Lake Sam Rayburn.

AP - Top-ranked North Carolina was impressive in what it hopes will be the first of three games at Ford Field.

Reuters - President-elect Barack Obama said on Wednesday struggling automakers have put forward a "more serious" restructuring proposal to Congress but withheld judgment on the plans until hearings are held.

Reuters - Central banks in Europe are poised to slash interest rates on Thursday to try to contain a global economic slump that appears to be spreading faster than policy makers in the industrialized countries had anticipated.

Reuters - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Pakistan to cooperate fully in the probe into the Mumbai attacks but she also warned India against any action that could stoke regional conflict.

Reuters - Senate Majority leader Harry Reid wants to try to find a way to avert threatened bankruptcies in the U.S. auto industry with Detroit Three chief executives readying for a make-or-break hearing on Thursday on a $34 billion bailout request.

Reuters - Senate Democrats will be able to do plenty over the next two years -- despite falling just short of their goal of winning a majority big enough to end Republican procedural roadblocks.

Reuters - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is weighing whether to ask Congress for the remaining $350 billion of the financial bailout fund, with White House aides approaching President-elect Barack Obama's transition team about the idea, an Obama aide said on Wednesday.

Reuters - A string of departures by the U.S. military's allies in Iraq is turning into an exodus as violence subsides and the end of a U.N. mandate permitting their deployment to the country approaches.

AFP - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has arrived in Pakistan on a hastily arranged visit aimed at defusing tensions with India after the Mumbai militant attacks.

AFP - Some 100 nations put their names Wednesday to a landmark treaty banning cluster bombs, amid calls for major arms producers such as China, Russia and the United States to join them.