AP - Barack Obama swept to the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday night, a transforming triumph that made him the first black American to lead a major party into the fall campaign for the White House. Thousands of national convention delegates stood and cheered as they made history.

AP - On the eve of Hurricane Katrina's third anniversary, a nervous New Orleans watched Wednesday as another storm threatened to test everything the city has rebuilt, and officials made preliminary plans to evacuate people, pets and hospitals in an attempt to avoid a Katrina-style chaos.

AP - Western leaders warned Russia on Wednesday to "change course," hoping to keep a conflict that already threatens a key nuclear pact and could even raise U.S. chicken prices from blossoming into a new Cold War.

AP - Conditions in the western Iraqi province of Anbar, where a brutal insurgency once ruled, have improved so dramatically that the United States is handing over responsibility for security in the Sunni stronghold to Iraq within days. Troops freed up in Iraq could shift to Afghanistan.

AP - Union bosses in this region of rural Mississippi have long grumbled that the largest factories here hire illegal immigrants, and that the immigrants were starting to get more overtime and supervisory positions.

AP - Talk about an extreme makeover: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.

AP - Marion "Suge" Knight was jailed Wednesday on assault and drug charges after he was accused of beating his girlfriend while brandishing a knife near the Las Vegas Strip, police said.

AP - Baseball's replay central is an 18-by-24 foot room on the fifth floor of a former baking factory in Manhattan's Meatpacking District that's crammed with so many computers and television screens that it looks like NASA's Mission Control.

AP - More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming "tipping point" in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years.

AP - The next version of Microsoft Corp.'s Web browser makes it easier for people to surf the Internet without leaving a trace.

Reuters - To shouts of "Yes we can," Democrats nominated Barack Obama on Wednesday as their presidential candidate in a historic first for a black American, sending him into battle against Republican John McCain.

Reuters - Tropical Storm Gustav pulled away from Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Wednesday after killing 23 people and threatened to become a major hurricane aimed at New Orleans and Gulf of Mexico oil fields.

Reuters - The top U.S. Marine officer said on Wednesday he could reduce his 25,000-strong force in the former al Qaeda stronghold of Iraq's Anbar province to reinforce military operations against a growing Taliban threat in Afghanistan.

Reuters - U.S. military planners have begun pondering the thorny question of how Georgia's shattered armed forces might be rebuilt without provoking a Russian backlash that could risk direct confrontation with Moscow.

Reuters - Corporate America is having the hardest time getting its customers to pay their bills since the last U.S. recession in 2001, according to a study released on Wednesday.

Reuters - Lesbian activist Del Martin died on Wednesday, just two months after marrying her partner of 55 years in one of the first legally recognized California same-sex weddings.

Reuters - Three U.S. soldiers killed four handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots on the bank of a Baghdad canal last year, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

AFP - Democrat Barack Obama Wednesday made history as Democrats formally nominated him by acclamation as the first black presidential nominee of a major political party.

AFP - Russia accused the West on Wednesday of ratcheting up tensions in the Black Sea with an increased NATO naval presence and warned against isolating Moscow over the conflict in Georgia.