AP - Oil prices skidded below $74 a barrel Wednesday in Asia as crude traders followed regional stocks down on reports European banks may be saddled with more debt than previously estimated.

Reuters - Asian stocks fell on Wednesday, with Japan's big exporters among the heaviest losers as a rise in the yen to a new 15-year high threatens to erode their overseas earnings.

AP - Mexican prosecutors say two dead bodies found in the northern state of Tamaulipas appear to be those of a state detective and local police chief who were investigating the massacre of 72 migrants in August.

AFP - Australia's newly elected Prime Minister Julia Gillard pledged to serve a full term after scraping back into power but her fragile coalition was immediately at odds over a major new tax Wednesday.

AP - Men armed with assault rifles burst into a shoe factory and opened fire Tuesday, killing at least 18 workers and wounding five, Honduran authorities said.

AFP - British prime minister Winston Churchill deliberately let millions of Indians starve to death, the author of a new book has claimed, alleging he was motivated in part by racial hatred.

Reuters - Republicans in Congress showed little willingness to help President Barack Obama approve billions of dollars in measures to boost the economy with midterm elections less than two months away.

AP - Weeks of torrential rains have unleashed flooding in huge swaths of southern Mexico, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes.

AP - The United Nations reported Tuesday that more than 500 systematic rapes were committed by armed combatants in eastern Congo since late July — more than double the number previously reported — and accepted partial responsibility for not protecting citizens.

AP - A magnitude-5.1 aftershock hammered New Zealand's earthquake-hit city of Christchurch on Wednesday morning, freshly damaging buildings, sparking evacuations and prompting the extension of a state of emergency for another week.

AP - President Barack Obama's proposed tax breaks for business sound like ideas that have enjoyed broad Republican backing in the past. But in today's toxic political atmosphere, he's unlikely to get much — if any — GOP help.

Reuters - Hewlett-Packard Co sued former Chief Executive Mark Hurd and asked a court to block him from joining Oracle Corp, saying his hiring by the rival technology firm puts HP's trade secrets "in peril."

AP - The international crossfire over Iran's stoning sentence for a woman convicted of adultery intensified Tuesday with a top European Union official calling it "barbaric" and an Iranian spokesman saying it's about punishing a criminal and not a human rights issue.

AP - An Iraqi soldier fired a barrage of bullets at American troops protecting one of their commanders during a visit to an Iraqi army base Tuesday and killed two of them, the first U.S. servicemen to die since President Barack Obama declared an end to combat operations in the country last week.

AP - The Obama administration is trying to jump-start its sputtering attempts to tackle the foreclosure crisis with an effort to assist homeowners who owe more on their properties than their homes are worth.

AP - Motorists should see pump prices slide again after spending a little more to fill their tanks over the Labor Day weekend.

AP - European Union nations agreed to create new financial oversight institutions Tuesday, hoping to prevent a repeat of the government debt crisis that nearly left Greece bankrupt and brought the European banking system to its knees.