AP - Jimmy Rollins got the Phillies rollin' with a leadoff homer and they kept right on going. Next stop, the World Series.

Reuters - A warning of tough times ahead by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sent global markets sharply lower, with Tokyo shares tumbling 10 percent on Thursday, as investors brace for looming recession.

AP - In the beginning, there was a long line for Judgment Day ale.

Reuters - Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama battled fiercely in their most contentious debate on Wednesday, with an aggressive McCain attacking Obama's campaign tactics and tax plans in a showdown that made a star of "Joe the plumber."

AP - American troops could face trial before Iraqi courts for major crimes committed off base and when not on missions, under a draft security pact hammered out in months of tortuous negotiations, Iraqi officials familiar with the accord said Wednesday.

AP - A soft-spoken designer from Portland, Ore., has the competition sewn up on Bravo's hit reality show "Project Runway."

AFP - John McCain went for the jugular in his third and final debate with Democrat Barack Obama as the Republican vied to stage a dramatic revival of his flagging White House hopes.

AP - John McCain repeatedly assailed Barack Obama's character and campaign positions on taxes, abortion and more Wednesday night, hoping to transform their final presidential debate into a launching pad for a political comeback. "You didn't tell the American people the truth," he charged.

AP - Monkeys taught to play a computer game were able to overcome wrist paralysis with an experimental device that might lead to new treatments for patients with stroke and spinal cord injury.

AP - A one-time top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr. was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison for having sex more than a decade ago with his then-teenage daughter.

AP - Close to one in every three newly registered Ohio voters will end up on court-ordered lists being sent to county election boards because they have some discrepancy in their records, an elections spokesman said Wednesday.

AP - Democratic Rep. John Murtha said Wednesday his home base of western Pennsylvania is racist and that could reduce Barack Obama's victory margin in the state by 4 percentage points.

AP - The economy lurched deeper into the doldrums Wednesday and took the stock market down with it, sending the Dow Jones industrials to a staggering 733-point loss and erasing any hopes that the convulsions that have shaken Wall Street for a month were over.

Reuters - Japan's Nikkei share average tumbled almost 10 percent and oil prices dropped to a one-year low on Thursday after downbeat U.S. economic data spread fears of a more protracted and sharp global slowdown than initially expected.

Reuters - Socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez mocked George W. Bush as a "comrade" on Wednesday, saying the U.S. president was a hard-line leftist for his government's intervention of major private banks in the U.S. financial crisis.