AP - Barack Obama, claiming a prize never held by a black American, swept to the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday as thousands of national convention delegates stood and cheered his improbable triumph.

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.