AFP - The Saudi owners of the Sirius Star are in negotiations with Somali pirates who have demanded a ransom for the super-tanker laden with 100 million dollars of oil they hijacked at the weekend.

AP - California's highest court agreed Wednesday to hear several legal challenges to the state's new ban on same-sex marriage but refused to allow gay couples to resume marrying before it rules.

Reuters - California's Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a legal challenge against the state's voter-approved ban on gay marriage and let the ban stand in the meantime.

AP - Barack Obama is enlisting former Senate leader Tom Daschle as his health secretary, embracing a third Washington insider in the early stages of Cabinet-building by the president-elect who promised change. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the capital's most famous woman for two decades, seemed ever more likely to be his secretary of state.

Reuters - U.S. auto executives went to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a second day to plead for $25 billion in government aid, but legislators tried to fashion a last-minute compromise bailout bill that could pass both Congressional and White House muster.

Reuters - Stocks plunged to their lowest in five-and-a-half years on Wednesday as investors girded for a lengthy economic downturn and automotive executives predicted a far-reaching calamity without a government lifeline.

AP - A Texas judge has set an arraignment for Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other officials accused of involvement in prisoner abuse.

AFP - French judicial officials on Wednesday charged a longtime comrade-in-arms of Rwanda's president over an assassination in the run-up to the 1994 genocide, as anti-European protests unfolded in Kigali.

AP - A Democratic Congress, unwilling or unable to approve a $25 billion bailout for Detroit's Big Three, appears ready to punt the automakers' fate to a lame-duck Republican president.

AP - A growing fear of economic deflation helped take the air out of the stock market Wednesday, and another white-knuckle final hour on Wall Street pushed the Dow Jones industrials under 8,000 to their lowest close since the financial meltdown began.

AP - The Kansas City Royals picked up the leadoff hitter they had been seeking, acquiring center fielder Coco Crisp from the Boston Red Sox for reliever Ramon Ramirez on Wednesday.

Reuters - President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Tom Daschle, a key early supporter and former U.S. Senate leader, as his top official to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system, two Democratic sources said on Wednesday.

Reuters - Citigroup Inc faced a crisis of confidence on Wednesday as investors questioned the survival prospects of the U.S. banking giant, and its shares tumbled 23 percent to a 13-year low.

AP - Bringing "Jurassic Park" one step closer to reality, scientists have deciphered much of the genetic code of the woolly mammoth, a feat they say could allow them to recreate the shaggy, prehistoric beast in as little as a decade or two.