AP - Asian stock markets plunged Friday in the wake of a sell-off on Wall Street amid mounting concerns about a slump the U.S. economy and its impact on the global economy. European shares also opened lower.

AP - Only hours after agreeing to resign and serve time in jail as part of plea deal, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick expressed regret for the scandal that has engulfed the city — and left the door open for a return to public life.

Reuters - Republican John McCain cast himself as an independent-minded reformer on Thursday, vowed "change is coming" if he is elected president and promised to create millions of jobs by developing new energy sources.

Reuters - Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded guilty on Thursday to obstruction of justice in a plea agreement that forces him from office and caps a scandal that had threatened to spill over into the U.S. presidential campaign in a key battleground state.

AP - Broken and disgraced, lobbyist Jack Abramoff will spend four years in prison for his role in a corruption scandal that upended Washington politics and contributed to the Republicans' loss of Congress in 2006.

AP - Some Southeastern states declared emergencies and officials urged residents to head inland Thursday as Tropical Storm Hanna headed toward the Atlantic coast, where it could bring high winds and rain from South Carolina to Maine.

Reuters - A wave of risk aversion hit financial markets on Friday, pushing world stocks to their lowest in more than two years, and knocking European currencies and oil as fears about the slowing global economy intensified.

Reuters - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney discusses the Georgia crisis on Friday with Ukrainian leaders, whose country is deeply divided over NATO membership and distracted by a domestic political crisis.

AP - That litany of health issues Novak Djokovic dealt with earlier in the week — hip, ankle, stomach and more — seemed a tad humorous to Andy Roddick.

Reuters - Powerful Hurricane Ike weakened slightly as it charged across the Atlantic toward the Bahamas and the United States on Thursday while Tropical Storm Hanna's death toll from floods in Haiti grew to 136.

Reuters - Five Islamist militants were killed on Friday in a missile attack by a suspected U.S. drone in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, in a stepped up campaign against militants near the Afghan border.

AP - The real question in Pakistan's presidential election is not who the winner will be but whether the new leader will be any more successful than his predecessor in tackling extremism and economic malaise.

AFP - Angolans voted Friday in their first peacetime elections with the ruling leftwing MPLA expected to keep a firm grip on the war ravaged new oil power while the opposition said the poll is unfair.

AFP - John McCain vowed to fight for America as long as he draws breath, in a patriotic pledge to bring political change as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination.

Reuters - The Polish prosecutor's office is investigating allegations that there was a CIA prison in Poland where al Qaeda suspects were questioned and guards might have used methods close to torture, the prime minister's top adviser said on Friday.

AP - The New York Giants won the Super Bowl with defense and they kicked off defense of that title with more of the same.

AP - Republican presidential nominee John McCain, buoyed by a unifying GOP convention and the spark of running mate Sarah Palin, plunged into a competitive, eight-week struggle with Democrat Barack Obama over which party can best bring change to Washington.

AP - When Condoleezza Rice spends a few hours in Libya and shakes hands with Moammar Gadhafi, she will close a nearly three-decade era of bitter animosity between the United States and the North African nation that has sometimes gotten personal.

AP - After seeing what "An Inconvenient Truth" did for environmental awareness, Hollywood producer Laura Ziskin wanted to make a documentary about cancer, a disease she has fought since 2004.