AP - A Spanish airliner bound for the Canary Islands at the height of the vacation season crashed, burned and broke into pieces Wednesday while trying to take off from Madrid, killing 149 people on board, officials said.

AP - The United States and Poland signed a deal Wednesday to place a U.S. missile defense base just 115 miles from Russia — a move followed swiftly by a new warning from Moscow of a possible military response.

AP - A senior U.S. military official says the U.S. government has approved a draft agreement on reducing the American military presence in Iraq.

AP - Republican presidential candidate John McCain told voters on Wednesday he is not challenging Barack Obama's patriotism in criticizing his call to pull out of Iraq, only the judgment of his Democratic rival.

AP - Democratic U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the first black woman to represent Ohio in Congress, had a brain hemorrhage and was in critical condition with limited brain function, a doctor said Wednesday.

AP - Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani will give the keynote address at the Republican National Convention next month and Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman also will take center stage at the GOP gathering.

AP - Arms churning high, face twisted in pain as he sprinted toward the finish line, Usain Bolt kept glancing at the clock. The win in the Olympic 200 meters was a given, his second gold medal of the Beijing Games assured. This was now about a world record. About racing against history.

AP - Emergency crews launched airboats into submerged streets Wednesday to rescue central Florida residents trapped by rising floodwaters from a stalled Tropical Storm Fay, which soaked the state for a third consecutive day.

AP - British glam rocker Gary Glitter, who served nearly three years in a Vietnamese prison for molesting children, was denied entry to Hong Kong after refusing to return to England, officials said Wednesday.