Australia

Stocks on Wall Street and other exchanges throughout the world dropped as brokerage Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America, insurance giant AIG sought tens of billions of dollars…

Read more

The Treasury Department seized control of mortgage and loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, firing the companies’ chief executives and promising to provide as much as $200 billion to…

Read more

One million people fled New Orleans to avoid Hurricane Gustav, which landed in Louisiana as a weakened category-2 hurricane and caused relatively little damage. Mississippi officials ordered people still living…

Read more

After more than a week of fighting and one failed cease-fire, Russia and Georgia signed a revised cease-fire agreement, but Russian troops remained within 25 miles of the Georgian capital,…

Read more

Claiming that South Ossetian separatists had attacked its villages, U.S. ally Georgia sent troops to capture the city of Tskhinvali. Russia retaliated by sending ground troops into Tskhinvali, then into…

Read more

Read more

Colombian military commandos infiltrated a settlement operated by the guerilla group FARC and freed 15 hostages, among them three U.S. contractors and the Colombian-French politician Ingrid Betancourt. President George W.…

Read more

An American cattleman. As the war in Iraq stretched beyond its fifth year the U.S. death toll rose to 4,000, and a national conference intended to reconcile sectarian groups was…

Read more

Charges of a rigged presidential election triggered violence along tribal lines in Kenya, leading to more than 700 deaths and the displacement of 250,000 Kenyans. Opposition leader Raila Odinga, who…

Read more