AP - The Senate voted Wednesday to extend a host of soon-to-expire elements of last year's economic stimulus measure, including help for the jobless and money to help financially strapped states pay for health care for the poor.

AP - The nation's top health official challenged insurers on Wednesday to join President Barack Obama's push to overhaul the medical system, arguing that if the effort fails it will hurt them as well as other Americans.

Reuters - Canadian parliamentarians tucked into a meal of seal meat on Wednesday to defy both animal right activists and the European Union, which has banned imports of seal products.

AP - Many law enforcement officers called up to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding it difficult to readjust to their jobs once home, bringing back heightened survival instincts that may make them quicker to use force and showing less patience toward the people they serve.

AP - As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time — the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries.

Reuters - An elephant gave birth to a calf at Sydney's main zoo on Wednesday, surprising vets and keepers who two days earlier declared the baby had died in the womb.

Reuters - Canada's largest airline has learned it sometimes has to take a back seat to the country's biggest sporting passion, ice hockey, the head of Air Canada said on Tuesday.

AP - President Barack Obama on Wednesday renewed America's commitment to the recovery and reconstruction of earthquake-devastated Haiti, telling visiting President Rene Preval he knows the crisis has not passed.

AP - A Georgia judge has dismissed most of the remaining legal claims in a dispute between the children of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., months after the siblings reached a settlement.

AP - A long-overlooked group of women who flew aircraft during World War II were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal on Wednesday.

AP - The self-dubbed "Jihad Jane" who thought her blond, all-American profile would help mask her plan to kill a Swedish cartoonist is a rare case of a U.S. woman inciting foreign terrorism and shows the latest evolution of the global threat, authorities say.

AP - Cindy Hickey had rehearsed what she would say to her son when she finally got to talk to him months after he was detained in Iran. When the time came, the conversation lasted only about a minute, she said, "so it was hard to say a lot."

AP - Before he called 911, James Sikes says he reached down with his hand to loosen the "stuck" accelerator on his 2008 Toyota Prius, his other hand on the steering wheel. The pedal didn't move.

Reuters - A court in Cyprus remanded two men in custody Wednesday on suspicion of snatching the corpse of former Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos, holding it for ransom for three months until its discovery Monday.

AP - Math and English instruction in the United States moved a step closer to uniform — and more rigorous — standards Wednesday as draft new national guidelines were released.