Reuters - Japan's exports to Asia fell in October for the first time since 2002, showing that the fallout from the credit crisis has spread to neighbors such as China and adding momentum to investors' flight to the safety of cash.

AP - President-elect Barack Obama promised the voters change but has started his Cabinet selection process by naming several Washington insiders to top posts.

AFP - Russia announced Thursday it would send more warships to combat piracy in the waters around Somalia, as the Saudi owners of the Sirius Star negotiated with the pirates holding their oil tanker.

Reuters - A 6 percent fall in Asia pushed world stocks to their lowest in 5- years on Thursday, while oil fell below $53 and safe havens such as the yen gained on fears the global recession and a financial crisis will get uglier.

AP - The astronaut who lost her tool bag on a spacewalk admitted Wednesday that she made a mistake by not checking to see if the sack was tied down, and said she's still smarting over the whole thing.

Reuters - The U.S. financial system still needs at least $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion of tangible common equity to restore confidence and improve liquidity in the credit markets, Friedman Billings Ramsey analyst Paul Miller said.

AP - Paris Hilton and her boyfriend of nine months, Benji Madden, have broken up.

AP - King Herod may have been buried in a crypt with lavish Roman-style wall paintings of a kind previously unseen in the Middle East, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday. The scientists found such paintings and signs of a regal two-story mausoleum, bolstering their conviction that the ancient Jewish monarch was buried there.

AP - A Texas judge has set a Friday arraignment for Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others named in indictments accusing them of responsibility for prisoner abuse in a federal detention center.