Gaming Site

AP - Separate bands of pirates hijacked two ships and captured their crews, while yet another opened fire on an Indian navy ship before being driven off — clear signs that the brigands roaming the Gulf of Aden are becoming bolder and more violent, officials said Wednesday.

Reuters - A balloon-borne instrument soaring high over Antarctica has found evidence of a possible large clump of mysterious so-called dark matter relatively close to our solar system, scientists said on Wednesday.

Politico - Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) has been chosen to serve as secretary of the vast and troubled Department of Homeland Security for President-elect Obama, Democratic officials said. Napolitano is a border governor who will now be responsible for immigration policy and border security, which are part of Homeland Security’s myriad functions.

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.

AP - Asian stock markets tumbled Thursday, with benchmarks in Japan and Hong Kong both losing more than 5 percent, after fears of a protracted recession sent Wall Street plunging to it lowest point in five years.

AP - A Democratic Congress, unwilling or unable to approve a $25 billion bailout for Detroit's Big Three, appears ready to punt the automakers' fate to a lame-duck Republican president.

AP - California's highest court agreed Wednesday to hear several legal challenges to the state's new ban on same-sex marriage but refused to allow gay couples to resume marrying before it rules.

AP - Animals and plants in danger of becoming extinct could lose the protection of government experts who make sure that dams, highways and other projects don't pose a threat, under regulations the Bush administration is set to put in place before President-elect Obama can reverse them.

AP - Army and Navy recruiters took one look at 330-pound Ulysses Milana and told him to forget about joining. "'You've got to lose weight,'" Milana remembers them saying. But Marine recruiters were willing to work with him as he began his weight-loss journey in December 2007.

AP - Winona Ryder was briefly hospitalized after falling ill on a flight to London's Heathrow Airport on Wednesday, her publicist said.