AP - President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named longtime spokesman Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary and reached outside his inner circle for the post of White House communications director.

AP - Since the Nov. 4 election, investors have been abandoning stocks in a kind of slow-motion crash that experts say underlines just how anxious they are about what is likely to be a long and deep recession.

AP - Leaders who oversee half the world's economy pledged Saturday to avoid protectionism but shied away from any new proposals on the financial crisis because of somebody who wasn't there: U.S. President-elect Barack Obama.

AP - The flowers have wilted and the candles are burned out at a makeshift memorial where an immigrant from Ecuador was stabbed to death in what police say was a hate crime carried out by marauding teenagers.

AP - President-elect Barack Obama promoted an economic plan Saturday he said would create 2.5 million jobs by rebuilding roads and bridges and modernizing schools while developing alternative energy sources and more efficient cars.