AP - Rupert Murdoch's News International has succeeded in settling nearly all the cases in the first wave of lawsuits against it for phone hacking, with a new round of apologies and payouts announced in a London court Wednesday.

AP - Oil prices are higher Wednesday following government reports that U.S. supplies didn't grow as much as expected last week.

AP - India has decided to buy 126 fighter jets from France, taken delivery of a nuclear-powered submarine from Russia and prepared for its first aircraft carrier in recent weeks as it modernizes its military to match China's.

AP - The European Union will impose harsher sanctions on Syria, a senior EU official said Wednesday, as Russia tried to broker talks between the vice president and the opposition to calm violence. Activists reported at least 50 killed in the regime's siege of the restive city of Homs.

AP - The head of the Transportation Security Administration says more travelers around the country will be eligible to enroll in a test program so that they can get through airport security with less hassle by the end of this year.

AP - Officials at an elementary school rocked by teacher sex abuse claims are investigating yet another allegation of misconduct, this one involving a teacher's aide accused of sending love letters to an 11-year-old boy.

AP - The No. 2 U.S. commander in Afghanistan says the U.S. military will begin sending advisory teams this year to help Afghan combat forces as they take a more prominent role in fighting the Taliban insurgency.

AP - Japan and the United States agreed Wednesday to proceed with plans to transfer thousands of U.S. troops out of the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, leaving behind the stalled discussion about closing a major U.S. Marine base there.

Reuters - Stocks edged higher on Wednesday as hopeful investors awaited the latest attempt by Greece to reach a deal on reforms in exchange for a new bailout.

AP - A suspected member of the Zetas drug gang has led Mexican authorities to a mass grave site at two ranches in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, the navy said Wednesday.

AP - A central Missouri teenager who confessed to strangling, cutting and stabbing a 9-year-old girl because she wanted to know how it felt to kill someone was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

AP - Conservationists in Zimbabwe say round-the-clock efforts to save a baby elephant have failed. The six-week-old calf, who was separated from his mother on a busy highway and hand fed for three weeks, has died, apparently from pneumonia.

Reuters - More evidence emerged on Tuesday of the crippling impact of new sanctions on Iran, with international traders saying Tehran is having trouble buying rice, cooking oil and other staples to feed its 74 million people weeks before an election.

AP - Move over, coffee and Red Bull. A Harvard professor thinks the next big thing will be people inhaling their caffeine from a lipstick-sized tube. Critics say the novel product is not without its risks.

AP - Republican Rick Santorum is looking to capitalize on a string of stunning victories that snapped his four-state losing streak and raised new questions about front-runner Mitt Romney's clout with conservatives.

Reuters - The ousted president of the Maldives, credited with bringing democracy to the Indian Ocean island resort, said on Wednesday he was forced out of power at gunpoint, prompting clashes between police and angry supporters.

AP - Mitt Romney just can't shake his difficulty attracting conservatives. And that reality is undercutting his effort to cast himself as the inevitable Republican presidential nominee and prolonging a race that each day exposes deep divisions within the party.

Reuters - An appeals court on Tuesday found California's gay marriage ban unconstitutional in a case that may lead to a showdown in the Supreme Court.

AP - Conservative critics like to point out that the federal appeals court that just declared California's same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional has its decisions overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court more often than other judicial circuits, a record that could prove predictive if the high court agrees to review the gay marriage case on appeal.