AP - Congress promised quick action on a plan to buy up toxic assets, such as bad mortgages, held by troubled banks and other institutions, hoping to lift the nation out of its worst financial crisis in decades.

AP - Barack Obama turned to a team of advisers that shaped America's economy in happier days to fashion fresh ideas for calming the stomach-churning financial crisis that has thundered from Wall Street to Main Street.

AP - It's been nearly a week since Hurricane Ike bulled ashore, and the images of once-bustling coastal Texas communities reduced to only a faint shadow of their old selves are no less staggering.