Wednesday News

• Drugmakers promise to relabel cold remedies as wrong for kids under 4

  The makers of cold and cough medicines said yesterday that they will stop marketing over-the-counter remedies to children under 4 - acting amid an extensive federal review of whether the drugs are safe and effective for children under 12.

• Gloves stay on

  John McCain, trailing in the polls, portrayed Barack Obama last night as a tax-and-spend liberal who lacks the courage to challenge leaders of his own party and would need on-the-job training as president.

• Scientists begin study as Mercury images pour in

  Like Columbus' crew reconnoitering the coast of the New World with spyglasses, scientists with NASA's Messenger mission gathered in an unremarkable office park yesterday to take in mankind's first glimpse of broad swaths of the planet Mercury.

• Dow falls 508 points

  Frantically trying to stop the bleeding on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve took a first-time step yesterday to get cash directly to businesses and hinted that interest rates could come down soon. Stocks continued their free fall anyway and hit new five-year lows.

• Obama book writer detained

  The American author of a controversial book attacking Barack Obama was detained yesterday by the other Obama nation.

• Facts, half-truths and some downright falsehoods

  Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain stretched facts, sometimes past the breaking point, as they addressed the financial crisis and other issues last night during their second debate.

• Obama connected with audience

  The format of the second presidential debate was described as that of a town hall meeting, but it was pure TV from the "citizens" seated on risers on a brightly lit stage, to the candidates moving about a stage like performers.

• Sexuality fades as election issue

  In his liberal Colorado district, it's no big deal that Jared Polis is gay. Yet his expected victory Nov. 4 in a congressional race would be a historic milestone and, he hopes, send an encouraging message to gay and lesbian young people nationwide.

• Tops on TV

  The Mentalist, the new CBS drama starring Simon Baker as a police detective with seeming psychic powers, is moving higher in the top 10 TV shows with 15.5 million viewers for the week of Sept. 29-Oct.5, according to Nielsen Media Research. Its 15.5 million viewers landed it in sixth place.

• Esquire dubs Halle Berry 'sexiest woman alive'

  "I don't know exactly what it means, but being 42 and having just had a baby, I think I'll take it," says Halle Berry, about her being named the sexiest woman alive by Esquire magazine in its November issue.

• Speaking of funny men

  Jimmy Kimmel will bring another round of chuckles as he hosts the American Music Awards Nov. 23 on ABC.

• Funniest man — this year

  Larry Doyle, a former TV writer-producer for The Simpsons, was named the winner Monday of this year's Thurber Prize for American Humor. He was cited for the novel I Love You, Beth Cooper.

• Correction

  The Baltimore Sun is committed to providing fair and accurate coverage. Readers who have concerns or comments are encouraged to call the newspaper's comment line at 410-332-6364 or toll-free at 1-800-829-8000, Ext. 6364, or to send an e-mail to underthesun@baltsun.com.

• American, 2 Japanese share Nobel Prize

  STOCKHOLM, Sweden Two Japanese citizens and an American won the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics yesterday for discoveries that help explain the behavior of the smallest particles of matter. American Yoichiro Nambu, 87, of the University of Chicago, won half of the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) prize for the discovery of a mechanism called spontaneous broken symmetry. Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa of Japan shared the other half of the prize for discovering the origin of the broken symmetry that predicted the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature. The Nobel citation said Nambu's theories now permeate the Standard Model of physics, which is the basic theory of how the universe operates.

• Military warns soldiers working with electricity

  WASHINGTON The U.S. military has started a media campaign to educate soldiers about working with electricity as part of an effort to prevent future electrocutions in Iraq. The deaths of at least 18 U.S. service members and contractors in Iraq are under investigation as possible electrocutions. Gen. David Petraeus revealed details of the information campaign and other efforts such as the creation of a baseline electrical code for the war zone in a letter to Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey. One of the soldiers killed was Green Beret Sgt. Ryan Maseth of Pittsburgh, who was electrocuted while showering in his barracks in Iraq. Petraeus wrote the letter before stepping aside as the top commander in Iraq.

• Iowa girl, 14, is left at Neb. 'safe haven'

  OMAHA, Neb. Health officials say a 14-year-old Iowa girl has been abandoned at an Omaha hospital under Nebraska's safe-haven law. The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services said the girl is from Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the Missouri River from Omaha. She was left at Creighton University Medical Center yesterday. She is the 17th child overall and the first from another state to be abandoned since the law took effect in July. It was meant to protect the lives of infants by letting a parent leave them at a hospital without fear of prosecution. The law doesn't have an age limit, and many children left to date have been teenagers or preteens.

• Author of anti-Obama book detained in Kenya

  NAIROBI, Kenya The American author of a controversial book attacking Barack Obama was detained yesterday in Kenya. Jerome Corsi, author of The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, was picked up yesterday morning by Kenyan authorities shortly before he planned to host a news conference to promote his book, which Obama's campaign has dismissed as a smear campaign riddled with falsehoods. He later boarded a plane out of the country, Kenyan police and his publicist said, amid questions about whether he left voluntarily or under duress. Obama, whose father was Kenyan and mother was American, is wildly popular in this East African nation, which emBRACes the senator from Illinois as a native son. Kenyan authorities accused Corsi of failing to obtain the proper visa needed to work in the country. Corsi could not be reached for comment.

• Lawmakers angered by posh AIG retreat

  Less than a week after the federal government had to bail out American International Group Inc., the company sent executives on a $440,000 retreat to a posh California coastal resort, lawmakers investigating the company's meltdown said yesterday.

• Release ordered for 17 at Guantanamo

  A federal judge ordered the Bush administration yesterday to immediately free 17 Chinese Muslims from the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay into the United States, a ruling that could set the course for releasing dozens of prisoners at the naval base in Cuba.

• Russian measures fail to lift stock markets

  MOSCOW Efforts by the Russian government to prop up the country's troubled banking sector with fresh cash injections did little to lift stock markets a day after they suffered their worst-ever day of trading. President Dmitry Medvedev unveiled new measures yesterday to ease liquidity concerns in the banking system, announcing 950-billion rubles ($36.3 billion) of loans with a five-year term to banks. Most of the money will go to the country's two largest state-backed lenders, Sberbank and VTB, in an effort to get liquidity moving through the whole system. A further 223 billion rubles will be lent to banks in particular difficulty. This comes on top of some $170 billion pledged already by the state in recent weeks in the form of loans and relief. A stock market collapse in September - triggered by plunging oil prices and turmoil on Wall Street - sparked a crisis of confidence among lenders, and resulted in a severe liquidity squeeze.