BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama urged Europe to stand by the United States in stabilizing Afghanistan in a speech to over 200,000 in Berlin that stressed the need for unity in the face of new threats.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An accounting change that could force banks to bring trillions of dollars of off-balance sheet transactions back on their books will be implemented in a way that will not create unnecessary shocks, the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Marathon trade talks limped into another day on Friday but with little progress so far on the tortuous negotiations ministers said it would soon be time to decide whether a deal was at all possible.

GLASGOW (Reuters) - Britain's ruling Labour Party lost an election for a parliamentary seat in a traditional Labour stronghold, in a serious setback for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, results showed on Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate was on course for a Saturday vote to approve a major housing market rescue bill with a lifeline for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and bond market action on Thursday indicated investors in the two mortgage finance giants were encouraged.

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - Hurricane Dolly, which lashed the U.S.-Mexico coastline, weakened to a tropical depression on Thursday over South Texas, but concern remained over flooding along the populous Rio Grande Valley.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Personal data collected on military, civilian and contractor employees seeking federal security clearances between 1997 and 2005 could be at risk due to inaccurate record-keeping by the Pentagon agency that did the investigations, an audit showed on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Personal data collected on military, civilian and contractor employees seeking federal security clearances between 1997 and 2005 could be at risk due to inaccurate record-keeping by the Pentagon agency that did the investigations, an audit showed on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An accounting change that could force banks to bring trillions of dollars of off-balance sheet transactions back on their books will be implemented in a way that will not create unnecessary shocks, the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jobless claims jumped and the pace of existing home sales tumbled to a 10-year low as slowing growth hit hiring and a glut of unsold houses weighed on real estate, data released on Thursday showed.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks added to losses on Thursday, with the Dow industrials briefly falling more than 2 percent, as financial stocks sold off on renewed housing concerns triggered by a higher-than-expected drop in sales of existing U.S. homes.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives rejected legislation on Thursday to sell 70 million of barrels of light, sweet crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and replace it with heavy, sour crude.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday threatened to veto legislation that would require the government to sell 10 percent of the oil in the nation's emergency stockpile.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Thursday urged his successor to carry on what he called his "freedom agenda" of promoting human rights, democracy, and free trade around the world.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration has proposed using counterterrorism funds from aid to Pakistan for the upkeep of Islamabad's F-16 fighter jets, the White House said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pace of existing home sales in the United States fell in June to a 4.86 million-unit annual rate, the National Association of Realtors said in a report on Thursday that saw the sales volume hit a 10-year low.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government's former point man in the fight against the heroin trade in Afghanistan has accused Afghan President Hamid Karzai of obstructing counter-narcotics efforts and protecting drug lords.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Wednesday he had rejected a request from lawmakers that an outside special counsel investigate the case of a Canadian taken off a plane in New York and sent to Syria, where he says he was tortured.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Presidential candidate Barack Obama travels to Berlin on Thursday to give the only public speech of a week-long foreign tour, an outdoor address on transatlantic ties that is likely to draw tens of thousands.

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - A black-and-white interrogation video of Osama bin Laden's driver showed Salim Hamdan denying under questioning in a dark cell that he worked for al Qaeda.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, on his first visit to Washington as Israel's top military officer, said on Wednesday it was crucial to block what he called "Iranian aggression" in the Middle East.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives passed a massive housing rescue bill on Wednesday while the White House dropped a threat to veto it, paving the way for measures aimed at shoring up the worst U.S. housing market since the Great Depression.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday after talks with North Korea that she believed Pyongyang was under no "illusions" it had to agree to a strong mechanism to verify its nuclear activities.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Ministers from seven rich and developing trade powers worked into the early hours of Thursday in an urgent effort to rescue a trade deal that would open up markets for food and manufactured goods.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama has a 6-point lead over Republican John McCain in the presidential race as a growing percentage of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, according to an NBC N