AP - Barack Obama stepped triumphantly into history Wednesday night, the first black American to win a major party presidential nomination, and thousands of Democrats transformed their convention hall into a joyful, shouting celebration.

AP - Former President Clinton forcefully endorsed Barack Obama's bid for the White House on Wednesday, telling delegates to the Democratic convention that Obama is "ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world."

AP - When this campaign ends, after future presidents have come and gone, and when today's young people are grown old, history will remember Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008, as the day a black man became the presidential nominee of a major party.

AP - We supposedly live in a classless society, but the velvet ropes have been spreading like weeds in recent years. How odd, then, that the power-saturated floor of the Democratic National Convention is, in fact, one of the most democratic places on Earth — providing, that is, you have the proper credentials.

Politico - The L.A. Times just popped a big story the Obama-Biden folks don't want to be reading the night the Delaware senator introduces himself to the nation: a potential conflict of interest involving Biden and one of the nation's biggest asbestos litigation law firms -- which also happens to be his top contributor.

AP - In an emotional meeting leading up to the Democratic roll call of the states, Hillary Rodham Clinton released her convention delegates Wednesday to vote for certain presidential nominee Barack Obama.

AP - Barack Obama will accept his party's presidential nomination by laying out a case for sweeping political change and illustrating the choice voters face between his candidacy and that of Republican John McCain, a top adviser said Wednesday.

AP - Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has ordered a special election Nov. 18 to replace the late U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

AP - More than a quarter of the U.S. intelligence agencies' employees are outside contractors, hired to fill in gaps in the military and civilian work force, according to a survey of the 16 intelligence agencies.

AP - A man who wrote hundreds of threatening letters over 20 years to black and mixed-race men — including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter — was sentenced Tuesday to three years and 10 months in prison.

AP - Deaths are expected to outnumber births in the European Union from 2015 when migration will become the only source of population growth, according to an EU report released Tuesday.