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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

LOS ANGELES - LeRoi Moore, the versatile saxophonist whose signature staccato fused jazz and funk overtones onto the eclectic sound of the Dave Matthews Band, died Tuesday of complications from injuries he suffered in an all-terrain vehicle accident, the band said. He was 46.

RALEIGH, N.C. - A mental patient died after workers at a North Carolina hospital left him in a chair for 22 hours without feeding him or helping him use the bathroom, said federal officials who have threatened to cut off the facility's funding.

MADRID, Spain - A Spanish airliner bound for the Canary Islands crashed, burned and broke into pieces Wednesday while trying to take off from Madrid's Barajas airport, killing 149 people on board, officials said.

ATLANTA - Turns out Bigfoot was just a rubber suit. Two researchers on a quest to prove the existence of Bigfoot say that the carcass encased in a block of ice — handed over to them for an undisclosed sum by two men who claimed to have found it — was slowly thawed out, and discovered to be a rubber gorilla outfit.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Guinness World Records has returned the title of world's tallest man to China's Bao Xishun after Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk refused to be measured under new guidelines.

WARSAW, Poland - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Polish counterpart signed a deal Wednesday to build a U.S. missile defense base in Poland, an agreement that prompted an infuriated Russia to warn of a possible attack against the former Soviet satellite.

HARTFORD, Conn. - For school bus driver Jamille Aine, a cold is more than an inconvenience. His employer does not offer paid sick days, so if he can't shake the bug, he may not be able to pay his bills.

DALLAS (Reuters) - More than 200,000 children were hit as punishment in U.S. schools last year and in the South more blacks than whites are struck, two human rights groups said in a report released on Wednesday.

John McCain has overtaken Barack Obama in the presidential race, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released Wednesday morning.

MADRID, Spain - A Spanish airliner bound for the Canary Islands crashed, burned and broke into pieces Wednesday while trying to take off from Madrid's Barajas airport, killing 149 people on board, officials said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

RALEIGH, N.C. - Barack Obama and his newly named running mate will campaign together Saturday at the place where the Democratic presidential hopeful formally launched his White House bid.

SYDNEY, Australia - A hungry and abandoned humpback whale calf that has been trying to suckle from boats in the waters off north Sydney rebuffed fresh attempts by wildlife workers to return it to the open ocean Wednesday and appeared to be weakening.

EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio - A hospital spokeswoman says U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones has been admitted to a Cleveland-area hospital.

SACHKHERE, Georgia - Russian forces on Wednesday built a sentry post just 30 miles from the Georgian capital, appearing to dig in to positions deep inside Georgia despite pledges to pull back to areas mandated by a cease-fire signed by both countries.

DALLAS (Reuters) - More than 200,000 children were hit as punishment in U.S. schools last year and in the South more blacks than whites are struck, two human rights groups said in a report released on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON - While this year's presidential election shows signs of drawing in more young voters than any since 1992, the candidates who pulled some of them into the Republican race are long gone — and it's unclear whether they've taken their young supporters with them.

MARTINSVILLE, Va. - Democrat Barack Obama is sounding tough populist themes on the campaign trail, pledging to create union jobs to build energy-efficient cars and to end tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas.

Los Angeles (E! Online) - With all the ogling at Britney Spears' fabulous physique has come the seemingly requisite question whenever celebs lose weight: "Gee, how did they do it?"

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Even low-level exposure to arsenic in drinking water appears to be associated with increased prevalence of type 2 diabetes, researchers said in a study published Tuesday.

ALGIERS (AFP) - Two car bomb attacks in eastern Algeria killed at least 11 people, state radio reported Wednesday with the country still in shock from a suicide bomber who killed 43 people a day earlier.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Scientists from a US firm claim to have created a large number of red blood cells from human embryonic stem cells, opening up the prospect of having a limitless supply of blood for transfusions.

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A commercial airline pilot and convert to Islam who says his name is on the U.S. government's secret terrorist watch list has fought back, filing a federal lawsuit against the Homeland Security Department and various other federal agencies.

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey's interior minister on Wednesday confirmed that 13 policemen were wounded in a suicide bombing this week.

The worst yet in a spate of suicide bombings stokes fears of more attacks during the coming holy month

NEW YORK - It's not easy being Bond. Roger Moore, who starred in seven Bond films in the 1970s and 1980s, recounts his days as the dashing super-spy in his upcoming memoir, "My Word Is My Bond," and says things weren't always as they seemed.

Washington - President Bush has long prided himself on his close personal relationships with foreign leaders. But over the last several weeks some of those relationships appear to have gone disastrously awry.

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 20 (HealthDay News) -- Working-age Americans are facing mounting problems when it comes to affording health care, a result of what analysts are calling a "perfect storm" of economic woes.

NEW YORK - Mortgage application volume fell last week to its lowest levels in nearly eight years, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday.