LONDON (AP) — Germany's Thomas Bach is set to become the first member to declare he is a candidate to succeed Jacques Rogge as president of the International Olympic Committee.

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel is back quickly and safely from his first trip to Syria since he and his team were kidnapped and held captive there last December.

LONDON (AP) — British film director Bryan Forbes, whose work includes the original 1970s horror classic "The Stepford Wives," has died at age 86 after a long illness, a family spokesman said Wednesday.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico's government proposed a sweeping overhaul of the banking sector Wednesday to make credit cheaper and more available, a move desperately needed in a country where bank loans represent less than 20 percent of GDP — one-tenth the level seen in the United States.

NEW YORK (AP) — Orb is becoming quite comfortable in the rain.

OTTAWA, Kan. (AP) — The bodies of a woman and two men who were found slain on an eastern Kansas farm were those of a young mother who went missing last week with her 18-month-old daughter and two men who lived there, authorities said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — They are young, often low-ranking service members out on the weekend in the late night and early morning hours. Sometimes they've been drinking. Often those who sexually assault them are in the armed forces, too.

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — An ethnic militia killed at least 20 police officers who launched a raid to try and arrest them in central Nigeria, a police commissioner said Wednesday.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A Boston-based human rights group said Wednesday it will sue the United Nations in 60 days if the world body does not agree to compensate Haitian cholera victims, apologize to the Caribbean nation for introducing the disease through its peacekeeping force, and launch a major effort to improve sanitation.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Just six months after Minnesota voters turned back an effort to ban gay weddings, lawmakers are poised to make the state the first in the Midwest to pass a law allowing them.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel demanded more information Wednesday after the Air Force removed 17 launch officers from duty at a nuclear missile base in North Dakota over what a commander called "rot" in the force. The Air Force struggled to explain, acknowledging concern about an "attitude problem" but telling Congress the weapons were secure.

NEW YORK (AP) — Penn State has 67 scholarship football players on its roster and coach Bill O'Brien sees no reason why that will change significantly by the time the season starts on Aug. 31.

ROME (AP) — Italian prosecutors placed the captain of the Jolly Nero cargo ship under investigation Wednesday for alleged manslaughter after his vessel slammed into the dock at Genoa's busy port and toppled the control tower into the harbor, killing at least seven people.

Eating fish is good for your heart but taking fish oil capsules does not help people at high risk of heart problems who are already taking medicines to prevent them, a large study in Italy found.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wrigley says it is taking a new caffeinated gum off the market temporarily as the Food and Drug Administration investigates the safety of added caffeine.

BEIRUT (AP) — A problem with a fiber optics cable was responsible for an Internet outage that cut off civil war-ravaged Syria from the rest of the world for nearly 20 hours, state media said Wednesday.

MILAN (AP) — Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction and four-year prison sentence were upheld on the first appeal Wednesday in a case that could see him barred from public office for five years.

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — A new law that excludes former officials of the Moammar Gadhafi era from public office is dividing Libya and deepening the turmoil plaguing the country since the 2011 civil war that ousted the erratic leader.

ATLANTA (AP) — An uncle of former Kris Kross rapper Chris Kelly was among the mourners Wednesday at an Atlanta funeral home and said his nephew was a good person who loved his family and was very devoted to his mother and grandmother.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Kidnapping and rape charges were filed Wednesday against a man arrested after three women missing for about a decade were found alive at his home.