New York  - Major US stock indices were recovering Tuesday after turmoil in the financial sector on Monday led to the worst day on Wall Street since the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 40 points early Tuesday afternoon, despite opening the trading day down about 150 points. The Dow plunged more than 500 points, or 4.4 per cent, on Monday.

The broader Standard & Poor's 500 was down as much as 1.8 per cent in early trading, but was posting a 0.5-per-cent gain by the late morning, after plunging 4.7 per cent Monday.

New York  - Three major US rating agencies have downgraded another victim of the US credit crunch, insurance conglomerate American International Group (AIG), reports said Tuesday.

Standard and Poor's, Moody's and Fitch lowered AIG's previous good-to-very-good credit rating to good-to-satisfactory after Wall Street financial institutes came under pressure to bail out the company.

The downgrading makes it more difficult for the struggling insurance giant to raise capital on financial markets to meet its obligations.

The rating agencies also placed AIG under observation and did not rule out a further lowering of its credit-worthiness ratings.

New York, Sept. 16: The Obama Campaign has denied a New York Post report that said he privately tried to persuade Iraqi political leaders to stall an agreement on scaling back American troops in Iraq while publicly campaigning for a speedy withdrawal.

New York, September 16 : Vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin seems to have failed to impress the women who filmed in ‘The Women’, for they are not necessarily going to vote in favour of the Republican party.

"I guess we have to root for her in that her son just went off to Iraq, and that''s gotta be really, really tough," the New York Daily News quoted Meg Ryan, who plays the spurned wife in the all-chick flick, as saying.

New York, Sept 16 : It seems former US President Bill Clinton enjoys sex jokes.

According to a source, Clinton couldn’t stop giggling when ‘Legally Blonde’ star and dyed-in- the-wool Democrat Laura Bell Bundy showed him a T-shirt made in support of presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

"The shirt read, ''Every Time Obama Speaks, an Angel Has an Orgasm," '' the New York Post quoted the insider, as saying.

New York - Electronics chain Best Buy is to buy online music service Napster Inc for 121 million dollars in a move to expand the retailer's digital music offerings, the companies said Monday.

Best Buy will pay a total of 121 million dollars for Napster, which has 700,000 subscribers to its digital entertainment services. The deal represented a price of 2.65 dollars per share, almost double Napster's closing price before the announcement of the deal. Napster also has 67 million dollars in the bank.