Washington - The US Senate approved a 700-billion-dollar financial rescue package Wednesday night that members said was essential to keep the world's largest economy from near-total collapse.

Senate leaders hoped the 74-25 vote would send a strong message to the lower House of Representatives, which rejected an earlier version of the bail-out plan on Monday and sent US stocks into a free-fall.

"I'm very very happy with this vote tonight," said Majority Leader Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate.

Washington - Sales of automobiles in the US plummeted in September as a weaker economy and tighter access to credit kept buyers away, industry figures showed Wednesday.

Both domestic and foreign automakers saw double digit declines. General Motors sales took the smallest hit falling 16 per cent from the year-earlier period, while Ford Motor Corp was pummelled by a 35 per cent drop and Chrysler slid 33 per cent.

Asian automakers also saw sales fall about a third, with a 32 per cent drop at Toyota Motor Corp, a 24 per cent decline at Honda and a 37 per cent slide at Nissan Motor Co.

San Francisco - Web giant Google unveiled a new national energy plan for the US Wednesday that it said would largely wean the country of fossil fuels by 2030.

The 4.4-trillion-dollar plan was developed by Google's philanthropic arm Google. org, which predicted that the county would reap net savings of 1 trillion dollars over the idea's 22-year term.

San Francisco - A new search was launched Wednesday for missing and presumed-dead adventurer Steve Fossett after hikers in the Sierra Nevada Mountains discovered ID cards, clothes and some 1,000 dollars in cash that appeared to belong to him, authorities said.

Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Los Angeles, confirmed that the copy of a pilot's license he had received matched Fossett's details.

"The certificate number and date of issue on the document in the photo matches the information we have for Mr Fossett in our database," he said.

Other information, including Fossett's date of birth and his address, also matched, he said.

Washington - Sales of automobiles in the US plummeted in September as a weaker economy and tighter access to credit kept buyers away, industry figures showed Wednesday.

Both domestic and foreign automakers saw double digit declines. General Motors sales took the smallest hit falling 16 per cent from the year-earlier period, while Ford Motor Corp was pummelled by a 35 per cent drop and Chrysler slid 33 per cent.

Asian automakers also saw sales fall about a third, with a 32 per cent drop at Toyota Motor Corp, a 24 per cent decline at Honda and a 37 per cent slide at Nissan Motor Co.