NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Global job woes worsened on Wednesday on bleak employment data from the United States and Germany, while microchip giant Intel Corp warned that slack demand for computers would hurt its revenue.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama should seek tougher sanctions against Iran, which will be his biggest Middle East challenge, outgoing White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley said on Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One of the packages accused swindler Bernard Madoff sent in violation of a court order contained about 13 watches, a diamond necklace and other valuables worth more than $1 million, prosecutors said in court papers released on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates has told Congress that a planned buildup of U.S. forces in Afghanistan could add $5.5 billion to U.S. war costs in the current federal fiscal year, officials said on Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Job losses and plans to lay off workers hammered the struggling U.S. economy in the final month of 2008, according to private reports that could foreshadow surprisingly grim labor market data from the government on Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In an abrupt switch, Senate Democratic leaders began talks on Wednesday about swearing in former Illinois attorney general Roland Burris, nominated by embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the Senate.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. budget deficit will swell to a record $1.186 trillion in fiscal 2009, congressional forecasters said on Wednesday, presenting President-elect Barack Obama with a daunting economic challenge.

GAZA (Reuters) - Hundreds of embattled Palestinians ventured outside to shop for food on Wednesday during a three-hour Gaza truce, a first step toward an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire under discussion by Israel and Hamas.

LONDON/BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany posted its first rise in unemployment in almost three years on Wednesday, a day after the global economic downturn forced U.S. aluminum giant Alcoa to announce 15,000 job cuts and slash output.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Average rents for U.S. apartments fell in the fourth quarter, as a sharp economic downturn and rising unemployment left Americans unwilling to pay higher prices, according to data released on Wednesday.

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Thousands of Cambodian survivors of the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" marked 30 years Wednesday since the fall of Pol Pot s ultra-Maoist regime, blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people.

MOSCOW/KIEV (Reuters) - Russian gas flows to Europe through Ukraine shut down completely on Wednesday, reducing power to industries and homes in south-east Europe and disrupting supplies to major economies.

(Reuters) - Investors who lost money in Bernard Madoff s alleged $50 billion fraud might begin recovering some of their funds as soon as next month, Securities Investor Protection Corp, President Stephen Harbeck told Bloomberg in an interview.

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday Israel and the Palestinian Authority had accepted a truce plan for Gaza announced by Egypt on Tuesday.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan is reportedly considering cash injections for scores of regional banks in an effort to encourage lending as the financial crisis creates havoc for companies and economies around the globe. A big cut in aluminum output from Alcoa Inc and bankruptcy protection filings by U.S. units of LyondellBasell, the world s third-largest petrochemical company, provided the latest evidence of the corporate struggle with the worst downturn in decades. [nN06446350]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday he expects to inherit a U.S. budget deficit approaching $1 trillion and his administration would have to make some tough budget choices.

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine s state energy company Naftogaz said on Wednesday that Russia had cut off all gas supplies to Europe via Ukrainian territory at 0544 GMT (12:44 a.m. EST).

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The chief of Pakistan s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has said there will not be a war with India over November s militant attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai, Der Spiegel reported. Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shujaa Pasha told the German magazine in an interview terrorism, not India, was Pakistan s enemy, and he said he took orders from the civilian president.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dismal economic data from the United States and Europe pointed to further pain for the world s two largest economies, while aluminum maker Alcoa Inc plans to slash thousands of jobs and curtail operations to conserve cash in a deepening recession.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Europe faced a deepening energy crunch and more sub-zero temperatures on Wednesday, with Moscow and Kiev showing little sign of a swift resolution of a pricing dispute that has slashed Russian gas supplies to the West.