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freestyle relay to earn his record 19th career Olympic medal and 15th gold on Tuesday night, etching a place in history as the most decorated Olympian of all time.
• "It has been a pretty amazing career but we still have a couple races to go," he said.
• Now his remaining four days in the pool at the London Games are all about putting that mark even further out of reach. Phelps has three events to go -- the 200 individual medley, the 100 butterfly and the 4x100 medley relay.
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• BEIRUT (AP) -- In a rare public comment, Syrian President Bashar Assad said foreign enemies are using internal agents in plots to undermine the country's stability.
• The comments, carried by the state news agency but not broadcast on television, break with the low profile Assad has kept over the past three weeks after rebels mounted attacks first on Damascus and then on the commercial hub of Aleppo.
• The speech, given to the army, seemed intended to encourage soldiers in their battle against the country's rebellion, which has brought the 17-month-old uprising to Syria's two biggest cities in the fiercest fighting to date.
• "In the war in which the country is embroiled and the battle against criminal and terrorist gangs, the army has proven its mettle," he said, adding that the Syrian people have shown themselves not easily "tamed" by foreign plots.

• Assad was speaking to the army on the 67th anniversary of its founding. He called it the "homeland's shield" against foreign plots.
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dueling with Republicans on taxes, President Barack Obama is urging the House to pass a tax cut for households earning less than $250,000 a year and drawing a bright line with rival Mitt Romney on a pocketbook issue for voters.
• Obama was making campaign stops in Republican-friendly Mansfield and the Democratic stronghold of Akron on Wednesday, rallying voters after a week of low-profile fundraisers and formal speeches in the aftermath of the deadly shooting at a

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