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• GENEVA (AP) -- Marc Rich, the trader known as the "King of Commodities" whose controversial 2001 pardon by President Bill Clinton just hours before he left office unleashed a political firestorm of criticism in 2001, died on Wednesday. He was 78.
• Rich died in Switzerland, where he lived, according to his Israel-based spokesman Avner Azulay. He did not give further details, but said Rich would be buried in Israel on Thursday.
• Rich fled from the United States to Switzerland in 1983 after he was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on more than 50 counts of fraud, racketeering, trading with Iran during the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis and evading more than US$48 million in income taxes -- crimes that could have earned him more than 300 years in prison.
• Rich remained on the FBI's Most Wanted List, narrowly escaping capture in Finland, Germany, Britain and Jamaica, until Clinton granted him a pardon on Jan. 20, 2001 -- the day he handed over the keys to the White House to George W. Bush.
• Rich's pardon catapulted him into the headlines once again.
• ___

• BOSTON (AP) -- Drawing on the political might of the White House, Democrats have exorcized the ghost of Scott Brown.
• Three years after the little-known Republican state senator shocked the political world with an unlikely victory here, veteran Democratic Congressman Ed Markey won the special election for U.S. Senate to replace John Kerry on Tuesday, defeating a Republican political newcomer with an all-star resume who failed to inspire Massachusetts voters and Washington's Republican leaders alike.
• It was a resounding victory in a low-turnout election for a national Democratic Party still haunted by Brown's 2010 special election stunner.
• "To everyone in the state, regardless of how you voted, I say to you tonight this is your seat in the United States Senate," Markey, 66, declared in his victory speech,

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