Los Angeles - Looking to pull themselves out of the Eastern Conference cellar, the Washington Wizards on Wednesday picked up a pair of backup guards in a three-team trade with the Memphis Grizzlies and New Orleans Hornets.

The Wizards (4-13), who recently fired head coach Eddie Jordan due to their slow start, acquired Javaris Crittenton from the Grizzlies and Mike James from the Hornets.

Sana'a, Yemen  - Somali pirates hijacked two Yemeni fishing ships and took 22 fishermen hostage in the Gulf of Aden on Wednesday, Yemen's Interior Ministry said.

The pirates attacked the ships as they sailed off the Mait area near the southern port city of Aden, the ministry said in a statement posted on its website.

Before the pirates took control of the ships, seven fishermen escaped on a small boat to report the attacks to the Yemeni Coast Guard Authority in Aden, the statement said.

Washington  - The US Treasury on Wednesday said efforts to stabilize the financial system were making good progress but legislators complained that billions of dollars were being spent with little oversight and few results for the wider struggling economy.

In a hearing on Capitol Hill, lawmakers criticized the government for plugging nearly half of a 700-billion-dollar financial rescue package into cash-strapped banks over the past two months while consumers still struggled to gain access to loans, the backbone of the US economy.

Washington - President-elect Barack Obama called on Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to resign Wednesday following his arrest on corruption charges.

"The president-elect agrees ... that under the current circumstances it is difficult for the governor to effectively do his job and serve the people of Illinois," Robert Gibbs, Obama's spokesman, said, according to the Washington Post.

Blagojevich was arrested on Tuesday on multiple corruption charges, including that he sought bribes and political favours from those being considered to take Obama's vacated Senate seat.

New York  - The UN General Assembly marked Wednesday as the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, noting that its goals remained unfulfilled while fresh global problems have aggravated living conditions for millions of people.

The short, low-key session of the 192-nation assembly at UN headquarters in New York was in contrast with the year-long activities around the world to debate whether norms included in the declaration had been carried out truthfully.

London - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown earned howls of laughter from the opposition benches for a slip of the tongue Wednesday in which he appeared to claim to have "saved the world" from economic disaster.

During a series of fiery exchanges at Prime Minister's Question Time, Brown quipped: "We not only saved the world, er, saved the banks and led the world. .." - but his attempts at correcting his verbal faux-pas were drowned out by laughter.