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This is your NOW IN THE NEWS update; I'm Reggie Aqui, from the CNN center in Atlanta.

Worldwide recession fears sent many world stock markets going down today. The Dow opened down sharply before recovering some of its losses. Tokyo's Nikkei downed more than 11 percent. Many European markets also saw losses. Japan's Prime Minister blamed the market trouble on America's quote: "insufficient¹ bailout plan".

The economy dominated the third and final presidential debate from Hofstra University. Senator John McCain continued to criticize Senator Barack Obama's economic plan as one that is unfriendly to small businesses. Obama fired back by saying McCain's economics is no better than President Bush's. According to a CNN poll taken shortly after the debate last night, 58 percent say Barack Obama did the best job, 31 percent say John McCain won it. The poll sampled 10 percent more Democrats² than Republicans, so keep that in mind.

Social security benefits are about to go up by sixty bucks³. That is the largest jump in more than twenty five years. The increase won't be enough by monthly Medicare premiums⁴, which will stay the same. Fifty five million Americans can expect to start getting those bigger checks by next year.

Relentless⁵ winds that spread 3 huge wild fires in Southern California have finally died down. Fire crew say the biggest fire, the Porter Ranch⁶ blaze is 50 percent contained. They believed a downed power line started that fire. All the evacuation orders were lifted yesterday.

They feared the worst, and they got pretty lucky. Puerto Rico, the Virgin⁷ Islands and other parts of the Northern Caribbean got far less damage from Hurricane Omar than expected. That storm is now moving away from the region after passing overnight, between Saint Martin and the US Virgin Islands as a major Category Three. It's been downgraded now to a Category One hurricane. Omar is expected to keep chirring toward the open Atlantic and far away from the US mainland.

And you are now up to date, those are your headlines. Please stick with us here at CNN for more on these stories and the other news of the day.