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Hello, from the CNN Center here in Atlanta, I’m Melissa Long. It is Tuesday afternoon. Here is a look at some of the stories happening at this hour.

In Chicago, President-elect Barack Obama spoke¹ for the second straight day on his plans for confronting the nation's financial crisis. He introduced other members of his financial team, Peter Orszag for the Director of Office of Management and Budget in that nomination². The president-elect says his first priority is to create or save 2.5 million jobs.

Treasury³ Secretary Henry Paulson unveiling 800 billion dollars new programs designed to encourage consumer lending. One plan would purchase assets, bad securities from government mortgage lenders, another would loan money to those holding securities so they could increase lending.

A new government report shows the economies took an even bigger tumble, the sum more than first thought. The third-quarter Gross Domestic Product, the GDP decline was a 0.5%. It was originally tagged less than one third of one percent. This marks the biggest drop in 7 years.

Chaos⁴ in Thailand's capital, today anti-government protestors swarm⁵ in Bangkok International Airport, forcing the suspension of all departing flights. This unrest also spilled into the streets where opponents and supporters of the government fought each other with guns, knives and sling⁶ shots. Police say 11 people were injured.

Pirates have hijacked⁷ another ship off the east coast of Africa. Dozens of ships have been attacked in the region in recent weeks. This new information is coming from a group that keeps tabs on sailors captured by pirates. No details yet on this ship or the size of its crew.

And those are some of the headlines making news at this hour. Do stay with CNN and cnn.com for more on these stories or other news of today.