Wall Street Journal Top Online Stories: Wed 11/17/10

The Wall Street Journal lead headline online early Wednesday morning says "U.S. Sets 50 Bank Probes." The paper says the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is conducting about 50 criminal investigations of former executives, directors and employees at U.S. banks that have failed since the start of the financial crisis.

The paper says the U.S. government is funding several television shows in Afghanistan as part of a strategy to galvanize Afghans behind their security forces.

It says senior European officials laid the groundwork for a bailout of Ireland that could reach $136 billion, saying experts would travel this week to Dublin to examine the country's finances amid alarm about the dire straits of the Irish banking system.

The paper says unable to borrow as readily as Washington and, in most places, required to balance operating budgets, state governments are facing a reckoning.

It says medical experts advising the FDA recommended that the agency approve lupus drug Benlysta, developed by Human Genome Sciences and Glaxo.

And the most popular story says the Senate's No. 2 Republican said Tuesday that he opposed a vote this year on President Barack Obama's signature arms control treaty, dealing a blow to a top White House foreign policy priority and possibly to U.S.-Russian relations.