PRESS DIGEST-Financial Times, Wall St Journal Asia editions

- The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal carried the following stories in their Asia print and website editions on Wednesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

FINANCIAL TIMES (www.ft.com)

-- Wall Street rebounded even as the global banking system was gripped by a worsening crisis of confidence as the leaders of the U.S. Congress struggled to salvage the administrations $700 billion bail-out plan.

-- The Reserve Bank of India stepped in to prevent a run on ICICI Bank (ICBK.BO), reassuring investors and depositors that India's second largest lender was in sound financial health.

-- The pressure on regulators and accounting rulemakers to ease fair value accounting standards in an effort to help end the financial crisis has been intensified by politicians, including the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, and the leader of the UK's opposition Conservative party, David Cameron.

WALL STREET JOURNAL (www.wsj.com)

-- U.S. lawmakers worked to save the White House's historic $700 billion financial-rescue package, after a stunning defeat in the House of Representatives that initially sent stock markets across the world into a tailspin and added to concerns that the U.S. faces a prolonged recession if the legislation isn't revived.

-- Asian countries are taking steps to boost liquidity as the global cash squeeze begins to hurt some economies. What happens next will depend in part on the fate of the U.S. bailout package and whether confidence is restored in interbank markets.

-- Central banks around the world are increasingly transforming themselves from being lenders of last resort to lenders of first resort, providing the day-to-day grease that allows financial markets to function.