Evening Edition

“I can’t ask my crew to do this and the best thing is you can get (the action models) naked without any complaints,” he told AFP at a secluded studio in Hong Kong.

The director is in a race against time to complete his 3.2 million-US-dollar film “3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy”, which is due for release in May.

Officials said that nationwide the area alight with fires was almost a quarter that of a week ago, although there appeared to be little progress in reducing the size of the blaze close to Russia’s main nuclear research centre in Sarov.

Two US Air Force C-130 planes carrying aid for Russia touched down early Saturday at a Moscow airport, followed by a charter flight from California ordered by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, state television and the foreign ministry said.

Muslims “have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country,” Obama said at an Iftar meal at the White House for Muslims breaking their Ramadan fast late Friday.

That includes “the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

The 600-million-dollar legislation, signed into law Friday by US President Barack Obama, will nearly double visa fees for some Indian information technology workers entering the United States.

“The US is giving a very strong signal foreigners are not welcome,” said Som Mittal, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), which represents India’s leading software exporters.

The lives of 20 million people — nearly 12 percent of the population — have been disrupted by one of the worst catastrophes in Pakistan’s history. Six million still need food, shelter and water, the UN said in a statement.

Highlighting the scale of the disaster, Prime Minister Raza Yusuf Gilani said in an Independence Day speech the country faces challenges similar to those during the 1947 partition of the subcontinent.

A statement issued by the presidential palace said Obama agreed in a video call to start talking about a review, which Karzai also proposed in a letter.

“The two presidents agreed that discussions regarding a strategic review of the more effective ways of fighting terrorism should begin,” the statement, written in Dari, said.

The prescription drug, called ella, is made by French company HRA Pharma and will be sold in the United States by Watson Pharmaceuticals.

It is the first emergency contraceptive approved since a five-year battle under the Bush administration ended with limited over-the-counter sales and age checks by pharmacists for a rival pill.

“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country,” Obama said to applause at an event attended by diplomats from Islamic countries and members of the U.S. Muslim community.

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” he said, weighing in for the first time in a national debate that has grown increasingly heated in recent weeks.

On a warm and muggy day, Obama pledged to “keep up our efforts until the environment is cleaned, polluters are held accountable, businesses and communities are made whole, and the people of the Gulf Coast are back on their feet.”

Obama is in the region for a brief weekend trip with first lady Michelle Obama, daughter Sasha (her sister Malia is at summer camp) and the family dog, Bo. Their 27-hour stop in the Sunshine State is as much a family vacation as it is an attempt by the president to convince Americans that this region, so dependent on tourism revenue, is safe for travel.

But four months after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, regulators have only started to make good on promises to overhaul drilling. Tough measures are stalled in Congress. A $1 billion emergency response network proposed by the industry won’t be operational for another year.

And while doomsday scenarios from the BP spill, like oil washing up the East Coast, have not come to pass, there are no guarantees that drilling will be any safer once it does resume.

The crisis has battered Pakistan’s economy and undermined its political stability at a time when the United States needs its steadfast cooperation against Islamist extremism. The U.N. has appealed for an initial $460 million to provide relief to Pakistan but has said the country will need billions to rebuild once the floodwaters recede.

Because of the flooding, Pakistan canceled celebrations Saturday marking its creation and independence from Britain in 1947. President Asif Ali Zardari met with flood victims in the northwest, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was expected to visit affected regions on Sunday.

More than 750,000 Medicare recipients with high prescription costs each got a $250 government check this summer, and 3 million-plus more checks are going out to people who land in the program’s anxiety-inducing coverage gap.

Democrats, running scared in an election year, are trying to overcome older people’s mistrust of the new health care law, which expands coverage for younger generations by cutting Medicare payments to hospitals and insurers.

Seventy-five years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law, Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday: “We have an obligation to keep that promise, to safeguard Social Security for our seniors, people with disabilities and all Americans – today, tomorrow and forever.”

Some Republican leaders in Congress are “pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall,” Obama said.

The early-morning shootings at Baghdad checkpoints demonstrated the insurgents’ aim to weaken confidence in the government and aggravate sectarian tension as all but 50,000 U.S. troops head home by the end of August.

In the first attack, gunmen armed with silenced pistols killed two policemen asleep in their patrol car at a security checkpoint in the Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood, said an officer with the federal police in Baghdad. The assailants then set the car on fire and fled, he said.

The Pentagon has said that secret information will be even more damaging to security and risk more lives than WikiLeaks’ initial release of some 76,000 war documents.

“This organization will not be threatened by the Pentagon or any other group,” Julian Assange told reporters in Stockholm. “We proceed cautiously and safely with this material.”

Theodore Olson and David Boies, the high-profile lawyers representing two couples, told the appeals court that same-sex couples are being hurt every day Proposition 8 is enforced and should not be denied their civil rights while the ban’s sponsors pursue an appeal of last week’s decision overturning the 2008 measure.

“Indeed, the only harm at issue here is that suffered by Plaintiffs and other gay and lesbian Californians each day that Proposition 8’s discriminatory and irrational deprivation of their constitutional rights remains in force,” the lawyers argued in a filing late Friday.

Unrest that has killed at least 57 people since June shows no signs of abating despite the deployment of thousands of troops and calls from India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for calm. Tens of thousands of Kashmiris staged angry demonstrations Friday after government forces killed four people and wounded 31 others.

The situation in recent weeks has been reminiscent of the late 1980s, when protests against New Delhi’s rule sparked the armed conflict that has so far killed more than 68,000 people, mostly civilians.

Let’s face it: There is no easy or imminent fix for the flagging recovery.

The sluggish economic summer wore on Friday with news that Americans spent less at most retail stores in July. Earlier this month came word that the trade deficit is ballooning and companies are not adding jobs fast enough to bring down unemployment.

The Yurok Tribe celebrated the items’ return this past week – among the largest repatriation of Native American sacred objects ever – from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian.

“It’s part of the fabric of who we are and why we are,” said Javier Kinney, who helped truck the artifacts back from Suitland-Silver Hill, Md. “It’s a little bit of mixed emotion – sadness that they were gone for so long but joy and excitement that they’re back. It’s like family coming back home.”

Three states – Washington, New Mexico and Utah – allow illegal immigrants to get licenses because their laws do not require proof of citizenship or legal residency. An Associated Press analysis found that those states have seen a surge in immigrants seeking IDs in recent months, a trend experts attribute to crackdowns on illegal immigration in Arizona and elsewhere.

“It’s difficult being undocumented and not having an identification,” said Hernandez, of Puebla, Mexico. “You can use the Mexican ID, but people look down on it.” An American driver’s license is also a requirement for many jobs.

A Brooklyn jury deliberated less than two hours before finding Hal Turner guilty of making death threats.

A judge jailed Turner, of North Bergen, N.J., following the verdict. His attorney declined comment.

John Dunn, the water and pollution control director in the central Iowa city, said people must adopt “temporary lifestyle changes.”

“Water used for any purpose other than essential health and sanitation purposes is hampering our community-wide recovery and extending the amount of time until water is available for drinking,” Dunn said. “The use of water for nonessential purposes must stop.”