Evening Edition

“I approve the full disbandment of private security companies, both national and international, within four months,” Karzai said in the decree.

The decision aims “to better provide security for the lives and property of citizens, fight corruption, prevent irregularities and the misuse of arms, military uniforms and equipment by private security companies that have caused heart-breaking and tragic incidents,” the decree said.

The attack, blamed on Al-Qaeda and the deadliest this year, wounded at least another 100 people and came a day after Iraq’s two main political parties suspended talks over the formation of a new government and as the US withdraws thousands of its soldiers from the country.

US President Barack Obama led international condemnation of the attack, with his spokesman insisting the bomber’s attempt to “derail the advances that the Iraqi people have made” would not succeed.

Torrential monsoon rain triggered catastrophic floods which have affected a fifth of the country, wiping out villages, rich farm land, infrastructure and killing an estimated 1,600 people in the nation’s worst natural disaster.

The United Nations last week launched an immediate appeal for 460 million dollars to cover the next 90 days and UN chief Ban Ki-moon visited Pakistan at the weekend, calling on the world to quicken its aid pledges.

“Without such support, the risk is that future recessions could be more severe because the financial system would not have the capital to support mortgage lending on an adequate scale,” he said.

“House price declines could be more acute, with even greater damage to financial wealth and economic security,” Geithner said at a conference in Washington on the future of housing finance in the United States.

Getting the Taiwanese legislature’s approval was seen as crucial in terms of securing legitimacy for the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) — by far the island’s most wide-ranging accord yet with China.

“The ECFA is extremely important to Taiwan if it hopes to avoid being marginalised economically amid an increasing number of trade blocs,” said Cheng Ching-ling, a legislator with the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT) party.

The commission also handed out a five-match ban to World Cup captain Patrice Evra, three matches to vice-captain Franck Ribery and one match to Lyon midfielder Jeremy Toulalan.

Eric Abidal, the fifth player called before the commission – Ribery was not present as his club Bayern Munich refused to release him and Anelka, as expected, did not show up – convinced the commission that he was an innocent party and was absolved.

United have had another quiet summer of transfer dealings, with Chris Smalling, Javier Hernandez and Bebe arriving for a total of 25 million pounds (40 million dollars).

It follows on from last summer, when Ferguson spent a similar figure on bringing Antonio Valencia, Michael Owen and Gabriel Obertan to Old Trafford.

Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia’s help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant’s core.

At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians.

In an annual report to Congress, the US Defense Department said Monday that China was ramping up investment in an array of areas including nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, submarines, aircraft carriers and cyber warfare.

“The balance of cross-Strait military forces continues to shift in the mainland’s favor,” the report said.

A week after a landmark decision overturned a ban on gay marriage, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a motion for a stay of the order, effectively reinstating the ban.

Further appeal proceedings are now scheduled to take place the week of December 6 in San Francisco.

Nine hours of talks ended late Monday with an agreement between the Unite union and airports operator BAA on a new pay offer.

Unite members, including firefighters and security staff, had originally voted by three to one to take action and threatened a “total shutdown” of airports including London Heathrow, the world’s busiest international passenger hub.

The Pentagon called the deadline “very challenging” but said the United States would work with the Afghan government and seek to improve oversight and management of private security firms, long an irritant to Afghans.

“Obviously that is a very aggressive timeline and one which I think our forces and commanders as well as the State Department and (U.S.) ambassador will be working with the government of Afghanistan to achieve,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

The blast, which tore through a line of recruits, was one of the bloodiest this year and occurred as suspected insurgents also launched an assassination campaign against judges in the Iraqi capital and a volatile province north of Baghdad.

The bloodshed added to tensions that have simmered following an inconclusive election more than five months ago that has yet to produce a new government.

Setting the stage for what promises to be a long debate about fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Geithner convened a conference of housing industry leaders and heard a range of ideas about reforms for the $10.7 trillion mortgage market.

Almost two years after the government seized Fannie and Freddie to save them from collapse, there is a widely held view that reform is needed, but the agreement ends there.

Paul leads state attorney general Democrat Jack Conway by 45 percent to 40 percent among likely voters in the November 2 election. In a broader pool of registered voters, the two are deadlocked at 40 percent.

The sluggish economy leads among voter worries, with 58 percent naming it as the state’s biggest problem. It finished ahead of education issues, which was second at 16 percent.

Obama has painted Republicans as obstructionist allies of big corporate interests as he has crisscrossed the United States this week, traveling thousands of miles to raise millions of dollars for Democrats running for Congress and governorships in the November 2 mid-term elections.

He took the same tone when he stopped at a Seattle bakery to meet with small business owners and tout the bill.

A San Francisco federal judge struck down the California same-sex marriage ban known as Proposition 8 earlier this month, and the case was immediately appealed to the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Monday, those appellate judges set a hearing for December and put gay marriages on hold pending appeal. They made only one comment relating to legal issues, asking the pro Prop 8 team to say why the case should not be dismissed due to lack of standing — a term for the right to appeal.

At a battery plant in Wisconsin Obama sought to convince voters he can ease high unemployment and has a plan to fix a slowing economy in which fears have grown of a double-dip recession.

He accused Republicans of trying to turn back the clock by resisting his administration’s efforts to bolster the sagging economy.

The initial prospectus, expected to be for $100 million, is likely to be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, two people said, asking not to be named because the preparations for the IPO are private.

GM updated its several-hundred page S-1 document to add a management risk factor after Chief Executive Ed Whitacre said on Thursday he would step down and be succeeded by Dan Akerson effective in September, the source said.

Discovered in a box under a desk at the CIA, the tapes could reveal how foreign governments aided the United States in holding and interrogating suspects. And they could complicate U.S. efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, who has been described as one of the “key plot facilitators” in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Apparently the tapes do not show harsh treatment – unlike videos the agency destroyed of the questioning of other suspected terrorists.

Officials quickly blamed al-Qaida for the deadliest single act of violence in the capital in months. Police said 125 people were wounded.

Bodies of bloodied young men, some still clutching job applications in their hands, were scattered on the ground outside the headquarters’ gate. Soldiers collected bits of flesh and stray hands and legs as frantic Iraqis showed up to search for relatives.

From statehouses to state fairs on Tuesday, Republican incumbents and challengers unleashed an almost unified line of criticism against the president days after he forcefully defended the construction of a $100 million Islamic center two blocks from the site of the 2001 terror attacks.

Recalling the emotion of that deadly day, Republicans said that while they respect religious freedom, the president’s position was cold and academic, lacking compassion and empathy for the victims’ families.

The floods began three weeks ago, but there is little sign conditions are improving for some 20 million people – or one in nine Pakistanis – who are affected. Tens of thousands of villages remain under water, and officials feared that more flooding could be on the way.

The already shaky and unpopular government has been sorely tested by the disaster, which is complicating the U.S.-backed campaign against Islamist militants. The international community is rushing water, medicine, shelter and aid workers to the country, but aid groups and the British government have complained that the response has been too slow and not generous enough.

Some experts are urging teenagers to turn down the volume on their digital music players, suggesting loud music through earbuds may be to blame – although hard evidence is lacking. They warn that slight hearing loss can cause problems in school and set the stage for hearing aids in later life.

“Our hope is we can encourage people to be careful,” said the study’s senior author Dr. Gary Curhan of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The Class of 2014 thinks of Clint Eastwood more as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry urging punks to “go ahead, make my day.” Few incoming freshmen know how to write in cursive or have ever worn a wristwatch.

These are among the 75 items on this year’s Beloit College Mindset List. The compilation, released Tuesday, is assembled each year by two officials at this private school of about 1,400 students in Beloit, Wis.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals imposed an emergency stay Monday on a trial court judge’s ruling overturning the ban, known as Proposition 8. Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker had ordered state officials to stop enforcing the measure starting Wednesday, clearing the way for county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“It’s saddening just to know that we still have to keep waiting for this basic human right,” Marcia Davalos, of Los Angeles, a health care advocate who had planned to marry her partner, Laurette Healey, said when the stay was issued Monday. “We were getting excited and then all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Ugh.’ It’s a roller-coaster.”

A survey of viewers conducted on the eve of the new fall season quantifies what has become commonplace in millions of American homes: People are putting themselves in charge of their own TV schedule.

Sixty-two percent of viewers across the country interviewed in a poll conducted for the nation’s largest cable company, Comcast Corp., said they have used time-shifting technology. Six in 10 people said they owned a digital video recorder.

While the executives disagreed on the exact level of support needed, the group overwhelmingly advocated the government should maintain a large role propping up the nearly $11 trillion market.

Bill Gross, managing director of bond giant Pimco, said the economic recovery required more government stimulus, particularly in the housing market. He suggested the administration push for the automatic refinancing of millions homes backed by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac.

For the 33-year-old Lopez, as for many other Hispanic immigrants, optimism about life in the U.S. appears to be partly a product of what she sees in the rearview mirror.

An Associated Press-Univision poll of more than 1,500 Latinos finds that Hispanic immigrants, many of whom faced huge problems in their homelands, have more idealized views of the United States than Hispanics who were born in America do.

Like 41 other states and the federal government, Florida has laws intended to keep amateur college athletes from losing their eligibility – and their schools from getting in trouble with the NCAA – because of dealings with an agent.

At a time when concern about improper contact between athletes and agents is spiking, however, cases such as Wood’s are an exception, not the rule.

Ceara Sturgis’ dispute with the central Mississippi Copiah County School District started in 2009, well before a student in another Mississippi school district, Constance McMillen, found national attention in her fight to wear a tuxedo and take a same-sex date to prom.

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit for Sturgis, claiming the Copiah County district discriminated against her on the basis of sex and gender stereotypes. Her photo and name were kept out of her senior yearbook.

United Nations deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said representatives of U.N. agencies and humanitarian organizations wanted to return to Kalma Camp to further assess conditions and additional humanitarian needs but were denied access.

Tensions have been high at Kalma since late July, when demonstrations by opponents of peace talks with the government turned violent, leaving at least five people dead. The camp has a strong base of supporters of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army, which is not taking part in talks in Doha, Qatar, aimed at ending the seven-year war in Darfur.

At one elementary school, a student said his teacher whispered in his ear the correct answers for a standardized test.

A teacher at another school reported seeing school administrators and other educators erasing wrong answers and filling in the right ones after students had turned in tests. One teacher said an administrator told her to “shhhh” when she brought up possible cheating by educators in the school.

A Superior Court judge amended Gregory Taylor’s sentence to eight years already served and the 47-year-old, who was sentenced in 1997 to 25 years to life, will be a free man in a few days.

Tears streamed down Taylor’s face and Judge Peter Espinoza asked a bailiff to get him a tissue.