Evening Edition

Monsoon systems were weakening after three weeks of torrential rains brought devastating floods that have left at least 1,400 people dead in the country’s worst natural disaster, with survivors hitting out at the government’s slow response.

The floods wiped out villages, farmland and infrastructure, and OCHA, the United Nations’ aid coordination body, said that more than 650,000 homeless families were still without basic shelter.

The country’s worst ever humanitarian disaster has ravaged an area roughly the size of England, affected 20 million people, exacerbated a crippling energy crisis and raising fears of social unrest.

“It seems we’re doomed to walking through a dark tunnel. We’re on an unending path of misery,” said Morio Pahore, a farmer from small town Thul in southern Pakistan who is now living in a tent on a highway.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hosted Afghan and Pakistan counterparts Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, its balmy shores dotted with palm trees and magnolias a stark contrast from the battle with Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

The four-way summit, which also involved President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan, agreed to pursue joint economic projects to help bring stability to the region.

The whistleblower website has already released nearly 77,000 leaked US military documents about the war in Afghanistan and is preparing to publish 15,000 more in the coming weeks, despite criticism that doing so could endanger lives since the files include the names of some Afghan informants.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic spokesman for the website, said the US military had a change of heart this week and told WikiLeaks it was prepared to talk about helping to remove sensitive details from the files.

Ghassem Asrar, director of the World Climate Research Programme, told AFP that changes, known as blocking episodes, can prevent humidity or hot weather dispersing.

That intensified heavy rain or heatwaves and locked them over an area, he explained, potentially with a growing impact on extreme weather events that scientists expect to happen more frequently with global warming.

The souring economy and stubbornly high unemployment have seen Obama’s poll numbers slump to all-time lows and they are threatening to drag down his fellow Democrats in looming mid-term elections in November.

In the rustbelt city of Columbus, Ohio, Obama sat down with the Weithman family, who he said were typical of how Americans across the country were benefiting from his economic policies.

The clashes are the reason the Fridtjof Nansen elementary school was created: to teach Macedonian and Albanian children to understand each other and overcome the differences that drove their elders to fight.

“Maybe we are different sort of fishes, but in this school, we all swim together,” reads a bold motto in the hall of the pioneering school, which believes it is a model for Europe.

To students who will get their bachelor’s degrees in 2014, Czechoslovakia has never existed, Fergie is a pop singer, not a duchess; Clint Eastwood is a sensitive movie director, not Dirty Harry; and John McEnroe stars in TV ads, not on the tennis court, Beloit College’s “Mindset” list says.

The Mindset list was first compiled in 1998, for the class of 2002, by Beloit humanities professor Tom McBride and former public affairs director Ron Nief.

“Potash Corp will provide BHP Billiton with an immediate leadership platform in the global fertiliser industry and further diversify BHP Billiton’s portfolio,” BHP said in a statement unveiling the news, one day after Potash had rejected an unsolicited approach.

The offer, worth the equivalent of 31 billion euros, would allow the energy and metals giant to expand in the agricultural sector amid soaring wheat prices and keen food demand to meet the needs of the world’s rising population.

Beijing said the US Defence Department report was “not beneficial” for military ties between the two powers, while state media branded the dossier “aggressive” and said it exaggerated China’s military power.

Geng Yansheng, spokesman for China’s defence ministry, insisted his country was on a “path of peaceful development”.

Rod Blagojevich, the flamboyant politician-turned reality television star, vowed to appeal his sole conviction for lying to federal agents, while US prosecutors promised a new trial on racketeering, bribery, attempted extortion, and wire fraud.

It is “absolutely our intention to retry this,” assistant US Attorney Reid Schar said Tuesday after the jury said it was unable to reach agreement on 23 of 24 counts. The sole guilty verdict, for lying to the FBI, carries a maximum five-year jail sentence.

The move rachets up pressure on the smartphone’s Canadian makers Research in Motion (RIM) to satisfy a demand from the Indian home ministry for access to the heavily encrypted corporate emails and messaging service.

India, the world’s fastest growing cellular market, is a crucial marketing target for RIM with increasingly affluent Indians buying smartphones. The Canadian operator has said it is keen to settle the dispute.

Despite the fresh funds — and some signs that rain was easing — only a small minority of the six million Pakistanis desperate for food and clean water have received help after floods that have killed up to 1,600 people and left two million homeless.

“There has been an improvement in funding. Donors are realizing the scale of the disaster,” U.N. spokesman Maurizio Giuliano told Reuters, “but the challenges are absolutely massive and the floods are not over.”

The automaker said it planned to list the shares on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange after its initial public offering.

Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citigroup Inc have been selected as the lead underwriters for the IPO by the top U.S. automaker.

Some New Yorkers traumatized by the September 11, 2001 attacks have emotionally opposed a proposed Muslim community center and mosque two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. Republican politicians seeking to wrest control of Congress from Democrats in November elections have seized on the issue.

The controversy has sucked in President Barack Obama and stirred debate about the meaning of religious freedom in a nation founded in part on that principle. Competing rallies for and against the Muslim project are planned to mark this year’s ninth anniversary of the attacks.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree on Tuesday ordering private security companies to disband within four months — part of an ambitious plan for the government to take responsibility for all security in the country from 2014.

The firms, who compete for billions of dollars in contracts, employ around 40,000 heavily armed guards — mostly Afghans but including many foreigners. They are also used to guard convoys, embassies and other mainly Western interests.

New Jersey, the first state ever hit with securities fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission, agreed to settle the case without admitting or denying the findings, the SEC said. The state was not required to pay any civil fines or penalties, but ordered to cease and desist from future violations.

New Jersey offered and sold more than $26 billion of municipal bonds in 79 deals between August, 2001 and April, 2007, according to the SEC.

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.

The evidence of microscopic amounts of oil mixing into the soil of the canyon was gathered by scientists at the University of South Florida, who also found poisoned plant plankton – the vital base of the ocean food web – which they blamed on a toxic brew of oil and dispersants.

Their work is preliminary, hasn’t been reviewed by other scientists, requires more tests to confirm it is BP’s oil they found, and is based on a 10-day research cruise that ended late Monday night. Scientists who were not involved said they were uncomfortable drawing conclusions based on such a brief look.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the oil crisis for the government, helped release the 22 oiled sea turtles about a mile off the coast of Cedar Key, Fla., an area unaffected by the spilled crude. They were the first oiled turtles found in the Gulf and rehabilitated.

“I think it’s emblematic of us starting to look forward in the recovery,” Allen said, smiling as he released some of the turtles. “This is a very pristine environment. This is their natural habitat.”

And that the imam who’s being branded an extremist has been valued by both Republican and Democratic administrations as a moderate face of the faith.

Even so, the project stirs complicated emotions, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a complex figure who defies easy categorization in the American Muslim world.

“For most Americans, 9/11 remains as an open wound, and anything associated with Islam, even for Americans who want to understand Islam – to have an Islamic center with so much publicity is like rubbing salt in open wounds,” said Akbar Ahmed, professor of Islamic studies at American University, a former Pakistani ambassador to Britain and author of “Journey Into America, The Challenge of Islam.” He said the space should include a synagogue and a church so it will truly be interfaith.

Abdul Cader Asmal, past president of the Islamic Council of New England, an umbrella group for more than 15 Islamic centers, said some opponents of the $100 million, 13-story project are indeed anti-Muslim. But he said many Americans have genuine, understandable questions about Islam and extremism.

A frustrated electorate could take it out on the party in power – Obama’s Democrats – in the November elections.

Eleven weeks before the Nov. 2 balloting, just 41 percent of those surveyed approve of the president’s performance on the economy, down from 44 percent in April, while 56 percent disapprove. And 61 percent say the economy has gotten worse or stayed the same on Obama’s watch.

Not close enough. On vote after vote, the jury kept coming up one juror short – a lone holdout who wouldn’t budge and would agree only that Blagojevich lied to the FBI. “The person just did not see the evidence that everyone else did,” said juror Stephen Wlodek.

The guilty verdict on the least serious of the 24 counts against him, and mistrial on all the rest, led Blagojevich to taunt prosecutors in the courthouse lobby. More than a year after federal prosecutors accused him of crimes that would make Abraham Lincoln “roll over in his grave,” the disgraced politician bragged about essentially fighting them to a draw.

Lori Berenson’s husband and lawyer, Anibal Apari, said she had turned herself in to police after the decision by a criminal appeals court was announced. Apari spoke to reporters outside the U.S. Embassy.

Apari declined to say whether she handed herself over within the diplomatic mission, but police officers were seen entering the embassy compound.

Favre joined his Minnesota Vikings teammates at practice Wednesday. The three-time MVP wore a helmet, shoulder pads and red quarterback’s jersey as he worked out with Minnesota for the first time since getting battered by New Orleans as the Vikings lost the NFC championship game in January.

“As we were driving on that last drive it seemed like it was destiny – for us,” said Favre, whose interception in the final minute ended that march and the Vikings never got the ball in overtime. “I was so close, so close to getting these guys to the Super Bowl.

The government-ordered inquest by two former FBI officials found that agents of the State Bureau of Investigation repeatedly aided prosecutors in obtaining convictions over a 16-year period, mostly by misrepresenting blood evidence and keeping critical notes from defense attorneys.

The review of blood evidence in cases from 1987 to 2003 by two former assistant directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation calls for a thorough examination of 190 criminal cases, stating information that could have helped defendants was sometimes misrepresented or withheld.

At the brick-and-shingle house of the Weithman family, Obama’s questioners showed no interest in the divisive midterm elections or other matters gobbling up the political debate. They wanted to know what he was doing on jobs, health care, pensions and child care. In turn, Obama got what he wanted: a sunny platform to engage voters and promote his agenda.

Obama hadn’t even left the property, though, before he got off message by answering a reporter’s shouted question about a national controversy – plans for a mosque and community center near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York. Obama said he had “no regrets” about his stand that Muslims have the right to build the mosque.

Schlessinger said she is walking away a week after apologizing for saying the N-word 11 times on the air while talking to a black woman with a white husband, then saying “if you’re that hypersensitive about color and don’t have a sense of humor, don’t marry out of your race.”

She apologized a day after the Aug. 10 remarks, but Media Matters for America called for her removal from the talk show. The group encouraged its members to contact show sponsors and affiliates and urge them to drop “Dr. Laura.”

“This week we received contact through our lawyers that the General Counsel” of the Pentagon “says now that they want to discuss the issue,” Assange told The Associated Press by telephone.

Assange added that the contacts have been brokered by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, which “CID” denies.

The findings sound contradictory. But the exam’s authors point to a growing and more diverse group of test-takers – many are likely scoring lower overall, but more are also meeting benchmarks used to measure college readiness.

Last spring’s high-school seniors averaged a composite score of 21.0 on the test’s scale of 1 to 36, down slightly from 21.1 last year and the lowest score of the last five years.

Murray said a vote for Republican Dino Rossi is a vote for the failed policies of former President George W. Bush. Rossi declared that he would put Washington, D.C., on “a pork-free diet” and end what he calls a reckless pursuit of federal money by Murray in her 18 years in the Senate.

Murray and Rossi easily won Washington’s primary Tuesday on a day in which President Barack Obama came to the state to campaign for the Democrat.

It had barely been raining at all.

Weeks after massive downpours first battered northern Pakistan, submerging tens of thousands of square miles, killing about 1,500 people and leaving millions homeless, those floodwaters are still sweeping downriver and through the south, adding one more layer of misery to people long accustomed to hardship.

Attorney General Jon Bruning agreed to a permanent federal injunction against enforcement of the law, which faces a challenge from Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, said his spokeswoman Shannon Kingery.

“It is evident from the judge’s ruling (to temporarily block the law from taking effect) that LB594 will ultimately be found unconstitutional,” she said. “Losing this case would require Nebraska taxpayers to foot the bill for Planned Parenthood’s legal fee.”

They found a corroded bronze buckle used to fasten tourniquets during amputations, a makeshift tobacco pipe with teeth marks in the stem, and a picture frame folded and kept after the daguerreotype it held was lost.

Georgia officials say the discoveries, announced Wednesday, were made by a 36-year-old graduate student at Georgia Southern University who set out to find Camp Lawton for his thesis project in archaeology.

In fact, sales this calendar year of the Camry, a perennially popular family sedan over the years, total nearly 190,000 and are up 2.8 percent through the first seven months of 2010 compared with the year-earlier period.

I found out why when a woman in a parking garage elevator wanted to know how I liked the new, 2010 Camry she saw me driving. She quickly confirmed she’s a Toyota loyalist and had fond memories of her old, durable Camry. She was driving a Lexus now, having moved up to Toyota’s luxury brand.

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library scheduled to open this fall in downtown Indianapolis will be part library and part museum, with a collection including first editions of his books, a replica of his writing studio, his Purple Heart and rejection letters that preceded his success.

The 1,100-square-foot space will also house an art gallery featuring his distinctive line drawings and a gift shop that will help generate income for the nonprofit library, said Julia Whitehead, the museum’s executive director and founder.

“Since learning of the `loan program’ it was immediately terminated,” Carrillo said in a statement. “We are in the midst of determining who benefited from the program, how much money was loaned, and how much money remains to be paid back to the city of Bell,” the statement said. “Once that determination has been made, payment will be immediately requested.”

The Los Angeles Times reported earlier Tuesday that the city gave nearly $900,000 in loans to officials, employees and at least two council members in the last several years.

In a California church, a young widow reunites with friends she saw just nine months ago at her wedding – this time, though, they’ve come to bid farewell to her soldier-husband.

And in a Tennessee high school, a family friend remembers the eager boy who grew up counting the days until he could don an Army uniform.