Evening Edition

An investigation into a molestation charge however remained open against the 39-year-old Australian — whose whistleblower site is in coming weeks set to unveil thousands more secret documents about the war in Afghanistan.

Assange and his aides claimed he was the victim of dirty tricks, with a Twitter message attributed to the former hacker saying: “The charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing.”

Gillard, who became the country’s first woman prime minister in a sudden party coup, was lagging her conservative rivals in national polls by 70 seats to 72, public broadcaster ABC said as vote counting went deep into the night.

The Labor leader, 48, conceded her centre-left party would not gain the 76 seats needed for an outright majority and would rely on the support of parliament’s projected four independent lawmakers.

The Financial Tracking Service (FTS), a UN database that aims to track all donations, showed late Friday that 490.7 million dollars in funding had been collected, with another 325 million dollars pledged.

The United States has given the most, followed by Saudi Arabia and Britain.

Captain and flanker Richie McCaw dived over in one corner and replacement back Israel Dagg in the other as the Springboks slumped to a fourth consecutive loss in the southern hemisphere championship after leading for 64 minutes.

It was also a memorable day for All Blacks fly-half Dan Carter, whose third penalty goal 29 minutes into the first half raised his Test tally to a world record 1113 points as he overtook veteran England pivot Jonny Wilkinson.

Authorities struggled to shore up an embankment holding back a growing tide on the edge of Shahdadkot, in Sindh province, which aid groups say is still highly vulnerable to floods that have raged through Pakistan for three weeks/

A heavy stream of trucks, tractors and donkey carts transported people away, repeating scenes played out throughout the catastrophe that has made more than four million homeless.

In a written ruling released by the Pentagon on Friday, Army Colonel Patrick Parrish gave his arguments for rejecting a motion by lawyers of Omar Khadr requesting that confessions made by Khadr to U.S. interrogators should not used as evidence in his trial on grounds they were obtained through torture.

A military tribunal trying Khadr opened proceedings last week at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba but was suspended for at least a month on August 13 after his main defense lawyer fell ill and was flown to the United States for treatment.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said Americans are seeing the ramifications of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed companies and other groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising.

Democrats support a bill that would blunt the impact of the court’s January ruling. Republicans have blocked it.

“I’d take it one step further. I’d say that it’s far, far worse today than it was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11,” said Reza Aslan, a writer and scholar on religion, using the shorthand for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Public opinion polls show more than 60 percent of Americans oppose building the proposed Muslim cultural center and mosque two blocks from the site known as “Ground Zero.”

Prosecutors often charge suspects with making false statements to investigators in part because that is often easier to prove than the more serious allegations and can be used to elicit help from witnesses, especially in corruption and terrorism cases.

Clemens, whose storied professional baseball career included a record seven Cy Young Awards for best pitcher, was indicted on Thursday for perjury, making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation into players using performance-enhancing drugs. If convicted on all charges, he could face up to 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.

Potash Corp is already soliciting bidders willing to pay more than BHP’s offer of $130 a share, a source close to the matter said, prompting speculation that China, one of the world’s biggest potash importers, may join the fray.

The source said Potash Corp was confident it could attract a competing bid, given the expectation for rising demand for potash, an important crop nutrient.

Singer-songwriter Jean, 40, an international celebrity who is popular in his impoverished and earthquake-ravaged homeland, was rejected from the list of approved candidates read aloud by the council on Friday night.

Jean was among 34 presidential candidates vying for a spot in the election to choose a successor to President Rene Preval, who cannot run again after two terms. The council approved 19 candidates and rejected 15.

Julian Assange, who was believed to be in Sweden, remained under suspicion of a lesser crime of molestation in a separate case, prosecutors said.

The nomadic 39-year-old Australian dismissed the allegations in a statement on WikiLeaks’ Twitter page, saying “the charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing.”

Yarborough’s 400-square-foot cottage sits on cinder blocks 13 feet above sea level, 7 feet lower than post-Katrina standards require. He can buy the cottage for $351, but it would cost about $23,000 to raise it in the flood-prone area, and Yarborough can’t afford that.

If he doesn’t buy the cottage, the state will begin the process of evicting him. State officials had hoped to end the cottage program by Aug. 29, the fifth anniversary of the storm, but they concede the process of evicting the residents will take a couple of more months.

The latest guidelines for BP’s $20 billion victims compensation fund say the nearer you are geographically to the oil spill and the more closely you depend on the Gulf of Mexico’s natural resources, the better chance you have of getting a share of the money.

Also, a second set of rules expected this fall will require that businesses and individuals seeking compensation for long-term losses give up their right to sue BP and other spill-related companies – something that could save the oil giant billions.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister who seized power in an internal Labor Party coup only two months ago, said Saturday she will remain the nation’s caretaker leader during the “anxious days ahead” as vote-counting continues.

The Australian Electoral Commission website said early Sunday that center-left Labor and the conservative Liberal Party-led coalition each had 71 seats, meaning neither could achieve the 76-seat majority.

Federal records show that he has accepted $480,000 in political action committee money since he made that claim in January. Moreover, his Republican opponent, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon, points to nearly $17,000 Blumenthal received as a state legislative candidate in the 1980s – a figure Blumenthal’s campaign does not dispute.

Blumenthal’s campaign insists he did not lie – as McMahon says – when he said in an interview on MSNBC the day after he announced he was running for the seat of retiring Sen. Chris Dodd that he had never taken PAC money. His campaign says he was referring only to his 20 years as attorney general.

The Crimson Tide is on top.

Coach Nick Saban has the Tide rolling the way Bear Bryant did in his day, first in The Associated Press preseason poll for the first time since 1978.

The country’s largest business lobby has pledged to spend $75 million in this year’s elections. That’s on top of a lobbying effort that already has cost the organization nearly $190 million since Barack Obama became president in January 2009.

Those numbers alone, together with what chamber officials say is a network of online backers that can amplify the pro-business message, give the group clout as a virtual third party and a powerful voice in what laws are made and who’s elected to write them.

Just after dawn, they file on their own – always in groups of 12 – into metal stalls for milking. Workers attach automated pumps. The milk flows into a system of chilled pipes that empty into a sealed metal vat.

The next stop someday could be markets in Europe, and possibly beyond, under ambitious plans backed by Dubai’s ruler to expand the reach of the playfully eccentric brand name Camelicious.

Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer popular with many tea party activists, is competing for the Republican nomination with former U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio. The primary is Sept. 14.

Paladino first described the idea in June at a meeting of The Journal News of White Plains and spoke about it again this week with The Associated Press.

The Haitian-American hip-hop star expressed disappointment at the late Friday ruling, but called on his followers to act “peacefully and responsibly.”

“Though I disagree with the ruling, I respectfully accept the committee’s final decision, and I urge my supporters to do the same,” the former Fugees frontman said in a statement.

John Kandra says several relatives watched a veterinarian euthanize the bear on Saturday. It had attacked Kandra’s son, Brent, after he opened the bear’s cage for a routine feeding Thursday.

The bear’s owner, Sam Mazzola, had said Kandra’s family would decide its fate. Mazzola’s lawyer didn’t return a call for comment on Saturday.

In the north, three Afghan policemen were accidentally killed by friendly fire, NATO said.

The bodies of the six policemen, who were shot, were found in Greskh district of southern Helmand province, said Dawood Ahmadi, a provincial spokesman. It wasn’t immediately clear who shot them, but insurgents fighting back against NATO forces also are targeting anyone who supports the coalition or the Afghan government.

Under pressure to end Tian Xi’s campaigning, police from his home town of Gulu detained the 23-year-old on Tuesday and first held him at a county hospital before his family lost track of his whereabouts on Friday, the activists said.

Tian traveled frequently between Gulu and Beijing, petitioning officials in the capital to compensate him and others who contracted AIDS through tainted blood supplies. In recent weeks, Tian had obtained official documents in which leaders from Gulu and Xincai county, where the town is located, ordered police to stop his activism, according to the Chinese advocacy group Aizhixing and Sara L.M. Davis, a New York-based activist.

The group calling itself “Wikicong” said Friday it set up the thaileaks.info site as “a tool to break the censorship” – an apparent reference to alleged efforts by the Thai government to block access to the material, which includes a private video of the country’s Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn.

Some access to the main Wikileaks site has been blocked in Thailand since at least late June. It has been accessible, however, using some variants of the domain name, and through some local Internet service providers.

Some of the imam’s American critics said they fear he is using the taxpayer-funded trip to raise money and rally support in the Muslim world for the mosque.

“I think there is no place for this,” said the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is the son of evangelist Billy Graham and opposes the Islamic center and mosque. “Can you imagine if the State Department paid to send me on a trip anywhere? The separation of church and state – the critics would have been howling.”

Its meanings are almost as numerous as the people who express them, as recent entries in the visitor comment book at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles suggest.

It means “to respect other races even if u hate them,” says one commenter, signed only as G. “Acceptance,” says another, Alejandra, adding, “To me, tolerance is tinged with the negative aspect of `putting up with’ someone or something, but not fully embracing it.”

The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Friday’s report from the Treasury Department suggests the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States, economists say.

More than 2.3 million homes have been repossessed by lenders since the recession began in December 2007, according to foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Economists expect the number of foreclosures to grow well into next year.

Wrapping up a hurriedly called two-day meeting of the U.N. General Assembly to spotlight the immediate need for aid, Pakistan’s U.N. Ambassador Abdullah Haroon said the initial outpouring from some 70 countries was “indeed heartening” and “a good beginning,” though he stressed that the country will need much more help in the months and years to come.

At the start of the meeting on Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said donors had given just half of the $460 million the U.N. appealed for to provide food, shelter and clean water for to up to 8 million flood victims over the next three months. He insisted all the money was needed now.

Among the challenges are helping Iraq’s deeply divided politicians form a new government; refereeing long-simmering Arab-Kurd territorial disputes; advising on attracting foreign investment; pushing for improved government services; and fleshing out a blueprint for future U.S.-Iraqi relations.

President Barack Obama also is banking on the diplomats – about 300, protected by as many as 7,000 private security contractors – to assume the duties of the U.S. military. That includes protecting U.S. personnel from attack and managing the training of Iraqi police, starting in October 2011.