Evening Edition

For the first year after Erika Clark fled the fetid flood waters that destroyed much of the city, including her two-story town house, all she could think about was how to get back to The Big Easy with her two children.

The 29-year-old single mother longed for her friends, for the familiarity of her native town, and so she planned and plotted to get back.

For nearly a month, torrential monsoon rain has triggered massive floods steadily moving from north to south, affecting a fifth of the volatile country — an area roughly the size of England — and 17 million people.

The United Nations estimated that around one million people had been displaced in the southern province of Sindh in 48 hours, where rising waters threatened a string of major towns.

The Nobel peace laureate left the reclusive communist state with Aijalon Mahli Gomes, an African-American who was jailed for illegally crossing into the North from China.

“At the request of president Carter, and for humanitarian purposes, Mr Gomes was granted amnesty” by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, said a Carter Center statement.

Five of the group were exhibiting signs of depression, refusing to take part in a video the other men made to show families that they were holding up despite being stuck for three weeks in the mine.

“Five of the miners are isolated, are not eating well and do not want to appear on camera,” Health Minister Jaime Manalich said. “This is what we call depression.”

San Esteban Mining, the owner of the gold and copper shaft in northern Chile, was also ordered by a local judge to freeze 1.8 million dollars in revenue so that it can pay future compensation to 26 of the families.

The litigation swirled as officials became increasingly concerned about the mental wellbeing of the miners who have been stuck below ground for three weeks after the entrance to the mine collapsed on August 5.

A big hydraulic bore, an Australian-made Strata 950, would begin excavating “between Sunday and Monday,” the engineer in charge of the operation, Andre Sougarret, told reporters at the mine in northern Chile.

It was estimated it could take up to four months for the machine to complete its task, because it drills at a maximum rate of 20 meters (66 feet) per day, and its initial narrow shaft will have to doubled in diameter to permit a man to be pulled through it.

Excerpts of the 45-minute video released Thursday showed the men upbeat despite their 21-day ordeal in a hot and dank underground shelter, where they await a potentially months-long rescue.

“We’ve organized everything really well down here,” said one of the miners, sporting a scraggly beard and pointing to a corner reserved for medical supplies.

But he said prospects for a US growth pick up in 2011 appeared to remain despite the sharp government cutback Friday in economic expansion to 1.6 percent in the April-June period.

The growth plunge by more than half from the 3.7 percent in the first quarter was on the back of a massive trade deficit and weak private inventory investment, and signaled a more pronounced slowdown in recovery from recession.

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 1.2 percent between April and June to record the fastest quarter-on-quarter growth since 2001, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement.

The second quarter growth figure was meanwhile revised higher from an initial estimate of 1.1 percent, while analysts had expected no change.

Barrichello, the most experienced driver in the history of the sport, made his debut back in 1993 and has driven for six teams, winning 11 races.

He has also claimed 68 podium finishes, 637 points and 14 pole positions since his debut in the 1993 South African Grand Prix with Jordan.

A major reduction in American troops in recent months has coincided with a surge in car bombings and shootings that has targeted the Iraqi forces who have steadily taken over security responsibilities from the US military since 2009.

The latest violence has seen hundreds of people killed, including a high number of police, but Washington has steadfastly continued to pull troops out of the country ahead of a complete military exit at the end of next year.

Three days after ending his nearly six-year marriage to Elin Nordegren, the world’s number one golfer fired seven birdies against a lone bogey to match fellow American Vaughn Taylor for the lead with half the field on the course.

Asked if he felt a weight lifted from him, Woods said: “I can’t really say that’s the case. As far as golf-wise, it was nice to put it together.”

Turning the tables on conservative Islamic beliefs, “Tash ma Tash” has again sparked huge laughs and huge controversy this month by depicting a Muslim woman not just married to four husbands, but also wanting to divorce one of them in order to marry someone else.

The episode brought cheers from Saudi women, but was met with rage by religious scholars, with one calling for the arrest of the show’s producers.

“We thought we would take a break from cultural touring and walking around,” said Chris Coffman, 43, visiting from Pennsylvania with his family and some friends, adding that they learned about the course on the Internet.

Just a stone’s throw from the Colosseum, on the ancient Appian Way leading from the Eternal City to Brindisi, they boarded the time machine of the Rome Historical Group (GSR, www.gsr-roma.com/english/gladiatori/htm/scuola.html) and whiled away an entire afternoon in the Rome of 2,000 years ago.

At least 15 senior leaders, including army number three Thura Shwe Mann, have retired from their military posts to stand in the November 7 poll — the first held in the country in two decades — an unnamed official said.

A separate government source denied an earlier report that 77-year-old Than Shwe would be among those stepping down from the army, along with deputy Maung Aye.

Gross domestic product growth in the April-June period fell from 3.7 percent in the first quarter on the back of a massive trade deficit and weak private inventory investment, the Commerce Department said.

It was sharply lower than the annualized 2.4 percent projected earlier by the government and came a shade higher than expected by most economists who had expected GDP growth to be shaved by nearly half to 1.4 percent.

In a hardened stance from his earlier rhetoric, Kan also stepped up pressure on the central bank to take further steps to support a slowing economy that remains mired in a damaging cycle of deflation.

“Given the yen’s current rise and the severe economic situation, we will decide on the outline of economic measures on August 31 and work out concrete measures based on it as soon as possible,” Kan said.

The primal beat of Japan’s best-known taiko ensemble, Kodo, rumbled through the wooded park behind a Shinto shrine last weekend at a paper lantern-lit festival held at the troupe’s home base, the quiet forest island of Sado.

In their high-energy show, remarkable as much for its art as its athleticism, Kodo’s two dozen men and women performers mesmerised their audiences with shows that combined the age-old with the avant-garde.

The Commerce Department report on Friday showed gross domestic product, the measure of total goods and services output within U.S. borders, was dampened by the largest increase in imports in 26 years. Nonetheless, growth was not quite as weak as anticipated.

So far, analysts do not believe the economy will slide back into recession and say the most likely prospect is for continued soft expansion.

Bernanke downplayed concerns that the economy might slip back into recession, predicting a modest expansion in the second half of this year with the pace picking up in 2011.

If that forecast proves overly optimistic, however, he said the Fed has sufficient ammunition left and could support growth by purchasing more government debt or reducing the rate of interest paid on banks’ excess reserves.

Fresh flooding has sent a million people fleeing from their homes in the south in the past 48 hours, the United Nations said.

The death toll from the floods, triggered by unusually heavy monsoon downpours over the upper Indus basin a month ago, was expected to rise significantly as more bodies were found while many people were missing, a disaster authority spokeswoman said.

The yen edged lower after Kan’s remarks as Japanese policymakers struggle over how to put a cap on the currency, which hit a 15-year high against the dollar this week and threatens to derail an export-led recovery.

The ruling Democratic Party’s options on fiscal policy are limited due to the country’s large debt burden, so it is leaning on the central bank to ease policy to help the economy.

As of this week, candidates for state and federal office had spent $395 million on ads for the November elections, compared with $286 million at this point in the 2006 midterms. More than half the ads have been negative.

Political parties and outside groups have been more negative, going on the attack in nearly 80 percent of their ads while spending $150 million, $41 million ahead of the 2006 pace.

The birth rate dropped for the second year in a row since the recession began in 2007. Births fell 2.6 percent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics show.

“It’s a good-sized decline for one year. Every month is showing a decline from the year before,” said Stephanie Ventura, the demographer who oversaw the report.

Beck has become a soundtrack for conservative activists and members of the tea party movement, angry and frustrated with Obama and other Democrats in a highly charged election year. Beck suggests Obama is a socialist moving the country away from its ideals of limited government. Beck’s critics contend that he exploits fear with conspiracy theories and overheated rhetoric.

Organizers say the “Restoring Honor” rally isn’t about politics. It’s to pay tribute to America’s military personnel and others “who embody our nation’s founding principles of integrity, truth and honor.” It also is to promote the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which provides scholarships and services to family members of military members.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s point man for the spill response, told reporters Friday that engineers will remove the cap starting Monday so they can raise the failed blowout preventer. The blowout preventer is considered a key piece of evidence in determining what caused the April rig explosion that unleashed the gushing oil.

The leak was first contained when engineers were able to place a cap atop BP’s well. Workers then pumped mud and cement in through the top in a so-called “static kill” operation that significantly reduced pressure inside the well. Officials don’t expect oil to leak into the sea again when the cap is removed, but Allen has ordered BP to be ready to collect any leaking crude just in case.

The worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history has spurred something of an economic boom in some communities where cleanup operations are based, an Associated Press analysis has shown.

But BP’s oil spill has delivered a double whammy to areas too far away from the cleanup to serve as a staging ground for masses of workers, but close enough to experience severe losses in tourism, fishing and drilling.

The nation’s gross domestic product – the broadest measure of the economy’s output – grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate in the April-to-June period, the Commerce Department said Friday. That’s down from an initial estimate of 2.4 percent last month and much slower than the first quarter’s 3.7 percent pace.

Shortly after the revision was announced, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed will consider making another large-scale purchase of securities if the slowing economy deteriorates significantly.

Yet the weatherization program the vice president highlighted in his visit Thursday to New Hampshire is widely considered among the least organized spending projects under the $814 billion economic stimulus law and has regularly been targeted for criticism of its slow progress by auditors and outsiders. Biden didn’t hint much at its troubles.

Nearly 18 months since it started, the stimulus weatherization program has experienced spending delays, inefficiencies and mismanagement. In Biden’s home state of Delaware, the entire program has been suspended since May, and last month federal auditors identified possible fraud.

Surprisingly, many locals – even the vocal critics of the Army Corps – say its assessment of work done on the levee system is not far off the mark.

Since Katrina flooded New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, and killed more than 1,800 people, New Orleans has become a round-the-clock construction site and Congress gave the Army Corps more than $14 billion to fix and upgrade the levees and other defenses. Numerous breaches in the hurricane protection system led to the flooding that devastated the New Orleans area. The corps says about half of the work is complete, and the rest should be finished by next summer.

No other details about the attacks on the U.S. troops were given by NATO and the identities of those killed were not immediately released.

A total of 55 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan this month, including 35 Americans, according to a count by The Associated Press. July was the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, with 66 killed.

Karzai’s statements were made during a meeting with visiting U.S. congressmen and come at a time when the Obama administration is ratcheting up pressure on the Afghan leader to do more to stamp out corruption. The Afghan government maintains that the U.S. should be doing more on other fronts, including pressuring Pakistan to shut down the insurgent sanctuaries.

A statement by Karzai’s office said the Afghan leader told the U.S. delegation that significant progress had been made in rebuilding the country after decades of war.

A tale of two disasters, Narvaez’s account embodies the challenges still faced by the poor in Chile despite two decades as Latin America’s economic darling. It is a story of incredible misfortune, unwavering faith and a love she said has only been strengthened by adversity.

Narvaez’s husband, Raul Bustos, is a heavy-machinery mechanic whose skills have always been in demand. For years he has made a living repairing the equipment that rips copper, the lifeblood of Chile’s economy, out of the earth, or helping build massive ships in ports along the nation’s 4,000-mile (6,400-kilometer) coastline.

The new flooding came after the Taliban issued a veiled threat against foreign aid workers helping out in the crisis, a development likely to complicate the massive relief effort. More than 8 million people are in need of emergency assistance across the country.

The floods began in the mountainous northwest about a month ago with the onset of monsoon rains and have moved slowly down the country toward the coast in the south, inundating vast swaths of prime agricultural land and damaging or destroying more than 1 million homes.

Reasons include the slow-motion nature of the calamity, relatively scant TV coverage, and – unmistakably – the fact that the strategic Muslim ally is viewed warily by many Americans.

No disasters are alike. Yet a month into Pakistan’s flood catastrophe, with 8 million people in dire need and a fifth of its territory affected, the donation comparisons are startling.

The state’s former chief judge, acting as the special counsel, has asked a district attorney to consider a perjury investigation. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Paterson, who rose to office in 2008 when Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned amid a prostitution scandal, will ever be charged, though.

Former prosecutors say perjury is a notoriously difficult charge to prove, if it’s pursued at all.

Investigators found salmonella in chicken feed at Wright County Egg that was used by that farm and also Hillandale Farms, the FDA said. Authorities also found additional samples of salmonella in other locations at Wright County Egg. More than 550 million eggs from the two farms were recalled this month after they were linked to salmonella poisoning in several states.

One of the positive samples for salmonella was found in a feed ingredient sold to Wright County Egg from a third party supplier, Central Bi-Products, according to Wright County Egg, raising new questions as to whether other egg farms also could have received contaminated feed. The FDA could not confirm that the feed element came from a third party, but so far has said it doesn’t believe the salmonella outbreak will expand beyond the two farms.

The mechanism, known as an “Assault Intervention Device,” is a stripped-down version of a military gadget that sends highly focused beams of energy at people and makes them feel as though they are burning. The Los Angeles County sheriff’s department plans to install the device by Labor Day, making it the first time in the world the technology has been deployed in such a capacity.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California criticized Sheriff Lee Baca’s decision in a letter sent Thursday, saying that the technology amounts to a ray gun at a county jail. The 4-feet-tall weapon, which looks like a cross between a robot and a satellite radar, will be mounted on the ceiling and can swivel.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Berks County Court, alleges that the Rev. Luis A. Bonilla Margarito carried on a sexual relationship with the teen while he was the chaplain of Reading Central Catholic High School and she was a senior there.

The girl’s parents became suspicious and installed a camera in their basement, where Bonilla and the teen were spending large amounts of time. The camera recorded the couple having sex in November 2009, after she had graduated, according to the suit.

Authorities would not say how many troops would start Monday, but said waves of them will be deploying every Monday until all 532 are on the Arizona border, likely by the end of September. In May, Obama ordered 1,200 National Guard troops to boost security along the border.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said the first of 224 National Guard troops allocated for his state have finished their training and are expected to be deployed to the state’s border on Wednesday. Troops will also be stationed in New Mexico and Texas.

The dismissal of Commissioner Bret Schundler comes after New Jersey became the top runner-up for the Race to the Top grants, missing out by only a few points. The Star-Ledger of Newark later reported that budget figures for the wrong years were supplied in one section of the application.

Christie had defended Schundler on Wednesday and blamed the U.S. Education Department for considering form over substance. Christie said this week that Schundler gave the federal government the missing information during a meeting in Washington this month. But a video released Thursday by the federal Education Department shows that wasn’t the case.

The overwhelming voice vote by members of the Lutheran Coalition of Renewal created the North American Lutheran Church, a tiny denomination of churches formerly affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, headquartered in Chicago.

As of early August, 199 congregations had cleared the hurdles to leave the ELCA for good, while 136 awaited the second vote needed to make it official. In all, there are 10,239 ELCA churches with about 4.5 million members, making it by far the largest Lutheran denomination in the U.S.

Not getting the waiver calls into question how the affected states – Wisconsin, Hawaii, Alaska and Colorado – will comply with deadlines for counting all votes cast for the Nov. 2 election by members of the military and other Americans living overseas.

The Defense Department granted Delaware, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Washington the waivers.

The rules sparked an outcry on Internet blogs and other websites after Springer contacted an advocacy group for mixed-race families. The NAACP called for a Justice Department investigation – not surprising in a state with a history of racial tension dating to the Jim Crow era.

The district scrapped the policy by Friday afternoon.

Attorney Gregory Reed unveiled some documents, letters and a booklet Thursday at a Detroit mosque, including a rare 1933 signature of Nation of Islam founder W.D. Fard. Reed said the well-preserved documents detail the early structure and teachings of the group founded on the ideals of black nationalism.

“Very few have seen the internal workings of how (the Nation of Islam) was put together,” said Reed, whose Keeper of the Word Foundation oversees collections and exhibits that include the works of Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela.

The strippers, fueled by Cheetos and nicotine, are protesting a fundamentalist Christian church whose Bible-brandishing congregants have picketed the club where they work. The dancers roll up with signs carrying messages adapted from Scripture, such as “Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” to counter church members who for four years have photographed license plates of patrons and asked them if their mothers and wives know their whereabouts.

The dueling demonstrations play out in central Ohio, where nine miles of cornfields and Amish-buggy crossing signs separate The Fox Hole strip club from New Beginnings Ministries.

In her first media interview since the trial ended, JoAnn Chiakulas told the Chicago Tribune that she found Blagojevich’s recorded statements about allegedly selling Barack Obama’s old senate seat so disorganized and scattered that his actions did not amount to a criminal conspiracy.

“I could never live with myself if I went along with the rest of the jury,” Chiakulas told the Tribune.

The lines marking the site of the 2001 terror attacks change depending on which New Yorker, 9/11 family member and American you talk to. Even those who know it best can’t agree on its boundaries. Tourists who come to snap pictures outside of a busy construction site often aren’t sure that they’re there.

Andrew Slawsky, 22, stood outside the proposed mosque and Islamic center two blocks north of the World Trade Center site. He said ground zero isn’t here.