Evening Edition

Speaking before some 40 countries were to address finance, an issue that has helped hamstring UN climate talks, Figueres said floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia and other weather disasters had been a shocking wakeup call.

“The news has been screaming that a future of intense, global climate disasters is not the future that we want,” Figueres, newly-appointed executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told reporters.

Karzai strongly condemned the incident in his statement, confirming earlier reports of an air strike that killed election workers in Takhar province.

“Three vehicles carrying the members of a parliamentary election candidate’s team was targeted by NATO aircraft twice while travelling towards the Kiwan area in Rustaq district of Takhar province this morning, during which 10 campaign members were martyred (killed) and two others injured,” the statement from the presidential palace said.

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, presented at the IFA electronics trade fair in Berlin, Germany, has a seven-inch (17.8-centimetre) touchscreen, slightly smaller than the iPad’s 9.7 inches, and uses Google’s Android 2.2 operating system.

“Samsung recognizes the tremendous growth potential in this newly created market and we believe that the Samsung Galaxy Tab brings a unique and open proposition to market,” said mobile communications unit head JK Shin.

There was no immediate sign of an oil spill and everything “appears to be” contained “at this time” Patrick Cassidy, a spokesman for Texas-based rig owner Mariner Energy told CNN.

“In an initial flyover by company personnel over the site, there was no hydrocarbon spill that was reported,” Cassidy said.

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the fund “will provide around 450 million dollars in immediate emergency financing” to Pakistan to help manage the aftermath of devastating floods that have affected 18 million people.

Pakistani and IMF officials have been holding talks in Washington for more than a week after Islamabad warned they would not be able to meet key IMF targets on inflation and budget deficit levels.

Analysts said the decision to extend the loan programme was widely expected given growing concerns that the economy, and the banks, may face a harder time over the balance of the year following robust growth into the second quarter.

After keeping its benchmark interest rate at a record low 1.0 percent, ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet said the bank would continue to offer exceptional three-month funding up to December 23.

With the cost of borrowing for commercial banks locked at a record low for the 16th month running, economists want to know if the central bank will extend unlimited loans for up to three months through the end of the year.

“Market events over the last month suggest the potential cost of an early exit from full allotment liquidity probably exceeds the risks from being more patient,” Deutsche Bank analysts suggested in a research note.

Test captain Salman Butt and bowlers Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif vowed to clear their names in a meeting in London with Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Ijaz Butt and Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan’s ambassador to Britain.

Speaking after meeting the players at his London office, Hasan said in a statement the players had insisted they were innocent of wrongdoing but were pulling out of the tour because of the “mental torture” of the scandal.

Three suicide bombers targeted a Shiite mourning procession made up of thousands of people on Wednesday at the moment of the breaking of the fast in the holy month of Ramadan, wounding hundreds.

It was the first major attack in Pakistan since devastating floods engulfed a fifth of the volatile country over the past month in its worst disaster yet.

All 13 crew members were rescued with no injuries from the ocean near the burning platform and were taken to another offshore platform, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The fire has been contained but is not yet extinguished.

It is not known whether the oil sheen came from the damaged platform or the well, which is in relatively shallow water at 340 feet deep.

The agency “has a huge role to play in continuing the work to move from where we are now to lower carbon emissions,” said the official, who did not want to be named as the EPA policies are still being formed.

President Barack Obama, looking to play a leading role in global talks on greenhouse gas emissions, has long warned that the EPA would take steps to regulate emissions if Congress failed to pass a climate bill.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has conducted regular arrest sweeps to try to round up illegal immigrants and smugglers in the state that has borne the brunt of people trying to sneak into the United States illegally from Mexico.

Arpaio’s crackdown on illegal immigrants has helped thrust the issue to the forefront nationally. The Obama administration is in a legal wrangle with Arizona over a strict new law against illegal immigration that the state passed in April.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in Washington on Thursday that the funds would be dispersed in “coming weeks.”

Strauss-Kahn said discussions with a delegation led by Pakistan’s Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh on how to “reorganize” an $11 billion IMF loan program would continue.

At $24 per share, the offer represents a 46 percent premium to Burger King’s price before news of the negotiations emerged on Wednesday.

“It was a call out of the blue,” Burger King Chairman and Chief Executive John Chidsey told Reuters in an interview when asked about how the talks started. He declined to give additional details.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s surprise statement on the export ban — which had been due for review after December 31 — puzzled analysts and helped send benchmark Chicago wheat prices higher.

“I would like to note that the lifting of the export ban can only be considered after next year’s crops have been harvested,” Putin told a government meeting. Amid speculation that he might have misspoken, his spokesman confirmed the statement.

General David Petraeus said he would discuss in mid-September an initial assessment with allies based on input from low-level military commanders and their Afghan counterparts. This would be continuously updated in the run-up to a NATO summit in Lisbon in November.

NATO allies, which are increasingly uneasy about the unpopular, nine-year-old war, are eager to shift security responsibilities to Afghan forces.

Civilian casualties caused by foreign forces hunting militants have caused major tension between Karzai and his Western allies. The latest incident came at a bad time as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates landed for unannounced talks.

Gates’s arrival was also overshadowed by renewed worries about corruption, one of Washington’s biggest concerns in Afghanistan, after two officials from the country’s top private bank left their positions amid allegations of graft.

The Coast Guard initially reported that an oil sheen a mile long and 100 feet wide had begun to spread from the site of the blast, about 200 miles west of the site of BP’s massive spill. But hours later, Coast Guard Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau said crews were unable to find any spill.

The company that owns the platform, Houston-based Mariner Energy, did not know what caused the blast.

More oil is not expected to leak into the sea, but crews are on standby with collection vessels just in case.

The cap was removed Thursday as a prelude to raising the massive piece of equipment underneath that failed to prevent the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Americans are spending only when the item and price are just right, according to August reports from major chains released Thursday that showed shoppers bought a little more than a year ago.

Analysts expect stores will need to keep discounting to get shoppers to spend this fall and for the holiday season while they grapple with job worries and tight credit.

Worried about the fragile economy and their own upcoming elections, a growing number of Democrats are joining the rock-solid Republican opposition to President Barack Obama’s plans to let some of the Bush administration’s tax cuts expire.

Democratic leaders in Congress still back Obama, but the willingness to raise taxes is waning among the rank and file as the stagnant economy threatens the party’s majority in the House and Senate.

“People who operate communication services in India should (install a) server in India as well as make available access to law enforcement agencies,” Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told reporters. “That has been made clear to RIM of BlackBerry but also to other companies.”

On Monday, India withdrew a threat to ban BlackBerry service for at least two more months after RIM agreed to give security officials “lawful access” to encrypted data.

New researcher suggests that at least one in seven home kitchens would flunk the kind of health inspection commonly administered to restaurants.

The small study from California’s Los Angeles County found that only 61 percent of home kitchens would get an A or B if put through the rigors of a restaurant inspection. At least 14 percent would fail – not even getting a C.

It’s the first time in decades a lawman has refused to cooperate in one of the agency’s probes, the department said.

The Arizona sheriff had been given until Aug. 17 to hand over documents the federal government first asked for 15 months ago, when it started investigating alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and jail policies that discriminate against people with limited English skills.

“If the crisis has a single lesson, it is that the too-big-to-fail problem must be solved,” Bernanke said Thursday while testifying before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Bernanke also said it was impossible for the Fed to rescue Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy in 2008 because the Wall Street firm lacked sufficient collateral to secure a loan. Lehman’s former chief executive told the panel a day earlier that the firm could have been saved, but regulators refused to provide help.

Gates spoke to reporters in the Afghan capital with President Hamid Karzai, who complained about the tactics of two Western-backed anti-corruption units that recently arrested one of his top aides on suspicion of bribery, likening them to heavy-handed Soviet tactics.

The U.S. views the arrest of Mohammed Zia Salehi as a test of Karzai’s willingness to take on graft in his government.

After calling a news conference outside a park district building, gang members complained to assembled TV cameras about the ultimatum police Superintendent Jody Weis gave them at a recent meeting – that if gangs resort to violence, police will go after their leaders.

In response, they offered their own message to police: You’re not playing fair.

The wife of a World War II veteran hugs him. Several men line up to shake his hand. Another woman talks to him for about 10 minutes, thanking him for his work on military issues, bringing jobs to this farm and ranching town of about 4,700 and, in her words, thinking for himself.

“You’ve done a good job,” said Donna Smith, 50, an office manager and a Republican who says she will vote for Edwards again this year. Later, she said Edwards “has proven himself and shown that he can get things done.”

Now after a $500,000 settlement for a wrongful termination and defamation lawsuit against the state, the former legal adviser in the governor’s office is using some of that money to run for a seat long held by Blunt’s father, outgoing U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt.

Eckersley, 33, is a long shot running as a Democrat in one of the country’s most Republican districts, where voters for more than a decade have elected Roy Blunt with about two-thirds of the vote or greater. But he’s betting he can tap into the electorate’s anti-Washington sentiments by showing he stood up to a top elected official.

The Justice Department and the company said Wednesday in a statement it will plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge of “misbranding,” in which the company’s marketing led physicians to use Botox for unapproved uses. Those included the treatment of headache, pain, spasticity and cerebral palsy in children.

Companies are prohibited from promoting drugs for unapproved, or “off-label,” uses.

With the stunning outcome, the fledgling tea party coalition and voters who identify with its anti-tax, anti-spending sentiments proved that democracy is alive and well – within the Republican Party. Don’t like who is representing you? Rise up, fire them and choose someone new.

The tea party has taken hold in the Grand Old Party, unseating lawmakers, capturing nominations for open seats and forcing Republicans to recalibrate both their campaign strategy and issues agenda. Out is talk of delivering federal dollars back home; in is talk of fiscal discipline.

While the Obama administration has dramatically reduced the number of troops and rebranded the mission, the operation in Hawija was a reminder that U.S. forces are still engaged in hunting down and killing al-Qaida militants – and could still have to defend themselves against attacks.

That reality was front and center at a change-of-command ceremony in one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces outside Baghdad that the American military now uses as its headquarters. Officials warned of a tough road ahead as the U.S. moves into the final phase of the 7 1/2-year war.

Much of the decline comes from a sharp drop-off in illegal immigrants from the Caribbean, Central America and South America attempting to cross the southern border of the U.S., according to the Pew Hispanic Center, which based its report on an analysis of 2009 census data.

The findings come amid bitter debate over Arizona’s strict new immigration law, which was passed earlier this year but is on hold for now as it is challenged in federal court. The Obama administration contends the state law usurps federal authority and promotes racial profiling, while Arizona leaders say states are justified to step in if federal enforcement falls substantially short.

Corrections Director Michael Randle is resigning as of Sept. 17. He will return to Ohio, where he had been assistant director of the state prison system, to run a community correctional facility in Cleveland for a not-for-profit agency. He will be taking a huge pay cut.

Randle’s departure comes after a review last month of the early release program that found the corrections department didn’t consider possible dangers to the public when it tried to save money by letting prisoners out early, including some who were violent.

The 52-year-old multimillionaire businessman is a naturalized citizen who immigrated legally to the U.S. with his parents from Scotland when he was 5 years old.

He has been running a television ad calling for English to be the country’s official language and advocates having the government do more to ensure immigrants learn it. The ad has moved fighting illegal immigration, an issue that plays well with Republicans, to the center of the campaign.

Even as the far northern state stubbornly adheres to its reputation for independence, it relies more heavily on federal spending than any other state, thanks largely to congressional powerhouses such as the late Republican Sen. Ted Stevens.

But a shift in that approach could come in the form of Joe Miller, who defeated Murkowski with the strong backing of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express as he campaigned against runaway government spending.

A few hours later, the search went online with a Facebook page dedicated to the Hotel Montana, created by three siblings in Long Island looking for their missing uncle. Strangers immediately began to post the names and photographs of their relatives. By the next morning, the site had received more than 50 messages from frantic families.

As the days passed and the death toll climbed, the number of members on the page grew until it reached 17,427 people from around the world. They called themselves “the family.” They adopted a profile picture of a rock inscribed with the word “Hope.” And they vowed to stick together until every last member of their online tribe was brought home, alive or dead.

The imam behind the project, meanwhile, was preparing to return to the U.S. after a taxpayer-funded good will tour to the Mideast, where he said the debate is about much more than “a piece of real estate.” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf sidestepped questions about whether he would consider moving the $100 million mosque and Islamic community center farther from where Islamic terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center. Instead, he stressed the need to embrace religious and political freedoms in the United States.

Leaders of the Majlis Ash-Shura of Metropolitan New York, an Islamic leadership council that represents a broad spectrum of Muslims in the city, gathered on the steps of City Hall to issue a statement calling for a stop to religious intolerance and affirming the right of the center’s developers to build two blocks north of the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks.