Evening Edition

The White House lent its voice to growing concern from military leaders that the incendiary move could trigger outrage around the Islamic world, as well as stoke a growing anti-Muslim tide of feeling in the United States.

“It puts our troops in harm’s way. Any type of activity like that that puts our troops in harm’s way would be a concern to this administration,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, reiterating comments by top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.

General David Petraeus said the planned torching of Islam’s holy book by a Florida church would be a propaganda coup for the Taliban in Afghanistan and stoke anti-US sentiment across the Muslim world.

Protests have already gone ahead in the capital Kabul and in Indonesia — the world’s largest Muslim-majority country — while Iran has warned that the burning could unleash an uncontrolled Muslim response.

“According to new estimates following the most recent flooding in Sindh… at least 10 million people are currently without shelter,” said Maurizio Giuliano, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesman.

He said the floods in Pakistan had become “one of the worst humanitarian disasters in UN history, in terms of number of people that we have to assist and also the area covered.”

The interior ministry reported the turnout at rallies across the country at 1.12 million, while labour leaders estimated it at more than 2.5 million, but either way the movement had grown since a similar protest in June.

Labour unions called the showdown over the pensions bill, which Sarkozy insists he will push through as an “absolute priority” and which was presented to a stormy session in parliament even as the marches continued.

Barclays said that British banker John Varley would step down at the end of March 2011 after more than six years at the helm.

“I am honoured by the board’s confidence in me and greatly motivated by the challenge of leading Barclays during the critical period ahead,” Diamond said, in reference to the fragile state of the global financial sector.

Except for one difference: instead of John, Paul, George and Ringo, this Fab Four featured Diego, Juan Carlos, Francisco and Heriberto.

And it wasn’t Liverpool’s Cavern Club. This was a festival for Beatles-inspired music lovers on the banks of the Potomac River outside Washington. And these crowd-pleasers were not British but Puerto Rican.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the EU parliament in Strasbourg that the 27-nation bloc’s economic outlook was better today than one year ago thanks to the “determined action” of member states.

But he warned that not all EU states were benefiting from the recovery — a view shared by economists who have pointed to the struggles of countries battling big deficits and debt such as Greece.

In an event seeking to emulate the annual speech delivered by US presidents before the US Congress, Barroso expressed optimism about the economic outlook but urged a deepening of the single market in order to boost growth and jobs.

The head of the European Union’s executive arm, standing before a blue lectern while holding his glasses, told the EU parliament that the 27-nation bloc needed to band together to speak with one voice on the world stage.

The country’s first woman leader, who came to office in a party revolt just 10 weeks ago, scraped over the line to form a government with support from the “kingmakers” after 17 days of frantic post-election negotiations.

“Labor is prepared to govern,” a tired-looking Gillard told reporters in Canberra. “I believe the Australian people, given the closeness of this vote, want us to find more common ground in the national interest,” she added.

Pastor Terry Jones of the small Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center church, which has announced the Koran-burning for Saturday, said he was praying about the event but showed no immediate signs of backing down from his plan.

The planned public torching of the Muslim holy book on U.S. soil already has triggered angry protests in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are fighting Taliban militants, and U.S. military commanders said the event could endanger Americans’ lives.

The NATO commander in Afghanistan submitted a request last week that alliance officials said called for another 2,000 soldiers, including 750 trainers.

Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the request referred to a long-standing NATO requirement focusing on training Afghan forces.

The blast in the northwestern garrison town of Kohat came hours after the Taliban threatened more suicide attacks on a government and security forces already overwhelmed by the worst flooding in Pakistani history.

A number of houses collapsed from the force of the blast and rescuers sought to dig out their occupants.

Obama’s plans for billions of dollars in tax breaks for businesses are policies that Republicans typically embrace, but the party has little motivation to give the Democratic White House a win with polls showing them gaining seats in Congress — possibly winning both houses.

Obama will announce his plans to stimulate the sagging U.S. economy — including the tax breaks and new spending on transportation projects — in a speech on Wednesday in Cleveland.

Rallies for and against the Islamic cultural center and mosque are set for Saturday in New York after a memorial ceremony at the site known as Ground Zero for the 2,752 people killed when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the twin towers nine years ago.

Critics say the planned location two blocks from Ground Zero in downtown Manhattan is insensitive, while supporters say politicians have wrongly commandeered the emotionally charged debate ahead of U.S. congressional elections on November 2.

Massoud Mirkazemi’s comments on Tuesday appeared to contradict previous remarks by other energy officials who had said major refinery capacity increases were required before self-sufficiency could be achieved.

“We attained a production of 66.5 million litres a day in the country’s refineries,” Mirkazemi said, according to the IRIB website.

Tapping into growing unease over austerity as Europe emerges deeply indebted from recession, French union leaders demanded the center-right government heed their call to backtrack or run the risk of an escalation.

“If they don’t respond and they don’t pay heed, there’ll be a follow-up and nothing is ruled out at this stage,” Bernard Thibault, leader of the large CGT union, told a Paris rally.

Some 10,000-12,000 Afghan soldiers and 5,000 police backed by thousands of international troops will focus operations against an estimated 1,000 insurgents in districts west of the strategic city, British Major-General Nick Carter said.

“It will happen in the next two to three months, but our expectation is that by mid- to the end of November that we will have rid those areas very much of the Taliban,” he told reporters in Brussels by video conference from Afghanistan.

Gillard’s Labor Party, which was punished by voters in August 21’s inconclusive elections despite a robust economy, secured enough support from three independents and one Green lawmaker to form a one-seat majority in the lower house of parliament.

Her narrow victory means Labor can implement its proposed 30 percent mining tax, a prospect that dented resources stocks and the dollar, as well as pursue a $38 billion telecoms project, which supported shares in phone company Telstra.

Gillard’s Labor Party, which was punished by voters in August 21’s inconclusive elections despite a robust economy, secured enough support from three independents and one Green lawmaker to form a one-seat majority in the lower house of parliament.

Her narrow victory means Labor can implement its proposed 30 percent mining tax, a prospect that dented resources stocks and the dollar, as well as pursue a $38 billion telecoms project, which supported shares in phone company Telstra.

Chinese officials made the conciliatory public comments in meetings with the U.S. National Economic Council Director, Larry Summers, and Deputy National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon. Both were in Beijing for talks.

Washington and Beijing are drawn together by economic and diplomatic interests, but this year has brought bouts of friction over Internet policy, Tibet, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, China’s currency and Chinese territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.

The March 7 vote produced no clear winner as Iraqis divided their ballots between two main Shi’ite-led blocs, Kurdish parties and a cross-sectarian, secular alliance that promised to look after the interests of minority Sunnis.

Since then, the politicians say they have failed to make clear progress in talks on a coalition government while persistent attacks by insurgents as U.S. troops end combat operations has spread fears of a return to broader violence.

Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center said he understands the government’s concerns, but plans to go forward with the burning this Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the attacks.

He left the door open to change his mind, saying he is still praying about his decision, which was condemned Tuesday by an interfaith coalition that met in Washington to respond to a spike in anti-Muslim bigotry.

Meanwhile, NATO reported the death of an American service member in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday.

The comments from Gen. David Petraeus followed a protest Monday by hundreds of Afghans over the plans by Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center – a small, evangelical Christian church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy – to burn copies of the Quran on church grounds to mark the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States that provoked the Afghan war.

The party could become a victim of its own successes during the past two elections, when candidates were swept into power by antipathy for President George W. Bush and ardor for Obama. Now, eight weeks from Election Day, the Democrats are bracing for the virtual certainty of lost House seats and scrambling to hold back a wave that could hand the GOP the 40 it needs to command a majority

Obama, grasping for a way to turn the tide, on Wednesday plans to propose $30 billion in new investment tax breaks for businesses to go along with tens of billions in spending he called for on Labor Day to invigorate the slow recovery. But even if Congress acts on the requests – a long shot in a highly charged political season – there’s little time left for Democrats to salvage their election chances.

The CIA officer wielded the bitless drill and an unloaded handgun – unauthorized interrogation techniques – to menace suspected USS Cole bombing plotter Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri inside a secret CIA prison in Poland in late 2002 and early 2003, according to several former intelligence officials and a review by the CIA’s inspector general.

Adding details to the public portions of the review, the former officials identified the officer as Albert, 60, a former FBI agent of Egyptian descent who worked as a bureau translator in New York before joining the CIA. The former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because many details of the incident remain classified.

The sharp words from both sides provide a snapshot of the dispute: Western leaders are ramping up pressure to call off the sentence for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and Iran is framing it as a matter for its own courts and society.

The case of the 43-year-old mother of two also spills over into larger and even more complex issues for Iran’s Islamic leaders of national sovereignty and defense of their system of justice.

Daley, 68, said he had been thinking about not running for several months and became comfortable with his decision over the last several weeks.

“It just feels right,” Daley said at a news conference, his smiling wife Maggie standing by his side. “I’ve always believed that every person, especially public officials, must understand when it’s time to move on. For me, that time is now.”

Boise State gained seven first-place votes and closed in on No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Ohio State as the top three teams in the first regular season Associated Press football poll held their spots from the preseason.

The Broncos remained third after a thrilling 33-30 victory against Virginia Tech on Monday night, receiving eight first-place votes and 1,399 points from the media panel, 13 points behind the Buckeyes.

Protests last week in the capital, Maputo, over hikes in the costs of bread, water and electricity turned violent, with demonstrators clashing with police. The health department put the death toll at 13.

Planning Minister Aiuba Cuereneia told reporters after a Cabinet meeting that the 20 percent increase in the government-set price of bread – which had followed a year of steady increases on the staple in this impoverished country – that went into effect Monday would be reversed. A loaf will cost five meticais, or about 14 cents. The reverses are immediate, he said.

Some witnesses at the foot of Mount Sinabung reported seeing an orange glow – presumably magma – in cracks along the volcano’s slopes for the first time. Vast swaths of trees and plants were caked with a thick layer of ash.

“There was a huge, thunderous sound. It sounded like hundreds of bombs going off at one,” said Ita Sitepu, 29, who was among thousands of people staying in crowded emergency shelters well away from the base. “Then everything starting shaking. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

The research is one of the first empirical studies of the effect of foreign emergency relief in Pakistan. It also raises questions about whether the ongoing U.S. relief mission for the victims of this summer’s devastating floods in the country could also alter Pakistani perceptions about America.

In short: Does helping out people in a crisis make them like you?

Gillard managed to persuade sufficient independent lawmakers to support her center-left Labor Party to form the first minority government in the House of Representatives in 67 years.

Australia’s first female prime minister promised the government will be stable over the next three years, although the defection of a single lawmaker would bring down her administration. While Labor expels lawmakers for failing to vote along party lines, Gillard must get three disparate independent lawmakers plus one from the Greens party to support her legislative agenda.

This year’s volatile election is bursting with money, setting fundraising and spending records in a high-stakes struggle for control of Congress amid looser but still fuzzy campaign finance rules.

Based on the latest financial reports, House and Senate candidates in this election cycle raised nearly $1.2 billion, well ahead of the pace for contests in 2008, 2006 and 2004.

The United States expects to spend about $6 billion a year training and supporting Afghan troops and police after it begins withdrawing its own combat troops in 2011.

The estimates of U.S. spending through 2015, detailed in a NATO training mission document, are an acknowledgment that Afghanistan will remain largely dependent on the United States for its security.

Riyad Assariyeh’s killing coincides with the release of a Reporters Without Borders report entitled, “The Iraq War: A Heavy Death Toll for the Media,” documenting the deaths of 230 media workers since 2003.

The report’s author, Soazig Dollet, said the killing of Assariyeh, who worked for state-run Al Iraqiya TV, was not surprising in a country where 99 percent of the killings of media workers go unpunished.

Beck told the Police Commission that witness and officer accounts indicate that the officer who killed Guatemalan immigrant Manuel Jamines on Sunday acted “in immediate defense of life” and that he was warned in English and Spanish to drop the knife, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The shooting prompted demonstrations Monday afternoon near MacArthur Park in an inner-city area west of downtown with a large population of Spanish-speaking immigrants from Central America.

Curtin admits it could easily happen again and there’s not much he can do to stop it.

“It’s one of those things; there’s only so many things you can do,” he said.

UNICEF’s new approach would likely concentrate more on such initiatives as training rural health workers and building schools in remote areas, and less on building big modern hospitals and universities in cities, said Charlie MacCormack of the non-governmental Save the Children, which UNICEF consulted. It would cost less but also demand more planning and effort, he said.

“This is a refocus for UNICEF, ensuring that equity reaches into the most deprived areas,” the agency’s new executive director, veteran American diplomat Anthony Lake, told The Associated Press.