Evening Edition

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held a crisis meeting with senior ministers late on Thursday and Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit oversaw the deployment of hundreds of staff to clean the athletes’ village.

“There has been progress and there is more to do,” Mike Hooper, chief executive of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), told AFP, adding that there had been a “significant” influx of additional resources.

Officials said Commonwealth Games Federation chief Mike Fennell was due to arrive in New Delhi Thursday for a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss the problems overwhelming the October 3-14 event.

The latest high-profile withdrawals include the English Olympic 400m gold medallist Christine Ohuruogu and world triple jump champion Phillips Idowu, with Australia warning more of its competitors might follow.

Many schools closed, flights were cancelled, and only half of inter-city and Paris metro trains ran as hundreds of thousands marched for the second time in a month against the centrepiece of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s reforms.

Scuffles broke out in Paris after the main march, when police tear-gassed a few dozen anarchist youths throwing stones and bottles, but the protests were by and large good humoured, determined and well marshalled.

Blockbuster’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection means hundreds of its brick-and-mortar stores are likely to close as the Texas-based company makes a belated attempt to focus on digital distribution.

Blockbuster said it had reached agreement with a group of creditors on a plan to bolster its financial position as it tries to turn around the business.

But Prada was having none of it, dictating stripes and solids in simple shapes cut from Japanese cotton for spring/summer 2011 in a collection full of eye-catching colour clashes.

Models for the quirky label came out on stripey platform tennis shoes, carrying faux furs — striped or white or both — with their hair slicked-down and wound into twin chiffons at the nape, some sporting striped sombreros slung behind them.

Obama unveiled a new “big-hearted but also hard-headed” US aid policy to push the world’s poorest countries toward prosperity. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched a 40 billion dollar drive to save the lives of millions of women and children. Britain, China and Japan also promised more help.

But many leaders still accused wealthy nations of failing to keep their promises on assistance. Aid groups said millions would still die unnecessarily in the final five years of UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) initiative launched in 2000.

Success meant England had won consecutive Test (3-1), Twenty20 (2-0) and limited overs series against a Pakistan side whose tour was overshadowed by ‘spot-fixing’ allegations.

Man-of-the-match Morgan made 107 not out in a total of 256 for six after England had slumped to 47 for three following captain Andrew Strauss’s decision to bat first.

The surprise news, together with disappointing eurozone manufacturing data, sent stock markets reeling as Ireland became the only European nation — with the exception of debt-riddled Greece — to be in contraction.

Gross domestic product (GDP) had been forecast by most economists to continue growing in the three months to the end of June, after the Irish economy escaped from recession in the first quarter.

Scattered across the country, the automated stores are about as ubiquitous as traffic lights and offer an ever-widening, dizzying palette of goods.

Thanks to Japan’s low crime rate, companies have placed them everywhere, from neon-lit city centres to the icy summit of Mount Fuji, with little risk of them being burgled and relieved of their rich coin vaults.

“The reality is, we are not going to pass what needs to be passed to change this, either in the Senate or in the House, before the election,” said the Senate’s assistant majority leader, Dick Durbin.

Durbin told reporters he saw no hope for a quick decision on the controversial tax cut question in the current tense political atmosphere.

In talks with Wen on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Obama said the currency was the “most important issue” of their meeting, the U.S. official told reporters.

“The president talked about the importance of our trading relation in general and the currency issue specifically to the United States and the world economy,” Jeffrey Bader, the senior National Security Council official for Asia, said.

The agenda, a draft of which was obtained by Reuters on Wednesday, proposes scaling back federal spending to 2008 levels, although with large exceptions, and ending government control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Their wide-ranging “Pledge to America” also calls for tougher border security, putting suspected terrorists on trial in military rather than civilian courts and repealing President Barack Obama’s landmark and unpopular overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system.

But a decision on Summer’s replacement is months away, a White House official said.

A day after Summers announced plans to step down as director of the National Economic Council, speculation about his replacement focused on female candidates, many of whom would bring business expertise that some say is lacking in the Obama White House.

“The land of opportunity has become the land of shrinking prosperity … Our government has failed us,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California declared. “We will take back our country. We will restore for a better future. This is our pledge to you.”

At a hardware store in suburban Washington, senior House Republicans in shirt sleeves showed off the 21-page document they say would guide them should they gain a majority of seats in the midterm balloting five weeks away.

A new analysis of government data finds that premiums will go up an average of 10 percent among the top plans that have signed up some 70 percent of seniors. That’s according to Avalere Health, a private research firm that crunched the numbers.

Marketing for next year’s drug plans gets under way Oct. 1, and seniors will see some of the biggest changes since the Medicare prescription benefit became available in 2006. More than 17 million are enrolled in private drug plans offered through Medicare.

The $40 billion-plus bill is the last vestige of the heralded jobs agenda that Obama and Democrats promoted early this year. They ended up delivering only a fraction of what they promised after emboldened Senate Republicans blocked most of the agenda with filibusters.

The Senate passed the measure last week. The 237-187 House vote Thursday that sent the bill to the president split along party lines as Democrats praised the measure for creating a $30 billion federal fund to help smaller banks issue loans to small businesses and for cutting taxes by $12 billion over the coming decade.

The 41-year-old woman, who defense attorneys say is borderline mentally disabled, inspired other inmates by singing Christian hymns in prison. Now she’s out of options, about to become the first woman to be executed in the U.S. in five years – a fate that has drawn appeals from the European Union, an indignant rebuke from Iran and the disgust of thousands of people.

Hours before her execution, Lewis was meeting with family, her spiritual adviser and supporters at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, where she is scheduled to die by injection at 9 p.m.

Bishop Eddie Long, who has denied the sex allegations, plans his first public response Sunday during services at his 25,000-member church, attorney Craig Gillen said on the Tom Joyner Morning Show after Long canceled an interview with the nationally syndicated radio program.

In lawsuits filed this week, three men who were members of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church claimed Long pushed them into sexual relations when they were 17 or 18 years old with gifts including cars, cash and travel. Long, who opposes same-sex marriage, built up the sprawling church in suburban Lithonia that counts politicians, celebrities and the county sheriff among its members and hosted four U.S. presidents during the 2006 funeral of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King.

“I am a Muslim, but I love Americans too,” Aafia Siddiqui said during one of several rambling statements delivered in a lilting voice at the behest of U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman.

“Forgive everybody in my case, please,” she added. “Also forgive Judge Berman.”

Three out of four Americans will be overweight or obese by 2020, and disease rates and health care spending will balloon, unless governments, individuals and industry cooperate on a comprehensive strategy to combat the epidemic, the study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.

The Paris-based organization, which brings together 33 of the world’s leading economies, is better known for forecasting deficit and employment levels than for measuring waistlines. But the economic cost of excess weight – in health care, and in lives cut short and resources wasted – is a growing concern for many governments.

For now, Blockbuster will continue to operate its 3,300 U.S. stores, although analysts expect hundreds of them to close under new owners led by billionaire investor Carl Icahn. The Dallas-based company has about 25,500 employees, including 7,500 full-time workers.

The prepackaged bankruptcy case, in the works since the spring, marks the end of an era that Blockbuster and its gold-and-blue torn ticket logo helped establish. Americans used to troop to video stores on Friday for the latest movies. Now, they’re skipping Blockbuster and watching movies from DVD-by-mail services like Netflix Inc., cable video on demand and Redbox vending machines.

In simultaneous news briefings Thursday, the European Medicines Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced their long-awaited decisions on the fate of GlaxoSmithKline’s controversial drug. The European regulator said it would stop authorizing marketing of Avandia, which will be banned from sales within the next few months.

The FDA said new patients will be able to get a prescription for Avandia, but only if they can’t control their blood sugar with other medications. Doctors will have to document that their patients are eligible to receive the drug and have been briefed on its risks. FDA expects the restricted plan “will limit use of Avandia significantly.”

Initial claims for jobless aid rose by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 465,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Many economists had expected a flat reading or small drop.

The rise suggests that jobs remain scarce and some companies are still cutting workers amid weak economic growth. Initial claims have fallen from a recent spike above a half-million last month. But they have been stuck above 450,000 for most of this year.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held an emergency meeting Thursday night with his sports minister and other top officials to assess the state of preparations for the event, which is to start in little more than a week. They did not give details on what was discussed. Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna said Singh “was informed that every effort is being made to prepare the games facilities and the village to the expected standards.”

Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi, whose organizing team has been mired in graft allegations, was not asked to attend the meeting.

In an Associated Press-GfK Poll this month, 58 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans said politics is making them angry, compared with 31 percent of Democrats who said so. About 7 in 10 independents and Republicans were disgusted, compared with 4 in 10 Democrats, and independents and Republicans were likelier than Democrats to be disappointed, depressed and frustrated.

As for positive emotions, independents and Republicans were half as likely as Democrats to be inspired and less prone to be hopeful, excited and proud.

Saturday’s vote was the first since a presidential election last year that was nearly derailed by widespread ballot-box stuffing and tally manipulation. That poll led many Western powers to question whether they should be supporting the administration of President Hamid Karzai with military forces and funds.

This year’s elections have about 2,500 candidates vying for 249 parliamentary seats. Tallies have been dribbling into a central tabulation center in the capital since Saturday and officials said Thursday that they had finished with about 67 percent of the ballots from one province – relatively peaceful Panjshir.

In California, Nevada, Delaware and New Hampshire, the GOP nominees for seats in the U.S. Senate are women who favor outlawing most abortions. All have been endorsed by Sarah Palin, who calls herself a “pro-life feminist.”

A win by any one of them would fill a void. All 17 women now in the Senate, including four Republicans, support relatively broad abortion rights.

So when President Barack Obama’s top transportation official, Secretary Ray LaHood, went to Seattle this month to tout the $30 million in federal grant money the administration was delivering to help unclog a notoriously snarled interchange downtown, it seemed like a major boon arriving at a critical time.

“We would not be standing here today if it weren’t for your courageous representatives in Congress,” LaHood, a former Illinois Republican congressman, said during an event largely devoted to praising Murray.

All three journalists were picked up over the past week – two by a joint NATO and Afghan force and one by Afghan intelligence officials. Previously, only two other journalists were believed to have been detained in Afghanistan over the course of the nearly 9-year-old war, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

The NATO-led coalition said it had information linking the two journalists in its custody to networks that act as a mouthpiece for the Taliban and hinder efforts to win the loyalty of Afghan citizens skeptical of foreign forces and the Afghan government.

The White House gathered patients from around the country who have benefited from the measure, and the president rolled up his sleeves to address them Wednesday in a sunny Virginia backyard, highlighting changes that take effect at the six-month mark on Thursday. These include a ban on lifetime coverage limits, as well as free coverage for preventive care and immunizations. Young adults will be able to stay on their parents’ plans until they turn 26, and kids with pre-existing health conditions won’t be denied coverage.

“We just got to give people some basic peace of mind,” the president said,

Prosecutors said Wednesday that corruption was so ingrained and unchecked in the blue-collar suburb that almost anyone who could have blown the whistle was benefiting from it.

Many will spend another night in jail as a judge kept bail high at the group’s initial court appearance.

The aortic valve is the heart’s main doorway, and a major new study found that snaking a new one in through an artery significantly improved the chances that patients with no other treatment options would survive at least a year.

Not yet known is whether easier-to-implant valves might work for the less sick who’d like to try the new technology rather than undergo the open-heart surgery required for standard valve replacements that can last 20 years.

The Office of Lawyer Regulation and the Wisconsin Crime Victims’ Rights Board knew 10 months ago about inappropriate behavior by Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz but didn’t discipline him.

Their inaction has been blasted by lawmakers and Gov. Jim Doyle since the text messages were revealed by The Associated Press last week. Since then, two other women have come forward with allegations of misconduct against Kratz, and Doyle has started the process to remove him from office.

It took that long for the church’s members to raise money to repair the double dose of damage from Rita and then from Hurricane Ike in 2008. On Saturday, they will sing a theme song they adopted in Rita’s aftermath, “Standing on the Promises.”

Church treasurer Cyndi Sellers had noticed a hymn book opened to the old Baptist standard in the church’s muddy wreckage. “I just really felt like He was promising us right then that we would be able to rebuild if we just had the faith,” she said.

Obama, standing by Wen on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, said cooperation between the United States and China “has been absolutely critical” to easing the financial crisis. He praised Chinese leaders for working with the United States on economic, nuclear nonproliferation and Asian security issues.

But, Obama said, “obviously, we continue to have more work to do on the economic front.”

In his keynote speech to the opening of the General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting, the U.N. chief told leaders from the 192-member nations that “today, we are being tested.”

Ban said people everywhere are living in fear of losing their jobs, too many are caught in conflict, “and we see a new politics at work – a politics of polarization.”

Viktor Yanukovych also said that despite restoring historically close ties with fellow Slavs in Russian, his nation is determined to win membership in the European Union.

“The people of Ukraine and Russia are very close. And this allows us to solve many economic issues. It’s a good factor, The human factor,” he said.