Evening Edition

While acknowledging that a “massive” effort had been made in recent days to address the multiple problems surrounding the October 3-14 event, Fennell voiced concerns on a wide range of issues including athletes’ safety.

“The work left to be done is quite extensive,” said Fennell, who toured the athletes’ village on Friday.

“Soon the two parties will be talking to each other for the first time in many years. We must be patient and seek out those issues which allow confidence to be built on each side,” Tadic said of looming talks with Kosovo.

“We are now ready to talk and we will do so in good faith.”

Japan had rejected an initial demand earlier Saturday, with foreign ministry spokesman Satoru Sato saying Beijing’s demand was “totally groundless” and “cannot be accepted at all”.

“China of course has the right to demand an apology and compensation from Japan,” spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in the Chinese foreign ministry’s second statement Saturday as the row rumbled on despite the captain’s release.

A woman’s options for self-expression will be wide open in spring/summer 2011, when Emporio Armani will add a knee-hugging underskirt into the mix.

Max Mara proposed confident lemon yellow, red, orange and violet in close-fitting, long-sleeved knit tops tucked into matching mid-length shorts or slightly flared trousers ending above the ankle.

It was a crucial drive by the Spaniard, with the front row of the grid likely to be decisive on the Marina Bay street circuit where overtaking is possible, but difficult.

He convincingly outpaced his title rivals under floodlights with a blistering lap of 1:45.390, which was enough to beat Red Bull’s Vettel into second place.

“The landing was without incident. The crew feels normal,” said a spokesman for the Russian mission control outside Moscow.

Russia’s space agency said the craft carrying US astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko had landed on time of 9:23 am (0523 GMT) and exactly at the planned site in the Kazakh steppes.

The new leader’s focus will be on fighting deep public spending cuts planned by the ruling coalition which Labour says threaten public services and will hit the poor hardest.

The party has been searching for a new direction and a new leader since former prime minister Gordon Brown resigned following the party’s crushing defeat in a May election, which ended 13 years of Labour rule.

Several athletes have pulled out of an event plagued by filthy accommodation, shoddy construction and security fears. The Indian government is rushing to ensure everything is prepared in the week before the opening.

“There is still a lot of work to be done and it’s not over yet,” Michael Fennell, chief of Commonwealth Games Federation, said a day after he visited the Games Village.

The government’s perceived poor handling of summer floods has raised questions over political stability in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country fighting homegrown Taliban insurgents which the U.S. regards as vital to efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

“In view of his pre-occupations with the post-flood situation, the Prime Minister has decided not to go ahead with his scheduled visits to Paris and Brussels,” said a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman in a statement.

The Obama administration earlier this year authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to capture or kill al-Awlaki, who is believed to be in hiding in Yemen where al Qaeda militants have been operating for years, U.S. officials have said.

Obama administration officials have also said Americans who travel overseas to fight alongside groups like al Qaeda — blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania — are legitimate targets for lethal strikes.

“The TMA module has landed,” an announcer at Mission Control outside Moscow said to applause from officials and relatives, relieved after an initial attempt to return from the orbital outpost was foiled by an equipment problem on Friday.

Space officials said the capsule landed upright, on time and on target near Arkalyk on the central Kazakh steppe. Swooping down beneath parachutes, it kicked up a cloud of dust as it hit after firing rockets to cushion the landing.

The billionaire announced the grant on Friday on the Oprah Winfrey television show. He denied suggestions the timing was aimed at deflecting attention from a movie that depicts the 26-year-old in an unflattering light.

“I’ve had a lot of opportunities in my life, and a lot of that comes from … having gone to really good schools. And I just want to do what I can to make sure that everyone has those same opportunities,” Zuckerberg told Winfrey about his gift to a city once the backdrop for Philip Roth novels but more recently struggling with crime, corruption and decay.

A new AP poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1.

“I was disappointed that it didn’t provide universal coverage,” said Bronwyn Bleakley, 35, a biology professor from Easton, Mass.

Known as consecrated women, they are lay Catholics affiliated with a conservative religious order who dedicate their lives to the church, making promises of chastity, poverty and obedience similar to the vows taken by nuns.

But the cult-like conditions they endure so alarmed Pope Benedict XVI that in May he ordered an extremely rare full Vatican investigation of the obscure group, which operates in the U.S., Mexico, Spain, the Philippines and a dozen other countries. The inquiry is expected to begin in the coming weeks.

It’s too early to say whether the sex allegations against Bishop Eddie Long, the famed pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta, will spur the kind of soul-searching that followed the downfall of the Rev. Ted Haggard in Colorado.

Regardless, pastors and experts say the Long case demonstrates how vulnerable the country’s independent churches still are to being damaged by the misbehavior – sexual, financial or otherwise – of leaders whose considerable influence often comes with temptation and little accountability.

The talk of postponing or canceling the games that emerged this week after a footbridge collapsed, two tourists were shot and the athletes’ village was found to be filthy, dissipated after the government poured enormous resources into urgently addressing the problems before the opening ceremonies on Oct. 3.

Commonwealth Games Federation President Mike Fennell – on an emergency trip here to address the problems – told reporters that significant work had been done in recent days.

With the global economic slowdown crimping government budgets, many countries are finding such generosity politically and economically untenable. China says it’s still a developing country in need of aid, while some critics argue that the money should go to poorer countries in Africa and elsewhere.

Germany and Britain have moved in recent months to reduce or phase out aid. Japan, long China’s biggest donor, halted new low-interest loans in 2008.

Believed to be hiding in Yemen, al-Awlaki has become the most notorious English-speaking advocate of terrorism directed at the United States.

E-mails link al-Awlaki to the Army psychiatrist accused of the killings at Fort Hood, Texas, last year. Al-Awlaki has taken on an increasingly operational role in al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Justice Department said in a court filing, including preparing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his attempt to detonate an explosive device aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

The siblings shared an emotional embrace after Miliband, 40, squeezed out David Miliband, the 45-year-old former foreign secretary, in a ballot of legislators, party activists and about 3.5 million labor union members.

Miliband pledged to reunite his wounded party, deposed in May after 13 years in office by the Conservative Party-led coalition government, and promised a role for his beaten brother – who struggled to hide his disappointment as he watched his younger sibling make a victory speech.

A Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority executive says he is working on an agreement with his counterpart in Beijing that will lead to an exchange of technical expertise and joint research projects.

While the notion of the car capital of the world teaching China’s capital how to handle traffic seems far fetched, experts say the two cities can benefit from the partnership.

U.S. Marines regained control of the ship three days after its seizure, and the 40 civilian members of the crew were safely returned. But three helicopters ferrying Marines to a nearby island defended by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forces were lost to hostile fire, and 18 U.S. servicemen died. Decades later the U.S. was still recovering their remains.

Washington’s initial response illustrated how, just weeks after the fall of Saigon, U.S. leaders were eager to put the Vietnam debacle behind them, erase the U.S. image as a helpless giant, and dissuade provocative action by other U.S. adversaries. A non-military response, such as freezing Cambodian assets, was raised and quickly rejected as ineffectual.

The conflict highlights a major challenge for the U.S. as it tries to win hearts and minds in Pakistan, a key ally in the war in neighboring Afghanistan and a deep well of anti-American sentiment. The U.S. has earmarked $7.5 billion in aid over the next five years, but it will do little to sway public opinion if Pakistanis don’t know where the money is coming from.

The issue has taken on new urgency in recent weeks as the U.S. has donated nearly $350 million to help Pakistan cope with this summer’s devastating floods.

Among the ideas this so-called “Red Team” is generating:

• Accept that Afghanistan’s entrenched system of graft won’t change overnight, so pick your battles.

• Recognize that for Afghans, some corruption is worse than others, so tackle what affects them day-to-day first.

• Study how the Taliban won power by exploiting Afghanistan’s system of payoffs and patronage in the 1990s, and borrow those tactics.

The homecoming of American astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson and Russia’s Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko had been delayed after technical glitches hindered the undocking of the spacecraft.

NASA spokesman Rob Navias said in a Web streamed report on the landing that the Soyuz craft landed vertically at its precise planned landing spot at 11:23 a.m. local time (0523 GMT).

CEO Vikram Pandit, who is drawing a salary of $1 for the second year in a row, did not get a raise, but the chairman of the bank hinted it plans a big payout for him next year.

The announcement Friday by Citi, which remains weaker than most of the large American banks two years after the meltdown, raised questions among experts on corporate governance.

Democrats, however, are divided on whether forcing a recorded vote on the issue before congressional elections in November would be politically helpful as they fight to maintain control of Congress.

“We will retain the right to proceed as we choose,” Pelosi told reporters. “We’ll take it one day at a time.”

The decision by U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton came in a closely watched case as a tense debate has been playing out over the policy. Senate Republicans blocked an effort to lift the ban this week, but Leighton is now the second federal judge this month to deem the policy unconstitutional.

Maj. Margaret Witt was suspended in 2004 and subsequently discharged under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy after the Air Force learned she had been in a long-term relationship with a civilian woman. She sued to get her job back.

Prison staff then examined the convicted rapist and murderer to ensure his veins were healthy enough to handle a lethal injection scheduled for Wednesday. And, then, just as quickly, a federal judge on Friday refused to block the execution, or reconsider the decision on Saturday.

With that, Brown made a surprising leap to the top of the long list of California death row inmates facing execution. Certainly, it was unforeseen by legal experts, by the federal judge who halted executions in 2006 and by Brown’s own lawyers.

At the center of the Wyoming controversy is a remote ranch where the Monks of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel want to build a 144,000-square-foot French Gothic-style monastery and coffee roasting barn. The monastery will feature a church that seats 150, with one spire rising 150 feet.

The proposal triggered a clash between ranchers who live miles apart, trying to protect their quiet, rural open spaces, and the hermit monks who live a secluded, Spartan life of prayer and meditation and are looking for more room to meet their expanding order and maintain their privacy.

Internet anonymity has removed one of the strongest barriers to the type of language that can ruin reputations and end careers. Racist messages are a small percentage of the wild and woolly web, but they stick out since they are rare in person – and they raise a host of questions.

Do these comments reflect a reversal of racial progress? Is that progress an illusion while racism thrives underground? What kind of harm are these statements doing? Could there be any value in such venting? And what, if anything, should a free society do about it?

Anthony Thomas, who claims to be the 840-pound gem’s first buyer, tried to convince Superior Court Judge John A. Kronstadt Friday that none of the half-dozen or so other claimants has a right to the so-called Bahia Emerald.

The soft-spoken businessman took the stand for several hours to stake his claim that he bought the boulder-sized gem in 2001 for just $60,000 soon after it was pulled from a mine in the jungles of Brazil’s Bahia state.

But on a recent warm morning, the river was clear.

“I didn’t see any cows. I didn’t see any signs of poultry waste or anything like that in the water,” the Fayetteville, Ark., resident said, standing on the riverbank in this northeastern Oklahoma hamlet. “The river itself is just gorgeous.”

The board approved the one-page nonbinding resolution, which urges textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam in world history books, by a 7-5 vote.

Critics say it’s another example of the ideological board trying to politicize public education in the Lone Star State. Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for religious freedom, questioned why the resolution came at a time when “anti-Muslim rhetoric in this country has reached fever pitch.”

The company knows the amount of the fine will depend on how much oil spilled, and has carefully avoided accepting the government’s estimate that 206 million gallons of crude were released by the well that blew out after the April 20 explosion on an offshore drilling rig.

A spokesman told The Associated Press that “now that the relief well has succeeded we are reviewing data and will develop our own estimate.” No timetable was given for reaching a conclusion.