Evening Edition

The state’s rescue of Anglo Irish, which hit the rocks when Ireland’s property bubble burst amid the 2008 global financial crisis, could cost as much as 34.3 billion euros (46.6 billion dollars).

The massive bill, plus the cost of helping other banks, is expected to help push Ireland’s public deficit to a record 32 percent of gross domestic product this year.

Tough new cutbacks proposed in Portugal, and a new hard line in a French budget statement on Wednesday, spotlight another threat in the eurozone: increasigly strident protests against spending cuts and tax rises.

Just hours after a general strike in Spain and mass street protests across European cities, the worker backlash against the tide of austerity was left facing daunting new realities.

About 150 renegade troops seized a runway at Ecuador’s international airport in the capital of the South American nation, as dozens of police protested against a new law which would strip them of some pay bonuses.

President Rafael Correa, 47, a leftist ally of his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez, swiftly denounced what he called a coup bid, and sought refuge in a hospital after failing to calm tensions in an occupied barracks.

“All three sets of parties, i.e. Muslims, Hindus and (Hindu religious organisation) Nirmhoi Akhara are declared joint holders of the property in dispute,” Justice S.U. Khan said in a ruling at the Allahabad High Court.

Several of the claimants in the case immediately said they would appeal the judgement to the Supreme Court, meaning the already 60-year dispute will continue in India’s notoriously slow justice system.

Analysts said the issuance of the first-ever official photo confirms the young man’s status as leader-in-waiting of the impoverished but nuclear-armed communist nation.

Official media published the photo of the son — part of a group of leading ruling party officials at an outdoor photo session — two days after the party bestowed powerful posts on Jong-Un at its highest-level meeting for 30 years.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) earlier Thursday announced that the Spaniard had been provisionally suspended after a minute trace of clenbuterol, a banned substance, was detected in a urine sample taken from him on July 21.

“It’s a case of food contamination and I was the victim,” Contador, who appeared tense and at times on the verge of tears, told a news conference in a hotel in his hometown of Pinto, outside Madrid.

Woods had stated he was keen to play McIlroy after the 21-year-old Northern Irish rookie said last month he wanted to face the troubled superstar, who has battled poor form and personal problems this year.

But the prospect of a mouth-watering grudge match was ruled out after McIlroy and fellow Ulsterman Graeme McDowell were drawn to play Stewart Cink and Matt Kuchar in the second match of Friday’s fourballs.

Sleeveless leathers, studded belts and clumpy boots set the tone for Nicolas Ghesquiere’s spring-summer look for Balenciaga.

“They are the children of punk,” the designer told AFP backstage after the show, which opened with a leather overcoat in a red-and-black houndstooth pattern, glowing under the chandeliers of the capital’s Crillon Hotel.

The House of Representatives passed the legislation by a 348-79 margin, one of its strongest showings against China in years, fueled by deep voter anger at the sour economy and joblessness near 10 percent ahead of the November ballot.

The US Senate has signaled it will take up a companion bill after the elections, but the legislation’s fate is unclear and President Barack Obama has not formally taken a position on whether he supports it.

The worst global slump since the 1930s savaged the industry and it is now setting its sights on emerging markets like China and India to compensate for stagnating sales and fierce competition in Europe.

“In 2010 we are dealing with a two-speed world,” said PSA Peugeot Citroen boss Philippe Varin as he presented the French firm’s new models at the Paris Motor Show.

The USS Pueblo — still listed as a commissioned US Navy vessel — sits docked and open to visitors at a riverside berth in the capital Pyongyang.

A steady flow of tourists, including some Americans, boarded the vessel for a guided tour one day recently.

The Nobel Peace laureate, who has been detained for most of the last twenty years since winning the country’s last poll in 1990, will be freed when her current house arrest expires on November 13, the unnamed sources said.

“November will be an important and busy month for us because of the election and because of Aung San Suu Kyi’s release,” a Myanmar official told AFP, noting the release would come soon after the country’s November 7 vote.

Beijing also said the bill — overwhelmingly approved by the US House of Representatives on Wednesday — violates World Trade Organisation rules, and insisted it has not deliberately undervalued its currency.

Angry US lawmakers, who accuse Beijing of keeping the value of the yuan artificially low to give its exporters an unfair competitive edge, blamed the weak yuan for the loss of US jobs, just weeks ahead of key midterm elections.

As markets contemplated Dublin’s ever growing fiscal hole, ratings agency Moody’s cut Spain’s AAA top-notch credit rating to Aa1, citing the budget impact of slower economic growth.

The downgrade was widely expected and followed similar moves by Standard’s and Poor and Fitch.

The plan, which comes a little over two years after AIG was rescued with an aid package that ballooned to $182.3 billion, will see the Federal Reserve Bank of New York getting repaid in full and ending its involvement in AIG, leaving the company to deal with just the Treasury Department.

The Treasury will convert some of its AIG securities into common shares, raising its stake in the company to 92.1 percent from nearly 80 percent. That stake will be sold off over time.

Obama was to make an announcement at a White House East Room event on Friday. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs would not confirm Emanuel was the subject of the announcement but the sources said Emanuel’s announcement would come on Friday.

Pete Rouse, a senior adviser who is one of Obama’s longest- serving aides, is expected to take over the chief of staff position for the time being. Gibbs would not confirm that, but said Obama would be making two announcements and he spoke warmly of Rouse.

In a relatively measured response, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Congress should avoid steps that could harm relations, saying Beijing was “resolutely opposed” to the bill. But she declined to say whether China would retaliate.

The House of Representatives bill, which many analysts say is unlikely to become law, is aimed at pressuring Beijing to let its currency, also called the renminbi, rise faster by branding it in violation of world trade rules.

Warren told the Financial Services Roundtable that the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she is setting up does not intend to layer on complex new rules that add compliance costs and encourage avoidance by banks.

“Instead of creating a regulatory thicket of ‘thou shalt nots,’ and instead of using ever more complex disclosures that drive up costs for lenders and provide little help for consumers, let’s measure our success with simple questions,” Warren said in remarks prepared for delivery to the banking trade group.

Kim Jong-un was this week appointed to senior political and military posts in the isolated state, whose aspirations to be a nuclear weapons power has worried the outside world for years.

The photo, published by state media on Thursday, is the first picture since the appointment of the 20-something third son of Kim Jong-il and about whom little is known other than he was educated in Switzerland. The only previous known photos of him date back to his childhood.

Trucks and fuel tankers for foreign forces in Afghanistan were stopped at the Torkham border post in the Khyber tribal region near the city of Peshawar, hours after the raid.

“Yes, the NATO supplies have been stopped. It has been done locally,” a senior security official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Requested budget increases for financial regulators were not included in a stopgap spending bill to fund government operations through early December that passed Congress on Wednesday, which could complicate efforts to put the sweeping law in place. The delay could stretch into 2011.

Congress passed the temporary spending bill because it has not completed work on any of the 12 regular bills that fund government operations for the fiscal year that begins October 1.

Banks stepped up foreclosures through the summer and will take over a record 1.2 million homes this year, up from around 1 million last year and about 100,000 in 2005 before the housing bust, according to a forecast from the real estate data company.

Foreclosed homes accounted for 24 percent of all second-quarter sales, at an average price discount of more than 26 percent compared with homes not in the foreclosure process.

Researchers who scanned the gene maps of more than 1,400 children found that those with ADHD were more likely than others to have small chunks of their DNA duplicated or missing.

Anita Thapar, a professor psychiatry at Cardiff University who led the study, said the findings should help dispel the myths that ADHD is caused by bad parenting or high-sugar diets.

J&J has recalled millions of bottles of potentially contaminated over-the-counter medicines such as Children’s Tylenol and Benadryl, forcing one of its plants to shut down well into next year, and prompting a criminal probe and civil lawsuits.

The House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee called the hearing after a session in May that some members said just raised more questions.

The Spaniard, who won his third Tour this year, was tested during the second rest day of the race and the second B test had confirmed the presence of clenbuterol, a banned anabolic agent, the UCI said in a statement.

“The rider, who had already put an end to his cycling season before the result was known, was nevertheless formally and provisionally suspended as is prescribed by the World Anti-Doping Code,” the statement said.

Echoing a move BP made after the Texas City blast in 2005, Dudley also said on Wednesday he was appointing a new safety guru, Mark Bly, who would ensure safe practices across the organization.

BP shares closed up 3.9 percent at 421 pence, against a 0.2 percent drop in the STOXX Europe 600 Oil and Gas index.

Tokyo and Beijing have been in a bitter feud since Japan detained a Chinese fishing boat skipper whose trawler collided this month with two Japan Coast Guard ships near uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that both sides claim.

Japanese prosecutors released the skipper late last week, but both sides have demanded compensation over the collision.

The two people, who spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because they did not want to pre-empt Emanuel’s announcement, said he will return to Chicago over the weekend and begin touring neighborhoods Monday.

“He intends to run for mayor,” one of the people told The Associated Press.

Attorney Gloria Allred says Nicky Diaz Santillan kept the letter from the government after Whitman’s husband, Dr. Griffith Harsh, partially filled it out and told the housekeeper to deal with it.

“At bottom of letter, “Dr. Harsh has written: ‘Nicky, please check this. Thanks,'” Allred said, adding that the housekeeper recognized the handwriting as belonging to Whitman’s husband.

Incensed officers shoved President Rafael Correa around and pelted him with tear gas and water when he tried to speak at a police barracks in the capital.

Correa, 47, was hospitalized from the effects of the gas.

Prosecutors say they’re examining the motives of whomever hid the camera in the room of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi.

Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan says that’s crucial to determining whether bias charges should be brought.

NATO said its helicopters entered Pakistani airspace and hit a target only after receiving ground fire. The alliance expressed condolences to the families of the soldiers and said both nations would investigate the incident.

A lengthy ban on supply trucks would place intense strain on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship and hurt the Afghan war effort. But that was seen as unlikely, as neither Islamabad nor Washington can afford a meltdown in ties at a crucial time in the 9-year-old war.

Democratic congressional leaders decided to call off controversial votes on taxes and President Barack Obama’s latest spending requests and instead pass a temporary bill to keep the government running through November. Some Democrats facing particularly tough re-election fights joined Republicans in protest, saying Congress should stay in session and get more done before facing voters Nov. 2.

“The Senate should be more concerned about doing what’s right for the country and less concerned about campaign season,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.

Both sides said they would appeal, and the muted reaction to the potentially explosive verdict generated hopes that the increasingly confident country, with its growing regional clout and skyrocketing economy, has moved beyond its divisive history.

“(This) shows that we have become a mature nation,” said Kamal Farooqui, a member of the Muslim Personal Law Board.

The Postal Service lost $3.8 billion last year and is headed toward an approximately $7 billion loss this year as people do more business on the Internet and the recession erodes the volume of marketing mail.

In July the post office had asked for a special rate increase for letters, postcards, periodicals, parcels and other services as one of several steps to cut its losses. The agency also had suggested cutting delivery service to five days a week and closing or consolidating offices – issues that were not addressed in Thursday’s rate decision by the independent Postal Regulatory Commission.

The Spanish rider was provisionally suspended after a World Anti-Doping Agency lab in Germany found a “very small concentration” of the banned substance clenbuterol in his urine sample on July 21 at the Tour, according the International Cycling Union, the sport’s governing body.

“It is a clear case of food contamination,” Contador told a news conference in his hometown near Madrid, during which he appeared close to tears several times. “I am sad and disappointed but hold my head high.”

Gross domestic product – the broadest measure of the economy’s health – expanded at a feeble 1.7 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter, The Commerce Department reported Thursday.

That’s a notch higher than the 1.6 percent growth rate the government estimated a month ago. The slight change was mostly due to a little more spending by consumers than first estimated. Still, that’s not enough to have a major impact on the economy.

The plan announced Thursday could return a profit to taxpayers who footed the bill for AIG’s near collapse in September 2008.

“This is a pivotal milestone as we deliver on our long-standing promise to repay taxpayers,” Robert Benmosche, AIG’s CEO said in a statement. “We are very pleased that this agreement vastly simplifies current government support of AIG.”

State media published the first official images of Kim Jong Un, the youngest son of leader Kim Jong Il who appears destined to inherit control of the impoverished, nuclear-armed state.

North Korean television broadcast video of a meeting of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party held Tuesday, including images of Kim Jong Un, who was positioned in the front row during a speech and shown standing and vigorously clapping with other delegates in the cavernous venue.

“It’s an insult to myself, my family and the veterans to say this is what our military men and women died for,” Snyder says, barely concealing his anger.

Yet more than four years after the death of his only son, Matthew, Snyder is in the middle of a Supreme Court case that raises almost precisely that issue.

As a last necessary task before leaving, both the Senate and House passed a temporary spending measure needed to keep federal agencies operating when the new budget year starts.

As Congress moved toward a messy end to a session fraught with partisan fire, President Barack Obama campaigned for Democrats in Iowa and Virginia, accusing Republicans of being dishonest about what needs to be done to revive the economy and restore middle-class dreams.

Officers Ronald Mitchell and Ray Jones were patrolling the area where thousands had sought refuge and were later stranded when resident Danny Brumfield tried to flag the police down, according to the indictment. Brumfield either jumped on the car’s hood or was struck by the vehicle, according to the indictment, and Mitchell shot Brumfield.

Mitchell claimed he shot and killed Brumfield after he lunged at him with a “shiny object” and testified that he thought Brumfield was armed with a knife.

It is “undisputed” that Luqman Ameen Abdullah fired at agents, resisted arrest and rejected demands to surrender, Attorney General Mike Cox said.

“Under Michigan law, law enforcement agents are justified in using deadly force in these types of situations, and therefore we found no crimes,” Cox said in a written statement.

The lawsuit filed Thursday claims the city, the county dispatch center and the various paramedics and emergency medical services brass are responsible for the Feb. 7 death of Curtis Mitchell, 50.

Mitchell died at home after ambulance crews didn’t reach him despite calls his live-in girlfriend, Sharon Edge, made to 911 as a storm dumped nearly two feet of snow on the city.

“What harm is there in allowing (inmate Damien Echols) to present all evidence?” Special Justice Jeff Priebe asked senior assistant attorney general David Raupp.

Raupp responded: “The harm is to the criminal justice system’s interest in finality and the work that gets done in evaluating whether justice can be served.”

The “One Nation Working Together” rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday comes one month before the Nov. 2 elections and one month after conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally. Organizers say more than 400 organizations – ranging from labor unions to faith, environmental and gay rights groups – are coming together to advocate for job creation, quality education and justice.

Although organizers describe the rally as nonpartisan, they also hope to raise awareness of their concerns before political contests that are expected to sweep out many Democrats.

More than 140 bottles of American-style India Pale Ale sit stacked in donated Bud Light and King Cobra boxes, labors of hop love brewed by a cast of characters that includes an organic chemist, a man with a grim reaper tattoo and a guy who wants to make a beer that tastes like orange sherbet mixed with hot fudge ice cream.

Over the next nine hours, beer identified only by number will get sniffed, scrutinized, swallowed and spit out by judges at the 29th annual Great American Beer Festival, the world’s largest beer competition.

Jamal Parris, 22, told Fox TV affiliate WAGA that they engaged in sexual acts at Long’s home, in his car and his office at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in surburban Atlanta, similar to claims he made in his lawsuit last week.

The Atlanta station is airing its interview with Parris, done outside a convenience store in Colorado, over several days.

At the U.N. General Assembly’s annual high-level gathering, which lasted almost two weeks, presidents and ministers vowed to extract tens of billions more from their financially hard-hit nations to grapple with poverty, diseases and climate change, and to prop up peace as hopes wear thin from Sudan to Somalia to the Middle East.

General Assembly President Joseph Deiss of Switzerland exhorted leaders at the meeting’s end to “put aside electoral cycles and purely national interests” and to move beyond their own rhetoric in order “to make true breakthroughs” on peace and governing, human rights and the environment.

The Wisconsin Crime Victims’ Rights Board acknowledged that Ken Kratz gave members information last December about text messages he sent Stephanie Van Groll while prosecuting her ex-boyfriend for attacking her.

But the board said Kratz did not give a detailed description of the texts, characterized the messages as being of a mutually friendly nature, and said he was interested in pursuing a friendship with Van Groll. The board, which has come under fire for not taking action against Kratz, said it could not investigate further under state law based on the information.