Evening Edition

“Around 2.9 million” demonstrators have taken part, the CFDT union’s deputy leader Marcel Grignard told AFP, “roughly the same number” as during the last day of action against raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 on September 23.

“This is a successful mobilisation. We expect the government finally to pay attention to this popular expression and take action on it’s plan,” Grignard said.

The confirmation that the Duke of Gloucester and the rest of the British delegation did not attend came after a Nigerian newspaper reported that British intelligence warned Nigerian officials of the possibility of an attack.

At least 12 people were killed after two car bombs went off about a 10-minute walk away from Eagle Square, where the main celebrations, including a military parade, occurred on Friday.

As he was being driven around his hometown of Sao Bernardo do Campo on Sao Paulo’s southern outskirts in an open car with his candidate Dilma Rousseff, Lula — Brazil’s most popular president ever — received accolades from residents with tears in his eyes.

“He is very moved because he did so much for us… He suffered what we suffered,” said Cleila Santos, a 54-year-old health worker wearing the red of a Lula campaigner.

Leading by one point after completion of the rain-delayed opening fourballs earlier Saturday, the ice-cool Americans kept their nerve to take a 6-4 lead over Colin Montgomerie’s men following the foursomes at Celtic Manor.

But after receiving a rallying cry from a furious Montgomerie — who accused his players of lacking passion — the Europeans came blasting out of the blocks as the third session got under way at Celtic Manor.

Leading by one point after completion of the rain-delayed opening fourballs earlier Saturday, the ice-cool Americans kept their nerve to open up a 6-4 lead over Colin Montgomerie’s men following the foursomes at Celtic Manor.

Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker wrapped up a comfortable four-up win over Peter Hanson and Miguel Angel Jimenez as Zach Johnson and Hunter Mahan downed Italian brothers Edoardo and Francesco Molinari.

Organisers promised a Bollywood-inspired opening extravaganza on Sunday with singers and dancers showcasing India’s diverse culture with dazzling sound and light effects and a performance by Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman.

“We’re sure the Games will be a huge success,” Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit after inspecting sites. “We’re working around the clock.”

American supermodel Karlie Kloss was first to stride out from a desert island decor, complete with white sand and ruined beach villa, in a sailor’s cap, hooded parka in crisp white nubuck leather, paired with stiletto boots.

Followed an upbeat roll-call of catwalk sailors in cotton print day dresses and sarong twists, patterned with bright hibiscus and orchids, worn with peacoats and white caps cocked to one side.

Vivienne Westwood also looked to lost civilisations — from Egypt to Peru — for inspiration, while Japan’s Yohji Yamamoto channelled the spirit of a modern-day icon, Jimi Hendrix, with a tribute 40 years after his death.

At Dior, designer Galliano chose a deserted South Pacific naval base for his setting and pumping 80s pop for his soundtrack.

After signing bilateral agreements on investment and tourism with his Greek counterpart George Papandreou, Wen announced the creation of a five-billion-dollar (3.6-billion-euro) fund to help finance the purchase of Chinese ships by Greek shipping companies.

China also pledged to back Greece, which nearly defaulted earlier this year when investors sniffed at Greek debt, in future issues of long-term bonds.

Friday’s car bombs close to where Nigerian leaders and foreign delegations had gathered escalated militant group MEND’s “oil war” and came despite a lull in attacks after thousands of rebels signed up to an amnesty programme last year.

MEND issued a warning an hour before the blasts went off and later blamed government officials for the deaths, saying they “acted irresponsibly by ignoring our forewarning.”

Officials in Washington say its drone strikes in the region have killed several high-value targets, including Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, and help protect troops in Afghanistan from attacks plotted across the border.

However, drone attacks are a sensitive issue in Pakistan as the attacks also fuel anti-American sentiment in the conservative Muslim country.

Bank of America said on Friday it is delaying foreclosures in 23 states to review whether it has been conducting them properly. Two other big lenders — JPMorgan and Ally Financial Inc’s GMAC Mortgage — have already suspended foreclosures.

Also, a Maine state court judge reprimanded GMAC Mortgage for how it repossesses homes. The judge concluded that GMAC submitted a company official’s affidavit to support a foreclosure “in bad faith.”

Wen, in an interview with U.S. TV news network CNN taped on September 23, also said he hoped for a “quick recovery of the U.S. economy” and said the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package was the right move to help the U.S. economy.

The Chinese premier’s comments were made before the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation to pressure China to let its yuan currency rise more quickly.

Rousseff has a strong chance of becoming the first woman elected president of the Latin American giant when Brazilians vote on Sunday, largely thanks to Lula’s energetic support and his staggeringly high popularity amid an economic boom.

Lula and Rousseff, his 62-year-old former chief of staff, rode on the back of car through cheering supporters in the manufacturing hub of Sao Bernardo do Campo on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, where Lula made his name as a fiery union boss.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council held its first meeting and voted to seek public comment for a period of 30 days on the Volcker rule, which restricts risky bank trading.

The panel also sought comments on what criteria should be used to decide which large non-bank financial companies should be supervised by the Federal Reserve.

Maliki was picked on Friday as the nominee for the top government job from his Shi’ite-led National Alliance after he secured support from Moqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shi’ite cleric whose militia once fought against U.S. troops in Iraq.

But the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc is threatening to boycott a Maliki government at a time when Iraq is struggling to tame insurgent violence.

The interim government of Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet nation hosting U.S. and Russian military air bases, has struggled to control southern parts of the country since assuming power after a bloody revolt on Apr. 7 that toppled the president.

Nearly 400 people were killed, and possibly hundreds more, during several days of violence in southern Kyrgyzstan in June. Clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the region also left many thousands of people homeless.

The report by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission did not name the trader. Reuters, citing internal documents prepared by exchange operator CME Group Inc, in May identified the trader as money manager Waddell & Reed Financial Inc.

The long-awaited report focused on the relationship between two hugely popular securities — E-Mini Standard & Poor’s 500 futures and S&P 500 “SPDR” exchange-traded funds — and detailed how high-frequency algorithmic trading can sap liquidity and rock the marketplace.

After years of speculation, Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong-un, was rolled out to North Koreans this week and appointed to senior political and military posts in the isolated state.

Kim Jong-un, whose very existence had not been previously acknowledged in North Korea, was made a four-star general and named second-in-command to his father at the Workers’ Party’s powerful Central Military Commission.

Two U.S. missile strikes that killed 16 people in a northwest Pakistani tribal region, meanwhile, showed that America has no intention of sidelining a tactic it considers highly successful, even if it could add to tensions.

The closing of the Torkham border crossing to NATO trucks has exposed the struggles and contradictions at the heart of the U.S.-Pakistan alliance against Islamist militancy.

“We are together. This march is about the power to the people,” said Ed Schultz, host of “The Ed Show” on MSNBC. “It is about the people standing up to the corporations. Are you ready to fight back?”

In a fiery speech that opened the “One Nation Working Together” rally on the National Mall, Schultz blamed Republicans for shipping jobs overseas and curtailing freedoms. He borrowed some of conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s rhetoric and vowed to “take back our country.”

Such a move could have negative implications for European tourism if travelers fear there’s a possibility of terror attacks.

The State Department may issue a travel alert as early as Sunday advising Americans to stay vigilant as they travel through Europe because of fresh threat information, U.S. officials told the AP.

Emboldened by their prospects, Republicans are throwing $3.4 million into West Virginia in hopes of winning a Senate seat that was long thought out of reach. It was the GOP’s latest move to expand a playing field already heavily tilting its way.

In the one-month dash to Election Day, both parties are zeroing in on races they have the best chances of winning, recalibrating strategies and shifting advertising money by the day. The state of play could change repeatedly between now and Nov. 2.

The arrest of Henry Okah, a former leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, came as Nigeria’s secretive State Security Service acknowledged it received a warning about the impending attack long before the bombs exploded Friday.

Nonetheless, the militant group was still able to detonate the explosives only a 10-minute walk away from a ceremony in Nigeria’s capital Abuja attended by the president and other dignitaries in the oil-rich nation.

An estimated 100,000 police and military personnel have been enlisted to keep the athletes, visitors and games venues safe. Foreign governments have issued travel advisories highlighting a risk for terror attacks in India during the games.

The Delhi government used a law enacted in 1954 as authority to enforce the closure of shops and markets on Sunday for the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony on Oct. 14, announcing it to businesses two days ahead.

The less aggressive approach contrasted with al-Qaida’s previous calls for a violent response in what experts say could be a “good cop, bad cop” ploy to exploit anger over the flooding and rally support for the terror network.

Al-Qaida is under pressure to refurbish support among Pakistanis as it faces a surge in U.S. missile strikes and government crackdowns on insurgents who easily move between Afghanistan and Pakistan’s porous border. American officials have asserted for months that the core of the network has been weakened and is struggling to raise money and attract recruits.

They won the opening two sessions. They had a 6-4 lead over Europe. They grabbed lunch and headed back out to the golf course.

And then, it all changed.

The court will look at provocative anti-gay protests at military funerals and a California law banning the sale of violent video games to children. These cases worry free speech advocates, who fear the court could limit First Amendment freedoms.

The funeral protest lawsuit, over signs praising American war deaths, “is one of those cases that tests our commitment to the First Amendment,” said Steven Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

To many people in the West, the statement was ludicrous, almost laughable if it weren’t so incendiary. And surveys show that a majority of the world does not in fact believe that the U.S. orchestrated the attacks.

However, the belief persists strongly among a minority, even with U.S. allies like Turkey or in the U.S. itself. And it cannot be dismissed because it reflects a gulf in politics and perception, especially between the West and many Muslims.

Instead, Whitman finds herself on the defensive and seeking to regain momentum with those voters after a tumultuous week in which she was forced to explain how she had an illegal immigrant housekeeper on the payroll for nine years and, according to her, didn’t know it.

She also is addressing allegations from the housekeeper’s attorney that she and her husband should have suspected the worker’s status because of a Social Security Administration letter mailed to their home in 2003.

Determined to do better in this year’s race, Carver added something extra to his training regime: beetroot juice. For a week before the race, he drank the dark purple juice every day. Last month, Carver won it by running 148 miles (238 kilometers).

“The only thing I did differently this year was the beetroot juice,” said Carver, 46, a professional runner based near Leeds, in northern England.

After the unusual ruckus caused by honoring Barack Obama less than nine months into his presidency, Nobel experts believe the peace prize committee will opt for a more low-profile choice.

“I do not foresee a similar level of risk-taking as last year,” says Kristian Berg Harpviken, Director of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

The move adds the nation’s largest bank to a growing list of mortgage companies whose employees signed documents in foreclosure cases without verifying the information in them.

Bank of America isn’t able to estimate how many homeowners’ cases will be affected, Dan Frahm, a spokesman for the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank, said Friday. He said the bank plans to resubmit corrected documents within several weeks.

Emanuel’s decision to quit the White House and run for Chicago mayor had been so well known that even Obama mocked the lack of suspense. But it still felt like the most important transition to date for the Obama operation, which has been fueled for nearly two years by Emanuel’s demands, drive and discipline.

At an emotional farewell, Obama said, “We are all very excited for Rahm, but we’re also losing an incomparable leader of our staff.” Emanuel choked up as he said his goodbye.

The Kurds, who control a semiautonomous northern enclave, emerged as the pivotal votes after al-Maliki’s Shiite-led coalition received a major boost Friday from a powerful Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, who once opposed him. The support pushed al-Maliki close to a majority grip in the 325-seat parliament, but he needs help from other factions to break a nearly seven-month impasse.

A Sunni-backed coalition led by a former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, narrowly won March elections, yet without enough clout to control parliament and oust al-Maliki, leaving the country in political limbo.

The dozens of photos, described in interviews and in e-mails and military documents obtained by The Associated Press, were seized by Army investigators and are a crucial part of the case against five soldiers accused of killing three Afghan civilians earlier this year.

Troops allegedly shared the photos by e-mail and thumb drive like electronic trading cards. Now 60 to 70 of them are being kept tightly shielded from the public and even defense attorneys because of fears they could wind up in the news media and provoke anti-American violence.

The dozens of photos, described in interviews and in e-mails and military documents obtained by The Associated Press, were seized by Army investigators and are a crucial part of the case against five soldiers accused of killing three Afghan civilians earlier this year.

Troops allegedly shared the photos by e-mail and thumb drive like electronic trading cards. Now 60 to 70 of them are being kept tightly shielded from the public and even defense attorneys because of fears they could wind up in the news media and provoke anti-American violence.

The discovery dredges up past wrongs in the name of science – like the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study in this country that has long dampened minority participation in medical research – and could complicate ongoing studies overseas that depend on cooperation from some of the world’s poorest countries to tackle tough-to-treat diseases.

Uncovering it gives “us all a chance to look at this and – even as we are appalled at what was done – to redouble our efforts to make sure something like this could never happen again,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

The stealthy submarine could become easier to detect by enemy sonar if it lost too much of the special coating. But the Navy insists that the sub never lost enough of the material to rise to that level and that it has moved aggressively to fix the problems in newer models of nuclear-powered attack submarines.

“We’ve been aware of the issues, we’re making improvements in the process, and we’re seeing results already,” said Alan Baribeau, spokesman for the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, D.C. There has been “no measurable impact on the ship’s performance,” he said.

The renderings, some of which were posted on the project’s website this week, are preliminary, but they project the development team’s desire to build something cosmopolitan and fun on a site now known only for controversy.

“I don’t think that once this thing gets built, anyone will be picketing,” said Sharif El-Gamal, the project’s developer.

He browses through a series of digital images of the vine-entangled wreckage of the American C-47B Dakota, which slammed into a mountain in Malaysia during a supply mission in November 1945. The cockpit, believed to still contain the remains of the three-member crew, lies embedded in the mountainside.

Taylan’s computer file with the C-47 photographs, e-mailed to him last fall, is just one of thousands he has compiled for his website, the key component of his effort to document World War II airplane crash sites in the Pacific.

Court rulings and corruption convictions have ended the primacy of the Machine, leaving get-out-the-vote efforts in the hands of what officials say are volunteers. But the city’s first real mayor’s race in more than two decades will test how far Chicago has advanced since the Machine’s heyday, and how badly big-name, well-funded candidates like Rahm Emanuel still need that old street-level help.

“Never underestimate the power of the precinct worker,” said Tom Manion, a longtime political operative who directed Mayor Richard M. Daley’s first re-election campaign in 1991. “This is going to be a Generation X campaign with Facebook, Twitter and all that … but you should never forget the power of friend talking to friend, neighbor talking to neighbor.”

A proposed city ordinance would require the giant hamburger chain to either stop putting little toys for kids in those Happy Meal boxes, or otherwise make them healthier by adding fruit and vegetable portions and limiting calories.

Supervisor Eric Mar said in proposing the law that he was trying to protect the health of his constituents.

After assuming that only wild creatures would witness her car roll through a remote stop sign, Wilson was stunned weeks later to get four tickets in the mail totaling $700. A hidden camera had captured her infractions on video.

“I was totally shocked,” Wilson said. “I knew there were signs there. I didn’t think they’d be that strict and be that expensive.”

Tester is a bit of an anomaly in what has been dubbed the nation’s “most exclusive club,” and it’s not likely he would have ever received an invitation to join on satorial considerations alone.

Montana voters sent him to the Senate in 2006, but he flies home almost every weekend to plow his fields, fix his farm machinery and tend to his relatively modest 1,800 acre farm in the rolling hills of wheat country north of Great Falls.

Long built a humble suburban Atlanta congregation into a giant TV ministry on the strength of his charisma and his interpretation of the Gospels, including the magnetic idea that the faithful will be rewarded with wealth. It’s a doctrine the architect and leader of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church embodies with his own luxury lifestyle, including a private jet, jewels, a luxury automobile and a mansion.

“It’s like the ‘in’ church to be associated with,” said Terry Belton of Charlotte, N.C., who has attended the New Birth church there with his wife. “You feel like you’re going to prosper by being associated with that church. A lot of people go there because of him. We went … because of him.”

There’s broad agreement that this sometimes occurs, usually triggered by a divorce and child-custody dispute. But there’s bitter debate over whether the phenomenon should be formally classified as a mental health syndrome – a question now before the psychiatric association as it prepares the first complete revision since 1994 of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

“We’re gotten an enormous amount of mail – more than any other issue,” said Dr. Darrel Regier, vice chair of the task force drafting the manual. “The passions on both sides of this are exceptional.”

Asher Brown’s parents, who claim school officials ignored their pleas for help, said they hope “justice will be served” by the investigation by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

“Once they find out what’s been hidden, we would want the people responsible to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” said Asher’s stepfather, David Truong.

Andrew Shirvell, 30, started a blog in April in which he regularly lambasted 21-year-old Christopher Armstrong as a racist with a “radical homosexual agenda.” Shirvell, one of about 250 lawyers in the attorney general’s office, has said that when he’s not at work, he has a right to say whatever he wants.

First Amendment expert Cliff Sloan said public employers must be careful because the Constitution says government can “make no law abridging the freedom of speech.” Still, judges and state officials have some discretion when it comes to dealing with workers, he said.

And analysts say it will need to do just that to avoid being left behind in its core personal computer and printer businesses that no longer offer much room for growth or big profits.

In a conference call that served as his formal introduction to Wall Street on Friday, former SAP AG CEO Leo Apotheker called software the “glue” that will hold together the different parts of the company. “Software is how we can make sure that the various parts of our technology actually fit well together,” he said.