Evening Edition

“I can confirm that we have seen sporadic losses of fish in the main branch of the Danube,” regional chief for the disaster relief services Tibor Dobson told AFP.

“The fish have been sighted at the confluence of the Raba with the Danube,” where water samples had shown a pH value of 9.1, he said.

Senior police official Hamid Parhial gave the toll, adding that 65 people were also injured, and said it was a suspected suicide attack.

The bombs exploded at the entrance of the shrine to Sufi saint Abdullah Shah Ghazi as devotees packed it for a weekly gathering in Karachi’s seaside Clifton district.

The High Peace Council is Karzai’s brainchild for opening a dialogue with the Taliban and other insurgents who have been trying to bring down his government since the US-led invasion overthrew their regime in late 2001.

The Taliban has said publicly it will not enter into dialogue with the government until all 152,000 US-led foreign troops based in the country leave and on Thursday issued a statement saying its jihad was as strong as ever.

Vargas Llosa, long tipped to win the award, is best known for works such as “Conversation in the Cathedral” and “The Feast of the Goat” but is also a prolific journalist, still writing for Spain’s El Pais daily.

“I hope to survive the Nobel,” he joked at his first press conference since winning the prestigious prize held in New York.

“We didn’t change at all our assessment of the non-standard measures, the allotment mode, the provision of liquidity and we are exactly, exactly in the same mood as we were a month ago,” ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet said after the rate decision.

As Trichet made his comments, the euro spiked briefly to an eight-month high above 1.40 dollars, adding to concerns the strengthening currency could undermine European exports by making them more expensive.

The ECB policy board met as the Bank of England kept its key lending rate at a record low level of 0.50 percent and two days after Japan launched a fresh stimulus package to keep the world’s third-biggest economy on track.

In the eurozone, “banks in the most troubled areas, most notably Ireland and Portugal, are still heavily reliant on the ECB?s three-month lending” of central bank cash, Capital Economics senior economist Jennifer McKeown noted following the rate decision.

A deal by New England Sports Ventures to purchase debt-saddled Liverpool for 477 million dollars was not made lightly by 61-year-old hedge-fund billionaire John Henry and partner Tom Werner, a television producer.

“Our objective is to stabilize the club and ultimately return Liverpool FC to its rightful place in English and European football, successfully competing for and winning trophies,” they said in a statement.

Like a ringmaster, the first model walked out in chest-to-toe black leather, cravache in hand, with riding boots and flat-topped, round-brimmed gaucho hat, before a packed Fashion Week audience that included Janet Jackson.

Showcasing his last collection for the house on the final day of the ready-to-wear shows, Gaultier worked within Hermes’ historic codes — with leather at the core — but spirited them to a Latin land.

Clarke, the only man in the final to have broken 10 seconds in the past two years, dipped over the line in 10.12 to capitalise on world record holder Bolt and fellow Jamaican, defending champion Asafa Powell, choosing not to compete.

It was a powerful run in hot and humid conditions but, ultimately, very slow and a long way off Ato Boldon’s Commonwealth record of 9.88 and even further behind Bolt’s 9.58 world record.

Around 40 English and 12 Australian swimmers had complained of feeling unwell after competing at the S.P. Mukherjee Aquatics Complex, with team officials insisting that the problem area was the warm-up pool.

“We must investigate this immediately. If the water is unsafe then clearly you can’t swim in it,” said Commonwealth Games Federation president Mike Fennell.

Around 40 English competitors and 12 Australians had complained of feeling unwell after competing at the S.P. Mukherjee Aquatics Complex, with team officials insisting that the problem area was the warm-up pool.

“We must investigate this immediately. If the water is unsafe then clearly you can’t swim in it,” said Commonwealth Games Federation president Mike Fennell.

Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo and Junior Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau expressed “stupefaction” at the choice by Eurostar, in which French state-owned rail operator SNCF is the biggest shareholder with 55 percent.

Eurostar said earlier that it had ordered 10 high-speed trains from Siemens.

Experts said damage beyond the borders of Hungary was unlikely to be great but the threat had to be monitored closely.

Tibor Dobson, a spokesman for Hungarian disaster crews, told Reuters there were sporadic fish deaths in the Raba and the Mosoni-Danube rivers. He said all fish had died in the smaller Marcal River, which was hit by the spill first.

The bill, which would have made it more difficult for homeowners to challenge foreclosures, came under the spotlight this week as the furor grew over disclosures that some of the biggest U.S. mortgage processors filed false affidavits in thousands of foreclosure cases.

Obama sent the bill back to the House of Representatives for further discussion on how it would affect the foreclosure crisis, one of the most visible signs of the deep economic problems gripping the country.

An outstanding member of the a generation of writers that led a resurgence in Latin American literature in the 1960s, Vargas Llosa was a champion of the left in his youth and later evolved into an outspoken conservative, a shift that infuriated much of Latin America’s leftist intelligentsia.

“I hope they gave it to me more for my literary work and not my political opinions,” the 74-year-old author said at a news conference in New York.

The U.S. ambassador to Islamabad said late on Wednesday that the cross-border raid, which killed two Pakistani soldiers and triggered the supply shut-down, was a “terrible accident”.

A joint NATO-Pakistani report released the same day said gunmen aboard the Apaches had likely mistaken warning shots from the border guards for an insurgent attack when they opened fire.

The spirit of global economic cooperation, first forged in 2008 during the darkest days of the financial crisis, was weakening as the recession gives way to an uneven and shaky recovery, the head of the International Monetary Fund said.

Fears of global currency and trade wars, which were key factors in the Great Depression, have jumped to the top of the agenda at IMF and World Bank meetings this weekend, and are also expected to be a primary topic of discussion when Group of Seven finance leaders gather on Friday.

The contrasting views over capital controls come amid rising tension between emerging and developed economies over exchange rates, which is expected to be a hot topic at Group of Seven and International Monetary Fund meeting starting on Friday.

Western leaders are worried efforts by emerging economies to weaken their currencies could derail the fragile economic recovery. Officials from developing markets say ultra-low interest rates in rich countries are fuelling massive fund flows into their markets, pushing up their currencies and inflating prices of stocks, property and other assets.

The Labor Department on Friday will give an initial estimate of how far off its count of employment may have been in the 12 months through March. The government admitted earlier this year that its count through March 2009 had overstated employment by 902,000 jobs.

Analysts expect a much smaller miscount this time, given the economy’s growth spurt in the second half of last year.

Control of one house of Congress could give the Republicans power to cripple the law, creating “zombie legislation,” healthcare expert Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution wrote in a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Healthcare reform is President Barack Obama’s signature policy.

The European Union and environmental officials fear an environmental catastrophe affecting half a dozen nations if the red sludge, a waste product of making aluminum, contaminates the Danube, Europe’s second-longest river.

Officials from Croatia, Serbia and Romania were taking river samples every few hours Thursday but hoping that the Danube’s huge water volume would blunt the impact of the spill.

Angry mobs burned tires and torched buses in the aftermath of the bombings in Karachi.

The attack came amid tensions between Washington and Islamabad over NATO helicopter incursions that have led Pakistan to close a key border crossing used to ferry supplies to Western troops in Afghanistan. Despite U.S. apologies over the incursions, one of which left two Pakistani soldiers dead, Islamabad said Thursday it had yet to decide when to reopen the crossing.

Across the country, in California, GOP gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman pointedly blamed Democrat Jerry Brown for the disclosure that she had employed an illegal immigrant housekeeper.

“You put it out there and you should be ashamed for sacrificing Nicky Diaz on the altar of your political ambitions,” Whitman told Brown, who was standing a few feet away. He shot back: “You have blamed her, blamed me, blamed the left, blamed the unions. But you don’t take accountability.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that Obama is sending a newly passed bill back to Congress to be fixed because the current version has “unintended consequences on consumer protections.” The bill would loosen the process for providing a notary’s seal to documents and allow them to be done electronically.

Obama will not sign a bill that would allow foreclosure and other documents to be accepted among multiple states. Consumer advocates and state officials had argued the legislation would make it difficult for homeowners to challenge foreclosure documents prepared in other states.

Given that the corn borer has cost U.S. farmers $1 billion a year, the economic benefits are dramatic, according to the report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

The genetically modified plants, called Bt corn, have had an economic benefit of $6.9 billion during the past 14 years in the five Upper Midwest corn-producing states studied, concluded the researchers. They were led by William Hutchison, head of the entomology department at the University of Minnesota, and Paul Mitchell, an agricultural economist at the University of Wisconsin.

Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler says the stretching and meditative discipline derived from Eastern religions is not a Christian pathway to God.

Mohler said he objects to “the idea that the body is a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine.”

Vargas Llosa, 74, has written more than 30 novels, plays and essays, including “Conversation in the Cathedral” and “The Green House.” In 1995, he won the Cervantes Prize, the most distinguished literary honor in Spanish.

He is the first South American winner of the prestigious 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) Nobel literature prize since Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez won in 1982 and the first Spanish-language writer to win since Mexico’s Octavio Paz in 1990.

Yet The Associated Press-mtvU Poll, released Thursday, also found that being perpetually connected comes at a cost. While 57 percent of students said life without computers and cell phones would make them more stressed, a significant number – 25 percent – said it would be a relief. A big majority feel pressured to instantly answer texts or voice mails, most get nervous if someone doesn’t immediately reply to a message, and nearly half worry whether messages they get are jokes.

“If you’re without it, you’re disconnected,” Megan Earley, 20, a junior at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md., said of technology. “You feel like it’s a lifeline.”

Attorney Danny Lampley spent about five hours behind bars Wednesday before Judge Talmadge Littlejohn set him free so that the lawyer could work on another case. Lampley told The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal he respected the judge but wasn’t going to back down.

“I don’t have to say it because I’m an American,” Lampley told the newspaper.

Nothing could deter Halladay in his postseason debut. Not the long television breaks. Not the rain in the early innings. Not the best-hitting team in the NL.

Halladay threw the second no-hitter in postseason history, leading the Philadelphia Phillies over the Cincinnati Reds 4-0 in Game 1 of the NL division series on Wednesday.

Clinton, the co-chair of the commission overseeing Haiti’s reconstruction, expressed frustration with the slow delivery of promised funds by donors who have delivered about $732 million of a promised $5.3 billion in funds for 2010-11, along with debt relief. Most notably absent is the United States, which has yet to deliver any of its promised $1.15 billion.

“First of all, in the next day or so it will become obvious that the United States is making a huge down payment on that,” the former U.S. president and husband of the current secretary of state told reporters without providing details. “Secondly I’m not too concerned – although I’m frustrated – because the Congress have approved the money that the Secretary of State and the White House asked for.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson announced Thursday that they are seeking permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the nation’s food stamp program, to add sugary drinks to the list of prohibited goods for city residents receiving assistance.

If approved, it would be the first time an item would be banned from the federal program based solely on nutritional value.

In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission’s staff describes “not an incidental public relations problem” by the White House in the wake of the April 20 accident.

Among other things, the report says, the administration made erroneous early estimates of the spill’s size, and President Barack Obama’s senior energy adviser went on national TV and mischaracterized a government analysis by saying it showed most of the oil was “gone.” The analysis actually said it could still be there.

Americans United for Life stands by the ad, saying the freshman lawmaker voted to pass a final version of the bill that omitted key safeguards to prevent federal funding of abortions.

But the campaign’s lawyers said in a letter to the stations on Wednesday that the ad is “slanderous, inaccurate and falsifies … Dahlkemper’s stance on abortion.”

Relaxing to a cable rerun of “Seinfeld”? The break includes a message from seniors who fret about their Social Security benefits if Republican Ken Buck is elected.

It’s not just commercials. Coloradoans drive by one billboard after another carrying political messages before arriving home to a mailbox full of pleas from politicians.

Brandon Piekarsky, now 18, and Derrick Donchak, now 20, are charged with a federal hate crime in the July 2008 attack on 25-year-old Luis Ramirez, who died after brawling with a tight-knit bunch of white athletes in Shenandoah, an old mining town riven by ethnic tensions between whites and a burgeoning Hispanic population. Donchak is also charged in a plot with Shenandoah police to cover up the crime.

Prosecutors allege that Piekarsky kicked Ramirez in the head, a theory bolstered Thursday by testimony from two of the defendant’s childhood friends.

With his enduring popularity and hectic schedule of public appearances at age 10 (that’s 70 in dog years), he’s like the Betty White of the dog world, although at 88, she still has a few years on Rufus.

Rufus is a colored bull terrier with a head like an egg and a body like a torpedo, explained David Frei, director of communications for the Westminster Kennel Club.

Lautenberg, D-N.J., told the crowd gathered Wednesday night in memory of 18-year-old freshman Tyler Clementi that he would introduce such legislation. Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River on Sept. 22 after the intimate images of him with another man were broadcast. His body was identified days later.

Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, and another Rutgers freshman, Molly Wei, both 18, have been charged with invasion of privacy, and authorities are weighing whether bias crime charges should be added.

Obama will be stumping for Senate candidate and basketball buddy Alexi Giannoulias on Thursday in Chicago, a city where every other person crossing the street seems to have a story about descending on Grant Park that historic night of the 2008 election or proudly watching the president take the oath on television.

But nearly two years after Obama took office, while the president remains widely popular in the city, his image has slipped a bit as many people wonder where the promised change and jobs are, even if they believe such talk is probably a bit unfair.

What it might not say: “Site of animal disease research and germ warfare testing; old Army coastal defense post.”

Plum Island held an open house of sorts for environmental leaders Wednesday as the federal government proceeds with plans to relocate its 50-year-old animal disease research laboratory to Kansas and sell the 840-acre pork chop-shaped island off the eastern tip of New York’s Long Island.