Evening Edition

Students and school pupils joined the movement for the first time and staff in several sectors threatened to make the strikes open-ended, escalating the toughest battle of Sarkozy’s presidency, as the government dug in its heels.

“Sarko, you’re screwed, the young are on the streets,” chanted students as they marched beside trade unionists and their supporters on the fourth major nationwide demonstration against pension reform in just over a month.

Some strikers decided to prolong their stoppages to try and make Sarkozy give up the pension plans that are the cornerstone of the right-wing leader’s reform agenda and which he says are needed to slash France’s budget deficit.

Students and school pupils broadened the movement and their participation — along with the plans to make some strikes open-ended — was seen as an escalation of what has become the toughest battle in Sarkozy’s presidency.

“We are just hours from beginning this process,” Mining Minister Laurence Golborne told reporters at gold and copper mine in northern Chile.

“We hope to see off Tuesday… with at least one of the miners on the surface, that’s our aim,” he said, adding the operation would start earlier than planned, between 8:00 pm (2300 GMT) and midnight (0300 GMT Wednesday).

The delicate and lengthy process of lifting each man out one-by-one will begin at around midnight Tuesday (0300 GMT Wednesday), according to Mines Minister Laurence Golborne.

“It would be wonderful if it was a little bit earlier, but we will take all the time we need,” Golborne said after engineers successfully completed a first test of the specially designed rescue capsule to bring the men to the surface.

It was “fairly certain” the operation would begin at 8:00 pm (2300 GMT) Tuesday, four hours earlier than scheduled, local lawmaker Carlos Vilches told AFP.

Each miner was to be slowly brought to the surface individually through a narrow, rescue shaft that was itself completed last weekend, well ahead of the original forecast of Christmas.

“We have decided it is now appropriate to lift the suspension on deepwater drilling for those operators that are able to clear the higher bar that we have set” for safety, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

Shortly after the BP oil disaster began in April, President Barack Obama ordered a six-month freeze on deepwater offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The moratorium was due to expire at the end of next month.

The project would set up offshore wind turbines and a new transmission grid stretching 350 miles (565 kilometers) from New Jersey to Virginia, the most densely populated part of the United States which suffered blackouts in 2003.

Google, the Internet search giant whose interests now run the gamut from broadband to robotic cars, said it would provide 37.5 percent of the initial funding.

Swiss equity fund Good Energies Investment and US utility Atlantic Grid Development LLC will also participate in the “Atlantic Wind Connection” venture, in which Google has a 37.5 stake and Marubeni has 15 percent.

The cables will carry electricity from offshore wind turbines to be built in the Atlantic and eventually deliver around 6,000 megawatts of power to the four states of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey, Marubeni said.

In the High Court in London on Tuesday, Liverpool’s current American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett were accused by the club’s main creditor of trying to “frustrate” a sale to the owners of the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

As the courtroom battle started, Singapore’s Peter Lim said he had made a rival bid of 360 million pounds for the club.

Linda Norgrove, 36, was abducted on September 26 in eastern Afghanistan and killed in the failed US-led operation on Friday. British officials had earlier said she died when one of her captors blew up a suicide vest.

Cameron said an immediate investigation had been launched into Norgrove’s death but he defended the attempt to rescue her, saying that she had been in “grave danger” from the moment she was captured.

A day after the managing director of MAL Hungarian Aluminium Production and Trade Company was detained for questioning in the country’s worst-ever chemical accident, the government seized control of the company and froze its assets.

A bill nationalising MAL was passed by the parliament, with 336 votes in favour, one against and 13 abstentions, and then signed into law by President Pal Schmitt.

The views of exiled Kim Jong-Nam come as the regime has signalled plans for a dynastic succession, including by broadcasting images of the heir-apparent Kim Jong-Un to its people from a huge military parade on Sunday.

Jong-Nam — who has lived in Macau and Beijing since apparently falling out of favour with his father in 2001 — offered his opinion in an interview with Japan’s TV Asahi, taped on Saturday in Beijing.

More than 4 million barrels of crude oil spewed into the seas off the U.S. Gulf coast after the rupture of BP’s Macondo offshore oil platform in April.

The disaster has led to a moratorium on offshore drilling in U.S. waters and new regulations aimed at permanently reshaping the U.S. offshore oil and gas industry, which industry officials have said will raise costs and could reduce offshore output.

That said, extending tax cuts and lifting growth should be the top priorities of the new Congress, according to a Reuters poll of 53 financial analysts, money managers and trading firms.

Repealing the recently-passed financial regulation law was less of a priority for Wall Street. Just three of 53 respondents said scrapping the bill should be one of two top priorities, despite months of vocal opposition.

The men have spent 68 days in the hot, humid bowels of a gold and copper mine in Chile’s northern Atacama desert after an August 5 collapse. They now face a claustrophobic journey to the surface in the specially-made steel cages, equipped with oxygen masks and escape hatches in case they get stuck.

With Chileans anxiously following the rescue on television, President Sebastian Pinera asked for all churches in the South American nation to ring their bells in celebration when the first miner emerges from the shaft.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs signaled on Tuesday the administration’s wariness of backing populist calls to halt evictions, which could undermine efforts to persuade skeptical voters that it rescued the economy from a complete meltdown.

“There are a series of unintended consequences to a broader moratorium,” Gibbs told reporters.

After the failure of a weekend International Monetary Fund meeting to defuse escalating foreign exchange tensions, Asian governments are redoubling efforts to resist capital inflows that are boosting their currencies and undercutting the competitiveness of their exporters.

Thailand’s cabinet agreed to impose a 15 percent withholding tax on capital gains and interest income from foreign investment in government debt in a bid to curb the baht, which is at its highest since the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has blamed “human negligence” for the escape of sludge from a giant reservoir at a MAL Zrt-owned alumina plant that killed eight people last week, and said the government would take control of the firm.

“Security responsibilities have been taken over by police at all Hungarian premises of MAL Zrt. And we have also gained control of (the company’s) information technology system,” disaster commissioner Gyorgy Bakondi told a news conference.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told a news conference in Beijing the award to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo last week showed a lack of respect for China’s judicial system and damaged ties between the two countries.

In Oslo, the Nobel Committee said it would be “delighted” for Liu’s wife to accept the award at a ceremony on December 10 in Oslo if Liu, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for “subverting” the Chinese state, were prohibited from traveling.

Pfizer, which is still digesting last year’s $67 billion acquisition of Wyeth, said on Tuesday it will use existing cash to pay $14.25 a share for King — representing a 40 percent premium over King’s closing share price on Monday.

Pfizer said it expects the transaction to add to adjusted earnings per share by about 2 cents for both 2011 and 2012 and 3 to 4 cents annually from 2013 to 2015. And it reaffirmed its earnings forecast for 2012 — the first full year that Lipitor will be under assault by competition from cheaper generics.

“What I’m afraid will happen is they could, if they came to power, shut off this reform, and I think that would be a mistake,” said Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, while speaking to reporters at a gathering of local financial-services executives held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

“They can’t repeal it, but they could underfund it,” said Frank.

Paying out bonuses early would likely be a public relations disaster for a sector already blamed for the economic downturn, they said.

Morgan Stanley said on Monday it was not considering moving up bonus payouts, becoming one of the first large Wall Street firms to dismiss the possibility.

At Asia-Pacific defense talks in Hanoi on Tuesday seven nations including the United States, Vietnam and Japan raised concern about the maritime region where China and others have competing territorial claims, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters.

But Chinese officials appeared to brush off the concerns, which came as Vietnam announced that China had freed nine Vietnamese fishermen it detained near the disputed Paracel islands in the South China Sea, the latest row involving China over its territorial claims in the region.

The Fed officials who gathered on September 21 focused both on the possibility of buying more longer-term U.S. government debt to drive borrowing costs lower and ways to nudge the public into expecting higher levels of inflation in the future to spur spending now, the central bank said on Tuesday.

Policy-makers had a “sense that (more) accommodation may be appropriate before long,” minutes of the meeting said.

The six-month ban had been scheduled to expire Nov. 30, but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was moving up that deadline because new rules imposed after the spill have strengthened safety measures and reduced the risk of another catastrophic blowout.

“The policy position that we are articulating today is that we are open for business,” Salazar told a news conference.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’ landmark ruling was widely cheered by gay rights organizations that credited her with getting accomplished what President Obama and Washington politics could not

“This order from Judge Phillips is another historic and courageous step in the right direction, a step that Congress has been noticeably slow in taking,” said Alexander Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United, the nation’s largest organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans.

The 33 miners are about to breathe fresh air for the first time since they were trapped a half-mile below the surface on Aug. 5.

Pinera says “it has been a very long journey,” but he’s optimistic that everything will go smoothly.

Deep-pocketed independent political groups are making the 2010 election homestretch the most scathing in years. In the frantic final days before the voting, a blitz of negative ads is hitting the air in more than two dozen tight congressional races.

The ads warn that candidates who say they’re on your side actually care more about Arabs or illegal immigrants – take your pick – than about you. And the other guy seeking your vote? Why, he’ll simply make stuff up to get it.

Jesse Gomez told jurors at the trial of Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky that Donchak made the statement to him two days after the assault on Luis Ramirez, a 25-year-old illegal immigrant.

Prosecutors say Donchak, now 20, and Piekarsky, now 18, were motivated by their dislike of Hispanics when they fought with Ramirez on July 12, 2008. Defense attorneys say ethnicity had nothing to do with the brawl between Ramirez and a group of white teenagers, all of whom played football at Shenandoah Valley High School.

Police were examining the photo Tuesday as part of an investigation into how part of the wall containing the 10 million cubic meters (350 million cubic feet) of caustic slurry could have given way without structural weaknesses being detected by a team of inspectors from the government environmental agency who inspected the container pond less then two weeks before the spill.

Disaster commissioner Gyorgy Bakondi, appointed to the newly created post Monday night, said Tuesday the inspections were under investigation, including claims by environmental inspectors that “they had found everything in order.”

These subtle moves can entice kids to make healthier choices in school lunch lines, studies show. Food and restaurant marketers have long used similar tricks. Now the government wants in on the act.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced what it called a major new initiative Tuesday, giving $2 million to food behavior scientists to find ways to use psychology to improve kids’ use of the federal school lunch program and fight childhood obesity.

Clinton made the call in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, the second stop on a three-nation tour of the Balkans aimed at pressing for reconciliation and reform in the region still politically splintered following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the bloody civil wars that followed.

Clinton said rapprochement between Serbia and Kosovo, combined with Serbian political reform, would put Serbia on the path to European Union membership, a role that it could use to anchor stability in southeastern Europe.

China, meanwhile, claimed the award was an attack on the country and an attempt to change its political system, and retaliated by canceling another set of meetings with the Norwegian government.

In brief interviews by phone, Liu Xia said her husband has started receiving better food since the Oslo-based Nobel committee announced the award last Friday – honoring his more than two decades of advocacy of human rights and peaceful democratic change that started with the demonstrations at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

It’s the first public sign of discord in the tightly choreographed succession process, though analysts said Kim Jong Nam spends so much time outside his native land that his opinion carries little weight.

The chubby 39-year-old Kim, the oldest of three brothers who were in the running to take over secretive North Korea, is the closest thing the country has to a playboy.

Unionized train and Paris public transport workers vowed to stay off the job for at least another day, and police said at least 1.2 million people marched in protests against the plan, the largest turnout in four nationwide demonstrations over the last five weeks.

That could be a signal of rising momentum for the movement facing off against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s governing conservatives over its proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

Linda Norgrove’s death has reverberated through the corridors of power from Kabul, to London, to Washington – where President Barack Obama expressed condolences and pledged “to get to the bottom” of what happened during the deadly raid.

Norgrove, 36, and six insurgents were killed Friday night after U.S. special forces stormed a compound in eastern Kunar province where she had been held for two weeks. Norgrove and three Afghan colleagues were ambushed and kidnapped Sept. 26. Her colleagues were quickly freed.

Diamond, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, won a Nobel Prize in economics with two other economists on Monday.

Only trouble is, Senate Republicans have so far blocked his nomination. Why? They suggest he lacks the experience to serve on the Fed’s board of governors.

Five communities claim to be the Navy’s birthplace, from a wealthy former fishing hub north of Boston to Whitehall, a town about 200 miles from the nearest ocean.

On the Navy’s official birthday Wednesday – its 235th – the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, may try to settle the question at a meeting in Boston at the museum of the USS Constitution, the country’s oldest commissioned Naval warship.

In two separate cases, U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro in July ruled the federal Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, is unconstitutional because it interferes with a state’s right to define marriage and denies married gay couples an array of federal benefits given to heterosexual married couples, including the ability to file joint tax returns.

The notice of appeal filed Tuesday did not spell out any arguments in support of the law. The appeals eventually will be heard by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

African, Asian and Latin American seats were uncontested so India, South Africa and Colombia easily won on the first ballot in the 192-member General Assembly.

Ten of the Security Council’s 15 seats are filled by regional groups for two-year stretches, with five elected each year. The other five seats are occupied by the council’s veto-wielding permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

It’s a remarkable, little-publicized trend, unfolding in an impoverished African country with an estimated 5 million orphans and homeless children, on a continent that has been wary of international adoption.

Just six years ago, at the peak of international adoption, there were 284 Ethiopian children among the 22,990 foreign kids adopted by Americans. For the 2010 fiscal year, the State Department projects there will be about 2,500 adoptions from Ethiopia out of fewer than 11,000 overall – and Ethiopia is on the verge of overtaking China as the top source country.

“It was a good place where Christians would be investing in the work of other Christians,” said Karen Lamb, a 55-year-old Terre Haute, Ind., housewife.

More than five years later, the Lambs still are waiting to get most of their $53,000 investment back. Now a former pastor is going on trial for what authorities call a multimillion-dollar scheme that preyed on thousands of parishioners who thought they were helping build churches but were actually buying the man and his sons planes and sports cars.

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights received nearly 7,000 complaints this fiscal year, an 11 percent increase and the largest jump in at least 10 years, according to data provided by the department. The increase comes as the office proceeds with 54 compliance reviews in districts and institutions of higher education nationwide, including cases involving disparate discipline rates and treatment of students with disabilities.

Why the spike?

A Wasilla, Alaska, couple has the answer: A full-sized pickup that has been converted into a giant red Radio Flyer.

Fred Keller and Judy Foster worked on the vehicle for 11 months, using the base of a 1976 Mazda B1600 pickup truck.

The Lower Merion School District admitted it captured thousands of webcam photographs and screen shots from student laptops in a misguided effort to locate missing computers.

Harriton High School student Blake Robbins, then 15, charged in an explosive civil-rights lawsuit filed in February that the district used its remote tracking technology to spy on him inside his home. Later evidence unearthed in the case showed that he was photographed 400 times in a two-week period, sometimes as he slept in his bedroom, according to his lawyer, Mark Haltzman.

The disciplinary case against Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller came after she closed the court on Sept. 25, 2007, as attorneys for twice-convicted killer Michael Wayne Richard tried to submit their appeal.

The state Commission on Judicial Conduct issued Keller a “public warning,” but the judge appealed, claiming the commission exceeded its authority and violated the state constitution.