Evening Edition

But even as officers forced open the barricades at some depots, strikers threw up new pickets at other fuel distribution centres across the country to fight against moves to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

Riot police made 16 arrests and used tear gas as they fought running battles with youths who pelted them with stones and overturned cars during street protests by high-school students in the central city of Lyon.

“We think no fewer than 10 miners will be released on Friday,” said Jorge Montes, deputy director of the hospital where the 33 survivors were taken for exhaustive medical check-ups following their dramatic rescue on Wednesday.

The first three left hospital late Thursday under high security in a government vehicle that was chased by a mob of photographers as it took them to homes in one of the most downtrodden and violent parts of Copiapo.

The first three of the group left hospital on Thursday under high security in a government vehicle that was chased by a mob of photographers after medics determined they were well enough to go home.

All 33 were admitted to hospital for treatment after their ordeal ended with a flawless rescue that inspired pride throughout Chile in a saga that captivated the world’s attention following a partial mine collapse in August.

“The United States can’t use domestic reasons to pass on its domestic employment and economic growth problems (to other nations),” commerce ministry spokesman Yao Jian told reporters.

“The yuan’s rate must not be the scapegoat of US domestic problems.”

John W Henry’s NESV group were able to take control after previous co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett were defeated in their legal battle to stop the takeover, withdrawing their temporary restraining order to block the sale.

Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton brokered the deal despite fierce opposition from Hicks and Gillett, who plan to sue for 1.6 billion dollars in damages because they believe the sale to NESV undervalued the Premier League club and was “illegal”.

Hicks on Friday withdrew his temporary restraining order that had blocked the sale of Liverpool to John W Henry’s NESV group in a move which effectively gave the green light for the deal to be concluded.

Hicks, who believes the NESV sale undervalues Liverpool, had been trying to sell his stake to Mill Financial, a USA-based hedge fund, so they could pay the club’s 280 million pounds debt to the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and scupper the takeover.

Germany has successfully exported its Volkswagen, Audi and BMW cars to China for years, as well as machine tools and chemicals.

Makers of household appliances, furniture and fabrics are now trying to use the cachet of the “Made in Germany” label to tap into well-heeled Chinese consumers’ appetite for products that show off their prosperity.

Margot Wallstrom, UN special envoy on sexual violence against women in conflict, said it was “unimaginable” that the same communities in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo were again the target of sexual assaults.

She said the UN mission, MONUSCO, had reported new attacks in the Walikale region where in late July and August militias and Rwandan rebels rounded up women and raped them in front of their villages and families.

The plenum of roughly 300 top party members in Beijing, which will run until Monday, is typically cloaked in great secrecy with details released only after it ends.

Xinhua news agency said the meeting, expected to be attended by President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, and other top leaders, opened “to discuss proposals for the nation’s next five-year development plan” from 2011 to 2015.

At a keynote address in Boston, Bernanke said the bank was ready to ramp up extraordinary measures to prime the economy amid sky-high unemployment and the risk of crippling deflation.

Ahead of a key meeting of the Fed’s policy-setting panel next month, Bernanke set out the case for intervention, saying “there would appear — all else being equal — to be a case for further action.”

In a stage-managed breakthrough, attended by some 200 dignitaries 30 kilometres (20 miles) inside the tunnel and broadcast live on Swiss television, engineers from both sides shook hands after the bore had pummelled through the final 1.5 metres (five feet) of rock.

“Here, in the heart of the Swiss Alps, one of the biggest environmental projects on the continent has become reality,” said Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger.

Global stock markets wobbled, with investors reviewing strong gains this week driven by renewed prospects of a second phase of quantitative easing (QE2) from the US central bank.

“Everybody is waiting for Bernanke this afternoon. We are waiting to see whether he continues with QE2, and the dollar is going to carry on sliding until we see some announcement from him,” said ProSpreads analyst Simon Brown.

Bernanke warned a prolonged period of high unemployment could choke off the U.S. recovery and that the low level of inflation presented an uncomfortable risk of deflation, a dangerous downward slide in prices.

“There would appear — all else being equal — to be a case for further action,” Bernanke said at a conference sponsored by the Boston Federal Reserve Bank.

The Treasury Department delayed a much-anticipated decision on whether to label China as a currency manipulator until after the U.S. congressional elections on November 2 and a Group of 20 leaders summit in South Korea on November 11.

Washington and the European Union accuse China — set to become the world’s second-largest economy after the United States this year — of keeping the yuan artificially low to boost exports, undermining jobs and competitiveness in Western economies.

The first three of the 33 men were cleared to leave a hospital late on Thursday, returning to neighbors’ cheers a day after their stunning rescue from the collapsed mine in Chile’s remote northern desert. At least 10 more were set for release on Friday, their doctors said.

The miners have became global media stars since their widely watched rescue and have been showered with job offers and gifts, including invitations to visit the Greek isles and Graceland and attend European football matches.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled on Friday the central bank would likely pump more dollars into the economy to bolster the recovery and keep deflation at bay.

The prospect of more easy money threatened to exacerbate global tensions about currency policies, although Washington delayed a much-anticipated decision on whether to label China a currency manipulator.

While the Fed is focused on lowering unemployment and avoiding deflation, near-zero interest rates in the developed world are encouraging capital flows into emerging markets in pursuit of higher yields, leading to overvalued currencies in many developing countries and talk of a “currency war”.

China’s currency has been rising slowly in recent months but U.S. and EU policymakers still see it as significantly undervalued and a contributor to global economic imbalances.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson had said at a hearing last month that he would block efforts by the Justice Department to dismiss the lawsuit, led by Florida and 19 other states.

“In this order, I have not attempted to determine whether the line between constitutional and extraconstitutional government has been crossed,” Vinson, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, wrote in his ruling.

NATO and U.S. officials have said they are ready to do more to help Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s reconciliation efforts with the Taliban, but Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the talks must be led by Afghanistan itself.

“We are there to facilitate. Because we want to see a stable, peaceful Afghanistan. It’s in Pakistan’s interest to have stability and peace in Afghanistan,” Qureshi said in Brussels before talks on Pakistan’s economic development.

The building furor over whether the largest U.S. mortgage lenders used so-called robo-signers and incomplete paperwork to force delinquent borrowers from their homes has mushroomed into a probe by the attorneys general in all 50 states, with U.S. Congressional hearings not far behind.

Those on Wall Street, however, are largely unsympathetic, insisting that possible errors in the foreclosure process are beside the point, that the process begins only when a borrower starts missing mortgage payments.

Raw politics – the drive to win a House-majority 218 seats, no matter how – is increasingly trumping policy and loyalty in these decisions, as Democrats shift money and attention in the closing days of the campaign toward races they can win and pull back from those seemingly lost.

The Democrats are shelling out $40 million in 59 congressional districts in the last three weeks of the campaign for TV advertising. Republicans, boosted by well-funded outside groups, are working to expand the political battleground by pouring money into 82 races next week alone.

Under cross examination, Pfc. Lance Aviles told an Article 32 hearing that his noncommissioned officer ordered him to destroy the two videos on Nov. 5, the same day a gunman unleashed a volley of bullets inside a processing center at the Texas Army post.

The footage could have been used as evidence at the military hearing to decide if Maj. Nidal Hasan should stand trial in the shootings. The 40-year-old American-born Muslim has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder.

Some 800 Kolontar residents were evacuated last Saturday after authorities said a wall of the factory reservoir could collapse further, releasing a second wave of red sludge after a calamitous break Oct. 4 created a deadly torrent.

Nine people died in the toxic flood and around 50 are still hospitalized, several in serious condition.

Trumpets sounded, cheers reverberated and even burly workers wiped away tears as foreman Hubert Baer lifted a statue of Saint Barbara – the patron saint of miners – through a small hole in the enormous drilling machine thousands of feet (meters) underground in central Switzerland.

At that moment, a 35.4-mile (57-kilometer) tunnel was born, and the Alpine nation reclaimed the record from Japan’s Seikan Tunnel. Television stations across Europe showed the event live.

The Justice Department strongly opposes California’s Proposition 19 and remains firmly committed to enforcing the federal Controlled Substances Act in all states, Holder wrote in a letter to former chiefs of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter, dated Wednesday.

“We will vigorously enforce the CSA against those individuals and organizations that possess, manufacture or distribute marijuana for recreational use, even if such activities are permitted under state law,” Holder wrote.

But Bernanke is signaling that doing nothing would pose the biggest risk of all.

The Fed chief on Friday made his strongest case yet for injecting billions more dollars into the economy. Purchasing the bonds could further drive down rates on mortgages, corporate debt and other loans.

That could explain why none of them have spoken publicly at any length or provided any dramatic details of their 69 days trapped a half-mile (1 kilometer) beneath the Atacama desert.

A daughter of Omar Reygadas, a 56-year-old electrician, said in an interview with The Associated Press early Friday that he told her the miners agreed to divide all their earnings from interviews, media appearances, movies or books.

The Boston Red Sox ownership group won its fight for Liverpool on Friday, gaining control of the struggling and nearly bankrupt Premier League club from Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr. in a trans-Atlantic legal tussle that replaced one set of American owners with another.

Henry and Werner are hoping to do with soccer what they did in baseball.

Bernanke also indicated that Fed policymakers are trying to craft a plan to lift inflation from super-low levels. He made his remarks in a speech at a Fed conference in Boston.

Bernanke said the Fed must both weigh the risks of a Treasury-buying program and determine how the debt purchases should be paced. The Fed’s bond purchases would be intended to lower long-term interest rates to stimulate buying and spending and help lower unemployment.

With federal money and prodding, states are being asked to sign onto an agreement allowing police, pharmacies and physicians to check suspicious prescription pill patterns from Nevada to North Carolina.

Civil liberties and privacy advocates have objected to the state databases, which would be linked with technology and standards developed by the Justice and Homeland Security departments.

From the hundreds of conservative activists who took up the cause in races this year, these candidates – mostly Republicans – emerged to capture nominations and are running with the support of loosely organized tea party groups that are furious at the government.

Some of the candidates are political newcomers who have struggled to organize and raise money and have little chance of winning election. In some states, tea party groups have been divided over whether to even back candidates or become active in campaigns.

“I’m a 60-40 optimist,” he said at the time.

Today, Case’s mood is far more subdued. In scarcely two weeks, he and other housing analysts have watched as the once-staid world of back-office bank procedures has spawned a scandal that threatens to further unhinge the housing market.

The Social Security Administration said Friday inflation has been too low since the last increase in 2009 to warrant a raise for 2011. The announcement marks only the second year without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. This year was the first.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to schedule a vote after the Nov. 2 election on a bill to provide one-time $250 payments to Social Security recipients. Obama endorsed the payment, which would be similar to one included in his economic recovery package last year.

Schools from California to Florida have banned the bracelets because they believe the “boobies” language is inappropriate.

The bracelets are marketed by a California-based nonprofit created to raise breast cancer awareness among youth. The Keep A Breast Foundation has sold 2 million of the bracelets so far, with the money going to breast cancer research and education programs.

He was surprised, though, when a representative for Jones called to collect the 2011 Hyundai Accent, retailing for $14,200.

“They said unless I was doing false advertising, they would like to arrange to pick up the car,” Benson recalled. At first he thought it was a hoax, so Benson asked Jones to send in a copy of his driver’s license. He did.

The latest appears to be a woman who Liu has said should win the prize: Ding Zilin, who has fought for years for China’s government to recognize the hundreds killed in the military’s crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Liu’s wife sent out an alert late Thursday that said Ding had “disappeared” and urged people to “pay attention” to her case.

Instead, Republican Sharron Angle taunted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to “man up” Thursday night in their only debate of a close, caustic and costly race.

Speaking more softly, Reid called her extreme, an ally of the special interests and advocate for jettisoning government agencies that millions of Nevadans rely on.

In this warped-lens world, a Democrat who votes against his party more than every other legislator except one is branded a lapdog of his party’s leadership. A federal deficit from the past is attributed to a health care law that did not yet exist.

Democrats blame Republicans for wanting to tax SUVs, groceries and teddy bears without telling people that, in return, most of the income, payroll and estate taxes Americans know and hate would be wiped out.

The program known as “Meth Tracker” had one glaring flaw – it didn’t account for people scooping as much medicine as they wanted in a given day, court documents show.

Although some store employees in Southern California and Nevada questioned if large amounts of pseudoephedrine flying off the shelves were being used for making meth, CVS management didn’t investigate immediately and later changed its sales practices only after it became aware of a federal investigation, according to the documents.

“That’s a lie,” Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, 61, of Erie, hissed into her attorney’s ear at one point. “Makes me sick.”

Diehl-Armstrong’s trial began Friday on armed bank robbery and other charges in the plot that killed 46-year-old Brian Wells. She faces a possible life sentence.

The members of the loosely organized street crew known as the Latin King Goonies wanted to know why their 17-year-old wannabe was there – and when they found out, they snapped, authorities said, setting off a weekend rampage that officials call one of the worst anti-gay attacks in recent city history.

It included the beatings and torture of three others, including the man thought to have a sexual encounter with the teen, authorities say. Eleven people have been arrested so far.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of Stephanie Van Groll, 26, alleges former Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz’s behavior was sexually harassing, discriminating and part of a pattern dating back years. It claims her right to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution was violated and seeks unspecified damages.

“Kratz caused (Van Groll) a high degree of humiliation, anxiety and distress and a substantial loss of her and her family’s privacy that would not have occurred but for his conduct,” according to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee.