Evening Edition

Tuesday’s coordinated protest is the latest in a series of mounting actions against Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, and follows days of strikes, skirmishes and full-blown street marches.

On Monday police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at youths who set a car on fire, smashed bus stops and hurled rocks outside a school in Nanterre, near Paris, blocked by students protesting the pensions reform.

Officials tried to head off panic buying of petrol amid the rolling strikes and protests that saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets for the latest day of action against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s key reform on Saturday.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon vowed to take any “necessary decisions” to ensure the country’s fuel supplies flowed.

Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at youths who set a car on fire, smashed bus stops and hurled rocks outside a school in Nanterre, near Paris, blocked by students protesting the pensions reform.

Youths threw petrol bombs at police outside a school in another Paris suburb, Combes-la-Ville, police said. In Lyon, hooded youngsters burned at least three cars they had overturned during clashes with riot police.

Truckers staged go-slows on motorways near Paris and several provincial cities, and drivers blocked access to goods supply depots and joined oil workers blocking fuel depots to defend their right to retire at 60.

The truckers’ action marked an escalation of the protests that have brought millions onto the streets in recent weeks. Another day of mass strikes and nationwide protest rallies is planned for Tuesday.

Delegates from the 193 members of the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are gathering in the central city of Nagoya to try to work out strategies to reverse a man-made mass extinction.

“The time to act is now and the place to act is here,” CBD executive secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf said as the meeting opened, describing the 12-day event as a “defining moment” in the history of mankind.

Their summit began over dinner in the French Channel resort of Deauville, two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War and a month before the NATO allies meet to agree their new security vision.

The three were not planning announcements Monday, but a news conference was scheduled for 11:45 am (0945 GMT) Tuesday after the working meeting.

Poland mounted staunch resistance and even Germany “softened” its hard line, diplomats said, leaving EU promises of tough action looking empty — “no different from where we were in 2003,” as one Brussels source put it bluntly.

Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said states — led by Italy, with one of the world’s highest public debt ratios, and France, simultaneously presenting new budget plans to its parliament — had cooled on ideas aimed initially at the soon-to-be 17 euro currency countries.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn made the comments at the end of a meeting in Shanghai that brought together high-level officials from Asia, Africa, Europe, and North and South America.

The Shanghai conference follows IMF and World Bank annual meetings earlier this month, where finance officials discussed how to strengthen the recovery from the worst recession since World War II and the global financial system.

Contador, who has also won the Tour of Spain and Tour of Italy, was considered by many as a legend in the making after securing his third yellow jersey in July.

However his world came crashing down in spectacular fashion several weeks ago when it was revealed he had tested positive for trace elements of the banned substance Clenbuterol.

The project is a joint initiative by an organization called the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, begun in 2005 with the aim of cross-referencing existing records to build a searchable database.

“Decades after the greatest mass theft in history, families robbed of their prized artworks can now search this list to help them locate long-lost treasures,” said Julius Berman, Claims Conference’s chairman.

Thirteen survivors, accompanied by partners and children, took part in a private ceremony Sunday after visiting the tent city where relatives refused to give up hope, waiting anxiously for 10 long weeks for their safe return.

Claudio Yanez, who proposed to his longtime companion Cristina Nunez during the ordeal, toured Camp Hope with his tiny daughter in his arms, peering into tents now empty and battered by the strong Atacama desert winds.

“This is a tough political environment,” he told a cheering crowd during a campaign trip on Friday in Delaware, home patch of Vice President Joe Biden. “I need you all to keep on fighting.”

With the November 2 contest set to turn on deep voter anger at the sour US economy, high joblessness, and soaring home foreclosures, Obama has been warning that his Republican foes will only make things worse.

South America will see sustained economic growth and the Middle East will become “a tangle of religions, sects and ethnicities,” says the report by Toffler Associates, a consultancy set up by the author of the 1970s blockbuster “Future Shock.”

Toffler Associates released its predictions for the next 40 years to mark the 40th anniversary of “Future Shock,” in which author Alvin Toffler studied the 1970s to see what would happen in the future.

An undercover investigation by The Sunday Times alleged that Amos Adamu, a Nigerian member of the world football governing body’s executive committee, asked for 800,000 dollars (570,000 euros) to endorse one of the bid candidates.

It filmed him meeting with undercover journalists posing as lobbyists for a United States business consortium, in which he apparently offered a “guarantee” to vote for the US bid in the 2018 event in return for cash.

World football’s governing body launched the investigation after a British newspaper alleged it covertly filmed OFC president Reynald Temarii and Nigerian FIFA official Amos Adamu soliciting money in return for their votes.

“Reynald Temarii welcomes a full and thorough investigation so that all the facts can be heard,” the OFC said in statement.

The oldest city in Ireland, Waterford boasts the highest level of unemployment in the country at 18.1 percent, compared to the national average of 13.7 percent.

The iconic Waterford Crystal factory’s heavy leaded cut glass put the city on the map, but it also dictated the fortunes of the southeastern port in the two centuries since it opened in 1783.

The war of words between the Asian giants, triggered by Japan’s arrest last month of a Chinese skipper in disputed waters, showed no sign of abating, with Japan’s foreign minister labelling Beijing’s reaction “hysterical”.

Both nations have sought to arrange a premiers’ summit later this month to ease their worst spat in years, but weekend street protests in both countries highlighted how the issue has inflamed nationalist passions.

The massive release, possibly early this week, is set to dwarf the whistleblower website’s publication of 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan in July, including the names of Afghan informants and other details from raw intelligence reports. Another 15,000 are due out soon.

In order to prepare for the anticipated release of sensitive intelligence on the US-led Iraq war, officials set up a 120-person taskforce several weeks ago to comb through the database and “determine what the possible impacts might be,” said Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.

Wider strikes will hit everything from air travel to mail on Tuesday when unions opposed to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age have called for one more en masse street protest against the unpopular pension bill.

With a final Senate vote on the legislation expected from Wednesday, this could be a make-or-break week for Sarkozy.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), which overlooks strategic oil supplies in OECD countries, said France had some 98 days of oil stocks and that the country had started to draw on the industry’s 30-day emergency reserves.

Asked whether France had started to use its strategic industry reserves, Aad Van Bohemen, the head of the emergency policy division told Reuters: “It’s already doing so.”

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan told Reuters the timing of the leak remained unclear but the Defense Department was ready for a document dump as early as Monday or Tuesday, a possibility raised in previous WikiLeaks statements.

Still, people familiar with the upcoming leak told Reuters they do not expect WikiLeaks to release the classified files for at least another week.

A new National Security Strategy highlighted threats from al Qaeda and Northern Ireland-linked groups, as the government sought to convince critics that an armed forces review due on Tuesday is policy-driven, and not a money-saving exercise.

The report also said the Olympic Games, which London will host in 2012, would “be an attractive” target for disruption.

Security is a major stumbling block in Russia’s relationship with the West and will dominate talks between Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Dmitry Medvedev and Chancellor Angela Merkel in the northern French seaside town of Deauville, ahead of a NATO summit in Lisbon next month.

“Confidence is key, the Cold War is over, the Warsaw Pact is over, Russia is our friend and we want to be theirs,” Sarkozy told a news conference. “We now find that the risks and threats France, Germany and Russia have are the same.”

Sino-Japanese relations deteriorated sharply last month after Japan detained a Chinese trawler captain whose boat collided with Japanese patrol ships near a chain of disputed islands — called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s comments to parliament were followed by remarks from Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara that China’s actions in the dispute were “extremely hysterical,” underlining the difficulty of putting a quick end to the spat.

The miners, their families and friends attended a ceremony led by Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy at the mouth of the San Jose gold and copper mine from which they were hoisted to freedom on Wednesday in a flawless rescue operation watched by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

The private service was held in the area known as “Camp Hope,” the tent city where family members gathered to pray and await news about their husbands, sons and fathers trapped for 69 days at 2,050 feet underground.

Lucrative movie and book deals have been flowing in since the miners’ miraculous rescue on Wednesday after 69 days trapped half a mile underground after a cave-in, and several are now looking to safeguard their financial future.

So far, most of the men have not yet spoken of the very worst moments of their ordeal in a hot, humid tunnel 2,050 feet underground, particularly during the agonizing 17 days before they were found alive. The rescue was watched by hundreds of millions of people, a survival story that captured the world’s imagination.

In an interview with Italian daily La Stampa on Sunday, Trichet said the governing council as a whole did not agree with Weber’s remark last week that the ECB’s government bond-buying program had not worked and should be scrapped.

“No! This is not the position of the Governing Council, with an overwhelming majority,” he said, according to an English transcript of the interview published on the ECB’s website.

Strikes over the government’s plans to raise the retirement age to 62 from 60 disrupted daily life and a wide swath of industry – from oil refining to travel to shipping – as protesters fought a proposal they say tampers with the near-sacred French social contract.

Teens, who usually don’t worry about old age, joined in the protests, with at least 261 high schools blocked or disrupted Monday. Some turned violent and 290 youths were arrested, the Interior Ministry said. Students set cars and tires on fire, toppled a telephone booth and hurled debris at police in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, as well as in Lyon and elsewhere. At least five police officers were injured.

“We are seeing instances where insurgents are receiving faulty ammunition and weapons through their supply channels,” said German Brigadier Gen. Josef Blotz, a spokesman for the NATO command in Kabul. “We have even seen instances where Taliban spokesmen attempt to blame this phenomenon on the coalition.”

Insurgents, however, are adapting, according to the coalition, which has been highlighting indications of progress in the war in the run-up to President Barack Obama’s December review of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. NATO military officials claim the buildup of tens of thousands of international troops is taking its toll on the insurgents. They also acknowledge fierce fighting against resilient militants, especially in the south.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that several popular Facebook applications have been transmitting users’ personal identifying information to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies. Facebook said it is working to fix the problem, and was quick to point out that the leaks were not intentional, but a consequence of basic Web mechanisms.

“In most cases, developers did not intend to pass this information, but did so because of the technical details of how browsers work,” said Mike Vernal, a Facebook engineer, in a blog post Monday.

The league is considering suspending players for illegal hits in an effort to help prevent serious injuries, NFL executive vice president of football operations Ray Anderson told The Associated Press on Monday, one day after several scary collisions in games.

“There’s strong testimonial for looking readily at evaluating discipline, especially in the areas of egregious and elevated dangerous hits,” he said in a phone interview. “Going forward there are certain hits that occurred that will be more susceptible to suspension. There are some that could bring suspensions for what are flagrant and egregious situations.”

The change puts “the simplest step first” for traditional CPR, said Dr. Michael Sayre, co-author of the guidelines issued by the American Heart Association.

In recent years, CPR guidance has been revised to put more emphasis on chest pushes for sudden cardiac arrest. In 2008, the heart group said untrained bystanders or those unwilling to do rescue breaths could do hands-only CPR until paramedics arrive or a defibrillator is used to restore a normal heart beat.

Not since the explosive years of the civil rights movement and the hard-fought debut of government-supported health care for the elderly and poor have so many big things – love them or hate them – been done so quickly.

Gridlock? It may feel that way. But that’s not the story of the 111th Congress – not the story history will remember.

This year, a Russian ship carrying up to 90,000 metric tons of gas condensate sailed across the Arctic and through the Bering Strait to the Far East. Last year, a Russian ship went the other way, leaving from South Korea with industrial parts. Russia plans up to eight such trips next year, using oil-type tankers with reinforced hulls to break through the ice.

All of which calls for more U.S. Coast Guard facilities and equipment in the far north to secure U.S. claims and prepare for increased human activity, according to Rear Admiral Christopher C. Colvin, who is in charge of all Coast Guard operations in Alaska and surrounding waters.

However, the party offered little indication of consensus on another political uncertainty dogging it: The scope and pace of any future reforms to the political system.

Top leaders have increasingly appeared at odds about the direction of any changes to the government and party, with relatively liberal Premier Wen Jiabao going up against more conservative politicians.

Holocaust survivors and their relatives, as well as art collectors and museums, can go online beginning Monday to search a free historical database of more than 20,000 art objects stolen in Germany-occupied France and Belgium from 1940 to 1944, including paintings by Claude Monet and Marc Chagall.

The database is a joint project of the New York-based Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

That’s a new question raised by lawyers familiar with nonprofit tax law and by at least one group that advocates for public financing of elections.

At issue is whether contributors to politically active tax-exempt nonprofit organizations – many of them donating in six- and seven-figures – have to pay the 35 percent gift tax on their donations. It is a murky area of the law and the Internal Revenue Service has not offered any instruction.

The groups Obama is targeting mirror those that helped him win the White House: young people, African-Americans and women. A crucial element of the president’s strategy in the two weeks before the Nov. 2 election is finding a way to get first-time voters from 2008 to head back to the polls even though Obama’s name isn’t on the ballot.

Speaking before a lively crowd of 35,000 during a Sunday night rally on the campus of Ohio State University, the president sought to recapture the enthusiasm of his presidential campaign, urging Democrats not to give up in the face of polls predicting sweeping defeats for the party in November.

Gene Epstein, 71, is promoting a $250,000 effort called Hire Just One, with plans to make $1,000 donations to charity in the name of businesses that hire an unemployed person and keep the worker on the payroll for at least six months.

Epstein, who amassed a personal fortune through car sales and real estate investments, has set aside his money for the first 250 hires – and thinks thousands more jobs could be created if others took on his idea, too.

“I voted right,” the Republican governor said after he and his wife, Anita, voted at an Austin grocery store.

White and his wife, Andrea, voted at a Houston community center. The former Houston mayor told reporters he did not vote a straight Democratic ticket.

A Times investigation into the early life of Maurice Clemmons found that Huckabee either ignored or wasn’t aware of Clemmons’ record in prison, and that the prosecutor and victims in Clemmons’ case were not consulted before the clemency decisions that led to his freedom.

Huckabee, now a Fox News TV personality and a potential candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2012, declined interview requests from the Times.

Above it, there’s the incongruous sight of lumbering U.S. Army Chinook helicopters, like twin-rotored flying trucks, ferrying refugees in one direction, and cement, rice and other relief supplies in the other.

Aboard this flight is U.S. Army Brigadier Michael Nagata, second in command of the U.S. military mission to Pakistan.

Her supporters shout, “You go girl!”

Others at the parade in Window Rock clearly don’t want to see her at the helm of the country’s largest American Indian reservation. “I hope you lose,” one man shouts, then covers his mouth and ducks into the crowd. Another woman declares support for Lovejoy’s opponent: “We want Ben Shelly. Women belong in the kitchen.”