Evening Edition

More tear gas was fired and cars burned in Lyon and suburbs of Paris in a third day of minor riots, a day after nationwide protests brought a million people into the street.

With a third of France’s filling stations dry, according to the government, queues again formed at pumps as several fuel depots remained blockaded.

A third of France’s filling stations ran dry on Tuesday, the government said, while cars were set alight and police fired tear gas at rioters on the sidelines of protests that brought a million people into the street.

“If it is not stopped quickly, this disorder which is aimed at paralysing the country could have consequences for jobs by damaging the normal running of economic activity,” President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement Wednesday.

Finance minister George Osborne said nearly half a million public sector jobs would go as a result of the austerity measures, and the age at which state pensions are paid to men and women would rise to 66 by 2020.

Osborne insisted that the 83-billion-pound (130-billion-dollar, 95-billion-euro) package — watched around Europe by governments with similar deficit worries — marked “the day that Britain steps back from the brink.”

The cancelled votes represent more than 23 percent of the ballots cast on September 18 for Afghanistan’s second parliament since the Taliban regime’s overthrow in a 2001 US-led invasion.

“The total number of ballots poured into the boxes was 5,600,000. The valid vote is 4,265,347 and the invalid vote is around 1,300,000,” said Fazil Ahmad Manawi, head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC).

The US military said Tuesday it was accepting openly gay recruits for the first time in the country’s history, as District Judge Virginia Phillips of California refused to grant the Obama administration a stay on her court order.

The Justice Department urged the appeals court in San Francisco to immediately suspend Phillips’s repeal of the controversial “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, while it considered a reversal of her stay decision.

But the Pentagon warned that the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule could be reinstated, depending on the outcome of pending court decisions.

“Recruiters have been given guidance, and they will process applications for applicants who admit they are openly gay or lesbian,” spokeswoman Cynthia Smith told AFP, adding that recruiters have been instructed to remind applicants that the court’s decision could be reversed.

Light from the galaxy UDFy-38135539 that reaches Earth today was emitted when the cosmos was only 600 million years old and mired in a primordial “fog” of hydrogen atoms, they said.

It has taken 13.1 billion years, travelling at 300,000 kilometres (186,000 miles) per second, for this smudge of infant light to arrive.

First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov announced that the government had taken its final decision and the plan only now required the approval of President Dmitry Medvedev.

“According to initial estimates, the state could receive 1.8 trillion rubles (58.5 billion dollars) from a full realisation of the privatisation plans,” he said in comments on state television, adding that 900 firms were slated for privatisation.

An agreement unveiled Tuesday would make it easier to sanction EU states that blow their budgets and create a permanent, Greek-style safety net for those that cannot cope.

This “was celebrated as a great day for Europe,” Stark noted on the sidelines of an ECB conference in Frankfurt.

The commercial plane maker and defense contractor said it swung into profit of 837 million dollars in the third quarter, compared with a 1.6-billion-dollar loss a year ago due to problems with its new 787 Dreamliner program.

Revenue topped expectations at 16.97 billion dollars, up from 16.69 billion a year ago.

Researchers conducted a new analysis of a landmark, federally funded clinical trial known as the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), which was halted in 2002 after data suggested women who took a combination of estrogen and progestin hormones faced a higher risk of breast cancer.

The study, published in this week’s edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, also found that women who previously used hormone therapy and discontinued it after the WHI was terminated still faced a slightly higher breast cancer mortality rate than women not taking hormones.

Chaotic skirmishes broke out between riot police and about 2,000 mainly student protesters outside the presidential palace in Jakarta, where the air filled with acrid gas.

Similar clashes erupted elsewhere in Jakarta and other towns on the main island of Java, as well as the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar where about 1,000 protesters set fire to cars and briefly detained a police officer.

Fuel imports hit a record high on Tuesday, the government said, as it tried to get round a 24-day blockade of France’s largest oil port, near Marseille, where 51 oil tankers lay idle in the Mediterranean, unable to dock.

With more than 3,000 service stations out of nearly 12,500 in France out of fuel, police could also be deployed to clear access to striking oil refineries, according to Sarkozy’s order.

The firm’s $91 million loss, on weak volumes during one of the most difficult trading quarters in recent memory, came a day after Goldman overcame those same conditions to beat Street estimates with a $1.9 billion profit.

Despite results that could have spooked Wall Street a few quarters ago, Morgan Stanley shares were just fractionally lower in afternoon trading and the broader market was higher, the latest sign of a decoupling of banks from wider investment sentiment.

Interest rates, however, are not far from record lows and the drop in demand does not bode well for the housing market, which has been showing signs of improvement but remains highly vulnerable to setbacks.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage applications, which includes both purchase and refinance loans, for the week ended October 15 decreased 10.5 percent. The four-week moving average of mortgage applications, which smooths the volatile weekly figures, was up 0.4 percent.

The administration asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to let the Pentagon resume its longtime prohibition on openly gay men and women in uniform while it appeals a lower-court ruling that struck down the ban.

The request for an emergency stay was filed with the three-judge panel in San Francisco even as some gay veterans expelled under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy have sought to reenlist in a test of the lower-court decision.

Officials plan to discuss everything from water to energy, but the three-day U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue will be overshadowed by the ongoing counterinsurgency campaigns in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and the strain the conflict has put on bilateral relations.

“Pakistani-U.S. relations have taken a hit in the past few weeks,” said Mark Quarterman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s actually very timely that the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue is occurring after this period so they can sit down and clear the air.”

But Karzai, in a long address at his presidential palace, made no direct reference to peace talks between his government and the Taliban and other insurgents.

He said Afghanistan and its allies were all working toward a settlement and that he hoped significant improvements would be achieved within one or two years.

California-based U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ordered the military a week ago to stop enforcing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and on Monday tentatively refused a Pentagon request to re-instate the 17-year-old ban.

Phillips issued a final decision late on Tuesday affirming her order.

Damage to natural capital including forests, wetlands and grasslands is valued at $2-4.5 trillion annually, the United Nations estimates, but the figure is not included in economic data such as GDP, nor in corporate accounts.

That “invisibility” needs to change so steps can be taken to save ecosystems that are a vital source of food, water and income, said Pavan Sukhdev, study leader for The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), a U.N.-backed initiative.

The top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan applauded the election body for its handling of the counting process, but said “considerable fraud” had been carried out on polling day and called for those responsible to be held accountable.

While announcing preliminary results, Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) said 5.6 million votes had been cast — more than a million above earlier estimates — but that it had thrown out 1.3 million of them for various reasons.

A group of eight investors accused Bank of America of inappropriately bundling some mortgages into more than $47 billion of bonds. The bank said it would fight being held responsible for the investors’ losses.

With pressure mounting for a tougher response by the Obama administration just two weeks before congressional elections, a top Justice Department official was due to meet with housing industry regulators on Wednesday.

Bank of America and GMAC Mortgage, two of the largest servicers of U.S. residential loans, have spent a few weeks poring over their foreclosure procedures after allegations surfaced that for years banks have not reviewed documents properly or have submitted false statements to evict delinquent borrowers.

Consumer attorneys doubt the banks have cured the problems, noting that the speed of the announcement that foreclosure proceedings were to resume would have necessitated huge resources devoted to document review.

Investors have pressured Yahoo, the leader in display advertising, and Chief Executive Carol Bartz to deliver growth and revive its stock price, amid talk that private equity firms are exploring a buyout of the $20 billion company.

“She was already on the hotseat. I don’t think she’s off the hotseat. The results have not shown any kind of real improvements,” analyst Yun Kim of Gleacher & Co said of Bartz.

Buck, a favorite of the conservative Tea Party movement, leads Bennet among likely voters by 48 percent to 45 percent. Buck led by 9 percentage points in August shortly after winning the Republican Senate nomination in a bitter primary fight.

More than half of Colorado voters say the struggling economy is the top issue and the state is on the wrong track, but Buck, a former prosecutor, has been unable to make political headway despite the sour voter mood.

Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, was not in the parliamentary compound in the Chechen capital Grozny when three rebels burst in at 8:45 a.m. (12:45 a.m. EDT), as deputies arrived for work.

One blew himself up and two others went on the rampage inside, spraying bullets and screaming “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Greatest”), a witness at the parliament building said.

Outside the capital, hooded youths smashed store windows amid clouds of tear gas.

Riot police in black body armor forced striking workers away from blocked fuel depots in western France, restoring gasoline to areas where pumps were dry after weeks of protests over the government proposal raising the age from 60 to 62.

In the final survey before Election Day, likely voters say the GOP would do a better job than Democrats on handling the economy, creating jobs and running the government.

Most also think the country’s headed in the wrong direction. More than half disapprove of Obama’s job performance. And even more don’t like the Democratic-controlled Congress.

Speaking on a conference call with reporters in Green Bay ahead of Sunday night’s Vikings-Packers game, Favre called the NFL’s investigation into his alleged behavior a “league matter.” Minutes later, he also declined to answer a series of questions about the situation in his weekly Wednesday news conference with Minnesota media.

“That’s a league issue,” Favre said, “that I just have to leave at that.”

“I have no intention of apologizing because I testified truthfully about my experience and I stand by that testimony,” Hill, now a Brandeis University professor, said in a statement released Tuesday night.

Thomas’ wife, Virginia, had left a voicemail message on Hill’s phone on Oct. 9 asking her to say she was sorry for the allegations that surfaced at Thomas’ confirmation hearings for a seat on the high court bench in 1991.

The full preliminary results from the Sept. 18 poll were released Wednesday after multiple delays as election officials struggled to weed out results from polling stations that never opened, along with bunches of ballots all cast for one candidate, or suspiciously split 50-50 between two people.

After last year’s fraud-marred presidential election, the government wanted to prove to the Afghan people and international allies that it is not mired in corruption but making strides for reform.

But political organizers don’t expect huge crowds when now-President Obama returns to Portland on Wednesday for the first time since that campaign heyday. Instead, the goal is for a far more modest showing of 5,000 people at a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Kitzhaber at the convention center.

It’s the mark of a presidency weighed down by a sluggish economy, high unemployment, a poor housing market, two wars and a public that largely disapproves of Obama’s performance in office.

A survey by the Federal Reserve released Wednesday found that seven of the Fed’s 12 regions reported moderate improvements in business activity. Three regions – Philadelphia, Richmond and Cleveland – described economic activity as mixed or steady. Only two regions – Atlanta and Dallas – suggested economic growth was slow.

The survey indicated that the economy isn’t weakening but is growing too sluggishly to drive down high unemployment, now at 9.6 percent. The jobless rate has been at or above 9.5 percent for more than a year.

The victim, Bandar Abdulaziz, had so many internal injuries, including bleeding on the brain and a fractured larynx, that pathologists could not pinpoint the precise cause of death after his body was found in the posh Landmark Hotel.

The killer was a Saudi prince who tried in vain to hide his homosexuality from the court and had been filmed on a closed-circuit camera mercilessly beating the victim – his paid manservant – in the hotel elevator.

But the folks tucking into fried chicken and cornbread at CoraFaye’s roll their eyes when asked whether the 2009 stimulus made a difference.

“Are you kidding?” said Donn Headley Sr., a 61-year-old whose heating and air conditioning company closed last year because of slow business.

The top-level guidance issued to recruiting commands last week and announced Tuesday marked a significant change in an institution long resistant and sometimes hostile to gays.

“Gay people have been fighting for equality in the military since the 1960s,” said Aaron Belkin, executive director of the Palm Center, a think tank on gays and the military at the University of California Santa Barbara. “It took a lot to get to this day.”

Security forces patrolled the southern city of Karachi to prevent fresh violence and in many neighborhoods, businesses shut down while public transportation was scarce.

“The atmosphere of terror is everywhere,” said local resident Mohammad Sadiq. “People are scared to come out of their houses.”

They’ve come into close contact with vulnerable people, including pregnant women and children, and the household trash from their homes has triggered radiation detectors at landfills.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., says the problem stems from a decision years ago by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ease requirements that thyroid cancer patients remain in the hospital a few days after swallowing doses of radioactive iodine to shrink their tumors.

That’s the view from the CIA director himself, speaking to reporters Tuesday, after a six-month internal review of the attack.

Yet Leon Panetta said no one will be disciplined or fired. He blamed the bombing on what he called “systemic failures,” which meant Jordanian intelligence warnings about the bomber weren’t shared and sufficient security measures weren’t taken.

“The international community, our neighbors and our people are marching toward it with full strength,” President Hamid Karzai said in a speech Wednesday. “The rumors we are hearing from the Taliban and our other brothers say a lot of people are hopeful about this peace process.”

But some coalition officials, Afghans and people familiar with insurgent leaders say contacts with militants are nothing new and have been overstated – perhaps to split the ranks of fighters or create the impression in the West of progress in resolving the unpopular war.

One player knows CPR and begged the police to let him try to save Danroy Henry, but instead “they put a gun to his ribs and they told him to back … up or he would be next,” attorney Bonita Zelman told The Associated Press.

She said the other two teammates were zapped with stun guns when they tried to intervene. They said Henry, “was on the pavement, handcuffed and dying, and no one was helping him,” she said.

Reid sought to link the ad to Angle Tuesday as it drew a harsh rebuke from President Barack Obama, Hispanic leaders and candidates from both parties in Nevada. Angle’s opponents also pounced on the tea party favorite for her comments to Hispanic high school students that “some of you look a little more Asian to me.”

“Listen to her latest, running ads on Hispanic television telling people not to vote,” Reid said. “She is trying to keep people from voting.”

Republican Jeff Perry is making a serious bid to take over a seat held by Democrats for nearly 40 years – and it’s just one of nearly 100 seats across the country that now appear under at least some threat of slipping away from the majority party and giving control of the U.S. House to the GOP.

At least 75 House seats – the vast majority held by Democrats – are at serious risk of changing hands, and roughly 25 more where Democrats were assumed to have the upper hand have tightened in recent weeks, raising the possibility that some could flip to the Republicans as well.

Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce’s target is the 14th Amendment, but it is unclear how the state lawmaker can or will influence a federal statue.

“This is a battle of epic proportions,” Pearce said Tuesday during a news conference at the Arizona Capitol. “We’ve allowed the hijacking of the 14th Amendment.”

The University of Virginia Press is putting the published papers of Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin on a National Archives website that is expected to be accessible to the public in 2012.

When complete, the website will allow users to read, browse and search the text of tens of thousands of documents from the period.

“The grosser the candy, the better it’s going to sell,” says owner Jon H. Prince.

While kids love gore and gimmicks when it comes to Halloween – how can you not love a pair of wax fangs? – experts say children still are drawn to the classics their parents favor when filling the family treat bowl every year.

The interior of the new Grand Cherokee is impressively quiet, with supportive seats and well-arranged controls. Exterior styling is more rounded and modern than before, and the new V-6 engine is more robust than its predecessor. Best of all, the vehicle rides in a nearly refined manner on pavement, while still capably handling rugged off-road duty when needed.

But don’t look for a bargain price. With seats for five, Grand Cherokees remain in the $30,000-and-above category, though starting retail price has declined by $499.