Evening Edition

The call for workers to join two new days of nationwide demonstrations next Thursday and on November 6 came after another day of unrest across France that saw protestors blocking key sites and clashing with police.

“Strengthened by the support of workers, the young and a majority of the population… the labour organisations have decided to continue and to broaden the mobilisation,” the main unions said in a joint statement.

With no fuel left in more than a quarter of petrol pumps, police are playing what unions dubbed a game of cat and mouse with protestors at refineries and fuel depots in a bid to prevent the country grinding to a halt.

Even US pop star Lady Gaga called off two Paris concerts set for the weekend “as a result of the logistical difficulties due to the strikes in France,” her website said, “as there is no certainty that the trucks can make it.”

With no fuel left in more than a quarter of French petrol pumps, police are playing what unions have described as a game of cat and mouse with protestors at depots and refineries in a bid to prevent the country grinding to a halt.

The head of the powerful CGT union Bernard Thibault said that faced with government “intransigence” there was “no reason to stop these protests” and “we recommend further action from next week.”

“It looks like an hour glass that is slowly sinking,” said Celestino Condori, president of the civil committee of Potosi, an organization dedicated to enforcing sustainable procedures for the rampant mining that is hollowing out the mountain in a bid to reach its silver, lead, zinc and tin.

Potosi, once South America’s wealthiest city due to the silver mine within the conical mountain which looms above it, is now even more treacherous for miners than usual, because of regular landslides prompted by some 90 kilometers (55 miles) of tunnels within the hulking Cerro Rico, or “rich hill”.

The draft obtained by Dow Jones Newswires suggests the world’s top economies are eager to allay fears of a currency war, even if no immediate solution to the forex disputes is in sight.

The Group of 20 will “move towards (a) more market-determined exchange-rate system”, the draft said, reflecting an often-used US expression meant to discourage countries from intervening in currency markets.

But campaigners for the rights of gays and lesbians said they were confident the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy would soon be over for good.

In the latest judicial twist, a three-judge appeals court panel in San Francisco lifted a lower court’s injunction issued last week that had barred the US military from continuing its 17-year-old ban while a lengthier stay of the rule is considered.

With races in Brazil and Abu Dhabi to come after this weekend’s maiden Grand Prix in South Korea, 2008 world champion Hamilton trails leader Mark Webber of Red Bull Racing by 28 points in the standings.

Button, the defending champion, is a further three points in arrears. With 25 points on offer for a win, both McLaren drivers are desperate for a victory to keep themselves in title contention.

The appointment of Sergei Sobyanin was overwhelmingly approved by the local parliament with all 32 deputies from ruling party United Russia in the 35-member chamber voting in favour of the Kremlin candidate.

But with the debate marked by speeches of lavish praise in favour of the new mayor and highly choreographed outbreaks of applause, the minority Communists condemned the vote as a pre-ordained farce.

The world’s largest automaker, which was battered by a global safety crisis earlier this year, said it would voluntarily recall 740,000 cars in the United States and almost 600,000 in Japan to fix the problem.

It was also recalling 50,000 autos in Europe, 60,000 in China, 30,000 in Australia and 50,000 in other Asian nations, said a Toyota spokesman in Japan.

Consumer prices rose at their fastest pace in nearly two years in September, official data showed — an apparent explanation for Beijing’s decision this week to hike interest rates for the first time since 2007.

Gross domestic product expanded 9.6 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, beating forecasts for 9.5 percent growth, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data.

But scuba divers Brian and Gina Blackburn, from Houston, weren’t disappointed — they found new wonders which both amazed and humbled them.

“In the Caribbean, finding fan coral that big is impossible because the tourists have destroyed it,” Gina said as she dried off after a dive last week within sight of Dili’s ramshackle airport.

The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco added to the disarray surrounding a landmark legal battle that already has forced the U.S. military to welcome openly gay recruits for the first time.

Siding with the Obama administration, a three-judge appellate panel lifted an injunction issued last week by U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips that barred further enforcement of a law requiring gay men and lesbians in the armed forces to keep their sexual orientation private.

The swift rebuff of a U.S. call for numerical targets for “sustainable” trade surpluses and deficits underscored difficulties facing Group of 20 finance ministers gathering in South Korea to try to defuse tensions over currencies and economic imbalances.

The G20 source, who has direct knowledge of deliberations at the meeting, said the proposals had not found favor with India, China and other emerging economies, or even the likes of Germany, which has a large current account surplus.

Obama will try to bolster incumbent Senators Patty Murray of Washington and Barbara Boxer of California with rallies and fund-raisers over the next two days, part of a four-day trip that is his longest campaign swing as president.

Standing in the backyard of one Seattle family’s home, Obama said women now constitute half the U.S. workforce and are responsible for more than half the income of middle-class families.

Her shocking victory in the Delaware Republican primary was a breakthrough for the conservative Tea Party movement that has up-ended U.S. politics. But while her grassroots fund-raising has been more than respectable, O’Donnell’s tense relations with mainstream Republicans and her floundering campaign have led bigtime donors to shun her, albeit quietly.

Their reluctance to open their checkbooks underlines the GOP’s recent tightrope act: the Tea Party’s emergence as a major force has energized the conservative base and bolstered Republican prospects in the November 2 election. But the two camps often don’t see eye to eye — on policy as well as on politicians.

Noble Corp, the second-largest offshore drilling contractor by fleet size, said it was even possible one of its deepwater rigs could get back to work in the U.S. Gulf by the end of this year.

This month, the U.S. government lifted a moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed after the BP Plc blowout six months ago that led to a huge oil spill off Louisiana’s coast.

The suit is one of thousands of damages cases to stem from the spill from BP’s blown-out undersea Macondo well, which between April and July dumped millions of gallons of oil into the sea, fouling coastlines in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The well was capped in mid-July.

But while the bulk of the cases have been brought by affected individuals, like fishermen, hoteliers and companies, this one brought by conservation groups focuses on endangered sea turtles, whales, birds and Florida manatees.

Obama told visiting officials attending the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue — including Foreign Ministers Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani — he would not visit Pakistan during his trip to South Asia this year. But he said he would travel to Pakistan in 2011 and would host President Asif Ali Zardari in Washington as well.

Obama underscored the importance of the strategic dialogue “in moving our relationship toward a true partnership based on mutual respect,” the White House said in a statement. Both sides agreed “on the importance of cooperating toward a peaceful and stable outcome in Afghanistan,” it said.

In an interview with the newspaper, Geithner also emphasized that the United States was not pursuing a deliberate policy of devaluing the dollar.

This echoed comments he made on Monday in Palo Alto, California, saying “No country around the world can devalue its way to prosperity.”

Despite growing pressure, President Nicolas Sarkozy held firm on a measure he says is crucial to the future of France, heightening the standoff with labor unions that see retirement at 60 as a hard-earned right.

Defiant unions announced two more days of protest, one on Nov. 6 – long after the bill is likely to become law. The bold action suggested that opponents believe they have the power to force the government’s hand.

Instead, Iraqis are turning to neighboring nations, and especially Iran, for guidance – casting doubt on the future of the American role in this strategic country after a grinding war that killed more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers.

“The Iraqi politicians are not responding to the U.S. like before. We don’t pay great attention to them,” Shiite lawmaker Sami al-Askari, a close ally of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Thursday. “The weak American role has given the region’s countries a greater sense of influence on Iraqi affairs.”

Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday that it will call back for repairs about 740,000 cars in the U.S. and 599,000 in Japan. The remainder are in Europe and other markets around the world. Honda Motor Co. also said it would recall an undetermined number of vehicles because of the same issue.

Over the past year, Toyota has recalled more than 10 million cars and trucks worldwide for a variety of problems, from faulty gas pedals and floor mats that can trap accelerators, to braking problems in its Prius hybrid. In August, Toyota recalled 1.33 million Corolla sedans and Matrix hatchbacks in the U.S. and Canada because their engines may stall.

That may not sound like much – it’s what a typical washing machine uses for a load – but it’s almost twice as much as researchers had initially measured and more than they ever expected to find.

The estimate represents only what scientists can see from the debris plume that was kicked up from the high-speed crash near the south pole by a NASA spacecraft on Oct. 9, 2009.

The relatively obscure emblem has become omnipresent because of one place it can’t appear: flying above a war memorial in a public park.

The city council decided last month to remove the flag from above the monument in Central Park after a resident complained, and after city leaders got letters from the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State urging them to remove it.

In a statement late Wednesday, National Public Radio said it was terminating Williams’ contract as a senior news analyst over his comments on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”

NPR executives had previously complained about his remarks on Fox and asked him to stop using the NPR name when he appeared on O’Reilly’s show.

Already President Barack Obama’s chief antagonist in Congress, Issa, R-Calif., will take over the main House investigating committee and control its probes of the White House and the federal bureaucracy.

One liberal Democrat, Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, predicts that Issa (pronounced EYE’-suh) will use subpoena power as chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to conduct a “witch hunt in an effort to bring down the Obama administration.”

From blunt TV ads to friendlier backyard chats, they’re straining to persuade women that it’s the Democrats who are on their side and it’s in women’s vital interest to turn out and vote in the Nov. 2 elections that could give Republicans control of one or both houses of Congress.

In Seattle on Thursday, Obama told local women and others that “how well women do will help determine how well our families are doing as a whole.” Accompanied by women who own businesses, he spoke in a family’s backyard about the economy’s effects on women and outlined ways he said his policies have helped them.

Applications for jobless benefits fell by 23,000 to a seasonally adjusted 452,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.

The decline comes after the department substantially revised the previous week’s figure to show a rise of 26,000. That was double the increase initially reported.

Republicans clearly are gaining ground in turning out early voters compared with their showing two years ago, but figures from the first batch of states that offer clues about 2010 early voting patterns still give Democrats an edge in a number of states and big counties.

“If people thought the Democrats were just going to roll over and play dead in this election, that’s not what we’re seeing,” said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University professor who tracks early voting nationally. “They’ve got to be feeling a little bit better with the numbers that they’re seeing.”

Nonprofits have long suspected that women were the driving forces behind many of the gifts they receive, but they haven’t had much proof. But the results of this study are so decisive and consistent, they can stop wondering, said Debra Mesch, director of the university’s Women’s Philanthropy Institute.

The study offered several factors the researchers thought contributed to the growing generosity of women: More women are working and their incomes have grown, more have college degrees that yield greater earning power, and the percentage of women who make more money than their working husbands is now about 26 percent.

The report, being released Thursday by the National Women’s Law Center and the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, analyzes policies in three areas – prenatal care, shackling of pregnant women during childbirth, and community-based alternatives to incarceration enabling mothers to be with their children.

Only one state, Pennsylvania, received an A.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday temporarily granted the U.S. government’s request for a freeze on the judge’s order.

The appellate court instructed lawyers for the gay rights group that brought the lawsuit successfully challenging the policy to file arguments in response by Monday.

The answer is one that perhaps only a lawyer could love: There is a long tradition that the Justice Department defends laws adopted by Congress and signed by a president, regardless of whether the president in office likes them.

This practice cuts across party lines. And it has caused serious heartburn for more than one attorney general.

Finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 rich and emerging nations, along with key officials from international finance and lending organizations, meet Friday and Saturday in the South Korean city of Gyeongju. Their deputies meet Thursday.

The gathering comes just two weeks after they failed at a meeting in Washington to iron out differences that have led to fears the world could descend into a so-called currency war that causes another downturn.

U.N. envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana cast more doubt on the legitimacy of the ruling junta’s planned Nov. 7 election, the first in two decades.

“I believe that the Myanmar government needs to send a strong signal to the international community about its commitment to hold genuine elections. An unconditional and immediate release of prisoners of conscience would be such a signal,” said Quintana, an Argentine lawyer.

The state Family and Social Services Administration withdrew the grocery benefit just weeks after it announced it would no longer reduce the benefit for those who receive food stamps, which a lawsuit claimed was a violation of federal law that prohibits food stamps from being counted against other benefits.

The lawsuit was filed in July by the American Civil Liberties Union and Indianapolis attorney Steven Dick on behalf of Dick’s 26-year-old autistic son. Dick said he believed the state ultimately decided to end the grocery benefit altogether because it could no longer factor in food stamps.

History buffs spent 12 years gleaning information from 200-year-old military documents to assemble the list of thousands who participated in the Battles of Saratoga. The database, recently unveiled at Saratoga National Historical Park, contains the names of about 15,000 of the more than 17,000 soldiers of the Continental Army and various state militias who defeated the British here in 1777.

About 2,500 more American names are being added, while the names of most of the 9,000 enemy combatants – British soldiers, German mercenaries, Canadians and loyalists – are expected to join the database in several years, according to Eric Schnitzer, a National Parks Service ranger and park historian. The names of some of the Native Americans who fought here – Oneidas for the Americans, Mohawks for the British – also will be added, he said.

The AU’s commissioner for peace and security, Ramtane Lamamra, urged the U.N. Security Council to authorize a blockade while seeking far more international aid and a contingent of 20,000 AU-led troops, up from the current authorization of 8,000. He also asked the council to approve hiring up to 1,680 police. The AU peacekeeping force, operating under the U.N. mandate, now has about 6,000 troops.

With Somalia lacking a fully functioning government since 1991, Lamamra called for a major escalation of troops and other resources to deter the pirates operating off the country’s coast and the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab Islamist rebels who control much of Somalia.

He had no real political experience, and his main claim to fame was a 17-year NBA career in which he was one of the worst free-throw shooters in basketball. He has struggled in debates and acknowledged that he didn’t vote much during his basketball career.

But Dudley may have a chance to defeat former two-term Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber, thanks to a remarkable fundraising effort that has drawn on his connections from pro sports and interest from the national GOP.

According to federal data, one in three Indian women will be raped in their lifetimes, while two-fifths will suffer from domestic violence. The chance an Indian woman will be the victim of a violent crime is three and a half times greater than the national average, recent numbers shows.

“The statistics in Indian Country regarding violence against women are disturbing to say the least. It’s incumbent upon us to take appropriate action,” said Wizipan Garriott, policy adviser to Assistant Interior Secretary of Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk.

Now Schuller’s life’s work is crumbling.

Citing debts of more than $43 million, the organization declared bankruptcy this week in a collapse blamed by some on its inability to keep up with the times and a disastrous attempt to hand the church over to Schuller’s son.