Evening Edition

It said that the major findings included a US military cover-up of Iraqi state-sanctioned torture and “hundreds” of civilians deaths at manned American checkpoints after the US-led invasion of 2003 that ousted Saddam Hussein.

The Qatar-based satellite broadcaster also said the leaked papers, dating from January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2009, show the United States kept a death count throughout the war, despite US denials.

“Such leaks are very unfortunate and may have very negative security implications for people concerned,” Rasmussen said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

“Leaks may put soldiers as well as civilians at risk,” he added.

The five-year assistance plan, which replaces an earlier package that expired, meets a key request of Pakistan’s leaders but comes amid signals the United States will deny aid to units accused of human rights violations.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US administration would ask Congress to approve two billion dollars in military aid from 2012 to 2016 as part of the United States’ “enduring commitment to help Pakistan plan for its defense needs.”

The strain of cholera seen in camps north of the capital is “the most dangerous type,” said Health Minister Alex Larsen, as contaminated river water was seen as the likely source of the bacteria.

Larsen said tests by the World Health Organization confirmed the 01 strain of cholera which is the most deadly and is responsible for most of the outbreaks around the world.

The epidemic has not yet reached the major displaced persons camps in and around the capital Port-au-Prince, which was ravaged by a 7.0 earthquake in January that left 1.2 million people homeless.

But officials fear an outbreak in densely populated tent cities that have poor sanitation and meager medical facilities has the potential of unleashing a public health disaster.

The vote all but sealed the reform, the centrepiece of Sarkozy’s agenda, and government now expects the text will next be reconciled with a lower house version before being definitively adopted in a final vote on Wednesday.

“The day will come when former opponents will thank the president and the government … for acting responsibly,” Labour Minister Eric Woerth predicted just before the upper house approved the bill by 177 votes to 153.

After days of strikes, riots and fuel shortages, the French Senate was due on Friday evening to hold a vote on the bill, which would raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, but unions vowed more mass protests regardless.

Leading unions called a seventh day of nationwide demonstrations for Thursday and university students — traditionally a radical force in French protests — intensified their fight announcing an earlier march on Tuesday.

Police used tear gas to repel 200 demonstrators trying to block a fuel depot before dawn near the southern city of Toulouse as part of protests against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s bid to hike retirement age to 62, unions said.

Police moved in a few hours later to clear the entrance to Grandpuits refinery, which serves the Paris region, after an emergency decree ordered strikers there back to work. Three people were injured, unions said.

“We ask finally for a sentence of 14 years in a standard-regime colony,” prosecutor Valery Lakhtin said in final arguments at the trial at a Moscow district court of the ex-Yukos chief and his co-accused Platon Lebedev.

The pair have been in jail since 2003 and Lakhtin said that the new sentence would run concurrently with their current eight-year jail term so that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, if convicted, would remain behind bars until 2017.

G20 finance ministers and central bankers opened a two-day meeting in South Korea, stalked by warnings of an all-out “currency war” between debtor nations such as the United States and export powerhouses such as China.

The G20 meeting, and parallel talks among the G7 grouping of North America, Western Europe and Japan, faced warnings that the world was at risk of relapsing into 1930s-style trade protectionism.

Flamboyant billionaire Richard Branson and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson will host a ceremony marking the completion of the main runway at Spaceport America, near the town of Las Cruces where the Virgin Galactic project is based.

Virgin is “getting close” to sending tourists into space, Branson told CNN Friday.

Aspirin is already recommended in low, daily doses by many doctors for patients at risk of a heart attack or a stroke.

High doses of this cheap, over-the-counter medication have similarly been found to help prevent cancer of the rectum and colon.

The Swedish company reported a net profit surge to 3.68 billion kroner (396 million euros, 553 million dollars) in the third quarter, up from 810 million in the same three-month period last year.

The results beat analyst expectations, which according to a poll by Dow Jones Newswires averaged 3.47 billion kronor.

The 34-year-old Australian, driving for Red Bull Racing, set a best time of 1 minute 37.942 seconds with 19 minutes of the 90-minute session remaining.

Webber, who said it was a “positive day”, leads the title chase by 14 points after 16 rounds of the 19-race season, with Grands Prix in Brazil and Abu Dhabi to follow this weekend’s inaugural race in Korea.

In Nevada, a state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate and the highest rate of home foreclosures, Reid, a Democrat, is slightly trailing Republican Sharron Angle with just 11 days to go before the November 2 elections.

A defeat for the Senate’s highest ranking Democrat would be a major blow for Obama, who worked closely with Reid and other congressional leaders to craft last year’s $814 billion economic stimulus package and reforms of the healthcare and financial regulatory systems.

In a letter to fellow finance ministers of the Group of 20 leading economies, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said countries should implement policies to reduce their current account imbalances below a specified share of national output.

Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Geithner, backed by host South Korea, proposed limiting surpluses and deficits on the current account — the broadest measure of trade in goods and services — to 4 percent of gross domestic product.

If confirmed, the leak would be much larger than the group’s record-breaking publication of more than 70,000 Afghan war documents in July, which stoked debate about the nine-year-old conflict but did not contain major revelations.

It was the largest security breach of its kind in U.S. military history.

Senators voted 177 in favor and 153 against the bill after the conservative government used a special measure to speed up the debate in the upper house, having had to send in police to break up long-running blockades of fuel depots.

The law to make French people work two more years for their pensions has been one of the most fiercely contested reforms among austerity measures being taken across Europe.

Although the main outbreak area was located north of Port-au-Prince, which bore the brunt of the January 12 earthquake, humanitarian agencies were on high alert to prevent the disease from spreading to crowded survivors’ camps in the capital.

The cholera epidemic, which had already affected more than 1,500 people in central Haiti, was the worst medical emergency to strike the poor, disaster-prone Caribbean nation since the devastating earthquake that killed up to 300,000 people.

The tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan would be America’s largest public-works project and has been backed by Democratic politicians and commentators who argue that major infrastructure works can boost sluggish economic growth.

Christie, a Republican, pulled funding for the tunnel on October 7 but is reconsidering his decision at the request of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

NATO and Afghan officials have reported preliminary contacts between President Hamid Karzai’s government and the Taliban, although doubt surrounds when those contacts were made, who they were made with and what, if any, progress was made.

Karzai is pushing a negotiated settlement to the conflict and has launched a High Peace Council which has said it is prepared to offer concessions to bring insurgents to the table. Kabul and Washington say fighters must renounce violence.

“The United States has no stronger partner when it comes to counterterrorism efforts against the extremists who threaten us both than Pakistan,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

The five-year military aid package, which must be approved by Congress, would complement $7.5 billion in civilian assistance already cleared by U.S. lawmakers.

In unusually candid remarks, Li Dongrong, an assistant governor of the People’s Bank of China, also warned that a continuation of ultra-loose policies in rich countries might unleash a flood of capital inflows into emerging economies.

Against the background of a fragile global recovery, he said that China could not waver from its long-term plan to boost the yuan’s international clout.

Coincidence? Maybe not.

Economists are only beginning to study the parallels between the 1920s and the most recent decade to try to understand why both periods ended in financial disaster. Their early findings suggest inequality may not directly cause crises, but it can be a contributing factor.

Kelly, 59, was found dead in 2003 after being named as the source of a BBC report which accused then-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government of exaggerating the military threat posed by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to help build the case for war.

His death caused one of the biggest controversies of Blair’s time in office and led to fevered speculation about the circumstances surrounding his loss of life.

Private first-class Justin Stoner was called as a witness in the prosecution of Staff Sergeant David Bram, the second of 12 soldiers to face a hearing in a case that grew from a probe of hashish abuse into charges of atrocities that Pentagon officials have said could undermine the U.S. war effort.

A court-martial was ordered this month for Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, the first to be charged in the case and one of five accused of killing unarmed Afghan civilians for sport.

St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said on Thursday he would favor Fed purchases of Treasury securities in $100 billion increments one Fed meeting at a time if the U.S. central bank decides monetary easing is necessary.

“If we do decide to go ahead with quantitative easing … we could think in units of about $100 billion,” he said.

“The housing bubble occurred because of one man — that was Andrew Cuomo,” Paladino told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

Paladino linked the bubble to policies carried out by Cuomo when he was housing and urban development secretary during Democratic President Bill Clinton’s second term from 1997 to 2001.

They may get more than they’re wishing for.

The so-called individual mandate has provoked tea party conservatives, who see it as an example of big government interference in personal decisions. Now Republican candidates are running on platforms that include repealing the broader health care law. And attorneys general from some 20 states – mainly Republicans – are challenging the mandate as unconstitutional.

U.S. officials condemned the move and said Friday they were racing to contain the damage from the imminent release, while NATO’s top official told reporters he feared that lives could be put at risk by the mammoth disclosure.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said any release would create “a very unfortunate situation.”

In tense balloting after 140 hours of debate, the Senate voted 177-153 for the pension reform. The measure is expected to win final formal approval by both houses of parliament next week.

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative government, keen to get the measure passed and quell increasingly radicalized protests, cut short the debate and voting process using a special procedure. Critics on the left dubbed the use of Article 44-3 of the Constitution a denial of democracy.

The first two cases of the disease outside the rural Artibonite region were confirmed in Arcahaie, a town in the same administrative region as the quake-devastated capital, Port-au-Prince.

Officials are concerned it could reach the squalid tarp camps where hundreds of thousands of quake survivors live in the capital.

If the Republican wave on Nov. 2 ends up a bit weaker than many now predict, at least some of the credit will have to go to the former president, the most sought-after surrogate for dozens of anxious Democratic congressional and gubernatorial nominees.

Always an intuitive campaigner who could slap backs and dissect policy with equal ease, Clinton has another appealing quality in these economic hard times: He left office amid high employment and a government surplus. Some people attending his rallies wear buttons saying “I miss peace, prosperity and Clinton.”

School officials have canceled Friday night football for the entire season on Kauai and moved the games to Saturday afternoon, angering residents who are upset that their beloved fall tradition has been thwarted all because of a bird.

They have been showing up to games wearing T-shirts that disparage the policy, and occasionally voicing their displeasure from the stands during games.

Tea party enthusiasm for repeal has failed to catch on with other groups, the poll found, which may be a problem for Republicans vowing to strike down Obama’s signature accomplishment if they gain control of Congress in the Nov. 2 elections.

Among likely voters, 36 percent said they want to revise the law so it does more to change the health care system. A nearly identical share – 37 percent – said they want to repeal it completely.

Muslim groups were outraged by Williams’ comments Monday on Fox News that he gets nervous when he sees people in Muslim dress on planes. But Williams’ firing two days later prompted complaints by conservatives and even some liberals that NPR went too far.

Williams said Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he believes NPR had wanted to fire him for some time because they disapproved of his appearances on shows by his other employer, Fox News. Opinions Williams expressed on Fox News over the years had strained his relationship with NPR to the point that the public radio network asked him to stop using its name when he appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show.

Plankton, tiny suspended particles that form the base of the ocean’s food web, float en masse 1,400 feet beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, forming a snowy-like underwater scene as they move with the currents outside the windows of a two-man sub creeping a few feet off the seafloor.

Crabs, starfish and other deep sea creatures swarm small patches of corals, and tiny sea anemones sprout from the sand like miniature forests across a lunar-like landscape illuminated only by the lights of the sub, otherwise living in a deep, dark environment far from the sun’s reach.

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.

Gonzales and her husband consistently qualify for food stamps now that Hawaii and other states are quietly expanding eligibility and offering the benefit to more working, moderate income families.

Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reviewed by The Associated Press shows that 30 states have adopted rules making it easier to qualify for food stamps since 2007. In all, 38 states have loosened eligibility standards.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s proposals, outlined in a letter to the Group of 20 major developed and emerging nations, met with immediate resistance on the opening day of a two-day meeting of top finance officials. Japan’s Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Friday called the idea of targets “unrealistic.”

The gathering of G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors in the South Korean city of Gyeongju comes just two weeks after their meeting in Washington failed to iron out currency differences that have led to fears of a trade war that could trigger another economic downturn.

The decorated Iraq war veteran had been serving in the Army, with some in his unit aware that he was gay. And yet, he said, no one had ever tried to get the officer discharged under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

“This is not an example of why the policy works, it’s an example of why it is broken,” he said.

At the same time, Brown went to court to demand that the scandal-ridden city of Bell be placed under a monitor until residents can elect a new City Council next year.

The twin announcements came on the same day eight current and former officials of Bell, including the mayor and vice mayor, were arraigned on charges of bilking taxpayers out of about $5.5 million. All of them pleaded not guilty.