Evening Edition

More than 250 people have died and thousands have been infected, but those numbers could soar if cholera reached the camps where hundreds of thousands live in awful conditions after being displaced by January’s earthquake.

Cholera is primarily passed on through contaminated water or food and could spread like wildfire through the unsanitary tent cities, where displaced families bathe outside, do laundry and share meals in close quarters.

A few days after the first cases appeared in the north, the outbreak looked to be moving closer to the capital, Port-au-Prince, which is heavily populated by homeless residents in tent cities where sanitation is poor.

Regional health director Dieula Louissaint said 12 more people died in the Artibonite department in northern Haiti, boosting that area’s toll 206, while 14 people died in central Haiti closer to the capital.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said in a statement late Saturday that the Haitian Public Health Ministry’s “national reference laboratory today confirmed cases in Ouest Department, including Port-au-Prince.”

No specific number of cholera cases in Port-au-Prince was given.

Governments and human rights organisations alike put the focus on answers to the allegations made against US, allied and Iraqi troops as the whistleblowing website released 400,000 classified US military documents.

The flood of material from 2004 to 2009 offers a grim snapshot of the conflict, especially of the abuse of Iraqi civilians by Iraqi security forces.

The mass of documents from 2004 to 2009 offer a grim snapshot of the conflict, especially of the abuse of Iraqi civilians by Iraqi security forces.

“This disclosure is about the truth,” Assange told a news conference in London after the whistleblowing website published the logs on the Internet.

But Richard Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, cautioned that the feelers so far add up to “contacts and discussions” rather than peace negotiations to end a war now in its tenth year.

“What we’ve got here is an increasing number of Taliban at high levels saying, ‘Hey, we want to talk,'” he said. “We think this is a result in large part of the growing pressure they’re under from General (David) Petraeus and the ISAF command.”

With thousands of families heading off for school half-term holidays, and lawmakers expected to give the pensions bill their formal final approval on Wednesday, Sarkozy hopes the mass protest movement will die away.

But, with Sunday newspaper opinion polls showing the embattled president more unpopular than ever, trade unions and student bodies have declared at least two more days of action, and strikes continue in the key fuel sector.

With thousands of families heading off for school half-term holidays, and lawmakers exected to give the pensions bill their formal final approval on Wednesday, Sarkozy hopes the mass protest movement will die away.

But, with Sunday newspaper opinion polls showing the embattled president more unpopular than ever, trade unions and student bodies have declared at least two more days of action, and strikes continue in the key fuel sector.

Geithner met Vice Premier Wang Qishan in the eastern coastal city of Qingdao a day after a Group of 20 finance ministers meeting wrapped up in South Korea.

Washington has long argued that China’s currency, the yuan, is being kept grossly undervalued in order to help Chinese exporters.

Leaders of the 27-nation bloc face the challenge at a two-day summit starting Thursday to turn the lessons of the 2008-2009 economic crisis into hard and fast rules tightening debt and deficit discipline.

But a controversial Franco-German proposal issued days ago, denounced by many as a “diktat”, calls for the rules to be enshrined in a new draft of the hard-fought Lisbon treaty, which came into force only last December after eight years of tough talks and failed referenda.

The 29-year-old Spaniard took his third victory in the past four races after pole-sitter and race leader Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull Racing was forced to retire with a blown engine on lap 46 of the 55-lap race.

The inaugural Grand Prix in South Korea finished in near-darkness after a rain-delayed start and a red flag after just three laps because of the soaked track, with the race taking almost three hours to complete.

His order that all private security companies be disbanded by the end of the year has caused widespread concern that aid and development projects would be unable to continue without adequate protection in the war-torn country.

The Afghan government had already partially rolled back the ban, allowing private protection to continue for diplomats and foreign military bases.

One of four historians asked to examine the ministry’s role in the Holocaust, Eckart Conze, said ahead of the report’s publication this week that it was much more involved in the Nazis’ killing machine than previously thought.

The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants hailed the report as shedding light on a chapter that had remained shrouded in secrecy more than six decades on.

The 12 days of negotiations in the central Japanese city of Nagoya are aimed at securing agreement on how to stop the rapid loss of the world’s plant and animal species, as well as their habitats.

But after the first week environment groups said the conference was becoming bogged down in the same kind of acrimony between developed and developing nations that have plagued UN climate change negotiations.

The Norway deliveries are just the newest facet of a decades-old effort by more than 100 countries to save the world’s many varieties of rice which might otherwise be lost.

A fire-proof, quake-proof, typhoon-proof gene bank set up by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines in 1962 now holds 115,000 varieties of one of the world’s most important grains.

Juan Uribe’s two-out solo home run off Ryan Madson in the eighth inning broke a 2-2 tie and San Francisco held on for the victory that gave them a four-games-to-two triumph in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series.

San Francisco will host the Texas Rangers in game one of the World Series on Wednesday.

The concise new paper, called “i”, will be available from Tuesday for just 20 pence (31 US cents, 23 euro cents) — a fifth of the price of British broadsheets such as The Times.

It is “specifically targeted at readers and lapsed readers of quality newspapers,” according to Lebedev’s main national daily, The Independent, which will share editorial staff with the new publication.

“We have registered a diminishing in numbers of deaths and of hospitalized people in the most critical areas … The tendency is that it is stabilizing, without being able to say that we have reached a peak,” Gabriel Thimote, director-general of Haiti’s Health Department, told a news conference.

The accumulated deaths since the cholera outbreak began around a week ago in the earthquake-ravaged Caribbean nation stood at 253, while total cases were 3,015, mostly in central rural regions straddling the Artibonite river.

Chet Edwards is a 10-term congressman in a district that is conservative to the core and includes Crawford, home to the ranch of former Republican President George W. Bush.

A centrist who supports abortion rights, Edwards has long defied the odds in a district the Cook Partisan Voting Index ranks as the most Republican currently held by a Democrat.

But under the strict “gawk but don’t talk” rule that governs media and prisoner encounters at Guantanamo, any member of the media who tries to talk to a prisoner can be expelled from the U.S. military base.

So none of the sweaty journalists shouted out the question on all their minds — “Omar, are you going to take the deal?”

In a rundown warehouse studio on Kabul’s dusty outskirts, Mirzad presents the “Treasure” — “Ganjina” in Afghanistan’s Dari language — gameshow, where prize money of up to one million afghanis ($21,000) is on offer, a fortune in one of the world’s poorest countries.

“In Afghanistan after 30 years of war, we had no gameshows, no big television programs like this. This is fun,” said Mirzad, a former journalist. “When they see how emotional people are and how they react, it lets them forget everything.”

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Sunday one of its service members was killed by a homemade bomb in the south of country, bringing the total to 599 since the beginning of 2010.

No other details of the incident were available. Crude but effective homemade bombs account for well over half of the casualties suffered by foreign troops in Afghanistan this year.

At a meeting in South Korea, G20 finance ministers recognized the quickening shift in economic power away from Western industrial nations by striking a surprise deal to give emerging nations a bigger voice in the International Monetary Fund.

A closing communique contained no major policy initiative after a U.S. proposal to limit current account imbalances to 4 percent of gross domestic product, a measure aimed squarely at shrinking China’s surplus, failed to win broad enough backing.

Wrapping up a jam-packed trip with 10 days to go before the November 2 congressional elections, Obama revved up a crowd of more than 11,000 in Minneapolis on Saturday by touting his achievements of healthcare and financial reform legislation.

He warned that if the election results in a return to power for Republicans in the U.S. Congress, they will try to repeal those landmark laws.

Uploaded on the WikiLeaks’ website, the files detailed gruesome cases of prisoner abuse by Iraqi forces that the U.S. military knew about but did not seem to investigate.

In Baghdad, Iraqi officials responded to WikiLeaks’ move by pledging to probe any allegations that police or soldiers had committed crimes and any culprits would be prosecuted.

If Democratic candidates are counting on long-standing support from gay voters to help stave off big losses on Nov. 2, they could be in for a surprise.

Across the country, activists say gay voters are angry – at the lack of progress on issues from eliminating employment discrimination to uncertainty over serving in the military to the economy – and some are choosing to sit out this election or look for other candidates.

He is already giving clues about how he will govern in the last two years of his term.

Obama will try to make gains on deficit reduction, education and energy. He will enforce his health care and financial overhauls and try to protect them from repeal should Republicans win control of Capitol Hill. He will use executive authority when blocked by Congress, and steel for scrutiny and investigations if the GOP is in charge.

Many also are important in presidential elections, and both parties are pouring millions of dollars into statehouse races in the closing days of the campaign.

There are now 26 Democratic governors and 24 Republicans. A record 37 governorships are up for grabs on Nov. 2; more than half are contests where an incumbent isn’t running.

But last week a leading manufacturer told workers their costs will jump partly because of the law. Also, a Democratic governor laid out a scheme for employers to get out of health care by shifting workers into taxpayer-subsidized insurance markets that open in 2014.

While it’s too early to proclaim the demise of job-based coverage, corporate number crunchers are looking at options that could lead to major changes.

Auburn jumped two spots to No. 3 behind top-ranked Oregon and Boise State in the media poll Sunday, and Missouri vaulted 11 spots to No. 7.

Oregon, which moved to No. 1 for the first time last week and followed up with a 60-13 victory against UCLA on Thursday night, received 44 first-place votes. Boise State had 11, Auburn received three and No. 4 TCU received two.

President Hamid Karzai spent the day meeting with his ministers and top-level foreign diplomats as they tried to hammer out a compromise between his aim of disbanding private security companies by the end of the year and protecting foreign-funded aid projects threatened by insurgent attacks.

“The list of the big projects and their security needs should be given to the Afghan government and the Afghan government will assess and make a decision,” Karzai said in a statement. “These talks will continue.”

Brian Wilson, Cody Ross and the Giants can exhale. Now they’ll try to bring the first crown to San Francisco.

Juan Uribe hit a tiebreaking homer off Ryan Madson with two outs in the eighth inning and the Giants held off the Phillies 3-2 Saturday night in Game 6 of the NL championship series.

The 325 lawmakers met only once since they were elected on March 7 for a session that lasted 20 minutes and consisted of a reading from Islam’s holy book, the Quran, the playing of the national anthem and swearing in new members.

Under the constitution, parliament was required to meet within 15 days of final court approval of election results, which came on June 1. Lawmakers met on June 14 and should have chosen a parliament speaker during their first session and then the president within 30 days. But these appointments had to be put off because they are part of the negotiations between major political blocs over the rest of the new leadership – including a prime minister and top Cabinet officials.

The reports, covering early 2004 to Jan. 1, 2010, help explain why Iraq’s struggle to create a unified, independent state continues, despite a dramatic reduction in violence. They appear to support arguments by some experts that the U.S. should keep thousands of troops there beyond their scheduled departure in 2011, to buy more time for Iraq to become stable.

The threats described in the leaked documents come from outside, including next-door Iran, as well as inside, in the form of sectarian, political and even family rivalries that predate the 2003 American-led invasion and endure today.

A growing urban middle class is defying the image of Africa as poor, underfed and under-medicated. And with the comforts of middle class life, afflictions familiar in the West are making inroads here too – obesity, diabetes, lung cancer, strokes, heart disease.

A continent that traditionally traveled on foot or by bicycle now increasingly rides cars and buses. More time is spent at desks. Elevators are replacing stairs. White-collar Africans are discovering the gym.

It may have been wet and dark when the race finally ended, but that did not dampen the delight in the Ferrari garage, which served as a stark contrast to the misery at Red Bull.

Sitting first and second in the standings entering the race, and qualifying first and second, everything looked set for the Red Bull drivers to stake their claim to the championship, but neither Mark Webber nor Sebastian Vettel finished the race.

Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak has trailed Republican Pat Toomey for months, and a GOP victory always has seemed likely, given that it’s a Republican-trending year in this perpetually contested state. Yet recent polls suggest Sestak has closed the gap, and Republican leaders are imploring supporters not to panic even as they ask themselves: What’s going on?

The Sestak-Toomey race mirrors other Senate contests that are making this one of the most intriguing and unpredictable midterm elections in years.

Bahrain’s ruling Sunni dynasty hoped that Saturday’s vote would showcase one of the rare examples of Western-style elections in the conservative Gulf Arab region and portray a sense of order in a country with strategic links, including being the home port of the U.S. 5th Fleet – one of the Pentagon’s major counterweights against expanding Iranian military power in the area.

The Shiites, meanwhile, sought political payback with some of their top figures jailed and facing trial later this week on charges of plotting a coup.

Coombs, 43, born in Jamaica, immigrated to the United States legally as a child with his family. He signed up to serve his adopted nation for six years – first in Japan and the Philippines, then in the Persian Gulf during the first war with Iraq.

Up to 8,000 non-citizens enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces every year and serve alongside American troops. As of May 2010, there were 16,966 non-citizens on active duty. The military does not allow illegal immigrants to enlist.

A judge was fined $500,000 for cutting down more than 120 cherry and maple trees in a city park for better views, and residents fought for years to save a mature grove of 100 Douglas firs from being cleared for development.

Tree lovers are now fighting proposed city rules that would remove current protections for large, exceptional trees, and do not include a requirement that property owners get a permit to remove a tree.