Evening Edition

Washington’s streets were clogged with people walking towards the National Mall where two of America’s best known satirists joined forces for a super-sized joint gathering, the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.”

“It’s chaotic but sane. There are a ton of diverse, happy people,” said James Cuizon, who had traveled from Hawaii to attend the rally and was on the chilly mall hours before the event kicked off at about noon (1600 GMT).

“Whatever the outcome on Tuesday, we need to come together to help put people who are still looking for jobs back to work,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.

“And there are some practical steps we can take right away to promote growth and encourage businesses to hire and expand.”

Obama, who spent the day dealing with a cargo plane terror scare, headlined an earsplitting evening rally in Virginia, on the eve of a four-state tour to shore up Democrats wobbling ahead of Tuesday’s congressional polls.

Republicans are tipped to seize the House of Representatives and pare back the Democratic majority in the Senate in the election, which could roadblock Obama’s presidency two years after voters gave him a mandate for change.

Clinton met Chinese state councillor Dai Bingguo — the nation’s most senior foreign policymaker — on southern Hainan island after wading into rows which are simmering in both the East and South China Seas at a regional summit in Hanoi.

The talks with Dai took place in the VIP lounge at the airport in the resort town of Sanya. Clinton was due to head later Saturday to Cambodia — her third country of the day and part of a gruelling two-week tour of Asia.

Australia were trailing until the final seconds and facing a 4-0 series whitewash until man-of-the-hour James O’Connor converted his own injury-time try to secure the match for the Wallabies.

“I’ve been through that situation many times and I just went through my motions, my little triggers that I have been working on,” a jubilant O’Connor said after the final whistle. “It was just like every other kick.”

Rich and poor nations agreed to take “effective and urgent” action to curb the destruction of nature in an effort to halt the loss of the world’s biodiversity on which human survival depends.

Delegates from 193 countries on Saturday committed to key goals by 2020 such as curbing pollution, protecting forests and coral reefs, setting aside areas of land and water for conservation, and managing fisheries sustainably.

“Today, we are clarifying our policy to ensure that developers understand the proper use of UIDs (user identification data) in their applications,” the world’s leading online social network said in a release.

“Our policy has always stated that data received from Facebook, including UIDs, cannot be shared with data brokers and ad networks.”

China’s top diplomat, State Counselor Dai Bingguo, and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi offered reassurances about the minerals used in products from iPhones to superconductors in separate meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

After meeting Yang at a regional summit in Hanoi, Clinton said she was pleased by the Chinese stance on the minerals but said the world still needed to find other suppliers.

Expectations of a bilateral talk between Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan were dashed on Friday when China canceled it, blaming Japan for “damaging the atmosphere” at the Asia-Pacific summit in Hanoi by raising the issue of the disputed Diaoyu islands, called Senkaku in Japanese.

A Japanese official, however, said the two leaders subsequently held an “informal” 10-minute meeting on the summit sidelines on Saturday in a seemingly positive step.

“Unless each and every one of you turn out and get your friends to turn out and get your families to turn out, then we could fall short, and all the progress that we’ve made over the last couple years can be rolled back,” he told a cheering crowd at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Obama launched a final campaign swing through four key states in a bid to limit Democratic losses in Tuesday’s elections, when polls show his party losing control of the House of Representatives and seeing its Senate majority weakened.

“The Lead Banks knew that this financing was barred by the terms of the Credit Agreement and it was tainted with fraud and other misconduct,” said the lawsuit, which was filed late on Friday.

Tribune, owner of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and 23 television stations, filed for bankruptcy in 2008, just a year after real estate developer Sam Zell bought the company with billions of dollars in debt.

The move came a day after a government panel said Halliburton had used flawed material to cement the well.

Halliburton was hired by BP to seal the Gulf of Mexico well, which ruptured on April 20, killing 11 workers who were on the Transocean Ltd rig contracted to drill it. The disaster caused the worst offshore spill in U.S. history.

“We live now in hard times,” Stewart said after all the shtick. “Not end times.”

Part comedy show, part pep talk, the rally drew together tens of thousands stretched across an expanse of the National Mall, a festive congregation of the goofy and the politically disenchanted. People carried signs merrily protesting the existence of protest signs. Some dressed like bananas, wizards, Martians and Uncle Sam.

That would be just fine, said Rep. John Boehner, in line to become the new speaker if Republicans take the House, as expected. He declared, “Americans are demanding a new way forward in Washington.”

Embarking on a four-state weekend campaign dash, Obama acknowledged the difficulties Democrats face – the distinct chance of losing their comfortable majority in the House and possibly the Senate, as well as several governors’ seats.

Drawing strength from the clamorous tea party movement, the GOP also is in line to wrest governorships from Democrats in all regions of the country, according to political strategists in both parties and public opinion polls. Big-state races in Florida, Ohio, Illinois and California remain intensely competitive into the campaign’s final hours.

Republicans must gain 40 seats to win control of the House and 10 to take the Senate. A victory in either case would spell the end of a two-year stretch in which Democrats controlled the White House and held comfortable majorities in both houses of Congress.

The Obama administration’s top diplomat also urged Chinese officials to use their influence with North Korea to keep the communist country from taking any provocative actions that might disrupt a summit of world leaders set for South Korea next month.

Clinton’s main goal, though, was to seek Chinese help in lowering tensions across East Asia and she proposed hosting a three-way meeting between the U.S., China and Japan to ease the latest regional flare-up: competing claims by China and Japan over East China Sea islands, a dispute that has soured ties between Beijing and Tokyo.

And not a single toilet or latrine for its 10,000 people.

Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone. Some have three.

Democrats and Republicans are accusing each other of cozying up to Beijing and backing policies that send U.S. jobs and IOUs to the world’s second-largest economy.

Hot rhetoric in the closing days of the election has helped to fan protectionism sentiment in the U.S., casting doubt on the fate of free-trade agreements and complicating U.S. dealings with a muscle-flexing China.

Instead, in a darkened arena, each of the Heat first-stringers stood still as a spotlight shined upon them.

The message couldn’t have been less subtle: All eyes are on this team, and they showed why Friday night.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signaled that the U.S. intended to remain a major power in the Asia-Pacific region, and waded into the spat between China and Japan that began more than a month ago, when a Chinese fishing trawler and two Japanese patrol boats collided near disputed islands.

“The United States has a national interest in the freedom of navigation and unimpeded lawful commerce,” Clinton said at a summit of East Asian leaders in Hanoi, Vietnam. “And when disputes arise over maritime territory, we are committed to resolving them peacefully based on customary international law.”

Oh, that campaign mail.

Even basketball star LeBron James is – unwittingly – part of the mailbox action. The player who spurned Cleveland for Miami is featured in an anti-handgun message in Ohio despite having nothing to do with that or any political issue.

In recent weeks the bank has made written and in-person pledges to pass anti-money laundering legislation, report and investigate suspicious transactions, identify customers to law enforcement and create a special compliance authority.

Prosecutors, though, aren’t buying any of it. They claim that even as the bank was making such overtures, it broke the law by trying to transfer money without identifying the sender or recipient, or what the money was being used for.

A confident-sounding Angle, locked in a tight race with Majority Leader Harry Reid, predicted “there is going to be shock and awe in Washington” on Nov. 3, the day after the election.

“We need to take back our economy,” she said. “It’s our government and it’s our money.”

The president, bracing for an election beatdown in a prime electoral atmosphere for Republicans, plunged into a final weekend of campaigning, undeterred by the somber news of a new terrorist threat. He implored a young, raucous crowd in this college town to rally behind first-term Rep. Tom Perriello, who has loyally backed key parts of the president’s agenda.

“The reason I am here is because in this day and age, let’s face it, political courage is hard to come by,” Obama said to thousands gathered outside on a crisp autumn night. “When you’re a first-term congressman, the easiest thing to do is make your decisions based on the polls … That’s not who Tom is.”

Demonstrators waving tree branches and carrying anti-U.N. banners walked from the central plateau city of Mirebalais several miles to the gates of the base perched above a tributary of the Artibonite River – a waterway identified by health officials as a conduit for the infection.

The protesters chanted “Like it or not, they must go” as the Nepalese soldiers and other U.N. peacekeepers remained inside.

Washington may be a home for some city dwellers, but it isn’t where their vote will count during Tuesday’s midterm elections. Some residents eligible to vote in the city choose to vote in another place they have a tie to, saying one reason not to vote in Washington is it would mean giving up their vote in Congress.

People who live in the nation’s capital can vote for president and local offices like mayor. But they have no senators representing them, and their one House member can’t vote on the House floor. Close races in November are virtually unheard of in the overwhelmingly Democratic city. So some of the city’s 600,000 residents go out of their way to vote somewhere they think they can make more of a difference. It may seem like manipulating the system – but it can be legal, depending on a person’s circumstances and the laws in the states where they vote.

But in Marine Corps boot camp and then the front lines of the Korean War, the 18-year old saw the rigid color barriers of civilian life smashed in front of him as the military followed a mandate to end segregation of its ranks. That major social change, carried out in wartime, has echoes in today’s debate about whether to end a ban on gays serving openly.

On his first day of training, as the only black recruit among 42, Woods was stunned when an instructor ordered his platoon to treat him as an equal. They all wore green, the instructor barked, and they’d all bleed red.

A refrigerated truck from the city morgue follows Fordham Street to its stump, between a used boat dealership and a lot thick with weeds, and a high chain-link fence warning “Prison-Keep Off.” For New Yorkers who die without the money, family or identity required to get a proper funeral, the dock just beyond is the boarding point for a seven-minute journey to oblivion.

The destination is Hart Island, 101 acres of wind-swept sand and trees crooked in the waters a half-mile off the Bronx, like a beckoning finger.

Leaders of Jemez Pueblo have banned trick-or-treating on Halloween, saying it’s a safety concern for children walking near unlit roads at night and a holiday that’s not part of pueblo culture.

Pueblo leaders say anyone trick-or-treating on tribal land will be sent home, and suggest parents who want their children to participate take them elsewhere.