Evening Edition

The blast targetted riot police patrolling the busy Taksim Square in the centre of Turkey’s economic capital, police chief Huseyin Capkin said.

“We think it was a suicide attack,” he said, adding that the bomb had gone off before the bomber reached his target.

“I am confident in the results of today’s vote,” Rousseff, 62, told reporters as she cast her ballot in her southern home city of Porto Alegre.

But her rival, Jose Serra, the former state governor of Sao Paulo, insisted the results would only be known when the last polls closed at 2100 GMT.

Long lines of voters snaked around polling stations even before they opened in the main city Abidjan and in Bouake, the northern stronghold of former rebel forces, as people openly relished the opportunity to vote.

In some areas in Abidjan, the country’s biggest city and home to a third of the nearly six million electorate, polling stations were late in opening and voters complained about a lack of transport but the mood remained buoyant. Polls closed about 5:00 pm (1700 GMT).

More than 73 million people — a record for the extravaganza — visited displays by 189 countries during the half-year culture and technology showcase that brought snapshots of the world to ordinary Chinese.

“The success of the Expo has strengthened China’s confidence and resolve to pursue reform and opening up,” Wen told a forum at the Expo attended by Chinese and international officials on the final day.

The two, along with fast bowler Mohammad Asif, were provisionally suspended by the ICC over allegations they were involved in spot-fixing during Pakistan’s summer tour of England.

All three appealed, but Asif later withdrew his application.

No organization has claimed responsibility, officials said, though the city has been targeted in the past by Kurdish separatist militants and al Qaeda, as well as militants from Turkey’s far-left.

Istanbul police chief Huseyin Capkin said a man had approached police stationed at the square before blowing himself up. Television footage immediately after the explosion appeared to show police firing warning shots and people fleeing in panic.

Rousseff, a left-leaning former energy minister, enjoyed a double-digit lead over her centrist opponent, Jose Serra of the PSDB party, in all major polls leading up to the runoff vote.

An election-day exit poll by Ibope polling firm showed Rousseff with 57 percent of the vote compared to 43 percent for Serra, Folha de S.Paulo newspaper said on its website. It did not say it how it obtained the information.

Satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, hosts of late-night cable TV shows, poked fun at politicians and media for stoking partisan fervor.

Performing in front of the Capitol building, the pair were joined by crooner Tony Bennett, rocker Ozzy Osbourne, singer Sheryl Crow, and British musician Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, who was refused entry to the United States in 2004 for alleged ties to Islamic extremism.

Making his way through a four-state tour, Obama implored Democratic voters to show up in large numbers. Polls show his party is likely to lose control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans and see its Senate majority weakened.

“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 of years can be rolled back,” Obama told cheering campaign volunteers at his first stop in Philadelphia.

“I put down my pad,” said Girsky, a banker brought in by the United Auto Workers union to report on GM’s finances. “I turned to my wife and said, ‘Remember this night. This is the night we figured out GM’s going out of business.'”

Two weeks later, the same realization was sinking in across America as the chief executives of GM, Ford and Chrysler — and the head of the UAW — flew to Washington to ask Congress for an unprecedented bailout. By November 2008, GM was on a path to become “Government Motors,” with the U.S. Treasury its majority shareholder.

Republicans said it was too little and too late, confident their party will pick up more than 40 House seats and regain the majority they lost four years ago. Republican control of the Senate seems less likely, although they expect to gain several seats there, as well as numerous governors’ seats.

Obama, bracing for perhaps one of the biggest midterm setbacks in recent times, made a four-state weekend sprint to help embattled Democrats as best he can. He said their chances are good if their supporters turn out heavily on Tuesday.

It’s really pretty much up to President Barack Obama.

Despite the punishment his fellow Democrats are expected to take from voters, Obama has shown no sign of retreating from his insistence that families and small businesses with incomes above $250,000 return to higher, Bill Clinton-era tax levels starting Jan. 1.

That could start a shift toward more reliable – and expensive – forms of birth control that are gaining acceptance in other developed countries.

But first, look for a fight over social mores.

A former Afghan official said the meeting in Kabul included an ex-Taliban governor, Maulvi Abdul Kabir. He comes from the same Zadran tribe as the leaders of the Haqqani network, an autonomous wing of the Taliban responsible for many attacks against U.S. and Afghan forces, the former official said over the weekend.

U.S. and Afghan officials hope that if Kabir agrees to quit the insurgency, it could split the Zadran tribe and undercut the pool of recruits from which the Haqqanis currently draw fighters. But it was unclear whether any progress toward that end was made during the talks.

The attack in Taksim Square, which was followed by police gunfire and sent hundreds of panicked people racing for cover, coincided with the possible end of a unilateral cease-fire by Kurdish rebels, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility. Turkey, a NATO ally that has deployed troops in a noncombat role in Afghanistan, is also home to cells of radical leftists and Islamic militants.

Istanbul police chief Huseyin Capkin said the bomber tried but failed to get into a parked police van and detonated the bomb just outside the vehicle, blowing himself to pieces. Riot police are routinely stationed at Taksim, a popular spot for street demonstrations that abuts a major pedestrian walkway whose shops and restaurants are usually packed.

Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman, 87-year-old Israelis, are devoting their final years to trying to preserve the memory of the 875,000 people systematically murdered in a one-year killing spree at the height of World War II. Almost all of them were Jews.

Only 67 people are known to have survived the camp, fleeing in a brazen revolt shortly before Treblinka was destroyed. Following the recent death of a prominent chronicler, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial says the two Israeli men are now the final living link to one of the most notorious death camps in human history.

But tough new pollution standards proposed by the Obama administration could require additional dioxin cleanups at scores of abandoned factories, military bases, landfills and other locations declared safe years ago, officials say.

If the guidelines receive final approval, federal and state officials will examine sites with known dioxin contamination to identify those needing work and what the work will cost. Among those expected to be reviewed are notorious places such as the former village of Times Beach, Mo., where about 2,000 people were relocated in the 1980s after dioxin-laced waste oil was sprayed on roads to control dust.

The Rangers, behind emerging October ace Colby Lewis, came home and threw themselves the biggest tailgate party of them all, beating San Francisco 4-2 on Saturday night and cutting the Giants’ Series edge to 2-1.

Longhorns, Aggies, Horned Frogs – sorry. This was a night to celebrate baseball.

The Secret Word today is: Comeback. Pee-wee has returned from exile.

Paul Reubens, who virtually abandoned the cult character he created nearly two decades ago following scandal, is making his Broadway debut with a reworking of the same theatrical show that started Pee-wee’s career in the late 1980s.

The Nevada Day Parade, part of three-day state holiday, is one politicians rarely miss, especially in an election year.

Reid, the Democratic majority leader, strolled the back streets before the festivities began Saturday, talking to entrants as they assembled. He watched the parade from along Carson City’s main drag.

The Globo television network’s poll indicates that Rousseff leading centrist rival Jose Serra, 58 percent to 42 percent.

The poll by the Ibope institute interviewed 54,400 people across Brazil and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent.

Signals for all stations and cable channels were restored before the first pitch of Game 3 of the World Series between the Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants, said Fox, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

“In the absence of any meaningful action from the FCC, Cablevision has agreed to pay Fox an unfair price for multiple channels of its programming including many in which our customers have little or no interest,” Cablevision said.

“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.

Tying the vote to nostalgia and obligation, black pastors invoked the civil rights movement and Obama’s historic 2008 victory. At Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta – the spiritual home of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. – the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock warned attendees that not voting would be nothing short of a sin.

“Go to the polls Tuesday in the name of our ancestors,” Warnock said to cheering listeners who rose to their feet. “Know that your ballot is a blood-stained ballot. This is a sacred obligation.”

One major showing of faith: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has poured more than $160,000 into the race, most of that late as candidate Scott McAdams has worked to convince independents and on-the-fence Democrats that he can beat U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and GOP primary winner and tea party favorite Joe Miller. Murkowski is running as a write-in candidate.

“We believe that Scott McAdams actually has a real chance of winning this race. Mr. Miller has obviously plummeted because it’s about ideology versus about Alaska,” Sen. Robert Menendez, of New Jersey, said Sunday on ABC.

Generational differences appear to play a prominent role in whether soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors are worried about repealing the policy that has barred gays from serving openly since 1993 but faces a possible court-ordered end. Generation may also influence how a change is implemented, if the courts or Congress ultimately lift the ban.

“Younger soldiers wouldn’t have a problem with it, but older soldiers are the ones that enforce Army regulations,” noted Jason Ashley, 43, a former Army first sergeant who served with the 101st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell, Ky.