Evening Edition

Pakistan’s Taliban swiftly claimed responsibility for what was a rare attack on government security forces in Karachi, a politically-tense city of 16 million in the south, far removed from militant strongholds in the northwest.

Karachi is Pakistan’s economic capital, home to its stock exchange and the Arabian Sea port where NATO supplies dock to be trucked overland to support the more than 150,000 US-led troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

A session where lawmakers chose a new parliamentary speaker and re-elected President Jalal Talabani, who subsequently pledged to nominate incumbent Nuri al-Maliki as the country’s prime minister, was overshadowed by a dispute which prompted a major Sunni-backed bloc to storm out of the chamber.

Immediately following the selection of Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni Arab, as speaker, the Iraqiya bloc to which he belongs began complaining that the deal they had signed was not being honoured.

The deal, clinched late on Wednesday night after three days of high-pressure talks between the rival factions, sees Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, set to return for a second term, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, likely to retain the presidency and a Sunni Arab MP poised to be elected as speaker of parliament.

It also establishes a new statutory body to oversee security as a sop to former prime minister Iyad Allawi, who had held out for months to take the premiership from Maliki after his mainly Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc won narrowly more seats in the March election.

The United States, striving to recover from its worst economic crisis in decades, locked horns anew with exporting giants China and Germany over a plan to rebalance skewed trade between deficit and surplus countries.

President Barack Obama, grafting to salvage a deal at the G20 after suffering an economy-linked drubbing in US elections last week, said his administration wanted to boost growth via “prudent” economic policies.

“We greatly fear a flare-up in the capital which would be serious given the conditions in the camps,” Doctor Claude Surena, president of the Haitian Medical Association, told AFP.

Haitian authorities have been warned to expect a whole different scale of disaster if cholera takes hold in Port-au-Prince, much of which was flattened by a January earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people.

The outbreak erupted in the Artibonite River valley in central Haiti in mid-October and initially seemed to have been contained, but the toll from the chronic diarrheal disease has since soared to 643 dead and just under 10,000 people being treated in hospital.

Some 115 cases and a first death have been confirmed in Port-au-Prince, while reports came in from northern Haiti of villagers on foot dying on the way to hospital and taxi drivers too scared to help.

It was the first budget negotiation since the EU’s Lisbon Treaty came into force last December, handing the parliament decision-making powers on par with governments, but member states refused to budge.

Drastic cuts to national spending have emboldened states to clip the directly-elected body’s new-found wings.

The country is currently in a race against the clock to sort out the problems of its top sports management before the 2014 Winter Olympics in its southern city of Sochi.

Russia’s new winter sports season has been marked by a massive revamp. Almost every winter sports federation in the country has invited foreign coaches and managers to boost their teams’ performance for the 2014 Games.

Boeing announced the decision after a fire aboard a test plane on Tuesday forced an emergency landing.

At a news conference in Seattle in the western US state of Washington, Boeing spokeswoman Loretta Gunter said the fire was the most serious incident since test flights began in December 2009.

Divers, aided by a crane on a boat, this month fixed into place the last pieces of “The Silent Evolution”, which British artist Jason deCaires Taylor calls the largest ever underwater collection of contemporary sculpture.

Some statues are naked, one is pregnant, an old man grimaces and a small child turns her head up toward the sun dancing on the surface of the Caribbean sea, as long hairs of yellow algae already cling to their faces and limbs.

“We’re restoring to Rome one of the most important symbols of the power and greatness of the Roman Empire,” Claudia Del Monte, the architect in charge of repairing the Temple of Venus and Roma, told AFP at the opening.

Designed by the Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD, the shrine occupies a large area in the Roman Forum — one of Italy’s most popular tourist sites.

Irish 10-year government bond yields jumped to 8.929 percent, the highest level since the euro was created in 1999, placing Europe’s bond markets under serious strain. Portuguese bond yields also hit historic highs on Thursday.

Amid mounting concerns over Ireland, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso insisted that the European Union was prepared to stand by the struggling eurozone nation.

The G20 hoped to use a two-day summit to recapture unity forged in the depths of the crisis two years ago in order to soothe exchange rate tensions generated by imbalances between cash-rich exporting nations and debt-burdened importers.

But even as U.S. President Barack Obama voiced confidence leaders would find a formula for more balanced and sustainable growth, negotiators squabbled over the wording of a closing statement to be issued when the summit ends on Friday.

U.S. President Barack Obama and South Korea’s Lee Myung-bak said negotiators would continue talks to address U.S. concerns that the deal does not do enough to open South Korean markets to U.S. beef and autos.

“We agreed that more time is needed to resolve detailed issues and asked trade ministers to reach a mutually acceptable deal as soon as possible,” Lee told a joint news conference with Obama on the sidelines of a G20 summit.

A pact on top government posts reached late on Wednesday brought together Shi’ites, Sunnis and Kurds in a power-sharing arrangement similar to the last Iraqi government, and could help prevent a slide back into the sectarian bloodshed that raged after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

In a sign of turbulent relations between the partners, lawmakers from the Sunni-backed Iraqiya alliance of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi walked out of the parliamentary session at which Maliki was chosen for a second term. Many Sunnis said they doubted Maliki could forge national unity.

The newspaper, Kommersant, identified the man as Colonel Shcherbakov and said he was responsible for unmasking a Russian spy ring in the United States in June whose arrests humiliated Moscow and clouded a “reset” in ties with Washington.

The betrayal would make Shcherbakov one of the most senior turncoats since the fall of the Soviet Union and could have consequences for Russia’s proud Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and its chief, former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.

Obama also urged Chinese President Hu Jintao to use his influence over Pyongyang to convince the reclusive state to refrain from provocative acts against the South.

Tensions on the peninsula sank to their lowest level in over a decade in March when the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, was torpedoed, killing 46 sailors.

European officials said they were monitoring developments in Ireland closely but denied for a second day running that Dublin was seeking financial aid, in an ominous echo of the rhetoric that preceded an EU/IMF bailout of Greece six months ago.

Unlike Greece, Ireland is fully funded through the middle of next year, meaning a liquidity crisis is not imminent.

Days after voters vented their fury over government red ink in midterm elections, commission co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson floated proposals that they said would bring $4 trillion in deficit reduction through 2020.

But their ideas might not even win the support of their own commission. Fourteen of the 18 members of the panel created by President Barack Obama must approve a final report before it can go to Congress for a vote, and some are already skeptical.

Boeing shares fell 3.1 percent to $67.07 on the New York Stock Exchange as investors pondered the likelihood of another setback to the 787 program, already nearly three years behind its original timetable.

The company, the second-largest commercial plane maker after EADS’ Airbus, said it was still investigating the fire.

The F-35, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, is the U.S. Defense Department’s costliest weapons purchase at up to $382 billion over the next two decades.

The co-heads of the deficit-reduction commission suggested canceling the F-35’s Marine Corps version. Separately, they suggested substituting Lockheed’s older F-16 and the Boeing F/A-18E for half of the Air Force’s and Navy’s planned F-35 purchases.

Maliki inched closer to a final deal to secure a second term on a day when bomb and mortar attacks targeting Christians across the Iraqi capital killed at least three people and wounded dozens of others.

After a meeting of Iraqi political leaders, a senior lawmaker from the cross-sectarian Iraqiya coalition headed by former prime minister Iyad Allawi told Reuters the bloc would join a Maliki government.

Here’s a taster from Ellen Brown, author of “Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth about our Money System”, on huffingtonpost.com in June 2009. Pointing to the fact that the FSB’s secretariat is based at the Bank for International Settlements’ headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, Brown warned that “to the wary, this is not a comforting sign. The BIS has a dark and controversial history”, and was, according to one professor she quotes, created as the apex of “a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.”

The “coup”, she argued, quoting blogger Marilyn Barnewall, lies in the fact that the United States has only one vote of 20 in the FSB. “In other words, the group will be largely controlled by European central bankers. My guess is, they will represent themselves, not you and not me and certainly not America.”

A dispute over whether China and the United States are manipulating their currencies is threatening to resurrect destructive protectionist policies like those that worsened the Great Depression. The biggest fear is that trade barriers will send the global economy back into recession.

Hopes had been high that the Group of 20, which includes wealthy nations like Germany and the U.S. and rising giants like China, could be a forum to forge a lasting global economic recovery. Yet so far, G-20 countries haven’t agreed on an agenda, let alone solutions to the problems that divide them.

The walkout underlined the Sunni minority’s reluctance over the prospective new unity government outlined in the deal, which ensures continued Shiite domination while giving Sunnis a role far short of the greater political power they seek.

Sunni support for any new government is key. The Americans had been pushing for them to have a significant role, fearing that otherwise, disillusioned Sunnis could turn to the insurgency, fueling new violence as the last of U.S. troops prepare to leave by the end of next year.

That date will be the focus of discussions later this month at a NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal, the third and largest international meeting on Afghanistan this year.

Heads of state and other officials there will talk about how to assess security and other conditions so that government security forces can begin to take control of some of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces next spring, allowing international forces to go home or move to other parts of the country.

A proposal released Wednesday by the bipartisan leaders of the commission suggested cuts to Social Security benefits, deep reductions in federal spending and higher taxes for millions of Americans to stem the flood of red ink that they say threatens the nation’s very future. The popular child tax credit and mortgage interest deduction would be eliminated.

Interest groups on the right and the left squealed, predictably, about the plan, which would cut total deficits by as much as $4 trillion over the next decade – much of it from programs long considered all but sacred.

The early competition to break through shoppers’ caution about spending promises savings for those willing to buy amid an economy that’s still worrying many. It also promises convenience. Retailers are offering deals anytime, anywhere their customers want, through websites, smart phones and Facebook.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that typically kicks off holiday shopping, is not only being marketed as “Black Friday week,” but for a growing number of stores, “Black Friday month.”

The single hair had been the only piece of physical evidence linking Claude Jones to the crime scene. But the DNA analysis found it did not belong to Jones and instead may have come from the murder victim.

Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that uses DNA to exonerate inmates and worked on Jones’ case, acknowledged that the hair doesn’t prove an innocent man was put to death. But he said the findings mean the evidence was insufficient under Texas law to convict Jones.

From halfway around the world, he admonished both friends and foes back in Washington to “tell the truth” about the pain of cutting the government’s huge spending deficits.

Here on Thursday, on a stage meant to salute triumph, Obama could not announce a free-trade pact with his ally and host, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, because negotiators had none to present them. It was an embarrassing setback given Obama’s high expectations and his desire to deliver more jobs for frustrated Americans at home.

The gang of around six gunmen managed to penetrate a high-security area of Karachi that is home to the U.S Consulate, two luxury hotels and the offices of regional leaders. While no stranger to extremist violence, Karachi has not witnessed this kind of organized assault in recent years.

It was the first major attack against a government target outside the northwestern tribal regions for several months, showing the reach of Islamist militants seeking to overthrow the U.S.-allied government despite efforts to crack down on them over the last three years.

In the past month alone, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania approved Verizon Communications Inc.’s request to quit distributing residential white pages. Residents in Virginia have until Nov. 19 to provide comments on a similar request pending with state regulators.

Telephone companies argue that most consumers now check the Internet rather than flip through pages when they want to reach out and touch someone.

Rates on fixed mortgages again fell to their lowest levels in decades this week, Freddie Mac said Thursday, after the Federal Reserve unveiled a massive bond-buying program to help spur economic growth.

That marked more than a half-year of record lows. But housing activity has still faltered.

It turns out many foreigners are pretty angry, too. They say the Fed’s $600 billion program is a scheme to give U.S. exporters an unfair edge – one that endangers the global economy.

Is it? Or is the Fed’s plan a credible way to help end a desperate jobs crisis and revitalize a still-tepid economy?

The Victoria course measures only 6,886 yards, making it one of the shortest Woods has played. Yet he found it challenging enough Thursday in the opening round of the Australian Masters that he had to make a 7-foot putt on the final hole for a 2-under 69. That left him four shots off the lead in the last tournament where he is the defending champion.

Woods hit driver only on the par 5s, a similar strategy to what he used last year in winning at Kingston Heath. He switched irons on the 257-yard opening hole to make sure he wound up just short of the green.

Home repossessions dropped 9 percent from September to October, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.

The decline represents the first significant hitch in a foreclosure steamroller that’s had lenders on pace to seize more than 1 million homes this year.

The agency issued an emergency order requiring airlines to re-examine Rolls-Royce engines on Airbus A380s and ground any planes with suspicious leaks.

The order by the European Aviation Safety Authority echoed earlier indications from investigators that a turbine disc – a heavy metal plate that holds the blades of the turbine that powers the jet – was the first piece to come apart as the Qantas jet climbed over Indonesia. It was the first official mention, however, that an oil fire could have preceded the disintegration.

It didn’t end there. Federal immigration officials stepped in because Guerra was in the country illegally, brought over from Mexico as a child. He ended up in federal immigration detention in Texas before being allowed to return to Manhattan; he’s now waiting to find out whether he’ll be shipped to a country he hasn’t seen since he was 9.

Merely being at Rikers put him on the radar of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, said Guerra, 21, who’s trying to get a college degree while awaiting word on his future. City authorities made “a mistake, and now I’m paying for their mistake,” he said. “I was living a normal life before.”

“You could say Obamacare was Romneycare before it was Obamacare,” said Joel Ario of the Office of Insurance Exchanges in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He spoke at a meeting in Chicago of the industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans.

Potential Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was persuaded by the conservative Heritage Foundation to support online insurance exchanges when he was governor of Massachusetts, Ario said. The exchanges became a key to Massachusetts’ health overhaul, which in turn became the model for nation’s law.

Lawmakers will need to get creative again if they want to accomplish anything in the next legislative session.

The November elections left the House split evenly between Democrats and Republicans and the Senate likely one vote from being deadlocked. At the same time, a former governor so famous for clashing with legislators that he was known as “Dr. No” has returned to office.

A strange but real possibility.

The president’s campaign-trail attack on Republicans as Slurpee-sipping do-nothings boomeranged on him the day after the GOP won the House majority in last week’s midterm elections. He was asked if he would have likely House Speaker John Boehner over for the slushy 7-Eleven staple, and the White House meeting next week with Congressional leaders was jokingly dubbed the “Slurpee Summit.”

For the 24th straight year, Skelton was the keynote speaker Thursday at the Veterans Day ROTC breakfast at Lincoln University. It was his first public event since the longtime Democratic Missouri congressman lost last week’s election to Republican Vicky Hartzler.

Skelton, 78, treated the speech as a political farewell, recounting how he dedicated his career to improving conditions for military troops, veterans and their families and to expanding the missions of Fort Leonard Wood, Whiteman Air Force Base and the Missouri National Guard – all based in his district.

Dr. LeRoy Carhart said he wants to open new clinics near Washington D.C. and in Council Bluffs, Iowa, while expanding operations at his existing clinic in Bellevue, Neb. and at a clinic in Indianapolis to offer other reproductive medical treatments. Late-term abortions would be offered at the clinics in the Washington D.C. area and Council Bluffs, he said.

“There’s certainly a need, and these areas are where the laws are favorable for us to do the practice that I need to do,” Carhart said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press.

But afterward, DeLay told reporters he misspoke to prosecutors during the August 2005 interview and actually didn’t know about the transaction until after it had happened.

In the audio interview, DeLay repeatedly said the money swap was legal, common practice and done by both Republicans and Democrats.

NWLC officials say they believe statistics from 2006 indicate the districts violated Title IX, the federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in federally funded education programs. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will investigate the complaints.

The school districts are Chicago; Clark County, Nev.; Columbus, Ohio; Deer Valley, Ariz.; Henry County, Ga.; Houston; Irvine, Calif.; New York City; Oldham County, Ky.; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Wake County, N.C.; and Worcester, Mass.