Evening Edition

Ireland in turn showed little sign of going along with its European Union peers, with possible conditions on any aid package hitting a raw nerve in Dublin over its right to make policy and set crucial tax levels.

For the EU’s Belgian presidency, it was a matter of when Ireland, one of the EU’s greatest beneficiaries in the past, would give way, rather than if.

European Union economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn said the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund would work on a programme for Ireland “with an accent on restructuring its banking sector.”

Rehn said after a meeting of eurozone finance ministers that Dublin had “committed” to come under a bigger umbrella after bond yields from Ireland and other weak euro economies went haywire amid frenzied speculation over recent weeks.

The high-profile EU/IMF mission will seek an “intensive engagement” to try and stabilise the nation’s deeply troubled banking sector, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said Wednesday.

The delegation will kick off talks with the government amid domestic concern that any bailout could force it to ramp up Ireland’s low corporate tax that had helped fuel its economic boom before the financial crisis erupted.

Hours after eurozone finance ministers vowed to act to protect the stability of the single currency area, Britain announced that it also stood ready to rally to its neighbour’s side although Dublin has yet to ask for any money.

“Ireland is our closest neighbour. And it’s in Britain’s national interest that the Irish economy is successful and we have a stable banking system,” British finance minister George Osborne told reporters ahead of a meeting with European Union counterparts in Brussels.

“He will plead not guilty,” a lawyer for Viktor Bout, 43, said in a New York federal court.

Judge Shira Scheindlin then ordered Bout to remain in detention until a hearing set for January 10. Bout faces a maximum penalty of life in prison and minimum of 25 years if found guilty.

Sean McGurk, the acting director of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), described Stuxnet in testimony before a US Senate committee as a “game-changer.”

Stuxnet, which was detected in July, has “significantly changed the landscape of targeted cyberattacks,” McGurk told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

In what could now be the largest initial public offering in world history, a reinvigorated GM plans to sell 478 million shares, netting close to 23 billion dollars in the expected flotation Thursday.

Amid stronger-than-anticipated investor demand the firm — once at the epicenter of US manufacturing — has gradually ramped up its expected windfall from 26 dollars per share to as much as 33 dollars in the hours before the sale.

The government promised it would “improve” subsidies for poor families and ordered officials to ensure adequate supplies of key products such as vegetables, grain and coal and other energy supplies.

The government “will take temporary intervention measures when necessary” on key products, said a statement issued after a meeting of the State Council chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao.

Burning tires wafted thick black smoke across the northern city of Cap-Haitien, where thousands of protesters went on the rampage Monday, setting a police station ablaze and threatening to torch a UN compound.

Two Haitians died in the riots, including one shot by a peacekeeper in an incident that raised fears of further unrest targeting the unpopular United Nations force, which is known by the acronym MINUSTAH.

The 10-day meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) seeks a compromise between ensuring the species’ future and salvaging a multi-billion-dollar business spread around the Mediterranean rim.

Conservationists argue that reconciliation is impossible, at least in the short term.

“No, I will not sign this kind of order because I am a socialist,” Talabani told France 24 television in an interview.

“I feel for Tareq Aziz, because he’s an Iraqi Christian, and he’s also an elderly person, over 70 years old. That’s why I will never sign this execution order.”

A team from the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank will travel to Ireland on Thursday to examine what measures may be needed if Dublin decides to seek aid, euro zone finance ministers said.

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen emphasized that the mission would look at what assistance Ireland might require, again rejecting suggestions his government was discussing a bailout.

With attention focusing on the security transition from foreign forces to Afghans over the next four years, newly appointed French Defense Minister Alain Juppe called Afghanistan “a trap for all the parties involved.

Afghanistan will be among the priorities for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leaders when an annual summit begins on Friday, with the pace and scope of troop withdrawals at the top of their agenda.

As the busy holiday travel period approaches, senators at a hearing on Wednesday complained to Transportation Security Administrator John Pistole about the tougher screening which entails a patdown or highly detailed body imaging.

“I’m wondering why I got both a few weeks ago. I did use my Senate I.D. and was subjected to both,” Republican Senator Mike Johanns said during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing. “Now, I didn’t object to going through the advanced imaging.”

Steps to cool demand in China, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, could weigh on global markets at a time when recoveries in Europe and the United States remain fragile.

To begin with, the State Council, or cabinet, said it would aim to increase the supply of commodities, especially food, that have driven inflation to a 25-month high, while also clamping down on speculative demand that has lifted prices higher.

Interim findings from the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council attribute the massive spill to workers’ decisions to move ahead with temporary abandonment of BP’s doomed Macondo well despite warning signs from a key test of well integrity.

“The various failures mentioned in this report indicate the lack of a suitable approach for anticipating and managing the inherent risks, uncertainties … associated with deepwater drilling,” the report said.

Altman, 64, is a veteran of both Washington and Wall Street, steeped in the ways of politics and finance and potentially able to act as a bridge to the private sector that business observers say the Obama White House badly needs.

Summers’ replacement will also play an important role in helping Obama find new ways to stimulate a sluggish economy after voters punished the president’s fellow Democrats in November 2 congressional elections for stubbornly high unemployment and government deficits.

She defeated moderate Democratic Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, 150-43, in secret balloting in a lengthy closed-door gathering of House Democrats in the Capitol.

Pelosi, 70, overcame a rebellion from party centrists, and even some fellow liberals, who argued that the party needs to offer a new face of leadership after losing at least 60 House seats on Nov. 2. She remains popular among the liberals who dominate the party’s House caucus. But Shuler’s level of support – plus an earlier 129-68 vote against postponing the election that Pelosi wanted to wrap up quickly – underscored the degree of discontent in a party that Pelosi had largely bent to her will in the past four years.

The victory completes a remarkable comeback for the Republican after her humiliating loss in the GOP primary to Joe Miller.

Her victory became clear when Alaska election officials confirmed they had only about 700 votes left to count, putting Murkowski in safe territory to win re-election. Murkowski is flying back from Washington to Alaska on Wednesday to make an “exciting announcement,” proclaiming in an e-mail to supporters that the campaign “made history.”

The pact is a top foreign policy priority for Obama. It would shrink the U.S. and Russian arsenals of strategic warheads, and revive on-the-ground inspections that ceased when a previous treaty expired nearly a year ago.

Sen. Jon Kyl, a leading Republican voice on the issue, dealt the pact a major setback Tuesday by coming out against a vote this year. Kyl, who’s been seeking more money and focus on maintaining and modernizing the remaining arsenal, said more time was needed before moving forward.

“We are the most excited we have been in decades,” said Dr. Christopher Cannon of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who led the study of the novel drug for Merck & Co. “This could really be the next big thing.”

The drug, anacetrapib (an-uh-SEHT’-ruh-pihb), will not be on the market anytime soon. It needs more testing to see if its dramatic effects on cholesterol will translate into fewer heart attacks, strokes and deaths. Merck announced a 30,000-patient study to answer that question, and it will take several years.

Here’s what it tasted like to me: yeast, honey and – dare I say it? – a hint of manure.

The antique bubbly wasn’t very bubbly after its long sleep in the cold and murky Baltic Sea. But I couldn’t help feeling a thrill Wednesday as I took a sip of history captured in that cloudy, golden liquid.

Still a full two years away, the 2012 contests hung heavily over the Republican Governors Association’s annual conference. No fewer than four potential presidential candidates, including outgoing RGA Chairman Haley Barbour and Vice Chairman Tim Pawlenty, and a slew of GOP rising stars were among the 34 governors and governors-elect planning to attend the two-day gathering.

With 800 to 1,000 people expected, the meeting was to be the largest celebration by the political arm of the nation’s Republican governors since 1994 when the GOP posted huge gains. Two weeks ago, Republican candidates took advantage of a friendly environment to score enough victories to ensure that the party will control a majority of states – 29 – come January.

That’s the edict from a New Jersey pastor who feels the two often go together.

The Rev. Cedric Miller said 20 couples among the 1,100 members of his Living Word Christian Fellowship Church have run into marital trouble over the last six months after a spouse connected with an ex-flame over Facebook.

At a news conference, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara repeatedly responded to questions about the relations between the countries by saying Viktor Bout was brought to the United States after prosecutors successfully sought an indictment and an extradition based on evidence collected during a long-running Drug Enforcement Administration probe.

“The so-called Merchant of Death is now a federal inmate,” Bharara said after Bout was flown from Thailand to a suburban New York airport on Tuesday to face charges that he offered to sell millions of dollars of weapons to a terrorist group that wanted to kill Americans. “No one should ever think he can plot to kill Americans with impunity.”

Irish and European Union officials had vowed the day before to stabilize the banks at the center of the country’s financial crisis to restore confidence in the wider 16-nation eurozone, but fell short of agreeing on a bailout. On Wednesday, Britain – which has made savage austerity cuts to avoid a debt crisis of its own – also offered help to protect Ireland’s heavily exposed banks.

Ireland insists it does not want a bailout because it has enough money through the middle of next year and is wary of the strings attached to a rescue by the International Monetary Fund.

But Andry Rajoelina, a former disc jockey who seized power with military backing last year, appeared confident of his hold on power, even though the comments from the officers undermined the message he had hoped Wednesday’s constitutional referendum would send – that he had the people’s support. The top officers said they have had enough of Rajoelina, and of the isolation and misery the March 2009 takeover caused.

Rajoelina, speaking to reporters outside the station in the capital where he had cast his referendum vote, said the majority of the military was behind him, “and not bothered by declarations from a handful of people.”

The Cabinet promised to ease shortages of vegetables and grain that helped push up food prices by more than 10 percent in October. It promised more supplies of diesel to end fuel shortages that have disrupted trucking and industry.

The Cabinet said it was not ordering direct price controls but said they could be imposed if necessary. The statement gave no details of the subsidies or how the government would try to increase food supplies.

With the incoming House GOP majority dead set against earmarks and President Barack Obama urging a crackdown, defenders of earmarks – mostly Democrats but with a few Republicans mixed in – are swimming against a powerful tide.

Earmarking allows lawmakers to steer federal spending to pet projects in their states and districts. Earmarks take many forms. They can be road projects, improvements to home district military bases, sewer projects, economic development projects and even those Predator drone aircraft that are used to kill terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In a national address after health officials announced that the death toll from cholera had risen above 1,000, President Rene Preval said barricades were keeping people from getting needed care and admonished protesters that looting would not help stem the epidemic.

The U.N. canceled flights carrying 3 metric tons of soap along with other medical supplies and personnel to Cap-Haitien because of violence in Haiti’s north, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. Flights were also canceled to Port-de-Paix.

Michael Diaz was charged in April 2004 with two armed bank robberies in Atlanta and represented himself at his first trial, despite concerns he was delusional. He was convicted and sentenced to more than 48 years in prison, but the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the conviction.

Prosecutors told federal judges Wednesday that Diaz would only be competent to stand trial again if he was forcibly medicated. Diaz’s attorney said the drug injections could have life-threatening consequences and violate his constitutional rights.

Three years after first telling readers to pick McNuggets over Filet-O-Fish and the low-carb slice over the deep dish pizza, books in the “Eat This, Not That!” series continue to offer sometimes surprising restaurant and supermarket tips.

The latest entries: the 2011 edition of “Eat This, Not That!” and a second “Cook This, Not That!” cookbook offers lower-calorie versions of restaurant favorites like burgers and calzones. That’s 10 books and more than 6 million copies in a series that still sells like hotcakes (which readers are advised to eat with fruit on top, not sugary supermarket syrup).

DeLay’s attorneys began presenting their defense on Wednesday.

Prosecutors have called 33 witnesses and presented volumes of e-mails and other documents in their efforts to prove allegations that DeLay’s political action committee illegally channeled $190,000 in corporate donations into Texas legislative races in 2002 through a money swap.

The first gasoline-electric-powered hybrid at Lincoln dealerships, the 2011 MKZ Hybrid, has the same sticker price as the gasoline-only, 2011 MKZ – $35,180. But it’s the hybrid version of MKZ that can deliver more miles from every gallon of gas. Virtual flowers and leaves “grow” on a colorful display in the instrument cluster as feedback for fuel-efficient driving.

The newest MKZ, which is a sibling of the Ford Fusion Hybrid, also ranks as the most fuel-efficient luxury sedan in America, even topping longtime hybrid seller Lexus. The federal government fuel efficiency rating for the MKZ Hybrid is 41 miles per gallon in city driving and 36 mpg on the highway, compared with the 35/34-mpg rating given to the 2011 Lexus 250h.

About 2,200 growers and more than 700 markets have paid to participate in the program after growing frustrated that some of the produce sold at markets was actually trucked in from hundreds of miles away.

“One of the common misconceptions consumers have is that `local’ means it’s coming from the nearest farmland to their city,” said Rick Jensen, chief of inspection and compliance with the California Department of Food and Agriculture. “But you can buy stuff in Los Angeles from Kings County or from the Central Coast or from anywhere in the state.”

“Two years after your tour in the White House ended, judgments are a little more measured than they were,” said Cheney, who introduced his former boss during a groundbreaking for Bush’s presidential center in Dallas. “When the times have been tough and critics have been loud, you’ve always said you’ve had faith in history’s judgment. And history is beginning to come around.”

Cheney, who suffers from congestive heart failure, used a cane to walk but went to the podium without it. Spokesman Peter Long said later that the former vice president lost weight during his long hospital stay – about a month – and is hoping to keep it off for his health. The cane was for a bad knee from playing high school football that acts up occasionally, Long said.

John Tyner’s online account – complete with cell-phone video of the encounter – has helped fuel a campaign urging travelers to decline the body scans next week during the busiest travel day of the year.

It also raised questions about the complaints: Are Americans standing up to government overreach or simply whining about the inconvenience of air travel while insisting on full protection from terrorists?

The discipline follows nearly 10 months of protests and tension between police and black leaders over the death of Aaron Campbell, 25, who was shot in the back Jan. 29 as he ran away from police.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has called Campbell’s death an “execution.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and Rob McDuff, a Jackson attorney, filed the complaint Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Jackson on behalf of 13 plaintiffs against the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility. The Justice Department also is investigating.

“These young men live in barbaric conditions,” said Sheila Bedi, the law center’s deputy legal director. “I have done prisons conditions work for almost 10 years, this is the most violent, corrupt abusive prison I’ve come across.”