Evening Edition

Thomas de Maiziere said it was not immediately clear who had carried out the test, which sparked a major security alert Wednesday, but said he had had no advance knowledge of the purported exercise.

“Experts from the (German) federal police force examined the luggage on site,” De Maiziere told reporters after a security conference with interior ministers from Germany’s 16 states.

The deal means NATO leaders will set up a network of radars and interceptors forming an anti-ballistic missile shield extending over Europe and possibly linking with Russia too.

“I’m pleased to announce that for the first time, we have agreed to develop a missile defense capability that’s strong enough to cover all NATO European territory and populations, as well as the United States,” Obama said after a first session of the two-day NATO summit in Lisbon.

After nine years of war provoked by Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack, 2,200 troops killed among US-led forces, and now an open row with Kabul over tactics, NATO will deliver the closest thing yet to a withdrawal timetable.

Leaders, meeting at a complex of white steel, concrete and canvas-roofed buildings at the shores of the River Tejo, will be drawing up nothing less than the outlines of a new era for the 28-nation alliance.

Reports said the talks focused on shoring up Ireland’s crisis-hit banks, kept afloat up to now with billions of euros from the government at the cost of straining the public finances to breaking point.

The mission from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund will subject Ireland’s books to forensic analysis, looking at the reasons for the collapse of the one-time ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy.

The mission from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund will subject Ireland’s books to forensic analysis.

Reports said the focus of the talks would be on shoring up the crisis-hit banks.

Uzbek judoka Shokir Muminov was stripped of his -81kg silver medal and thrown out of the sporting showpiece after testing positive for methylhexaneamine, a stimulant used widely as a nasal decongestant.

“The athlete has been disqualified from the competition as well as these Games and his performance in the competition has been nullified,” said Dr. Mani Jegathesan, chairman of the Olympic Council of Asia’s medical committee.

Wannabe wizards converged on the Big Apple from all over the United States for the fourth annual Quidditch World Cup.

Even if they couldn’t fly, and even if the winged, golden “snitch” ball from the books was reincarnated as an earthbound student wearing yellow, competition was every bit as fierce as in the mega-selling J.K. Rowling series.

Organizers had urged people to vent their anger at the United Nations and the Haitian authorities in a demonstration at a main square by the presidential palace, but what transpired was more like urban guerrilla warfare.

Tear gas filled the air and sporadic gunfire could be heard as gangs took to the streets of the quake-ravaged capital, blocking roads with barricades of burning tires and dumpsters full of rotten garbage.

Stone-throwing youths raced Thursday through the rubble-strewn streets of fetid camps built for earthquake survivors as UN peacekeepers in armored trucks fired tear gas on the crowds in running clashes that lasted several hours.

Sporadic gunfire echoed through the quake-ravaged streets of the capital as demonstrators blocked roads with burning tires and dumpsters overflowing with rotting garbage.

“Given the serious overfishing that has happened in the past, we need to rebuild the stocks as rapidly as possible,” said Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The 48-member International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), convening in Paris through November 27, sets the rules and catch limits for Atlantic fisheries, and monitors compliance.

“Today, one of the toughest tales of the recession took another big step towards becoming a success story,” Obama said shortly after GM completed its first day on the stock market in 18 months.

Amid GM’s skyrocketing debt and plummeting sales, Obama forced the company into bankruptcy protection in June 2009, while taking the deeply unpopular decision to up the company’s bailout to almost 50 billion dollars.

Football’s governing body FIFA barred OFC executive committee member Ahongalu Fusimalohi from football for three years and fined him 10,000 Swiss francs (10,000 dollars) following an investigation into the claims.

The OFC’s president Reynald Temarii was also banned for a year and told AFP after hearing the FIFA inquiry’s findings — handed down in Zurich on Thursday — that he too planned an appeal.

As another NATO soldier fell to an Afghan bomb attack, taking the toll for this year to 654, leaders began a two-day summit in Lisbon dominated by war in Afghanistan and planning new defences against future foes.

“We will take decisions which will frame the future of our alliance,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the leaders of the 28 allies.

Around 150 of the Roman Catholic Church’s 203 cardinals took part in the Vatican meeting organised by Pope Benedict XVI, where they also debated the issue of religious freedom and conversions of Anglicans to Catholicism.

The closed-door meeting was referred to by the Vatican as “a day of prayer and reflection” on the challenges facing the Church. Talks on “the Church’s response to sexual abuse cases” were expected to start at 1600 GMT.

Police said the explosion at the coal mine on the South Island’s west coast appeared to have crippled the mine’s ventilation system but locals said they were were drawing hope from the rescue of 33 miners in Chile last month.

Two miners survived the blast at the Pike River coal mine but there had been no contact with any others, the mining company’s chief executive said.

Police at the scene said up to 10,000 people filled the upmarket shopping zone that the Reds occupied earlier this year with their campaign for snap elections.

Red Shirts, many wearing their trademark colour and waving banners, lit candles to commemorate those killed in the unrest.

A top Iranian official lashed out at Britain as the “United Kingdom of devils,” North Korea’s representative said his country would not change its much-condemned actions, while Myanmar’s ambassador called the vote “seriously flawed.”

Opposition from China and other nations failed to stop the resolutions from passing with strong majorities.

Europe’s single currency fell back late in the day and the risk premium investors demand to buy Irish debt instead of benchmark German bonds remained high as optimism about an aid deal was tempered by a sense the crisis is far from over.

A poll of participants at a high-level banking congress in Frankfurt showed nearly three quarters believe the turmoil that has shaken Europe’s currency bloc for much of the past year would rage on even after an Irish rescue, ensnaring other financially weak countries like Portugal.

Bernanke, facing a chorus of protests about the asset-buying spree from within and outside the central bank, said a more vigorous U.S. economy was essential to fuel the global recovery and dismissed charges he was debasing the dollar.

“The best way to continue to deliver the strong economic fundamentals that underpin the value of the dollar, as well as to support the global recovery, is through policies that lead to a resumption of robust growth in a context of price stability in the United States,” Bernanke told a conference at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

Some NATO and Pentagon officials have expressed doubt that the 2014 deadline can be achieved because of the rising threat posed by Taliban insurgents to Afghanistan’s weak government.

But NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he believed it was a realistic goal and one that would allow the military alliance to focus on training Afghan troops.

But some senior NATO and Pentagon officials have expressed doubt that the 2014 deadline for a security handover can be achieved, with the threat posed by Taliban insurgents to Afghanistan’s weak government rising.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Lisbon before a NATO summit that the United States and the military alliance had listened to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who set the 2014 goal, and were addressing his concerns.

NATO leaders gathered in Lisbon for a summit on Friday where the transition from foreign forces — now at about 150,000 — to Afghan security responsibility will be at the top of the agenda, with leaders to discuss a 2014 target date set by Kabul.

Few Afghans in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, Taliban strongholds where fighting remains fiercest, know why foreign troops are in Afghanistan, says the “Afghanistan Transition: Missing Variables” report to be released later on Friday.

The troops would be additional to the 8,000 former rebel troops and government military police jointly deployed throughout the country for the first round, Colonel Rene Sako, army operations chief, told Reuters in an interview Friday, and a rebel spokeswoman confirmed the plan.

The first round passed off peacefully, putting President Laurent Gbagbo just in the lead with 38 percent of the vote, meaning he will face opposition challenger Alassane Ouattara, who got 32 percent, in the run-off.

The apparent refusal by the army to use force against fellow soldiers raises doubts about how much control President Andry Rajoelina still retains over the same military that helped bring him to office in a March 2009 power-grab.

Early on Friday, the government warned civilians in the barracks and residents nearby to leave, while schools close to the camp by the international airport were evacuated.

Police in Namibia, a former German colony bordering South Africa, confirmed it was an explosive simulation training device manufactured by a U.S. company. They named the company as Larry Copello Inc and said it had confirmed it made the product.

The company’s owner, Larry Copello, said by telephone from his office in California that the bag was indeed made by his firm. “Yes, it’s ours,” he told Reuters.

Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former vice president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is the most senior political leader to be put on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) so far.

His case will be the court’s first chance to judge whether a leader, who might not have directly ordered or committed violence, can still be held responsible for atrocities. The case focuses on sexual crimes.

As some of the automaker’s newest models lined up outside of the New York Stock Exchange, GM shares began trading on the floor of the Big Board to the sound of a revving Camaro engine, taking the place of the traditional opening bell.

Close to 220 million shares had traded by the market close, more than triple the amount of trading in Citigroup Inc, the next most actively traded stock. GM shares also traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

“He wanted us to give him a list of what our other concerns were,” Representative Michael Michaud, a Maine Democrat, told Reuters after he and eight other lawmakers met with Obama.

Obama said he “is willing to go over that list and see which ones they agree with, and the ones that they do (agree with) they’ll try (to pursue) when they continue the negotiations with the Koreans,” the Maine Democrat said.

The comments by the 65-year-old Nobel peace laureate, in an interview with Reuters six days after her release from house arrest, were the strongest yet illustrating her intention and desire to engage the junta to bring about democratic reforms.

“We have not ruled out cooperation with military,” she said.

The red-shirted protesters will gather in the same shopping district they occupied during the April to May unrest that killed 91 people and wounded at least 1,800 in the worst political violence in modern Thai history.

But the lack of clear leadership among the “red shirts” makes a prolonged protest this time unlikely, especially with memories still fresh of a May 19 crackdown that ended with a night of rioting in which more than 30 buildings were set ablaze

Major banks admitted sloppy documentation to a House of Representatives’ subcommittee but said they had taken steps to tighten procedures and that the basis of their foreclosures has been accurate.

Federal regulators said they learned of the problems from news reports but are now actively reviewing banks’ work and plan to issue their findings in January.

The indictments of former employees Jo Ann “Jodi” Crupi, 49, and Annette Bongiorno, 62, brings to eight the number of people criminally charged since the December 2008 revelation of Madoff’s multibillion-dollar decades-long fraud.

Hours after the two women were arrested at their homes, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara hinted at more arrests and criminal charges in the case. The fraud shook investor confidence in market regulators who missed Madoff’s epic swindle despite repeated warnings.

The moves end days of hand-wringing by Democrats to find a common strategy before a December 31 deadline for expiration of tax cuts for nearly all Americans and a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives next year.

A clash over taxes augurs badly for any chance that the two parties will work together after this month’s elections on major issues like cutting the budget deficit and creating jobs.

Rattner separately settled a related U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil lawsuit, agreeing to pay $6.2 million and accept a two-year ban from working with an investment adviser or broker-dealer.

The former investment banker led the federal government’s auto task force that oversaw the restructuring and bankruptcy of General Motors Co.

The deal will resolve an overwhelming majority of the lawsuits over the city’s failure to provide protective equipment to the army of construction workers, police officers and firefighters who spent months clearing and sifting rubble after Sept. 11.

Among the thousands who sued, claiming that soot at the site got into their lungs and made them sick, more than 95 percent eligible for the settlement agreed to take the offer. Only 520 said no or failed to respond.

Saying Election Day victories gave them a mandate to curb spending, Republicans formally agreed last week to a two-year prohibition of earmarks, legislative provisions that funnel money to lawmakers’ favorite projects. President Barack Obama has said he, too, wants to restrict earmarks, though he defended some as helping communities.

“I am proud that House and Senate Republicans have united to end the earmark favor factory,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., a leader in the drive to stop the practice.

On another major issue, Obama and the allies are expected to announce plans on Saturday to begin handing off security responsibility in Afghanistan to local forces next year and to complete the transition by the end of 2014.

That end date is three years beyond the time that Obama has said he will start withdrawing U.S. troops, and the challenge is to avoid a rush to the exits as public opinion turns more sharply against the war and Afghan President Hamid Karzai pushes for greater Afghan control.

A glittering week being wined, dined and oriented by the most powerful people in Washington gave way Friday to the exercise in humility that is the freshman office lottery. The most senior lawmakers get the best real estate on Capitol Hill. The freshmen get what’s left: the worst office space in Congress.

At the outset, most professed not to care what their new work spaces looked like, or how far they were from the floor of the House.

It’s clear from the photos why orbiting astronauts rate Earth-gazing as their favorite pastime.

“The Earth never disappoints,” the commander of the International Space Station, Douglas Wheelock, said in a broadcast interview Thursday.

Harvard Associate Athletics Director Timothy Wheaton said in a statement this week that the noisemakers will not be allowed inside Harvard Stadium for Saturday’s game in the interest of promoting good sportsmanship – a reversal from a previous position that said the horns would be allowed on a case-by-case basis.

“It has become apparent that some individuals intend to use artificial noisemakers to both disrupt play on the field and detract from the overall fan experience for many spectators,” Wheaton said in the statement issued Tuesday.

The size of the U.S. delegation, larger than previously known, and the fact that it traveled all the way to France for two days of talks with police officers and other officials from at least three European countries where Armstrong and some of his teammates have competed, trained and lived, was in itself an indication of the importance of the snowballing probe, European officials said.

One European participant said he’d been expecting to meet no more than two or three people at Interpol’s high-security compound in the south-central French city of Lyon. He was surprised to be ushered into a conference room where at least a half-dozen American officials were arrayed across the table.

Standing next to Obama to address the media after the two met privately, Portugal’s president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, complained that the level of U.S. investment in his country is “far from what you would expect.”

He said Portuguese trade and exports to the U.S. also were far from where they could be.

In a speech in Germany, he argued that Congress must help support the Fed’s program with further stimulus aid. And he issued a stern warning to China, saying it and other emerging nations are putting the global economy at risk by keeping their currencies artificially low.

Bernanke made the remarks Friday at a banking conference in Frankfurt.

On the firing line was Ireland’s prized low business tax, which the government says has lured 1,000 multinationals to Ireland over the past decade – but which it may have to give up to satisfy conditions of being rescued.

The Irish rescue is the latest act in Europe’s yearlong drama to prevent mounting debts and deficits from overwhelming the weakest members of the 16-nation eurozone. Greece was saved from bankruptcy in May, and analysts say Portugal could be next in line after Ireland for an EU-IMF lifeboat.

Two dazed and slightly injured miners stumbled to the surface hours after the blast shot up the 354-foot- (108-meter-) long ventilation shaft at the Pike River mine on Friday. Video from the scene showed blackened trees and light smoke billowing from the top of the rugged mountain where the mine is located, near Atarau on New Zealand’s South Island.

A company official had earlier said that five men had come out of the mine, based on information provided by the two men who had surfaced. By Saturday morning, however, officials had seen no sign of the other three men.

Even Cold War dissidents Andrei Sakharov and Lech Walesa were able to have their wives collect the prizes for them. Myanmar democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi’s award was accepted by her 18-year-old son in 1991.

But China’s clampdown on Liu’s relatives means the Nobel medal and diploma likely won’t be handed out for the first time since 1936, when Adolf Hitler prevented German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from accepting the prize.

Who gets praise? Simon Cowell, for one. Barack Obama? Unsurprisingly, not so much – she accuses him of “a stark lack of faith in the American people,” among many other things.

“America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag,” which has been billed as a tribute to American values, comes out Nov. 23. The Associated Press purchased a copy.

Saudi authorities have transformed the look of Mecca, Islam’s most sacred city, and are planning even more dramatic change in years to come. But much of the change has catered to high-end pilgrims, and critics say what is supposed to be an austere spiritual ritual bringing Muslims closer to God has turned into a luxury expedition for some.

Samir Barqah, a guide who runs tours of the historic city in Mecca, says luxury towers are turning Mecca into Manhattan.

Rumblings in Washington by the resurgent Republican Party against Senate ratification of the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty raise doubts about a fragile U.S.-Russian rapprochement – the “reset” that has been a centerpiece of President Obama’s diplomacy.

An unraveling of ties, which hit post-Cold War lows during the administration of George W. Bush, would erode global stability at a time of burgeoning security threats and harm international efforts to stem the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

If you’re like Elnora Cooper, nothing.

“I’m not eating the bag … and I’m not going to get rid of it,” Cooper, 68, said with a chuckle after walking out of a Wegmans Food Markets store in Rochester this week with a reusable bag under her arm.

“This is the start. It’s the turnaround. It’s what’s happened because of doing the right things,” said Mike Green, a local union president in Lansing, Mich., whose family includes four generations of GM workers. “But you can’t just sit back and rely on it. You’ve got to keep doing the right things day in and day out.”

A little more than 18 months ago, Michigan watched in shock as the unthinkable happened: GM filed for bankruptcy protection and was rescued with a $50 billion infusion from taxpayers. The state cringed as GM was mocked as “Government Motors” and its leadership replaced with industry outsiders.

No, not Sarah – though he hopes she’ll be the next president. He means daughter Bristol, on “Dancing with the Stars.”

The 20-year-old Palin’s improbable run to next week’s finals – championed by websites like DuJan’s Hillbuzz.org – has led to such an uproar that conspiracy theories are floating, some fans are insisting they’ll never watch again, and a Wisconsin man actually shot up his television, apparently in disgust over Palin’s dancing.

But that was long ago.

When Braun launches a campaign for Chicago mayor on Saturday, she’ll have to reintroduce herself to many voters, including some who weren’t even born the last time she won an election.

Yet as he veers into these political debates, Bernanke may be putting at risk the Fed’s strongest tools – its credibility and independence.

Bernanke has been under fire since Nov. 3, when the Fed announced a bold plan to buy $600 billion in Treasury bonds. The bond purchases are intended to lower long-term interest rates, lift stock prices and encourage higher spending to energize the weak economy.

The University of Illinois researcher has begun a years-long project that includes plenty of wild grape tasting – much of it not pleasant.

“After a while you get sore tongues because you taste a lot of acidic grapes,” Shoemaker said. “You spit out an awful lot of grapes you don’t like.”

Republicans are expected to block the plan, leaving both sides back at square one as they try to negotiate a deal to spare families at every income level from a big tax increase in January.

Democratic officials said Obama did not embrace a particular approach to the tax cuts in his Oval Office meeting with Democratic leaders. He indicated he wanted to wait for a meeting with Democratic and Republican leaders on Nov. 30 before staking out a position.

Some ex-members have grown impatient with efforts by the Rev. Jynona Norwood over the decades to erect a 36-foot-long stone wall, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, at the Oakland cemetery where more than more than 400 unidentified and unclaimed victims are buried.

Those planning the new and competing memorial include Jim Jones Jr., an adopted son of the temple leader. Jones told The Associated Press it’s time to move forward with an alternative monument – four large stone slabs that would be sunk flat on the grassy mass grave site overlooking San Francisco Bay.

Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in Washington that the administration will continue to rely on a combination of civilian courts and military tribunals to handle terrorism cases.

His comments came a day after Ahmed Ghailani was acquitted in federal court in New York on all but one of more than 280 charges that he took part in the al-Qaida bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The twin attacks in 1998 killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

Obama’s two days of diplomacy in Lisbon, Portugal, will be framed by back-to-back summits: one with the North American Treaty Organization and then a joint U.S.-European Union gathering. He was scheduled to leave Washington late Thursday.

But it’s Obama’s agenda – from the future of the Afghanistan war to disputes over currency and trade – that will be in the international spotlight at a time when he’s been weakened at home by his party’s defeats in the midterm elections and rebuffed abroad by world leaders.

Federal law allows airports to opt for screeners from the private sector instead. The push is being led by a powerful Florida congressman who’s a longtime critic of the Transportation Security Administration and counts among his campaign contributors some of the companies who might take the TSA’s place.

Furor over airline passenger checks has grown as more airports have installed scanners that produce digital images of the body’s contours, and the anger intensified when TSA added a more intrusive style of pat-down recently for those who opt out of the full-body scans. Some travelers are using the Internet to organize protests aimed at the busy travel days next week surrounding Thanksgiving.