Evening Edition

US diplomats headed to foreign ministries in hopes of staving off anger if the whistleblower website puts out the leaked cables, which are internal messages that lack the niceties that diplomats generally voice in public.

The documents, the third tranche since WikiLeaks published 77,000 classified US files on the Afghan conflict in July, could affect some of the most sensitive US relationships including with Russia, Israel and Turkey.

A huge line, twice as long as earlier in the week, snaked down from the police station in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville as people waited for identification cards to allow them to vote in Sunday’s national elections.

At the head of the 18-strong presidential field are a 70-year-old academic and former first lady who could become Haiti’s first female leader, and a young technocrat plucked from obscurity to be the ruling party candidate.

Campaigning has been marred by deadly clashes between rival political factions and by anti-UN riots over the growing cholera outbreak that have raised fears of wider unrest in this desperately poor and insecure Caribbean nation.

With days to go, leading the race to succeed President Rene Preval are Jude Celestin, the ruling party candidate backed by Preval, and Mirlande Manigat, a 70-year-old former first lady who has a clear opinion poll lead.

With the cholera toll soaring past 1,600 and the number of confirmed infections approaching 70,000, candidates cranked up campaigning ahead of Sunday’s crucial vote for a successor to President Rene Preval.

The head of Haiti’s electoral registry, which signs up eligible voters and verifies their IDs on election day, voiced fears Thursday that widespread fraud could “hijack” poll results.

Security forces patrolled the entrances to the Vila Cruzeiro slum, a day after military vehicles led by six tank-like M113 armed personnel carriers for the first time penetrated the pockmarked streets run by drug traffickers.

Police said they forced the criminals to flee uphill to another slum, and claimed to have wrested control of the densely populated area back from drug gangs.

The prospect of a costly rescue for Spain’s economy, which is twice the size of that of Ireland, Greece and Portugal combined, is sowing deep concern in world financial markets.

Investors are demanding increasingly high rates in return for taking the risk of buying Spanish debt, adding to the problems faced by Madrid in raising fresh cash.

As polls closed Thursday, Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s Fianna Fail party was widely expected to lose its seat in County Donegal in northwest Ireland to the nationalist Sinn Fein party, cutting the coalition government’s majority to just two seats.

The day after Ireland published a four-year package of austerity measures designed to smooth the way towards huge loans from the EU and IMF, Cowen warned that everyone would have to tighten their belts if Ireland was to recover.

She made clear that a proposal for investors to shoulder part of the costs of national bailouts would apply only after an existing rescue scheme expired in 2013, addressing critical uncertainty behind recent market turmoil.

“There is a high degree of nervousness in the markets, and therefore I would like to make very clear here what I have often said,” Merkel said in a speech in Berlin.

With the eyes of Europe on his debt-ridden nation, Prime Minister Brian Cowen said his four-year package of cuts and tax increases would restore shattered confidence, calling it a signpost on the road to recovery.

“We can and we will pull through this as we have in the past,” Cowen told a news conference.

Both public and private sector workers joined the one-day strike, which follows similar stoppages in countries such as Greece and France, as governments are forced into unpopular cost-cutting programmes.

The head of the main UGT union, Joao Proenca, said, “It is the biggest strike ever staged,” after workers ranging from teachers, train drivers and firemen to doctors and entertainers all walked out.

Portuguese lawmakers approved the deficit-slashing spending plan in hopes the country can regain market credibility after figures showed it had made little progress in restraining expenditures this year.

As market pressure continued to mount on Portugal and Spain, Finance Minister Teixeira dos Santos said it was challenge to the entire eurozone.

Ireland’s government faced the wrath of voters in the first by-election since the banking emergency forced it to fall into the arms of the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Market pressure already is building on Spain, which has an economy twice the size of that of Ireland, Greece and Portugal combined, with investors shying away from its debt unless they receive an interest rate premium.

“No reference to an aid plan for this country has been asked for and none has been suggested,” the commission president told reporters in Paris, playing down reports that Portugal might follow Ireland in seeking a bailout.

“I think one of the problems that we have had recently has been that some political leaders have been making declarations every day instead of taking decisions,” he added, in an apparent swipe at German officials.

While the pace of the year-on-year decline eased compared to previous months, analysts on Friday said this was due to one-off effects such as a hike in cigarette prices after a tax rise that month, with weak domestic demand still haunting the economy.

Japan’s core consumer price index fell 0.6 percent in October year-on-year, compared to a 1.1 percent fall in September, as the deflation-mired economy laboured under a strong yen, which tends to harm its exporters.

The powerful lower house, dominated by Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan, overruled a vote in the opposition-controlled upper house earlier Friday against the budget, which amounts to 4.85 trillion yen.

The stimulus package, designed to ease concerns over deflation and a strong yen, includes job programmes, welfare spending and schemes to help small businesses and infrastructure.

When Feng Lanlan clinched the women’s 68kg karate title it pushed China’s total golds to 184, shattering their previous best at the Beijing Asiad in 1990, a tally no other country has reached since the Games began in 1951.

Guangzhou had already become their most dominant in terms of total medals when they marched past the 341 set in 1990.

Yang Jianli, a prominent Chinese democracy activist who is coordinating between the Nobel committee and dissidents, said all sides would keep pressing China to free wife Liu Xia from house arrest and let her travel to Oslo.

But if not, the Nobel committee is prepared to make the unprecedented gesture of setting a single empty chair on the stage during the December 10 ceremony, Yang said.

President Jalal Talabani’s nomination of Maliki, delayed to give him as much time as possible to negotiate ministerial posts, comes after a power-sharing deal between Iraq’s divided factions was sealed two weeks ago.

It gives Maliki 30 days to complete the difficult task of forming a cabinet.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, dressed in black, wiped away a tear and burnt incense at the foot of the narrow bridge, as he led the country in a national day of mourning at a short service.

Flowers and food offerings for the souls of the deceased replaced the shoes, clothing and plastic bottles that were discarded by victims and had remained as grim reminders of Monday’s disaster.

Karzai has stopped short of endorsing the outcome of September’s fraud-hit parliamentary vote, urging protesters around the country to avoid violence and file complaints through legal channels.

Election Complaints Commission (ECC) commissioner and spokesman Ahmad Zia Rafat and head of the ECC secretariat Aman Tajali have been ordered to appear before top prosecutor Mohammad Ishaq Alko, his deputy Rahmatullah Nazari said.

He also warned it could take “months” to recover the bodies of the workers who died underground in one of the country’s worst mining disasters, as the grieving mining community pleaded for the return of their loved ones.

As flags across New Zealand flew at half-mast, Key said the nation was struggling to understand the tragedy at the Pike River colliery, where miners trapped by an explosion last Friday were confirmed dead after a second blast Wednesday.

The veteran left-hander dispelled doubts over his place in the team after a lean trot to spearhead Australia’s fightback following the loss of four wickets in the post-lunch session.

When rain forced play to be abandoned at 4:45 pm (0645 GMT), Australia were 220 for five and trailing England by 35 runs with Hussey unbeaten on 81 and wicketkeeper Brad Haddin not out 22.

The euro currency dipped as low as $1.32 for the first time in over two months and shares on both sides of the Atlantic fell amid fears the currency bloc’s debt crisis could deepen further and the 85 billion euro ($113 billion) package for Ireland might not be the last.

The bloc’s woes and the seeming inability of its leaders to unite behind a plan to stem the contagion has prompted some experts to speculate the 16-nation currency area could splinter apart, but the costs of a breakup would be catastrophic and the chances are still seen as extremely slim.

Parliament adopted the budget hours after a Financial Times Deutschland report said that most euro zone countries and the European Central Bank (ECB) were pressing Lisbon to seek an international rescue package as Greece and Ireland had done.

But Prime Minister Jose Socrates said the budget’s passage, which concluded many months of political bickering that at one point threatened the government’s survival, removed Portugal from the crosshairs of the euro zone crisis.

The loss of a seat in the remote northwestern county of Donegal complicates the country’s politics even as the deeply unpopular government enters the final days of a tense negotiation for an IMF/EU bailout for its banks and budget.

In the last day of trading before the terms of the bailout are expected to be announced over the weekend, the extra yield investors demand to hold Irish debt reached a record high of nearly 7 percentage points above German bunds.

But despite investor unease continuing to push up its debt costs, the country would resist pressures to accelerate fiscal reforms, a source at the prime minister’s office said.

“Those who are taking short positions against Spain are going to be mistaken,” Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in an interview with broadcaster RAC1 radio in which he “absolutely” ruled out the need for a Greek- or Irish-style bailout.

Such tenders have been used successfully by Irish and other European banks during the financial crisis. These have allowed them to buy back bonds at a premium to their market price but at a discount to nominal value, saving them money and forcing bond investors to take a so-called “haircut.”

There was more bad news when Standard & Poor’s cut Irish banks long-term credit ratings, saying: “The stand-alone creditworthiness of the four domestically owned Irish banks has weakened.”

Country B has a huge and growing trade surplus. It is attracting a flood of international investment from global firms, building thriving hi-tech export industries. Exports grew this year by 6 percent and now amount to more than $50,000 per person. Taxes are low and staying low, and the English-speaking population is highly skilled.

Both countries are Ireland. And therein lies a tale, or rather two tales: of a domestic economy that is in tatters, side by side with a global export economy in the rudest of health.

The world’s No. 3 copper mine needs to convince more than half the unionized workers to take a $29,000 bonus offer that expires midnight Friday for the strike to legally end, but so far has won over only 14 percent of the union.

Though workers’ resistance has strengthened the union’s hand, the mine insists it has maintained operations largely unaffected and met its deliveries, setting up a battle of attrition that will continue until one side caves in.

In the first study to assess the global impact of second-hand smoke, WHO experts found that children are more heavily exposed to second-hand smoke than any other age-group, and around 165,000 of them a year die because of it.

“Two-thirds of these deaths occur in Africa and south Asia,” the researchers, led by Annette Pruss-Ustun of the WHO in Geneva, wrote in their study.

They face the challenge of translating their upbeat rhetoric into negotiating reality if the new target is not simply to join a long list of missed deadlines in the Doha talks.

Leaders of the G20 rich and emerging economies in Seoul this month called for a conclusion of the Doha round to bolster economic recovery and resist protectionism, saying 2011 offered a narrow window of opportunity for a deal. Leaders of the Asia-Pacific group APEC issued a similar call a few days later.

Vijay Nambiar, an Indian diplomat who was appointed U.N. special envoy to Myanmar earlier this year, will be the most high-profile dignitary to meet Nobel laureate Suu Kyi since her release from seven years of house arrest on November 13.

A Foreign Ministry official said Nambiar would visit “soon” but would not say whether government ministers or members of the ruling junta were prepared to meet him.

U.S. retailers, trying to squeeze every extra cent out of shoppers, are open on Thursday for Thanksgiving, trying to get a jump on the holiday shopping season.

Among the retailers that will open on Thursday are Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s U.S. discount stores, 850 of Gap Inc’s Old Navy stores as well as some of its Gap and Banana Republic stores; and Sears Holdings Corp’s namesake department stores and Kmart discount stores.

The scandal is one of the biggest to taint India, potentially harming the image of Asia’s third-largest economy as destination for foreign investors, especially as it comes a few days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has had to defend his government in another graft scandal involving telecoms licenses sold at rock-bottom prices.

The federal Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday arrested five officials from state-run listed lenders, including the chief executive of LIC Housing Finance, accused of taking bribes to facilitate large corporate loans.

The ability of Afghan troops to fight on their own is crucial to NATO’s goal of handing over control of security by the end of 2014, and will be a crucial focus when U.S. President Barack Obama reviews his Afghanistan war strategy next month.

Two of the four 500-man Afghan army battalions Canadian and U.S. forces are paired with in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, the Taliban’s spiritual home, can now operate on their own “for several hours”, the Canadian officer said.

About 1,000 trained nurses and at least 100 more doctors were urgently needed to control the epidemic, which has struck the impoverished Caribbean nation months after a destructive earthquake.

The outbreak has killed more than 1,400 Haitians in five weeks and the death toll is climbing by dozens each day.

The release of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables is expected this weekend, although WikiLeaks has not been specific about the timing. The cables are thought to include private, candid assessments of foreign leaders and governments and could erode trust in the U.S. as a diplomatic partner.

In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman, Steve Field, said Friday that the government had been told of “the likely content of these leaks” by U.S. Ambassador Louis Susman. Field declined to say what Britain had been warned to expect.

As Portugal and Spain insisted they will not seek outside help, creating an eery sense of deja-vu for investors, Europe braced for what seems inevitable – more expensive bailouts.

The Portuguese Parliament approved an unpopular debt-reducing package, including tax hikes and cuts in pay and welfare benefits. But while that helped to avoid a sharper deterioration in bond markets, the sense among analysts was that the move had only bought a little time.

Incoming GOP governors and legislative leaders across the nation insist they intend to focus initially on fiscal measures to spur the economy, cut spending and address state budget problems.

“At this point, the economy dominates everything, and until the economy is turned around and our fiscal house put in order, there’s not going to be a lot of appetite for anything else,” said Whit Ayres, a pollster in Alexandria, Va., whose firm did research for several GOP candidates in the midterm race.

About 80 federal police officers joined state police in door-to-door searches in the Vila Cruzeiro slum as 800 military troops, trained in surrounding and isolating conflict areas, stood ready in their headquarters, 12 miles (20 kilometers) away, to back them up.

The area had been taken by law enforcement just hours before during a five-hour operation using armored vehicles and assault rifles.

First word of the injury came in a statement from press secretary Robert Gibbs nearly three hours after the incident.

The White House did not initially name the person who caused the injury, but identified him later Friday as Rey Decerega, director of programs for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

She figured she could pull it off at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, too. After all, “don’t ask, don’t tell” sounded a lot like how she had gotten through her teen years.

But something changed when she arrived at West Point two years ago. She felt the sting of guilt with every lie that violated the academy’s honor code. Then, near the end of her first year, she found herself in a classroom discussion about gays in the military, listening to friends say gays disgusted them.

The current case is largely an extension of work that led to the arrest of Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam in October 2009. The Galleon investigation marked the first time that federal authorities used wiretaps in an insider trading probe.

Similarly, wiretaps led to the first arrest in the latest case. Don Ching Trang Chu, a consulting firm executive, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly providing private information about a company’s corporate earnings to a hedge fund.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen saw his own hold on power slip another notch, as his ruling Fianna Fail party lost a special election for a long-empty seat in parliament. The winner vowed to force Cowen from office before he can pass an emergency 2011 budget being demanded as part of the international rescue.

The New York-based Standard & Poor’s credit ratings agency said it was lowering Anglo Irish Bank six notches to a junk-bond B grade. It also cut the ratings on Bank of Ireland one notch to BBB+, and downgraded both Allied Irish Banks and Irish Life & Permanent one notch to BBB.

Already ravaged by exotic species such as the sea lamprey and quagga mussel, the Great Lakes soon may be invaded by Asian carp, greedy giants that suck plankton from the water with the brutal efficiency of vacuum cleaners. Scientists are unsure how much damage they would do, but a worst-case scenario has them unraveling the aquatic food web by crowding out competitors and decimating a fishing industry valued at more than $7 billion.

Nowhere is the danger greater than in Lake Erie. Although the shallowest of the five lakes, its fish populations are by far the most abundant. That’s why commercial fishing, which has faded elsewhere in much the Great Lakes region, is still alive in Canadian port towns scattered along the lake’s northern shoreline.

Marine Air Station Futenma has been located on Okinawa island since 1945, and residents have long complained it produces aircraft noise and pollution and contributes to crime in the area.

A 2006 deal between the U.S. and Japan to relocate the base to a less crowded location on Okinawa has sunk into stalemate. Public opinion in Okinawa remains opposed to the plan. The controversy even toppled a prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, earlier this year. Hatoyama quit after failing to keep a promise to move the base off Okinawa.

The 77-year-old statesman with his trademark grin, hearty laugh, portly girth and walrus-like mustache was elected to a second, four-year term in office this month and already has been thrust back into the public eye.

On Thursday, he formally asked incumbent Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to form a new government, fulfilling a key but rather symbolic duty as president. But only a week earlier, he gave an example of how he has flexed what real muscles his officially ceremonial position does have by refusing to sign off on the hanging of one of Saddam Hussein’s closest aides, Tariq Aziz.

The Fish and Wildlife Service says 251 species are candidates for endangered species protection, four more than a similar review last year found.

Environmental groups say that shows the Obama administration has done little to improve on what they consider a dismal record on endangered species under President George W. Bush.

On Friday, the U.S.-led coalition will have been fighting in this South Asian country for as long as the Soviets did in their humbling attempt to build up a socialist state. The two invasions had different goals – and dramatically different body counts – but whether they have significantly different outcomes remains to be seen.

What started out as a quick war on Oct. 7, 2001, by the U.S. and its allies to wipe out al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the Taliban has instead turned into a long and slogging campaign. Now about 100,000 NATO troops are fighting a burgeoning insurgency while trying to support and cultivate a nascent democracy.

Emily Rowlinson, a tourist from London, squealed and snapped pictures with her cell phone as the massive Smurf balloon floated by a packed sidewalk along the route.

“We don’t have anything like this in England,” she exclaimed. “We have parades. We don’t have any sort of huge, floating beasts. It’s very cool.”

DeLay’s lead attorney, Dick DeGuerin, expressed confidence on Friday the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Austin will rule in his favor because it has in the past. Add to that a varied assortment of available arguments, and DeGuerin and law experts say they’re convinced this is only the start of what will become a precedent-setting case.

“This is the first and only time that a prosecution like this has ever taken place in Texas. It’s totally unprecedented, and we believe we’re right,” DeGuerin said.

Most of those serving in America’s armed forces have no strong objections to repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, according to a Pentagon survey of 400,000 active duty and reservists that is scheduled for release Tuesday.

But the survey found resistance to repealing the ban strongest among the Marines, according to the Washington Post. It’s an attitude apparently shared by their top leader, Commandant Gen. James Amos, who has said that the government should not lift the ban in wartime.

Eastern Indiana resident Allen Hutchison said the trucks filled with manure are worsening the air quality around his farm, which he said was already thick with ammonia and dust from a nearby dairy. He and other residents worry that runoff from the manure that’s applied to fields as fertilizer will harm nearby rivers and streams, just as it has tainted Ohio’s largest inland lake, Grand Lake St. Marys.

“Here comes another one,” Hutchison said recently as a truck loaded with poultry manure rumbled past his home, trailing dust. “You see what it’s doing to Grand Lake St. Marys? It’s going to do the same thing to our water before long.”

Right now, though, the gay rights movement is at a tipping point, as epitomized by Bowling Green’s divisive referendum on extending anti-discrimination protections to gays. The vote was so close that it took three extra weeks to determine whether the two measures passed.

Nationally, gay-rights supporters and their conservative opponents are trading victories and setbacks, and the public is deeply divided on same-sex marriage. Could the push for full equality be stalled or reversed? Probably not, if public opinion evolves at its current pace.

Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old black boy, was bludgeoned to death for “sassing” a white woman and his body dumped in the Tallahatchie River in 1955. Mississippi NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers was gunned down outside his home by white sniper in 1963. And three young voter registration activists were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan during the Freedom Summer of 1964.

Such events forced the nation’s eyes on the upheaval in the segregated South, and were pivotal in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Republican incumbent, who mounted a write-in bid after losing the primary to Joe Miller, declared victory after the ballot count showed her with a 10,328-vote lead – a total that includes 8,159 ballots contested by Miller observers.

Miller sued this week in Fairbanks Superior Court, claiming that elections officials illegally accepted improperly marked write-in ballots that benefited Murkowski.

Others have been stopped from leaving China or placed under tight surveillance amid a crackdown on dissenters following the prize announcement, several activists told The Associated Press.

Nobel officials said last week that none of Liu’s relatives were expected to travel to Oslo to collect the prize on Liu’s behalf. But his wife, Liu Xia, had invited scores of activists and luminaries to attend the Dec. 10 ceremony in an open letter posted online.