Evening Edition

Former South African president Mbeki stepped in to try to head off violence after both the incumbent Gbagbo and his old rival Alassane Ouattara swore themselves in as president following a disputed runoff vote on November 28 in the divided country.

But after Mbeki held emergency talks with the two rivals, Ouattara upped the ante, pressing the mediator to demand Gbagbo quit as his own allies declared they had formed a new government.

The former South African president stepped in as world powers called for a peaceful resolution to the November 28 election, which was meant to end a decade of conflict but has been marred by deadly violence.

The 53-member African Union (AU) dispatched Mbeki to try to avert “a crisis of incalculable consequences”. Mbeki has previously helped mediate a peace deal which led to the holding of the west African country’s first elections in a decade last month.

Mbeki was dispatched by the African Union (AU) to help settle the crisis after long-term incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and his rival Alassane Ouattara each claimed the presidency after a disputed election.

An airport official said Mbeki landed in Abidjan about 9:00 am (0900 GMT) and was met by South African diplomats but no Ivorian officials.

And as fresh leaks of US diplomatic cables heaped more embarrassment on Washington, one report suggested that the revelations would force a major reshuffle of their diplomatic, military and intelligence staff.

Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, who is handling the rape allegations in Sweden, defended the pursuit of the case in comments to AFP Sunday.

When eurozone ministers gather Monday, followed by their full European Union partners Tuesday, they will seek to move from fire-fighting to securing solid future foundations for the eurozone at the December 16-17 EU summit.

“If the 1990s was the decade of constructing the economic and monetary union, and the 2000s the decade of turning it into reality, we are now at the beginning of the decade of its fundamental reform,” the EU’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a speech to employers Friday.

Environment ministers began arriving in the Mexican resort city at the weekend to find themselves plunged into a mood soured by a row over the Kyoto Protocol and a logjam of inter-connected, unresolved issues.

After more talks among senior officials, the ministers on Tuesday get down to a four-day haggle, due to climax on Friday.

Environment ministers began arriving in the Mexican resort city at the weekend to find themselves plunged into a mood soured by a row over the Kyoto Protocol and a logjam of inter-connected, unresolved issues.

After more talks among senior officials, the ministers on Tuesday get down to a four-day haggle, due to climax on Friday.

The number four showman relished his return to the ground where he last hammered a big century to continue England’s relentless accumulation of runs to plunder the home attack.

When rain washed out play after tea England were 551 for four with Pietersen on a majestic 213 and Ian Bell providing solid support on 41.

“A well-placed contact claims that the Chinese government coordinated the recent intrusions of Google systems,” a cable dated earlier this year said.

“According to our contact, the closely held operations were directed at the Politburo Standing Committee level,” the cable said, referring to the ruling body of the Chinese Communist Party.

At one polling station in Cairo shortly after polls opened at 8:00 am (0600 GMT), police outnumbered the few voters waiting to cast their ballots, an AFP photographer reported.

Egypt’s two main opposition blocs, the Muslim Brotherhood and the liberal Wafd party, withdrew from the race after official results from last Sunday’s first round gave the ruling National Democratic Party 90 percent of the seats decided outright.

The November 28 election was aimed at reuniting the West African nation, split after a 2002-3 civil war, but both Gbagbo and Ouattara have claimed victory and taken presidential oaths.

Gbagbo was sworn in as president on Saturday even though the electoral commission declared Ouattara the winner, according to provisional results.

According to a report that IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn will present to euro zone finance ministers at a meeting in Brussels, the turmoil hitting countries in the currency area’s southern periphery constitutes a “severe downside risk” and more action from member states is needed.

Together with the IMF, the EU set up a 750 billion euro ($1 trillion) rescue facility in May, but it now faces pressure to increase it after last week’s rescue of Ireland failed to ease fears of contagion to Portugal, Spain and other high-deficit countries.

The National Democratic Party (NDP), which has never lost a vote, is sure of a crushing victory after the Muslim Brotherhood and liberal Wafd party withdrew. The fiercest run-off races were where NDP candidates were pitted against each other.

The Brotherhood, the biggest opposition group with a fifth of seats in the outgoing parliament, won no seats in the first round. Wafd won just two. Egyptian monitors cited ballot box stuffing, voter intimidation by hired thugs and other abuses.

U.S. and South Korean negotiators struck a deal Friday on the long-delayed pact, which was signed in 2007 but had not been ratified for three years because of U.S. auto and beef industry concerns.

The pact was an accomplishment for Obama, who faced an embarrassing setback when negotiators failed to settle their differences before he visited Seoul last month, but it was greeted less positively in South Korea.

Holding banners reading “Free Liu Xiaobo” and singing for his release to the strumming of guitars, nearly one thousand marched to Beijing’s liaison office in support of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who is the first Chinese recipient of the accolade.

China denounced Liu’s award as an “obscenity” and sparked a torrent of diplomatic scorn toward Norway, with Beijing pressuring diplomats to boycott the ceremony.

President Barack Obama said he was disappointed with the vote, but indicated he was open to compromise on the tax cuts enacted under former Republican President George W. Bush, if certain conditions were met.

The Democratic plans — to renew low tax rates for individuals with income up to $200,000 and for those making up to $1 million — failed in procedural votes, as Republicans said low tax rates for the wealthiest should also be extended.

One of Assange’s lawyers said he would also fight any attempt to extradite his client to face questions over alleged sexual misconduct, adding that he believed foreign powers were influencing Sweden in the matter.

Washington is furious about the leak of hundreds of confidential diplomatic cables that have given unvarnished and sometimes embarrassing insights into the foreign policy of the United States and its allies.

Supporters say Julian Assange is considering seeking asylum in Switzerland. He told a Spanish newspaper that he faced “hundreds of death threats,” including some targeting his lawyers and children, aside from the pressure he is getting from prosecutors in the U.S. and other countries.

After a number of web companies dropped WikiLeaks, much of the site’s traffic was coming through the wikileaks.ch Web address Sunday. The address is controlled by the Swiss Pirate Party, a group that formed two years ago to campaign for freedom of information. The site’s main server in France went offline but it remained reachable through a Swedish server.

It is impossible to verify the actual numbers of foreign insurgents entering the country. But one Middle Eastern intelligence official estimated recently that 250 came in October alone. U.S. officials say the figure is far lower, but have acknowledged an increase since August.

At the same time, Iraqi officials say there has been a surge in financial aid to al-Qaida’s front group in Iraq as the U.S. military prepares to leave by the end of 2011. They said it reflects fears by Arab states over the growing influence of Iran’s Shiite-led government over Iraq and its Shiite-dominated government.

As the Department of Homeland Security moves methodically to pare down and secure the approximately 2,400 network connections used every day by millions of federal workers around the world, experts suggest that technology already may be passing them by.

The department that’s responsible for securing government systems other than military sites is slowly moving all the government’s Internet and e-mail traffic into secure networks that eventually will be guarded by intrusion detection and prevention programs. The networks are known as Einstein 2 and Einstein 3.

Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. In fact, it was warm and pumping even before doctors transplanted it.

Ybarra belongs to a small group of people who have had a “beating heart” transplant, an experimental operation that’s mostly been done in Europe. The donor heart is placed into a special box that feeds it blood and keeps it warm and ticking outside the body.

The medical evacuation team – a pilot, co-pilot, crew chief, flight medic and, on this day, an AP photographer – scrambled into the Black Hawk helicopter. In a few minutes we were zigzagging at more than 240 kph (150 mph), the fields and mud compounds blurring past like a movie in fast forward. The crew chief held up two fingers: Distance from landing zone, two minutes.

As darkness fell, the Marines ignited a colored smoke grenade to mark the landing zone. The Black Hawk touched down only to be fired on by insurgents hiding nearby, despite the clear red cross marked on its nose and sides. It rose again and circled.

The information is valuable for con artists to learn more about their targets and send them personalized attacks. It also allows e-commerce companies to adjust ads or prices – for instance, if the site knows you’ve just come from a competitor that is offering a lower price.

Although passwords aren’t at risk, in harvesting a detailed list of where you’ve been online, sites can create thorough profiles on its users.

In the northern opposition stronghold of Bouake, several hundred people marched down a main boulevard Sunday afternoon, calling for incumbent Laurent Gbagbo to stand down. Villagers wielding machetes also created their own checkpoint in protest along one major road in the region.

“It’s important not to have violence, not to return to war – to find a peaceful solution,” former South African President Thabo Mbeki said Sunday after arriving in Abidjan to try and mediate at the behest of the African Union.

According to secretly recorded telephone conversations, the sooner Johnson could pick up her pills, the more quickly she could sell them to her dealer. Her pain pills were destined for the street.

Johnson is among 33 people charged so far in a large-scale investigation that has opened a window into an emerging class of suppliers in the illicit drug trade: medical patients, including many who rely on the publicly funded Medicaid program to pay for their appointments and prescriptions. She has pleaded not guilty.

The vote, which will decide the fate of 50 percent of parliament’s 508 elected seats, was marred by reports of armed clashes in the north and south and allegations of widespread vote buying in many constituencies in Cairo.

With a large-scale crackdown ahead of the vote that included arrest sweeps, Egypt’s ruling establishment appeared determined to purge the largest opposition group, the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, from the next legislature. The aim seems to be to ensure the Brotherhood cannot use parliament as a platform for dissent amid uncertainty over the country’s future and in the lead-up to next year’s more crucial presidential elections.

Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk reached a final agreement Friday after four days of negotiations focusing on U.S. demands that South Korea rework the accord to address its big trade surplus in automobiles.

The South Korea-U.S. free trade agreement was originally signed in June 2007, but steps to ratify it stalled amid changes in government in both countries, the global financial crisis and American demands that South Korea take steps to reduce their imbalance in auto trade and ease restrictions on imports of American beef.

Differences remained over details, and some Democrats continued to object to any plan that would continue Bush-era tax rates at the highest income levels.

Without action, however, Congress faced the prospect of letting the tax rates revert to higher pre-2001 and 2003 levels, and delivering a tax hike to all taxpayers. Negotiations between the Obama administration and a bipartisan group of lawmakers centered on a two-year extension of current rates.

The plaintiffs expect it will be at least next August before Indian trust landowners see a dime, and six months after that before the last claims are settled with trust account holders.

That’s because when the political wrangling ends, the red tape begins.

“He dropped something, and as he banked away I saw the red emblem of the Japanese on his wings so I knew we were under attack,” Conner said. “He dropped the torpedo that struck the ship right below where I was standing.”

The battleship shook like an earthquake, and the cryptographer rushed to his battle station where he coded and decoded messages for the California’s commander. Since no messages were coming in, he joined a chain passing ammunition to Marines and sailors firing guns on the deck.

Today, the Latino community supports six Spanish-language Masses at five churches each week. Last year it had the most baptisms – about 425 – of any parish in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Depman said.

The growth has turned spiritual life into a series of logistical challenges for Latinos as they try to schedule an increasing number of liturgies, weddings, funerals, baptisms, first communions and quinceaneras – rites of passage similar to Sweet Sixteens.

State District Judge Kevin Fine surprised many Texans last spring when he granted what is usually a routine and typically rejected defense motion and ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. His ruling came in the case of John Edward Green Jr., who is awaiting trial on charges he fatally shot a Houston woman and wounded her sister during a June 2008 robbery.

Following a torrent of criticism from Republican Gov. Rick Perry and other Texans, Fine clarified his ruling, saying the procedures the state follows in getting a death sentence are unconstitutional. Then Fine rescinded his ruling and ordered the hearing, which starts Monday, saying he needed more information before making a final decision.

If the courtroom had been a boxing ring, the referee would have called a knockout.

Yet lawyers for the ban’s sponsors say their side was on the ropes for a reason: They disputed that live testimony and reams of evidence were relevant to a lawsuit against the voter-approved Proposition 8, so they did not provide it. In their view, the proceedings were a “a show trial,” and they were willing to invite the unfavorable verdict they eventually got while betting they would win in a later round where the ground rules would be different.

Now, as the 11 winning states and the District of Columbia set about spending their awards, the losing states are left wondering what to do with ambitious reform plans they planned to fund with the money.

In Colorado, for example, lawmakers had the prize in mind earlier this year when they adopted a contentious plan to pay teachers based on student performance. Now, state educators are obligated to some up with a new evaluation for teachers – with no new money to pay for it.

But what the place really needs, he says, is a whole lotta love, with some positive spiritual energy thrown in.

Despite his buttoned-down appearance, Gomes is not your typical casino executive.

Now, some of the top lobster-fishing ports in New England are claiming bragging rights about who has the biggest and best Christmas tree created from lobster traps. As the holiday season gets into full swing, a new lobster trap tree in eastern Maine is stirring the pot.

Gloucester, Mass., started the trap-to-tree tradition 12 years ago, and Rockland, Maine, followed five years later. Both are threatening to be upstaged this year by the small lobstering town of Beals, Maine, which is getting into the act with a monster tree that stands 50 feet tall.