Evening Edition

The violence comes two weeks ahead of a deadline for premier-designate Nuri al-Maliki to form a cabinet in a bid to end months of government impasse, and days before the climax of the Shiite commemoration of Ashura.

In the western city of Ramadi, a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives near Anbar provincial government offices, killing 11 people, including six policemen, a doctor said.

Gbagbo has become locked in a dangerous face-off with long-time enemy Alassane Ouattara after both claimed victory in last month’s presidential election, declared themselves president and named rival governments.

Ouattara has been recognised by the United Nations and the international community, but Gbagbo retains control of the Ivorian army and the country’s main cocoa-exporting harbours, which are key to his ability to rule.

Minority Serbs in the north of the Albanian-majority territory largely boycotted the poll, as urged to by Serbia, with tensions leading authorities to close voting stations in the area three hours earlier than scheduled.

Voting however passed off without incident although the electoral commission the overall turnout was only 47.8 percent.

Opinion polls ahead of the vote showed support for Prime Minister Hashim Thaci’s PDK party at 30 percent, just two percent ahead of its main rival the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), led by Pristina mayor Isa Mustafa.

The electoral commission said turnout across the territory reached 34.10 percent at 1430 GMT, slightly higher than the turnout at the same time in the last elections at 32 percent.

Saturday’s explosions — a suspected suicide attack and separate blast — targeted Christmas shoppers in a busy pedestrian quarter of the Swedish capital. Two people were also injured.

“We are opening an investigation into a terrorist crime,” Anders Thornberg, head of the security unit of domestic intelligence Saepo, said Sunday. “We suspect that it was a suicide attack.”

The studies published by the Science journal and BioMed Central identified 25 “stagnant technologies” that never got off the drawing board.

“Driven largely by entrepreneurs, innovative and affordable technologies to improve health in Africa are under development throughout the continent,” said Ken Simiyu, who co-authored the study for Canada’s McLaughlin-Rotman Center for Global Health (MRC).

Beijing said Friday’s ceremony in the Norwegian capital, where the prize was presented in absentia to the imprisoned democracy activist, was “political theatre” and a product of a “Cold War mentality”.

“Honouring someone the government dislikes may serve to embarrass China in this year’s case, but that is almost all,” the China Daily, an English-language government mouthpiece said in an editorial on Saturday.

Treasurer Wayne Swan said the reforms aimed to empower consumers, bolster smaller lenders and secure credit flows to both consumers and business, pledging a “fair go in the banking system”.

Targeting Australia’s “big four” banks, the reforms ban exit fees on new home loans and allow the competition regulator to prosecute lenders for colluding on rates, after large hikes sparked an angry consumer backlash.

Despite record numbers of coalition deaths and talk that the Taliban’s reach is spreading, the US assessment is likely to endorse the current strategy amid claims of some battlefield success in the highly volatile south.

But critics say the mounting death toll is indicative of a strengthening insurgency and that it is time to negotiate with the militants to end nine years of violence that is only getting worse.

The Taliban have been waging an increasingly deadly insurgency after they were ousted from government in 2001 by a US-led invasion, with the south and east of the war-torn country taking the brunt of the violence.

The 15 died when the truck they were travelling in from Khair Abad village to Khansheen district in Helmand province was hit by a homemade device late Friday, provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi told AFP.

The president made his comments in a call to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Saturday, the White House said.

Obama “expressed his regrets for the deplorable action by WikiLeaks and the two leaders agreed that it will not influence or disrupt the close cooperation between the United States and Turkey,” said his office.

Sales are sliding in the United States, the market worst-hit by the recalls, as Toyota faces a battle to regain consumer trust and market share despite efforts to tighten quality control.

“Before the crisis, Toyota was by far the strongest auto company globally. Now the gap has narrowed,” said Tatsuya Mizuno, an auto industry analyst with Mizuno Credit Advisory.

After two weeks of talks in Mexico and two virtually sleepless final days, more than 190 countries reached a deal that leaves open an extension of the Kyoto Protocol whose requirements expire in two years.

“A new era in international cooperation in climate change has begun,” Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa told the talks in the resort of Cancun.

Beijing said Friday’s ceremony in the Norwegian capital, where the prize was presented in absentia to the imprisoned democracy activist, was “political theatre” and a product of a “Cold War mentality”.

“Honouring someone the government dislikes may serve to embarrass China in this year’s case, but that is almost all,” the China Daily, an English-language government mouthpiece said in an editorial on Saturday.

England as holders can retain the Ashes if they win the third Test, starting in Perth on Thursday, after crushing Australia by an innings in the second Adelaide Test.

There is a conviction among the media that another round of chopping and changing at the selection table was not going to fix things for the troubled Australian team, who have not won any of their last five Tests.

Police stopped short of calling Saturday afternoon’s blasts, which killed the suspected bomber and wounded two people, a suicide attack. A car blew up in a busy shopping area, followed minutes later by a second explosion nearby.

Shortly before the blasts, Swedish news agency TT received a threatening letter referring to Sweden’s presence in Afghanistan and caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad drawn by a Swedish cartoonist. The letter included digital sound files with a recording in broken Swedish and in Arabic.

White House adviser David Axelrod said he believed the House of Representatives would approve the sweeping package without significant changes, despite loud complaints from liberal Democrats that Obama conceded too much to Republicans.

The Senate is expected to pass it early this week, then send it to the House for consideration.

The United States and China will cap a rocky year of trade relations with two days of meetings beginning on Tuesday. The United States on Thursday will then shift from transpacific to transatlantic relations for talks with the EU.

The separate dialogues present distinctly different challenges, with fast-growing China receiving the bigger share of U.S. attention this year.

General Abdul Hameed, commander of the Afghan army in the south, said a suicide car bomber staged the attack outside a U.S. base in Kandahar province, the heartland of Taliban insurgents.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said six troops were killed in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan but declined to give any details or confirm if it was the same incident.

The deal includes a Green Climate Fund that would give $100 billion a year in aid to poor nations by 2020, measures to protect tropical forests and ways to share clean energy technologies.

Ending a marathon session of talks in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun, almost 200 countries also set a target of limiting a rise in average world temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) over pre-industrial times.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters at an OPEC meeting in Quito: “$70-$80 is a good price.”

The comments came as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed, as expected, to keep production restraints unchanged, despite a recent surge in crude prices to $90 a barrel.

The plan is part of a package of tax cuts and extended unemployment benefits that Obama negotiated with Senate Republican leaders. It would cut workers’ share of Social Security taxes by nearly one-third for 2011. Workers making $50,000 in wages would get a $1,000 tax cut; those making $100,000 would get a $2,000 tax cut.

The government would borrow about $112 billion to make Social Security whole. Advocates and some lawmakers worry that relying on borrowed money to fund Social Security could eventually force it to compete with other federal programs for scarce dollars, leading to cuts.

NATO has claimed improvements in security after months of raids, patrols and strikes on insurgents in Kandahar province, but Sunday’s blast – the deadliest attack on coalition troops this month – shows the area is still far from safe.

The assault comes days ahead of a major White House review of its Afghan strategy following President Barack Obama’s decision last year to send 30,000 American reinforcements in a bid to reverse gains by the Taliban since they were ousted from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

He shared millions in grants, had university and hospital posts, and bragged of work for prestigious medical groups. An Associated Press story featured him leading a teamwork training session at an American College of Cardiology convention last spring.

But it turns out Hamman isn’t a cardiologist or even a doctor. The AP found he had no medical residency, fellowship, doctoral degree or the 15 years of clinical experience he claimed. He attended medical school for a few years but withdrew and didn’t graduate.

The victim: an unnamed moon of Saturn that disappeared about 4.5 billion years ago.

The suspect: a disk of hydrogen gas that once surrounded Saturn when its dozens of moons were forming, but has now fled the crime scene.

The moms and dads were ordered to attend the class under a new California law giving judges the option of sending parents for training when their kids are convicted of gang crimes for the first time.

Assemblyman Tony Mendoza, the lawmaker behind the Parent Accountability Act, said it is the first state law to give judges the power to order parents of gang members to school, though other court-mandated classes exist at the local level.

But what if there’s nothing worth watching?

Just as the online video market is starting to take shape, federal regulators have a rare opportunity to help protect its future as they scrutinize Comcast Corp.’s proposal to take over NBC Universal.

O’Donnell’s quote is cited by Fred Shapiro, associate librarian at Yale Law School, who released his fifth annual list of the most notable quotations of the year. In the ad, O’Donnell was responding to reports of her revelations that she had dabbled in witchcraft years ago.

“It was such a remarkable unconventional quote to be a part of the political discourse,” Shapiro said.

The Vikings’ home game against the New York Giants was moved to Monday night in Detroit after the Metrodome’s inflated roof collapsed in a snowstorm early Sunday morning.

The delay has given Favre more time to heal his sprained right shoulder, with his NFL-record streak of 297 straight regular season starts hanging in the balance.

His 40-year-old company, Chabuma S.A., sells cement blocks, doors, sand bags and other materials for international companies. But what he wants is a more significant role in his country’s recovery, which is why he says he keeps bidding – without success – for U.S. government contracts.

“You can imagine that if we can’t win the contracts ourselves, we become totally dependent on foreign companies and nonprofits, and there is not much hope in that,” he said. “We may not have the extended capacity of a U.S. company, but we are respectable. We keep good books and records, we have foreign suppliers, we have good credit, we pay our taxes and our customs dues.”

Two people were wounded in central Stockholm on Saturday in what appeared to be the first suicide bombing in the history of Sweden, which has been spared the major terrorist strikes seen in several other European countries.

A car exploded in the middle of the seasonal shopping frenzy, shooting flames and causing several smaller blasts as people ran screaming from the scene. The blast that killed the alleged bomber came moments later further a few blocks away from the car explosion on a busy pedestrian street.

Senate Republicans last week blocked action on a bill appropriating up to $3.2 billion for medical programs caring for people who fell ill after breathing in ash and pulverized building materials at ground zero.

The act would have guaranteed at least eight years of strong, even lavish, funding for existing health programs for 9/11 responders and other New York City residents exposed to the dust.

Alassane Ouattara does not have access to the presidential palace, so he holds Cabinet meetings in a tent on the hotel lawn. His administration has taken over the hotel manager’s office, where the fax machine is used to communicate with embassies abroad. And the neighboring golf course’s sloping fairways may soon house soldiers defecting from the army still controlled by incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo.

In the upside-down world that has taken root in this corner of Africa, 68-year-old Ouattara was declared winner of last month’s presidential election by his country’s election commission in an outcome certified by the United Nations. He was recognized as the legal president by the United States, the European Union, former colonial ruler France and the African Union.

The meeting of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade on Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington comes as Beijing faces rising congressional pressure over its swollen trade surplus. The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a measure to allow Washington to punish currency manipulation and the Senate is considering it.

Both sides are likely hoping for a “successful meeting with some deliverables” ahead of Hu’s arrival in Washington in January, said Christian Murck, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.

Six police officers were among the dead in the latest strike on the provincial council compound in the Anbar province capital of Ramadi, police and hospital officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

At least 23 people were wounded in Sunday’s attack on the compound, which has been a favorite target for insurgents in the past.

But residents and tourism officials – not to mention ecologists and transportation engineers – are feeling much less neighborly about the spectacular region these days. They’ve split into feuding factions over how to cope with a massive slide of Volkwagen-sized boulders that closed the only all-weather highway into the park.

The problem arose nearly five years ago when almost 800 million tons of rocks and debris tumbled onto Highway 140, creating a blockade that forced tourists from the San Francisco Bay area to take hours-long detours to reach the valley.

That the Holy See used its diplomatic-immunity status as a tiny city-state to try to thwart the Irish fact-finding probe has long been known. But the WikiLeaks cables, published by Britain’s The Guardian newspaper on Saturday, contain delicate, behind-the-scenes diplomatic assessments of the highly charged situation.

The Vatican press office declined to comment on the content of the cables Saturday, but decried the leaks as a matter of “extreme seriousness.”

Former AIM member John Graham was convicted Friday in the murder of Annie Mae Aquash in 1975 on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation. Her death remains synonymous with AIM and its often-violent clashes with federal agents in the 1970s.

Marty Jackley, the state attorney general who prosecuted the case, declined to say Saturday if anyone else might face charges.