Evening Edition

“At least 11 of our men have been martyred and 12 others wounded,” Amjad Ali Khan, the administrator of lawless Mohmand tribal district, told reporters at a press conference in the area’s main town, Ghalanai.

Security officials earlier said at least three soldiers were killed in the attacks.

For Iraq’s battered Christian community, threats of attacks from Al-Qaeda and mourning for the victims of an October massacre at a Baghdad church have turned a normally festive season into one of fear and sadness.

Many mass gatherings in Iraq were cancelled on Friday, and Saturday services will be held during the morning for safety reasons.

“It’s amazing. To be in the birthplace of Christ on Christmas, you can’t get better than that,” said Brady MacCarl, 22.

MacCarl was among thousands of people packed into Manger Square, awaiting the arrival of Latin Patriarch Fuad Twal, in unseasonably warm weather under clear blue skies.

Leaders from the 15-member ECOWAS regional bloc also said a high-level delegation would be sent to Ivory Coast as an “ultimate gesture” to Gbagbo in the hope that he could be persuaded to leave peacefully.

The statement following an emergency summit of the Economic Community of West African States came as Gbagbo’s internationally recognised rival, Alassane Ouattara, urged the army to desert the incumbent leader.

And in a second blow to Gbagbo’s increasingly isolated regime, the Central Bank of West African States said only his rival Alassane Outtara’s globally recognised government could manage the country’s accounts there.

UN officials in Abidjan said Gbagbo’s security forces, shielded by civilian protesters and backed by unidentified masked gunmen, had prevented human rights monitors from probing reports of at least two new mass graves.

The State Duma lower house of parliament voted with 350 in favour and 58 against for the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and US President Barack Obama on April 8.

Yet hopes ratification could be wrapped up by the end of the year after the US Senate’s approval Wednesday were dashed when top Russian officials voiced unease at additions made by US senators to their own ratification resolution.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s cabinet backed the 92.41 trillion yen draft budget for fiscal 2011 which starts on April 1.

To finance the massive outlays, Japan aims to issue fresh bonds worth 44.3 trillion yen — meaning that for the second year in a row new debt will be bigger than tax revenue, projected to raise just short of 41 trillion yen.

The troops — living in unheated tents in the Taliban heartland of Musa Qala district, in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province — will climb out of their sleeping bags as usual, plan patrols and hope the day ends without casualties.

“I’m hoping it’s going to be a quiet day and our guys can relax a little bit,” says Staff Sergeant Josh McCall, 32, who will call his wife and children at home in rural North Carolina on Saturday.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the attacks represented “a serious threat” against foreign embassies, while Chile’s ambassador Oscar Godoy Arcaya condemned “an absolutely irrational and brutal act of terrorism.”

Police said checks were under way in all the embassies in the Italian capital and the city’s mayor said emergency services were on the ready.

“Checks around sensitive targets have been reinforced. Foreign embassy and consulate workers should be on alert and call us if they see suspect packages,” a spokesman for the Carabinieri paramilitary police force told AFP.

Embassies, ministries and post offices were placed under tighter security.

Amid severe winter, the former capital of the Russian tsars — conceived by Peter the Great as a “window to Europe” for a country which stretches to the Pacific — Saint Petersburg suffers from problems unimaginable in Western Europe.

Huge snowdrifts make Saint Petersburg’s streets impassable for cars and pedestrians, who risk being killed by huge icicles falling from roofs.

The State Duma lower house of parliament was scheduled to hold the first of three required votes on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in its final session of the year Friday.

Duma deputies were expected to add their non-binding resolutions to the text that did not change the essence of the treaty but underscored Russia’s displeasure with US plans to deploy a new missile defence system in Europe.

Still struggling to emerge from Vladimir Putin’s shadow less than 18 months before the end of his term, Medvedev has struck a softer, more liberal tone on issues ranging from jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s trial to ties with the United States.

But in the latest appearance in what looks like a contest between the two leaders for public approval, he announced no major initiatives and lamented the pace of his trademark campaign to enliven Russia’s economy through innovation.

More than 700 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year — nearly a third of the total in over nine years of war.

While U.S.-led NATO forces have applied a surge strategy there is also a search on for ways to bring about a political solution as a countdown begins for the withdrawal of troops.

A false alarm took place on Friday at the Irish embassy, when police were called to open a package that resembled those sent on Thursday, but which turned out to contain a greeting card.

“These false alarms confirm that our message has got through to the people it needs to reach,” Francesco Tagliente, Rome’s chief of police told SkyTG24 television.

A Swiss man was seriously wounded and rushed to hospital. An employee at the Chilean embassy was less seriously hurt. A note was found stuck to his clothing, claiming responsibility for the attack on behalf of the FAI, or Informal Anarchist Federation.

“We have decided to make our voice heard with words and with facts, we will destroy the system of dominance, long live the FAI, long-live Anarchy,” said the note, written in Italian, which was released in the evening by the police.

“I sing to ease my pain. If I think too much, I’ll die,” said Monfort, 38, one of over a million Haitians made homeless by a January earthquake that plunged the poor, French-speaking Caribbean nation into the most calamitous year of its history.

With a raging cholera epidemic and election turmoil heaping more death and hardship on top of the quake devastation, Haitians are facing an exceptionally bleak Christmas and New Year marked by the prospect of more suffering and uncertainty.

The family’s lawsuit, filed in March in San Diego Superior Court, was part of a wave of product-liability and wrongful-death actions brought against Toyota Motor Corp and subsidiaries over complaints of sudden, unintended acceleration in its vehicles.

But the fiery August 28, 2009, crash near San Diego of a Lexus ES 350 sedan driven by off-duty California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor drew intense media attention and renewed government scrutiny of safety problems leading to the recall of over 6.5 million Toyota vehicles in the United States.

After an unexplained postponement that deepened suspicions of government interference in the fate of a prominent Kremlin foe, a judge is to start reading out the verdict on Monday, with Khodorkovsky confined to a glass-and-steel courtroom cage.

Once Russia’s richest man and head of its biggest oil producer, Yukos, Khodorkovsky is serving the final year of an eight-year term imposed in a fraud and tax evasion trial that marked a key event in Vladimir Putin’s 2000-2008 presidency.

The Senate scuttled Diamond’s nomination on Wednesday by failing to vote on it before adjourning a lame-duck legislative session for the year.

The Obama administration views Diamond, a Nobel prize-winning economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as extremely well qualified for the job and believes Republicans will see this too if they stick with him.

The Kremlin-controlled State Duma voted 350-58 to approve the New START treaty in the first of three readings. The legislators said they would proceed further after returning from the New Year’s vacation that lasts until Jan. 11.

The Russian parliament normally ratifies international treaties in a single vote, but this time legislators said they needed an extra time to study legislation accompanying the treaty that was passed by the U.S. Senate when it ratified the pact on Wednesday.

In a statement posted on the agency’s website late Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson said the aim was to better cope with pollution contributing to climate change.

“We are following through on our commitment to proceed in a measured and careful way to reduce GHG pollution that threatens the health and welfare of Americans,” Jackson said in a statement. She said emissions from power plants and oil refineries constitute about 40 percent of the greenhouse gas pollution in this country.

The U.N. reported that heavily armed forces allied with Laurent Gbagbo and joined by masked men, were preventing people from getting to the village of N’Dotre, where the global body said “allegations point to the existence of a mass grave.”

The U.N. did not elaborate on the possible victims, though it has expressed concerns about hundreds of arrests, and dozens of cases of torture and disappearance during the political turmoil since the presidential runoff vote was held nearly a month ago.

Now the Busch name is in the headlines again, this time after an aspiring young model was found dead in the gated home of August Busch IV, the former Anheuser-Busch CEO and heir to the Budweiser fortune. The death is under investigation.

The woman, Adrienne Nicole Martin, was Busch’s girlfriend and there was “absolutely nothing suspicious” about her death, said Busch’s attorney, Art Margulis.

Officials said the turnout was shaping up to be the largest since 2000. Unseasonably mild weather, a virtual halt in Israeli-Palestinian violence and a burgeoning economic revival in the West Bank all added to the holiday cheer.

By nightfall, a packed Manger Square was awash in red, blue, green and yellow Christmas lights.

Volunteer Liz Anderson said that when she tells kids that, she will sometimes hear parents say, “See! I told you.”

Tracking Santa’s travels, a celebrated tradition at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, unfolded Friday for the 55th year.

Those dreams are gone now, because another was fulfilled: She began regaining feeling in her legs over the summer, and now she can walk again.

Van der Vorst savors every step through the snow. Every climb up the stairs. The ability to look somebody in the eye standing up.

There is even a tax break for people who buy race horses.

Millions of homeowners, however, might feel like they got a lump of coal. Homeowners who don’t itemize their deductions will lose a tax break for paying local property taxes.

The killing of Shahlaa al-Anbaky, reported by police Friday, appeared to be from an unusual melding of motives – part to defend the family honor, part to prevent her from joining the militants. But how much of each weighed in her father’s mind remains unclear, with police still investigating the details.

Al-Qaida has been recruiting women for suicide attacks because they can pass police checkpoints more easily than men by concealing explosives under an abaya, a loose, black cloak that conservative Muslim women wear. Suicide bombers have been al-Qaida’s most lethal weapon in Iraq, killing hundreds of civilians and members of Iraq’s security forces.

A day after Broadway’s costliest show was forced to cancel two performances following a scary fall by a stunt actor, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” resumed previews Thursday and came off without a hitch, including virtually all its complex aerial stunts.

“It’s a safer show now,” said a clearly relieved lead actor Reeve Carney, who plays Peter Parker and his alter ego, Spider-Man, as he signed autographs following the show. “It was always safe, but now it’s safer. It was beautiful to see everyone come together tonight.”

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which is being allowed to monitor the analysis, demanded in a letter Thursday to the head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement that testing stop and not resume until Transocean and Cameron officials are removed from any hands-on role in the examination of the 300-ton device.

An employee of Transocean – the owner of the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf – has been removed as a consultant for the Norwegian firm conducting the testing, but the ocean energy bureau says that otherwise the companies have provided their expertise appropriately. The board claims conflicts still exist.

Neither her lawyer nor her team, Fenerbahce, would confirm that Taurasi tested positive for the stimulant, which has been involved in several major doping cases, including that of U.S. sprinter Kelli White.

Modafinil is used to counter excessive sleepiness due to narcolepsy, shift-work sleep disorder or sleep apnea, according to the website for the prescription drug Provigil, which contains the substance.

Italian investigators suspected the attacks were the work of anarchists, similar to the two-day wave of mail bombs that targeted several embassies in Athens last month – including those of Chile and Switzerland. One of last month’s booby-trapped packages, addressed to Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, was intercepted in Italy.

Late Thursday night, the Italian news agency ANSA reported that a claim by anarchists was found in a small box near one of the wounded employees, and was being examined by anti-terrorism police squad.

The decision of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners was followed a few hours later by the surprise withdrawal from the race of state Sen. James Meeks, who said the remaining African-American candidates must rally a “divided and splintered” black community in Chicago to beat “the front-running, status quo candidates” – a list presumably topped by Emanuel.

Meeks’ decision to exit and urge the city’s large African-American community to rally around a unity candidate tightens a still-large field of people seeking to replace retiring Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Grand Isle’s annual Christmas bird count has begun – early, as always.

This year the National Audubon Society’s bird count on the Gulf Coast is especially important: It comes eight months after the BP oil spill set off panic in the hearts of ornithologists and bird lovers across the nation. The counts will be used by scientists tracking the health of the Gulf’s bird populations.

Across the Corn Belt, the price of farmland was on the rise in 2010. The highest increases were seen in Iowa, where values rose 13 percent and an acre of farmland sold for upward of $7,000 in some areas of the state. Minnesota and Wisconsin also saw double digit increases in farmland value, averaging 12 percent and 11 percent respectively, according to the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.

“A lot of it is driven by commodity prices,” said Jason Henderson, a branch manager and economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in Omaha, Neb. “As soon as June, the Russian drought started to raise concerns about global crop supplies and we saw commodity prices begin to rise and we saw farmland values rise with commodity prices.”

But the Texas state board that licenses accountants sees Bass differently – as unfit to continue in his profession.

Nearly a decade after Enron collapsed and took Arthur Andersen with it, the work of Bass and another former Andersen partner, Thomas Bauer, as Enron auditors is still being debated in a highly contentious and costly proceeding.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer joined other New York politicians and some ground zero workers beneath the rising construction at the site to celebrate the $4.2 billion legislation, which they said amounted to a declaration that the U.S. would not abandon those who defended its people in a time of war.

“When you risk your life for this country in a time of war, America is there for you. Yesterday we affirmed that tradition. The dream of America is alive and well,” Schumer said.

The agency will replace the 2003 policy adopted under former Interior Secretary Gale Norton. That policy – derided by some as the “No More Wilderness” policy – stated that new areas could not be recommended for wilderness protection by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and it opened millions of acres to potential commercial development.

That policy “frankly never should have happened and was wrong in the first place,” Salazar said Thursday.