Evening Edition

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who is facing a fight for survival after losing his parliamentary majority, immediately appealed for calm with memories fresh of riots sparked by previous political killings in Pakistan.

Officials said Salman Taseer, 66, who was appointed governor of Pakistan’s most populous and politically important province in 2008, was killed by one of his bodyguards opposed to his public criticism of controversial blasphemy laws.

An aide to Alassane Ouattara, the man the world says won November’s election, accused Gbagbo of playing for time and insisted the embattled leader quit to end the five-week stand-off in which at least 179 people have died.

“All we’re waiting for is for him to go,” Ouattara aide Ali Coulibaly told AFP. “The rest is of no interest to us.”

The four African leaders’ efforts appeared to come to a head as they left Abidjan late Monday after their latest talks with embattled incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, who is facing the threat of military action if he does not stand down.

“For us, the discussions are over,” Ouattara told journalists after meeting three presidents representing the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga for the African Union.

But an aide to Alassane Ouattara, the man the world says won November’s election, accused Gbagbo of playing for time and insisted the embattled leader step down to end the five-week stand-off in which at least 179 people have died.

“All we’re waiting for is for him to go,” Ouattara aide Ali Coulibaly told AFP. “The rest is of no interest to us.”

Ford said it was the biggest winner in 2010 as it expanded US market share for the second year in a row to over 16 percent with total sales of 1.9 million vehicles.

It was the automaker’s first back-to-back market share increase since 1993 and comes after years of painful restructuring.

The spiritual head of the Middle East’s largest Christian minority also called on the government to address his flock’s grievances.

The unrest came as police went on high alert and tightened church security for Christmas, which Copts celebrate on Friday, as investigators hunted the perpetrators of the Alexandria church bombing.

In London, Paris and Rome, hopes for a spooky darkening of the winter skies at sunrise were dashed by dense cloud which turned the event into a grey mush.

“Aaah so much hype of an eclipse… all I saw was the usual British cloud!!!” said Twitter contributor Romana Alli in Britain.

Auto sales results are one of the first snapshots of U.S. consumer demand and stand as the latest in a string of indicators including unexpectedly strong factory orders for November pointing toward growing confidence in the recovery.

U.S. auto sales rose more than 11 percent in 2010, snapping a four-year slide that forced the Detroit automakers into a wrenching restructuring that included government-directed bankruptcies for GM and Chrysler.

BP shares were up 5.6 percent to 491.7 pence by 1351 GMT (8:51 EST).

The Daily Mail newspaper, citing sources close to the Anglo-Dutch group, reported Shell weighed an opportunistic bid for BP as crude gushed into the Gulf last summer, but was discouraged by the potentially uncapped legal liabilities.

Several sources close to the deliberations said Gene Sperling, a Clinton administration veteran, has gained traction in the last few weeks as a potential successor to Larry Summers, who is departing as director of the National Economic Council.

Sperling is seen as having an edge over two other leading contenders, investment banker Roger Altman and Yale University President Richard Levin.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said, citing initial reports, said Salman Taseer was killed because of his opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

Rights groups say the law is often exploited by religious extremists and ordinary Pakistanis to settle personal scores. Islamist groups have been angered by what they believe are government plans to change or scrap the law.

According to a survey released on Monday by the National Conference of State Legislatures, most state lawmakers listed balancing the budget at the top of their fiscal agenda.

“Diminishing federal stimulus funds, slow revenue growth and spending pressures have opened new budget gaps totaling $26.7 billion this fiscal year,” the survey found. It added that states already expect a total gap of $82.1 billion for fiscal 2012, which begins for most in July.

Captain Owen Honors, who made the videos several years ago while serving as the USS Enterprise’s second-in-command, was removed from the nuclear-powered carrier and reassigned to administrative duties.

Admiral John Harvey, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, said Honors performed “without incident” as captain of the Enterprise but had shown poor judgment over the videos.

A Democratic-controlled Congress pushed through the Dodd-Frank bank reform laws last year and regulators were counting on a big budget boost to police the $600 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market — blamed for much of the excess behind the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

But the last Congress failed to deliver on the funding, and that will be even harder to obtain with Republicans vowing to cut spending as they take control of the House of Representatives and boost their rolls in the Senate.

Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer, regarded as a moderate voice in a country increasingly beset by zealotry, was a close ally of U.S.-backed President Asif Ali Zardari. He is the highest-profile Pakistani political figure to be assassinated since former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto three years ago, and his death underscores the growing danger in this country to those who dare challenge the demands of Islamist extremists.

Taseer was riddled by gunshots while walking to his car after an afternoon meal at Kohsar Market, a shopping center in Islamabad popular with Westerners and wealthy Pakistanis.

Facing anything but a political soft landing after his holiday stay in Hawaii, Obama told reporters en route to the capital Tuesday that he understands Republicans, who recaptured the House in last fall’s elections, “are going to play to their base for a certain period of time.”

“But I’m pretty confident that they’re going to recognize that our job is to govern and make sure that we are delivering jobs for the American people and that we are creating a competitive economy for the 21st century,” the president said.

“For us, it’s not about whether we had a locker room,” Mikulski, 74, said in an interview with The Associated Press this week. “It’s whether we had a committee room, and we now have them.”

She added, “We had to work very hard to get on the committees of power.”

“Whatever your truth is, you have to stick with it,” Dupree, 51, said Tuesday, minutes after a Dallas judge overturned his conviction.

Nationally, only two others exonerated by DNA evidence spent more time in prison, according to the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that specializes in wrongful conviction cases and represented Dupree. James Bain was wrongly imprisoned for 35 years in Florida, and Lawrence McKinney spent more than 31 years in a Tennessee prison.

Christina Scavo and Shannon O’Toole contend in a lawsuit filed Monday they were subjected to sexual harassment and job discrimination. They are seeking unspecified damages from Favre, the Jets and a team massage coordinator, saying they lost their part-time jobs after complaining about sexually suggestive text messages from the 41-year-old quarterback while he was with the team in 2008.

“Unfortunately, the plaintiffs never reported the allegations to the Jets, either during or after the conclusion of their work,” the team said in a statement Tuesday. “The case against the Jets is completely without merit, and we look forward to defending the matter in court, where we are confident that the Jets will prevail.”

Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, is likely to leave that job, and his interim chief of staff, Pete Rouse, may go, too. Those departures would significantly alter the management of the White House and the way it explains itself to the world.

In the coming days and weeks, Obama is also expected to have a new chief economic adviser, a new senior political counselor, and two new deputy chiefs of staff.

Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., whose processors are the “brains” of PCs, are unveiling significant changes to their chips’ designs at this week’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Tablet computers and other gadgets have taken on many of the tasks once performed by PCs, and there are already signs that those devices – led by Apple Inc.’s iPad – are eating away at PC sales.

With sales of 11.6 million new cars and trucks, 2010 was still one of the worst years in decades. Buyers returned fitfully following the recession and big bankruptcies at GM and Chrysler. But sales took off in October and November and finished up about 11 percent last month compared with last December.

That has car companies starting to think they may reach the heights they saw in the early 2000s, when credit was cheap, incentives were rampant and sales topped 17 million.

The Big Ten was shut out on New Year’s Day.

Unless the Buckeyes win Tuesday night’s Sugar Bowl against Arkansas, it will be a total wipeout at the hands of the hated Southeastern Conference.

Claiming they were subjected to sexual harassment and job discrimination, Christina Scavo and Shannon O’Toole are seeking unspecified damages from Favre, the Jets and a Jets massage coordinator.

While the women don’t say they received any messages directly from Favre, he referred to Scavo in a message proposing a meeting with her and a third, unidentified massage therapist, the lawsuit says.

DNA test results that came back barely a week after Cornelius Dupree Jr. was paroled in July excluded him as the person who attacked a Dallas woman in 1979, prosecutors said Monday. Dupree was just 20 when he was sentenced to 75 years in prison in 1980.

Now 51, he has spent more time wrongly imprisoned than any DNA exoneree in Texas, which has freed 41 wrongly convicted inmates through DNA since 2001 – more than any other state.

U.N. Human Rights Division Director Simon Munzu says he and his staff were barred from entering the building belonging to the party of Henri Konan Bedie on Tuesday hours after the shootout. Witnesses say security forces opened fire with automatic weapons for at least 20 minutes at around 5:30 a.m.

Bedie’s party is allied with Alassane Ouattara, who was recognized as the winner of the election but has been unable to assume power because the incumbent president is refusing to leave.

“That’s what Sasha eats for lunch probably three times a week,” Obama said then. “And you know, I don’t want to have to worry about whether she’s going to get sick as a consequence to having her lunch.”

On Tuesday, Obama is getting a chance to allay people’s fears about the safety of their food. He is set to sign a $1.4 billion overhaul of the food safety system, giving Washington new power to increase inspections at food processing facilities and force companies to recall tainted products.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order asking the California Supreme Court to decide if the backers of ballot propositions can step in to defend voter-approved initiatives in court when state officials refuse to do so.

The high court does not have to respond, but legal experts expect it to. The 9th Circuit panel suggested that without the state court’s input, it would have to dismiss the case.

The debate over the lifelines has long presented authorities with a moral dilemma: Is it acceptable to do nothing when so many immigrants are dying in the water? Or do lifesaving devices lull immigrants into a false sense of security that they can conquer the channel while giving them extra motivation to enter the country illegally?

The agency that manages the canal had waffled on those questions as board members worried aloud that the buoys would encourage illegal immigration. But the Imperial Irrigation District reversed course in August and has been bolting 105 lines across the 82-mile desert canal at a cost of $1.1 million. Crews are also planting 1,414 bilingual signs on canal banks that read, “Warning: Dangerous Water.”

The filing was delivered by hand to the U.S. House of Representatives clerk on Dec. 16, but did not come to public attention until now.

It was filed one day before The Miami Herald published a lengthy article raising questions about Rivera’s financial dealings with the gambling referendum firm, Millennium Marketing Strategies, and reporting the existence of an investigation by the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office.

The pope’s ruling was relayed in a Dec. 15 letter to Peter Borre, head of the Council of Parishes, which sent the last-ditch appeal in October. Borre said he received the letter at his home Monday.

The letter, written by a top Vatican diplomat, undersecretary of state Archbishop Fernando Filoni, said the pope was informed about the appeal and Filoni’s office had carefully studied it.

In late March or April, the flowering plants will paint the rugged landscape yellow, green and red. Their diminutive seed, which powered Inca armies only to be elbowed aside by the wheat preferred by colonizing Spaniards, is unmatched in nutritional value.

Quinoa’s rising popularity among First World foodies – the wholesale price has jumped sevenfold since 2000 as global demand climbed – has been a boon to the poor farmers here in the semiarid highlands where most of it grows.

On Constitution Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill, sweeping marble staircases, sculptures, manicured gardens and ornate doors beckoned citizens of the past. Now most stand empty and sealed.

The Supreme Court has become the latest to shoo people from its front steps, to the displeasure of several justices who think it’s wrong for an open society to close its most majestic portals.

Daley, an executive at JPMorgan Chase, has extensive private sector experience, an attractive profile for a White House trying to counter the notion that the president is antibusiness. Obama aides have been discussing naming an executive to a top job as a way to give the business community more of a voice in the administration.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The man who once was California’s most famous bachelor took the oath of office after being introduced by his wife of five years, former Gap Inc. executive Anne Gust Brown, inside Sacramento Memorial Auditorium.

As California Supreme Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye administered the oath, Gust Brown held a Bible that had belonged to her grandfather and was used during her wedding with Brown.

The European Union, China, Japan, South Korea and Israel are lobbying against requiring air shipments of lithium batteries and products containing them to meet hazardous cargo regulations, diplomatic and industry officials told The Associated Press.

At a minimum the proposal could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and disrupt the flow of products such as cellphones, laptops, medical devices, water meters and electric car batteries, among others, these governments say.