Evening Edition

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing. Policemen, who are generally less well protected than soldiers in Afghanistan, are common targets in the Taliban’s nine-year insurgency against its Western-backed government.

The marketplace attack underscored the perilous security in parts of the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual home, despite being the focus of the US-led military strategy to reverse their momentum.

Regional powers are mulling military intervention to remove Gbagbo in favour of the man the world says beat him in democratic elections, Alassane Ouattara, although neighbouring Ghana said it is opposed to the use of force.

Gbagbo’s increasingly isolated government said late Thursday that the two ambassadors were no longer welcome but London and Ottawa reiterated that they only recognised Ouattara’s legitimacy.

Gbagbo’s increasingly isolated government said late Thursday that the two ambassadors were no longer welcome but both countries reiterated that they only recognised statements made by his rival Alassane Ouattara.

Ouattara is the internationally recognised winner of a November 28 presidential run-off, but he has been holed up in an Abidjan hotel for weeks, surrounded by the Ivorian army which remains loyal to Gbagbo.

Egypt has been under tight security since the attack in the northern city of Alexandria killed 21 people, and the measures were stepped up for Christmas Eve services held for Copts on Thursday.

Under the Coptic calendar, Christmas Day falls on January 7.

Fears also grew that the contamination could have entered the food chain earlier than thought, as tests on animal fats at the firm at the centre of the scandal reportedly showed they were tainted as far back as last March.

A spokesman for Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner told a news conference Friday that “4,709 farms and businesses are currently closed,” including 4,468 in the state of Lower Saxony, northwest Germany.

A border collie has learned more than 1,000 words, showing US researchers that her memory is not only better than theirs, but that she understands quite a bit about how language works.

Chaser learned the names for 1,022 toys, so many that her human handlers had to write on them in marker so that they wouldn’t forget, said study co-author Alliston Reid, a psychology professor at Wofford College in South Carolina.

The daily Le Figaro cited “several internal sources” at the company as saying that Renault and the French secret service suspect Chinese involvement in the affair.

“Suspicions are indeed leading in that direction,” towards China, said Bernard Carayon, a lawmaker for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UM party who has authored several specialist reports on economic intelligence.

The move will be the latest step in a staff shuffle that has seen Obama refresh his economic and political teams to meet a strong challenge from resurgent Republicans as he prepares to build a 2012 reelection campaign.

Sperling is a veteran of divided government battles with Republicans during then-president Bill Clinton’s administration — and his promotion comes as Obama faces a similar political scenario after November’s mid-term elections.

England wrapped up an innings and 83-run victory early on the last day in Sydney for their first series victory in Australia since Mike Gatting’s team won 2-1 in 1986-87.

The series culminated in an overpowering England performance against the one-time titans and plunged Australian cricket into the depths of despair and inquisition.

The disappointing jobs growth figure reported by the Labor Department on Friday suggested the Federal Reserve would likely stay the course with its effort to support the world’s biggest economy with the purchase of $600 billion in government bonds.

The department’s survey of nonfarm employers showed payrolls increased 103,000 last month, below economists’ expectations for 175,000. Private hiring rose 113,000, while government employment fell 10,000.

American International Group Inc received the largest bailout of the credit crisis, at one point owing the U.S. government just over $182 billion. The government now stands to make a massive profit on the deal with a series of stock sales starting as soon as March.

The company said on Thursday its board had approved the issuance of warrants to buy 75 million shares of common stock, subject to all the parties to the recapitalization agreeing it can close by January 14.

As Ford Motor Co prepared to close the books on its biggest comeback year for sales and earnings since the 1980s, Ford was talking to friends about the risk of gridlock choking booming urban centers from Sao Paolo to Shanghai — and potentially choking auto sales, too.

“I want us to start thinking now about how we’re going to solve it,” he said. “Nobody is thinking about it yet in our industry, but it’s going to be upon us fast.”

Bank shares fell, weighing on broader stock indexes, on fears the decision could threaten lenders’ ability to work through hundreds of thousands of pending foreclosures.

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts’ unanimous decision on Friday upheld a lower court ruling. It is among the earliest cases to address the validity of foreclosures done without proper documentation.

Obama named Gene Sperling as the new head of his National Economic Council in remarks after a report showed the country’s jobless rate had declined last month but still remained high.

“He is a public servant who has devoted his life to making this economy work,” Obama told several dozen workers at the Thompson Creek Window Co. in Landover, Maryland.

Industry Minister Eric Besson, who spoke earlier this week of a case that smacked of “economic warfare,” said no official inquiry had been opened and this would happen only if the carmaker lodged a formal complaint.

Asked about the possible Chinese lead, Besson said: “I am not authorized to say anything at all on the subject.”

The proposed cuts, unveiled at a somber Pentagon briefing on Thursday, follow increased White House and congressional scrutiny of military spending, which has doubled in real terms since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

They are in addition to a $100 billion cost-savings drive that Defense Secretary Robert Gates kicked off last year to eliminate waste, cut poorly performing weapons programs and redirect the money to other priorities.

Sadr, who led two uprisings against the U.S. military and demands its withdrawal, seems eager to shed the image of a firebrand and appear a statesman as his movement assumes a new, powerful role in Baghdad’s coalition government, analysts say.

Bearded men in black shirts and grey suits with pistols strapped to their belts, and others dressed like professional mercenaries, have knitted a tight circle around him since his return Thursday after years of voluntary exile in Iran.

By a partisan vote of 236-181, the House approved rules for debating the healthcare reform repeal bill, with a vote expected on January 12.

Only a handful of Democrats joined unified House Republicans in voting to allow debate to proceed — one day after leaders in the Democratic-controlled Senate warned that the repeal effort would die in their chamber.

In legal filings on Thursday, the world’s biggest coffee chain asked U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Seibel to deny Kraft’s request to stop Starbucks from ending their 12-year-old deal and moving the business to a new partner.

In the latest flare in the increasingly bitter battle, Starbucks argued that a court-issued injunction would cause it harm by leaving Kraft in charge of selling its packaged coffee in supermarkets and other stores in the United States, Canada, Britain and other parts of Europe.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pressed lawmakers to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt limit to allow the United States to borrow more and avert a crisis in the coming months.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Republican, said he recognized the need to allow the government to go deeper in debt.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced on Thursday a further restructuring of the radar-evading F-35 as part of a broad cost-reduction plan, saving it would result in net savings of about $4 billion over the next five years.

The Pentagon’s biggest arms program, the new fighter is being developed with eight international partner countries at total cost of $382 billion, but the program has run into schedule delays and massive cost overruns in recent years.

The president is surrounding himself with veterans of the Clinton administration. Chief of staff William Daley, economic overseer Gene Sperling and recently confirmed budget director Jacob Lew form an inner circle with a history of bipartisanship and experience in the art of the deal.

“Our mission has to be to accelerate hiring and accelerate growth,” the president declared Friday at a window manufacturing plant in suburban Maryland.

The economy added 103,000 jobs in December, a figure that fell short of what most economists were hoping for. The unemployment rate did come down, to 9.4 percent from 9.8, but that was partly because people gave up looking for work.

“The labor market ended last year with a bit of a thud,” Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, said after the Labor Department released its monthly jobs report Friday. He said the drop in unemployment wasn’t likely to be sustained.

The real action is in states, where Republicans are using federal courts and governors’ offices to lead the assault against Obama’s signature domestic achievement, a law aimed at covering nearly all Americans.

In a post-election bow to tea partiers by the new GOP House majority, Republican lawmakers are undertaking an effort to repeal the health care law in full knowledge that the Democratic Senate will stop them from doing so.

A reported increase in the spotting problem is one reason the federal government said Friday it plans to lower the recommended levels for fluoride in water supplies – the first such change in nearly 50 years.

About 2 out of 5 adolescents have tooth streaking or spottiness because of too much fluoride, a surprising government study found recently. In some extreme cases, teeth can even be pitted by the mineral – though many cases are so mild only dentists notice it. The problem is generally considered cosmetic.

It’s no longer unusual to find a nursing home resident who is decades younger than his neighbor: About one in seven people now living in such facilities in the U.S. is under 65. But the growing phenomenon presents a host of challenges for nursing homes, while patients like Martin face staggering isolation.

“It’s just a depressing place to live,” Martin says. “I’m stuck here. You don’t have no privacy at all. People die around you all the time. It starts to really get depressing because all you’re seeing is negative, negative, negative.”

The divers, Charles Buffum, a brewery owner from Stonington, Conn., and Craig Harger, a carbon dioxide salesman from Colchester, Conn., say the wreck changed the course of history because Perry likely would not have been sent to Lake Erie otherwise. Sunday is the 200th anniversary of the wreck.

In the months preceding Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Berlin’s Foreign Office commanded its diplomats in the Nazi-friendly country to gather evidence on the dog and its owner – and even plotted to destroy the owner’s pharmaceutical business.

Historians were unaware of the scheme until some 30 files containing correspondence and diplomatic cables were found by a researcher in the Foreign Office archives.

It’s impossible to walk the floor at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show without stumbling across a multitude of keyboard-less touch-screen computers expected to hit the market in the coming months. With Apple estimated to have sold more than 13 million iPads last year alone, the competition is clearly for second place, but even that prize is worth pursuing.

Technology research firm Gartner Inc. expects that 55 million tablet computers will be shipped this year, most of them still iPads, but there will be room for rivals to vie for sales of the remaining 10 million to 15 million devices.

Roadside bombs also killed three NATO service members in the south and east, while gunmen shot dead a police inspector in Kandahar’s provincial capital, bringing the day’s death toll to 21. Authorities said they suspect the Taliban assassinated the police inspector.

The day’s violence underscored the dangers in southern Afghanistan – and in particular Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban. Some of the fiercest fighting in the nearly 10-year war has taken place in the south, where international forces, bolstered by the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops over the summer, are battling to to disrupt the insurgents’ network.

The weeklong independence balloting starts Sunday for the southern third of Sudan – Africa’s biggest country – on whether to draw a border between the north, which is mostly Arab and Muslim, and the south, populated mostly by blacks who are Christian or animist.

For southern Sudanese like Atem Yak, who survived war, lived amid dire poverty and endured discrimination, it has been a long time coming.

At age 6, he endured choking thirst, aching hunger and the constant terror of ambushes as he and hundreds of others traveled to a refugee camp in nearby Ethiopia. Then came safety in the United States.

On Sunday, he and thousands of other Sudanese refugees will head to the polls in eight U.S. cities to decide whether the Southern Sudan should secede from the North, creating the world’s newest country.

Bernanke told the Senate Budget Committee that there’s rising evidence that a “self-sustaining” recovery is taking hold. He said he expects stronger growth because consumers and businesses will boost spending this year.

Bernanke spoke an hour after the government released a disappointing employment report. Employers added only 103,000 jobs in December. The unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent partly because people gave up looking for jobs. Many economists had forecast much bigger job gains and were looking for a signal that businesses were stepping up hiring.

Some of the numbers that began trickling out Thursday were eye-popping – most notably a net profit margin of nearly 30 percent, much higher than most people had previously speculated.

The owner of the world’s largest Internet social network, privately held since it started in a Harvard University dorm room seven years ago, will be forced to open its books because it expects to have more than 500 shareholders at some point this year, according to a person who has reviewed the documents handed out Thursday. The person asked not to be identified because the documents are only being given to an elite group selected to buy a stake in Facebook through a fund packaged by the company’s newest investor, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Flakes melted onto wet streets as snowplows – some equipped with global positioning devices since the blizzard foul-up – and salt spreaders sat idle in neighborhoods all over the city.

By nightfall, the National Weather Service reported the highest accumulation citywide was 2 inches in Queens, a mere dusting compared with the holiday storm that dumped 29 inches in Staten Island, 2 feet in Brooklyn and 20 inches in Central Park.

The defense chief has tried to push similar proposals through Congress before and failed. And this year’s pitch is a particularly fraught with political risk. President Barack Obama is defending his own health care plan from threats of repeal in the House, while Republicans are looking for ways ahead of the 2012 election to discredit the administration’s commitment to the troops.

The military health care program, set up in the 1960s and known as TRICARE, has exploded in cost in recent years with some 10 million individuals now eligible for coverage, including active-duty personnel, retirees, reservists and their families. The price tag has climbed from $19 billion a year a decade ago to its current $50 billion.

During Gates’ visit to Beijing, coming a week before Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington, the defense chief plans to make the case for regular face-to-face discussions among U.S. and Chinese military leaders that are routine for presidents and diplomats.

Gates will see Hu and senior Chinese military leaders after a particularly rocky year in which China expanded its military reach and firepower, quarreled with U.S. allies over Pacific territory and broke off the few flimsy military ties it had allowed with the United States.

She started off dating guys a few years her junior, then graduated to age spreads of a decade or more.

“I was terrified of men my age, or older than myself. Really, really afraid,” said Turner, a 46-year-old bookkeeper from San Luis Obispo, Calif. “They wanted to marry me and put me in a house and keep me there. They seemed incredibly boring.”

Affable and slightly rumpled, Sperling at age 52 is the Obama White House’s new Renaissance man.

In his return engagement as head of the president’s National Economic Council, Sperling will oversee the administration’s direction of economic policy. He replaces Lawrence Summers, a man whose economic vision he generally shares. But where Summers could be a prickly and intimidating intellectual force, Sperling is more negotiator and explainer, not likely to become impatient with a questioner, whether it’s a lawmaker with an agenda or reporters with a deadline.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission invited the fire experts to testify amid the Innocence Project’s insistence that Willingham was convicted with faulty evidence and was innocent when he was put to death in 2004. The New York-based organization specializes in wrongful conviction cases.

Prosecutors in Corsicana, about 60 miles south of Dallas, have insisted Willingham’s conviction and execution was proper, and the State Fire Marshal’s Office has stood behind the arson finding.

A Democratic centrist, Daley can serve as a liaison to business in a White House that has faced criticism from some as being anti-business. A former commerce secretary and banking powerhouse, he can also give Obama real-world advice on economic matters. No stranger to sharp-elbow politics, Daley can be a trusted campaign adviser.

“Bill Daley is entirely comfortable in the world of business as in the world of politics,” said William Galston, a longtime associate of Daley’s who was a White House domestic adviser in the Clinton administration.

Some of the biggest growth is expected in California, where planting had slipped to a low of 200,000 acres two years ago from 1.6 million acres in 1979. This year, California farmers are expected to plant 400,000 acres, said Mark Bagby, spokesman for Calcot, a marketing cooperative that represents 1,400 growers in California, Texas and New Mexico.

Nearly all of that will be Pima cotton, the high-quality, extra-long fiber used in luxury sheets and towels. The commodity futures for cotton rose to historic highs in August, hitting $1.50 per pound, triple the price in 2008. Long-term cotton futures now hover around $1, but Pima prices are closer to $1.30.

The choice of Daley immediately brought howls of protest from the left flank of the Democratic Party, where advocates questioned his insider ties to Wall Street. Centrists, business leaders and Republican lawmakers rallied around the move, one that underscored just how much and how fast the face of the White House is changing.

Obama, whose hopes for a second term will be shaped largely by how the economy does, immediately linked Daley’s appointment to that task. For the most influential staff job in American politics, Obama chose a fellow Chicagoan and former Cabinet secretary who has run both companies and campaigns.

Speaker John Boehner made the challenge as the new GOP majority voted to cut funding for House members’ own offices and committee operations by $35 million. Rank and file Republicans described that vote as a mere down payment on a much more ambitious assault on record federal deficits.

“It’s not massive,” first-term Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said of Thursday’s cut. “But it is monumental.”

Federal prosecutors charged Jeffrey Sterling with 10 counts related to improperly keeping and disclosing national security information.

The indictment did not say specifically what was leaked but, from the dates and other details, it was clear that the case centered on leaks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen for his 2006 book, “State of War.” The book revealed details about the CIA’s covert spy war with Iran.