Evening Edition

Repeating the jubilant scenes witnessed on Sunday, huge queues formed outside polling stations in the regional capital Juba from long before dawn as voters seized the chance to have their say on whether to split Africa’s largest nation and put the seal on five decades of north-south conflict.

The scale of the turnout on the first of the seven days of polling has already put the south well on the way to reaching the 60-percent threshold set by a 2005 peace deal between north and south for the referendum to be valid.

Thousands of voters had begun waiting from early hours, eager to be among the first to have their say on whether the impoverished south should finally break away from rule by Khartoum, ending five decades of north-south conflict.

When the polls finally opened at 8:00 am (0500 GMT), the excitement was electric. Each time another vote was inserted in the ballot box, women began ululating in celebration.

It was the first unilateral declaration of a permanent ceasefire in ETA’s campaign of bombings and shootings for a homeland independent of Spain, which has claimed the lives of 829 people.

“ETA has decided to declare a permanent and general ceasefire which will be verifiable by the international community,” the group said in a video declaration, with no promise of disbanding or disarming.

“This is the feel good movie of the year,” Barron Meade, the show’s chairman, said at the opening ceremony.

GM and Ford scored an early win after the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid and Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle were named the North American Car and Truck of the Year by an association of automotive journalists.

The acquisition of Danisco, a profitable leader in the agri-food and biotechnology sectors, is set to make DuPont “a clear leader in industrial biotechnology,” the Wilmington, Delaware-based company said.

The purchase involves $5.8 billion paid in cash and $500 million of Danisco’s net debt, DuPont announced late Sunday.

Gabrielle Giffords, 40, was in a medically-induced coma but could respond to basic verbal commands, said doctors at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson, who were “cautiously optimistic” about her recovery chances.

A nine-year-old girl and a federal judge were among six people killed and at least 14 others were wounded before bystanders at the event in Tucson on Saturday grappled a gunman armed with a 9mm Glock pistol to the ground.

“I once more encourage the leaders of that country to take the necessary steps to abrogate that law,” the leader of the world’s one billion Catholics said in a traditional New Year’s address to ambassadors to the Vatican.

“The tragic murder of the governor of Punjab shows the urgent need to make progress in this direction,” he said, referring to the killing of Salman Taseer by one of his bodyguards last week over his liberal position on the law.

Biden, whose trip was not announced in advance for security reasons, is due to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai for talks on Tuesday.

Violence is at its worst in the near-decade-long war against a Taliban-led insurgency, with the insurgency spreading from traditional strongholds in the south and east into once-peaceful areas in the north and west.

A senior euro zone source said on Sunday that Germany, France and other euro zone countries were pushing Portugal to seek an EU-IMF assistance program, following Greece and Ireland, to prevent contagion spreading to much larger Spain, the fourth biggest economy in the euro area.

The Reuters report drew official denials from German Chancellor Angela Merkel on down, but economists and market analysts said it was only a question of time before Lisbon too would need a rescue.

Analysts say the central region of Abyei is the most likely place for north-south tensions to erupt into violence during and after the vote, the climax of a troubled peace deal that ended decades of civil war.

Southerners are expected to vote to split from the mostly Muslim north, depriving Khartoum of most of its oil reserves.

The deal, announced on Monday, would create the largest U.S. power company, if it wins approval from regulators, with 7.1 million electricity customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, and 57,000 megawatts of generating capacity.

Duke Energy Chief Executive and Chairman Jim Rogers said the combined company would be financially stronger and better able to cope with the huge costs facing the industry, from upgrading the power grid and adding new environmental controls to building a new generation of power plants, including new nuclear reactors.

Playing a weekend warm-up match days before the anniversary of the devastating January 12 quake, the players, all lower extremity amputees, control the ball artfully with their good legs, avoiding “illegal” contact with their crutches.

The teams train on a dusty pitch near Cite Soleil, Haiti’s largest slum on the outskirts of the wrecked capital Port-au-Prince. They were to face off again on Monday in the National Stadium as part of a low-key yet poignant commemoration of the disaster that killed around a quarter of a million people.

Gates is in China on a bridge-building trip a week ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States for a January 19 summit with President Barack Obama.

U.S. and Chinese military ties were curtailed for much of last year after Beijing protested against Obama’s proposed sale of $6.4 billion in weapons to Taiwan, the self-ruled island China deems an illegitimate breakaway.

Global sales and marketing chief Jim Farley said that Ford for now is maintaining its annual sales forecast of between 12.5 million and 13.5 million, up from 11.5 million in 2010.

Speaking on the sidelines of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Farley declined to give a specific forecast for Ford sales, other than to say the automaker is just as optimistic about 2011 as it was in 2010 when its sales increased 19 percent. Last year was Ford’s largest year-on-year sales increase in its home market since 1984.

In the first big event of the show, the Chevy Volt, the centerpiece of General Motors’ return from bankruptcy and already the winner of both Motor Trend Magazine’s car of the year and Green Car of the Year awards, was named 2011 North American Car of the Year award, beating out rival vehicles from Japan’s Nissan Motor Co Ltd and Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co.

The latest version of Ford Motor Co’s Explorer sport utility vehicle, meanwhile, was named 2011 North American Truck of the Year — the third year in a row that Ford has dominated the category.

A leak was discovered at the northern end of the pipeline in Prudhoe Bay early Saturday, near production facilities, forcing oil companies to cut output to 5 percent of their average 630,000 barrels per day.

The shutdown is the latest setback for the 33-year old duct, which is becoming more expensive to maintain as it ages. It currently handles less than a third of the oil it did at its peak in the 1980s.

The cash deal would enable DuPont to enter a niche in the chemical industry – food additives – long dominated by smaller rival International Flavors and Fragrances Inc. It would also solidify existing cooperation between the two companies in the field of technology for advanced bioethanol.

However the acquisition will reduce DuPont’s 2011 earnings of $3.30 to $3.60 per share by a range of 30 cents to 45 cents per share, the company said.

Sanofi said late on Sunday that representatives from both companies had entered discussions about ways to value key Genzyme drug Campath, which the U.S. biotech hopes to market as a multiple sclerosis (MS) treatment under brand name Lemtrada.

Genzyme has rejected Sanofi’s takeover offer price of $69 a share as too low, but the two sides are now talking about a way to bridge the valuation gap by focusing on prospects for Campath via a deal structure known as a contingent value right (CVR).

Some preliminary discussions on the possibility of Portugal asking for help if its financing costs on markets become too high have taken place since July, the source said.

No formal talks on aid have started yet, a number of euro zone sources said, but the pressure was rising in the Eurogroup, which brings together euro zone finance ministers.

American views on overweight candidates may help determine the political future of Christie, an alternative to fit fellow-Republican Sarah Palin. While Americans like female candidates slim, they seem to better tolerate their male politicians on the heavy side.

Christie rose to prominence on the national scene after his 2009 election when he closed an $11 billion deficit on a $29 billion budget while putting a cap on property tax increases.

The United States owes China at least $907 billion and needs to have a careful conversation with its largest creditor when the Chinese president visits the White House on January 19.

Obama wants Beijing to let its yuan currency rise, helping him to cut U.S. unemployment by lifting exports to China.

The sentence comes after a jury in November convicted DeLay on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The Republican who represented the Houston area was once one of the most powerful people in U.S. politics, ascending to the No. 2 job in the House of Representatives. During a several-minute statement to the judge prior to sentencing, DeLay repeated his longstanding claims that the prosecution was politically motivated and that he never intended to break the law.

U.S. Gen. David Petraeus told The Associated Press in the southern city of Lashkar Gah that a shift in thinking by the Afghan government and NATO means that the tribe’s risky move is being embraced rather than ignored. And that brings the hope that others may follow suit, he said.

Later Monday, Petraeus was on hand in Kabul to greet Vice President Joe Biden, who made a surprise visit to Afghanistan to assess progress toward the key objective of handing over security from international forces to Afghans. The White House said Biden, who was last here in January 2009, was to meet with President Hamid Karzai as well as U.S. troops.

In releasing his first budget plan, the newly elected Democratic governor said he wanted to end the types of acccounting gimmicks, borrowing tricks and overly optimistic revenue assumptions that characterized the recent budgets signed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

His budget projects the deficit at $25.4 billion over the next 18 months.

The report by the Organization of American States team has not been released publicly but officials confirmed its conclusions. It was to be presented to President Rene Preval later Monday, foreign and Haitian sources confirmed.

The report’s most important conclusions are that the disputed Nov. 28 vote should neither be thrown out entirely nor recounted, and that enough fraudulent or improper ballots should be invalidated to drop governing-party candidate Jude Celestin into third place and out of the second-round runoff.

An Associated Press review of federal data shows that the lure of such easy money has drawn thousands of new people into the methamphetamine underworld over the last few years.

“It’s almost like a sub-criminal culture,” said Gary Boggs, an agent at the Drug Enforcement Administration. “You’ll see them with a GPS unit set up in a van with a list of every single pharmacy or retail outlet. They’ll spend the entire week going store to store and buy to the limit.”

Children born less than two years after their siblings were considerably more likely to have an autism diagnosis compared to those born after at least three years.

The sooner the second child was conceived the greater the likelihood of that child later being diagnosed with autism. The effect was found for parents of all ages, decreasing the chance that it was older parents and not the birth spacing behind the higher risk.

Every bit as rare: an offense that can’t be stopped. But Oregon, led by running back LaMichael James, has scored 37 or more points 11 times in an equally impressive undefeated season.

These are the reasons people are envisioning scores like 60-55 and 55-53 for the BCS title game Monday in nearby Glendale, a reason the matchup has turned into such a red-hot ticket.

The NFC has a juicy one upcoming, too: surging Green Bay at Atlanta.

The Packers discovered a running game Sunday in beating the Eagles 21-16, the third road victory during wild-card weekend. Shockingly, the only home winner was Seattle, which beat defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans on Saturday.

Abyei remains the most contentious sticking point between north and south following a two-decade civil war that left 2 million dead. Even President Barack Obama, who applauded this week’s historic referendum on independence in the south, warned that violence in the Abyei region should cease.

United Nations spokesman Martin Nesirky said Monday the organisation is “extremely concerned” about the reports of clashes and casualties in Abyei.

Microsoft provided a sneak peek at a radical new version of Windows, Verizon showed the first consumer gadgets for a wireless network that’s faster in many cases than wired broadband, and many manufacturers showed tablet computers with the potential to give Apple’s iPad a run for its money.

The show itself, the largest trade show in the Americas, was back in high form, after two lean years. A pre-show estimate put attendance at more than 126,000 people, and the crowds pointed to attendance well above that, but perhaps not as many as the 141,150 people that showed up in 2008.

Military contacts are fewer and less substantive than U.S.-Chinese interaction in the economic, political and diplomatic arenas, and both nations wanted to put a better face on the military relationship ahead of a high-stakes visit to Washington by Chinese President Hu Jintao next week.

The agreement stops short of the robust cooperation sought by Washington, and China pointedly refused to promise that friction over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan might not interfere.

One: She failed to engage and mobilize parents, residents and community leaders who supported her ambitious education reform agenda, but were never vocal about it.

“The people who were vocal were the people who were opposing,” Rhee said in an interview with The Associated Press, three months after announcing her resignation.

Family legacies aren’t unusual in the Fire Department of New York, but the Washingtons are – because they are black. And the nation’s largest fire department remains an overwhelmingly white force.

But a federal lawsuit, a court order and a revamped application system are offering a glimmer of a future in which the FDNY could become as diverse as the population it serves – a goal other big-city departments have already achieved.

For some Cuban exiles, avowed militant Luis Posada Carriles is like the horsemen, a patriot who has long battled a fearsome oppressor. To his foes, Posada is like the waves, a dangerous force responsible for Havana hotel bombings, assassination attempts on Castro and one of the deadliest pre-9/11 airliner explosions.

To others, the 82-year-old is simply the farmer, a harmless relic living out his twilight.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento filed a motion to drop the charges “in the interests of justice,” according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge Frank Damrell Jr. granted the motion.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Terry Adelman ordered Jeffrey Sterling, 43, to remain held without bond pending a full detention hearing in Virginia once federal marshals escort him back there by commercial jet. He has been jailed since his arrest last week in St. Louis.

The indictment did not say specifically what information was leaked, but the dates and other details indicate the case centered on leaks to James Risen, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. His 2006 book “State of War” revealed details about the CIA’s covert spy war with Iran.

A top deputy mayor and several commissioners testified at a City Council hearing about the Dec. 26 storm that dumped more than 2 feet of snow in parts of the city.

More than 100 ambulances became stuck as streets went unplowed and 911 calls backed up. Then, the overworked sanitation department fell behind on trash pickups, and garbage piled up.

Advocates say the preservation efforts are needed to ensure food is available locally if the national distribution system is ever disrupted. They also say it helps maintain a way of life important to many Americans.

Twenty-five states have farmland preservation programs, and nearly half of them are in the densely populated Northeast, where the loss of fields to housing developments and shopping malls has been rapid and pressing. After losing 21 percent of its farmland in less than two decades, Connecticut increased spending on preservation efforts.

A recent Ohio State University study found that healthy cats show signs of illness when stressed.

At the same time, cats diagnosed with feline interstitial cystitis (FIC) became healthier when stress levels were reduced, the study showed.

In eight cities across the U.S., voters swarmed the makeshift polling places where the weeklong elections were being held.

In Chicago, basketball star Luol Deng arrived at the office-turned-polling station on the city’s North Side to a hero’s welcome, drawing cheers from the Sudanese waiting to vote when he briefly draped himself with a flag. One man yelled in response, “Hey Lu, that’s a good color on you, man!”