Evening Edition

Investigators will look into the extensive domestic and foreign assets held by former president Zine El Abdine Ben Ali, who resigned abruptly on Friday and fled to Saudi Arabia after a wave of social protests against his regime.

“Together we can write a new page in the history of our country,” Foued Mebazaa said in an address to the nation in which he also vowed to ensure an amnesty for political prisoners, media freedoms and an independent judiciary.

“Ben Ali has gone to Saudi Arabia! The government should go there too,” more than 1,000 protesters chanted in central Tunis, referring to former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who fled on Friday after 23 years of iron-fisted rule.

“We want a new parliament, a new constitution, a new republic! People rise up against the Ben Ali loyalists!” they chanted at the peaceful demonstration.

The news came as Duvalier’s lawyer confirmed the former leader had returned from exile amid the political upheaval after disputed elections and planned to stay in the Caribbean nation which he once ruled with an iron fist.

“We need to shake everything up so that the elections are annulled and new elections are held in which Duvalier can run,” Henry Robert Sterlin, a former Haitian ambassador to France, told AFP.

Duvalier stands accused of corruption, theft and misappropriation of funds related to the siphoning off of hundreds of millions of dollars during a 1971-1986 rule allegedly marked by widespread human rights abuses.

“Yes he has been charged. But I don’t understand it,” his lawyer Gervais Charles told AFP.

As several areas returned landslides exceeding 99 percent for separation of the mainly Christian, African south from the mainly Arab, Muslim north, the majority was achieved although some of 10 states, including the most populous, Jonglei, had yet to announce any results.

Figures gathered from state and county referendum officials showed that 2,224,857 votes for independence have already been returned.

Citing 70 agreements spanning 12 US states, the White House edged away from the fevered rhetoric that has come to dominate trade ties between the two powers, saying the massive package would support 235,000 US jobs.

The total includes an order for 200 Boeing aircraft worth an estimated $19 billion dollars.

On a long-awaited state visit, Hu made the unusual comment for a Chinese leader that “a lot” remained to be done on freedoms in China, but pointedly did not share Obama’s view that basic human rights were “universal.”

Trumpets sounded and a 21-gun salute blasted over Washington as Hu arrived at a White House draped with US and Chinese flags, in the most sumptuous pageantry a US president can muster. But tough talking soon ensued.

Hu landed at Andrews Air Force base and was expected soon afterwards at the White House for a rare private dinner hosted by President Barack Obama in recognition of the key nature of a relationship under severe recent strain.

US military officers rolled out a red carpet and gave full military honors complete with a brass band to the Chinese leader, who arrived at the base, just outside Washington, aboard an Air China jet.

The study was posted Tuesday on EurekAlert, a independent service for reporters set up by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was written about by numerous international news agencies, including AFP.

But AAAS later retracted the study as experts cited numerous errors in its approach.

In an interview with Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said the Saudi king was “pulling his hand” from Lebanon.

He said the monarch — whose country is a key ally of embattled caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri — took the decision after the failure of Saudi-Syrian efforts for rival camps in the small Mediterranean country to reach a compromise.

Another suicide attack in a nearby town killed two others and wounded a top provincial official, shattering a relative calm in Iraq since the formation of a new government by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki last month.

“I was on my way to the market close to the building when I saw the ambulance arrive at the entrance,” 53-year-old Sumaya Sabr, who suffered wounds to her head in the first blast, said from her hospital bed in Baquba, capital of Diyala province and site of the first attack.

Five days after veteran strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia with some of his wealthy entourage, former political allies including the prime minister were still trying to coax opposition figures into a national unity government which can restore order and oversee promised free elections.

Demonstrators, though less numerous than during the days of rage which unseated Ben Ali, continued to insist on the removal of all ministers from his once feared RCD party. Only that, they say, can satisfy the hopes of their “Jasmine Revolution,” which has delivered a shock to autocrats across the Arab world.

Amid the pomp of a state visit, both leaders spoke glowingly about cooperation but made no major breathroughs on a range of disputes over trade and security that have strained relations over the past year.

Hu gave up little aside from $45 billion in export deals that seemed aimed at quelling anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States and allowing Obama to tout job creation as U.S. unemployment remains stubbornly above 9 percent.

Bond trading revenue, including commodities and currencies, slid 39 percent from the third quarter as worries about European sovereign debt and rising U.S. Treasury yields kept investors on the sidelines.

“Things were just dead” in December, though “it’s sure a lot more active” in January, Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said on a conference call.

Regional power Saudi Arabia and Syria had worked for months to resolve a dispute between Hezbollah and Hariri over indictments in the 2005 killing of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, which are widely expected to accuse Hezbollah members.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said the kingdom had abandoned its efforts and that the situation in Lebanon was “dangerous.”

At 1830 (1730 GMT) Elmer was taken into custody by police, having just been found guilty of breaching strict banking secrecy for publicizing private client data and of threatening an employee at his former firm Julius Baer.

“The state prosecutor’s office is checking to see whether Rudolf Elmer has violated Swiss banking law by handing the CD over to WikiLeaks,” the Zurich cantonal (state) police and state prosecutor said in a joint statement.

Elmer, 55, among the first to use WikiLeaks to publish private bank documents, said he took his information to the website after Swiss authorities failed to act on it.

“The ethics of business leadership on both sides of the Atlantic have disappointed me,” he said, adding that he wanted to expose illegal offshore activity in the Cayman Islands.

Lieberman, 68, bolted the Democratic party to become an independent five years ago but still often sides with his old party. He plans to declare his political intentions for 2012 at a news conference in his home state of Connecticut.

“Senator Lieberman will announce tomorrow that he won’t run for re-election in 2012,” said the aide, who asked not to be identified by name.

Gbagbo’s rival Alassane Ouattara was proclaimed winner of a November 28 poll by the electoral commission and is internationally recognized as president-elect, but Gbagbo has refused to go, alleging rigging.

He maintains control of the security forces, much of the cocoa sector and state institutions.

The Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice approved the combination – but with a variety of conditions — more than a year after the companies announced it. The deal creates a new media powerhouse that controls not just how television shows and movies are made, but how they are delivered to people’s homes.

Comcast sees it as a potent combination, particularly as viewing habits change and audiences expect to find their favorite entertainment on the TV set as well as the PC, tablet and smartphone. Not only is Comcast the largest U.S. cable company, it is also the top broadband provider.

Google, whose shares underperformed the market in 2010, will need to overcome past failures to get onto the social Web and local advertising — twin areas that threaten to siphon off Internet traffic, and advertising dollars.

Now, the world’s top Internet company is recruiting and driving an acquisitions spree, aiming to ensure its online products remain popular as surfers turn to new services like Facebook — now the most heavily trafficked site — and wireless gadgets.

Eileen Rominger will have to prove she can be a neutral regulator of the industry from which she came. She spent the past 11 years at Goldman Sachs, most recently as chief investment officer of Goldman’s asset management unit before announcing her retirement in September.

On the other hand, Rominger, 56, will give the agency some of the Wall Street experience it has been accused of lacking in its oversight of complex instruments sold to small-scale investors.

Shares in Apple leapt almost 4 percent after hours following a brief trading suspension. It later backtracked to stand about 2 percent higher, recouping most of the losses incurred after Jobs’s surprise announcement.

Apple, once notorious for its conservative forecasts, said it expected earnings for the March quarter of $4.90 a share on revenue of $22 billion, surpassing the forecast of $4.47 a share on revenue of $20.8 billion.

A congressional official briefed on the reviews said the administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers.

“I think they just want to present the toughest front they can muster,” the official said.

The south has the world’s second largest migration of mammals, untamed wildernesses and vast herds of gazelles and antelopes, rivaling anything seen in Kenya, Uganda and other African holiday hotspots, say experts.

But populations of elephants, hippos and other fleshier animals have plummeted after hungry militia fighters hunted them for their meat and forced them to take shelter in dense forests.

While Lieberman’s supporters lamented his decision not to run in 2012, many constituents, especially Democrats, said they were pleased because the “Joe” they knew as a state lawmaker and activist state attorney general is already long-gone.

“I think Joe at one point was a really good legislator. … He was on the right side of the issues,” said Leslie Simoes of West Hartford, an advocate for people with disabilities and a registered Democrat. “And then, something shifted in him and he has just come out repeatedly, over and over and over again, absolutely on the wrong side of things.”

Passage would clear the way for the second phase of the “repeal and replace” promise that victorious Republicans made to the voters last fall. GOP officials said that in the coming months, congressional committees will propose changes to the existing legislation, calling for elimination of a requirement for individuals to purchase coverage, for example, and recommending curbs on medical malpractice lawsuits.

Republicans also intend to try to reverse many of the changes Democrats made to Medicare Advantage, the private alternative to the traditional government-run health care program for seniors.

The exchange over human rights was balanced by U.S. delight over newly announced Chinese business deals expected to generate about $45 billion in new export sales for the U.S.

Those agreements were cemented during Wednesday’s summit meeting between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies. Obama said the deals would help create 235,000 U.S. jobs.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them given time limits and existing law, District Attorney Seth Williams said. Nine of Gosnell’s employees also were charged.

Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

Tensions on the streets appeared to be calming as the administration tried to show it was distancing itself from the old guard.

Hundreds of protesters led a rally in central Tunis demanding that former allies of deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali stop clinging to power. Later, about 30 youths in the capital broke a curfew and set up camp near the heavily guarded Interior Ministry, bringing mats, food and water for an overnight sit-in. Police didn’t bother them.

Defense attorney Reynold Georges told reporters that it is Duvalier’s right to remain in Haiti, but that he is free to travel. He stressed that Haiti’s government has not ordered Duvalier to return to France following his surprise return on Sunday.

“He is free to do whatever he wants, go wherever he wants,” Georges said of the once-feared strongman, known as “Baby Doc.” “It is his right to live in his country … He is going to stay. It is his country.”

That’s what researchers are saying after finding a bone fragment from what they are calling the earliest confirmed domesticated dog in the Americas.

University of Maine graduate student Samuel Belknap III came across the fragment while analyzing a dried-out sample of human waste unearthed in southwest Texas in the 1970s. A carbon-dating test put the age of the bone at 9,400 years, and a DNA analysis confirmed it came from a dog – not a wolf, coyote or fox, Belknap said.

In an encouraging round of earnings reports, major banks say fewer mortgages are going bad, credit card defaults are down and more people are paying the bills on time.

One of the nation’s largest consumer lenders, Wells Fargo, said Wednesday that 29 percent fewer loans went bad in the last three months of 2010 than the year before. And late payments on loans considered likely to default declined for the first time since 2008.

In financial parlance, it’s called “playing the float.”

In contrast with another government program that also deals regularly with health insurers, Medicare lets its plans keep the cash.

Republicans are finding it’s one thing to issue a blanket promise to cut spending, an entirely different matter when you actually take the scissors to $1 of every $6 spent by agencies like the IRS, the FBI, NASA and the National Park Service. Federal layoffs would be unavoidable, the White House warns.

That’s the real-world impact of House Republicans’ campaign promise to cut $100 billion from the budgets of domestic agencies. Next week, they plan to vote on a resolution setting appropriations for the rest of the year at 2008 pre-recession levels. before President Barack Obama took office.

The Associated Press on Tuesday reported the contents of the letter, in which the Vatican’s top diplomat in Ireland told bishops that their policy of mandatory reporting such cases to police “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature.”

The newly revealed letter, obtained originally by Irish broadcaster RTE from an Irish bishop, has undermined persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that Rome never told bishops not to cooperate with police.

In his speech on Staten Island, Bloomberg said reforms of the city’s pension system will be his administration’s number one priority in Albany in the weeks ahead. The mayor said he had enlisted the help of former mayor Ed Koch in the effort to wrest control of city-worker pensions back from the state.

The mayor said he wants to raise the retirement age to 65 for non-uniformed workers. The change, which would only apply to new hires, would save billions of dollars over the long term, Bloomberg said.

After working much of the past decade to stem the rise of suicide in its ranks, the Army said that 156 active-duty soldiers killed themselves in 2010, down from 162 in 2009. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli attributed the progress to improved training and counseling programs that help soldiers deal with stress, including from the repeated wartime deployments common for soldiers in an Army still fighting two wars.

But the number of guard and reserve troops who killed themselves while not on active duty jumped to 145 from 80 the previous year. Officials said some of that increase may reflect the difficulty in getting help to people scattered away from military bases and back at their civilian homes and jobs.

Luis Posada Carriles, 82, is charged with 11 counts of perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud for lying during immigration hearings in El Paso after sneaking into the United States in 2005.

Prosecutors say he gave false testimony about how he reached American soil and failed to acknowledge planning a series of Havana hotel bombings in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist, even though he admitted responsibility in 1998 interviews with the New York Times.

Ketia Brenner is learning three languages – English, Spanish and Hebrew – and spends Friday nights eating popcorn and drinking root beer by the fireplace in Seattle.

And Jimmy Lepp, once the unofficial “mayor” of his Port-au-Prince orphanage, is saving money for a dirt bike and learning to play the drums in Colville, Wash.

The bomb, which was defused without incident on Monday, was the most potentially destructive he had ever seen, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release information about the investigation.

The FBI said it has no suspects in the case and has asked the public for help in identifying anyone who might have been seen in the downtown area where the bomb was found.

Citrus greening has destroyed groves in the U.S., Brazil, Asia and Africa. Detected in Florida in 2005, it leaves fruit sour, malformed and unusable. Eventually, it kills the tree.

The disease has been particularly devastating because it takes years for citrus trees to reach peak production, and the disease targets young trees, making it difficult for growers to replace those that have been lost.

While public education appeared to bear the brunt of the $15 billion state revenue shortfall, few corners of state government were spared in the draft proposal for the next two years that spends $73.2 billion in state money.

The proposal reduces state spending by almost $14 billion over the current budget. The reduction is smaller than the shortfall because of $1.4 billion in savings requested by the state leaders from the current year budget.