Evening Edition

“Our revolution, your revolution, the revolution of the young, risks being lost … There are forces that are calling for a void, a power vacuum. The void brings terror, which brings dictatorship,” Rachid Ammar told the protesters.

Speaking through a megaphone and surrounded by soldiers, the popular general said the army would act as a “guarantor” for the revolution that ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and would respect the country’s constitution.

Protesters said the revolt against Ben Ali has not gone far enough and should be followed up by the removal of all old-regime figures from the leadership and the abolition of Ben Ali’s powerful RCD party.

The protest defied a night-time curfew and a state of emergency that bans any public assemblies but security forces did not intervene — in stark contrast to the violent crackdown seen in the final days of Ben Ali’s rule.

“Our revolution, your revolution, the revolution of the young, risks being lost … There are forces that are calling for a void, a power vacuum. The void brings terror, which brings dictatorship,” General Rachid Ammar told the crowd.

Speaking through a megaphone and surrounded by soldiers, the popular general said the army would act as a “guarantor” for the revolution that ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and would also respect the constitution.

Some of the hundreds of protesters threw stones, charged against police lines and and smashed up a police car near the government quarter in the centre of Tunis, as security forces sealed off the area with barbed wire.

“We will stay here until the government resigns and runs away like (ousted president Zine El Abidine) Ben Ali,” said 22-year-old student Othmene, one of the hundreds who staked out the building overnight in defiance of a curfew.

There were scenes of carnage at Domodedovo airport in southern Moscow as corpses were stretchered out of the smoke-filled arrivals area after the blast, the latest deadly attack to hit the capital after the metro bombings in March.

Describing the attack as an act of terror, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev chaired an emergency meeting of top officials and ordered a special security regime across the country’s main airports and railway stations.

Demonstrations broke out in various regions with a significant Sunni population where protesters burned tyres and blocked major roads as they vented their anger at the likely appointment of billionaire Najib Mikati to replace Hariri, Lebanon’s most popular Sunni leader.

“Sunni blood is boiling!” and “Hezbollah, party of the devil!” chanted demonstrators in the northern port city of Tripoli, Mikati’s home town and Lebanon’s main Sunni bastion.

Details of the proposals emerged as Al-Jazeera news channel began late Sunday to release the first of some 1,600 documents known as the “Palestine Papers” on more than 10 years of secret US-brokered Middle East peace talks.

The files, shared with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, caused surprise and anger among Palestinian leaders, with chief negotiator Saeb Erakat saying they contained “lies” and president Mahmud Abbas saying they distorted the issue.

In its preliminary findings released the same day, a Turkish investigation said Israeli troops had used “disproportionate” force in boarding the flotilla of ships to prevent them from reaching Israeli-blockaded Gaza.

The assault earned the Jewish state international censure, prompting Israeli MPs to appoint a commission to examine both the military operation’s legality and Israel’s blockade.

Sarkozy said he would meet his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao in China in March and invited Britain, Germany and Russia to aid his efforts to police financial transactions and stabilise currency and raw commodities markets.

He also said France wants to reform the International Monetary Fund, a support for emerging economies, to broaden its world finance role.

The Packers advanced to their first Super Bowl in 13 years with a 21-14 victory over long-time rival Chicago, who could not overcome a quarterback crisis in the NFC championship game.

“This is a dream come true, incredible feeling. I am at a loss for words,” Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said. “We just had enough points on offense and B.J. had an incredible touchdown.”

Green Party leader John Gormley told a press conference in Dublin that “our patience has reached an end” after a week of political turmoil that resulted in Cowen quitting as leader of his ruling Fianna Fail party on Saturday.

“Because of these continuing doubts, the lack of communication and the breakdown in trust, we have decided that we can no longer continue in government,” Gormley said after talks with his party’s national executive.

The meeting led by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan follows a torrid weekend in which Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s coalition lost the vital support of the Green party and Cowen himself resigned as leader of the Fianna Fail party.

Lenihan will be one of four candidates to run in the succession race, with former foreign minister Micheal Martin seen as the favourite.

Within 48 hours of Duvalier’s unexpected return one week ago, government prosecutors slapped him with a slew of charges, many related to the alleged siphoning off of hundreds of millions of dollars during his 15-year rule.

Six private lawsuits have also been filed against the 59-year-old former strongman over alleged human rights violations and torture, and judicial officials expect more complaints to follow.

After being launched in the United States, Britain and Ireland, Sony’s “Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity” service, is being extended to France, Germany, Spain and Italy, Sony said in an announcement to coincide with Sunday’s opening of the MIDEM music industry convention on the French Riviera.

The subscription service will be competing with a fast-growing number of free and paying music streaming services that include Spotify, Pandora, Last.fm, Groove Shark and We7.

The Ivory Coast is the world’s largest producer and exporter of cocoa and the announcement led cocoa futures to jump to a one-year high on the New York Board of Trade, also climbing on the London exchange.

Ouattara’s government flexed its muscles by calling for “the immediate stoppage of all exports of coffee and cocoa”, as Nigeria urged the UN Security Council to authorise force to prise his rival Laurent Gbagbo from the presidency.

As Nigeria called on the UN Security Council to authorise force to prise Gbagbo out of the presidency, Ouattara flexed his muscles by insisting on “the immediate stoppage of all exports of coffee and cocoa”.

Producers and exporters who violate the ban would be considered to be “financing the illegitimate regime” of Gbagbo, said an edict from his office.

Green stood a free man on the stage of a Houston high school auditorium and looked out at row after row of teenagers.

Many were no older than Green was back in the summer of 1983, when he was wrongfully convicted of raping a woman based on faulty eyewitness testimony.

Emanuel immediately responded that he would appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court and urged quick consideration. The ruling on Monday overturned decisions by a lower court and a Chicago elections board that allowed him on the February 22 ballot.

“I have no doubt that, in the end, we will prevail,” Emanuel said at a news conference held at a downtown restaurant. “As my father always used to say, ‘nothing is ever easy in this life.'”

President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to track down and punish those behind the bombing, which also injured over 150 people, during the busy late afternoon at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. The dead included some foreigners.

Islamist rebels have vowed to take their bombing campaign from the North Caucasus to the Russian heartland in the year before presidential elections, hitting transport and economic targets. They have also leveled threats at the 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled for the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, a region some militants consider “occupied.”

The documents, obtained by the Al Jazeera television channel, could undermine the position of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose public declarations about Jerusalem are at odds with what his officials were promising in private.

Equally sobering for the Palestinian people, who want to create a state on land Israel seized in a 1967 war, is the fact that Israel offered nothing in return for the concessions and turned down their offer, saying it did not go far enough.

In Ramallah, several dozen Abbas loyalists tried to break into Al Jazeera’s office, witnesses said, during a protest against the channel’s publication of leaked documents showing the Palestinians offered big concessions to Israel in peace talks.

The documents released on Sunday showed Abbas’s negotiators willing to give substantial ground on important issues at the heart of the decades-old conflict with Israel, such as the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

Some Arab analysts said the documents, published by Al Jazeera television, did not differ markedly from offers discussed in previous peace talks over the years and showed the kind of concessions needed for any settlement.

But ordinary Arabs, many of them angered by their leaders who they feel are too ready to capitulate to U.S. and Israeli demands, still voiced fury about the content of leaks that touch on issues sensitive to many across the Middle East.

Telecoms tycoon Najib Mikati, backed by a Hezbollah-led coalition, looked set to be asked to form a government after the first of two days of consultations among Lebanese politicians.

Caretaker Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, whose government collapsed earlier this month, said he and his group would not serve in an administration dominated by Hezbollah, and Hariri supporters in north Lebanon called for a “day of anger.”

The sources said the council would be tasked with protecting the revolution that toppled veteran president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali this month, amid widespread complaints that former members of the ruling party are trying to cling on to power.

The council is expected to include respected opposition politician Ahmed Mestiri, whom a range of opposition politicians and former members of the ruling RCD believe they can work with.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has failed to produce a consensus explanation of the 2007-2009 banking debacle, as it was asked to do in May 2009.

Instead, the 10-member panel has fractured along the same ideological fault lines that divide much of political Washington. Three reports will be issued by commission members on Thursday, each conforming with a familiar political slant.

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.

The No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, said Sunday his party would demand “serious spending cuts” in an array of federal programs.

Obama has signaled he will call for efforts to tackle the long-term problem of high annual U.S. deficits and surging debt in his nationally televised annual address at 9 p.m. Tuesday (0200 GMT Wednesday) but he and his advisers also want to calibrate the pace of the fiscal pullback.

Morgan Stanley shares rose 4.6 percent.

In 2009, after the financial crisis brought the bank to the brink of failure, Morgan Stanley began reducing its reliance on trading and risk-taking for profit.

The requests, by trustees liquidating Mortgage Lenders Network USA and American Home Mortgage, come despite intense concerns that paperwork critical to foreclosures and securitized investments may be lost.

A series of recent court rulings have increased the importance of original loan documents, holding that they are essential for investors to prove ownership of mortgages and to have the right to foreclose.

Speaking to 300 diplomats and journalists in the Elysee presidential palace, Sarkozy also voiced support for a tax on financial transactions, calling such a move a “moral question” but admitting the idea had many enemies.

“How can you explain that we regulate money markets and not commodities?,” said Sarkozy, who holds the rotating presidency of the Group of 20, a policy forum for the world’s leading rich and developing economies, for 2011.

Le Yucheng, director-general of policy planning for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made the remarks before Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States last week, but they reflect the thinking behind Hu’s four-day effort to both reassure Washington while pressing Beijing’s own complaints.

The worst of the global financial crisis had passed, but its aftershocks would continue to drag on wealthy economies, and are hastening a “historic transformation in the international balance of powers,” Le said in the Foreign Affairs Review, a Chinese-language publication overseen by his ministry.

The Turkel Commission, whose report will form the core of Israel’s submission to a U.N. investigation into the May 31 incident, endorsed the sea closure but called for reviews by Israel of how to direct its sanctions at Gaza’s Hamas rulers and spare civilians.

“By clearly resisting capture, the Mavi Marmara had become a military objective,” the commission said in a 245-page report, referring to the converted cruise ship which Israeli marines boarded on the high seas after it ignored orders to turn away.

Presenting the findings of his latest ISPO survey for Corriere della Sera daily, Renato Mannheimer said that while half of those interviewed thought Berlusconi should resign, support for his center-right party had increased.

The poll was conducted after Milan prosecutors alleged that Berlusconi paid for sex with a “significant” number of prostitutes, including a 17-year old nightclub dancer.

But on Monday, the former White House chief of staff was waging a desperate bid to keep his campaign alive after an Illinois appeals court kicked him off the ballot for not meeting a residency requirement. The surprise decision threw the race into disarray with less than a month to go.

Emanuel’s lawyers quickly sought help from the Illinois Supreme Court, asking the justices to stay the appellate ruling and to hear an appeal as soon as possible. But time was running short, since the Chicago Board of Elections planned to begin printing ballots without Emanuel’s name within days.

No one claimed responsibility for the blast at Domodedovo Airport that also wounded 180 people, although Islamic militants in the southern Russian region of Chechnya have been blamed for previous attacks in Moscow, including a double suicide bombing on the capital’s subway system in March 2010 that resulted in 40 deaths.

The Interfax news agency said the head of the suspected bomber had been found.

The resurgent automaker reported Monday that its worldwide sales last year came within 30,000 of beating Japanese rival Toyota, which took a big hit because of safety recalls.

GM is hiring, producing more and basking in a better reputation for quality. It expects to sell even more cars and trucks this year, putting it within reach of the title of biggest in the world – an honor it held for 76 years before losing it in 2008.

The uptick in violence poses a major test for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s new and somewhat shaky coalition government as followers of a powerful Shiite cleric and key ally demanded he fill key security posts.

The blasts struck Karbala as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were massing for religious rituals marking the end of a 40-day mourning period for the Islamic sect’s most beloved saint.

Following an overnight ‘sleep-in’ in defiance of the country’s curfew, scores of protesters from Tunisian provinces gathered in central Tunis, shouting anti-government slogans. As the crowd grew rowdy, police fired tear gas grenades in the air, and some demonstrators shattered the windows of police cars.

Schools were set to reopen Monday after protracted closure because of the unrest, but teachers went on strike. Some students joined the demonstrations instead of heading to their classrooms.

In the State of the Union speech Tuesday night, she will be looking for Obama to stand firm against Republicans who want to take the law apart. Health insurance for her daughter, who has lifetime medical problems, could hang in the balance.

Many other Americans feel a personal stake in what Obama will say Tuesday and do later – and what Republicans do in response. The hunger for jobs and economic growth stood out in interviews with more than 1,000 people, part of an Associated Press-GfK poll asking Americans what one thing they most want the government to accomplish this year.

The result could be helpful to Obama as he delivers what is effectively the first speech of his re-election campaign. Rather than serving the traditional visual of the president’s party popping up on one side of the chamber for dozens of standing ovations, the applause will be more evenly spread, perhaps giving the illusion of wider acceptance.

To a television audience in the tens of millions, Obama will home in on jobs, the issue of most importance to the public and to his hopes for a second term. Though war and other concerns bid for attention, the president has chosen to lean heavily on the economy, with far less emphasis on Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorism and foreign affairs.

Specifically, Obama will focus on improving the education, innovation and infrastructure of the United States as the way to provide a sounder economic base. He will pair that with calls to reduce the government’s debt – now topping a staggering $14 trillion – and reforming government. Those five areas will frame the speech, with sprinklings of fresh proposals.

Obama plans to tour Orion Energy Systems, a renewable energy technology company, in Manitowoc, and talk about the economy with company workers. In his address to Congress and the nation Tuesday night, Obama will emphasize his efforts to create jobs now and to promote spending on innovation, according to the White House.

There are signs the Wisconsin economy is improving, which should improve the climate for his visit. Unemployment statewide was 7.5 percent in December, down from 8.3 percent in December 2009.

Though there has been little discussion of Washington bailing out states, some congressional Republicans and conservative groups are suggesting that states be allowed to seek protection in federal bankruptcy court, which they are currently barred from doing. Public employee unions, liberal groups and some lawmakers of both parties oppose the bankruptcy idea.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told reporters Monday that he believes states already have the tools they need to ease crushing budget deficits since they can cut spending, raise taxes and pressure public employee unions to renegotiate their contracts and pension benefits. As a result, he said, he opposes letting states declare bankruptcy because he said they don’t need that power.

Federal subsidies for Amtrak, mohair farming, public broadcasting, small airlines serving rural airports and many others were targeted in the heady days of the 1995 GOP takeover of Congress. But like cut bamboo, they grew back healthier than ever.

With budget deficits over $1 trillion, conservative Republicans are trying again, determined to weed out dozens of programs ranging from regional development commissions to replenishing sand lost to beach erosion that they see choking a free-enterprise economy. The ardor of tea party-backed GOP freshmen to make the government smaller shouldn’t be underestimated, but most of the programs they want to eliminate have emerged victorious after losing early skirmishes.

The Republican former governor who lost his Senate seat in a 2006 campaign riddled with embarrassments said in an Associated Press interview he will run a more disciplined campaign focused on issues straight out of the tea party playbook.

His 2-minute, 45-second video, sent to supporters and around noon Monday, champions sharp cuts in federal spending, an end to Democratic health reforms and a domestic energy policy more dependent on coal.

In each case, according to Planned Parenthood, the man sought to speak privately with a clinic employee and then requested information about health services for sex workers, including some who he said were minors and in the U.S. illegally.

Planned Parenthood’s vice president for communications, Stuart Schear, said the organization has requested an FBI probe of the man’s claims and has already fielded some initial FBI inquiries. However, Schear said Planned Parenthood’s own investigation indicates that the man has links with Live Action, an anti-abortion group that has conducted previous undercover projects aimed at discrediting the nation’s leading abortion provider.

Arnold Fields, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told the Commission on Wartime Contracting it is not clear how U.S. military authorities are going to construct enough bases and training facilities by late 2013, when the Afghan forces are supposed to assume responsibility for the country’s security.

There are 884 projects valued at $11.4 billion planned for completion over the next two years, but as of November only 133 have been finished, Fields told the commission, which was created by Congress to examine spending in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another 78 are under construction and 673 have not been started, he said.

Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Arthur Rothenberg said at a hearing he is troubled that the body of Perez, who died Dec. 25 in Miami at age 88, is being stored in a refrigeration unit at a local funeral home.

Entombing the remains in a stone crypt, he said, would bring dignity to the former leader and preserve the rights of both sides. He said it could be April before a final decision is made.

The fifth-generation Wisconsin native, who marks his 41st birthday this week, enters the new Republican-controlled session of the House as chairman of the Budget Committee and the point man for the GOP drive to reduce the national debt by slashing government spending.

Well-spoken and well-liked by House colleagues, Ryan also has drawn the ire of Democrats and liberal groups because, unlike other Republicans who leave out the details in how they would cut federal spending, Ryan has never been afraid to be specific.

Prosecutors aren’t saying if other chapters are to come.

John Graham was found guilty last month of felony murder for participating in a kidnapping that ended in Annie Mae Aquash’s death. He’s the second person convicted in Aquash’s death, which garnered international attention and remains synonymous with the 1970s clashes between AIM activists and federal agents.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing a Pennsylvania man now held for nearly three years, suggested a six-month window for such hearings. Cheikh Diop is fighting deportation to his native Senegal over a 1995 drug case.

“We think, under any reading, three years of locking somebody up without a bond hearing is unreasonable,” ACLU lawyer Judy Rabinovitz argued to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court.

The University of Missouri student came up with an idea in class one day that spawned an iPhone application that has had more than 250,000 downloads since its release in March 2009. The app created by Brown and three other undergraduates won them a trip to Apple headquarters along with job offers from Google and other technology companies.

But the invention also raised a perplexing question when university lawyers abruptly demanded a 25 percent ownership stake and two-thirds of any profits. Who owns the patents and copyrights when a student creates something of value on campus, without a professor’s help?

While all businesses qualify for the same deductions, alpaca breeders may benefit more than some other livestock owners because of the amount of their investments and sales. Breeding stock alpacas can start at $4,000 and go up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a top stud, compared to sheep, which breeders can get for a few hundred dollars.

A 2010 extension of a tax law allows ranchers to write off the entire cost of buying their breeding alpacas the same year. If the animals are raised for profit, the farmer can also deduct expenses like feed, fertilizer and veterinarian care from their income.

A small propeller plane flight or a two-hour ferry ride into the northern reaches of Lake Michigan gets you as far as St. James, the northern hub of Beaver Island. But it takes another half hour by car, down bumpy gravel roads, to get to the south tip of the island and the small cluster of classroom buildings and log cabins, shadowed by the historic lighthouse for which this secluded alternative high school is named.

“What the hell have I gotten myself into?” That’s exactly what 18-year-old Katie Daugherty thought as she arrived at the Beaver Island Lighthouse School last September.

“I know how important her field trip into space was to her and how much she hoped to learn and share with students everywhere,” said the Concord High School graduate, who at 43 is now older than McAuliffe was when she died at age 37. “I wouldn’t want her sincerity to get lost in a textbook.”

A whole generation – including McAuliffe’s own students – has grown up since McAuliffe and six other astronauts perished on live TV on Jan. 28, 1986, a quarter century ago this Friday. Now the former schoolchildren who loved her are making sure that people who weren’t even born then know about McAuliffe and her dream of going into space.

These officials said that 100 posts or more could be dropped from the list if discussions between Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., result in an agreement that gains the support of the rank and file in both parties. Judicial appointments would not be affected, nor would the most senior positions at Cabinet department or independent agencies.

In addition, the two men have discussed curtailing the right enjoyed by individual senators to block action on a nomination or legislation anonymously for up to five days. This rule is widely flouted.

It continues: That diner on the corner for decades – closed. The beer garden down the street – now a Starbucks. The block once home to clusters of independent businesses – thriving as a big-box store.

And last month, another piece of the old New York slipped away with the demise of the city’s Off-Track Betting parlors. It’s enough to make old-school New Yorkers bristle.

Though the ship has long since been out of service, its final battle is still being waged. Two California nonprofits – one in the San Francisco Bay area, the other in Los Angeles – are vying to host the decommissioned ship as a tourist attraction. The Navy is expected to make a decision within a few months.

Fights over such ships, although not unprecedented, are generally confined to the most coveted of vessels. A group that wanted the USS Missouri – site of Japan’s surrender in Tokyo Bay during World War II – to remain moored in Bremerton, Wash. sued the Navy in 1998 when the ship was awarded to the Honolulu-based USS Missouri Memorial Association. A federal court later dismissed the suit.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ and he smacked me. They tied my hands and arms down and gave me more medication,” Johnson told The Associated Press.

Johnson, then 21, had a 3-year-old daughter when she became pregnant again. She said she first went to Planned Parenthood in downtown Philadelphia but was frightened away by protesters.

That demand is creating hard choices for the newest members of Congress, especially Republicans who owe their elections and solid House majority to the influential grass-roots movement. Cutting defense and canceling weapons could mean deep spending reductions and high marks from tea partiers as the nation wrestles with a $1.3 trillion deficit. Yet it also could jeopardize thousands of jobs when unemployment is running high.

Proponents of the cuts could face criticism that they’re trying to weaken national security in a post-Sept. 11 world.