Evening Edition

Government spokesman Taieb Baccouch was quoted by the state news agency TAP as saying a cabinet reshuffle would be announced on Wednesday. He earlier told AFP that the changes would involve at least six ministerial posts.

But a source close to the government said that talks over the possible replacement of the defence, foreign and interior ministers were “blocked”.

“I certainly expect that we’ll be using the Tunisian example” in talks with other Arab governments, said Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman, the first senior foreign envoy to visit Tunisia since this month’s uprising.

“The challenges being faced in many parts of the world, particularly in the Arab world, are the same and we hope people will be addressing these legitimate political, social, economic grievances,” he told reporters.

Hundreds of protesters from impoverished regions in central Tunisia chanted anti-government slogans in front of Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi’s offices for a third day, saying they would not leave until the cabinet resigns.

The new government has announced unprecedented democratic freedoms for Tunisia after the end of Ben Ali’s 23-year rule, but many people are angry that figures from the previous regime, like Ghannouchi, remain in the cabinet.

Two protesters, Ahmed Soliman Gaber and Mustafa Ragab, died in the port city of Suez in clashes between police and demonstrators, medical officials told AFP.

A policeman, Ahmed Aziz, died from his wounds in Cairo, where thousands had gathered in Tahrir square, a security official said.

The protests were the largest and most significant since riots over bread subsidies shook the Arab world’s most populous nation in 1977, analysts said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged all sides to “exercise restraint” and said Washington believes the Egyptian government is stable.

President Michel Sleiman asked the billionaire Sunni tycoon to form a government amid a “day of rage” by fellow Sunnis who blocked roads and burned tyres in anger at his nomination, prompting France and the United States to voice concern.

Mikati shortly after his appointment rejected attempts to cast him as “Hezbollah’s man” and said he would cooperate with all Lebanese in a bid to form an inclusive government.

The deal for the amphibious assault ships will be the first sale to Russia of such technology by a NATO country.

France’s NATO allies — in particular Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — have expressed concern about arming Russia with modern Western weaponry.

The Washington-based institution said a two-speed recovery — with advanced economies growing at a significantly slower pace than emerging economies — was shifting gears as tax cuts in the United States boosted consumption.

The IMF projected the global economy’s output would expand by 4.4 percent in 2011, slightly higher than the 4.2 percent annual rate it forecast in October.

Gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 0.5 percent in the three months to December, after expansion of 0.7 percent in the third quarter, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement.

That was the first drop in economic output since the third quarter of 2009 and confounded expectations for 0.4-percent expansion.

A teenager blew himself up in the eastern city of Lahore near a Shiite Muslim procession, killing at least nine people and wounding more than 70, in an attack claimed by Taliban militants who said they had targeted police.

About 90 minutes later a motorcycle bomber detonated in the southern city of Karachi, killing three people, including two policemen, police and hospital officials said.

Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress at 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT on Wednesday) will stress a search for common ground on efforts to boost growth and jobs, shaping a centrist message to carry into his 2012 re-election campaign.

White House aides said Obama will call for a five-year halt on non-security, discretionary spending increases, extending a previous call for a three-year freeze. Such a freeze would not apply to big entitlement programs — such as Social Security and Medicare — at the heart of America’s deficit problem.

Tanzanian national Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, 36, was accused of joining the 1998 al Qaeda bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. A U.S. jury in November found him guilty of one count of conspiracy to damage or destroy U.S. property with explosives but cleared him of 284 other conspiracy and murder charges.

His case in New York City was the first test of President Barack Obama’s decision to prosecute in civilian court some of the 173 terrorism suspects held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“Down, down, Hosni Mubarak,” chanted protesters in Cairo, where police fired teargas and used water cannon, and protesters hurled bottles and rocks at them.

Two protesters in the city of Suez, east of Cairo, died as a result of rubber bullets, security and medical sources said. State television said one security officer died in central Cairo because of a blow to the head from a stone that was thrown.

A friend and ex-addict uses a lighter to heat a dark, pebble-like lump of Afghan heroin in a tiny glass jar, mixes it with filtered water and injects it into Zoya’s shoulder. The 44-year-old widow is a wreck: HIV-positive, overweight and diabetic. After 12 years of dealing and drug abuse, the veins in her forearms and feet are covered in bloody scabs and abscesses, too weak and sore to take fresh injections.

Crimson-dyed hair frames her bloated face, which is made up to match a hot pink manicure. As the syrupy brown mixture enters her system, Zoya’s eyes glass over and she ponders her fate and that of her country.

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.

They 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.

The protests to demand an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year authoritarian rule and a solution to Egypt’s grinding poverty could embolden the opposition and fuel growing dissent in a presidential election year.

Mobilized largely on the Internet, the waves of protesters filled Cairo’s central Tahrir – or Liberation – Square, some hurling rocks and climbing atop armored police trucks.

It was an awkward endorsement of an authoritarian regime that is a key Arab ally for Washington.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the government of President Hosni Mubarak is stable and trying to respond to the needs of protesters. Egyptians gathered in thousands in Cairo to protest Mubarak and his three-decade grip on power. Some hurled rocks and clashed with riot police.

State Supreme Court justices agreed to expedite the case, but they gave no specific time frame. They planned to review legal briefs only and would not hold oral arguments.

Emanuel has asked the court to overturn a lower ruling that pulled his name off the ballot because he had not lived in the city for a year. His attorneys called Monday’s decision “squarely inconsistent” with previous rulings on the issue.

Details of the speech began leaking in advance. Obama was to call for a five-year freeze on all discretionary government spending outside of national security, the White House said. That would be almost identical to the freeze Obama called for in his address to the nation last year at this time, and ultimately it may have little effect, as Congress decides the budget on its own terms.

Indeed, the Republican-dominated House voted on Tuesday to return most domestic spending to 2008, pre-recession levels. The 256-165 vote came on a symbolic measure that put GOP lawmakers on record in favor of cutting $100 billion from Obama’s budget for the current year.

Ahmed Ghailani, who served as Osama bin Laden’s cook and bodyguard after the bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, sought leniency, claiming he was tortured at a secret CIA camp after his arrest in Pakistan seven years ago. But U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan imposed the maximum sentence, saying that whatever Ghailani suffered “pales in comparison to the suffering and the horror” caused by the nearly simultaneous attacks, which killed 224 people and injured thousands more.

Ghailani, 36, was convicted last month of conspiring to destroy government buildings. Prosecutors said he bought a truck used in the Tanzanian attack, stored and concealed detonators, sheltered an al-Qaida fugitive and delivered hundreds of pounds of TNT to the African terror cell.

Now voters in Nebraska’s largest city are deciding whether the Democratic mayor’s unpopular tax hikes and other policies are so out of touch that they should kick him out of office midway through the term.

Suttle says the recall effort was funded by political opponents who remain dissatisfied with the results of the 2009 election.

The 256-165 vote came on a symbolic measure but is an opening salvo in an upcoming battle over the budget that will pit the House GOP against Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate.

It came just hours before Obama was to issue his own proposal: calling for a five-year freeze for most domestic agencies at current levels. That’s more than $80 billion a year higher than the level of cuts Republicans want. Obama also reportedly will call for lawmakers to back a five-year plan put forth by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to save $78 billion in defense spending, an idea that has many Republicans anxious.

Only 1 percent of fourth-grade and 12th-grade students, and 2 percent of eighth-graders scored in the highest group on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal test known as the Nation’s Report Card. Less than half were considered proficient, with many more showing minimal science knowledge.

“It’s very disappointing for all educators to see students performing below the level we’d like them to be,” said Bonnie Embry, an elementary school science lab teacher in Lexington, Ky. “These low scores should send a message to educators across our nation that we’re not spending enough time teaching science.”

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that formation of a government dominated by Hezbollah would mean changes in U.S. relations with Lebanon. The militant group and its allies ousted the government backed by Washington two weeks ago when they walked out of the Cabinet.

“A Hezbollah-controlled government would clearly have an impact on our bilateral relationship with Lebanon,” Clinton said. The United States deems Hezbollah a terrorist organization and has imposed sanctions against the group and its members.

The administration has begun a broad review of political, economic and military assistance to Lebanon in light of the collapse of a U.S.-backed government two weeks ago, U.S. officials said Tuesday. The Obama administration will probably cut or realign that aid if Hezbollah takes over key ministries under a new prime minister, Najib Mikati, who has the backing of Hezbollah, they said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the review is in its preliminary stages and won’t be complete until after Lebanon forms a new coalition government. But at least one senior U.S. lawmaker called for the review and demanded an immediate stop to all weapons transfers to Lebanon.

Most current pet owners said they would hold on to their spouse or significant other (84 percent), but a sizable 14 percent picked their pet, according to an AP-Petside.com poll.

Put Sally Roland, 53, of Omaha, Neb., down in the dog-first column. “I’m divorced, so that might explain it,” she joked.

Government informant Gilberto Abascal testified for a second day in the trial of Luis Posada Carriles, who faces 11 counts of perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud for lying during immigration hearings about how he reached the U.S. in 2005.

Abascal testified a former shrimp boat converted into a 90-foot pleasure boat brought Posada up the Miami River in March 2005 and that Posada then used a 25-foot speed boat to get off and land at waterfront restaurant before those on the converted yacht reported to U.S. Customs.

The accused historian – Thomas P. Lowry, 78, of Woodbridge – denied Tuesday that he actually tampered with the document despite a written confession he gave to the National Archives earlier this month.

The National Archives announced on Monday that Lowry used a fountain pen with special ink to change the date on a presidential pardon issued by Lincoln to a Union army deserter from April 14, 1864, to April 14, 1865. The date change made it look like the pardon was the last official act carried out by Lincoln before he was shot that night at Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.

Beginning in March, the state execution team will use a single, powerful dose of pentobarbital, a drug sometimes used to induce surgical comas, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced Tuesday.

The drug, which is chemically related to a version of pentobarbital used to euthanize pets, replaces sodium thiopental, which was already scarce when its only U.S. manufacturer announced last week it would no longer produce it.

The House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee voted down a proposal by Republican Rep. David Meeks of Conway that would ban any law requiring Arkansans to buy health insurance.

The committee’s 12-7 vote against the proposal included five Republicans and two out of 15 Democrats – Rep. Jeff Wardlaw of Warren and Rep. Sheilla Lampkin of Monticello – who voted in favor of the bill. The committee’s chair, Rep. Linda Tyler, D-Conway, did not vote.

Now, in the wake of the shootout Sunday that left four cops wounded and the gunman dead, some big-city police departments and police unions around the country are taking another look at their security measures and grappling with how to serve the public while also protecting officers’ lives.

“Our commitment to community policing, engaging the community, will not change one iota,” Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee said Monday. “But by the same token, the society we live in dictates that we have to take a different level and a different look at how we secure our facilities.”

Camp, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, told a hearing that completion of the trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama was “a sure-fire way to create American jobs by growing U.S. exports of goods and services.”

The Michigan lawmaker cited estimates made by President Barack Obama that the South Korean agreement alone could create 70,000 American jobs.

Transportation lobbyists and interest groups said administration officials have indicated in public forums and private conversations in recent weeks that they expect to unveil a transportation plan after President Barack Obama presents his budget to Congress in mid-February.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told a recent business conference in Atlanta that the six-year bill will include a $50 billion “upfront investment to help employ the nearly one in five construction workers that are still out of a job,” according to a transcript of his remarks. He has also said he wants Congress to put a transportation bill on Obama’s desk for signature by August.

Carona, 55, surrendered at the Federal Correctional Institution Englewood in Littleton, Colo., said Victoria Joseph, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

“I believe justice has been done,” U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford said during a brief hearing in federal court Tuesday that had been scheduled to discuss Carona’s surrender.

On Tuesday, a House of Representatives panel aired criticisms of the U.N. at a briefing expected to prescribe congressional action.

Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, is seeking cuts and has introduced a bill intended to pressure the United Nations to change the way it operates and to make dues voluntary. She also is promising investigations into possible corruption and mismanagement.

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.

U.S. and Russia researchers have tracked the 13-year-old male western Pacific gray whale, dubbed “Flex,” from Russia across the Bering Sea, through the Aleutian Islands into the Gulf of Alaska about 400 miles south of the Alaska fishing community of Cordova.

Bruce Mate, head of Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, called the whale’s location “pretty darn amazing.” No one has documented winter habits of western gray whales, he said. Others of the species may spend winters elsewhere, but a route over deep water in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska is “something of a paradigm shift” given that eastern gray whales are considered near-shore animals.

Hatched last week by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., the idea caught fire over the weekend after a poll showed a big majority of the public wanting lawmakers of both parties to sit together at the presidential address. A spirited round of private phone calls and e-mails among lawmakers followed, and by Monday at least five dozen House members and senators had announced they had bipartisan dates for the big dance.

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.

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.