Evening Edition

Security forces fired warning shots and tear gas, as some groups threw stones in the main government quarter where protesters have remained camped out in front of Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi’s offices for five days.

Protesters had demanded a clean break with the old regime, calling for Ghannouchi to step down. The premier has been in charge since 1999 and has stayed on despite the end of Ben Ali’s 23-year iron-fisted rule on January 14.

The attack occurred early afternoon at the Finest supermarket in the upmarket Wazir Akbar Khan district of the Afghan capital, near several Western embassies.

“A total of eight people, including three foreign women, have been killed and six others injured, including three supermarket employees,” Kabul police said in a statement.

Under the mandate approved by a crushing majority of lawmakers in the Bundestag lower house, Germany can continue to deploy a maximum of 5,350 troops until January 31, 2012. At present Germany has 4,860 soldiers there.

“The German government is confident that it will be able reduce the presence of the Bundeswehr from the end of 2011 as part of a security handover (to the Afghans),” according to the new mandate.

At least five people were killed and hundreds more injured in Cairo alone, said medics at one hospital. It was not immediately known if or how many casualties were taken to other facilities in the capital.

Witnesses said that another two people were killed in the Delta city of Mansura, after being hit by rubber bullets, and a protester died in the canal city of Suez.

As Egypt’s biggest anti-government protests in three decades escalated, police struggled to contain the anger, with protesters running rampant through the capital and torching two police stations, witnesses said.

In the canal city of Suez, protesters overran a police station, seized weapons and torched security force vehicles in fierce clashes during which a protester was killed, witnesses said.

Leading dissident Mohamed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brothers have joined the biggest uprising in decades despite the government warning that decisive measures would be taken to crush the rising tide of protest.

Streets around Cairo were quiet Friday, a weekly holiday in Egypt, as dozens of riot police trucks were seen headed towards the capital, an AFP reporter said.

For all of 2010, Ford reported net income of $6.6 billion, or $1.66 per share, up 135 percent from 2009.

The earnings came in below analysts’ forecasts of $2.08 per share.

And the restaurants that serve them are also likely to feel it on their bottom lines.

It was the one thing that stuck out when fast-food king McDonald’s delivered its annual financial results Monday: they may have to push up prices to cover the higher cost of beef going into their world-famous burgers.

As Ferrari’s new and more aggressive car was unveiled at the team’s headquarters in Maranello, Di Montezemelo declared that the revamped team were eagerly anticipating the 2011 season.

He said: “This year we have to win and we will do our best to win.

Leaders of the business and political elite gathered at the World Economic Forum were treated to back-to-back appearances by Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

But, as delegates debated how best to protect and nurture the world’s tentative economic recovery, the top envoys from these two very similar debt-ridden Western economies brought very different messages.

Mubarak, facing a challenge that could send shock waves through the Middle East, also declared a curfew. But thousands stayed on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez — the epicenter of four days of protest.

Shots were heard near parliament and the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party was in flames, the blaze lighting up the night sky. Cheering demonstrators thronged around armored cars that moved in a long convoy through Cairo.

Weighing in for the first time after three days of Egyptian unrest, Obama was careful to avoid any sign of abandoning Mubarak but made clear his sympathy for demonstrators he said were expressing “pent-up frustrations” over the lack of meaningful change.

Obama and his aides are performing a delicate balancing act as political upheaval rocks the Middle East, from Egypt to Tunisia to Lebanon to Yemen, catching his administration off-guard and showing the limits of U.S. influence.

The disappointing results, which also reflected higher commodity costs, shook confidence in the next stage of recovery for Ford after a four-year comeback that has seen the No. 2 U.S. carmaker climb back from a brush with near-bankruptcy.

Ford shares had been one of the best-performing American stocks since late 2008, rising from just above $1 to nearly $19 earlier this month.

The Beijing-based Dagong Global Credit Rating firm took concerns about a world currency war to a higher level as it suggested China and other emerging market countries may need to reduce their U.S. Treasury holdings to “avoid unpredictable losses on their own interests.”

It also said in its 2011 Sovereign Credit Risk Outlook that quantitative easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve has “eroded the legitimacy of the global monetary system that takes the dollar as the key reserve currency.”

Microsoft surprised Wall Street with a better-than-expected profit, helped by resurgent corporate spending after the belt-tightening of past years. But its shares stayed flat as investors expressed concern about the weakness of overall computer sales amid a faltering U.S. recovery.

The world’s largest software maker, whose Windows operating system runs on 90 percent of the world’s computers, is heavily dependent on PC sales, which grew only 3 percent in the quarter. Now it is starting to feel the heat from investors eyeing the phenomenal take-up of Apple Inc’s iPad.

From a superjumbo jet plane to the ubiquitous Big Mac, manufacturers around the globe are plotting price rises to offset higher costs and claw back ground lost in the recession.

Take McDonald’s Corp, the world’s biggest restaurant chain, which this week said it would charge more for some menus to help offset expected rises in the 10 commodities that make up around 75 percent of the cost of preparing its food.

The International Monetary Fund said the G7’s two biggest economies needed to spell out credible deficit-cutting plans before the markets lose patience and dump their bonds.

On Friday, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan vowed to push ahead with tax reforms aimed at curbing the country’s debt, but an uncooperative opposition and divisions within his own party on policy make the chances of success slim.

Rating agency Standard and Poor’s cut Japan’s long-term debt rating on Thursday for the first time since 2002. The International Monetary Fund too had harsh words for Japan, saying it needed to act urgently to cut its deficit.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan has made tax and social security reform, including a future rise in the 5 percent sales tax, a priority given the rising costs of Japan’s fast-aging society and a public debt that is the biggest among advanced nations.

Rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Thursday cut Japan’s long-term debt rating for the first time since 2002, and a day after a U.S. agency raised its 2011 budget deficit forecast by 40 percent.

In the United States, Moody’s Investors Service warned said while the risk to the United States’ coveted top triple-A rating was small, it was rising.

Washington and its allies are struggling to balance mounting budget pressures at home with the need to stand up a capable local fighting force in Afghanistan that can take over more security responsibilities as foreign forces withdraw.

The plan, under consideration by Afghan, U.S. and NATO officials, would boost troop levels in the Afghan national forces to 378,000 by October 2012 — from this year’s goal of 305,000 — a U.S. Senate aide who works on Afghanistan issues told Reuters in an interview this week.

The company also reported slightly lower-than-expected sales for the fourth quarter, which includes the holiday season, as it offered discounts and free shipping to attract customers.

Amazon’s shares, which had gained 5.2 percent earlier in the day, lost that advance and more to fall $16.46 lower than their close in after-hours trading. They had risen more than 70 percent in the past six months, reaching an all-time high of $191.25 last week — leaving plenty of room for disappointment.

He told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in a private interview that even the most powerful U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs was among those he feared would topple in a crisis he described as the worst in financial history, even exceeding the Great Depression.

The notes from the interview were released on Thursday by the commission as part of its final report.

“Violence is not the response” to the demands for greater freedoms, said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Gibbs said President Barack Obama had been briefed extensively about the fast-moving events but had not tried to speak with Mubarak by phone.

The Egyptian government’s response to widespread street protests unnerved investors. The military was deployed in an effort to quell the protests and the headquarters of the ruling party was on fire. Thousands of people defied a curfew, and Internet and cell phone service has been cut off.

Earlier, riot police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and used water cannons to disperse crowds that had gathered in the largest challenge to Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year rule. The fall of the Tunisian government two weeks ago has raised concerns that other authoritarian governments in the Middle East could also be toppled.

Almost simultaneously, the handful of companies that pipe the Internet into and out of Egypt went dark as protesters were gearing up for a fresh round of demonstrations calling for the end of President Hosni Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule, experts said.

Egypt has apparently done what many technologists thought was unthinkable for any country with a major Internet economy: It unplugged itself entirely from the Internet to try and silence dissent.

The disclosure of the confidential messages – some of which were circulated within the U.S. government less than one year ago – offers extraordinary insights into the complicated relationship between the U.S. and Egypt as tensions there escalated.

“The Egyptians have long felt that, at best, we take them for granted; and at worst, we deliberately ignore their advice while trying to force our point of view on them,” Ambassador Margaret Scobey wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Feb 9, 2009. It was among the diplomatic messages released recently by WikiLeaks.

Obama said anti-government protests filling the streets show the frustrations of the populace.

“It is very important that people have mechanisms in order to express legitimate grievances,” Obama said in an interview being broadcast live on YouTube, after being shown video of the protests and getting a question about repression of expression in the country.

The freshman Kentucky lawmaker unveiled his budget proposal this week that would make significant cuts in education, housing and energy while reducing money for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by $16 billion. Paul’s plan also would cut some $20 billion in overseas aid, and he said he wants to eliminate the $3 billion the United States provides to Israel annually in foreign military assistance.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans agree with Senator Paul – our current fiscal crisis makes it impossible to continue the spending policies of the past,” Paul spokesman Gary Howard said in a statement responding to the criticism. “We simply cannot afford to give money away, even to our allies, with so much debt mounting on a daily basis.”

Days after delivering a State of the Union message in which he called on Democrats and Republicans to work together, Obama made clear in a speech to supporters that he’s open to compromise on the issue only on the margins – a “tweak” here or there, but not major changes.

“I am not willing to just refight the battles of the last two years,” said the president, who saw his popularity plummet and some in his own party distance themselves amid the scalding, partisan debates over the health care law. “I’m not open to efforts that will take this law apart without considering the lives and the livelihoods that hang in the balance.”

Without President Barack Obama’s health care law, as many as 129 million Americans – half of those under age 65 – could be denied coverage or charged more because of a pre-existing medical condition.

The new estimate by the Health and Human Services Department is more than twice as high as a figure that supporters of the law were using last year.

Party leaders will determine if the so-called voucher plan will be part of the budget Republicans put forward in the spring.

“No decisions have been made on the details of our House GOP budget,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Thursday. “There are a lot of ideas out there, and we’re going to listen to our members and the American people.”

The chilly outdoor ceremony drew space agency managers, former astronauts, past and present launch directors, family and friends of the fallen crew – and schoolchildren who weren’t yet born when the space shuttle carrying a high school teacher from Concord, N.H., erupted in the sky.

The accident on Jan. 28, 1986 – just 73 seconds into flight – killed all seven on board, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.

Challenger.

A quarter-century later, images of the exploding space shuttle still signify all that can go wrong with technology and the sharpest minds. The accident on Jan. 28, 1986 – a scant 73 seconds into flight, nine miles above the Atlantic for all to see – remains NASA’s most visible failure.

The fast-food chain took out full-page ads in at least nine major newspapers and launched a YouTube campaign featuring its president Friday to proclaim its taco filling is 88 percent beef.

A false-advertising lawsuit filed last week that caused an online stir alleges the company’s filling doesn’t have enough beef to be called that. The lawsuit seeks to make the company stop calling it “beef,” and pay the suing law firm’s bill.

It’s the third year in a row that human medications top the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ list of top 10 toxins, which will be released Friday.

Over-the-counter medicines with ibuprofen and acetaminophen, antidepressants and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder medicine topped the list.

Mets owner Fred Wilpon and his son, chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon, retained Steve Greenberg of Allen & Co., a Mets director, a former deputy baseball commissioner and a son of Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg, to head the search for investors.

Fred Wilpon said the Mets were looking to sell a non-controlling interest of 20 to 25 percent and he did not envision giving up control of the franchise, which his family first bought into in 1980.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood visited QinetiQ North America, a Waltham, Mass.-based research and development facility, for the first public demonstration of systems that could measure whether a motorist has a blood alcohol content at or above the legal limit of .08 and – if so – prevent the vehicle from starting.

The technology is being designed as unobtrusive, unlike current alcohol ignition interlock systems often mandated by judges for convicted drunken drivers. Those require operators to blow into a breath-testing device before the car can operate.

They said there is no intent to delay but would not guarantee full implementation of the repeal this year.

The hedge on scheduling came despite assertions by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union speech this week that the repeal of the 17-year-old ban will be finalized in 2011.

Ford got a taste of that Friday. Despite reporting a profit for 2010, the company’s stock fell more than 13 percent to close at $16.27. Investors were disappointed that the results fell short of expectations. Ford also posted an 80-percent drop in fourth-quarter net income, missing forecasts and ending two years of better-than-expected results.

It was clear Ford won’t have much room for error as it tackles nagging problems, from the huge loans it took out to fund its turnaround to its upcoming labor talks to its stodgy, slow-selling Lincoln brand.

The scene after the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday in Emanuel’s favor served as a reminder that he was still the front-runner. He had barely broken stride during the three days his campaign was in doubt after a lower court threw the former White House chief of staff off the ballot because he had not lived in Chicago for a full year before the Feb. 22 election. Emanuel is still far ahead in the polls, millions of dollars ahead in fundraising, and again reminding voters of his friends in the highest of places – even as he tries to win votes in train stations and bowling alleys.

“The good news is now that we have the Supreme Court decision, it’s behind us,” he said a short time later during a debate with other candidates. “Hopefully this will be the last question about it for all of us, including myself.”

The Taliban said their target was an official with the U.S. security contractor formerly known as Blackwater whom they followed into the store. Although the insurgent group regularly attacks those allied with NATO forces or the Afghan government, it was not clear why they specifically targeted the company, now known as Xe Services.

It was the third deadly attack in Kabul in less than two months and the worst on a civilian target in the city since February 2010, when suicide attackers charged two residential hotels, killing 20 people.

Herb Rozell, a former state senator, told The Associated Press he made a “mental mistake” when he said at a board meeting on Thursday that a new legislative liaison would be worthless if she took maternity leave during this spring’s legislative session.

“It wasn’t to criticize anybody,” said Rozell, of Tahlequah. “I know it was made at the wrong time. I understand that.

The drug, an anesthetic called sodium thiopental, has become so scarce over the past year that a few states have had to postpone executions. Those delays could become widespread across the country in the coming months because of a decision last week by the sole U.S. manufacturer to stop producing it.

States have begun casting about for new suppliers or substitute drugs.

Serving as his own campaign treasurer, the Miami Republican didn’t report any details for more than a third of the roughly $160,000 in expenses for which he reimbursed himself, other than simply calling them campaign expenses, according to the records.

The AP review also shows his total reimbursements far exceeded those claimed by 12 other top Florida state legislators who served with him. Those lawmakers – both Democrats and Republicans – usually gave at least some explanation of how the money had been spent, as required by Florida law. Rivera denies wrongdoing.

Emilio Maya won a one-year stay a year ago, after U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., introduced a rare private bill requesting that the 35-year-old immigrant, who runs a restaurant in Saugerties, be granted legal status immediately.

At the time, Hinchey said he was hopeful that the year would give ICE enough time to properly review Maya’s case and reach a fair decision.

Across the Northeast, full of large cities where people wear their brusqueness like a badge of honor, neighbors and even strangers are banding together to beat back what’s shaping up to be one of the most brutal winters in years – and it appears to be contagious.

“It seems to have started a whole grass-roots movement of people helping one another,” said Cindy Twiss, a school administrator who lives in Milford.

He walks up to the driver’s side of a black, Ford Escape Hybrid parked on the start-finish line, opens the door, sits down and adjusts his seat. After a few minutes the car revs up and takes off.

None of that’s unusual at one of the meccas of motorsports racing, except for one thing: Riccobono is blind.

California state Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, is leading a fight in demanding an apology from the radio talk show host for what he and others view as racist and derogatory remarks against the Chinese people.

In recent days, the state lawmaker has rallied civil rights groups in a boycott of companies like Pro Flowers, Sleep Train and Domino’s Pizza that advertise on Limbaugh’s national talk radio show.

Republican Rep. John Kavanagh, who filed the Arizona plan Thursday, said the goal isn’t to get every state in the nation to enact such a law, but rather to bring the dispute to the courts in hopes of reducing the costs associated with granting automatic citizenship.

“The result of that is they immediately acquire the right to full benefits, everything from welfare to cheese, which increases the costs to the states,” Kavanagh said. “And beyond that, it’s irresponsible and foolish to bestow citizenship based upon one’s GPS location at birth.”

“It’s just like an ocean of birds going out the doors – zoom!” Blosser said.

Greg Herbruck says his organic laying hens also love the outdoors – but they spend their time in the fresh air on concrete patios and in other enclosures.

“It’s the wrong way to do it,” says Bill Gross, manager of the $241 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, the largest mutual fund. “Obviously, I’m all for a move to a balanced budget over time. But this is like imposing the death penalty for shoplifting.”

In arguments over lifting the federal government’s $14.3 trillion debt limit, both sides have used bond investors as a bogeyman.

Shortly before Obama used his State of the Union speech to say he would veto any bill with lawmaker-targeted spending projects, known as “earmarks,” Reid struck pre-emptively.

The president “has enough power already,” he told reporters, and Obama’s effort was just a “lot of pretty talk.”

Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said tribal lands contain about 10 percent of U.S. energy resources, but provide less than 5 percent of national energy production. He blamed bureaucratic obstacles that prevent tribes from generating an estimated $1 trillion in revenue from energy sources.

Keel cited at least 49 bureaucratic steps in the Interior Department alone that deter energy development. He called for Congress and the Obama administration to unleash the potential of Indian energy resources throughout the nation.

The decision announced Thursday is a blow to the organic foods industry, which complains that modified seeds can contaminate their organic crops through pollination, bringing genetically modified foods into their fields. The Agriculture Department has said the modified alfalfa – used primarily for hay for cattle – is safe, but some consumers don’t want to eat foods derived from it, including milk or beef. The growing organic industry and its millions of consumers have long been wary of genetically modified seed companies such as Monsanto, citing the purity of natural seeds, the ethics of eating modified foods and possible environmental damage from creating new varieties of crops.

Farmers who use the seeds say they boost their crop yields and help reduce prices for consumers in the grocery store. The biotech companies say they are doing their part voluntarily to restrict where their alfalfa crops are planted so they don’t contaminate other, non-engineered crops.