Evening Edition

“Deputy governor Abdul Latif Ashna had just left his home and was on his way to his office when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up near his vehicle,” said Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa.

One of his bodyguards and his driver were wounded, as were two passers-by, he added. A fifth person was slightly hurt and did not need hospital treatment.

The US embassy had claimed diplomatic immunity on behalf of Raymond Davis, previously described as a consulate employee, who is under investigation on double murder charges after shooting dead the two motorcyclists this week.

“This matter is sub judice in a court of law and the legal process should be respected,” Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said in a statement, adding that a report was awaited from Punjab police.

The budget, which hikes taxes and slashes spending as part of the price for the 67.5 billion euro ($91 billion) European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout, had already passed the lower house of parliament on Thursday.

“The finance bill now goes to the president for signing into law on Monday,” a government spokesman said.

Fresh riots in several cities left three protesters dead in Cairo and three police in the Sinai town of Rafah — bringing to at least 92 the number of people killed since the unrest flared up on Tuesday, including 23 on Saturday, according to medics.

As tens of thousands flooded central Cairo demanding Mubarak’s ouster, the president went into crisis talks with officials late Saturday afternoon , after which it was announced that career army man and Mubarak confidante General Omar Suleiman had been sworn in as his deputy.

Four days after angry protesters first took to the street and with at least 27 people killed in subsequent street battles, a stoney-faced Mubarak said he had sacked the government and would pursue economic and political reforms.

“I have asked the government to resign and tomorrow there will be a new government,” Mubarak, 82, said on state television as protests raged in Cairo and other cities despite a night-time curfew.

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.

Some 15 protesters were injured in the clashes, according to a doctor who treated some of the casualties and a spokesman for some of the demonstrators.

Smiling and confident in his oversize white puffa jacket, 21-year-old Hamada Ben Amor stepped out on to the stage and rapped the lyrics that earned him a spell in prison earlier this month as Tunisia’s revolution exploded.

“We live in suffering/ Like dogs/ Half the population is oppressed and living in misery/ President of the Country/ Your people are dead!”, he said in his most famous song in front of several hundred cheering fans in a sports hall.

The Moscow education department’s order covered more than 1,500 public and private elementary schools.

Education officials said this meant that nearly 500,000 children would get an unscheduled week-long vacation in the first such shutdown to strike the Russian capital since 1998.

“Everybody agreed we are in the endgame, that we should get a deal in July,” said EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht after he met counterparts including US Trade Representative Ron Kirk and China’s Commerce Minister Chen Deming.

“For that we redraft texts in March,” he said, following the talks on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, an annual networking event for the world’s business elite in this Swiss ski resort.

The final results of the second round will be announced on April 16, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) said Friday.

The announcement came as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was expected in Haiti on Sunday for talks with President Rene Preval on the disputed election, earthquake recovery and a deadly cholera outbreak.

Police shot dead 17 people at Beni Suef, south of Cairo, as pressure mounted on Mubarak from allies in Washington and Europe to restrain his police and speed a democratic transition that would end his 30 years of one-man rule.

Thousands marched in Cairo by day, unmolested by troops who manned tanks on the streets. After dark, police there opened fire in at least one incident, looters roamed for booty, and the national tax office was set ablaze. Recalling eastern Europe in 1989, one analyst called it “the Arab world’s Berlin moment.”

As angry protesters defied a curfew in Egyptian cities, President Barack Obama and his administration kept up pressure for Mubarak to heed their calls for democratic change and take seriously a U.S. threat to review massive aid to Cairo.

Obama is performing a delicate balancing act, trying to avoid abandoning Mubarak — an important U.S. strategic ally of 30 years — while supporting protesters who seek broader political rights and demand his ouster. But Washington has limited options to influence the situation.

Mubarak ordered troops and tanks into the capital Cairo and other cities overnight and imposed a curfew in an attempt to quell demonstrations that have shaken the Arab world’s most populous nation, a key U.S. ally, to the core.

Government buildings, including the ruling party headquarters, were still blazing Saturday morning after being set alight by demonstrators who defied the curfew.

After news of the curfew was passed from protester to protester, just minutes before it came into force, some stopped throwing stones at state security officers and asked them to join them in protests through the night.

Protesters and police embraced, many nodded in agreement or said they would join demonstrators. One police officer raised his fingers in a “V for a victory” sign. Others shouted words of encouragement and apologies at each other.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told a World Economic Forum panel he did not expect the 17-nation euro zone to suffer any further major crises. Member states were drawing lessons and moving toward convergence in their economic and social policies.

“I don’t expect that there will be further major shocks,” Schaeuble said. “I think the euro will be stable.”

Saturday’s fast-moving developments across the north African nation marked a sharp turning point in President Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade rule of Egypt.

Residents and shopkeepers in affluent neighborhoods boarded up their houses and stores against looters, who roamed the streets with knives and sticks, stealing what they could and destroying cars, windows and street signs. Gunfire rang out in some neighborhoods.

A White House statement said Obama “reiterated our focus on opposing violence and calling for restraint, supporting universal rights, and supporting concrete steps that advance political reform within Egypt.”

But Obama offered no reaction to Mubarak’s decision earlier Saturday to name a vice president for the first time since coming to power nearly 30 years ago. Mubarak appointed his intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, who’s well respected by American officials. The president also fired his Cabinet.

His four-minute speech from the White House on Friday evening was a balancing act. He had much to lose in the chaos engulfing Egypt, where protesters are demanding that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak step down from a government violently clinging to its three-decade grip on power.

“The United States will continue to stand up for the rights of the Egyptian people and work with their government in pursuit of a future that is more just, more free and more hopeful,” Obama said.

As Egypt’s unrest neared its sixth day, the cancelations of flights and the arrival of several largely empty aircraft appeared to herald an ominous erosion of key tourism revenue for the country, hitting hard at its pocketbook even as protesters centered many of their grievances on the grinding poverty they endure daily.

Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan organized an additional 10 flights to evacuate their citizens, officials at Cairo International Airport said. Among those who left were families of diplomats.

Republican leaders say they have a jobs agenda, kicked off by their attempt to unravel what they call the Democrats’ “jobs-killing” health overhaul.

Democrats scoff at this notion, and they’re hounding Republicans to show how they can put more people to work.

The deal closed shortly before midnight EST on Friday.

The takeover gave the cable-hookup company 51 percent control of NBC Universal, which owns the nation’s fourth-ranked broadcaster, NBC; the Universal Pictures movie studio and related theme parks; and a bevy of cable channels including Bravo, E! and USA.

Yet the 63-year-old has shown a penchant for airbrushing his state’s segregationist past, a period he’s inclined to describe as more like Mayberry than “Mississippi Burning.”

Critics have dogged him for such comments, and Barbour has recently attempted to make amends, a sign he’s aware that if he is to carry his party’s banner next year against the country’s first African-American president, he will have to be more forthright about Mississippi’s troubled history.

Meanwhile, about 60 protesters marched down the street behind the Congress Center where the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting was winding down and the event was peaceful until a brief skirmish near a train station about a kilometer away from the venue.

Police fired rubber bullets and a fire hose at the protests, some of whom were carrying a banner that read “Tunisia equals Cairo equals Davos.”

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.

Eric Staal of the host Carolina Hurricanes quickly picked goalie Cam Ward – his teammate – first overall for Team Staal.

“I was the best player available, I guess,” Ward quipped. “Yeah, I was surprised. He wouldn’t tell me. He wouldn’t lay down his cards, at all. Obviously, I knew I had a better chance to have him choose me early because he is a good friend and teammate. But I didn’t know if he really actually wanted me to sweat it out.”

At least that’s what President Barack Obama has in mind.

The president unveiled his “Winning the Future” mantra in his State of the Union address, and now the upbeat but amorphous phrase is part of every speech, policy and pronouncement coming out of the administration. It’s also emerged as a fat target for his Republican critics.

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.

Behind the joke was an ambitious promise to tame and reorganize segments of the federal bureaucracy. If Obama’s new chief of staff, Bill Daley, wields any influence, a primary target will be the Commerce Department.

Its 38,000 employees oversee a diverse portfolio, from helping businesses and conducting the census to providing accurate weather forecasts and granting patents and trademark protection.

The attacker struck as the official, Abdul Latif Ashna, was being driven to work in the provincial capital, said a ministry spokesman, Zemeri Bashary.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. In a text message to reporters, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef said the suicide bomber killed the deputy governor as well as three of his body guards and his driver.

But one category of drivers may soon get a break, thanks to a group of local parents who are lobbying for car-owning nannies to be included in the city’s residential parking permit program. They have caught the ear of the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is considering issuing a new class of annual street parking permits available exclusively to childcare providers.

If approved by the SFMTA board of directors, San Francisco would be the largest U.S. city to offer a nanny parking permit, transportation officials say. The board is scheduled to take up a proposal drafted by transportation authority staff at its meeting Tuesday.

Then he took one look at the one-time heir to Adolf Hitler and commander of the fearsome Luftwaffe – all 300-plus pounds of him – and knew he needed a bigger plane.

It was May 9, 1945, the day after World War II ended in Europe. Goering, Foster and a group of officers from the Army’s 36th Infantry Division gathered on a tiny airstrip outside Kitzbuhel, Austria, to transport the highly-prized war prisoner back to Germany in an unarmed, two-man reconnaissance plane.

But 15 minutes into the debate on whether Virginia should extend the time alleged sex abuse victims have to file lawsuits against their attackers from two years to 25, prospects for the bill weren’t looking good. Even the proposal’s sponsor was ready to settle for 10 years – still more than most states.

Then the 67-year-old Dorough rose from his seat and asked to speak.

His prized collection of mystery novels, the bedroom set he was once proud to purchase new and anything else that can’t fit into the trunk of a car must be left behind.

More than two years after Meyers lost his job as a Las Vegas Strip bartender and nearly eight months after he exhausted his unemployment benefits, it has come to this: a careful inventory of a life’s possessions and the hopeless embrace of a future as a middle-aged homeless man.

It was 1989 and Taylor was representing a notorious killer – Andrew Wilson, who had shot two police officers and was behind bars for life. He’d originally been sentenced to death but won a new trial after the Illinois Supreme Court ruled his confession had been coerced.

Wilson was now in federal court, claiming that during questioning in the police killings he’d been beaten, tortured with electric shocks, forced onto a hot radiator and smothered with a plastic bag. Among those he was suing: Chicago police commander Jon Burge, a decorated Vietnam veteran.

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.