Evening Edition

The resignations came after Mubarak huddled with his new government for the first time on, and an official said that the country’s stock exchange would remain closed indefinitely as the stand-off continues.

State television said the executive committee of the ruling National Democratic Party had resigned en masse. Among those stepping down was Mubarak’s son Gamal, once viewed as his heir apparent, state television reported.

Mubarak defied huge protests in central Cairo and in Alexandria aimed at forcing his ouster as US President Barack Obama said talks have begun on a transition in Egypt and EU leaders said it was time for change.

Obama did not explicitly call on Mubarak to resign, but noted he had already made the psychological leap of saying he would step down after elections in September — and should now reconsider his position.

The turmoil in Cairo loomed large over a meeting in Munich, Germany of the Middle East diplomatic Quartet, where US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that the Middle East faced a bumpy road on the transition to democracy.

At the same time, Clinton praised the “restraint” shown by the Egyptian security forces during a mass demonstration on Friday, billed as the “day of departure” for Mubarak by protesters.

The attackers used explosives against the pipeline in the town of Lihfen in northern Sinai, near the Gaza Strip, the official said. It was initially thought the pipeline to Israel was attacked.

“The pipeline to Jordan has been attacked and the supply to Israel has been cut off,” the official said.

State news agency MENA said the embattled leader held talks with members of his newly-appointed cabinet but gave no further details.

In Sinai, a gas pipeline supplying Israel was attacked, although it was not immediately clear who was responsible, or whether the attack was linked to the protests against Mubarak’s rule.

In a speech to the Munich Security Conference, Cameron said many young British Muslims were drawn to violent ideology because they found no strong collective identity in Britain.

Signalling a marked change in policy towards ethnic and religious minorities, he urged a “more active, muscular liberalism” where equal rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech and democracy were actively promoted.

Maliki also backed constitutional term limits on his office in an interview with AFP, with his remarks coming amid nearly two weeks of protests in Egypt demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s three decades of rule.

“The constitution does not prevent a third, fourth or fifth term, but I have personally decided not to seek another term after this one, a decision I made at the beginning of my first term,” said Maliki, who began his second term by forming a government in December.

In the video released late Friday, Doku Umarov, the leader of a deadly insurgency against Russian control of the North Caucasus region, said rebel attacks in the country’s heartland are meant as a wake-up call for ordinary Russians, who should urge their leaders to withdraw from the region.

The video marked Umarov’s first known public statement since the late January attack — Moscow’s second suicide bombing with heavy casualties in less than a year.

The hosts, who had exited to jeers on their last appearance here in November’s 59-16 mauling by Australia, outscored the visitors by four tries to three for whom captain Alistair Kellock recorded his first at Test level.

Defeat, however, left the Scots winless in Paris since 1999.

Italy looked to have snatched a famous victory five minutes from time as Luke McLean touched over to give the hosts a one-point lead with Ireland down to 14 men following Denis Leamy’s sin-binning.

However Ireland responded immediately, with substitute O’Gara kicking a late drop which broke Italian hearts and ended any premature celebrations.

The head of the International Cricket Council tribunal Michael Beloff announced the verdict after a lengthy nine-hour hearing in the Qatari capital.

“The Tribunal found that charges that (respectively) Asif agreed to bowl and did bowl a deliberate no ball in the Lord’s Test match played between Pakistan and England from 26 to 29 August 2010, Aamer agreed to bowl and did bowl two deliberate no balls in the same Test, and Butt was party to the bowling of those deliberate no balls, were proved,” said Beloff.

There was no evidence the hackers accessed or acquired customer information or that any of parent company Nasdaq OMX Group Inc’s trading platforms were compromised, the transatlantic exchange operator said on Saturday.

The FBI and outside forensic firms helped conduct the investigation, though Nasdaq OMX did not say when it was launched or when the suspicious files were found. The files, found in a Web application called Directors Desk, have been removed, the company said.

The United Nations, European Union, Russia and the United States said further delays in resuming Israeli-Palestinian talks would be “detrimental to prospects for regional peace and security.”

“The Quartet emphasized the need for the parties and others concerned to undertake urgently the efforts to expedite Israeli-Palestinian and comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace,” they said in a statement.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov exchanged the final START documents at the Munich security conference, where two years ago U.S. Vice President Joe Biden launched the Obama administration’s push for better relations with Moscow.

“Two years ago we all laughed about the translation of the ceremonial ‘reset’ button I gave to the Foreign Minister,” Clinton said, referring to a diplomatic gaffe in which she presented Lavrov with an oversized button on which “reset” was mistranslated into the Russian for “overcharge.”

With Republicans in Congress threatening to restrain her budget, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said the agency faces severe challenges in doing its existing job and in taking on new duties mandated under 2010’s Dodd-Frank market reform law.

SEC enforcement head Robert Khuzami said budget constraints are hurting the agency, but nevertheless defended its record against critics who say too few Wall Street financiers have been held accountable for the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

In a tribute to former President Ronald Reagan, the potential 2012 White House contender said leaders in Washington had lost sight of the values that made Reagan a Republican icon and a hero to conservatives — a belief in limited government, low taxes and personal freedoms.

“This is not the road to national greatness, it is the road to ruin,” Palin said of the growth in government spending, budget deficits, joblessness and housing foreclosures under Obama. “The federal government is spending too much, borrowing too much, growing and controlling too much,” she said.

Robert Engle, a Nobel Prize-winning finance professor at New York University, said in an interview that the regulator-appointed panel has not yet decided on its final recommendations, though he expects them to be made public at a February 18 meeting.

The focus, he said, should be that buyers all but vanished during the May 6 market plunge, abandoning investors when liquidity was most needed.

Schapiro said on Friday the agency is looking at a variety of areas, from new market-making obligations for high-frequency traders to a new limit up/limit down trading parameters.

She also said the SEC is broadly looking into the rules surrounding securities offerings to see if the agency’s regulations may be out of date.