Evening Edition

Hundreds of demonstrators marched on parliament from the epicentre of the uprising in Cairo’s Tahrir Square the day after the largest protests since the revolt began, as other demonstrations erupted in cities across the country.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit warned the army, until now a respected and mostly neutral force on Cairo’s streets, would intervene to protect the country if the protests against President Hosni Mubarak escalated.

Around a thousand marched on parliament to demand its members’ resignation. The protest was peaceful, and government troops secured the building, but the marchers swore they would not leave until the legislature was dissolved.

The night before they had been joined by several hundred thousand supporters for the biggest night of rallies yet in the two-week-old drive to topple their autocratic president and replace his 30-year-old regime.

As speakers blared “Do not be tired. Do not be tired. Freedom isn’t free,” thousands of protesters remained camped under plastic sheets and the tracks of tanks, clinging to their “liberated” enclave on Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Around a thousand marched on parliament to demand its member’s resignation. The protest was peaceful, and government troops secured the building, but the marchers swore they would not leave until the body was dissolved.

Berlusconi reacted by calling the request a “farce,” condemning his accusers for acting “subversively” and dismissing their case as a pretext by a politically-biased judiciary to smear him in the media and eventually oust him.

Chief prosecutor Edmondo Bruti Liberati and his fellow judges allege that the 74-year-old leader paid for sex with nightclub dancer Ruby, who was 17 at the time, and improperly used his power as prime minister by asking police to release her after she had been arrested for suspected theft in May.

Sarkozy bowed to criticism from rivals after embarrassing revelations that his prime minister and foreign minister accepted free holiday flights in Egypt and Tunisia, shortly before popular uprisings in both countries.

“From now on, members of the government must prefer France for their holidays,” President Nicolas Sarkozy told a cabinet meeting, according to a transcript released by his office.

“There was shooting at the ministries (complex) in which the minister of cooperatives and rural development was killed as well as his bodyguard,” Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) spokesman Philip Aguer told AFP.

South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir announced a three-day mourning period, in a statement issued by his office.

“We remain unwaveringly committed to price stability,” Bernanke told the House of Representatives budget committee, rejecting claims that rising prices for food and oil heralded dangerously speeding inflation.

Bernanke — who was appointed by Republican president George W. Bush — sparred with the committee’s Republican members, who warned of the risks from pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy to prop up growth and help reduce unemployment.

In an internal memo obtained by AFP Wednesday, Elop’s memo paints a picture of a desperate man who must make the drastic move of plunging into icy waters in order to save himself.

The company must now make a similar radical choice, he warned.

Army Major General Lo Hsien-che was recruited by China while stationed in Thailand between 2002 and 2005 and was detained late last month, the ministry said in a statement.

At the time of his arrest, the 51-year-old was head of the army’s telecommunications and electronic information department, according to the statement.

Still reeling from unprecedented flooding last year that caused damages of $9.7 billion, the government is under huge pressure to introduce economic reforms and meet IMF targets agreed in a 2008 bail-out package.

“Today’s meeting is going to be the last meeting of the present cabinet,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told more than 50 ministers, praising their record on the economy, constitutional reform and response to major floods.

“London Stock Exchange Group plc and TMX Group Inc. today announced an agreement to combine Europe’s and Canada’s leading diversified exchange groups in an all-share merger of equals,” the pair said in a joint statement.

“The merger will create a world-leading organisation and is unanimously being recommended by the boards of both LSE and TMX.”

“This (scandal) has put a big hole in my heart,” said Hakuho, the Mongolian-born yokozuna or grand champion, a day after a panel widened its probe to all 70 wrestlers in the top two divisions of the ancient sport.

“The only thing I can do now is to work hard so that I can show you good sumo fights again,” said the 25-year-old grappler in his first press conference since the scandal broke last week.

The Fed chief, testifying to the House of Representatives Budget Committee, also warned about the dangers of record U.S. budget deficits. But he indicated sharp spending cuts in the short term could cripple the recovery.

Acknowledging a recent pick-up in the economy, Bernanke said a drop in the jobless rate to 9 percent in January from 9.8 percent in November, the biggest two-month decline since 1958, was “grounds for optimism.”

The discussions announced on Wednesday are part of a massive shake-up of an industry under intense cost pressure from upstart electronic rivals, but also sees new business opportunities as derivatives are forced onto exchanges.

Only hours earlier, the London Stock Exchange’s agreed to buy Canadian stock market operator TMX, a move that would make it the fourth largest exchange and give it dominance in the fast-growing mining and energy sectors.

Shares in the LSE, first established in 1698, jumped 9 percent as markets welcomed the all-share deal, and indicating a per share valuation for TMX of C$46.7, up 16 percent.

The deal would create the No. 1 global center of mining and energy stock trading and values the Toronto group at about $3.2 billion.

The second-largest U.S. bank said court-appointed trustee Irving Picard is exceeding his authority by suing in bankruptcy court, where a judge rather than a jury would decide the case.

It said the case instead belongs in district court, because it involves “significant” banking and securities law issues.

Prosecutors on Tuesday accused the two former employees, among four new defendants charged with insider trading, with receiving corporate secrets while working at SAC. The firm itself has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

The government has been investigating current and former SAC employees, sources have told Reuters, since prosecutors announced a huge insider trading case involving Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam in October 2009.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted 5-0 on Wednesday to propose that several of its key documents for securities offerings no longer require ratings references that were designed to help investors gauge the quality of securities.

The SEC’s action on Wednesday is the start of a broader effort mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to strip ratings references from all federal agencies’ rules, as appropriate.

“Reckless spending fueled by bottomless borrowing and guaranteed by endless bailouts is an unsustainable course,” said Representative Patrick McHenry, chairman of a House of Representatives subcommittee on bailout oversight.

“The era of the bailout is over,” he said at a hearing about states’ fiscal distress.

Many states have had to borrow from the federal government to meet rising demand for unemployment payments as the ranks of the jobless grew during the recession that began in 2007.

Now, 30 states are in debt, having borrowed $42 billion to pay their unemployment insurance obligations.

Texas, the second most populous state behind California, is about $27 billion short of the money it needs to extend current programs and services through 2012 and 2013. The state has a two-year budget cycle.

Texas has been doing better financially than most other big U.S. states including California, New York and Illinois. Two of the three major bond ratings agencies give it a top AAA rating.

In a further bid to bolster capital at the unit, the U.S. government will allow AIG to retain $2 billion from recent sales.

Under Chief Executive Robert Benmosche, AIG had been selling businesses such as its AIG Star Life Insurance Co and AIG Edison Life Insurance Co to refocus on core units including global property insurer Chartis and U.S. life insurer SunAmerica.

To simulate hurricane-like conditions, an industry group has built a wind tunnel big enough to accommodate nine large residential homes. Some 105 fans deliver gusts of 175 miles per hour, destroying dwellings built precisely for this purpose.

The goal is to construct homes across the country that can withstand the worst Mother Nature has to offer, which lately has been quite a lot — not to mention tough if not impossible for insurers to predict.

Shares in the company fell 1.6 percent as Chief Executive Chris Viehbacher gave very little away about talks to complete a takeover deal expected to be worth approximately $20 billion, designed to rejuvenate the company’s product line.

“As we announced about 10 days ago, we have signed a confidentiality agreement with Genzyme,” Viehbacher said in a media conference call on Wednesday.

Global food prices have climbed to record highs in recent months on shrinking supplies of wheat, corn, soybean and oilseeds, and while rice has been less of a worry thanks to ample supplies in the top two exporters, Thailand and Vietnam, traders said other Asian governments may soon seek to boost rice stocks too.

Adding to a sense of gathering nervousness among governments over food supplies, China plans subsidies to boost grain output this year, state radio said in a report on its website.

The scandal, one of several during the Congress party’s second term, has not yet threatened the survival of the coalition because it holds enough seats in parliament, and Singh is still seen as one of the few politicians skilled enough to hold the government together.

But it has already led to the arrest of the former telecoms minister and the opposition, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, is going after the prime minister, accusing him of allowing graft to go unchallenged.

The timing was a surprise, coming on the final day of China’s Lunar New Year holiday, but investors have long expected more monetary tightening as Beijing struggles to rein in price pressures and ward off a property bubble in an economy that grew at a double-digit pace last year.

Benchmark one-year deposit rates will be lifted by 25 basis points to 3 percent, while one-year lending rates will also be raised by 25 basis points to 6.06 percent, the People’s Bank of China said. The changes go into effect on Wednesday.

The stock jumped 5.2 percent to a nine-month high, making it the biggest percentage gainer on the Nikkei 225 index.

“The numbers were good. The second thing was the U.S. report which says there are no problems with Toyota electronics. It was a double header,” said Chris Richter an auto analyst with CLSA Asia Pacific Markets in Tokyo.

Protests calling for Mubarak’s ouster have been spreading since Tuesday outside of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where demonstrators have been concentrated for the past two weeks. On Wednesday, protesters also gathered at parliament, the Cabinet and the Health Ministry buildings, all a few blocks from the square, and blocked Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq from his office.

Strikes erupted in a breadth of sectors – among railway and bus workers, state electricity staff and service technicians at the Suez Canal, in factories manufacturing textiles, steel and beverages and at least one hospital.

After the initial euphoria over their defiance of a state once thought impregnable, protesters are increasingly uneasy that President Hosni Mubarak or leaders he has chosen may hang on to power.

If they do, there is a growing fear that the entrenched regime will try to exact revenge in the way it has done so many times before – mass arrests and abuse of detainees.

Obama administration officials were also increasingly blunt in describing the limits of their leverage, reasserting that the United States is not seeking to dictate events in Egypt – and that it cannot.

“We’re not going to be able to force them do anything,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.

The Obama administration and Congress have struggled with the vexing problem of how to embrace a powerful democratic movement while dealing with longtime ally Mubarak, who clings to power despite the clamor for him to step down. Lawmakers have played a limited role in a foreign policy crisis that has gripped the White House and State Department for weeks, offering statements but largely deferring to the administration.

Deciding on whether to give U.S. taxpayer dollars to Egypt is the exception; Congress will decide.

In a blunt challenge to President Barack Obama, the plan calls for eliminating a high-speed rail program the administration has ticketed for a multibillion-dollar expansion. It also recommends ending federal support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, family planning services and AmeriCorps.

The government’s principal nutrition program for pregnant women would be cut 6 percent below last year’s level.

And to qualify, the widows must remarry when they are 57 or older. Those who remarry earlier miss out, as do widows who never remarry.

At the heart of the issue is a government policy known as the “widows’ tax.” It says a military spouse whose loved one dies from a service-related cause can’t collect both survivor’s benefits and the full annuity benefits from insurance the couple bought from the Defense Department at retirement. Instead, the amount of the annuity payment is reduced by the amount of the monthly survivor benefit.

The numbers, reported Wednesday at an American Stroke Association conference, come from the first large nationwide study of stroke hospitalizations by age. Government researchers compared hospitalizations in 1994 and 1995 with ones in 2006 and 2007.

The sharpest increase – 51 percent – was among men 15 through 34. Strokes rose among women in this age group, too, but not as fast – 17 percent.

Within 24 hours this week, House Speaker John Boehner’s team had to pull a trade bill from the chamber floor, suffered an embarrassing setback on a USA Patriot Act vote, and failed to recoup money paid to the United Nations.

And in electoral politics, the tea party’s threat to Republican incumbents came more into focus. Three GOP senators up for re-election in 2012 could be looking at challenges for their party nominations. One of them, five-term Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, crossed town Tuesday to tell the tea party’s national town hall that he has supported its budget-balancing, smaller-government agenda for decades.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he is concerned that the Fed won’t be able to detect inflation until “the cow is out of the barn” and inflation is already spreading dangerously through the economy.

Bernanke acknowledged that inflation is surging in emerging economies. But he downplayed the risks to the U.S. economy, even as lawmakers expressed concerns about rising gasoline and food prices.

The prosecutors, who filed their request in Milan, are seeking a trial now because they believe there is overwhelming evidence against the 74-year-old leader.

A judge must decide whether to accept the prosecutors’ request and indict Berlusconi, or dismiss it. The decision is expected to be made in the next two weeks.

But he was the wrong guy.

A hard-charging CIA analyst had pushed the agency into one of the biggest diplomatic embarrassments of the U.S. war on terrorism. Yet despite recommendations by an internal review, the analyst was never punished. In fact, she has risen to one of the premier jobs in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, helping lead President Barack Obama’s efforts to disrupt al-Qaida.

The House voted 277-148 to keep the three provisions of the USA Patriot Act on the books until Dec. 8. But Republicans brought up the bill under a special expedited procedure requiring a two-thirds majority, and the vote was seven short of reaching that level.

The Republicans, who took over the House last month, lost 26 of their own members, adding to the 122 Democrats who voted against it. Supporters say the three measures are vital to preventing another terrorist attack, but critics say they infringe on civil liberties. They appealed to the antipathy that newer and more conservative Republicans hold for big government invasions of individual privacy.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives wants to require gun dealers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to report the sales of two or more rifles to the same customer within a five-day period, similar to a rule that exists for handgun sales. The goal of the plan is to crack down on problem gun dealers and buyers at a time of heightened drug cartel violence along the border.

The agency asked the White House for an emergency order that would allow ATF to quickly impose the requirement without public review. But the White House denied the request and told the agency that the proposal has to undergo a standard three-month review period that is open to public comment.

But the judges didn’t want Powell to say thank you. They wanted his cash.

Powell says he fell victim to an extortion scheme by former Luzerne County Judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella, telling jurors at Ciavarella’s federal racketeering trial Wednesday that he was forced to pay them nearly $600,000 after they agreed to send the county’s juvenile delinquents to his new private lockup outside Wilkes-Barre.

The state had been in negotiations to sell the properties for $2.3 billion and use the proceeds after paying off construction bonds to help close the state’s general fund budget deficit. Under a deal approved by lawmakers, the state would have continued using the space by entering into a 20-year lease with the new owners.

The Associated Press reported in April that the deal would end up costing the state $5.2 billion in rent over 20 years, likely saddling taxpayers with costs beyond whatever the state would net from the sale. That assessment was confirmed by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which found the sale shifts taxpayer costs to the future. The state controller and treasurer also opposed the sale.

Lt. Col. Roberto Hernandez Caballero, assigned to the state security division of the powerful Interior Ministry, told the jury he was in charge of a task force that investigated a series of bombings in Havana and the beach resort of Varadero that ran from April to October 1997.

Prosecutors accuse Cuba-born Luis Posada Carriles of lying during citizenship hearings in El Paso about how he sneaked into the U.S. in March 2005, and of failing to acknowledge planning the bombings of Cuban hotels and a top Havana tourist restaurant in 1997.

U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello ruled Wednesday in Denver. She says associate professor David Mullin and a watchdog group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, didn’t show they had legal standing to bring the suit.

They alleged the event violates the constitutional separation of church and state because it appears to be sponsored by the academy itself, and because Mullin and other faculty members believe they’ll face retribution if they don’t attend, even though it’s officially voluntary.

They are among small businesses in Michigan’s off-the-beaten-path Upper Peninsula that owe their success to high-speed Internet access, which President Barack Obama considers a potential economic savior for America’s countryside and small towns. Obama will campaign for his coast-to-coast wireless initiative on Thursday during a visit to Marquette, a university and tourism city of 20,000 overlooking Lake Superior that cherishes both its geographical remoteness and technological savvy.

“The Internet is as important as oxygen up here,” said David Ollila, a local entrepreneur who has founded seven companies, including the camera vendor, V.I.O. Inc. His latest venture, Marquette Backcountry Ski, markets a snowshoe-ski hybrid that he invented and sells online from an office in his basement.

Schwarzenegger cut the 16-year manslaughter sentence in half for 21-year-old Esteban Nunez just hours before leaving office last month, despite the fact that he had pleaded guilty months earlier in the stabbing death of a student in 2008. The decision has angered law enforcement and the family of the victim and has led to lawsuits and three proposed pieces of legislation that would take away a governor’s last-minute clemency authority.

Fellow Republicans are among the most enraged by Schwarzenegger’s commutation of the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, the Democrat who helped broker Schwarzenegger’s biggest environmental accomplishments and became a trusted political ally.

Companies are investing billions of dollars to get at oil deposits scattered across North Dakota, Colorado, Texas and California. By 2015, oil executives and analysts say, the new fields could yield as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day – more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces now.

This new drilling is expected to raise U.S. production by at least 20 percent over the next five years. And within 10 years, it could help reduce oil imports by more than half, advancing a goal that has long eluded policymakers.

The flurry of activity nationwide has activists on both sides of the gay marriage debate encouraged that 2011 will be a year of gains for them.

“There is so much happening that it is a challenge even for the most ardent marriage-equality supporters to keep track of,” said Molly McKay, media director of Marriage Equality, a national group that favors same-sex marriage. “This is a national fight being fought out on various local grounds. Rhode Island, New York, those are states right now where all eyes are looking.”

“The era of the bailout is over,” Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., told a House hearing on the debt problems facing scores of states and municipalities around the country.

At the same hearing, Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., said states need to erase their deficits and face up to their long-term obligations such as pensions for government workers on their own. He also criticized a proposal from some conservatives that Congress pass a law allowing states to reorganize their debts by declaring bankruptcy, an idea that opponents say would send state borrowing costs soaring.

Their shared flirtation with presidential politics won’t allow that much longer.

Though each appeals to different segments of their party and they are far from alone in the 2012 mix, some doubt a same-state duo can stay viable very long. And it is a recipe for division among Minnesota Republicans left to pick sides, meaning delay for either Pawlenty or Bachmann nailing down critical support back home.

The EPA’s effort to tackle the latest and perhaps most challenging environmental problem – global warming – has made it a central target of the new Republican leadership’s anti-regulatory agenda. Having failed last year to enact new legislation to curb global warming, the administration is left to use existing law – the Clean Air Act – to start reducing the pollution causing the planet’s temperature to rise.

During a hearing on Wednesday, GOP members of a House subcommittee contended that such actions will only raise electricity prices and penalize industries that otherwise could be creating jobs.

The National Labor Relations Board has been flexing its muscle in recent months by cracking down on businesses that fire employees during union organizing drives and reconsidering some business-friendly decisions made during the George W. Bush administration.

It recently proposed a new rule that would require every private employer to display posters explaining union rights. And last month, it threatened to sue four states over laws that guarantee the right to a secret ballot in union elections.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told the House Ways and Means Committee that Obama hopes Congress will approve the South Korean pact this spring. The administration says that accord could mean billions of dollars in increased U.S. exports and create tens of thousands of jobs.

Kirk failed to satisfy majority Republicans about progress in finalizing the Latin American agreements. He said Obama had directed him to intensify talks with Colombia and Panama, but “there remain serious issues” including labor rights issues, to be resolved before the administration submits the deals to Congress.

The new-for-2011 Optima, featured in a multi-million dollar Super Bowl ad, is handsome and well-powered and longer and wider than its predecessor. It even has better fuel mileage ratings than the non-hybrid versions of Camry, Accord and Fusion.

And the starting retail price for the 2011 Optima undercuts the major competition while, in some cases, including more standard equipment. The Optima also comes standard with longer basic and powertrain warranty coverage – up to 10 years/100,000 miles, whichever comes first – than competitors offer.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois called for a full review of the system – with at least 10,000 cameras mounted at locations from skyscrapers to utility poles – saying city officials won’t release basic information such as the exact number and cost of the cameras, nor any incidents of misuse.

Those concerns, along with city officials’ plans for expansion, put Chicago a step closer to a Big Brother invasion of privacy, the ACLU said.