Evening Edition

On the fifth day of an unprecedented challenge to his four-decade regime, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi had still made no public comment although he reportedly appeared at a mass rally of supporters in the capital on Thursday.

After regime opponents used Facebook to mobilise protests, as in neighbouring Egypt, the social networking website was blocked on Saturday and Internet connections were patchy, said Internet users in Tripoli and Benghazi.

After the security force pull-out, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa ordered that they were to stay away.

Salman, deputy commander of the armed forces, ordered “all security forces to immediately withdraw from assembly areas,” the BNA state news agency reported.

As Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi faced an unprecedented challenge to his rule, protesters returned to Pearl Square in Bahrain’s capital Manama despite police attempts to disperse them with tear gas.

Clashes also continued in Yemen, with one protester shot dead and five wounded in battles between protesters and government supporters near the Sanaa university campus.

Police collecting their salaries were among the casualties including Alishah Paktyamwal, police chief of Nangarhar province where Jalalabad is located, plus his deputy.

The incident is third major attack in a week targeting police in Afghanistan, who alongside the army are due to take control of the war-torn country’s security from 2014, allowing most international troops to withdraw.

French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde, who chaired the talks, said the accord marked the “first step” towards correcting these problems, thereby putting the global economy on track to more balanced growth and prosperity.

Lagarde told a press conference there had been a lengthy debate about the indicators, after reports that China, sensitive over its currency policy and trade balance, had held out to the last moment against a number of measures.

After a marathon floor debate running well past midnight, the Republican-controlled House voted to cut about $61 billion in government spending. The Obama administration and leaders in the Senate, controlled by Democrats, immediately criticized the move.

“The continuing opposition in the House would undermine and damage our capacity to create jobs and expand the economy,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said at a news conference after a Group of 20 meeting in Paris.

The pair added 203 for the third wicket as India piled up 370-4, the fifth highest World Cup total, after being given first strike by Bangladesh skipper Shakib Al Hasan in the day-night match at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium.

Bangladesh made a spirited chase of the daunting target before ending at 283-9 with opener Tamim Iqbal making 70 and Shakib playing a captain’s knock of 55 off 50 balls in the Group B match.

The Islamic National Accord Association, which is boycotting parliament in protest at the army’s iron-fisted response to the wave of protests sweeping the small but strategic Gulf kingdom, said 95 people were wounded on Friday, of whom three were “clinically dead.”

“To consider dialogue, the government must resign and the army should withdraw from the streets” of Manama, said the group’s parliamentary leader, Abdel Jalil Khalil Ibrahim.

The anti-government demonstrators in Bahrain swarmed into Pearl Square in Manama, putting riot police to flight in a striking victory for their cause and confidently setting up camp for a protracted stay.

In Libya’s second city Benghazi, security forces killed at least three more people but withdrew to a fortified compound, a witness said, after the worst unrest in Gaddafi’s four decades in power.

The government said it had opened a dialogue with opposition groups demanding reform as Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa sought to ease tensions triggered by a wave of anti-government unrest sweeping the Middle East.

Crowds had approached Pearl Square in Manama from different directions, creating a standoff with riot police who had moved in earlier to replace troops withdrawn on royal orders.

Amid unrest across much of the Middle East, U.S. officials have voiced concern about violence in the island nation in talks with the government of Bahrain, which hosts a big U.S. military base and borders Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter.

The White House said in a statement that Obama, in speaking with King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, condemned violence and said Bahrain’s stability depended on respect for the rights of its people.

Eight protesters were hurt and a witness said one died from a bullet wound in the neck as he was taken to hospital. But a medical source said he was admitted to intensive care and had stabilised. The Interior Ministry said no one was killed.

Saleh blamed a “foreign agenda” and a “conspiracy against Yemen, its security and stability” for the string of protests against poverty, unemployment and corruption which have gained momentum since the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, who chaired the Group of 20 talks, said the deal nevertheless represented a significant step toward better coordination of economic policies worldwide to help prevent another financial crisis.

“It wasn’t simple. There were obviously divergent interests but we were able to reach a compromise on a text that seems to us to be both balanced and demanding in its implementation,” she told a news conference.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, asked whether Portugal would be the next euro zone country to need an EU/IMF bailout after Greece and Ireland, said the ball was in Lisbon’s court.

“We call on all governments, without any exception, first to apply the plan that they have … as rigorously, convincingly and ethically as possibly, and they have themselves to be ahead of the curve in all respects,” Trichet told a news conference after a meeting of G20 finance chiefs in Paris.

Talks at a Group of 20 meeting in Paris centered round efforts, led by Germany and G20 presidents France, to persuade China to include its yawning current account surplus and undervalued currency in a list of measures aimed to start a process of rebalancing the global economy.

There was little public evidence that the United States itself had pushed Beijing hard on that issue, but Geithner reiterated that there was still some way to go in the steady appreciation of the yuan.

The Republican-backed bill is a challenge to Obama to show he is serious about closing record budget deficits and sets up the possibility of government shut downs if a compromise is not worked out by March 4, when current funding expires.

On a largely partisan vote of 235-189, House Republicans passed the bill to cut spending by about $61.5 billion from current levels, marking a victory for Tea Party conservatives elected in November.

Tens of thousands have demonstrated throughout the week against Republican Governor Scott Walker’s proposed legislation, which supporters say is needed to bring spending under control and opponents contend would break the back of state worker unions.

Wisconsin is the flashpoint for a U.S. struggle over efforts to roll back pay, benefits and bargaining rights of government workers. If the majority Republicans prevail, other states could be emboldened to take on the powerful unions.

Russia has urged the United States not to establish long-term military bases in Afghanistan, suggesting that even discussing the subject could undermine peace efforts and anger Afghanistan’s neighbors.

Often-uneasy ties between Afghanistan’s government and its main Western backers have become even more tense of late over a bank corruption scandal, a ban on private security contractors, election fraud and decision by the Afghan government to take over the running of women’s shelters.

The panel’s 14 recommendations for U.S. securities and futures regulators contained far-reaching ideas to overhaul the high-speed electronic market.

Yet many of the ideas issued on Friday called only for “consideration” or “further study” — potentially raising more questions as the first anniversary of the May 6 flash crash nears.

Even as Bahrain’s king bowed to international pressure and withdrew tanks to allow demonstrators to retake a symbolic square in the capital, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh made clear they plan to stamp out opposition and not be dragged down by the reform movements that have grown in nations from Algeria to Djibouti to Jordan.

Libyans returned to the street for a fifth straight day of protests against Gadhafi, the most serious uprising in his 42-year reign, despite estimates by human rights groups of 84 deaths in the North African country – with 35 on Friday alone.

The deaths pushed the overall estimated death toll to 99 in five days of unprecedented protests against the 42-year reign of Moammar Gadhafi. Government forces also wiped out a protest encampment and clamped down on Internet service throughout the North African nation.

As relatives buried their dead, they fell victim to a mixture of special commandos, foreign mercenaries and Gadhafi loyalists armed with knives, Kalashnikovs and even anti-aircraft missiles trying to quell the demonstrations, witnesses said.

The royal family, which was quick to use force earlier this week against demonstrators in the landmark square that has been the heart of the anti-government demonstrations, appeared to back away from further confrontation following international pressure from the West.

The demonstrators had sought to emulate successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in attempting to bring political change to Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet – the centerpiece of Washington’s efforts to confront Iranian military influence in the region.

Police brandishing clubs, but no firearms, weaved their way through the crowd in central Algiers, banging their shields, tackling some protesters and keeping traffic flowing through the planned march route.

A demonstrating lawmaker was hospitalized after suffering a head wound when he fell after police kicked and hit him, colleagues said.

A few dozen police officers stood between supporters of Republican Gov. Scott Walker on the muddy east lawn of the Capitol and the much larger group of pro-labor demonstrators who surrounded them. The protest was peaceful as both sides exchanged chants of “Pass the bill! Pass the bill!” and “Kill the bill! Kill the bill!”

“Go home!” union supporters yelled at Scott Lemke, a 46-year-old machine parts salesman from Cedarburg who wore a hard hat and carried a sign that read “If you don’t like it, quit” on one side, and “If you don’t like that, try you’re fired” on the other.

None of it – not the ear-splitting chants, the pounding drums or the back-and-forth debate between 70,000 protesters – changed the minds of Wisconsin lawmakers dug into a stalemate over Republican efforts to scrap union rights for almost all public workers.

“The people who are not around the Capitol square are with us,” said Rep. Robin Vos, a Republican from Rochester and co-chair of the Legislature’s budget committee. “They may have a bunch around the square, but we’ve got the rest on our side.”

President Barack Obama and his political machine are offering tactical support, eager to repair strained relations with some union leaders upset over his recent overtures to business.

The potent combination has helped fan the huge protests in Wisconsin against a measure that would strip collective bargaining rights from state workers. The alliance also is sending a warning to other states that are considering the same tactic.

Passage early Saturday of the $1.2 trillion bill, covering every Cabinet agency through Sept. 30, when the current budget year ends, sent the measure to the Senate, where it faces longer odds, and defied a White House veto threat.

The largely party-line vote of 235-189 was the most striking victory to date for the 87 freshman Republicans elected last fall on a promise to attack the deficit and reduce the reach of government. Three Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the measure.

It was a candid acknowledgement from Ohio Rep. John Boehner that the 87 Republican first-term lawmakers who swept the party into power in the House are moving on a path – and at a pace – of their own choosing.

When the leadership brought a bill to the floor to renew parts of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, it fell short. The leadership regrouped, and the rebels, their questions answered, helped pass the measure on a second try.

G-20 finance ministers and central bankers meeting in Paris agreed on a list of technical indicators to track those imbalances – caused by some countries consuming more while others tend to hold on to their money – but left the more tricky questions of when those imbalances actually become dangerous and what to do to mitigate them for later.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, whose country holds the G-20 presidency this year, said the all-night talks had been “tense” at times, indicating the clash in national interests between countries that find themselves on completely divergent growth trajectories after the 2008 financial crisis that plunged the world into its worst economic recession in 70 years.

At least 48 people were being treated in the main hospital in Jalalabad, the site of the attack, hours after the midday siege on the Kabul Bank branch, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary. Others had already been discharged. He said seven of the dead were Afghan police officers. Three others were also killed, he said, but investigators were trying to determine if two of them were the suicide attackers.

Gunmen launched the raid by firing on bank guards, then overpowering them to seize control of the bank, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the provincial governor. Afghan security forces surrounded the building and heard an explosion inside, he said. That was followed by a gunbattle and another blast, then further clashes between attackers and police. He put the death toll as high as 18.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn’t.

It glides past a row of Main Street houses, past roadsigns touting this business, that fraternal group, the local team who were champions. Vehicles, horseless ones, slow to take in the outlandish muscles of the four giant draft horses, two white, one dark, and one dapple gray.

And up ahead, always, there’s someone on the shoulder or on a porch, or a family in a yard or driveway, stopping everything to shade eyes and squint, or just to listen to the clip-clop, steady as a heartbeat.

“Trust Fund Reserves Inadequate,” federal auditors said in a 1988 report.

It’s clear now the warnings were pretty much ignored. Instead, states kept whittling away at the trust funds, mostly by cutting unemployment insurance taxes at the behest of the business community. The low balances hastened insolvency when the recession hit, leading about 30 states to borrow $41.5 billion from the federal government to pay unemployment benefits to their growing population of jobless.

One man, underdressed in a light jacket and baseball hat, paces impatiently at the basement door of the University Lutheran Church.

He’s waiting for the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter to open.

Let’s clarify that: Lassiter, a media adviser for political campaigns who lives in Cherry Hill, N.J., is still with his partner of nearly eight years, Greg Lehmkuho. But since Thursday, when Facebook expanded its romantic-status options, Lassiter’s profile there echoes his relationship’s legal status: “Domestic partnership.”

It may not be a life-altering change. After all, you can call yourself anything you want on a social network. And Facebook is merely that.

Marc Ravalomanana said aviation authorities in Madagascar had written to South African Airways to say he was not welcome. Ravalomanana had been booked on the carrier’s regular Saturday flight to Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital.

“I’m very, very upset,” Ravalomanana told reporters shortly after South African Airways said he could not board the plane. “I’m very disappointed right now because many Malagasy people are at the airport right now waiting for my arrival. But I’m still here – I’m stuck here.”

They started at a fountain where slaves were once sold, past the church that Martin Luther King Jr. led during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and ended at the Capitol steps, where Alabama’s old and modern history often collide.

It’s the spot where former Gov. George C. Wallace proclaimed “segregation forever” in 1963 and where King concluded the historic Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march in 1965.

The state’s first Democratic governor in two decades, Malloy is unapologetic about proposing a budget that raises taxes on everything from personal income to haircuts. And while he’s calling for $2 billion in savings and labor concessions over two years from state employees, Malloy acknowledges he doesn’t want to carry through on a threat to lay off thousands if a deal can’t be reached.

Malloy also admits he’s “not one of those people who dislikes government,” a defiant political statement these days given the national tea party movement and demands for major cuts in government spending.

She also spends time making sure other people stay out.

“We don’t have open doors, ever. They’re always locked,” said Melchor, whose Gray Area Foundation for the Arts sits at the convergence of the Tenderloin and Mid-Market, two of the city’s most downtrodden neighborhoods. “We must see 100 crimes every week out of these windows, and although the city wants it to change, it hasn’t happened.”

Exactly how much he’s lost he’s isn’t saying, but his suits have been getting noticeably baggy.

“I’m not going to put any numbers on it because you just set yourself up for failure,” the 48-year-old Republican said.

He paused a second for comic timing, then said the word: “JOBS.”

“There,” he said, “I already feel better.”

Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella was allowed to remain free pending sentencing following his conviction Friday in what prosecutors said was a “kids for cash” scheme that ranks among the biggest courtroom frauds in U.S. history.

Ciavarella, 61, left the bench in disgrace two years ago after he and a second judge, Michael Conahan, were accused of using juvenile delinquents as pawns in a plot to get rich. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has dismissed 4,000 juvenile convictions issued by Ciavarella, saying he sentenced young offenders without regard for their constitutional rights.