Evening Edition

In a defiant, sometimes rambling speech on television, Kadhafi vowed to remain in Libya as head of its revolution, saying he would die as a martyr in the land of his ancestors and fight to the “last drop” of his blood.

Proclaiming the support of the people, Kadhafi ordered the army and police to crush the popular uprising against his iron-fisted four-decade rule that has already left hundreds dead in the past eight days.

The Libyan strongman’s comments, designed to scotch “malicious rumours” he had fled to Venezuela, were the first since protests erupted last Tuesday in the east of the oil-rich north African nation.

“I am going to meet with the youth in Green Square” in downtown Tripoli, Kadhafi said in what state television billed as a live broadcast from outside the strongman’s home.

Proclaiming the people to be behind him, Kadhafi ordered the army and police to crush the popular uprising against his iron-fisted four-decade rule that rights groups say have left hundreds dead in the past eight days.

In a live, apparently unscripted speech on national television, the 68-year-old Kadhafi said, “Moamer Kadhafi is the leader of a revolution; Moamer Kadhafi has no official position in order for him to resign. He is the leader of the revolution forever.”

“The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt are continuing to spread across the region. It seems to be Libya’s turn now. These developments cause a high degree of uncertainty,” said Commerzbank analyst Ulrich Leuchtmann.

Financial markets were also rattled by news of a deadly earthquake in New Zealand and a ratings downgrade for Japan, dealers said.

Officials in Washington cited by US media reports confirmed the account of a Pakistani intelligence official, who told AFP that Raymond Davis, the American being held in a prison in Lahore city, was working undercover for the CIA.

Washington is pushing hard for Pakistan’s authorities to free Davis, arguing that he has diplomatic immunity and backing his claim to have acted in self-defence when he shot the men in a busy city street nearly four weeks ago.

“In 2020, the UN has projected that we will have 50 million environmental refugees,” University of California, Los Angeles professor Cristina Tirado said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“When people are not living in sustainable conditions, they migrate,” she continued, outlining with the other speakers how climate change is impacting both food security and food safety, or the amount of food available and the healthfulness of that food.

In a contest the competition badly needed after a series of mismatches, the Dutch, inspired by ten Doeschate’s knock of 119 off just 110 balls, racked up a challenging score of 292 for six in Nagpur.

The Ashes winners were shocking in the field as ten Doeschate went on the rampage, hitting three sixes and nine fours in a devastating show of power.

Swathed in brown robes, Gaddafi seethed with anger and banged the podium outside one of his residences that was damaged in a 1986 U.S. bombing raid that attempted to kill him. Next to him stood a monument of a fist crushing a U.S. fighter jet.

“I am not going to leave this land, I will die here as a martyr,” Gaddafi said on state television, refusing to bow to calls from his own diplomats, soldiers and protesters clamouring in the streets for him to go.

For most of that time he held a prominent position in the West’s international rogues’ gallery, while maintaining tight control at home by eliminating dissidents and refusing to annoint a successor.

As his oil-producing nation feels the wind of change gusting across the Arab world, his security forces have responded with the deadly force that human rights groups say has characterized the Gaddafi era.

Turmoil in Libya drove prices as much as 6 percent higher in the previous session, taking Brent crude in London to almost $109 a barrel for the first time since 2008.

In a defiant speech on Tuesday, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi refused to step aside on Tuesday and threatened tougher action against protests, as rebel troops said eastern regions, including major oilfields, had broken free from his rule.

The retailer reported its seventh consecutive quarterly decline in sales at U.S. stores open at least a year, posting a 1.8 percent drop that was much bigger than its worst forecast and showing how hard it is for a merchant that accounts for 10 percent of U.S. retail sales to overcome its own mistakes.

Wal-Mart shares fell 4 percent, despite reporting earnings that beat analysts’ expectations. U.S. sales are also still being hurt by a poorly executed decision, since reversed, to pare down the number of items Wal-Mart offers.

Under Chief Executive Mike Duke and new U.S. chief Bill Simon, the world’s largest retailer is stocking more goods and has a renewed focus on consistently low pricing.

Tuesday’s quarterly results will show whether the fresh management team at the U.S. discount chain was able to make a difference in the key fourth quarter.

The case of 36-year-old Raymond Davis, a former U.S. special forces officer, has strained the already-uneasy alliance between the United States and Pakistan, who are supposed to be united in the face of Islamist militants waging a war in Afghanistan.

Davis’ killing of two Pakistani men in the eastern city of Lahore last month has inflamed anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan, effectively giving the government little choice but to prosecute him in court. His trial for murder beings on Friday, February 25.

The confirmation of a link with the CIA — which had been reported in recent days in Pakistani media — was likely to further strain Washington’s ties with Islamabad over the case.

The shooting of two Pakistanis last month in the eastern city of Lahore has inflamed anti-American feeling in Pakistan and highlighted the countries’ uneasy alliance against Islamist militants who attack U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

The 68-year-old prime minister, who has cultivated an image as a man of the people and is popularly known as “Grandpa Wen, visited Zhaoyuan village in eastern Anhui province during the Chinese New Year holidays.

He came to support his pledge to narrow the rich-poor gap and channel more wealth to China’s 720 million villagers and rural migrant workers, a population more than double the size of the United States.

ECB policymakers have sounded increasingly aggressive on inflation this year since it topped the bank’s target of just under two percent.

Speaking late in Frankfurt, Juergen Stark, one of the ECB’s inflation hardliners, added to the message.

The Libyan strongman’s comments, designed to scotch “malicious rumours” he had fled to Venezuela, were the first since protests erupted last Tuesday in the east of the oil-rich north African nation.

“I am going to meet with the youth in Green Square” in downtown Tripoli, Kadhafi said in what state television billed as a live broadcast from outside the strongman’s home.

Proclaiming the people to be behind him, Kadhafi ordered the army and police to crush the popular uprising against his iron-fisted four-decade rule that rights groups say have left hundreds dead in the past eight days.

In a live, apparently unscripted speech on national television, the 68-year-old Kadhafi said, “Moamer Kadhafi is the leader of a revolution; Moamer Kadhafi has no official position in order for him to resign. He is the leader of the revolution forever.”

“The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt are continuing to spread across the region. It seems to be Libya’s turn now. These developments cause a high degree of uncertainty,” said Commerzbank analyst Ulrich Leuchtmann.

Financial markets were also rattled by news of a deadly earthquake in New Zealand and a ratings downgrade for Japan, dealers said.

Officials in Washington cited by US media reports confirmed the account of a Pakistani intelligence official, who told AFP that Raymond Davis, the American being held in a prison in Lahore city, was working undercover for the CIA.

Washington is pushing hard for Pakistan’s authorities to free Davis, arguing that he has diplomatic immunity and backing his claim to have acted in self-defence when he shot the men in a busy city street nearly four weeks ago.

“In 2020, the UN has projected that we will have 50 million environmental refugees,” University of California, Los Angeles professor Cristina Tirado said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“When people are not living in sustainable conditions, they migrate,” she continued, outlining with the other speakers how climate change is impacting both food security and food safety, or the amount of food available and the healthfulness of that food.

In a contest the competition badly needed after a series of mismatches, the Dutch, inspired by ten Doeschate’s knock of 119 off just 110 balls, racked up a challenging score of 292 for six in Nagpur.

The Ashes winners were shocking in the field as ten Doeschate went on the rampage, hitting three sixes and nine fours in a devastating show of power.

Swathed in brown robes, Gaddafi seethed with anger and banged the podium outside one of his residences that was damaged in a 1986 U.S. bombing raid that attempted to kill him. Next to him stood a monument of a fist crushing a U.S. fighter jet.

“I am not going to leave this land, I will die here as a martyr,” Gaddafi said on state television, refusing to bow to calls from his own diplomats, soldiers and protesters clamouring in the streets for him to go.

For most of that time he held a prominent position in the West’s international rogues’ gallery, while maintaining tight control at home by eliminating dissidents and refusing to annoint a successor.

As his oil-producing nation feels the wind of change gusting across the Arab world, his security forces have responded with the deadly force that human rights groups say has characterized the Gaddafi era.

Turmoil in Libya drove prices as much as 6 percent higher in the previous session, taking Brent crude in London to almost $109 a barrel for the first time since 2008.

In a defiant speech on Tuesday, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi refused to step aside on Tuesday and threatened tougher action against protests, as rebel troops said eastern regions, including major oilfields, had broken free from his rule.

The retailer reported its seventh consecutive quarterly decline in sales at U.S. stores open at least a year, posting a 1.8 percent drop that was much bigger than its worst forecast and showing how hard it is for a merchant that accounts for 10 percent of U.S. retail sales to overcome its own mistakes.

Wal-Mart shares fell 4 percent, despite reporting earnings that beat analysts’ expectations. U.S. sales are also still being hurt by a poorly executed decision, since reversed, to pare down the number of items Wal-Mart offers.

Under Chief Executive Mike Duke and new U.S. chief Bill Simon, the world’s largest retailer is stocking more goods and has a renewed focus on consistently low pricing.

Tuesday’s quarterly results will show whether the fresh management team at the U.S. discount chain was able to make a difference in the key fourth quarter.

The case of 36-year-old Raymond Davis, a former U.S. special forces officer, has strained the already-uneasy alliance between the United States and Pakistan, who are supposed to be united in the face of Islamist militants waging a war in Afghanistan.

Davis’ killing of two Pakistani men in the eastern city of Lahore last month has inflamed anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan, effectively giving the government little choice but to prosecute him in court. His trial for murder beings on Friday, February 25.

The confirmation of a link with the CIA — which had been reported in recent days in Pakistani media — was likely to further strain Washington’s ties with Islamabad over the case.

The shooting of two Pakistanis last month in the eastern city of Lahore has inflamed anti-American feeling in Pakistan and highlighted the countries’ uneasy alliance against Islamist militants who attack U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

The 68-year-old prime minister, who has cultivated an image as a man of the people and is popularly known as “Grandpa Wen, visited Zhaoyuan village in eastern Anhui province during the Chinese New Year holidays.

He came to support his pledge to narrow the rich-poor gap and channel more wealth to China’s 720 million villagers and rural migrant workers, a population more than double the size of the United States.

ECB policymakers have sounded increasingly aggressive on inflation this year since it topped the bank’s target of just under two percent.

Speaking late in Frankfurt, Juergen Stark, one of the ECB’s inflation hardliners, added to the message.

Gadhafi’s call portended a new round of mayhem in the capital of 2 million people. The night before, residents described a rampage by pro-regime militiamen, who shot on sight anyone found in the streets and opened fire from speeding vehicles at people watching from windows of their homes. Tuesday morning, bodies still lay strewn in some streets.

Gunshots in celebration were heard after Gadhafi’s speech, aired on state TV and on a screen to several hundred supporters in Tripoli’s central Green Square, witnesses said.

Western nations are urging the U.N.’s most powerful body to demand an immediate end to Gadhafi’s crackdown on civilian protestors and to strongly condemn the attacks.

“We want a clear message to the Libyan regime to stop the violence and to respect human rights and to protect the civilians,” said Germany’s U.N. Ambassador Peter Wittig, whose country is serving a two-year term on the council. “That’s what we are working for – something that is efficient on the ground.”

“This violence is completely unacceptable,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said.

But as it sought to safely extricate U.S. diplomats and other Americans from the violence spreading around Libya, Washington stopped short of criticizing Gadhafi personally or demanding that he step down.

Upbeat, determined demonstrators took over Manama for the day, circling the Bahrain Mall and Manama’s financial district, symbols of the country’s recent prosperity, in a march to the heart of the protest at Pearl Square.

“Egypt, Tunisia, are we any different?” marchers chanted, calling for the Sunni rulers they accuse of discriminating against the island’s Shiite majority to fall as the presidents of two other Arab countries have in recent weeks.

Walker said in a statement to The Associated Press that the layoffs wouldn’t take effect immediately. He didn’t say which workers would be targeted but he has repeatedly warned that up to 1,500 workers could lose their jobs by July if his proposal isn’t passed.

“Hopefully we don’t get to that point,” Walker said.

Hit by an aging population and a poor economy, a near-record number of U.S. counties are experiencing more deaths than births in their communities, a phenomenon demographers call “natural decrease.”

Years in the making, the problem is spreading amid a prolonged job slump and a push by Republicans in Congress to downsize government and federal spending.

Upbeat, determined demonstrators took over Manama for the day, circling the Bahrain Mall and Manama’s financial district, symbols of the country’s recent prosperity, in a march to the heart of the protest at Pearl Square.

“Egypt, Tunisia, are we any different?” marchers chanted, calling for the Sunni rulers they accuse of discriminating against the island’s Shiite majority to fall as the presidents of two other Arab countries have in recent weeks.

The court voted 6-2 against the parents of a child who sued the drug maker Wyeth in Pennsylvania state court for the health problems they say their daughter, now 19, suffered from a vaccine she received in infancy.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said Congress set up a special vaccine court in 1986 to handle such claims as a way to provide compensation to injured children without driving drug manufacturers from the vaccine market. The idea, he said, was to create a system that spares the drug companies the costs of defending against parents’ lawsuits.

Now, historians are poring through the 69 newly discovered books and five others the school already knew about, and librarians are searching the collection for more volumes that may have belonged to the founding father.

Even if no other Jefferson-owned books are found, the school’s collection of 74 books is the third largest in the nation after the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia.

The six candidates spent Tuesday morning still pushing for votes, shaking hands with surprised commuters and diner-goers and pleading their cases for why they should be picked to succeed the retiring Daley, who will leave office this spring after 22 years on the job.

“This is a critical election for the future of the city of Chicago. We’re at a crossroads,” front-runner Rahm Emanuel said as he greeted commuters at a South Side train station.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday indicated it would likely allow Bond to challenge her conviction despite arguments from federal prosecutors and judges that she shouldn’t even be allowed to appeal the verdict that has left her in federal prison since 2007.

Bond, from Lansdale, Pa. almost 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia, wants to challenge her conviction on 10th Amendment grounds, saying that the federal government’s decision to charge her in this case using a chemical weapons law was an unconstitutional reach into a state’s power to handle what her lawyer calls a domestic dispute.

The politically charged case against Luis Posada Carriles, 83, ground to a halt Feb. 10, when the defense moved for a mistrial – its fifth such request in five weeks. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone then delayed the proceedings for 11 days to consider the motion.

She found U.S. attorneys were indeed deliberately slow in turning over documents providing information about one of their star witnesses, saying “it is difficult for this court to believe the government simply overlooked this material,” but that that wasn’t enough to throw the case out.

It has no line item for health care implementation, a task delegated to agencies in several government departments, each with its own procedures – and quirks – to account for spending and hiring.

Republicans suspect a dodge to make it harder for them to track the money as they strategize over how to block the law by shutting off the spigot of federal funds.

A year after new regulations curbed a spate of questionable billing practices, federal officials say over-the-limit penalty charges have also been dramatically curtailed. The findings were released by the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will administer the regulations once it’s officially up and running this summer.

The agency focused only on the impact of specific regulations, however, and did not look at the full scope of costs customers pay for cards. For example, new credit card accounts are now more likely to come with annual fees and higher interest rates. That could offset the savings noted by the consumer watchdog. The regulations have also greatly reduced available credit for riskier customers, the American Bankers Association noted in a release.

Raymond Allen Davis, 36, had been working as a CIA security contractor and living in a Lahore safe house, according to former and current U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly about the incident.

Davis, a former Special Forces soldier who left the military in 2003, shot the men in what he described as an attempted armed robbery in the eastern city of Lahore as they approached him on a motorcycle. A third Pakistani, a bystander, died when a car rushing to help Davis struck him. Davis was carrying a Glock handgun, a pocket telescope and papers with different identifications.

In a matter of days, the Pentagon will announce whether Chicago-based Boeing Co. or European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) will build 179 new tankers to replace the Air Force’s Eisenhower-era KC-135 planes.

The competition is far more complex than a case of the U.S. against Europe. If Boeing wins, the air tanker would be built in Everett, Wash., Wichita, Kan., and several other states. If EADS wins, the tanker would be assembled in Mobile, Ala., at the former Brookley military base that was shuttered in the 1960s.

On Tuesday, Obama curried favor with small businesses in politically important Ohio, pushing his plans to boost American competitiveness by increasing spending on sectors like education and infrastructure. That agenda, however, is running up against opposition from some Republican governors in cash-strapped states, and GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill, whose demands for deep spending cuts raise the prospect of a federal government shutdown.

The president’s domestic initiatives have also been overshadowed by the turmoil in the Middle East. Tuesday’s trip came amid an escalation of violence in Libya, where government-backed security forces clashed with protesters, and news that four Americans were killed at the hands of pirates off the coast of Africa.

Her emotional, obscenity-laced outburst last week – caught on video and spread over the Internet – has come to symbolize the anger felt by parents whose children were railroaded by Mark Ciavarella, the former Luzerne County judge convicted Friday of racketeering in a $2.8 million “kids for cash” plot to send youth offenders to for-profit detention centers.

Fonzo’s son was 17 and an all-star wrestler with a chance at a college scholarship when he landed in Ciavarella’s courtroom on a minor drug paraphernalia charge. Though the teen, Edward Kenzakoski, had no prior criminal record, he spent months at the private lockups and a wilderness camp and missed his senior year of high school.

Michael Hastings won the Polk Award for magazine reporting for his story that recounted how Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his staff made scornful comments about Obama administration officials. Obama removed the four-star general from his command in June, saying McChrystal’s comments undermined civilian control of the military.

“We were as surprised as everyone else how swift and immediate the reaction was,” said Rolling Stone Executive Editor Eric Bates. The article “really helped put the war back on the map.”

After two weeks of testimony and about six hours of deliberations, jurors late Monday acquitted John Paul Hernandez on 14 counts in 11 indictments that alleged he sexually abused five inmates at in 2004 and 2005.

“Six years I’ve been waiting to hear those words,” Hernandez said. “I’ve already served a six-year punishment and finally a weight has been lifted.”