Evening Edition

As condemnation of the brutal crackdown grew and foreigners fled the oil-rich country, Kadhafi appeared to be increasingly isolated after reports that hundreds of civilians were killed in the backlash by his forces.

Kadhafi opponents appeared firmly in control of Libya’s coastal east, from the Egyptian border through to the cities of Tobruk and Benghazi, with government soldiers switching sides to join the uprising.

In a defiant and rambling television speech, Kadhafi vowed to remain in Libya as leader, 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 rule that has already left hundreds dead in the past eight days.

“Cyrenaica (province) is no longer under the control of the Libya government and there are outbreaks of violence across the country,” Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said, calling for an immediate end to the “horrible bloodbath.”

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, the north African nation’s top trading partner, on Tuesday phoned Kadhafi to urge the strongman to end a crackdown by his force against a nine-day-old popular uprising.

As he flew in, the king boosted social benefits for his people, in a region where a young population and unemployment have since January combined with demands for political reform to create a cocktail for political upheaval.

“The assumption that a coalition of different elites could keep systems stable has proven not to be correct anymore,” London-based Middle East analyst Neil Patrick told AFP. Abdullah must “be in a state of shock.”

“Even if they put the gun in my mouth and order me to leave, I will not,” said Sabah Abadi, a retired municipal employee who sat in a tent with his son and friends in the square.

“I’m here day and night.”

Riot officers blanketed the city’s central Syntagma Square in tear gas after being pelted with stones and firebombs by masked youths who vandalised metro and bus stops and set fire to garbage bins.

Three officers were injured — one after being set on fire by a Molotov cocktail — and police detained 20 people for questioning, including five who were later formally arrested.

Pakistan, who lost key players Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer after the spot-fixing scandal that rocked world cricket, opened their campaign against lowly Kenya in Hambantota, Sri Lanka.

The 1992 world champions racked up an imposing 317 for seven, helped by four half-centuries and an astonishing tally of 46 extras served up by the wayward Kenyan bowlers.

“It’s an exciting moment. We’ve pulled out all the stops to make Milan the leading Fashion Week for womenswear on the international stage,” Mario Boselli, head of the organisers, Milan’s Camera Moda, told AFP.

After London and New York, fashionistas can see the latest from 66 designers on 76 runways, including an exclusive few who will unveil their collections on catwalks in front of the city’s towering Gothic cathedral.

The crew bailed out of the aircraft after it took off from the capital Tripoli. It then came down south-west of Benghazi, Libya’s Quryna newspaper cited a military source as saying, averting a fresh bloodshed in almost a week of violence.

Tripoli, along with western Libya, is still under Gaddafi’s control and people there said they were too afraid of pro-government militia to go out after Gaddafi threatened violence against protesters in a speech on Tuesday night.

Brent has posted the biggest three-day gain since October 2009, rising to as much as $111.85 a barrel. That marked its highest since October 2008, shortly after the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.

U.S. crude has shot up more than 15 percent since Friday.

Jubilant rebels and supporters thronged the city center, waving red, green and black monarchy-era flags and giving out snacks and juice to passing cars, which honked their horns in a giant party. People danced, cheered and played loud music.

Anti-Gaddafi protesters hung effigies with “Mercenaries” written on them from lamp-posts, saying paid gunmen from Africa were sent by Gaddafi to try to suppress them. “Libya is Free! Libya is Free!,” they chanted. “Allahu Akbar (God is Great).”

None of several potential outcomes is benign for Libya’s oil industry — the lifeblood of its economy — or for oil prices. The scenarios run the gamut from all-out civil war and attacks on energy infrastructure to low-level neglect and reservoir damage, as foreign expertise flees the country.

Over decades, from Iran, to Iraq and Venezuela, periods of political chaos in OPEC countries have usually carved lasting scars on the oil sector, and few expect Libya to be any different.

Truckloads of demonstrators rolled down the streets of the eastern Libyan port city, past low concrete houses, distant smokestacks and the glinting Mediterranean Sea.

Libyan soldiers told a Reuters correspondent they no longer backed Gaddafi and the eastern region was out of his control.

This is one option Nasdaq, valued at $5.7 billion, is considering as a spate of deals shakes up an industry under intense cost pressure from new entrants such as BATS Global Markets, which last week snapped up rival Chi-X.

Nasdaq’s alternatives include tying up with IntercontinentalExchange Inc or the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to wrest NYSE from its planned $10.2 billion takeover by Deutsche Boerse, the source familiar with the matter said.

The search for an answer will frame succession planning discussions in Building 4 of 1 Infinite Loop — the heart of Apple’s California headquarters — when Cook is expected to step in for his boss to lead the annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday.

But little did Cook know that a gut decision he made in 1998 during his first meeting with Silicon Valley legend Steve Jobs would forever change his life — and alter the course of technology history.

In the morning, top managers at SAC Capital Advisors, LP’s headquarters in Stamford, Conn., calmly fanned out to allay any concerns the 250 analysts and traders at the $13 billion fund firm might have about the insider trading charges against the two former employees, Donald Longueuil and Noah Freeman. A separate outreach program went on with SAC Capital’s wealthy investors, some of whom had anxiously called up within minutes of the news hitting the wires.

By lunchtime, a spokesman for SAC Capital issued a statement calling Longueuil’s and Freeman’s actions “outrageous.” It also said both men obviously circumvented SAC Capital’s considerable compliance, deftly concealing their activities.

Emanuel will take over as head of the nation’s third-largest city in May after the retirement of Richard M. Daley, who has been in office for 22 years.

In his acceptance speech, Emanuel thanked the city for the “humbling victory.”

Casting a watchful eye over the crew of workers is Lewis C. Dogar, a veteran of Liberia’s railway. Dogar and a handful of colleagues have been brought out of retirement to help reclaim hundreds of kilometers of track from the jungle.

The softly spoken 64-year-old remembers Liberia’s booming 1960s and 1970s, when trains laden with iron ore wound south from the mine on the mist-shrouded Mount Nimba to the sweaty port town of Buchanan. That finished with the outbreak of fighting, and two back-to-back civil wars that lasted 14 years. The conflict, which finally ended in 2003, left more than 200,000 people dead and Liberia’s finances and infrastructure in ruins.

Those estimates are preliminary, and the quake could still end up being the costliest disaster for the global insurance industry in nearly three years. It is not expected to be enough, however, to arrest a sharp multiyear decline in insurance and reinsurance pricing.

“The quake caused extensive damage in the city center and was the second major quake to strike the city in six months,” Air Worldwide said in a statement on Wednesday.

The White House also expressed confidence that the two parties can agree to keep the government going and avoid a political standoff that could unsettle financial markets and risk mass government layoffs.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said his chamber “will pass a short-term bill to keep the government running — one that also cuts spending,” if the Democratic-led Senate refused to vote on a tough spending-cut bill that passed the House on Saturday.

In a further sign of Gadhafi’s faltering hold, two air force pilots – one from the leader’s own tribe – parachuted out of their warplane and let it crash into the deserts of eastern Libya, rather than follow orders to bomb a opposition-held city.

International momentum was building for action to punish Gadhafi’s regime for the bloody crackdown it has unleashed against the week-old uprising. The White House said it is reviewing options to compel Libya to stop violence, including sanctions. French President Nicolas Sarkozy raised the possibility of the EU cutting off economic ties.

Similar uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this month already had markets on edge before protests escalated in Libya, which has the biggest oil reserves in Africa. The rebellion widened Wednesday as protesters overwhelmed government buildings and advanced around Tripoli, the capital.

West Texas Intermediate crude for April delivery jumped $2.68, or 2.8 percent, to settle at $98.10 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the day, prices hit triple digits for the first time since Oct. 2, 2008. WTI has soared 18 percent since Valentine’s Day.

So Libya’s leader of 41 years kept his military weak to prevent any serious challenges to his rule.

With money and patronage, he seeded supporters in key posts. He built up militias and armed “revolutionary committees” that are the final line of support for him and his powerful sons.

“I have proof that Gadhafi gave the order about Lockerbie,” Mustafa Abdel-Jalil was quoted as saying in an interview with Expressen, a Stockholm-based tabloid.

Abdel-Jalil, who stepped down as justice minister to protest the clampdown on anti-government demonstrations, didn’t describe the proof.

The assessments by U.S. diplomats were published by the secret-spilling web site WikiLeaks as Gadhafi vowed to fight to the “last drop of blood” to put down an uprising against his 42-year rule of the North African nation. At least 300 protesters are believed to have been killed by pro-government forces in the past week of clashes.

Growing anger over crass behavior by Gadhafi’s offspring, such as son Hannibal’s 2008 arrest for beating servants in a hotel in Switzerland, may have helped spark the current uprising. “The family has been in a tailspin recently,” a cable assessed a year ago.

Two Turkish ships whisked 3,000 citizens away from the unrest engulfing Libya as Turkey cranked up its largest-ever evacuation, seeking to protect an estimated 25,000 Turkish workers in Libya. More than 200 Turkish companies are involved in construction projects in Libya worth over $15 billion, and some construction sites have come under attack by protesters.

The safety of U.S. citizens was a prime concern after failed attempts earlier this week to get them out by plane. But hundreds of Americans safely boarded a 600-passenger ferry at Tripoli’s As-shahab port on Wednesday for the five-hour journey to Malta, a Mediterranean island south of Italy.

The speech by the Libyan leader – who shouted and pounded his fists on the podium – was an all-out call for his backers to impose control over the capital and take back other cities. After a week of upheaval, protesters backed by defecting army units have claimed control over almost the entire eastern half of Libya’s 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) Mediterranean coast, including several oil-producing areas.

“You men and women who love Gadhafi … get out of your homes and fill the streets,” he said. “Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs.”

“Everything will be on the table,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. “We will look at all the possible options to put an end to the violence, to try to influence the government.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney called the violence “abhorrent.”

The total cost was estimated at 135 billion Saudi riyals ($36 billion), but this was not largesse. Saudi Arabia clearly wants no part of the revolts and bloodshed sweeping the already unsettled Arab world.

Saudi officials are “pumping in huge amounts of money into areas where it will have an obvious trickle-down by addressing issues like housing shortages,” said John Sfakianakis, chief economist for the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based Banque Saudi Fransi. “It has, really, a social welfare purpose to it.”

Attorney General Eric Holder said President Barack Obama has concluded that the administration cannot defend the federal law that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman. He noted that the congressional debate during passage of the Defense of Marriage Act “contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships – precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus” the Constitution is designed to guard against.

The Justice Department had defended the act in court until now.

Walker believed the caller was a conservative billionaire named David Koch, but it was actually a liberal blogger. The two talked for at least 20 minutes – a conversation in which the governor described several potential ways to pressure Democrats to return to the Statehouse and revealed that his supporters had considered secretly planting people in pro-union protest crowds to stir up trouble.

The call also revealed Walker’s cozy relationship with two billionaire brothers who have poured millions of dollars into conservative political causes, including Walker’s campaign last year.

Like the Wisconsin Senate Democrats, most Indiana House Democrats fled to neighboring Illinois and holed up in a budget hotel in an effort to block votes on what they viewed as threatening legislation, denying the chamber the quorum needed to conduct business.

Democrats want Republicans to drop efforts to push a voucher bill that would direct taxpayer money to private schools and a so-called “right-to-work” bill that prohibits union membership from being a condition of employment.

Police fired tear gas and flash grenades at protesters, blanketing parts of the city center in choking smoke and forcing thousands of peaceful demonstrators to scurry into side streets for cover. A motorcycle police officer was hit by a petrol bomb and his uniform caught fire in the city’s main Syntagma Square, before he was rescued by colleagues. His bike was destroyed.

Protesters chanting “Don’t obey the rich – Fight back!” marched to parliament as the city center was heavily policed. A brass band, tractors and cyclists joined the rally.

Such a move could seriously damage the U.S war effort in Afghanistan, limit a program targeting al-Qaida insurgents along the Pakistan frontier, and restrict Washington’s access to information in the nuclear-armed country.

According to a statement drafted by the ISI, supported by interviews with officials, an already-fragile relationship between the two agencies collapsed following the shooting death of two Pakistanis by Raymond Davis, a U.S. contracted spy who is in jail in Pakistan facing possible multiple murder charges.

A quicker route would be through federal legislation, and the NFL backs a bill pending in Congress. But the GOP-led House is unlikely to support that kind of federal role in local matters, so the league sees a bigger opening at the state level.

The suicide of a former NFL player just last week highlighted the urgency of this issue.

In an overhaul of air pollution regulations, the EPA said it found ways to control pollution at more than 200,000 industrial boilers, heaters and incinerators nationwide at a 50 percent cost savings to the companies and institutions that run them. Those operating large boilers that burn renewable fuels would not be required to install some expensive technologies, and only maintenance would be required for smaller boilers. That would cost $1.8 billion less each year than the original proposal, and still avert thousands of heart attacks and asthma cases a year, the agency said.

These rules “are realistic, they are achievable and reasonable and they come at about half the cost to industry to comply,” said Gina McCarthy, EPA’s top air pollution official in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. “EPA … found we could reduce emissions at a lower cost and still achieve the health benefits required by law.”

Emanuel, who overwhelmed the race with truckloads of money and friends in high places from Washington to Hollywood, will take control of a city in deep financial trouble with problems ranging from an understaffed police department to underperforming schools.

On Tuesday, Emanuel won 55 percent of the vote, easily outdistancing former Chicago schools president Gery Chico, who had 24 percent, and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and City Clerk Miguel del Valle, who each had 9 percent. He succeeds Mayor Richard M. Daley, who is retiring after 22 years in office as the longest-serving mayor in Chicago’s history.

They hadn’t heard from Donna Manning since a powerful earthquake tore through one of New Zealand’s largest cities a day earlier, killing at least 75 people and leaving some 300 missing in the rubble. Still, there was hope.

“My mum is superwoman, she’d do anything,” Manning’s 18-year-old daughter Lizzy said, tears streaming down her face.

Some members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, are threatening to cut off funds to Pakistan if Raymond Allen Davis is kept much longer in a Pakistani jail. But turning him over to the U.S. could unleash a torrent of anti-American sentiment across Pakistan, threatening to undercut that country’s fragile civilian government.

With anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East, public restlessness and anger could ripple as far as Pakistan, probably making the timing less than ideal for a government in an Islamic country to make a public show of cooperation with the United States.

Documents filed with the Utah Department of Commerce show church President Wendell Loy Nielsen resigned his post Jan. 28. Jeffs signed the documents retaking control of the church corporation Feb. 10 and filed the papers with the state five days later.

“I, the undersigned, Warren Steed Jeffs, have been called and sustained as the president,” Jeffs writes in a cover letter to the Commerce Department.

College costs and enrollment are rising in the state, and the governor is proposing to cut back on the first-in-the-nation HOPE scholarship, reserving the free ride for those with at least a 3.7 GPA, up from 3.0, and a 1200 on the SAT.

The rest would get some tuition help, an amount that could change from year to year.

The high court in a unanimous judgment Wednesday agreed to let the lawsuit go forward, despite complaints from the car company that federal regulators gave it an option on whether to install lap belts or lap-and-shoulder belts in the middle seats in the back of the van.

Thanh Williamson’s family wants to sue Mazda Motor of America Inc. because it made its 1993 Mazda MPV minivan with only lap seat belts in the middle seat of the van’s second row. Williamson, who was from Utah, died in a 2002 accident; her family says her body jackknifed around the lap belt causing fatal internal injuries.

The many provisions of Senate President Russell Pearce’s latest bill target education and other public services as well as activities ranging from hiring to driving.

Pearce’s late-emerging bill and other proposals sponsored by fellow Republicans cleared a Senate committee dominated by conservatives late Tuesday. But two committee Republicans voted against Pearce’s bill, and a GOP senator who’s not on the committee said Wednesday that full Senate votes on the measures will be close.

Edward Peters, who’s also a conservative Catholic blogger and seminary professor in Detroit, called the living arrangement “public concubinage” and said that Cuomo taking Communion would be sacrilegious.

But Catholic bishops don’t agree. Bishops and priests have allowed the Catholic Democrat to receive Communion for years, including at Christmas last year and at a Mass last month marking his inauguration. The practice appears to conform to church law.

Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky were among a group of white high school football players in the small town of Shenandoah who attacked 25-year-old Luis Ramirez in 2008. Prosecutors alleged they beat and kicked Ramirez because they didn’t like Hispanics and wanted them out of their town.

Justice Department prosecutor Myesha Braden said in court Wednesday that while Piekarsky, now 19, and Donchak, now 21, did not intend to kill Ramirez, they decided his ethnicity made him “somehow worthy of being beaten like a dog in the streets.”

But this five-seater has sleeker styling than any recent Volvos, moves forcefully with zippy turbo engine power, has Volvo’s well-known comfortable seats and can be loaded with a raft of safety equipment – some not found on other vehicles.

An example: The S60 with optional technology package includes a world-first pedestrian detection system with full auto brake. It can sense when a pedestrian comes in front of the car and, if the driver does not react, can apply the brakes fully to stop the car.