Evening Edition

Speaking on state television, the embattled Kadhafi insisted the uprising against his 41-year rule was not a people’s revolt but driven by “trigger-happy” youths “stoned with drugs” inspired by Osama bin Laden.

“These are the ones who are under Bin Laden’s influence and authority, under the influence of drugs.”

As Kadhafi sought to cling on to his four-decade grip on power, US President Barack Obama condemned the Libyan leadership’s blooody crackdown on anti-regime protests and orders to shoot protestors as “outrageous”.

Thousands of Libyans and foreigners fled the north African country, leaving Kadhafi increasingly isolated as estimates suggested that 640 to more than 1,000 civilians were killed in the backlash by his forces.

In his first televised response to Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s decision to unleash vengeance on demonstrators, Obama reached out to US allies and promised to deploy a “full range of options” to halt “outrageous” bloodshed.

Obama spoke as officials said that Washington was considering fresh sanctions and other steps against Libya, and as political pressure mounted on his administration for a more activist response.

Swathes of Libya have fallen to opposition control and others into lawlessness, residents and reporters said, as opponents of veteran leader Moamer Kadhafi vowed to march on the capital and topple him from power.

In a 20-minute telephone call to state television, Kadhafi blamed Al-Qaeda for the insurrection as he addressed his divided nation for the second time this week in an attempt to galvanise support for his crumbling regime.

Lawyers for the 39-year-old Australian said they would appeal against judge Howard Riddle’s decision to reject defence arguments that Assange would face an unfair trial that would breach his human rights.

Speaking after the hearing at Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court in London, Assange criticised the European system under which he was detained in December over claims that he sexually abused two women in Sweden.

Discovery was set to launch at 4:50 pm (2150 GMT) on an 11-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS), and when it returns next month it will be the first of the three-member fleet to enter retirement.

The end of the US space shuttle program creates a gaping hole in the US space program during a period of belt-tightening and budget freezes and leaves Russia’s space capsules as the sole transit option to the ISS.

Putin and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso clashed heatedly after talks between almost half of the Russian government and the European Union executive, which also touched on the threat to global economic recovery caused by rocketing oil prices amid the unrest in north Africa.

At the heart of their squabble lies a change in EU law, due to enter force on March 3, to unbundle gas supplies from transportation networks.

MaxMara designer Laura Lusuardi’s drew on the classic British country look for her show, reinterpreting kilts and urbanising Irish knitwear with long-haired alpaca and camel tartan bustiers and skirts.

The collection was aimed at “the active, younger and more animated woman,” Lusuardi said backstage: “She is always elegant though, and ageless in her way.”

Emerald green and teal feathers adorned violet hats worn rakishly over 1970s-style fur stoles in Gucci designer Frida Giannini’s autumn-winter creations.

The look was accompanied by full-sleeved dresses pulled in with a sliver of a belt at the waist or flared trousers.

Fendi swept the catwalks Thursday on the second day of the event in Italy’s fashion capital, ahead of shows by D&G and Prada.

Karl Lagerfield and Silvia Venturini Fendi wowed the audience with a collection inspired by the “perverse teacher” with models wearing high-heeled brogues, swinging mustard, blue and red boxed bags, their hair in chignons.

Details of the long-flagged Kremlin procurement plan through 2020 see Russia acquiring a total of 20 submarines and more than 600 warplanes in place of a outdated fleet of jets and vessels that have been losing international clients.

Analysts said the ambitious plan would in effect create a brand new Russian armed forces that finally cut links with its Soviet past.

Several people were injured as police attempted to keep order among the throng at the M. Chinnaswamy stadium which the Press Trust of India news agency said numbered at least 30,000.

All 7,000 tickets put on sale Thursday for Sunday’s blockbuster match between India and England, switched at the last minute because of problems at Eden Gardens in Kolkata, were sold out within hours.

The opposition were already in control of major centers in the east, including the regional capital Benghazi, and reports that the towns of Misrata and Zuara in the west had also fallen brought the tide of rebellion closer to Gaddafi’s power base.

Gun battles in Zawiyah, an oil terminal 50 km (30 miles) from the capital, left 23 people dead, a Libyan newspaper said. Al Jazeera quoted residents putting the toll at 100 there.

Defense Minister Alain Juppe said he hoped Muammar Gaddafi’s rule was nearing an end and that he would sign up to a halt to purchases of Libyan oil if such a move was among international sanctions considered.

“I hope wholeheartedly Gaddafi is living his last moments as leader,” Juppe said in an interview on France Inter radio. Asked if those sanctions should include oil, he said: “If that option were proposed I would go for it.”

A court compound in the center of Benghazi, on the Mediterranean coast, has become a focal point for those seeking to reimpose law and order after a bloody rebellion against Gaddafi loyalists who relinquished the city to residents.

A Reuters correspondent was shown about a dozen people held in a court building who residents said were “mercenaries” backing Gaddafi, some were said to be African and others from southern Libya.

One cable seen by Reuters, sent from the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, shows Gaddafi’s government exerting heavy pressure on U.S. and other oil companies to reimburse Tripoli the $1.5 billion Libya had paid in 2008 into a fund to settle terrorism claims from the 1980s.

The amount was the initial payment in a planned $1.8 billion fund. The cable suggests Gaddafi intended foreign oil companies to provide full funding for the scheme, which at the time was a key factor in improving ties between Libya and the United States.

Assange’s lawyers said immediately they planned to appeal against the decision to London’s High Court and it could still be months before the legal process in Britain reaches an end.

The 39-year-old Australian computer expert remains in Britain on bail in the meantime.

The surprise action on Thursday extended a damaging string of recalls covering 19 million Toyota vehicles worldwide since 2009, mainly over complaints of unintended acceleration linked to defective floormats and gas pedals.

The additional recalls covered several Toyota and Lexus models and renewed questions about quality at the world’s largest automaker and its ability to shake the stubborn safety crisis that has undermined sales and tarnished its brand.

Kohl’s, which caters to price-conscious shoppers, had strong sales over the holidays and said sales at its established stores could rise as much as 4 percent this year.

Target outperformed its larger but more down-market rival Wal-Mart Stores Inc during the holiday quarter and forecast comparable sales may rise up to 5 percent this year.

A senior Pakistani intelligence official in Islamabad said the case of Raymond Davis had strained but not broken relations between the CIA and the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligences (ISI) because the ISI didn’t know about Davis before he shot and killed two Pakistanis on January 27 in Lahore.

“It’s not business as usual; it’s not open war,” the official told Reuters. “Cooperation and operations together will continue at a lesser scale.”

The 26-year-old from the poor heartland province of Henan, like so many other workers, had just returned from his village after the Lunar New Year holidays and was looking for a job. But unlike an older generation of migrant workers, not just any job.

“It’s easy to find work, but not easy to find good work,” said He, wearing a thin grey jacket and a flop of gelled hair. “We haven’t seen any big improvements in wages or benefits.”

His father and oldest brother were shot dead last August at the start of a midnight assault by NATO-led troops on their house in Afghanistan’s east. Abdullah himself was hooded, handcuffed and flown to prison, where he was detained for questioning and then released.

They were casualties of a night raid, a controversial tactic that has been stepped up dramatically since General David Petraeus took over running the Afghan war last year, despite strong opposition led by President Hamid Karzai.

The issue of gay marriage has been a major personal conflict for Obama — he has opposed it and instead favored civil unions — and his policy reversal drew criticism from conservatives who said the move was a political one.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the change on Wednesday after a detailed review in recent weeks.

Chief Executive William Brodsky said CBOE Holdings Inc’s focus on equity derivatives has kept it competitive against larger rivals, but remaining a niche player “may not be the only way that we will succeed,” he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

Brodsky’s comments, in an interview in his office above the trading floor, appeared to leave the door open to joining the consolidation wave that has rocked the industry, though he did not suggest any particular deal was under consideration.

The worse bloodshed was in Zawiya, 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of the capital Tripoli. An army unit loyal to Gadhafi opened fire with automatic weapons on a mosque where residents – some armed with hunting rifles for protection – have been holding a sit-in to support protesters in the capital, a witness said.

The troops blasted the mosque’s minaret with an anti-aircraft gun. A doctor at a field clinic set up at the mosque said he saw the bodies of 10 dead, shot in the head and chest, as well as around 150 wounded. A Libyan news website, Qureyna, put the death toll at 23 and said many of the wounded could not reach hospitals because of shooting by “security forces and mercenaries.”

Now citizens are figuring out how to run their own affairs and build up their military, as Gadhafi remains very much in power on the other side of the country.

It began as a series of small protests over the imprisonment of a human rights lawyer and then, in a week of increasingly bloody battles, the residents of Libya’s second-largest city, Benghazi, found themselves, improbably, in charge.

President Barack Obama consulted with the leaders of Britain, France and Italy, while officials said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would help coordinate the larger international strategy to stop the violence in Libya at a meeting of foreign policy chiefs next week in Switzerland.

As an initial punishment for Libya’s violent attacks on protesters, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. is backing a European proposal for the U.N. Human Rights Council to recommend Libya’s expulsion.

No decisions had been made on what size cuts to include in legislation expected on the Senate floor next week, these officials said, adding that $8.5 billion in funding for previously approved congressionally-approved earmark projects is on the chopping block. In addition, aides are reviewing $24.7 billion worth of proposals President Barack Obama recently made to reduce or eliminate programs beginning in 2012, to see whether any should be accelerated.

One obvious candidate for elimination is an alternative engine for the Pentagon’s next-generation fighter aircraft, a program that the White House and Defense Secretary Robert Gates oppose, and that the House recently voted to jettison at a savings of about $450 million.

The stepped-up tactic ordered by the Republican head of the Senate came amid reports that at least a few of the missing senators were returning home at night before rejoining their colleagues in Illinois.

Meanwhile, the state Assembly appeared close to voting on the union-rights bill after more than two straight days of filibustering.

The bones represent the earliest human remains discovered in the Arctic of North America, a “pretty significant find,” said Ben A. Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

While ancient Alaskan residents were known to hunt large game, the newly discovered site shows they also foraged for fish, birds and small mammals, he explained. “Here we know there were young children and females. So, this is a whole piece of the settlement system that we had virtually no record of.”

In the first real indication of what’s been going on behind closed doors, the federal mediator overseeing talks said Thursday the two sides made “some progress” during more than 40 hours spread over seven consecutive days of face-to-face meetings, but “very strong differences remain.”

The league and union will resume mediation Tuesday, less than 72 hours before the old collective bargaining agreement is set to expire. If there’s no new deal in place by the end of next Thursday, the union thinks owners will move to lock out players, threatening the 2011 season. The NFL has said, however, that the deadline could be extended.

The six astronauts on board, all experienced space fliers, were thrilled to be on their way after a delay of nearly four months for fuel tank repairs. But it puts Discovery on the cusp of retirement when it returns in 11 days and eventually heads to a museum.

Discovery is the oldest of NASA’s three surviving space shuttles and the first to be decommissioned this year. Two missions remain, first by Atlantis and then Endeavour, to end the 30-year program.

Judge Howard Riddle rejected claims from the Wikileaks founder that he would not face a fair trial, saying that the allegations of rape and sexual molestation by two women against Assange meet the definition of extraditable offenses and that the Swedish warrant had been properly issued and was valid.

Assange, 39, a key figure in the release of tens of thousands of secret U.S. government and military documents, has been out on bail during the extradition fight. He has seven days to appeal the ruling in British courts.

The Transportation Department said it had reviewed more than 400,000 pages of Toyota documents to determine whether the scope of the company’s recalls for pedal entrapment was sufficient.

“As a result of the agency’s review, (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) asked Toyota to recall these additional vehicles, and now that the company has done so, our investigation is closed,” said NHTSA administrator David Strickland.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gave no proof for his assertion in a nationally televised speech Thursday, which echoed similar blanket statements he has made before blaming terrorists and Saddam loyalists for an array of problems in the country.

Religious figures including anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the leader of Iraq’s majority Shiite community also have raised doubts about the rally.

As part of a 12-year-old lawsuit against the tobacco industry, the government on Wednesday released 14 “corrective statements” that it says the companies should be required to make.

One “corrective” statement says: “A federal court is requiring tobacco companies to tell the truth about cigarette smoking. Here’s the truth: … Smoking kills 1,200 Americans. Every day.”

Opinion polls show a steady rise in Americans’ embrace of gay rights, and young voters solidly back positions their grandparents opposed, including gay marriage.

“Anybody under the age of 40 doesn’t care, or actively supports it,” said Steve Elmendorf, a longtime Democratic staffer and lobbyist.

The Democratic governor is trying to sell lawmakers on his proposal for a June special election that would allow voters to decide on a five-year extension of increases to state sales, income and vehicle taxes.

The hour-long hearing was remarkable for the frankness of the exchanges between the governor and lawmakers that gave the public a wide-open look at what typically is a closed-door process.

The House Democrats’ leader said he wasn’t sure whether they would return then. The two parties remain in a stand-off over the Republican agenda, which Democrats say is an attack on the middle class. Republicans have refused to drop any of their bills, and Democrats say they won’t come back until the GOP agrees to sit down and talk about agenda items.

“Nothing’s really changed,” said House Minority Leader Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend. He was at a hotel in Urbana, Ill., where most House Democrats have been holed up since they left Tuesday.

The drop will mean a financial loss that could cost the already cash-strapped Gateway City millions of dollars.

Figures from the 2010 census were a bitter disappointment, as the city’s population dipped to 319,294. That’s down more than 29,000 – a staggering 8 percent – from 2000. For St. Louis leaders, the news was doubly disappointing because they were expecting to see an increase.

Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican and Catholic, supports the measure and when he signs it into law, Virginia will become the first state to require clinics that provide first-trimester abortions to meet the same standards as hospitals. The requirements could include anything from expensive structural changes like widening hallways to increased training and mandatory equipment the clinics currently don’t have.

While abortion providers must be licensed in Virginia, the clinics resemble dentists’ offices and are considered physicians offices, similar to those that provide plastic and corrective eye surgeries, colonoscopies and a host of other medical procedures.

Sgt. Derrick Miller, 27, of Hagerstown, Md., has been charged with murder in the death of Atta Mohammed in eastern Afghanistan last September. Miller had volunteered to deploy with the Connecticut National Guard and was attached to the 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan at the time of the shooting.

After being charged, he was sent to Fort Campbell, on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line where the division is based, and remains there on active duty status. His court-martial is scheduled for June.

A hearing on the proposal set for Friday before a regulatory panel was cancelled following accusations that the port backers concealed plans for a much larger project along the Columbia River north of Portland, Ore.

The proposed Millennium Bulk Terminal in southwestern Washington has stood at the forefront of industry plans to ramp up coal exports using the vast reserves of the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming. Those plans are bitterly opposed by environmental groups.

However, Staff Sgt. James Michael Beck said he didn’t report the phone call to anyone because there was no standard operating procedure for doing so, according to a statement obtained by The Associated Press.

Beck said he was working in the operations center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle on Feb. 14, 2010, when he received a call from Christopher Winfield of Cape Coral, Fla., who told him soldiers in his son’s platoon had already killed one civilian and were planning to kill more.

That’s the little-known truth about a government shutdown. The government doesn’t shut down.

And it won’t on March 5, even if the combatants on Capitol Hill can’t resolve enough differences to pass a stopgap spending bill to fund the government while they hash out legislation to cover the last seven months of the budget year.

Their state would be a place where officials can ignore U.S. laws, force FBI agents to get a sheriff’s OK before arresting anyone, ban abortions, limit sex education in schools and create armed citizen militias.

It’s the tea party world. But not everyone is buying their vision.

“The ripple effect nationwide will be to galvanize supporters of marriage,” said staff counsel Jim Campbell of Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal group.

On the federal level, opponents of same-sex marriage urged Republican leaders in the House of Representatives to intervene on their own to defend the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, against pending court challenges.

Indiana’s governor urged GOP lawmakers to give up on a “right to work” bill for fear the backlash could derail the rest of his agenda. In Ohio, senators plan to soften a bill that would have banned all collective bargaining by state workers. And in Michigan, the Republican governor says he’d rather negotiate with public employees than pick a fight.

That’s hardly enough to set labor leaders celebrating. They still face a slew of measures in dozens of states that seek to curb union rights. But union officials say they believe the sustained protests in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states are making an impact.

Ileana Vizcaino Dime, director of Cuba’s state-run Institute of Forensic Medicine, testified against Luis Posada Carriles, an 83-year-old anti-communist considered Public Enemy No. 1 in his native Cuba, where his face is plastered on numerous billboards. Prosecutors say Posada planned a series of bombings in Cuba before sneaking into the U.S. in 2005.

Jurors appeared to be listening carefully as Dime detailed in monotonous, dry tones the exceedingly bloody 1997 death at the center of the U.S. government’s case against Posada, who faces 11 counts of perjury, obstruction of justice in an anti-terrorism investigation and immigration fraud.