Evening Edition

I’ll be sitting in for ek hornbeck who is Live Blogging the NCAA Championship Games for the next few days.

• Japan battles nuclear crisis, power effort crucial
  
  By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Yoko Nishikawa

  (Reuters) – Exhausted engineers scrambled to fix a power cable to two reactors at Japan’s tsunami-crippled nuclear station on Saturday in a race to prevent deadly radiation from an accident now rated at least as bad as America’s Three Mile Island in 1979.

  In a crude tactic underlining authorities’ desperation, fire engines also sprayed water overnight on a third reactor deemed to be in the most critical state at the Fukushima plant in northeastern Japan, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

• Obama warns Gaddafi to comply with U.N., halt advance
  

  (Reuters) – President Barack Obama warned Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Friday to comply with U.N. demands for a ceasefire or else face consequences that include military action.

  He said Gaddafi must stop advances on the rebel capital of Benghazi.

  “All attacks against all civilians must stop,” Obama said in a White House speech.

  Obama, offering his first justification to Americans for getting the U.S. military involved in Libya, said the goal is to protect Libyan citizens from what he called Gaddafi’s campaign of repression against his people.

• Japan weighs need to bury nuclear plant; tries to restore power
  
  By Shinichi Saoshiro and Yoko Nishikawa

  (Reuters) – Japanese engineers conceded on Friday that burying a crippled nuclear plant in sand and concrete may be a last resort to prevent a catastrophic radiation release, the method used to seal huge leakages from Chernobyl in 1986.

  But they still hoped to solve the crisis by fixing a power cable to two reactors by Saturday to restart water pumps needed to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods. Workers also sprayed water on the No.3 reactor, the most critical of the plant’s six.

• In free Egypt, Jihad leader says time for gun is over
  
  By Tom Perry

  NAHIA, Egypt (Reuters) – Abboud al-Zumar went to jail 30 years ago for his role in killing Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Now a free man, he believes democracy will prevent Islamists from ever again taking up the gun against the state.

  Zumar was a prisoner for as long as Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, was president.

  His release with other leading Islamists jailed for militancy is a sign of dramatic change in Egypt in the five weeks since Mubarak was swept from power by mass protests.

• Judge temporarily blocks Wisconsin’s anti-union law
  
  By Jeff Mayers

  (Reuters) – A judge on Friday temporarily blocked Wisconsin’s controversial new law stripping public employee unions of key collective bargaining rights, though the ruling does not strike down the law itself.

  Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi granted a temporary restraining order, which stops the official publication of the bill by Wisconsin’s secretary of state, while she considers a complaint filed against several Republican lawmakers who orchestrated the measure’s passage last week.

• Aristide returns to Haiti as key vote looms
  
  by Guillaume Decamme

  PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically-elected leader who was twice driven into exile, returned to his homeland Friday in a move that threatens to cloud an already fraught presidential run-off.

  The former leader, smiling and wearing a dark blue suit, stepped off a private jet with his wife and two daughters, who wept as their father emerged to a ceremonial welcome by President Rene Preval’s chief of staff, as well as foreign ministry officials and bouquet-bearing supporters.

• 46 dead in Yemen protest bloodbath: medics
  
  by Jamal al-Jaberi and Hammoud Mounassar

  SANAA (AFP) – Beleaguered Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh ordered a state of emergency Friday after regime loyalists killed at least 46 protestors in the deadliest incident in weeks of unrest, according to medics.

  Witnesses said pro-Saleh “thugs” had rained bullets from rooftops around a square at Sanaa University, the centre of demonstrations against Saleh, adding that more than 400 people were wounded.

• Libya offers cease-fire after UN no-fly zone vote
  
  By Hadeel Al-Shalchi and Ryan Lucas

  TRIPOLI, Libya – Libya declared an immediate cease-fire Friday, trying to fend off international military intervention after the U.N. authorized a no-fly zone and “all necessary measures” to prevent the regime from striking its own people. A rebel spokesman said Moammar Gadhafi’s forces were still shelling two cities.

  The United States said a cease-fire announcement was insufficient, calling on the regime to pull back from eastern Libya, where the once-confident rebels this week found themselves facing an overpowering force using rockets, artillery, tanks, warplanes.

• CBO: Obama understates deficits by $2.3 trillion
  

  WASHINGTON – A new assessment of President Barack Obama’s budget released Friday says the White House underestimates future budget deficits by more than $2 trillion over the upcoming decade.

  The estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that if Obama’s February budget submission is enacted into law it would produce deficits totaling $9.5 trillion over 10 years – an average of almost $1 trillion a year.

  Obama’s budget saw deficits totaling $7.2 trillion over the same period.

• Arizona Senate votes down immigration bills
  

  PHOENIX (Reuters) – The Arizona Senate on Thursday rejected five immigration bills, placing a major stumbling block in the way of state conservatives’ hopes to pass more laws cracking down on illegal immigrants.

  The Senate voted down bills that sought to provoke a reevaluation by the U.S. Supreme Court of birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants, Senate officials said.

• G7 central banks in rare currency action after yen surge
  
  Leika Kihara and Kristina Cooke

  TOKYO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – A coordinated move by central banks of rich nations to stabilize the yen appeared to be working on Friday, tamping its value down after Japan’s devastating earthquake and nuclear crisis triggered a yen surge and raised fears about the global economy.

  The action by the Group of Seven, in which they poured billions of dollars into markets, was the first joint intervention in currency markets since the G7 came to the aid of the newly launched euro in 2000.

• JPMorgan, Wells Fargo boost payouts after Fed tests
  
  By Maria Aspan and Rachelle Younglai Maria Aspan And Rachelle Younglai

  NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co and other major U.S. banks plan to boost their dividend payments after passing stress tests evaluated by the Federal Reserve.

  The dividends, and announcements of share buybacks in some cases, signal that regulators view banks as being healthy enough to withstand the remaining uncertainties in the economy, after the banking system has been profitable for a year.

• California seeing no radiation level increase
  
  By Fredrik Dahl and Nichola Groom

  VIENNA/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – California air quality officials said on Friday they saw no elevated radiation levels on the U.S. West Coast from Japan’s nuclear power plant disaster.

  “At this point we’re unable to verify if there are any elevated levels,” said Ralph Borrmann, a spokesman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in San Francisco. “We’re not seeing it on our live data in California.”

  Radiation levels have not shown an increase at any of the monitoring stations up and down the West Coast, he added.

• Libya set to release NY Times journalists: report
  

  NEW YORK (Reuters) – Four New York Times journalists who were captured by Libyan forces while covering the conflict there will be released on Friday, the Times reported.

  The son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Seif al-Islam, told ABC News they would be released, and the Times reported that Libyan officials told the U.S. State Department on Thursday evening that all four would be released.

  The Times could not confirm details of their condition but quoted Executive Editor Bill Keller as saying, “We’re all, families and friends, overjoyed to know they are safe.”

• Report criticizes immigrant detention system
  

  PHOENIX (Reuters)- Immigrants detained in the United States lack adequate access to legal representation and medical care, while the system itself is over reliant on detention, a human rights report released on Thursday found.

  The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights study — “Immigration in the United States: Detention and Due Process” — examined the U.S. federal government’s immigration enforcement and detention system.

• Utah becomes first in U.S. to designate official state gun
  
  By James Nelson

  SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) – Utah has become the first U.S. state to name an official firearm, placing an automatic pistol on a list of designated symbols, right along with the honeybee and the cutthroat trout.

  Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed the bill into law this week, designating the Browning model M1911 automatic pistol as the official state firearm.

  The gun, which turns 100 years-old this year, is manufactured in Ogden, Utah.