Evening Edition

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

• West pounds Libya with air strikes, Tomahawks
  
  by Imed Lamloum

  TRIPOLI (AFP) – French air raids and US Tomahawk missiles pounded targets in Libya on Saturday, in an international campaign to prevent Moamer Kadhafi from crushing a month-old uprising against his rule.

  A US warship fired Tomahawk cruise missiles into Libya, targeting Kadhafi’s air defence sites, a senior US military official said.

  Two days after a UN Security Council resolution authorised military action, French planes carried out an initial four air strikes, destroying several armoured vehicles of Kadhafi’s forces, the French military said.

• Power line connected to stricken Japan reactor
  
  by Hiroshi Hiyama

  KITAKAMI, Japan (AFP) – Crews fighting to cool reactors at Japan’s stricken nuclear plant managed to connect a power line Saturday as the government revealed that leaking radioactivity had reached the food chain.

  The Fukushima No. 1 plant was crippled eight days ago by a terrifying earthquake and tsunami which according to the latest police tally left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing in Japan’s worst natural disaster since 1923.

• Mass Egypt vote turnout marred by ElBaradei attack
  
  by Steve Kirby

  CAIRO (AFP) – Egyptians voted in huge numbers on Saturday in their first taste of democracy after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, although a referendum was marred by an assault on Nobel peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei.

  Turnout figures were not expected before Sunday but officials said the numbers at polling stations were unprecedented for Egypt, where participation was minuscule in the Mubarak era as voters assumed their ballots would make no difference.

• Yemen seethes as death toll climbs to 52
  
  by Jamal al-Jaberi

  SANAA (AFP) – Yemenis seethed with anger as medics raised the death toll from a sniper attack on protesters to 52 and thousands rallied on Saturday despite a state of emergency imposed by the autocratic regime.

  “We will not leave until the fall of the butcher,” demonstrators chanted in the capital Sanaa, referring to President Ali Abdullah Saleh. “We will not leave this place until the departure of Saleh and his sons.”

• Haitians face crucial choices in presidential run-off
  
  by Clarens Renois

  PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Haitians Saturday faced a crucial decision over who will lead their quake-ravaged country — a popular singer or a former first lady — as campaigning ended in the presidential election.

  Sunday’s vote brings to a close a long and turbulent election season that sparked fraud charges and deadly violence after a first round of balloting on November 28, which also has slowed progress in Haiti’s recovery from the 2010 earthquake.

• Thousands demonstrate in Lisbon against austerity policy
  

  LISBON (AFP) – Thousands of workers from the public and private sectors converged on Lisbon from all over Portugal Saturday to demonstrate against the government’s austerity policy, rising unemployment and insecurity.

  At the same time the leader of the centre-right opposition, Pedro Passos Coelho, said the country would “need outside help” in spite of denials by the Socialist government.

• Libya’s National Oil Corp will honour contracts: Ghanem
  

  TRIPOLI (AFP) – Libya’s National Oil Corp will honour its contracts with foreign firms operating in the country, NOC chairman Shukri Ghanem said on Saturday.

  “We will honour all our engagements and contracts with the foreign oil companies that are working in Libya,” Ghanem told a press conference in Tripoli. “We have no intention of cancelling our contracts.”

• Obama gives modest backing for Brazil’s U.N. ambition
  
  By Matt Spetalnick and Raymond Colitt

  BRASILIA (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama heralded Brazil’s “extraordinary” rise on the world stage but stopped short of backing its bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

  At the start of a five-day trip to Latin America, Obama told a joint briefing with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Saturday that his visit was a historic opportunity to strengthen U.S. ties with the region’s largest economy.

• Bahrain eases curfew
  
  By Lin Noueihed and Erika Solomon

  MANAMA (Reuters) – Bahrain cut curfew hours on Saturday and urged residents to return to work after a crackdown on mainly Shi’ite Muslim protesters this week raised tensions in the world’s largest oil-producing region.

  The call came as a fourth protester died of wounds sustained when troops and police moved on Wednesday to end weeks of unrest that prompted the king to declare martial law and call in troops from Bahrain’s Sunni-ruled neighbor, Saudi Arabia.

• Warren Christopher, U.S. negotiator, dies at 85
  

  WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who helped bring peace to Bosnia and negotiated the release of American hostages in Iran, died in California at age 85.

  Christopher “passed away peacefully, surrounded by family at his home in Los Angeles” late on Friday of complications from kidney and bladder cancer, his family said in a statement.

  As the top U.S. statesman under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997, Christopher was a behind-the-scenes negotiator. Often called the “stealth” secretary of state, he was known for his understated, self-effacing manner.

• Super-moon to rise on Saturday
  

  NEW YORK (Reuters) – An especially large moon will appear to rise on Saturday in the most extreme example of a so-called super-moon phenomenon in nearly 20 years, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory.

  For such a visible super-moon to be visible, the moon must be full and passing through its closest approach to earth, known as the perigee, in its month-long, elliptical orbit, the Observatory said on its web site.

• Magnificent Ireland wreck England’s slam dream
  

  DUBLIN (AFP) – Ireland wrecked England’s hopes of a Six Nations grand slam here Saturday, outclassing their opponents 24-8 in a one-sided encounter at Lansdowne Road.

  Tries from wing Tommy Bowe, captain Brian O’Driscoll – setting a new all-time record for the tournament of 25 – and 14 points from fly-half Jonathan Sexton gave Ireland a deserved victory that was even more one-sided than the lop-sided final score suggested.

• Berlin’s polar bear star Knut dies
  

  BERLIN (AFP) – Knut the polar bear, who became a global media sensation as a cub after being rejected by his mother and reared by hand, died suddenly for unexplained reasons on Saturday, the Berlin Zoo said.

  “Everyone is just in shock here,” said Claudia Bienek, a spokeswoman for the zoo in the German capital.

  Knut, who shot to fame as a highly photogenic, snow-white cub in 2007, was aged just four years and three months, well below the average life expectancy for polar bears of around 35.