Evening Edition

Demonstrations were reported in Damascus, Banias, Latakia, Hama, Dahel and Homs, and the southern town of Daraa, with videos purporting to be of the rallies surfacing on YouTube. The authenticity of the videos could not be verified.

Human rights activists said police fired on protesters in the southern village of Sanamen as they were heading to nearby Daraa, hub of the protests, for the funeral of two people killed earlier in the week during clashes with security forces.

France insisted on keeping the 28-member alliance out of decision-making with President Nicolas Sarkozy holding out hopes of a diplomatic initiative to end the conflict.

Britain and France were jointly preparing a “political and diplomatic” solution, he said.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that after days of fraught talks, as NATO member Turkey objected to air strikes against Kadhafi’s forces, the 28-member alliance had finally reached a deal.

“We have now decided to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya,” he said in a statement, adding “we are taking action as part of a broad international effort to protect civilians against the Kadhafi regime.”

NATO agreed to take control of a no-fly zone over Libya to thwart Kadhafi loyalists while British and French warplanes targeted his ground forces in the strategic eastern town of Ajdabiya.

“We are taking action as part of a broad international effort to protect civilians against the Kadhafi regime,” said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

“We will stand firm … steadfast in the face of all challenges,” Saleh, wearing a suit and sunglasses and confidently waving his right hand, told vast crowds in Sanaa.

With Yemen’s two-month-old political crisis in limbo, tensions ran high and security forces were out in large numbers amid fears of a repetition of a Sanaa bloodbath a week earlier that cost more than 50 lives.

Anti-regime protesters poured into a square near Sanaa University where they have been camped since February 21, as regime loyalists crowded a nearby square in response to a call from the longtime president.

“The people want Ali Abdullah Saleh,” his supporters shouted, according to AFP correspondents who put the number of protesters at both the pro- and anti-regime demonstrations at hundreds of thousands.

Two weeks after a giant earthquake hit and sent a massive tsunami crashing into the Pacific coast, the death toll from Japan’s worst post-war disaster topped 10,000 and there was scant hope for 17,500 others still missing.

The tsunami obliterated entire towns and some 250,000 homeless in almost 2,000 shelters are still braving privations and a winter chill, with a degree of discipline and dignity that has impressed the world.

On a summer day, thousands would visit the resort’s pristine sands, many of them staying in the guest houses that dotted the shoreline on Japan’s picturesque northeast coast.

They came to gather shellfish or take boat tours of pine-covered islands and eat the oysters produced in the bay.

The grim toll of dead and missing from Japan’s monster earthquake and tsunami on March 11 topped 26,000. Hundreds of thousands remained huddled in evacuation shelters and fears grew in Tokyo over water safety.

The damage to the Fukushima nuclear plant from the tectonic calamity and a series of explosions has stoked global anxiety. The United States and Hong Kong have already restricted Japanese food, and France wants the European Union to do the same.

After last year’s massive bailouts for Greece and then Ireland, Portugal slipped towards the brink this week when prime minister Jose Socrates resigned after parliament blocked an austerity plan already agreed with eurozone partners.

“Portugal does not need a financial rescue plan and I will maintain this in defending my country,” Socrates insisted after a European Union summit clouded by his country’s financial troubles.

Led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, top figures insisted Portugal’s options were limited, with massive savings on spending required even if it seeks to negotiate a financial rescue package such as those given Greece and Ireland.

The two-day European Union summit was called to bolster defences against a eurozone debt crisis, but the overnight resignation of Portuguese premier Jose Socrates seriously undermined efforts to promote new shared economic goals.

After last year’s massive bailouts to Greece and then Ireland, Portugal slipped towards the brink this week when prime minister Jose Socrates resigned after parliament blocked an austerity plan already agreed with eurozone partners.

“Portugal does not need a financial rescue plan and I will maintain this in defending my country,” Socrates insisted after a European Union summit clouded by his country’s financial troubles.

A two-day European Union summit called to seal the bloc’s “comprehensive” response to a debt crisis crossed a major hurdle Thursday when partners conceded a last-minute German demand.

Berlin successfully that the the timeframe for contributions to a future, 700-billion-euro rescue fund, should be renegotiated.

The Red Bull pair of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel dominated first free practice with Webber clocking a best lap of one minute 26.831 seconds, before Jenson Button led a McLaren one-two in the late afternoon hit-out.

Button, bidding for a hat-trick of Melbourne victories in Sunday’s race, clocked 1:25.854, just 0.132secs ahead of 2008 world champion Lewis Hamilton.

Contador’s future has hung in the balance since he tested positive for the banned substance clenbuterol at the 2010 Tour de France.

After he declared his innocence, and blamed the tiny amounts of clenbuterol found in his urine on a contaminated steak, the Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC) cleared Contador to compete last month.

Ukrainian prosecutors confirmed they had presented charges of “abuse of power” to Kuchma as he attended a second session of questioning after a criminal probe was formally opened earlier this week.

The headless body of 31-year-old Georgy Gongadze — the founder of the liberal Ukrainska Pravda website and a virulent critic of Kuchma — was found in 2000 after he was abducted from central Kiev.

The Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal ruling upholds a freeze on the tie-up issued by a London court in February and formally puts a halt to the $16 billion deal.

The British firm immediately issued a statement saying it “remains committed to partner with Russia” and would seek other ways of completing the historic deal.

“I would like to assure all our friends and partners that their athletes and all of the event’s participants and guests will feel themselves at home in Moscow,” Putin declared moments after the official announcement.

The globally-watched championships had been due to start on March 21 in Japan but will now run between April 24 and May 1 in Moscow.

Rocket fire and shelling rocked the Abidjan suburb of Abobo, a stronghold of internationally-recognised president Alassane Ouattara, witnesses said.

The United Nations Operation in Ivory Coast (UNOCI) said the west of the country was also wracked by violence, with militia fighters looting a warehouse belonging to the UN refugee agency.

In the southern city of Deraa, which has been in revolt for a week, gunfire and tear gas scattered a crowd of thousands after people lit a fire under a statue of late president Hafez al-Assad, whose son Bashar has ruled since his death in 2000.

Al Jazeera aired comments by a man who said security forces had killed 20 people Friday in the nearby town of Sanamein.

While the African Union said it was planning to facilitate talks to help end war in the oil producing country, NATO said its no-fly zone operation could last three months, and France cautioned the conflict would not end soon.

In Washington, a U.S. military spokeswoman said the coalition fired 16 Tomahawk cruise missiles and flew 153 air sorties in the past 24 hours targeting Gaddafi’s artillery, mechanized forces and command and control infrastructure.

The U.N.-mandated no-fly mission, approved by NATO states on Thursday, will involve dozens of planes from the 28-nation military alliance.

NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said the alliance would decide “in coming days” whether to broaden its role to take over full command of military operations, including ground strikes to protect civilians, from a coalition led by France, the United States and Britain, which began air strikes almost a week ago.

A Reuters correspondent on the road a few kilometers east of Ajdabiyah heard three explosions and saw large plumes of black smoke rise over its eastern entrance.

A rocket that seemed to be fired from a rebel truck then hit the eastern entrance, sending a fireball into the sky. Black smoke also began rising from the western gate.

Quiet talks were underway on two tracks to work out the details of a deal on a peaceful transition of power in the Arabian Peninsula state that is home to a resurgent arm of al Qaeda, Yemeni political sources said.

Western countries are concerned that al Qaeda militants could exploit any disorder arising from a messy transition if Saleh, a pivotal U.S. and Saudi ally fighting for his political life, finally steps down after 32 years in office.

Helicopters buzzing overhead, extra checkpoints erected on major highways and a large troop presence prevented any major demonstration from kicking off in the small Gulf Arab island kingdom, where a security crackdown last week quelled a month of protests by the mostly Shi’ite Muslim demonstrators.

Bahrain has great strategic importance because it hosts the U.S. 5th Fleet, facing non-Arab Shi’ite power Iran across the Gulf, and is situated off-shore from Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter.

Underscoring growing international concern about nuclear power raised by the accident in northeast Japan, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement it was time to reassess the international nuclear safety regime.

Earlier, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, making his first public statement on the crisis in a week, said the situation at the Fukushima nuclear complex, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, was “nowhere near” being resolved.

At least two German shipping companies are avoiding Tokyo area ports due to radiation concerns from Japan’s quake-crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, sparking worries of new supply chain bottlenecks if others in the industry follow their example.

Radiation levels as of late Thursday in Tokyo’s port, located 240 km (150 miles) south of the plant, were below exposure levels the World Health Organization (WHO) considered normal, the ministry said.

Battling to stem a debt crisis that has raged for over a year and pushed both Greece and Ireland to accept bailouts, the EU had promised to unveil a comprehensive solution at the March 24-25 summit that it hoped would reassure jittery markets.

But the abrupt resignation of Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates on the eve of the meeting, after his austerity measures were rejected by parliament, cast a long shadow. Uncertainty in other euro members such as Finland and Ireland also prevented leaders finalizing fundamental elements of their plan.

“I would say we did not discuss this option,” Trichet told a news conference after a meeting of the ECB’s Governing Council. Four days later, the ECB announced that it would start buying bonds.

Trichet’s U-turn was part of an emergency package with euro zone leaders to stave off a crisis of confidence in the single currency. By reaching for its “nuclear option”, the ECB had also helped rewrite the manual of modern central banking.

Members of the more hawkish wing of the Fed went further, with Philadelphia Fed Bank President Charles Plosser saying the U.S. central bank will have to reverse its easy money policy in the “not-too-distant future” to avoid sowing the seeds of inflation.

The Fed has kept short-term rates near zero since December 2008 and has bought more than $2 trillion in long-term securities to push borrowing costs down further and boost recovery from the 2007-2009 recession.

Rosneft Chairman Igor Sechin said an arbitration panel ruling preventing BP and the state-controlled energy giant from jointly exploring Russia’s Arctic region and from executing a $16 billion share swap did not void the deal.

“The court didn’t block (the deal), it extended the injunction until April 7. We must await the court’s verdict,” Sechin, also Deputy Prime Minister, told reporters.

But the media isn’t here for the car. They want Sergio.

Sergio Marchionne, who runs both Fiat and Chrysler, has a rock star appeal you don’t see anywhere else in the global car industry these days. After two hours, he finally appears, tieless, in a dark turtleneck sweater over a white-and-blue checked shirt. As always, he’s wearing laceless shoes. Laces take too much time.