Evening Edition

(Reuters) – Libyan rebels backed by allied air strikes retook the strategic town of Ajdabiyah on Saturday after an all-night battle that suggests the tide is turning against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in the east.

Western warplanes bombed the outskirts of Misrata further west to stop Gaddafi forces shelling the city, a rebel spokesman said. One inhabitant said 115 people had died in Misrata in a week and snipers were still shooting people from rooftops.

(Reuters) – Japanese engineers struggled on Sunday to pump radioactive water from a crippled nuclear power station after radiation levels soared in seawater near the plant more than two weeks after it was battered by a huge earthquake and a tsunami.

Tests on Friday showed iodine 131 levels in seawater 30 km (19 miles) from the coastal nuclear complex had spiked 1,250 times higher than normal, but it was not considered a threat to marine life or food safety, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

AJDABIYA, Libya – Libyan rebels clinched their hold on the east and seized back a key city on Saturday after decisive international airstrikes sent Moammar Gadhafi’s forces into retreat, shedding their uniforms and ammunition as they fled.

Ajdabiya’s initial loss to Gadhafi may have ultimately been what saved the rebels from imminent defeat, propelling the U.S. and its allies to swiftly pull together the air campaign now crippling Gadhafi’s military. Its recapture gives President Barack Obama a tangible victory just as he faces criticism for bringing the United States into yet another war.

(Reuters) – Thousands of mourners at a funeral for a Syrian killed in anti-government protests burned a ruling Baath party building and a police station on Saturday as authorities freed 260 prisoners in a bid to placate reformists.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was facing the deepest crisis of his 11 years in power after security forces fired on protesters on Friday in the city of Deraa, adding to a death toll that rights groups have said now numbers in the dozens.

DAMASCUS, Syria – Protesters set fire to offices of the ruling party in southern and western Syria on Saturday, burning tires and attacking cars and shops in a religiously mixed city on the Mediterranean coast, according to accounts by government officials, activists and witnesses.

Officials said at least two people were killed.

Presidential advisor Bouthaina Shaaban told reporters that demonstrators attacked a police station and offices of the Baath party in the town of Tafas, six miles (10 kilometers) north of the city of Daraa, epicenter of more than a week of anti-government protests.

(Reuters) – A deal to transfer power peacefully in Yemen could emerge shortly based on an offer by President Ali Abdullah Saleh to quit by the end of the year, Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi told Reuters.

But Al Arabiya television later quoted Saleh as saying that while he was prepared to step down “with respect” even within hours in response to relentless popular unrest, a deal did not appear imminent since his opponents had hardened their demands.

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama sought to reassure Americans about U.S. military involvement in Libya on Saturday, saying the mission is limited and the United States will not intervene everywhere there is a crisis.

Obama, accused by many lawmakers of failing to explain U.S. objectives in Libya, used his weekly radio and Web address to speak about his Libyan policy and plans a Monday night address to the American people to explain it further.

SENDAI, Japan – Japan’s government revealed a series of missteps by the operator of a radiation-leaking nuclear plant on Saturday, including sending workers in without protective footwear in its faltering efforts to control a monumental crisis. The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, rushed to deliver fresh water to replace corrosive salt water now being used in a desperate bid to cool the plant’s overheated reactors.

(Reuters) – The tsunami that slammed Japan two weeks ago wiped out homes, businesses and a fishing industry that was the lifeblood for thousands of victims on the northeast coast.

The tsunami erased aquatic farms just offshore along with low-lying seaside areas that are home to fleets fishing along the coast, while a nuclear plant in Fukushima leaking radiation has raised concerns about marine life in the region over the longer term.

(Reuters) – Radioactivity levels are soaring in seawater near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said on Saturday, two weeks after the nuclear power plant was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami.

Even as engineers tried to pump puddles of radioactive water from the power plant 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, the nuclear safety agency said tests on Friday showed radioactive iodine had spiked 1,250 times higher than normal in the seawater just offshore the plant.

(Reuters) – Ten flimsy wooden coffins were laid on two sturdy rails at a hastily prepared cemetery of mostly mud as Keseunnuma began burying its dead from the tsunami that ripped apart the Japanese coastal city.

Desperate municipalities such as Kesennuma have been digging mass graves, unthinkable in a nation where the deceased are almost always cremated and their ashes placed in stone family tombs near Buddhist temples. Local regulations often prohibit burial of bodies.

(Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper set May 2 as the date of the next election on Saturday and said people would be “crazy” to vote for opposition parties he accused of trying to illegitimately seize power.

A clearly angry Harper railed against the three opposition parties that brought his minority Conservative government down on Friday. The opposition said the government was tainted by sleaze, had managed the economy poorly and was in contempt of Parliament.

LONDON – A quarter-million mostly peaceful demonstrators marched through central London on Saturday against the toughest cuts to public spending since World War II, with some small breakaway groups smashing windows at banks and shops and spray painting logos on the walls.

Another group of black-clad protesters hurled paint bombs and ammonia-filled light bulbs at police.

Organizers of the March for the Alternative said people from across the country were peacefully joining in the demonstration, the biggest protest in London since a series of rallies against the Iraq war in 2003.

(Reuters) – The leader of Portugal’s opposition Social Democrats (PSD) is fully committed to meeting budget goals agreed with Brussels and hopes the country will not need to seek a bailout, the head of the party said on Saturday.

Pedro Passos Coelho told Reuters in an interview that if the country were to need emergency financing to meet short-term financial payments, the caretaker Socialist government will have the power to seek a bridging loan until a snap election is held.

(Reuters) – The European Central Bank is putting the finishing touches on a new facility that will give troubled euro zone banks liquidity over a longer time frame, throwing a lifeline to Ireland’s ailing banks.

A euro zone central banking source told Reuters on Saturday that the plan will initially be “tailor made for Irish banks” and was likely to be announced next week t

As Washington worries about the United States’ growing deficit problem, there’s mounting evidence the government is failing to collect taxes from wealthy individuals and corporations. A piece in today’s New York Times by David Kocieniewski outlines how G.E. skirted paying any taxes on $5.1 billion in profits in 2010–in addition to claiming a $3.2 billion tax credit.

The main reason G.E. is so adept at avoiding paying taxes, Kocieniewski writes, is because it’s compiled an all-star team of in-house tax professionals plucked from the Internal Revenue Service, the Treasury Department, and “virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.”

(Reuters) – Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic congresswoman who became the first woman on a major party presidential ticket as Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984, died on Saturday at the age of 75, her family said.

Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston of a blood cancer after a 12-year illness, according to a statement from her family.

(Reuters) – Prison inmates are letting their fingers do the walking by orchestrating crimes with contraband cell phones, as states scramble for ways to fight back despite budget woes that limit their options.

Until now, authorities had focused on nabbing smuggled cell phones, but in recent months Mississippi, Texas and California have experimented with disrupting inmates’ wireless calls.

(Reuters) – Wisconsin Republicans said on Friday a measure stripping state public employees of most collective bargaining rights was now in effect after it was published by a legislative agency despite a judge’s order against publication.

The move looked certain to stir fresh controversy over the legislation, which in recent weeks sparked huge demonstrations and ignited a national struggle over efforts by several budget-strapped state governments to rein in union power.

(Reuters) – New York City leads the nation in at least two areas: private-sector job growth and the commercial property market’s revival, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a report released on Friday.

Private employers have hired about 73,400 workers since November 2009, replacing about half of the jobs they cut in the recession, according to DiNapoli’s report.

BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) — Mississippi legislators last year put one of the nation’s toughest anti-methamphetamine laws into effect — and officials say the results so far are dramatic.

(Reuters) – The Pacific Northwest chapter of the Roman Catholic Church’s Jesuit order has agreed to pay $166 million to settle more than 500 child sexual abuse claims against priests in five states, attorneys said on Friday.

(Reuters) – Driving through Virginia? You could soon be making a pit stop at the Geico Travel Plaza.

The commonwealth is selling naming rights to its 42 rest stops and welcome centers to help defray the $20 million annual operating and maintenance costs.

(Reuters) – M’m! M’m! Salty?

A federal judge has allowed a lawsuit to go ahead against Campbell Soup Co, the world’s largest soup-maker, over whether its purported “low-sodium” tomato soup really has less sodium.

(Reuters) – Dr. Garrison Bliss has found a way to decrease the role of insurance companies in day-to-day medical care that leaves both doctors and patients with more money.

(Reuters) – Tons of relief goods have been delivered to victims of Japan’s catastrophic earthquake and tsunami from a dark corner of society: the “yakuza” organized crime networks.

Yakuza groups have been sending trucks from the Tokyo and Kobe regions to deliver food, water, blankets and toiletries to evacuation centers in northeast Japan, the area devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami which have left at least 27,000 dead and missing.

(Reuters) – Two workers hospitalized by radiation from Japan’s damaged nuclear plant may be discharged soon, the U.N. atomic agency said, although the exact source of the contaminated water which injured them is a mystery.

The men, battling to cool one of the most critical reactors at the plant on Thursday, and a colleague were exposed to radiation levels 10,000 times higher than expected, raising concern of a leak from the core’s container.

(Reuters) – Up to one million Ivorians have now fled fighting in the main city Abidjan alone, with others uprooted across the country, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said Friday in a sharp upwards revision of previous estimates.

“The massive displacement in Abidjan and elsewhere is being fueled by fears of all-out war,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a news briefing in Geneva.

Everyone knew that Red Bull Racing had the upper hand in testing. But Sebastian Vettel’s massive advantage in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix on Saturday came as a shock to his rivals.

Fast all day, Vettel eventually set a time that was nearly 0.8-second quicker than that of his nearest rival, Lewis Hamilton. Things didn’t quite go the same way for local hero Mark Webber and the Aussie found himself pushed down to third on the grid.