Evening Edition

Iceland’s government insisted it could pay back more than 90 percent of the money lost, despite most voters having rejected a deal to refund 3.9 billion euros ($5.6 billion) to the two countries, according to partial results.

“The Icelandic state has absolutely no problem in repaying its debts” resulting from the collapse of the Icesave bank, Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson told reporters.

“The Icelandic state has absolutely no problem in repaying its debts,” Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson told a news conference the day after voters gave a resounding “no” to a proposed deal for repaying 3.9 billion euros ($5.6 billion) to the two countries.

“Iceland’s reserves are more than enough to cover all the payments in the coming years,” he added.

The peace mission came as NATO warplanes were in action against Kadhafi’s forces in the stricken port city of Misrata and Ajdabiya in the east.

The African mediators were welcomed to Tripoli by Kadhafi supporters holding the veteran Libyan leader’s picture and waving the green flags of his regime.

Tens of thousands of people took part in demonstrations in Sanaa as well as Taez and Ibb, both south of the capital, and in the Red Sea city of Hudaydah to condemn Saturday’s bloodshed, witnesses said.

The protesters shouted slogans condemning the “massacre” and carried the flags of several other Arab countries, including Qatar which has come out vocally in support of the departure of Saleh.

The announcement came after the broadcast of an audio tape in which the former president defended his reputation and after weeks of mounting protests calling for him to be put on trial.

“The public prosecutor Abdel Magid Mahmud decided today to ask for the questioning of former president Hosni Mubarak and his sons Gamal and Alaa,” the official news agency reported.

At least one person was killed earlier in the morning when troops and police stormed the iconic square to break up an overnight protest demanding the trial of former regime officials.

The health ministry said one person died, a figure later echoed by the army, and 71 people were hurt — some from bullet wounds and others suffering breathing difficulties or having been struck during clashes.

The former strongman’s statement was broadcast on the pan-Arab news network Al-Arabiya as pressure mounted on the ruling military to put him on trial for alleged corruption and other crimes.

Mubarak, who has been under house arrest since resigning on February 11, said he was prepared to assist any investigations into his family’s alleged assets abroad.

A spokesman for the UN mission in Ivory Coast (UNOCI) said its peacekeepers and France’s Licorne force had fired on the positions in the main city Abidjan in a bid to destroy heavy weapons that were being used against civilians.

“We have resumed the operation aimed at neutralising heavy weapons wherever they are found,” UN mission spokesman Hamadoun Toure said.

A UN spokesman and witnesses told AFP the Golf Hotel in Abidjan, where Ouattara has been holed up since disputed November elections, came under attack from about 5:00 pm local time (1700 GMT).

It was the first time since the start of the west African nation’s political crisis that the hotel had come under direct attack.

“We call upon the impartial forces from UNOCI, with the support of the French Licorne troops, to eliminate with no further delay the heavy weapons, neutralise the militiamen on Gbagbo’s payroll … and to bring to justice the defeated (presidential) candidate,” the French lawyers said.

The statement, issued in Paris, described Gbagbo loyalists as “an illegal occupation force” as fighters backing the two rival claimants to the presidency battle it out in Ivory Coast’s main city Abidjan.

Blasts hit an electoral office in central Nigeria on Friday night, a polling place as parliamentary voting was under way in the northeastern city of Maiduguri on Saturday and a vote collating centre in the same city Saturday evening.

At least 13 people were killed in the explosions and dozens of others were wounded, but the toll was likely to rise because details remained unclear from the blasts on Saturday.

Kan, on only his second trip to the disaster zone in the month since the March 11 tragedy, said the government would “work as fast as possible” to house 150,000 people living in emergency shelters since the disaster struck.

Speaking to survivors in Ishinomaki city, a major fishing hub in the worst-hit northeast of the country, the prime minister said the government would do all it could to ensure fishing “can be resumed as soon as possible”.

Imagine, William Molyneux wrote to the great British thinker, that a man blind from birth who has learned to identify objects — a sphere and a cube, for example — only through his sense of touch is suddenly able to see.

The puzzle, he continued, is “Whether he Could, by his Sight, and before he touch them, know which is the Globe and which the Cube?”

As it sought to draw a line under the furore, the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World weekly tabloid begged pardon from its victims, saying its actions had been “unacceptable”.

The Sunday paper said it had admitted liability in some cases and planned to pay compensation from a fund being set up, reportedly worth around £20 million ($33 million, 23 million euros).

This tidbit was among more than 700 pages of once-secret material linked to the life and times of the world’s first spaceman that were released by Russia ahead of the April 12 anniversary.

The historic space shot turned Gagarin into an instant celebrity whose boyish charms became a powerful propaganda weapon for the Soviet Union as it scrambled to win its ideological battle against the United States during the Cold War.

The 23-year-old German steered his Red Bull car from pole position to the chequered flag to win ahead of McLaren’s Jenson Button, the 2009 champion, and Nick Heidfeld who finished third for Renault.

“In the heat, we kept our heads cool,” the jubilant Vettel told the Red Bull crew on his victory lap.

NYSE Euronext’s directors found the $11.3 billion (6.8 billion pounds) bid from Nasdaq and ICE “strategically unattractive, with unacceptable execution risk”, the exchange operator said in a statement on Sunday.

The parent of the New York Stock Exchange said the friendly, $10.2 billion deal with Germany’s Deutsche Boerse announced in February is in shareholders’ long-term interest, and “significantly more likely” to be completed. A merger would create the world’s biggest exchange operator.

NATO said it had hit 11 tanks outside Ajdabiyah, which Gaddafi’s troops had earlier threatened to overrun, and 14 more on the outskirts of Misrata, a lone rebel bastion in western Libya which has been under siege for six weeks.

A Reuters reporter saw six burning hulks surrounded by 15 charred and dismembered bodies in two sites 300 meters (1,000 feet) apart on Ajdabiyah’s western approaches.

Saleh’s government and the opposition will meet in Saudi Arabia to discuss Yemen’s “unity, security and stability,” foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council said in a statement after talks in the Saudi capital.

“The formation of a national unity government under the leadership of the opposition which has the right to form committees…to draw up a constitution and hold elections,” was a key principle of the Gulf-sponsored meeting between the two sides, they said.

Once-unthinkable mass protests challenging Assad’s 11-year authoritarian rule have spread across Syria despite his attempts to defuse resentment by making gestures toward reforms and reaching out to minority Kurds and conservative Sunni Muslims.

Intensifying a crackdown on popular dissent now in its fourth week, security forces fanned out in tanks overnight near the Banias oil refinery — one of two in Syria — near the Alawite district of Qusour, where its main hospital is located.

Bahrain saw the worst sectarian clashes since the 1990s last month after protesters, emboldened by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, took to the streets, prompting the government to impose martial law and invite in troops from Sunni-ruled neighbneighborsours.

Abdulhadi al-Khawaja was arrested with two sons-in-law, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights said in a statement.

Election officials and party agents tallied results from 120,000 polling units stretching from the oil-producing mangrove swamps and teeming cities near the southern coast to the dustblown fringes of the Sahara desert in the north.

There were isolated reports of ballot box snatching, clashes between rival supporters in parts of the Niger Delta and two bombs in the remote northeast during the vote but observers said it appeared to have been a vast improvement on previous polls.

In the first round of results for nationwide local elections, a pro-nuclear governor was also set to keep his post in Japan’s west despite a crisis at a nuclear power plant hit by the tsunami and leaking radiation into the air and sea.

Both are independents but other election results, to be finalized later on Sunday or Monday, could be bad news for Prime Minister Naoto Kan, under fire for his handling of the nuclear crisis, and a boost for rivals who want to seek his resignation once the crisis ends.

But problems in restoring cooling systems at Japan’s crippled nuclear plant, hit by a tsunami on March 11, mean more contaminated water may eventually be pumped into the sea if the complex again runs out of storage capacity.

Japan is struggling to regain control of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated its northeast on March 11, and is facing a major humanitarian and economic crisis.

Alenquer, nestling between vineyard-covered hills 40 km (24 miles) north of Lisbon, is the perfect example: the skeleton of a shuttered textile factory stands at one end of the village and unfinished apartment blocks at the other.

The factory, closed down 15 years ago, is a reminder of how Portugal’s traditional industries were forced out of markets as cheaper goods flowed in from elsewhere, especially China.

The statement, broadcast Sunday at the end of a turbulent weekend that saw a deadly military crackdown on protesters, only stoked more public anger.

In the prerecorded audiotape, the 82-year-old Mubarak spoke with a tone of authority more in keeping with his past power than his current situation. He said he had agreed to “authorize” an investigation of his finances, and promised to sue all those who smeared his reputation.

Details were sketchy because telephone lines, Internet access and electricity apparently were cut to most parts of the city. Army tanks and soldiers circled the city, preventing people from entering.

But one witness, reached by telephone, said hundreds of protesters had gathered near the al-Rahman mosque when security forces and armed men in civilian clothes opened fire on them. The names of the dead were read out on mosque loudspeakers.

The terms of the African Union’s road map were unclear – such as whether it would require Gadhafi to pull his troops out of cities as rebels have demanded.

“We have completed our mission with the brother leader, and the brother leader’s delegation has accepted the road map as presented by us,” said South African President Jacob Zuma. He traveled to Tripoli with the heads of Mali and Mauritania to meet with Gadhafi, whose more than 40-year rule has been threatened by the uprising that began nearly two months ago.

Keeping up the pressure, tens of thousands of protesters complaining of poverty and corruption marched in the capital, Sanaa, on Sunday, a day after renewed clashes between demonstrators and security forces there. Witnesses said police fired a barrage of tear gas late Saturday and that many demonstrators suffered breathing problems.

The statement, by foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in the Saudi capital, called on President Ali Abdullah Saleh transfer his powers to his vice president in return for promises that neither he nor his family would be prosecuted for any crimes committed under his leadership.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he had authorized the strikes, accusing Gbagbo of using heavy weapons against Ivory Coast civilians and the U.N. forces trying to protect them.

Residents from nearby neighborhoods reported seeing two U.N. Mi-24 attack helicopters and a French helicopter open fire on the residence, where Gbagbo is holed up in a bunker. The residents couldn’t be named for fear of reprisal.

Rows of 36 boxy, gray houses line a junior high school parking lot in this port city pulverized by the March 11 wave, and, after a lottery, the first lucky few families moved in this weekend. Each unit is just 320 square feet (30 square meters), but replete with modern comforts like a television, refrigerator, microwave and washing machine – a welcome upgrade for the homeless, many of whom have slept on the floors of school gyms for a month.

That’s just one house for every 50 applicants.

Now that the law has passed, organizers are focusing on signature-gathering efforts. But of the 16 state senators who were originally targeted, only six appear likely to face an election threatening removal. And before recall elections can be held, supporters need to find candidates to run against the incumbents.

Still, voter outrage remains high in many places, helping to stir interest in the recalls.

With crude prices surging beyond $100 a barrel, and politicians preaching the need to reduce America’s reliance on foreign supplies, companies are now looking for more local sources. One Canadian firm says it’s found it in the tar sands of Utah’s Book Cliffs.

Alberta-based Earth Energy Resources Inc. aims to start with a roughly 62-acre mine here to produce bitumen, a tar-like form of petroleum, from oil-soaked sands. For decades, other Utah operators have used oil sands as a poor-man’s asphalt, and Canada has been wringing oil from the ground for years, but nobody has yet tried to produce petroleum from U.S. soil on such a scale.

They can’t stay on the sidelines for long, however. The contentious debate will rope them in on terms they might find hard to control.

The triumph of tea party candidates in 2010 pumped new urgency into a long-brewing Republican Party push for major cuts in domestic and benefit programs, including Medicare and Social Security.

The law that prohibits federal recognition of their unions in under assault in the courts. The Obama administration has repudiated it and taken piecemeal steps to weaken its effects.

Yet for now, the Defense of Marriage Act remains very much in force – provoking anger, impatience and confusion among gay couples.

The plan could have led to public hunting of some 1,300 wolves in the two states.

In the 24-page decision, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula, Mont., cited the court’s lack of authority to put part of an endangered species population under state management and expose that population to hunting, noting “Congress has clearly determined that animals on the ESA (Endangered Species Act) must be protected as such,” and the court couldn’t “exercise its discretion to allow what Congress forbids.”

Leaders of the unregistered Shouwang church had told members to gather at an open-air venue in Beijing for Sunday morning services, but police, apparently alerted to their plans, taped off the area and took away people who showed up to take part.

China’s Communist government allows worship only in state-approved churches, but many Christians belong to unregistered congregations. Such “house churches” are subjected to varying degrees of harassment by authorities.

That made the tight battle for second crucial as no other candidate has expressed any intention of seriously shaking up the economic status quo.

Technically tied for second in an election-eve poll were Keiko Fujimori, 35-year-old daughter of the imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori whom Peruvians alternately adore and vilify, and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a 72-year-old former World Bank economist and investment banker. Trailing them was Alejandro Toledo, Peru’s president from 2001-2006.

“He said we don’t have the Senate and we don’t have the White House, and it’s a good day’s work,” said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., who was in the closed-door session and later described the scene.

And with that, Republicans clapped: “Not euphoria,” Kingston said, reflecting fatigue and the realization of a long year of intense budget battling lay ahead. But for now, a week of top-level White House meetings, round-the-clock bargaining by staff and lots of emotional hills and valleys had produced a bipartisan accord to trim $38.5 billion in spending over this fiscal year’s remaining six months and head off a federal shutdown that both parties feared could hurt their standing with voters.

Emboldened by last fall’s election victories, fiscal conservatives have changed the debate in Washington. The question no longer is whether to cut spending, but how deeply. Rarely mentioned is the idea of higher taxes to lower the deficit.

Their success is all the more notable because Democrats control the Senate and White House.

A customer recently told Morehouse she was moving her sailboat and Boston Whaler from the Mystic marina to neighboring Rhode Island, about 15 minutes away.

“She’s afraid that so many people are going to be running to Rhode Island,” said Morehouse, who has customers from as far away as Pennsylvania. “If you’re going to travel all the way from Philadelphia, what’s another 6 miles to Rhode Island? We will lose. Connecticut will lose.”

While no one rejected Roxanne Quimby’s idea outright, all four members of Maine’s delegation expressed some level of concern about the proposal by the founder of Burt’s Bees personal care products to turn over more than 70,000 remote acres to the National Park Service.

The Park Service finds the idea intriguing, especially since it thinks people in the Northeast have fewer parks than other areas of the country. The park’s acreage would be roughly double the size of Maine’s Acadia National Park, which draws more 2 million visitors a year.