Evening Edition

A day after President Bashar al-Assad scrapped decades of emergency rule, his forces fired live rounds at demonstrators in several towns and cities nationwide, witnesses and activists told AFP by telephone.

The official SANA news agency said security forces intervened using only tear gas and water cannon to “prevent clashes” between protesters and passers-by.

The US military’s top officer, meanwhile, said between 30 and 40 percent of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s forces had been destroyed in allied air strikes.

“I am sure that NATO forces will continue to attrite the military capability of the regime forces,” Admiral Michael Mullen told reporters in Baghdad.

It was the first reconstruction budget approved by Kan’s cabinet since the catastrophe in northeast Japan on March 11 that devastated entire towns and left more than 27,000 people dead or missing.

The government also said it planned to widen the evacuation zone around the Fukushima atomic plant, which has been leaking radiation since it was hammered by the magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in the country’s worst post-war disaster.

Asked by a seven-year-old Japanese girl why she had to be hit by an earthquake and tsunami, the pope answered: “I also have the same questions: why is it this way? Why do you have to suffer so much while others live in ease?”

“And we do not have the answers but we know that Jesus suffered as you do, an innocent, and that the true God who is revealed in Jesus is by your side,” the 84-year-old pontiff said.

Many key component manufacturers in Japan are based in the worst-hit northeast regions, where facilities were damaged by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11 or inundated by the giant wave that followed.

Toyota has announced production disruptions domestically and in the United States, European Union, China and Australia because of the crisis, temporarily shutting some plants or running them at half-capacity or less.

“The first thing we saw was a little wooden head, and after some time came another wooden head… It was a fantastic sight,” said retired navy commander Jarl Ellsen, ahead of Sunday’s 50th anniversary of the raising of the ship.

Slowly, what was once briefly the crown jewel of the Swedish navy was raised off the Baltic sea bed where it had rested for more than 300 years after pitifully sinking just minutes into its maiden voyage.

Rejecting a Sri Lankan demand to keep a report by a panel of experts secret, the United Nations on Friday said the report would soon be published in full without changes, and accompanied by recommendations on the next steps to be taken.

The United Nations said it was in talks with Sri Lankan authorities on an offer to add their comments to the report into the alleged deaths of tens of thousands of people when government forces launched a final offensive against Tamil separatists in 2009.

Chicago beat the Indiana Pacers 88-84 to seize a 3-0 lead in their best-of-seven first-round series, while the star-studded Heat beat the 76ers 100-94 in Philadelphia to also move within one victory of a sweep.

The Heat, led by their star trio of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh, rallied from an early 10-point deficit to win.

It was the first serious outbreak of hostilities since fighting in February near the 900-year-old Hindu temple Preah Vihear left at least 10 dead and prompted a UN appeal for a lasting ceasefire.

Three Cambodian and three Thai soldiers were killed in Friday’s fighting near a different group of temples over 100 kilometres away. More than a dozen others were wounded, including three Thai troops who were said to be in critical condition.

The comments by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, are the strongest so far by U.S. officials warning Baghdad that Washington will soon have to initiate the withdrawal of its 47,000 forces under the terms of a bilateral security pact.

Asked what Iraq’s deadline was for deciding, Mullen said: “I think the timeline is in the next few weeks.”

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military’s joint chiefs of staff, told U.S. troops in Baghdad that Western-led air strikes had degraded between 30 and 40 percent of Muammar Gaddafi’s ground forces.

Referring to the conflict, he said: “It’s certainly moving toward a stalemate.

The emergency budget of 4 trillion yen ($48.5 billion), which is likely be followed by more reconstruction spending packages, is still dwarfed by the overall cost of damages caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, estimated at $300 billion.

“With this budget, we are taking one step forward toward reconstruction … and toward restarting the economy,” Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

Both countries evacuated thousands of villagers and accused each other of firing first in the thick, disputed jungle around Ta Moan and Ta Krabei temples in the northeastern Thai province of Surin, about 150 km (93 miles) southwest of the 900-year-old Preah Vihear temple, which saw a deadly stand-off in February.

“Cambodia started attacking our temporary base with artillery fire and we responded to defend ourselves,” said Lieutenant General Thawatchai Samutsakorn of the Thai army.

BP has sued Transocean Ltd, Halliburton Co and Cameron International Corp, in one of the biggest legal moves since last year’s blowout. It is seeking up to the full cost of the disaster — estimated at $42 billion — plus costs, interest and punitive damages from each of the companies that helped it drill the doomed well.

So far, BP has met the cost of the clean-up effort alone and is paying compensatory damages to fishermen, property owners and others in the Gulf area affected by the spill.

In his closing argument on Thursday, chief defense lawyer John Dowd also fired back at the government contention Rajaratnam corrupted his friends and colleagues. He said it was the people who testified against the Galleon Group founder who were corrupt or had lied.

Mostly reading from a lectern, with an unemotional Rajaratnam sitting five feet behind him, Dowd presented dozens of e-mails, trading records and excerpts from trial testimony to show Rajaratnam made trades based on public reports, not on tips about nonpublic information.

BP has sued Transocean Ltd, Halliburton Co and Cameron International Corp, in one of the biggest legal moves since last year’s blowout. It is seeking up to the full cost of the disaster — estimated at $42 billion — plus costs, interest and punitive damages from each of the companies that helped it drill the doomed well.

So far, BP has met the cost of the clean-up effort alone and is paying compensatory damages to fishermen, property owners and others in the Gulf area affected by the spill.

The human rights group cited local activists.

Syrian security forces fired live bullets and tear gas Friday on rallies across the country.

A day after the U.S. began flying armed drones to bolster NATO firepower, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said the United States and other nations should recognize the opposition’s political leadership as the “legitimate voice of the Libyan people.” The White House disagreed, saying it was for the Libyan people to decide who their leaders are.

McCain also called the rebels “patriots” with no links to al-Qaida, in contrast to what some critics have suggested, and added they should receive Gadhafi assets that were frozen by other countries.

Audiences in California and Nevada understood why it’s important to get a handle on the deficit over the long term. Yet they made clear that the economic recovery hasn’t fully taken hold in ways that are meaningful to them.

As Obama shifts into re-election mode, he will need to show that he hasn’t lost his focus on jobs even as the conversation in Washington swings to paying down what the nation owes.

As the Republican candidates tiptoe through the mine field, Democrats are watching. They hope the debate will fire up their liberal base and perhaps tie the eventual GOP nominee to fringe beliefs that swing voters will reject.

In recent days several prominent Republicans have distanced themselves, with varying degrees of emphasis, from the false claim that Obama was born in a foreign country. But with a new poll showing that two-thirds of adult Republicans either embrace the claim or are open to it, nearly all these GOP leaders are not calling for a broader effort to stamp out the allegations.

Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of “grotesque distortion” in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei’s and other arms inspectors inside the country.

The Iraq war taught him that “deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators,” ElBaradei writes in “The Age of Deception,” being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company.

The panel’s chairman, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and the vice chairman, Johnny Isakson, R-Georgia, issued a terse statement saying the committee had spent 22 months investigating “and will complete its work in a timely fashion.”

“Senator Ensign has made the appropriate decision,” the statement said.

With women taking on new roles, the issue is getting fresh attention from the military.

Seven hundred female Army troops are testing a new combat uniform for women with shorter sleeves and with knee pads in the right place for their generally shorter legs. A committee on women’s issues has recommended that flight suits be redesigned for both men and women so it’s unnecessary to disrobe before urinating. And engineers have been looking at ways to design armor that better fits the contours of a woman’s body.

Benedict was responding to questions submitted over the last few weeks by the general public via state-run RAI television’s website, part of the Vatican’s new push to engage with the world online and through Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

It was hardly a casual or spontaneous chat with the general public, however. Seven questions were selected from the thousands that poured in, and Benedict recorded the answers on April 15 from behind his desk inside the Apostolic Palace.

They were left in tears when Bobby Thomson from the hated crosstown Giants ended the then-Brooklyn Dodgers’ 1951 season with his home run, “the shot heard `round the world.”

The team broke their hearts when it moved in 1958 to Los Angeles.

The twin disasters destroyed roads, ports, farms and homes and crippled a nuclear power plant that forced tens of thousands of more people to evacuate their houses for at least several months. The government said the damage could cost $309 billion, making it the world’s most expensive natural disaster.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he was moved by his conversations with victims during a recent tour of shelters.

President Akio Toyoda apologized to customers for the delays due to the March 11 disasters that damaged suppliers in northeastern Japan, affecting automakers around the world.

“To all the customers who made the decision to buy a vehicle made by us, I sincerely apologize for the enormous delay in delivery,” Toyoda said at a news conference in Tokyo.

The Kings never fully recovered.

Ryane Clowe scored twice, Jason Demers added another goal in the second period and the Sharks won 6-3 on Thursday night to take a 3-1 lead in the first-round series.

In the playoffs only after Minnesota beat Dallas in the final game of the regular season, the Blackhawks routed Vancouver 5-0 on Thursday night to cut the Canucks’ lead to 3-2 in the first-round series.

Defenseman Duncan Keith had two goals and two assists for the Blackhawks, coming off a 7-2 victory in Chicago on Tuesday night. The Blackhawks return home for Game 6 on Sunday night looking to become the fourth team in NHL history to overcome a 3-0 deficit.

It’s not clear if other smartphones and tablet computers are logging such information on their users. And this week’s revelation that the Apple devices do wasn’t even new – some security experts began warning about the issue a year ago.

But the worry prompted by a report from researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden at a technology conference in Santa Clara, Calif., raises questions about how much privacy you implicitly surrender by carrying around a smartphone and the responsibility of the smartphone makers to protect sensitive data that flows through their devices.

At Mount Rushmore, only about 37,000 people decided in March that seeing the four granite-etched presidential sculptures was worth the trip, down from about 43,000 a year before.

At the Grand Canyon, a marketing executive for one company that offers sweeping helicopter vistas says 10 percent fewer people than last year are driving up and booking tours. The company is counting on international tourists to make up the rest.

The fighting near the ancient temples of Ta Krabey and Ta Moan forced thousands of civilians on both sides to flee. Cambodia says artillery fell on villages and other areas as far as 13 miles (21 kilometers) inside its territory.

It was the first skirmish reported since four days of fighting in February, when eight soldiers and civilians were killed near the 11th century Preah Vihear temple, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the east of Friday’s fighting.

The report centered on Transocean’s role in the disaster because it owned the rig and was primarily responsible for ensuring its safety, the Coast Guard said. BP PLC owned the well that blew out.

The Coast Guard report also concluded that decisions made by workers aboard the rig “may have affected the explosions or their impact,” such as failing to follow procedures for notifying other crew members about the emergency after the blast.

The U.S. Supreme Court has asked for more information from attorneys and will decide next month whether to hear the case of a 25-year-old noncommissioned officer who died after a nurse put a tube down the wrong part of his throat.

If the law is overturned, it could expose the federal government to billions of dollars in liability claims. That makes it highly unlikely a divided Congress desperate to cut expenses will act on its own to change what’s called the Feres Doctrine, a 1950 Supreme Court ruling that effectively equates injuries from medical mistakes with battlefield wounds.

Only a handful of people knew that 17-year-old Gaby Rodriguez wasn’t really pregnant, including her mother, boyfriend and the principal, according to the Yakima Herald-Republic.

They helped keep the secret from some of her siblings and her boyfriend’s family and students and teachers, all as part of a senior project on stereotyping.

Demand by U.S. consumers is up, imports are down and prices have soared.

“You have almost what you can call a perfect storm,” said Fisher, 64, who has about 3,100 animals on his acreage near Sonora. “The great part is we have record prices for lambs – the highest ever by a whole lot.”

The verdict in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on Thursday came as a staggering blow to Mattel, which has long claimed it held the copyright for the ethnically diverse, pouty-lipped toys that gave platinum-haired Barbie a run for her money after decades of fashion doll dominance.

The jury, which deliberated for nearly two weeks after a three-month trial, also found that Mattel acted willfully and maliciously in misappropriating MGA’s trade secrets. That raises the possibility the judge could also add on punitive damages that could bring the total award to three times the jury’s initial findings, attorneys for both sides said.

The person, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity, did not name the officials or say how many were involved. The person also confirmed an online news report that Yankees senior director of operations Douglas Behar had a traffic ticket fixed.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is the subject of a secret grand jury investigation. The Yankees didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Committees to recall Sens. Dave Hansen of Green Bay, Jim Holperin of Conover and Robert Wirch of Pleasant Prairie filed the signatures needed with the Government Accountability Board. All three groups had thousands more signatures than required to trigger a recall election.

Hours later, the committee to recall Republican Sen. Alberta Darling of River Hills submitted 30,000 signatures to trigger her recall election. Naomi Cobb, the main petitioner for the Darling group, said there was strong support for the recall, despite Darling’s relatively Republican district.

The Appalachian Regional Commission is betting Boyd is the sexier Civil War story and that tourists will want to visit the Martinsburg, W.Va., home of the notorious “siren of the South” who used her feminine charms to spy on Union soldiers for the Confederacy.

The Belle Boyd House in the Eastern Panhandle is one of 150 lesser-known Civil War destinations the commission is highlighting on a new 13-state map that was released Thursday, pointing the way to that footnote on history and plenty more.