Evening Edition

However, fighting continued in the Al-Ghiran and Zawiat al-Mahjub areas near the airport, which rebels have been trying to capture from Kadhafi forces based there.

In their eastern stronghold of Benghazi, the rebels warned that they would soon run out of funds unless Western governments make them a $3 billion loan secured on frozen Kadhafi regime assets.

In a landmark vote likely to reshape the Canadian political landscape, Harper won re-election Monday at the head of a long-coveted majority wiping out the party’s previous back-to-back minority governments.

After routing his long-time Liberal rivals, Harper dismissed fears he might track the country, one of the world’s leading economies, to the far right.

Leon Panetta’s comments were the most direct yet from President Barack Obama’s administration since bin Laden was killed in a US raid on Sunday, laying bare the chasm of suspicion between the United States and nuclear-armed Pakistan, a key “war-on-terror” ally.

“It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission,” the CIA director told Time magazine. “They might alert the targets,” he added in an unusually blunt and damning remark.

Hackers breached the Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) network as well as the PlayStation Network and the Qriocity streaming music service, according to the Japanese consumer electronics giant.

“We had previously believed that Sony Online Entertainment customer data had not been obtained in the cyber-attacks on the company,” it said in an online update.

According to the lawsuit, Deutsche Bank and its MortgageIT Inc unit misled the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, into believing their mortgages qualified for federal insurance, knowing they could make “substantial profits” when the loans were later sold.

In fact, the government said, the loan quality was so poor that nearly one in three mortgages defaulted, a percentage elevated by Deutsche Bank’s “dysfunctional” quality control.

Michael Meister, deputy parliamentary leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said he saw logic in extending the repayment schedule for the 110 billion euros of loans granted to Greece on May 2, 2010.

His intervention followed European Central Bank policymaker Nout Wellink, who said on Monday he was open to the idea of extending maturities on all Greek debt, becoming the first senior ECB official to admit the possibility of a restructuring publicly.

GM and Ford Motor Co showed much faster growth rates than Toyota and other Japanese brands, in an early sign that supply disruptions as a result of Japan’s March 11 earthquake are hitting Japanese manufacturers hardest.

“An American resurgence seems to be occurring,” said Edmunds.com senior analyst Michelle Krebs.

The National Weather Service said the river gauge at Cairo, Illinois where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers meet, showed water levels had dropped a foot since 10 p.m. last night, when the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers blasted a hole in the protective embankment downriver from the historic town.

“The plan performed as expected,” Jim Pogue, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman, said in a telephone interview.

Harper, in his Western Canadian home base of Calgary on the morning after his Conservatives won big in the federal election, singled out the Western-based oil industry as being a beneficiary of his party’s pro-business agenda, which will also include corporate tax cuts and deficit reduction. Investors greeted the result with relief.

“There were a lot of policies being quoted by the other parties, whether it’s on West Coast transportation or the energy sector, that simply did not reflect the needs and concerns of this part of the country,” he told reporters.

The death of the al Qaeda leader in Monday’s U.S. raid on his compound in Abbottabad, a military garrison town 38 miles from the capital Islamabad, has led some U.S. lawmakers to demand a review of U.S. aid to nuclear-armed Pakistan.

“They (Pakistani officials) are expressing as great a surprise as we had when we first learned about this compound, so there is no indication at this point that the people we have talked to were aware of this, but we need to dig deeper into this,” White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said in an interview with National Public Radio.

Michael Meister, deputy parliamentary leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said he saw logic in extending the repayment schedule for the 110 billion euros of loans granted to Greece on May 2, 2010.

His intervention followed European Central Bank policymaker Nout Wellink, who said on Monday he was open to the idea of extending maturities on all Greek debt, becoming the first senior ECB official to admit the possibility of a restructuring publicly.

But Duan, based in the southwest Chinese city of Chengdu, is working on an audacious project described as a “man-made sun”. He hopes it will eventually create almost unlimited supplies of cheap and clean energy.

Duan is no maverick either, but a pioneer in one of the many expeditions that China has launched to map out its nuclear energy options in the future.

Officials from the government, Tokyo Electric, and creditor banks have been scrambling to craft a scheme that would allow the utility to cope with the bill of compensating those displaced by the crisis at its Fukushima Daiichi plant, while continuing to operate as a private firm.

The draft government plan reported by the Asahi newspaper could mark a significant development in those efforts because it puts a ballpark figure on the total cost at 4 trillion yen ($49.2 billion) and suggests a cap on Tokyo Electric’s burden.

Ali Tarhouni, head of the rebel national council’s finance committee, said Tuesday he expected France, Italy and the United States to extend credit secured against frozen Libyan state assets. Money should arrive in a week to ten days.

“I need about $2-3 billion and we are hoping to get most or all of this,” Tarhouni told reporters in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

Nasdaq and ICE said on Monday that they will launch a tender offer for NYSE’s shares later this month. The move comes after NYSE’s board twice rejected the $11 billion unsolicited offer in favor of its existing $10.2 billion deal with Deutsche Boerse.

Nasdaq and ICE’s move to go hostile could force NYSE to the negotiating table or to fight back with defensive measures if shareholders step up pressure. It could also pressure Deutsche Boerse into sweetening its deal.

Some 410 million Swiss francs traced to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and 60 million Swiss francs linked to former Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali have also been identified, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lars Knuchel said.

“In the case of Libya, it was 360 million Swiss francs,” Knuchel told Reuters. “These amounts are frozen in Switzerland following blocking orders by the Swiss government related to potentially illegal assets in Switzerland.”

The study by the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, or AMAP, is one of the most comprehensive updates on climate change in the Arctic, and builds on a similar assessment in 2005.

The full report will be delivered to foreign ministers of the eight Arctic nations next week, but an executive summary including the key findings was obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

But the demolition project did nothing to ease the risk of more trouble downstream, where the mighty river is expected to rise to its highest levels since the 1920s in some parts of Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. Authorities were considering using techniques similar to the Missouri project to divert on oncoming rush of water.

By Tuesday, sunny skies and dry conditions gave residents and government officials their clearest view of the inundation triggered after the Army Corps of Engineers blew a massive hold in the Birds Point levee late Monday.

Along with the information about the growing influence of older adults, preliminary census estimates also show a decline in the number of married couples with children, slight growth in household size and a rapid rise in the number of Mexicans.

The findings, based on the latest publicly available government data, offer a preview of trends that will be detailed in the next round of 2010 census results being released this month that focus on age, household relationships and racial subgroups.

The White House said it was considering whether to release photos that were taken of bin Laden after he was killed but was concerned that the photos were “gruesome” and could be inflammatory.

Other details that emerged on Tuesday, according to U.S. officials: One of bin Laden’s wives tried to rush the commandos and was shot in the leg. High temperatures caused a lumbering helicopter carrying the raiders to make a hard landing. And as Navy SEALs swept through the compound, they handcuffed those they encountered with plastic zip ties and pressed on in pursuit of their target, code-named Geronimo.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a Wyoming couple who said they learned about the PC Rental Agent “device and/or software” inside the computer they rented last year when an Aaron’s Inc. store manager in Casper came to their home on Dec. 22.

The manager tried to repossess the computer because he mistakenly believed the couple hadn’t finished paying for it, the couple said. Brian Byrd, 26, said the manager showed him a picture of Byrd using the computer – taken by the computer’s webcam. The image was shot with the help of spying software, which the lawsuit contends is made by North East, Pa.-based Designerware LLC and is installed on all Aaron’s rental computers.

They report a sharp escalation in arbitrary arrests and unexplained disappearances – including people being plucked from their homes and offices in the middle of the day. One prominent activist in an upscale Damascus neighborhood was reportedly bundled into a car after being beaten by security officers.

“Syrian cities have witnessed in the past few days an insane escalation by authorities who are arresting anyone with the potential to stage protests and demonstrations,” Ammar Qurabi, who heads the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Monday’s election marks a change in the country’s political landscape with opposition Liberals and Quebec separatists suffering a punishing defeat.

Harper said the Conservatives won their mandate because of the way they’ve governed so far and sought to allay fears he would implement a hidden right wing agenda.

A boxy minivan made by Nissan will be the next iconic yellow cab in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Tuesday.

The model, selected from among three finalists in a city competition, is designed so that it could eventually be updated with an electric engine. The city is exploring the possibility of ultimately replacing the city’s entire fleet of more than 13,000 taxis with vehicles powered by electricity.

The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeks to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance claims that the government has had to pay when homeowners defaulted on their mortgages. The lawsuit also asked for punitive damages. The government said the bank made substantial profits between 2007 and 2009 from the resale of the risky mortgages, leaving the government to foot the bill for loans that defaulted. The mortgage insurance is issued by the Federal Housing Administration.

The lawsuit said the bank carried out the fraud through its subsidiary, MortgageIT, which employed more than 2,000 people at branches in all 50 states. Deutsche acquired MortgageIT in 2007.

Traian Basescu announced that Bucharest had agreed to build the interceptor site at the Deveselu former air base near the Bulgarian border, in a remote agricultural region. Romania already had agreed to host the interceptors, but the location had not been decided. The president, a staunch ally of the U.S., said it would give Romania “the highest security level in its history.”

The announcement prompted a strong complaint from Russia, which sees European missile defense as a potential encroachment.

A bill providing authority for Federal Aviation Administration programs that the House passed in March contains an amendment sponsored by Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa. It would change the way the FAA goes about making regulations, including requiring an analysis of the effect proposed rules may have on the economy, private markets, productivity, employment and competitiveness.

The FAA would also be required to write separate safety rules for different segments of the airline industry – passenger airlines, cargo carriers, charters and others – even though the agency’s oft-stated goal is to have “one level of safety” across the aviation industry.

The often sad family history behind “the greatest show on Earth” is poised to go on trial May 9 before U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle in a Washington courtroom. Karen Feld filed a $110 million suit against her younger brother, Kenneth, for assault when they came together in the Jewish rite of sitting shiva for their dead aunt.

The suit filed by 63-year-old Karen Feld says her 62-year-old brother long wanted to harm her and control her life because he feared she would reveal facts about their father and family that could tarnish the image of the family business. Irvin Feld created Feld Entertainment, which Kenneth Feld now runs and bills as the world’s largest source of live family entertainment, including the circus, Disney on Ice, drag racing and monster truck shows.

But it was unclear how far their arguments would go, given the previous failed lawsuits on the issue and concern from the court about whether the latest claim was filed too late to be considered.

Obama’s production of the vital record was aimed at quashing any lingering doubt among critics who contend he shouldn’t have been elected because he couldn’t prove he was a citizen – a prerequisite for the nation’s highest office.

The company hopes to see results from a $3.5 billion investment into Arctic Ocean drilling that has been thwarted in recent years by court challenges or inability to obtain federal permits.

“Maybe four times is a charm,” said Pete Slaiby, Shell Alaska vice president, on Monday. “This is our fourth Beaufort Sea exploration plan that has gone down the pike. And next week it will be the second Chukchi exploration plan. We feel that we’ve got pretty good and robust plans.”