Evening Edition

Meanwhile, rebels were bracing for a ground assault by Kadhafi forces on the besieged western port city of Misrata as NATO warplanes struck regime targets further to the west.

The fund, agreed at a meeting of the International Contact Group on Libya on Thursday, is intended to provide an emergency lifeline to the rebels, whose provisional administration has no source of financing to replace receipts from oil exports, which have come to a virtual halt.

The violence came as the European Union agreed to impose sanctions on 13 Syrian officials involved in the regime’s brutal crackdown on protests and will meet Monday to discuss whether to target Syrian President Bashar Assad as well, diplomats said.

The Syrian rights group, Insan, put the day’s toll at 26 killed but said it expected this to rise.

The exhaustive inquests examining the deaths of the 52 victims of the Al-Qaeda-inspired July 7, 2005 suicide attacks on three underground trains and a bus found they were all unlawfully killed.

The coroner, judge Heather Hallett, said the evidence “does not justify the conclusion that any failings of any organisation or individual caused or contributed to the deaths”.

The announcement is a part of BP’s strategy to preserve the share swap portion of its agreement with Rosneft and thus retain its foothold in the market of the world’s largest oil producer.

But both parts of the revised agreement are subject to Rosneft’s approval and the state-held company has previously ruled out working with TNK-BP — the British firm’s much smaller and less experienced local subsidiary.

On a day of heavy rain followed by dry conditions, Briton Jenson Button, the 2009 champion, topped the afternoon times for McLaren after Spanish two-time champion Fernando Alonso had dominated the rain-hit morning for Ferrari.

Button clocked a best lap of one minute and 26.456 seconds at the Istanbul Park race circuit to outpace German Nico Rosberg of Mercedes and the 2008 champion Lewis Hamilton in the second McLaren.

Activists and witnesses said demonstrations broke out after the main Friday prayers in cities across the country of 20 million people, from Banias on the Mediterranean coast to Qamishly in the Kurdish east.

The bloodiest confrontation took place in the city of Homs where 15 protesters were killed, activist Ammar Qurabi said.

Oil bounced up early, then began to erase gains as the dollar rose. Crude turned negative late, extending Thursday’s shock-inducing collapse, when Brent fell by as much as $12, a record, in a furious, high-volume session that saw wave after wave of selling as key technical levels were broken.

Selling pressure on oil and other commodities came on several fronts throughout the week. Investors weighed factors from the death of Osama bin Laden to the impact of higher fuel and commodity costs on consumer nation economies to the monetary policy in major economies.

The Wall Street bank, seen as one of the most influential in commodity markets, said it did not rule out a further short-term fall after Thursday’s near record drop, especially if economic data continued to disappoint.

But the bank reaffirmed its traditional long-term bullish view of oil, helping crude to pare some of its earlier heavy losses on Friday.

In fact, Poland and Hungary together accounted for 21 percent of all subjects studied in the pivotal 18,000-patient trial — more than double the United States and Canada combined.

A few years ago that would have been unthinkable. Major drug companies, with an eye on the commercial promise of the world’s largest and most profitable market, would have run half their tests on a major cardiovascular medicine like this in U.S. hospitals under the supervision of U.S. doctors.

Stringer’s comments, which did not specify when services would resume, come after criticism of his leadership since Sony revealed hackers had compromised the data of more than 100 million accounts used for accessing games and music over the Internet.

“As a company we – and I – apologize for the inconvenience and concern caused by this attack,” Stringer said on Sony’s U.S. PlayStation blog late on Thursday.

The United States and China have a lengthy list of long-standing irritants on both the economic and diplomatic fronts, requiring careful management to ensure none boil into a dispute that damages a still-fragile global recovery.

By 2012, jockeying for position ahead of U.S. presidential elections and orchestrating the succession of Chinese President Hu Jintao will preoccupy policymakers in each country, so the window for advancing a complicated agenda is relatively small.

With the Republican Party’s most high-profile contenders skipping the event, the five participants used the nationally televised forum to slam President Barack Obama’s leadership and attack what they called his misguided policies on the economy, healthcare and foreign affairs.

“The issues that have come up while he’s been president, he’s gotten them wrong strategically every single time,” former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, the lone top-tier candidate at the debate, said of Obama’s foreign policy.

The U.N. said it is sending a team into Syria to investigate and the European Union is expected to place sanctions on Syrian officials next week – both significant blows to Assad, a British-educated, self-styled reformer who has tried to bring Syria back into the global mainstream over his 11 years in power.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. was pressing the Syrian government to cease “violence against innocent citizens who are simply demonstrating and trying to state their aspirations for a more democratic future.”

Libyan troops have indiscriminately fired heavy artillery, rockets and cluster bombs at residential areas of Libya’s third-largest city during a two-month siege, in a clear breach of international humanitarian law, the group said in a report.

“Weapons designed for the battle field and not for residential areas are being launched into residential neighborhoods, killing civilians and really just creating a situation of terror,” said Amnesty’s Donatella Rovera.

The two choppers evidently used radar-evading technologies, plus noise and heat suppression devices, to slip across the Afghan-Pakistan border, avoid detection by Pakistani air defenses and deliver two dozen Navy SEALs into the al-Qaida leader’s lair. Photos of the lost chopper’s wrecked tail are circulating online – proving it exists and also exposing sensitive details.

President Barack Obama traveled Friday to Fort Campbell, Ky., and met privately with the elite Army pilots who flew the daring mission. They are members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, nicknamed the Night Stalkers, and he saluted them in public remarks afterward.

Emergency workers in Memphis handed out bright yellow fliers in English and Spanish that read, “Evacuate!!! Your property is in danger right now.”

All the way south into the Mississippi Delta, people faced the question of whether to stay or go as high water rolled down the Big Muddy and backed up along its tributaries, breaking flood records that have stood since the Depression.

Uncle Mo’s defection also threw the Derby wide open.

“You’re never safe until you put that saddle on because anything can happen,” Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert said.

The typical pay package for the head of a company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 was $9 million in 2010, according to an analysis by The Associated Press using data provided by Equilar, an executive compensation research firm. That was 24 percent higher than a year earlier, reversing two years of declines.

Executives were showered with more pay of all types – salaries, bonuses, stock, options and perks. The biggest gains came in cash bonuses: Two-thirds of executives got a bigger one than they had in 2009, some more than three times as big.

Ouattara spent much of that time barricaded inside a hotel, surrounded by troops loyal to Laurent Gbagbo, who used the army to terrorize the population. Gbagbo was removed militarily last month and is now under house arrest in a remote town 420 miles (700 kilometers) north of Abidjan.

The price of installing the country’s democratically elected leader was steep. More than a 1,000 civilians were killed, first by the army controlled by Gbagbo and later by a former rebel group allied with Ouattara that seized control of the country and toppled Gbagbo.

You probably won’t see a change at the gas station this weekend. But relief will come soon because oil prices fell 15 percent this week, the steepest decline in two and a half years. Oil hit a two-year high of $114.83 in Monday trading. It closed Friday at $97.18.

The plunge was part of a sharp sell-off across in commodities this week. Analysts say investors – demonized as “speculators” by some market watchers – got nervous that oil, metals and grains had risen over the past few months to unrealistic heights.

A 2009 decision by the legislature to deny coverage to legal immigrants was the first major rollback to Massachusetts’ landmark 2006 health care law, which was used in part as a blueprint for the national health care law signed by President Barack Obama.

A ruling Friday by the Supreme Judicial Court does not actually decide the case, but it answers key legal questions that will allow it to proceed.

The $65.72 billion budget, which is likely to change before it wins approval from the City Council, also calls for a 12 percent cut to the city’s libraries, the closure of some city swimming pools and the loss of 20 fire companies – a step that the city’s fire commissioner said would slow firefighters’ response times.

Bloomberg placed the blame for the city’s financial woes on cutbacks handed down by state and federal legislators, and on what he said was a national movement against funding government efforts. Business tax revenues have surpassed the level they were at before the collapse of the financial sector, he said.

But when the 82-year-old decided to retire, she found how difficult it is to sell and get out of an industry she helped to establish in the Northwest.

With no takers at her original price of $2.7 million, Stear recently accepted an offer of $1.2 million for the south-central Washington winery.

To protect people, homes and businesses along the big river, the Army Corps of Engineers plans to open at least one spillway, sending water out of the river. The tactic may ease the pressure on levees, but it will almost certainly kill the shellfish, too.

Fourth-generation oysterman Shane Bagala spent months skimming oil to make money. Earlier this week, though, he embarked on his first oyster run, returning with a healthy catch. But he became worried when he heard the corps was considering opening a spillway.

U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall imposed the prison time on Alexander DeFelice of Milford, who was convicted by a jury in December of conspiracy and firearms charges. The same jury acquitted two alleged co-conspirators, while two other men pleaded guilty.

Prosecutors said DeFelice in 2009 and early 2010 arranged the sale of three homemade grenades, a rifle and two shotguns to the informant, a convicted felon who claimed to be a member of the Imperial Klans of America. The informant testified that he handed the firearms and explosives over to federal agents.