Evening Edition

Forces loyal to the Libyan strongman shelled fuel depots in Misrata and dropped mines in its harbour using helicopters bearing the Red Cross and Red Crescent emblems, the rebels said as they braced for a fresh ground assault.

“It seems that the more desperate Kadhafi gets the more he unleashes his firepower on the people,” said Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, vice-chairman of the opposition National Transitional Council.

The latest fighting came as Amnesty International lashed out at the government of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, saying its more than two-month “horrifying” siege of Misrata could be a war crime.

“There are still attacks by Grad missiles and our fighters are still resisting,” said Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani, military spokesman of the rebels’ Benghazi-based National Transitional Council.

Rebels, meanwhile, braced for a new ground assault by Moamer Kadhafi’s forces on Misrata, the main bastion of the insurgents in western Libya.

The National Conference for Libyan Tribes called in a meeting that ended late Friday for a “general amnesty law which will include all those who were involved in the crisis and took up arms.”

Activists said dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles entered Banias, on the Mediterranean coast, from three directions as electricity and communications were cut. Tanks also encircled the nearby town of Baida.

Residents of Banias formed human chains in a desperate bid to halt the military operation when it began around dawn, said activists reached by telephone.

Heavy gunfire was heard in Banias’s south, a seaside sector of the city where most of the protesters live, while navy boats patrolled offshore, the activists said, reached by telephone from Nicosia.

An Internet-based Syrian opposition group, meanwhile, proposed Saturday that embattled Assad offer to hold elections in six months in order to bring to an end the crisis that has engulfed his country for more than seven weeks.

President Hamid Karzai charged that the violence was “revenge” for this week’s killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by US troops in Pakistan, but the Taliban said the operation was planned several weeks ahead.

Targets in the first major incident since the Taliban unveiled the start of its spring offensive included the offices of the governor, mayor and intelligence service plus two schools and several police offices.

Militants with guns and rocket-propelled grenades launched an assault on the governor’s office, and ten explosions including six suicide blasts rocked the city — the birthplace of the Taliban — after the attacks began at about 1:00 pm (0930 GMT).

Gunmen occupied a hotel near the local office of Afghanistan’s intelligence service, while suicide bombers tried to attack two police offices in the south’s de facto capital but were shot before they could reach their targets.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong thanked voters for their support as unofficial reports had the PAP winning 81 of the 87 seats, compared with its victory in 82 out of 84 seats in Singapore’s last general election in 2006.

Foreign Minister George Yeo lost a hotly contested group constituency whose five seats went to the Workers’ Party, forcing him out of the cabinet.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou urged “the EU in particular, to leave Greece in peace to do its job”, but Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou later warned that Athens may need more hard cash support.

“We need to plan our next steps for 2012 and 2013 so that Greece can either access markets or use the European council’s recent decision that enables the European (rescue) fund to buy Greek bonds,” Papaconstantinou said, after G20-eurozone talks overnight in Luxembourg.

Braving spring drizzle, thousands of demonstrators gathered at a park in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, many holding hand-made banners reading: “Nuclear is old!” and “We want a shift in energy policy!”

The protest came a day after Prime Minister Naoto Kan called a halt to operations at a nuclear plant southwest of Tokyo because it is near a tectonic faultline, fearing a disaster like that which hit the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March.

His fourth successive pole position from the opening four races of the season was the first time this feat had been achieved since Finnish driver Mika Hakkinen in 1999.

The 23-year-old German drove his Red Bull car — dubbed ‘Kinky Kylie’ — with great conviction despite his damaging experience the previous day to clock an outstanding lap time of one minute and 25.049 seconds.

The bombardment of the western city came as artillery rounds fired by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi fell in Tunisia in an escalation of fighting near the border with rebels trying to end Gaddafi’s rule of more than four decades.

Misrata, the last remaining city in the west under rebel control, has been under siege for more than two months and has witnessed some of the war’s fiercest fighting.

The campaigner told Reuters that Syrian forces fired at a small all-women protest marching on the main coastal highway from Marqab village near Banias, killing three of them.

The attack came hours after the United States, reacting to the death of 27 protesters on Friday, threatened to take new steps against Syria’s rulers, from the Alawite sect, unless they stopped killing and harassing their people.

“It’s a pretty day here, and people get a false sense of security,” said Steve Shular, public affairs officer for the Shelby County Office of Preparedness. “The mighty Mississippi is starting to wrap its arms around us here in Memphis.”

County officials were going house-to-house in areas threatened by flooding from both the Mississippi and its tributaries. Nearly 3,000 properties are expected to be threatened. Shular said residents are being told that if they have been flooded before, they will be again.

Ministers from the euro zone’s biggest economies met in Luxembourg to discuss Greece’s debt crisis on Friday but Athens and senior EU officials denied a report by Germany’s Spiegel Online that the Greek government had raised the prospect of leaving the 17-member euro zone.

“These scenarios are borderline criminal,” Papandreou told a conference on the Ionian island of Meganisi. “No such scenario has been discussed even in our unofficial contacts…I call upon everyone in Greece and abroad, and especially in the EU, to leave Greece alone to do its job in peace.”

The surprise call from Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Friday to shut down Chubu Electric Power Co’s Hamaoka plant followed pressure on the government to review nuclear energy policy after a March 11 quake and tsunami damaged another plant and triggered the worst disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Tens of thousands of residents around the Fukushima Daiichi plant on the northeast coast have been ordered to evacuate after radiation leaks into the air, soil and sea. Radiation checks have led to shipment bans of some vegetables and fish.

An extraordinary row has broken out in the east African country over media photographs and video footage of the arrest of its most popular opposition leader Kizza Besigye last week.

Ministers insist some images are “concoctions.” But the claim is drawing derision, particularly from those who witnessed the incident.

While other militant groups across the world were quick to denounce bin Laden’s killing, the Taliban, who once sheltered the al Qaeda leader, were slow to comment in the hours after his death, saying they needed proof he had been killed.

Al Qaeda then issued its own statement on Friday confirming bin Laden was dead, prompting a response hours later from the Taliban.

He responded with a solid and typically low-key performance that reinforced his role as a legitimate contender but will do little to change his current standing in the low single-digits in most national polls.

“It was a good performance, but it wasn’t particularly memorable in a way that could have really helped him,” said Scott Huffmon, a political scientist at Winthrop University in South Carolina.

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. And it wasn’t alone: JP Morgan took the bold step of raising its oil price forecasts for this year by $10, becoming the most bullish of 27 forecasts in a Reuters poll.

The Wall Street chieftain sipped water and blew his nose through the two-hour proceedings, and declined to shake one investor’s hand after the meeting for fear of spreading germs.

But while Blankfein might have preferred chicken soup over the continental breakfast on display, his demeanor remained strong and, some might say, resilient.

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 Taliban said their goal was to take control of Kandahar city, the birthplace of the Taliban and President Hamid Karzai’s home province, making it the most ambitious of a series of recent high-profile attacks on government installations. The attack came a day after the Islamic movement said Osama bin Laden’s death would only serve to boost morale, but a Taliban spokesman insisted it had been in the works for months before the al-Qaida leader was killed by American commandos on Monday.

Shooting started shortly after midday and lasted more than seven hours, while government forces were backed by military helicopters firing from overhead.

In a high-profile speech to the University of South Carolina, the former Utah governor said patriotism should trump partisanship and defended his two years in Beijing as the Democratic administration’s top diplomat.

“Work to keep America great. Serve her if asked. I was – by a president of a different political party,” Huntsman said, directly addressing the job that his rivals and critics hope to make disqualifier among the conservatives who hold great sway in the nominating process.

Verlander barely missed a perfect game. The only runner he allowed came with one out in the eighth inning when J.P. Arencibia walked on a full count, with Verlander’s 12th pitch to the rookie just an inch or two outside.

Minnesota’s Francisco Liriano pitched a no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday night.

When the time came for him to address the court, he spoke of the many dreams he’d had to work on behalf of his country.

“Mine was to be a life of service,” he said. “I could have been very valuable. That was originally my plan.”

On Monday that dream figures to become a reality – even though the bike will be awaiting the 53-year-old outside the walls of Utah State Prison, where family members plan a parking lot reunion.

“We’re going to celebrate a late Mother’s Day, but it will be the best Mother’s Day present we could ask for,” said daughter Alana Williams, who was 11 when Debra Brown was arrested in Logan, about 80 miles north of Salt Lake City, 10 months after the November 1993 shooting death of her longtime friend and employer, Lael Brown. The two were not related.

Republicans, in a rapid sequence of votes over the next eight weeks, plan to legalize concealed weapons, deregulate the telephone industry, require voters to show photo identification at the polls, expand school vouchers and undo an early release for prisoners.

Lawmakers may also act again on Walker’s controversial plan stripping public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights. An earlier version, which led to massive protest demonstrations at the Capitol, has been left in limbo by legal challenges.

The last quarter-century has seen plenty of missed deficit and spending targets and inventive evasions of budget curbs. This is because the same legislators who put in place those budget constraints can pass laws to ignore them.

That history has convinced analysts that automatic triggers work best when lawmakers already have approved spending cuts, taxes increases or both. They’re least effective when used as an incentive to force legislators into such agreements in the first place.

Shutting down the reactors would likely worsen power shortages expected this summer.

On Friday, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he had asked Chubu Electric Power Co. to suspend operation of the reactors at the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station in Shizuoka prefecture until a seawall is built and backup systems are improved. Though not legally binding, the request is a virtual order.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Friday that a private gathering was a great chance for the billionaires who have pledged to give away at least half their wealth to meet each other, compare notes, eat and laugh.

The media was banned from Thursday’s first meeting of the group that has accepted the giving challenge by Buffett and his friend Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Since last June, 69 individuals or couples have made the giving pledge.

These are the parallel worlds of one of Washington’s linchpin military allies in the Gulf.

On one side is a grinding campaign to break the spirits of Shiite-led opponents whose pro-reform uprising was smothered by martial law. On the other: An expanding PR offensive to portray the Sunni monarchy as firmly in charge, and Bahrain as a firewall against Iranian influence in the nation that hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

The 21-year-old business administration major at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, says missing Friday’s graduation doesn’t compare to the sacrifices the original Freedom Riders made when they challenged the South’s segregation laws: quitting jobs, dropping out of college and, ultimately, risking their lives.

“What the Freedom Rides did 50 years ago paved the way for what I have today as an African-American,” said Reed, one of 40 college students chosen from nearly 1,000 applicants who will join a handful of the original Freedom Riders on an eight-day journey from Washington, D.C., through the South.

Well, that’s a toenail of a different color.

Last month, J. Crew unleashed a furor when a promotion depicted its creative director, Jenna Lyons, painting her 5-year-old son Beckett’s toenails with pink nail polish. “Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink,” the caption read.

John Demjanjuk, 90, already has a U.S. attorney willing to work for free, so he doesn’t need a public defender, prosecutors said in a U.S. District Court filing.

The public defender asked last week to be appointed co-counsel, citing a 1985 FBI report recently uncovered by The Associated Press that challenged the authenticity of a Nazi ID card used as evidence in the trial.

“We have a key threat that we all need to focus on and that is transnational criminal organizations,” the head of U.S. Southern Command Gen. Douglas Fraser told a conference organized by the University of Miami’s Center for Hemispheric Policy.

U.S. Southern Command handles planning, operations, and security cooperation for Central and South America.

A bill moving through the state Legislature would ban the sale, distribution and possession of shark fins. State and federal laws prohibit shark finning in U.S. waters but do not address the importation of fins from other countries.

Supporters say shark finning is inhumane and a threat to the ocean ecosystem. They say an estimated 73 million sharks a year are slaughtered, mainly for shark fin soup, which can sell for more than $80 a bowl and is often served at weddings and banquets.

The letter comes amid reports that schools may be checking the immigration status of students trying to enroll, and reminds districts they are federally prohibited from barring elementary or secondary students on the basis of citizenship status.

“Moreover, districts may not request information with the purpose or result of denying access to public schools on the basis of race, color or national origin,” said the letter, which was signed by officials from the department’s Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Justice.

Oil prices fell 15 percent this week, the steepest decline in two and a half years, just as average U.S. pump prices were approaching $4 a gallon. Gasoline prices fell imperceptibly to consumers’ eyes Friday – one-tenth of a penny to just over $3.98 per gallon – but that ended a 44-day streak of rising prices. Prices will soon drop noticeably and some analysts said they could hit $3.50 by summer.

Analysts say investors got nervous that oil, metals and grains had risen over the past few months to unrealistic heights. Their rush to sell also knocked silver prices down 28 percent, sugar down 13 percent and natural gas down 10 percent.