Evening Edition

The United Nations, meanwhile, said the offensive launched by Kadhafi’s forces was paralysing the oil-rich nation and causing the population to suffer widespread shortages of essential goods.

Jets screamed in low over the capital in the early hours, carrying out an unusually heavy bombardment that lasted roughly three hours, an AFP correspondent said.

After heavy clashes, the rebels controlled a stretch of coastal road west of Misrata, Libya’s third city which Kadhafi’s forces have laid siege to for more than two months, forcing thousands to flee.

The Red Cross said meanwhile it delivered a shipment of humanitarian aid to the rebel-held western city amid concerns Kadhafi’s forces may have dropped mines into the harbour from helicopters bearing the Red Cross emblem.

A pro-regime newspaper said the army had restored “calm” in Banias, while an adviser to President Bashar al-Assad told The New York Times she believes the regime has ridden out the worst of the uprising.

EU sanctions against the regime took effect on Tuesday, with the president spared but his younger brother heading a list of 13 officials targeted for their involvement in the brutal crackdown.

“The army controls all the neighbourhoods of Banias and arrests are still underway there and in the neighbouring villages of Baida and Marqab,” Rami Abdul Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP.

Troops are hunting down “leaders of the protest movement” such as Anas al-Shaghri, Abdul Rahman said by telephone from London where the group has its base.

The call by the Syrian Revolution 2011, an Internet-based opposition group, comes as the European Union listed the younger brother of President Bashar al-Assad among 13 Syrian officials facing sanctions for their involvement in violently repressing pro-democracy demonstrations that first erupted March 15.

“Demonstrations will continue every day,” said the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page, which has been a motor of the protests.

Experts from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank (ECB) began an audit of finances and reforms in Greece to determine if it merits a critical new slice of funding from a bailout package agreed last year.

This was just as a top ECB official warned that debt default or restructuring would hit the entire eurozone.

In an explosive session of a British parliamentary committee, six members of FIFA’s graft-tainted executive were accused of involvement in bribery before last year’s votes to decide the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts.

British lawmaker Damian Collins said the hearing had received evidence FIFA vice-president Issa Hayatou from Cameroon and Jacques Anouma from the Ivory Coast received bribes of 1.5 million dollars to vote for Qatar’s 2022 bid.

Weylandt died in a fatal accident on Monday’s third stage when he tumbled 20 metres to the road below as he negotiated a descent 25km from the finish line in Rapallo.

Amid a huge outpouring of emotion, the peloton agreed not to race the fourth stage, instead riding at a pace which effectively neutralised the race for the entire 216 km between Genoa and Livorno.

Kan was speaking hours after about 100 villagers who fled their homes near the stricken plant made brief but emotional return journeys into the rural no-man’s land in radiation suits and masks to pick up personal belongings.

Japan was plunged into a nuclear crisis by the March 11 quake-tsunami that hit the plant, causing partial reactor meltdowns, explosions and radiation leaks in the world’s worst atomic accident since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

Presenting the request to trade and industry minister Banri Kaieda, Masataka Shimizu told reporters that TEPCO would undertake bold restructuring measures to help pay for damages caused by the world’s worst nuclear accident for 25 years.

Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said in the submitted document that the company faced “an extremely severe situation regarding fund-raising such as loans from financial institutions, not to mention bond issuance.”

In a deal that took a month from offer to signing, the software company outbid Google and Facebook, which sources said offered to partner or buy Skype for $3 billion to $4 billion.

Microsoft’s interest in the money-losing, but popular service highlights a need to gain new customers for its Windows and Office software. Skype has 145 million users on average each month and has gained favor among small business users.

The pledges were made in two days of talks between the world’s two biggest economies which ended with both sides hailing progress in their often tense relationship.

“We are seeing very promising shifts in the direction of Chinese economic policy,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said, though he repeated that China needs to let its yuan currency rise more rapidly.

Speaking to foreign correspondents in Berlin, Merkel did not rule out additional funding for Athens, or a possible further easing of terms on its 110 billion euro ($157 billion) bailout, and she voiced confidence that the German parliament would back a permanent bailout mechanism for the euro zone.

“I need to analyze the findings of the European Central Bank, European Commission and International Monetary Fund first and I can’t comment before that,” she said. “Anything else would not help Greece or Europe.

Greifeld on Tuesday said the offer is “probably still a couple weeks away.”

Earlier this month, Nasdaq and ICE said they planned to take their bid directly to shareholders in a tender offer.

Ahead of an afternoon meeting of Vice President Joe Biden and top lawmakers from both parties, the White House said Republicans should not hold the U.S. economy hostage by tying an increase in the country’s borrowing authority to trillion-dollar spending cuts.

“To hold one hostage to the other remains extremely unwise,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Barack Obama flew to Texas.

The Obama administration is trying to save the individual mandate after a Virginia federal judge agreed with the state it was unconstitutional and struck down that part of the law.

The Obama administration has vigorously defended the measure, set to go into effect in 2014. The president’s Republican opponents are expected to make the issue a theme during his re-election bid by arguing it is a costly and unnecessary government expansion.

Goldman Sachs, in a high-profile case, was spooked in January into limiting an offering of Facebook shares to foreign investors out of fear that a sale of the private shares to U.S. customers would violate the rules.

Securities and Exchange Chairman Mary Schapiro and SEC corporation finance director Meredith Cross will appear together at the House Oversight Committee after its chairman, Darrell Issa, questioned whether rules governing the trading of private shares are outdated and hinder the creation of capital.

Greece denied reports on Tuesday it was discussing a new 60 billion euro ($84 billion) bailout with international lenders and its borrowing costs rose amid fears it may have to restructure its debt without further EU help.

A euro zone source involved in the preparation of the monthly meeting of ministers from the 17-member single currency area said a discussion of new aid for Greece, on top of the already agreed 110-billion-euro bilateral loans from the euro zone and the IMF was premature.

Doubts were raised by a German lawmaker whether Greece had met the conditions for getting the next, crucial tranche of aid under its existing bailout deal but a source close to EU and IMF inspectors in Athens said it was too early for a decision.

Prime Minister George Papandreou chaired a cabinet meeting ahead of the key EU/IMF decision — at stake is the next, 12 billion euro bailout tranche due in June, essential to pay 13.7 billion euros of imminent funding needs.

Ewald Nowotny, one of three members of the European Central Bank to voice opposition on Tuesday to a restructuring, said he favored giving Greece more time to repay its aid rather than issuing new loans.

“You have to be aware that this would immediately have massive consequences for the Greek banking system and for the banking system overall,” Nowotny told Austrian radio. “That would only heighten the crisis.”

GM said the plans will create or preserve more than 4,000 jobs as it retools the plants in eight states. The company employs 202,000 people globally, including 77,000 in the United States.

“We are doing this because we are confident about demand for our vehicles and the economy,” GM Chief Executive Daniel Akerson said.

The surplus of $11.4 billion, nearly four times greater than expected, comes as China holds high-level economic and strategic talks in Washington and could fuel U.S. criticism that Beijing limits the yuan’s appreciation to support its exports industry.

The trade account swung from a small, rare trade deficit in the first quarter, pushed by a stronger-than-anticipated 29.9 percent rise in exports over a year earlier to a record $155.7 billion.

President Barack Obama has vowed to begin in July a gradual withdrawal of the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan as Washington takes steps to end a costly, unpopular war nearly a decade after the Taliban government was toppled.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the weeks up to early- to mid-June would reveal the extent to which Obama’s decision to send an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan had weakened the Afghan insurgency.

In France, where Armstrong became famous by winning the Tour de France seven straight times, officials received a request from U.S. authorities last month for help gathering evidence about the cyclist and other members of his former U.S. Postal team.

The move indicates federal authorities are looking to bolster their case against Armstrong so they can give a grand jury in Los Angeles the fullest account possible of the cyclist’s actions before deciding whether Armstrong, like Bonds, also should face criminal charges related to using performance-enhancing drugs.

Dead broke and living in a FEMA trailer following the 2008 flood, Van Fleet repeatedly submitted paperwork and made countless phone calls arguing his case. After seven months, the agency finally gave him more than $20,000, which he said gave him his life back and allowed him to move into a house.

Then in March, a letter arrived from the government with a shocking message: He should never have gotten the money. And he had just 30 days to pay it all back.

The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vigorously questioned lawyers on both sides, but the most spirited exchanges focused on the central issue in both cases: whether the law’s requirement that individuals buy insurance is constitutional. Federal judges in Virginia split on that question in the lawsuits, one filed by Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli and the other by Liberty University.

The 14-member court uses a computer program to randomly select its panels, and Obama could hardly have wished for a better outcome. He appointed two of the judges, Andre M. Davis and James A. Wynn Jr. The other was Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton.

Democratic officials said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., raised the idea of an extra tax on the wealthiest taxpayers and the Senate’s Democratic leader, Harry Reid, D-Nev., called for an end to tax subsidies for oil and gas companies. House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell both staked out seemingly unyielding positions against tax increases

The parties exchanged volleys over taxes even as bipartisan congressional negotiators working with Vice President Joe Biden struggled for common ground on spending cuts that would help erode long-term deficits.

The tougher U.S. line almost certainly would echo demands for “democratic transition” that the administration used in Egypt and is now espousing in Libya, the officials said. But directly challenging Assad’s leadership is a decision fraught with problems: Arab countries are divided, Europe is still trying to gauge its response, and there are major doubts over how far the United States could go to back up its words with action.

If the Syrian government persists with its harsh crackdown on political opponents, the U.S. could be forced into choosing between an undesired military operation to protect civilians, as in Libya, or an embarrassing U-turn that makes it look weak before an Arab world that is on the tipping point between greater democracy or greater repression.

Replacing bin Laden, who founded al-Qaida more than two decades ago and masterminded 9/11, may be no easy task. Analysts say the choice will likely depend on how the terror organization views its goals and priorities in the post-bin Laden age.

The revolt across the Arab world over the past few months was driven by aspirations for Western-style democracy, not the al-Qaida goal of a religiously led state spanning the Muslim world. And as al-Qaida struggles to prove its relevance, the group has become increasingly decentralized and prone to internal disputes.

The opposition also said it made gains along a long-deadlocked front near the eastern town of Ajdabiya.

The rebels’ military spokesman, Col. Ahmed Bani, said opposition forces had pushed Gadhafi’s troops out of rocket range on the west side of Misrata and dislodged them from the airport after two days of battles, raising the prospect that the siege could be broken.

The military has been sealing off various areas of Syria and conducting house-to-house raids in search for people whose names are on wanted lists, with many fleeing cities and towns for fear of detention by the regime of President Bashar Assad, activists say.

Intense military operations have taken place in the Damascus suburb of Maadamiyeh, which has been sealed off for days, said human rights activist Mustafa Osso. He said communications have been cut and checkpoints were preventing anyone from entering or leaving the area.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a rare red finding against the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant near Athens, Ala., after investigating how a valve on a residual heat removal system became stuck shut. The NRC has issued only five red findings – the most severe ranking the agency gives to problems uncovered in its inspections – since its current oversight program started in 2001.

NRC said the utility must pay for detailed inspections of the plant’s performance, its safety culture and organization. The agency said it could not immediately estimate inspection costs.

In an historical twist, though, Lee’s French-made ceremonial sword is returning to Appomattox 146 years later, leaving the Richmond museum where it has been displayed for nearly a century.

The Museum of the Confederacy in downtown Richmond is delivering one of its most-treasured pieces to Appomattox for a new museum that it’s building less than a mile from where Lee met with Grant to sign the document of surrender on April 9, 1865. The Army of Northern Virginia’s formal surrender followed three days later, effectively drawing to a close the Civil War that left about 630,000 dead.

Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase of Skype is supposed to make using the Internet for video phone calls as common as logging on to Facebook or instant messaging is today.

If it wins regulatory approval, the deal announced Tuesday provides Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, with the means to sell more digital advertising and offer more popular conferencing tools to help businesses save money.

The neighborhood where the 24-year-old mother of two was slain once was known as a haven for black gays and lesbians, but activists say her death here late last month highlights an alarming rise in homophobic violence in some of the country’s most impoverished areas.

“If the police and other state officials do not act swiftly, it will only be a matter of time before they have to account for their failure to the family and friends of the next lesbian who is beaten and killed in Kwa-Thema,” Human Rights Watch researcher Dipika Nath said in a statement.

Naoto Kan said Japan needs to “start from scratch” on its long-term energy policy after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was heavily damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami and began leaking radiation.

Nuclear plants supplied about 30 percent of Japan’s electricity, and the government had planned to raise that to 50 percent by 2030.

Off to the side, watching silently, were the U.S. special operations troops who had made the meeting possible by flying in the officials and disarming the villagers before they entered the compound.

If all went well, the Americans would later be training the neighborhood-watch-like police force to protect the villagers from the Taliban, and hastening the handover of security responsibility to the Afghans.

Most would likely be proposed for threatened or endangered status if a federal judge approves the agreement, Interior Department officials said. The species to be reviewed range from the greater sage grouse and Canada lynx, to 110 plants and 38 kinds of mollusks.

That could lay the groundwork for a spate of future conflicts over industrial development, water management and residential expansion wherever humans are encroaching into the natural world.

U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups issued his ruling in Salt Lake City just 14 hours after the law went into effect, saying that there is sufficient evidence that at least some portions of the Utah legislation will be found unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union and National Immigration Law Center last week sued to stop the implementation of House Bill 497, saying it could lead to racial profiling. The civil rights groups submitted hundreds of pages of evidence and affidavits to prove their claims ahead of Tuesday’s hearing.

The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board denied a plan by Cook County to close Oak Forest Hospital, a move that triggered a celebration from those against closing the charity care hospital and disappointment from the county board president who was hoping shuttering the facility would help reduce crushing health care costs.

Meanwhile, officials predicted it would take three to four months to close Kenneth Hall Regional Hospital in East St. Louis and open an urgent care center nearby. The Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation plans to move some of the psychiatric beds from Kenneth Hall to a sister hospital in neighboring Centreville.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a ruling Tuesday that there was not enough evidence to convict Siegelman and Scrushy of two bribery counts, which involved a hospital license and equipment. But the appeals court rejected a request for a new trial and let stand convictions on five counts against Siegelman and four against Scrushy. The court said they must be resentenced to reflect the reduced number of counts.

Siegelman was unaware of the decision until contacted by The Associated Press.

After two days of talks, the two sides announced a range of modest agreements aimed at increasing sales opportunities for U.S. companies in China. But there was no breakthrough on a key U.S. demand – letting China’s currency rise in value at a faster rate against the dollar. The currency issue gained new urgency in the view of American manufacturers with release of a Chinese government report showing that China’s trade surplus with the world had surged in April.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters at a closing news conference Tuesday that the United States had made its concerns known on a range of sensitive issues, including human rights.

The analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute concluded that Medicaid’s role as the nation’s safety net health care program would be “significantly compromised … with no obvious alternative to take its place,” if the GOP budget is adopted.

The plan passed by House Republicans last month on a party-line vote calls for sweeping health care changes, potentially even more significant than President Barack Obama’s insurance overhaul. So far, most of the attention has gone to the Republican proposal to convert Medicare into a voucher-like system for future retirees. But Medicaid would also be transformed.

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the party whip, placed himself on the same side as Republicans and the business community – and against liberal groups demanding more disclosure.

Hoyer told reporters that contractors should be chosen on the merits of their applications, their bids and their capabilities, not on their political donations.

Tanya McDowell’s arrest in Norwalk last month came a few months after Kelley Williams-Bolar of Akron, Ohio, was convicted of falsifying records for using her father’s address to send her children to safer suburban schools.

Yet in Connecticut, Ohio and elsewhere throughout the U.S., officials acknowledge parents are routinely caught doing the same thing but rarely face criminal charges.