Evening Edition

“I want to say to the Crusader cowards that I live in a place where I cannot be reached or killed; I live in the hearts of millions,” Kadhafi said in an audio message broadcast on state television.

He referred to an early-Thursday strike on his Bab al-Aziziya compound that “led to the martyrdom of three civilians, journalists,” meaning the recording, the authenticity of which could not be verified, was made since then.

The continuing repression came as the government announced plans to launch a “national dialogue” in response to the anti-regime protests that have rocked the country since March 15.

And Britain summoned the Syrian ambassador in coordination with other European nations, warning of “further measures” if it fails to stop the crackdown on protesters.

The elite military unit opened fire at demonstrators in the southern city of Ibb when they were pinned down in a building where they sought refuge after an earlier clash with protesters, opposition sources and witnesses told AFP.

They said an officer and four soldiers were also wounded when demonstrators threw stones and other projectiles at the besieged security forces.

Around 140 people were wounded, 40 of them critically, in the blasts — the deadliest attack this year in the nuclear-armed country where the government is in crisis over the killing of the Al-Qaeda chief by US forces.

In the fallout over the unilateral raid and in another sign of damaged ties with wary ally Washington, an official said Pakistan’s senior military officer General Khalid Shameem Wynne had cancelled a visit to the United States.

“This is wonderful,” said Bertrand Piccard, joint founder and president of the Solar Impulse project.

The single-seater, piloted by Andre Borschberg, had lifted off gently in clear blue skies from Payerne airbase at 8:40 am (0640 GMT) after being delayed by early morning mist.

Economic expansion across the 17-country currency bloc almost trebled to 0.8 percent in the first quarter of 2011, from 0.3 percent in the last three months of 2010 — compared to US growth of 0.4 percent quarter-on-quarter.

However, Italy, the eurozone’s third-largest economy, fell in with Mediterranean laggards, growing by just 0.1 percent in the first quarter, as the outlook for crisis-hit Greece worsened amid talks on a second Athens bailout due in Brussels on Monday.

The PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, said meanwhile that it had taken on an assignment for Facebook on the condition that it not reveal the name of its client and that it should not have done so.

Facebook’s clumsy PR effort was first revealed by the website The Daily Beast, which said Burson-Marsteller had reached out to a number of US news outlets urging them to look into claims Google was invading privacy.

A UN environment panel said the world cannot sustain the tearaway rate of use of minerals, ores and fossil and plant fuels. It called on governments to “decouple” economic growth from natural resource consumption.

With the world population expected to hit 9.3 billion by 2050 and developing nations becoming more prosperous, the report warned “the prospect of much higher resource consumption levels is far beyond what is likely sustainable.”

Economists forecast that demand from abroad for European exporters could ease later in the year.

Germany, with the biggest European economy, led the way, expanding by a quarterly 1.5 percent to a level last seen before the economic crisis in 2008, provisional data showed.

Embattled operator Tokyo Electric Power Company faces compensation payments worth tens of billions of dollars for victims of the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl a quarter of a century ago.

More than 80,000 people have been forced from homes, farms and businesses in a 20-kilometre (12-mile) zone around the plant which was hit by a tsunami on March 11 and has since leaked radiation into the air, ground and sea.

The expert found a handful of security flaws in Sony’s networks while remotely studying its systems via the Internet to see how difficult it would be to penetrate the electronics giant’s systems in the wake of the attacks.

Security researcher John Bumgarner discovered a potential bonanza for hackers by using little more than a web browser, Google’s search engine and a basic understanding of Internet security systems.

The 17-nation currency area expanded by 0.8 percent in the first three months of the year, data showed on Friday, fueled by startling 1.5 percent GDP growth in Germany, while the French economy grew 1.0 percent, driven in part by consumer demand.

Economists had forecast euro zone growth of 0.6 percent. Analysts said the better than expected data — despite Portugal returning to recession and Greece still buried under a debt mountain — strengthened the case for a European Central Bank rate rise by July, which would be the second this year.

Vice President Joe Biden, who heads a deficit-reduction working group including key members of Congress, said the talks were difficult but progress was being made.

“I’m convinced we can get to a significant downpayment on the $4 trillion we all agree has to be cut in the escalation of the debt over the next 10 years,” he told reporters.

A member of the Pakistani parliament said Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, Pakistan’s spy chief, said he was “ready to resign” over the bin Laden affair that has embarrassed the nation. Pakistan’s opposition leader accused the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, spy agency of negligence and incompetence.

Followers of bin Laden have vowed revenge for the al Qaeda chief’s death and the Pakistani Taliban said Friday’s attack by two suicide bombers in the northwestern town of Charsadda was their first taste of vengeance.

According to a report to be released on Friday, between 2006 and 2010 there were 219 former SEC employees who filed letters with the agency indicating their intent to represent a client with business before the commission.

In all, those former officials advised firms on SEC business nearly 800 times, according to an advance copy of the report seen by Reuters.

The plan, agreed after weeks of wrangling between government officials, bankers and Tokyo Electric executives over who should pay for the crisis, allays investors’ fears that a collapse of the power firm would roil financial markets.

It comes as engineers are still working to bring reactors under control at Tokyo Electric’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant north of Tokyo two months after the earthquake and tsunami that led to radiation leaks.

Athens would fall short of its 2011 deficit target by two percentage points if it left policies unchanged, the European Commission said ahead of a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday and the conclusion next week of an EU/IMF inspection of Greece.

“Because of weaker than expected growth last year, plus some fiscal slippages, there is need to take additional measures in fiscal consolidation still this year,” EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told a news conference.

Athens would fall short of its 2011 deficit target by two percentage points if it left policies unchanged, the European Commission said ahead of a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday and the conclusion next week of an EU/IMF inspection of Greece.

“Because of weaker than expected growth last year, plus some fiscal slippages, there is need to take additional measures in fiscal consolidation still this year,” EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told a news conference.

In July 2007, then Senator Barack Obama’s top foreign policy advisers met in the modest two-room Massachusetts Avenue offices that served as his campaign’s Washington headquarters. There, they debated the incendiary language Obama would use in an upcoming speech on national security, according to a senior White House official.

Pakistan was a growing worry. A new, highly classified intelligence analysis, called a National Intelligence Estimate, had just identified militant safe havens in Pakistan’s border areas as a major threat to U.S. security. The country’s military leader, Pervez Musharraf, had recently cut a deal with local tribes that effectively eased pressure on al Qaeda and related groups.

The week-long visit by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Chief of General Staff Chen Bingde follows this week’s talks of top government officials seen as making some ground in easing tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.

“The lack of high-level and sustained military-to-military engagement means that the whole of the U.S.-China relationship remains unbalanced,” said Cheung Tai Ming, a senior fellow at the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.

The head of the rebel National Transitional Council’s executive bureau, Mahmoud Jebril, will meet President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, and other senior officials, the White House said in a statement.

Jebril, a U.S.-educated technocrat who has become the public face of the rebel council, made a plea for Washington to free up some $180 million in frozen Gaddafi funds to fund the rebels fighting to end his 41-year rule.

Members of a new inter-agency council on U.S. economic stability said they would extend their public comment period on how to choose important banks, insurers and hedge funds for heightened surveillance and tougher capital rules.

The concession by the Financial Stability Oversight Council came as a House of Representatives panel was expected to vote on Friday for weakening the consumer protection provisions of 2010’s Dodd-Frank law and slowing down implementation of its new rules for derivatives markets.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, dogged by the biggest corruption scandal in India’s history, may gather some clout from the win, but he suffered the defeat of a key ally in the southern state of Tamil Nadu after a telecoms kickback scandal. He also risks the rise of a fickle populist ally in West Bengal.

The complicated post election scenarios highlight how Singh faces hard times in his second term amid signs the 78-year-old is increasingly out of touch with both reform-hungry investors and voters furious at inaction over corruption and inflation.

About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be in harm’s way when the gates on the Morganza spillway are unlocked for the first time in 38 years.

Opening the spillway will release a torrent that could submerge about 3,000 square miles under as much as 25 feet of water but take the pressure off the downstream levees protecting New Orleans, Baton Rouge and the numerous oil refineries and chemical plants along the lower reaches of the Mississippi.

Gadhafi had appeared on state TV but not been heard speaking since a NATO attack on his Tripoli compound two weeks ago, which officials said killed one of his sons and three grandchildren. In a brief recording played Friday on Libyan TV, Gadhafi said he wanted to assure Libyans concerned about a strike this week on his compound in Tripoli.

“I tell the coward crusaders – I live in a place where you can’t get to and kill me,” he said. “I live in the hearts of millions.”

President Barack Obama, accepting the resignation, called Mitchell “a tireless advocate for peace.”

In a two-paragraph letter to Obama, Mitchell said that he took the diplomatic job intending to only serve two years. “I strongly support your vision of comprehensive peace in the Middle East and thank you for giving me the opportunity to be part of your administration,” Mitchell wrote

For a few joyful days, more than 20,000 people around the world thought they literally had hit the lottery and won a chance to come and live legally in the United States. Oops, the State Department said Friday, we had computer problems and have to run the annual visa lottery again.

The decision reopens competition for 50,000 wild-card visas for people who otherwise would have little hope of qualifying. About 15 million had applied, so it’s good news for many people who thought they had lost.

Oil prices have fallen, with gas soon to follow. Demand for farm commodities, like the corn used in everything from cereal to soda, has dropped. And businesses remain slow to pass along higher costs because customers aren’t getting raises and might walk away.

Inflation may be approaching its peak.

Fudai is the village that survived – thanks to a huge wall once deemed a mayor’s expensive folly and now vindicated as the community’s salvation.

The 3,000 residents living between mountains behind a cove owe their lives to a late leader who saw the devastation of an earlier tsunami and made it the priority of his four-decade tenure to defend his people from the next one.

The attack came as both the Pakistani and Afghan wings of the Taliban have been carrying out attacks to prove they remain a potent force and bolster their profiles in case peace talks prevail in Afghanistan.

U.S. and Afghan officials have said they hope the Afghan Taliban will use bin Laden’s death as an opportunity to break their link with al-Qaida – an alliance the U.S. says must be severed if the insurgents want peace in Afghanistan. But Afghan officials and Pakistani experts say any severing of ties would not happen anytime soon, if at all.

Both Medicare and Social Security are being hit by a double whammy: the long-anticipated wave of retiring baby boomers and weaker-than-expected tax receipts, according to the annual report by the trustees who oversee the programs.

The Medicare hospital insurance fund for seniors is now projected to run out of money in 2024, five years earlier than last year’s estimate. The Social Security trust funds are projected to be drained in 2036, one year earlier than the last estimate. Once the trust funds are exhausted, both programs can only collect enough money in payroll taxes to pay partial benefits, the report said.

Since he left office, Huckabee has made himself a multitasking, moneymaking conglomerate, with a Fox News Channel show, a nationally syndicated radio program, speaking engagements, book deals, novelty sales and even a newly launched series of children’s videos.

Now, his decision on whether to move toward another run for president — which he’ll announce on his television show Saturday night — may come down to whether he’s willing to cut back those revenue streams to put his political career first again. His top advisers say he hasn’t told them what he’ll do, which makes them think he’s probably going to stick with the money, rather than go for the White House.

A leading human rights activist said three people were killed in Homs, two in Damascus and one in a village outside Daraa, the southern city where the revolt began two months ago. He asked that his name not be used for fear of government reprisal.

“At first they opened fire in the air, but the people continued on their way, and then they shot directly into the crowd,” an eyewitness said by telephone from Homs.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, did not release the names of the suspects, but Gadhafi himself is expected to be among them.

Moreno-Ocampo revealed broad details of his investigation last week to the U.N. Security Council, but the announcement was the first time the court specified the charges – murder and persecution, considered crimes against humanity under the Geneva Conventions.

“Time has come around to the point where the people are agreeing with much of what I’ve been saying for 30 years. So, I think the time is right,” said the 75-year-old Paul, who first ran for president as a Libertarian in 1988.

Paul made his announcement in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” from New Hampshire, where he held a rally later Friday.

Trying to crystalize the Dodgers’ bottom line is like trying to capture the shifting borders of the strike zone.

“The complexity of the situation is daunting,” he said Thursday during an interview with The Associated Press at Major League Baseball headquarters. “The way things are structured, sometimes they’re for tax purposes and sometimes they’re for liability purposes, but it does require you to try to follow the dollar through the process, and that takes a little bit of time. And some of the entities are shells that were set up maybe to do something else and that don’t really bear a great deal on it. What you’re trying to do is figure out what is pertinent … and it just takes a little bit of time.”

Brownback, an anti-abortion Republican, is expected to sign the bill sent to him by the state House a mere 15 minutes before lawmakers adjourned their annual session. The House’s early-morning vote was 86-30 in support of a larger bill that included the abortion coverage restrictions. The state Senate had approved it Thursday night, 28-10.

If the bill becomes law as expected, starting in July, individuals and employers who want abortion coverage would have to buy supplemental policies that cover only abortion. Supporters of the bill argue that it will protect employers who oppose abortion rights from having to pay for policies that cover the procedures.

Democrats and Republicans alike gave him a friendly reception that went beyond mere formality into regret over his impending departure.

Now, if all goes according to plan, they’ll still have the face they’ve grown accustomed to at the FBI.

And now, more bad news: It’s also lasting longer, prolonging the misery of the millions of people for whom spring is a punishment, not a pleasure.

Heavy snow and rain in some parts of the country have nourished a profusion of tree pollen, while a sudden shift to warm, sunny weather has made its release more robust. The deluges and, in some places, flooding have pumped up the volume on mold. Add in the wind, and the suffering skyrockets.

Either accusation, if it sticks, might deny him the GOP nomination. Conservatives despise Obama’s 2010 health care law, especially the requirement that everyone obtain medical insurance. That same requirement is a cornerstone of the 2006 Massachusetts law that Romney championed as governor. Many advisers have urged Romney to apologize, say he made a big mistake and move on.

But voters of almost every stripe dislike political flip-floppers. And that puts Romney in a different jam.

The former Republican lawmaker “created a web of deceit that entangled and compromised numerous people,” the committee said, adding that it had assembled enough evidence to warrant possible expulsion had Ensign not resigned.

Ensign quit May 3, one day before he was to have testified under oath about an affair with the wife of a top aide, the aide’s subsequent lobbying of Ensign’s office, and a payment from Ensign’s parents to the one-time aide’s family.

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader opened the three-day Newark Peace Education Summit by urging participants to work on inner peace as a key prerequisite to making positive change in the world.

“The change in human society, the initiative, must start with the individual,” the Dalai Lama said.

The 15-member commission, created by President Barack Obama, did not identify any proposed site for nuclear storage. Nor did commission members agree on whether there should be one or several sites for a nuclear dump, where waste would be stored for up to 100 years.

The panel, formally known as the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, also suggested creation of a new organization, independent of the Energy Department, to locate and build a site to permanently bury nuclear waste.

Cardinal Justin Rigali and his bishops “failed miserably at being open and transparent,” review board chairwoman Ana Maria Catanzaro wrote this week in the lay Catholic magazine Commonweal.

“What will it take for bishops to accept that their attitude of superiority and privilege only harms their image and the church’s?” Catanzaro wrote in an article titled “The Fog of Scandal.”

Santorum, formerly a Pennsylvania senator and now a presidential candidate touting family values, is only one of many political and spiritual figures drawn into the tale of Ensign’s sexual misconduct, political dealings and personal ruin that led to the senator’s resignation May 3 and a scathing Senate ethics committee report this week.

Many of those named in the report are only incidentally connected to the case. Others tried to help hush up Ensign’s unpleasantness with cash, advice or both. The list is a long one. It includes Ensign’s parents; Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Tim Coe, Ensign’s longtime spiritual advisor connected to the National Prayer Breakfast and the C Street townhouse where Ensign and other lawmakers lived while in Washington.