Evening Edition

President Boris Tadic said the 69-year-old had been detained by Serbian security forces, and predicted that the capture would foster reconciliation within the war-torn Balkans.

“Today, early in the morning, we arrested Ratko Mladic,” he told reporters.

One of the most wanted men in the world, Mladic was arrested in a relative’s home in the hamlet of Lazarevo, a village around 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Belgrade, close to the Romanian border.

He was handed over to the Serbian special war crimes court, which will process his extradiction to The Hague for trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The attack defied the government’s authorisation of “all means” to wipe out militants, which nonetheless stopped short of unveiling specific new measures despite a string of humiliating Taliban attacks on security forces.

As Pakistan grapples with the fallout from the US Special Forces raid that killed the Al-Qaeda chief on May 2, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States had “expectations” of its troubled ally.

“Seven International Security Assistance Force service members died following an improvised explosive device attack in southern Afghanistan today,” ISAF said in a statement.

It did not say which country they were from, where they were killed or give further details of the incident, in line with policy.

The leader, Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar, in turn accused Saleh of dragging Yemen into civil war, speaking after hours of clashes late on Wednesday and overnight in which at least 24 people were killed.

Meanwhile a website linked to the defence ministry said 28 more people died when an explosion ripped through an ammunition store belonging to the al-Ahmar tribal opposition.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France welcomed the chiefs of the Group of Eight most developed nations to the windswept Normandy resort of Deauville for two days of talks on the world’s great diplomatic and economic challenges.

According to a draft version of their planned declaration, seen by AFP, the presidents and prime ministers were to call for an end to violent repression in Libya and Syria and for immediate Israel-Palestinian peace talks.

Lagarde, one of two declared candidates for the IMF job vacated by the disgraced Dominqiue Strauss-Kahn, “could go in the coming days to China and Brazil,” said one source in Lagarde’s entourage.

Details had yet to be agreed, the source added.

As the biggest IMF shareholder, the US could cement Lagarde in the powerful global finance post if it joins forces with the seven European IMF directors on the IMF board.

Yet, after Lagarde officially launched her candidacy in Paris Wednesday, and Jose Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission, declared his support, the United States took the quiet tack.

Mladic, accused of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica and a brutal 43-month siege of Sarajevo during Bosnia’s 1992-5 war, was found in a farmhouse owned by a cousin, a police official said.

“Mladic was handcuffed and whisked away,” said the official, who added that he had been cooperative. The once burly and widely feared general was not disguised but had false identity papers and looked haggard and much older, he said.

Residents were hurriedly strapping furniture, stoves, baby cots and other possessions to the roofs of cars and trucks and streaming out of Sanaa by the thousands, hoping to escape the violence that has killed more than 80 people since Monday.

The fighting, pitting the security forces of President Ali Abdullah Saleh against members of the country’s most powerful Hashed tribe led by Sadiq al-Ahmar, was the bloodiest Yemen has seen since protests began in January.

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi, who was appointed by a Republican governor, said Republican state lawmakers who passed the law in March had violated the state’s open meetings law in rushing the legislation through amid massive public protests at the state Capitol.

But the ruling will not end the bitter battle over the measure, which also sent 14 state Senators into hiding in neighboring Illinois to prevent a caucus and later sparked the largest wave of legislator recall votes in state history.

The economy grew at an annual 1.8 percent rate in the first three months of this year, the Commerce Department said on Thursday, unchanged from an earlier estimate and weaker than most forecasts.

A separate report from the Labor Department showed the number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week by 10,000 to 424,000.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, hosting talks with leaders from the G8 industrialized powers, said his country’s candidate was “a woman of very great qualities” and regarded by many as a good person to run the world’s primary rescue lender.

“We think it would be appropriate that the director of the IMF be a European,” he said. “Everybody thinks that Christine Lagarde is a woman of very great qualities,” he said.

The comments suggested that it expects at least some negotiation over who should replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the helm of the IMF, even if Beijing ultimately avoids a destabilizing fight and backs Lagarde.

The French government said on Tuesday that China was supporting Lagarde’s candidacy, although just hours later China joined Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa in decrying the IMF practice of always appointing a European to head the agency.

As another Arab state, Yemen, appeared headed for civil war, leaders of the G8 — the seven Western powers, plus Russia — called on its president to join those of Egypt and Tunisia in stepping down.

A draft of Friday’s final summit communique also contained strong censure of the Syrian and Libyan leaders.

Pressing their advantage after winning an election to fill an open congressional seat in New York state, Democrats in the Senate staged a vote on the Republican budget plan, which would save trillions of dollars in coming decades by privatizing the Medicare health program for the elderly.

The measure failed, as expected, by a vote of 40 to 57 as five Republicans broke ranks to oppose it.

“We can no longer let politicians in Washington deny the danger to Medicare — the danger is all too real, and the health of our nation’s seniors is far too important,” Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee, said in an Internet video.

Democrats on Tuesday won a vacant House seat in a district in upstate New York, a traditional Republican stronghold, by turning the special election into a referendum on the plan pushed by Ryan to privatize Medicare.

Republicans cautioned against reading too much into Democrat Kathy Hochul’s victory in a conservative upstate House of Representatives district, as a self-described Tea Party candidate siphoned off Republican support.

But for the first time since their landslide loss in 2010, Democrats were optimistic on Wednesday about the outlook for 2012 when control of the White House and both chambers of Congress will be up for grabs.

A Serbian government that has changed mightily since Mladic’s alleged atrocities trumpeted his early morning arrest as a victory for a country worthy of EU membership and Western embrace. It banned all public gatherings and raised security levels to prevent ultra-nationalists from making good on pledges to pour into the streets in protest.

Mladic was one of the world’s most wanted men, and faces charges of genocide and war crimes at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, where judge Fouad Riad said there was evidence of “unimaginable savagery.”

Two Afghan policemen also died and two others were wounded in the explosion in the mountainous Shorabak district of Kandahar province, 12 miles (19 kilometers) from the Pakistan border, said Gen. Abdul Raziq, chief of the Afghan border police in the province.

“Two months ago, we cleared this area of terrorists, but still they are active there,” Raziq said.

Facing a midnight deadline when three terror-fighting tools would expire, the Senate struggled to find a way to stage a final vote in the face of continued resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky. Following a Senate vote, the House was expected to quickly approve the legislation for President Barack Obama’s signature.

The measure would add four years to the legal life of roving wiretaps, court-ordered searches of business records and surveillance of non-American “lone wolf” suspects without confirmed ties to terrorist groups.

On a 322-96 vote, the House approved the broad defense blueprint that would provide a 1.6 percent increase in military pay, fund an array of aircraft, ships and submarines and increase health care fees slightly for working-age military retirees. The bill meets the Pentagon’s request for $119 billion to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Final passage came shortly after the House narrowly rejected a measure requiring an accelerated timetable and exit strategy for withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan nearly 10 years after the conflict began.

Palin’s tour announcement is the strongest signal yet that she is considering a presidential bid, despite her failure to take traditional steps such as organizing a campaign team in early primary states. The former Alaska governor’s approval ratings have fallen across the board – including among Republicans – in recent months. But many conservatives adore her, and she has enough name recognition and charisma to shake up a GOP contest that at this point seems to be focusing on three male former governors.

Beginning Sunday, Palin plans to meet with veterans and visit historic sites that her political action committee calls key to the country’s formation, survival and growth. The tour follows reports that Palin has bought a house in Arizona and the disclosure that she’s authorized a feature-length film about her career, which could serve as a campaign centerpiece. She recently said she has “that fire in the belly” for a presidential bid.

The stellar blast was first spotted by a NASA satellite in April 2009, but researchers announced Wednesday that they have since gathered data placing it more than 13 billion light years away – meaning that the event took place when the universe was still in its infancy.

Andrew Levan, one of the scientists behind the discovery, said this blast from the past blew open a window onto the universe’s early years, showing that massive stars were already dying within the first few hundred million years of the birth of the universe.

A protest was planned Thursday in Beverly Hills, California, at an academy board meeting. It is part of a campaign by those upset by last month’s decision to reduce the Grammy fields, which this year totaled 109, to 78.

Grammy President and CEO Neil Portnow said changes would be in effect for the 2012 Grammys. He urged dissenters to work with the academy, which would examine the effect of the changes for the 2013 awards.

The bold ultimatum reflected the growing confidence among the opposition forces – led the Yemen’s largest tribe – that they could be gaining the upper hand against Saleh’s regime with the uprising shifting from near daily street protests to fast-moving urban combat.

But Saleh also has shown he will not go easily. He has managed to ride out swelling anti-government demonstrations for more than three months, defections of military commanders and pressure from Arab neighbors and Western powers to leave office.

Even so, the government insisted Moammar Gadhafi would not relinquish power, which he has held for more than 40 years. His departure is a key demand of the United States, European leaders and the rebels, who say they will not consider halting more than three months of fighting until Gadhafi goes.

“The leader, Moammar Gadhafi, is in the heart of every Libyan. If he leaves, the entire Libyan people leave,” said Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi.

Trying to move beyond years of inherited mistrust, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claimed progress Thursday but achieved no breakthrough on a U.S. missile defense plan that Moscow is concerned could threaten its security.

The two leaders went out of their way to stress – four times over – that their relationship was good But Medvedev also acknowledged: “It does not mean that we’ll have common views and coinciding views on all the issues. It’s impossible.”

Republican backers of Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal said they were confident the state Supreme Court would overturn the judge’s ruling that the law is void because lawmakers broke open meetings statutes during the approval process. She had temporarily blocked the law shortly after it passed in March.

The Supreme Court was scheduled to hear arguments in the case on June 6. Republicans who control the Legislature also could pass the measure a second time to avoid the open meeting violations.

The announcement Thursday would allow owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon and Saul Katz to retain control of the team, which has been damaged by the Bernard Madoff scandal. The influx of money would help pay debts and cover operating expenses.

It was not clear how much of the team Einhorn will own. He emphasized his stake was a minority one and that he wouldn’t oversee the team’s payroll or budget.

The Commerce Department estimated Thursday that the economy grew at an annual rate of 1.8 percent in the January-March quarter. That was the same as its first estimate a month ago.

Consumer spending grew at just half the rate of the previous quarter. And a surge in imports widened the U.S. trade deficit.

Fast forward four years.

On Friday, the former Massachusetts governor will make his first trip to Iowa this year, underscoring what aides call a more focused, disciplined approach to his second attempt at the GOP nomination.

The Humane Society of the United States urged the Bureau of Land Management to “discourage and, if possible and appropriate, prohibit” owners of private horses from bringing animals at risk of Equine Herpes Virus-1 onto federal lands where they could have contact with wild horses.

“The potential for a catastrophic outbreak of EHV-1 among wild horse herds needs to be addressed by the BLM on an emergency basis,” Holly Hazard, the society’s chief innovations officer, wrote in a letter to BLM Director Bob Abbey.

They predicted the ruling would lead to many other states passing laws that require employers to use the federal E-Verify system to check that workers aren’t illegal immigrants. And some said the ruling bodes well for the prospects of a much broader and more controversial immigration law in Arizona, known as SB1070, to be found constitutional.

The state is appealing a ruling blocking that law from taking effect.

Looking exhausted but relieved as they left court, Officers Franklin Mata and Kenneth Moreno said they felt vindicated by the verdict, though it could send them to jail and immediately got them fired. Moreno called it both “a lesson and a win.”

“My intentions were, from the beginning, just to help her,” Moreno said. He was accused of raping the woman, with Mata serving as a lookout; the two had returned to her apartment three times after an initial call to help her get home. Moreno, 43, said he did so to check on her, at her request, and to counsel her about drinking.

Inspections triggered by Japan’s nuclear crisis found that some emergency equipment and storage sites at the Wolf Creek nuclear plant in southeastern Kansas might not survive a tornado.

Specifically, plant operators and federal inspectors said Wolf Creek did not secure equipment and vehicles needed to fight fires, retrieve fuel for emergency generators and resupply water to keep nuclear fuel cool as it’s being moved.

Most major economies are expected to keep growing. But evidence is mounting that many around the world are struggling to expand as fast as they did last year.

In China, interest-rate hikes designed to reduce inflation are slowing growth. European governments are struggling with debts and squeezing budgets. Britain’s economy scarcely grew at the start of the year.

These were among hundreds of existing regulations that the Obama administration said Thursday it wants to revamp or eliminate in a government-wide effort to ease burdens on business. Overall, the drive would save hundreds of millions of dollars annually for companies, governments and individuals and eliminate millions of hours of paperwork while maintaining health and safety protections for Americans, White House officials said.

“The president believes we need to be very careful to make sure small businesses have room to grow,” said Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s regulatory chief, who described the plans in a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

The campaigners include members of Congress, the American Civil Liberties Union, and veterans such as Jessica Kenyon, who says her Army career derailed after she was raped and impregnated by a fellow soldier while serving in South Korea in 2006.

Kenyon, who remembered herself as a gung-ho private hoping to advance through the ranks, said the incident led to her discharge, and she miscarried after flying back to the U.S.

More than 150 people, including legislators, administration officials, advocates who pushed for the bill and a handful of opponents gathered on the Statehouse steps as storm clouds threatened but gave way to humid sunshine.

“We gather here today to launch the first single-payer health care system in America, to do in Vermont what has taken too long – have a health care system that is the best in the world, that treats health care as a right and not a privilege, where health care follows the individual, isn’t required by an employer – that’s a huge jobs creator,” Shumlin said.

The decision marks a turnaround for a highly industrialized state that was an early backer of reducing greenhouse gas pollution – credentials that helped promote the leader of its environmental efforts to head the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

“This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future,” said Christie, a Republican. “The whole system is not working as it was intended to work. It is a failure.”

Children don’t just attend their neighborhood public school anymore. They often choose between that and the charter school across town as the number of students enrolled in charter schools has more than tripled since 2000.

And after graduation, students are increasingly looking beyond traditional state and private schools for a higher education. For-profit colleges – offering flexible schedules but high costs and lower graduation rates – have enrolled one out of four new undergraduate students in the U.S. since 2000.

President Barack Obama will begin drawing down some of the 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in July, with all combat forces due out by 2014. But that timetable is unacceptable to a growing number of war-weary lawmakers, who argue that the death of the al-Qaida leader is an opportunity for the United States to recalibrate its strategy.

“The successful mission that located and killed Osama bin Laden has raised many questions about the effectiveness of America’s strategy to combat terrorism through a now 10-year-old nation-building effort in a deeply corrupt Afghanistan, especially in light of the serious fiscal challenges we face at home,” Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Peter Welch, D-Vt., wrote in a letter to colleagues on Wednesday.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, an accomplished veteran of the Iraq war, would succeed Navy Adm. Mike Mullen as the president’s top military adviser when Mullen’s term as chairman ends Sept. 30. Dempsey would have to be confirmed by the Senate.

Two people familiar with the choice, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it has not been announced by the White House, said it is scheduled to be made public on Tuesday.