Evening Edition

The ruling came amid pleas from Mladic’s family that he was too ill to be transferred to the UN court in The Hague and that he was not guilty of organising the Srebrenica massacre — the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II — and the 44-month siege of Sarajevo.

“It has been established that Ratko Mladic’s health condition makes him fit to stand trial… We have decided the conditions for transfer have been met,” Judge Maja Kovacevic told reporters outside Serbia’s special war crimes court.

Europe’s most-wanted man was arrested in the early hours of Thursday in a village in northern Serbia, but there were immediately questions over whether 69-year-old Bosnian Serb was fit to stand trial after he claimed to be ill.

“Today, early in the morning, we arrested Ratko Mladic,” Serbian President Boris Tadic announced.

The West’s drive to oust Kadhafi was boosted on both the military front, with France and Britain vowing a “new phase” of operations, and on the diplomatic, with Russia joining calls for him to step down and head into exile.

“The world community does not see him as the Libyan leader,” President Dmitry Medvedev said, in a turn-around in Russia’s stance that was welcomed by summit host Nicolas Sarkozy of France and White House officials.

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.

Blatter will appear before FIFA’s ethics committee on Sunday after claims he knew about alleged cash payments at the centre of an investigation targeting his election rival Mohamed Bin Hammam.

Bin Hammam had demanded the corruption investigation be widened to include Blatter on Thursday as the two men prepare to contest a June 1 election for control of world football.

Football’s governing body said Blatter would appear before FIFA’s ethics committee on Sunday after claims he knew about alleged cash payments at the centre of a corruption probe targeting his election rival Mohamed Bin Hammam.

Bin Hammam had demanded the corruption investigation be widened to include Blatter on Thursday as the two men prepare to contest a June 1 election for control of world football.

Within hours of the unveiling of “Google Wallet” on Thursday, eBay and PayPal filed a lawsuit charging the Internet giant tapped into the online financial transaction service’s know-how for the mobile payments project.

PayPal spent three years trying to work out a deal in which it would handle payments for Android smartphones, only to see Google scuttle the talks and hire PayPal lead negotiator Osama Bedier, according to court documents.

PayPal and eBay filed a lawsuit in a California state court Thursday charging that the Internet giant tapped into trade secrets for its newly released Google Wallet. Google did not immediately respond to the allegations.

PayPal spent three years trying to work out a deal in which it would handle payments for Android smartphones, only to see Google scuttle the talks and hire its lead negotiator Osama Bedier, according to court documents.

Environmental groups have repeatedly voiced concern that the global fad for Japanese food was driving the world’s stocks of tuna to dangerously low levels and have sought strong safeguards to preserve the species’ survival.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it was putting Atlantic bluefin tuna on a watchlist of species at risk but would not classify it under the Endangered Species Act, which would bring legal protections.

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.

“Lagarde? It’s done,” the senior source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity as the decision depends on the IMF and not on EU or G8 leaders.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he had witnessed “very strong support for her candidature in a range of different conversations that I’ve had” at the Deauville summit.

The court said Mladic, arrested Thursday in a Serbian village, had until Monday to appeal against extradition to the international criminal court to be tried over a massacre in Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo during Bosnia’s 1992-5 war.

European officials hailed his capture, at a farmhouse belonging to his cousin, as a milestone on Serbia’s path toward the European Union and said they expected his extradition within 10 days.

Likening it to the fall of the Berlin Wall that changed Europe, G8 leaders ending an annual summit in France launched a partnership for North Africa and the Middle East that ties aid and development credits to progress on political and economic reforms by states which have thrown off autocratic rulers.

Most is in the form of loans rather than outright grants, to the two countries in the vanguard of protest movements which have swept the Arab world from the Atlantic to the Gulf. Egypt and Tunisia are planning to hold free elections this year.

In a report to the Group of Eight meeting in Deauville, France, the IMF urged G8 industrial nations and rich Arab partners to develop an action plan that lays out what help they could provide countries in need.

“The region needs to prepare for a fundamental transformation of its economic model,” Masood Ahmed, in charge of Middle East and Africa at the IMF, told journalists on the sidelines of a Group of Eight meeting in northern France.

It was a striking change in tone from Kremlin criticism of NATO air strikes in Libya, which are officially intended to protect civilians in a civil war but have effectively put the West on the side of rebels seeking Gaddafi’s removal.

NATO said it was preparing to deploy attack helicopters over the Arab North African state for the first time to add to the pressure on Gaddafi’s forces on the ground.

Yemeni fighter jets broke the sound barrier as they swooped over Sanaa, where battles between Saleh loyalists and the Hashed tribal alliance led by Sadeq al-Ahmar erupted this week after failure of a deal to ease the president out.

Clashes spread northeast of Sanaa on Friday, where tribes said in addition to seizing a military post in the Nahm region, they were also fighting government troops at two other positions south of the capital.

The European Union is demanding that Greek politicians reach a national consensus on long-term economic and fiscal reforms before it will provide more funding for the indebted euro zone state, but Brussels is also urging the IMF to be more flexible.

“We don’t agree with a policy that kills the economy and destroys society,” the leader of Greece’s main conservative opposition party said after five-hour emergency talks with Socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou.

Consumer spending increased 0.4 percent for a 10th straight month of gains, the Commerce Department said on Friday, after rising 0.5 percent in March.

But prices rose 0.3 percent, leaving spending up just 0.1 percent and incomes stagnant when adjusted for inflation.

Information gleaned from black boxes, and recovered almost two years after the disaster killed 228 people, confirmed that speed readings in the Airbus cockpit had gone haywire, believed to be linked to the icing of speed sensors outside the jet.

As Air France pilots fought for control, the doomed A330 dropped 38,000 feet, rolling left to right, its engines flat out but its wings unable to grab enough air to keep flying.

The Fitch move means all three major ratings agencies now have their fingers poised on the trigger to downgrade Japan’s credit status unless they see moves by the government to strengthen the country’s finances.

Fitch cut its outlook to negative from stable and affirmed its AA minus local currency rating, its fourth highest and the same level as S&P’s but one notch below Moody’s Aa2.

The former Bosnian Serb army commander known for his cruelty and arrogance began issuing demands from behind bars Friday, calling for a TV set and Tolstoy novels, and regaining some of his trademark hubris after a pre-dawn raid in a Serbian village the day before ended his 16 years on the run.

Now a disheveled old man, his family claim he’s too ill to stand up to the rigors of a genocide trial and that he’s not guilty of crimes including his alleged role in the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, the massacre that left 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Srebrenica enclave in Bosnia dead.

The striking proposal by a leading critic of the NATO bombing campaign reflects growing international frustration with the Libyan crisis and a desire by the Kremlin for influence in the rapidly changing Arab landscape.

With Gadhafi increasingly isolated and NATO jets intensifying their attacks, Russia may also be eyeing Libya’s oil and gas and preparing for the prospect that the lucrative Libyan market will fall into full rebel control.

Officials didn’t fully detail the sources of the money, or how it would be used, but the thrust was clearly to underpin democracy in Egypt and Tunisia – where huge public uprisings ousted autocratic regimes this year – and put pressure on repressive rulers in Syria and Libya.

The overall message from President Barack Obama and the other G-8 leaders meeting in this Normandy resort appeared to be warning autocratic regimes in the Arab world that they will be shut out of rich-country aid and investment, while new democracies are encouraged to open their economies.

In the Dec. 19, 2001, document – one double-sized page obtained by The Associated Press under Japan’s public records law – Tokyo Electric Power Co. rules out the possibility of a tsunami large enough to knock the plant offline and gives scant details to justify this conclusion, which proved to be wildly optimistic.

Regulators at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, or NISA, had asked plant operators for assessments of their earthquake and tsunami preparedness. They didn’t mind the brevity of TEPCO’s response, and apparently made no moves to verify its calculations or ask for supporting documents.

But the passengers on that doomed Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight were probably asleep or nodding off and didn’t realize what was going on as the aircraft plummeted nose-up toward the ocean, the director of the French accident investigating bureau said after releasing preliminary data from flight recordings that provide new insight into the June 1, 2009, disaster.

All 228 people aboard the Airbus A330 died.

In a ruling issued late Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Cacheris tossed out part of an indictment against two men charged with illegally reimbursing donors to Hillary Clinton’s 2006 Senate and 2008 presidential campaigns.

Cacheris says that under the Citizens United decision, corporations enjoy the same rights as individuals to contribute to campaigns.

All four have stepped back from previous stances on the issue, either apologizing outright or softening what they said earlier. And those who haven’t fully recanted are under pressure to do so.

The latest sign of that pressure came Thursday when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he was pulling his state out of a regional agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, saying it won’t work. While Christie, a rising GOP star, has said he’s not running for president, some in the party continue to recruit him.

Romney was asked by a reporter during a stop in a Des Moines suburb whether he would sign the Republican plan if he were president. But the former Massachusetts governor declined to answer.

“That’s the kind of speculation that is getting the cart ahead of the horse,” he said.

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.

“Twelve years of building and 15 countries and now it’s the Parthenon in the sky and hopefully the doorstep to our future,” spacewalker Gregory Chamitoff before heading back inside. “So congratulations everybody on assembly complete.”

Chamitoff said it was fitting for space shuttle Endeavour to be at the space station for the end of construction since it was there for the first assembly mission in December 1998.

The 5,000 rupees ($110) he earns a month pays for a tiny room with a single light bulb and no running water for his family of four. After buying just enough food to keep his family from starving, there is nothing left for medicine, new clothes for his children or savings.

Still, Himmat is way above India’s poverty line.

Coroners and other medical experts on the study panel concluded that while the effects of prolonged and repeated stun gun use on the body are not fully understood, most deaths officially attributed to Tasers and similar devices are from multiple or lengthy discharges of the weapons.

The panel reviewed nearly 300 cases in which people died from 1999 to 2005 after police shot them with stun guns, but found that most of the deaths were caused by underlying health problems and other issues. Of those cases, the experts examined 22 in which the use of stun guns was listed as an official cause of death.

The decision to withdraw from the 10-state cap-and-trade program at the end of the year marks a turnaround for New Jersey, a heavily industrialized state that was an early backer of efforts to curb the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming.

Environmentalists were dismayed, while conservatives were thrilled.

The church plans to lease back most of its core buildings under the plan, so worshippers and visitors won’t notice any changes in services or outreach. The church’s popular, decades-old televangelist program “Hour of Power” broadcasts will also continue, the church said.

“The ministry is going to continue in the same place, in the same buildings,” said Marc Winthrop, the attorney. “It’s just that we had to go through a financing transition to get rid of the debt.”

Kathy Witterick and David Stocker recently landed on the front page of the Toronto Star, explaining that they hope their third child, Storm, can remain untouched by the connotations of pink versus blue, male versus female, long enough to make up his or her own mind.

The decision has online haters and supporters of the family on hyperdrive. Child development experts, meanwhile, question the impact on the cherubic infant later in life and whether the couple has gone too far in their quest for gender neutrality.

Supporters of Demjanjuk – who lived for years in suburban Cleveland and worked in an auto plant before accusations arose that he hid his past as a Nazi death camp guard – have spoken out against his conviction, nudged Ukraine to help, promised to lobby Congress and hope to see his U.S. citizenship restored.

“If there’s any way that we can help him get his citizenship reinstated, we will do anything that we possibly can,” said Tamara Olexy, president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, an umbrella group of Ukrainian-American organizations.

But when a twister struck the central Arkansas town of Vilonia, where Firestone is now mayor, he had to seek safety in an ordinary closet because his current home had no storm shelter.

“I would have felt much safer if I had something like that to go to,” said Firestone, whose house was one of the few that escaped damage from the tornado last month that killed four people.

After extensive scientific review, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Friday it has determined that bluefin tuna does not warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act. The agency conducted the review after the Center for Biological Diversity submitted a petition seeking an endangered status for the fish, claiming the species faces possible extinction because of overfishing and habitat degradation, including effects of the BP oil spill on bluefin spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico.

Even though bluefin will not be listed as endangered or threatened, NOAA officials said they still have concerns about the fish, which can swim at speeds faster than 50 mph and grow to more than half a ton in size.

The remarks by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., were noteworthy because they came three days after a Democrat won a special House election in a heavily Republican district in upstate New York after accusing the GOP of wanting to kill Medicare.

Many Democrats have made clear that they intend to stick with that theme when they try to recapture the House and defend their slim Senate majority in next year’s elections.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to suspend the law from taking effect until a final ruling on whether the new law, set to take effect July 1, violates a woman’s constitutional right to abortion established under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.

The legal challenge was filed in Sioux Falls, where Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota operates South Dakota’s only abortion clinic.

The massive animal – her newborn twin calves nowhere to be seen – pounced again, stomping on the fallen woman before tearing into the woods. Della Cioppa could barely breathe as she punched 911 on her cell phone.

State troopers had just arrived when the enraged moose stormed back, jumped over della Cioppa, and charged toward the two officers, who opened fire. The moose fell dead 20 feet from della Cioppa, who suffered a broken collar bone and ribs, a dislocated shoulder and a bruise shaped like a hoof on her forehead.

The shareholders claim that if the $7 billion deal is allowed to close, their derivative claims will be lost, and the Massey directors will be allowed to escape responsibility for leaving the company so damaged that they were forced to sell it to Abingdon, Va.-based with by Alpha Natural Resources at a discount in an effort to shield themselves from liability.

“Alpha in no way is going to pursue these claims,” shareholders’ attorney Stuart Grant told Delaware court Vice Chancellor Leo Strine Jr. in arguing for a preliminary injunction to delay the merger.