Evening Edition

“Ratko Mladic was today transferred to the Tribunal’s custody,” the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said in a statement.

“Mladic … has been admitted to the UN detention unit in The Hague.”

“We condemn those indiscriminate attacks by the Yemeni security forces,” State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said, referring in particular to violence in Yemen’s second-largest city of Taez where seven people were killed.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton also voiced shock at the use of live rounds against protesters in Taez in a crackdown that the UN human rights office said had already killed more than 50 people since Sunday.

The toll of dead and injured was given at a news conference in Tripoli by government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, who also warned the departure of Kadhafi would be a “worst case scenario” for Libya.

“Since March 19, and up to May 26, there have been 718 martyrs among civilians and 4,067 wounded — 433 of them seriously,” Ibrahim said, citing health ministry figures which cannot be independently verified,

State news agency JANA said Zuma left the capital after a visit lasting several hours during which he met Kadhafi.

State television broadcast footage of Kadhafi welcoming Zuma at the entrance to a building, in the embattled Libyan leader’s first reported public appearance in weeks.

Authorities in the northern German city of Hamburg said fresh tests indicated that cucumbers imported from Spain, initially suspected of making hundreds ill, may not be to blame.

Tests on two cucumbers revealed they carried the dangerous enterohamorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) bacteria, but not the strain responsible for the current massive contamination which has killed 15 in Germany and one in Sweden.

The impact had spread and was inflicting estimated losses of 200 million euros ($290 million) a week, said the Spanish fruit and vegetable producer-exporter federation, FEPEX.

Asked which countries had stopped buying Spanish produce, FEPEX president Jorge Brotons told a news conference: “Almost all Europe. There is a domino effect on all vegetables and fruits. A psychosis has been created.”

The source of the outbreak is still unknown but contaminated vegetables appear the most likely vehicle of infection, officials said after identifying some cucumbers from Spain carrying the bacteria.

The Hygiene Institute at Muenster’s University Clinic in western Germany announced it had put together a test to quickly identify people infected with the so-called Shiga toxin-producing E. coli.

Radio-frequency electromagnetic fields generated by such devices are “possibly carcinogenic to humans,” the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced at the end of an eight-day meeting in Lyon, France.

Experts “reached this classification based on review of the human evidence coming from epidemiological studies” pointing to an increased incidence of glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, said Jonathan Samet, president of the work group.

“Nokia now expects Devices and Services net sales to be substantially below its previously expected range of 6.1 billion to 6.6 billion euros ($8.6-9.5 billion dollars) for the second quarter 2011,” the company said in a statement, citing lower than expected selling prices and volumes.

After issuing the warning, Nokia saw its stock price plunge 17.5 percent to close at 4.75 euros a share on a Helsinki stock exchange down just 0.80 percent. Shares in mobile phone giant are at their lowest level since 1998.

The English and Scottish football associations issued statements calling on FIFA to postpone Wednesday’s election, saying the ballot was no longer viable following the wave of bribery allegations which have rocked the organisation.

English FA chairman David Bernstein, who had earlier vowed to abstain from the vote, said a postponement would allow for a credible reform candidate to run against incumbent Sepp Blatter.

After days of widespread claims and counter-claims of corruption that saw two top officials suspended pending a bribery investigation, Blatter broke his silence in a stormy solo press conference at FIFA headquarters.

“Crisis, what is a crisis?” a clearly irritated Blatter said. “We are not in a crisis. We are only in some difficulties and these will be solved.”

Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts — five Americans and one Italian — are to glide in for a nighttime touchdown at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center at 2:35 am (0635 GMT), the US space agency NASA said on Tuesday.

The astronauts are wrapping up STS-134, a 16-day mission to the International Space Station, where they installed a $2 billion physics experiment to probe the origins of the universe, and also conducted four spacewalks.

Merkel said the “fundamental” rethink of energy policy in the world’s number four economy, prompted by the disaster in March at Japan’s Fukushima plant, opened new opportunities for business and climate protection.

“We believe we as a country can be a trailblazer for a new age of renewable energy sources,” she told reporters.

“What if the Georges Tron affair were the first in a long series of aftershocks that will follow the earthquake on May 14 in the Sofitel in Times Square?” wondered Liberation newspaper in an op-ed article.

Tron, who was Sarkozy’s civil service minister, resigned Sunday after a legal probe got under way into claims — which he denies — by two women that the foot massages he forced on them turned into sexual harassment and rape.

A single flare was fired above the Harland and Wolff shipyard at 1113 GMT — exactly a century on from the moment the ill-starred ocean liner, then the largest boat ever built, slid into the waters of Belfast Harbour.

At the time the launch was a moment of huge pride, but ever since the “unsinkable” liner hit an iceberg on its maiden transatlantic voyage nearly a year later the tragedy has hung over Belfast.

“The question is, ‘Is the softer data we’re seeing transitory, or is it likely to persist throughout the remainder of 2011?’ Right now, that’s an open question that investors are trying to figure out,” said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut.

The U.S. economy grew at a tepid 1.8 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, and these fresh signs suggest the recovery is still struggling to gain momentum.

The 69-year-old arrived in Rotterdam on a Serbian government jet on Tuesday evening. After 90 minutes at the airport, where he was kept out of sight of the media, Mladic was transferred by helicopter to the tribunal’s detention center near The Hague.

Mladic was indicted by the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia over the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

International lenders are demanding that leading Greek political parties sign up to the government’s latest austerity and reform drive to ensure that Greece keeps tackling its huge budget deficit for years to come, whoever is in power.

In Berlin, a German coalition source said European Union, IMF and ECB inspectors had struck a deal with the Socialist government on a value-added tax cut.

Global powers have been pressing Saleh to sign a Gulf-mediated deal to hand over power to stem spreading chaos in Yemen, a haven for al Qaeda militants and neighbor to the world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia. The turmoil was a factor in keeping up oil prices on Tuesday, traders said.

“The ceasefire agreement has ended,” a government official said, adding that tribesmen had seized a state building.

Gaddafi is emphatic he will not leave Libya, South African President Jacob Zuma said after talks with the Libyan leader, dashing prospects for a negotiated end to the conflict.

Zuma was in Tripoli on Monday to try to revive an African “roadmap” for ending the conflict, which started in February with an uprising against Gaddafi and has since turned into a war with thousands of people killed.

Gaddafi’s officials insist there is no unrest inside the capital, which has remained firmly under his control despite a rebellion mainly in the east of the country.

But activists released a video on Monday showing hundreds of demonstrators attending a funeral for two slain protesters.

Panos Moumtzis, who coordinates U.N. relief efforts for the conflict, said he had been given information by the Libyan government that showed it was using up stocks of food and medicine, which could not be replenished because of sanctions.

“The food, and the medical supplies, is a little bit like a time bomb. At the moment it’s under control and it’s okay. But if this goes on for quite some time, this will become a major issue,” he told Reuters in Tripoli.

The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee has kept reporters scrambling across three states for three days, refusing to publish her schedule while traveling the countryside in a flashy, painted campaign-style bus.

After announcing the tour of East Coast historic sites last week, Team Palin went silent on the itinerary and refused to accommodate press coverage. It was an unusual strategy for any politician, particularly one considering a White House run in 2012.

Industrial output rose 1 percent last month after a record plunge immediately after the magnitude 9.0 quake and a tsunami it set off, and companies said they planned to crank up output further in May-June, bringing it close to pre-disaster levels.

The upbeat outlook spurred talk that the world’s third-largest economy could be poised for a V-shaped recovery after the disaster knocked Japan back into its second recession in three years and a third downturn in a decade.

The backing of Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy and an influential diplomatic power, could help ease discontent among developing countries over the long-standing practice of choosing a European to head the Washington-based IMF.

Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said Brazil had yet to decide whether to support Lagarde or her only declared rival, Mexican central bank chief Agustin Carstens. But he underscored the need for more reforms to give emerging economies a greater voice in the IMF, something Lagarde was eager to stress she supported.

Palin was a no-show for several hundred supporters, celebrity-watchers and media who turned out in hopes of seeing her at the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg on Monday. She and her entourage arrived at a hotel outside the town late in the day and spoke to a smaller group of people gathered there.

The Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008 is on a tour of historic sites on the East Coast, renewing speculation she might be testing the waters for a presidential bid in 2012.

The central bank will consider topping up the program as early as its next rate review in June, so that it can put it to use later this year to support Japan’s reconstruction from the devastating March 11 earthquake.

But some analysts said the BOJ should focus on directly supporting the quake-hit economy rather than worrying about nurturing growth industries.

Blatter began a week in which he should be re-elected as president for a fourth term in combative mood.

FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke issued a statement denying he meant to suggest anything corrupt about Qatar’s bid for 2022 and Blatter gave the Gulf nation his public backing and took time out to berate the media for a lack of manners.

NATO countered that airstrikes on houses are essential and will continue, setting up a possible confrontation with Karzai.

The president’s remarks followed a recent strike that mistakenly killed a group of children and women in southern Helmand province. Karzai declared it would be the last.

The justices were unanimous, 8-0, in holding that Ashcroft cannot be personally sued over his role in the arrest of Abdullah al-Kidd in 2003. The court sets a high bar for suing high-ranking officials, and all the justices agreed al-Kidd did not meet it, even though he was never charged with a crime or called to testify in the terrorism-related trial for which he ostensibly was needed.

Al-Kidd contended that his arrest under the material witness statute had a more sinister motive that violated his constitutional rights – federal authorities suspected him of ties to terrorism but lacked evidence that he committed or was planning a crime. And, he said, Ashcroft blessed the use of the law in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to take suspected terrorists off the street.

War crimes tribunal spokeswoman Nerma Jelacic said tribunal staff were handing Mladic his indictment and explaining the rules and procedures to him before placing him in an isolation cell for the night. She said isolation is standard for new arrivals at the prison.

Mladic also was being given a list of defense lawyers who could help him through the initial proceedings of the war crimes court. He would be examined by a doctor and receive any treatment he may need before the end of the day, Jelacic said.

The boy in the video is now a 24-year-old man. He clearly recalls the sunny day in July 1995 when he met the Bosnian Serb military commander who gave him chocolate.

“I was 8 and I didn’t know what was going on or who Ratko Mladic was,” Izudin Alic told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Tuesday.

The U.N. expert, Christof Heyns, reviewed the 5-minute, 25-second video frame by frame with a team of technical and forensic specialists to determine its authenticity, and concluded that the video suggests there is enough evidence to open a war-crimes case. Sri Lanka has claimed the video is fake.

In the video, several men lie on a muddy track, bound and motionless. The camera cuts and another man is shown being forced to sit upright by a soldier in camouflage carrying a rifle. Another soldier steps up behind the seated prisoner and shoots him in the back of the head, point blank. The prisoner slumps sideways as the camera pans across the road revealing nine bodies, most of them naked, with gunshot wounds clearly visible despite the grainy quality of the footage.

The U.N. expert, Christof Heyns, reviewed the 5-minute, 25-second video frame by frame with a team of technical and forensic specialists to determine its authenticity, and concluded that the video suggests there is enough evidence to open a war-crimes case. Sri Lanka has claimed the video is fake.

In the video, several men lie on a muddy track, bound and motionless. The camera cuts and another man is shown being forced to sit upright by a soldier in camouflage carrying a rifle. Another soldier steps up behind the seated prisoner and shoots him in the back of the head, point blank. The prisoner slumps sideways as the camera pans across the road revealing nine bodies, most of them naked, with gunshot wounds clearly visible despite the grainy quality of the footage.

The jury found Lazare Kobagaya guilty on one of the two counts of lying to immigration officials, and it deadlocked on the other count. U.S. District Judge Monti Belot declared a mistrial on that count.

Kobagaya, who speaks an African dialect known as Kirundi, leaned to the side and listened intently to his interpreter, but showed no emotion as the verdict was read. Afterward, he hung his head and stared at the defense table while the attorneys met with the judge in his chambers. No sentencing date was immediately set.

House Democrats accused the GOP of political demagoguery, while the Obama administration maneuvered to avoid taking sides – or giving offense to majority Republicans.

The debate was brief, occasionally impassioned, and set a standard of sorts for public theater, particularly at a time when private negotiations continue among the administration and key lawmakers on the deficit cuts Republicans have demanded.

The Republican presidential field is far less settled than it seemed just a week ago, and it shows few signs of jelling soon.

With campaigning off to a slow start in early-voting states, half a dozen potential candidates are mulling whether to jump in. So keen is the interest, among journalists at least, that two news helicopters tracked Palin’s East Coast bus trip to Philadelphia on Tuesday.

The classification was issued Tuesday in Lyon, France, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer after a review of dozens of published studies. The agency is an arm of the World Health Organization and its assessment now goes to WHO and national health agencies for possible guidance on cellphone use.

Classifying agents as “possibly carcinogenic” doesn’t mean they automatically cause cancer and some experts said the ruling shouldn’t change people’s cellphone habits.

Investigators across Europe were frantically trying to determine the scope of the contamination by an unusual strain of the common E. coli germ – and where in the long journey from farm to grocery store the contamination occurred. German authorities pointed to a few cucumbers from Spain, but further tests showed that those vegetables, while contaminated, did not cause the outbreak.

In Germany, where the vast majority of deaths and severe illnesses have been reported, officials said that investigations including interviews with patients have shown that people were likely infected by eating raw cucumbers, tomatoes or lettuce. They are warning consumers to avoid those vegetables, and Russia went so far as to ban imports of those vegetables from Spain or Germany.

Prices fell from February to March in 18 of the metro areas tracked by the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city index. And prices in a dozen markets have reached their lowest points since the housing bubble burst in late 2006.

The nationwide index fell for the eighth straight month. Prices have now fallen further since the bubble burst than they did during the Great Depression. It took 19 years for the housing market to regain its losses after the Depression ended.

The mother said she had accidentally rolled over onto her daughter in bed, smothering her. The medical examiner concluded that the brown-eyed toddler with the wavy dark hair had been beaten, declaring her death a homicide.

Had 2-year-old Kiara Harvey died elsewhere the case likely would have been handled by the county sheriff or police, and the local district attorney.

The Rev. Bernice King told a radio interviewer Tuesday that her last Sunday as a member of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church was this past Sunday. Although her departure coincided with New Birth leader Bishop Eddie Long’s settlement agreement in the sexual misconduct lawsuits he has fought since September, King said she had been planning to leave for weeks.

“It has nothing to do with anything that’s going on with Bishop Long,” King told reporters Tuesday. “I always knew I would not be at New Birth forever. This is the time for me to leave.”

The offer was swiftly rejected by the opposition as just another plot by the regime to gain time.

Syrian state television said the amnesty covered “all members of political movements,” including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which led an armed uprising against Assad’s father in 1982. Membership in the party is punishable by death.

Gadhafi’s departure is the key demand of rebel forces battling his troops. On Tuesday, Italy’s foreign minister pledged to provide Libya’s rebels with fuel and hundreds of millions of dollars backed by frozen assets of Gadhafi’s regime. Franco Frattini spoke during a visit to the de facto rebel capital, Benghazi.

The hard lines of the two sides and the competing, high-level visits illustrated the virtual stalemate in the conflict. NATO aircraft bomb the Libyan capital night after night, and military forces from the two sides engage each other in battles, shelling and rocket attacks, little is changing on the ground.

The violence pushed Yemen closer to the edge of a civil war.

Nearly four months of mass protests calling for democratic reforms and the ouster of longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh have rocked the stability of this impoverished corner of the Arabian Peninsula, where government control is weak outside the capital Sanaa and an active al-Qaida branch and other militant groups operate.

But Bryson’s nomination was already in peril Tuesday, as Republican lawmakers renewed their threats to block any commerce secretary nominee until the Obama administration sends them final legislation on three key free trade agreements.

Bryson would bring a unique skill set to the Commerce Department, an agency tasked in part with representing the interests of U.S. businesses abroad. The 67-year-old is the former chairman and chief executive of Edison International, a California-based power company; co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy organization; and has served on the board of major international businesses, including The Boeing Co. and the Walt Disney Co.

It was a stunning turnaround for Blatter, who a day earlier denied that the bribery case that led to the suspension of his only challenger had caused even a hint of crisis within FIFA.

On Tuesday, two more top sponsors broke decorum of business-as-usual to express concern about the stains the scandals have left on the sport and, by extension, their global investment in soccer.

The new tactic is raising the anxiety level – and risks – for corporate honchos at drug companies, medical device manufacturers, nursing home chains and other major health care enterprises that deal with Medicare and Medicaid.

Previously, if a company got caught, its lawyers in many cases would be able to negotiate a financial settlement. The company would write the government a check for a number followed by lots of zeroes and promise not to break the rules again. Often the cost would just get passed on to customers.

The White House now displays an air of confidence, bolstered in part by achievements such as the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. commandos and the financial success of an auto industry that Obama bailed out over the objections of many.

Obama is also benefiting from the absence of negatives. The economy, while lethargic, is growing. The private sector is creating jobs. Natural disasters, while deadly and plentiful, have not developed into governmental crises. Skyrocketing gas prices, which fed the public’s economic fears, are now subsiding. And the GOP’s signature budget plan, ambitious in its spending reductions, has lost its luster with the public.

Damage from tornadoes, like floods and hurricanes, often goes beyond what is readily visible. Liquid fuels and chemicals can leak from ruptured containers and contaminate groundwater. Ruined buildings may contain asbestos. Fires can generate smoke containing soot, dioxins and other pollutants. Household, industrial and medical wastes are strewn about.

In the initial hours after the May 22 twister, the odor of gasoline was evident around several flattened service stations. A large fire burned for hours near the devastated St. John’s Regional Medical Center. Heavy rains caused flash flooding, possibly fouling local waterways.

The accompanying tsunami created a national crisis that understandably put spelling on hold. The bee was postponed twice before it was finally held May 14. The winner was Yuichi Yoshioka, whose family then had to make quick preparations to fly to the United States.

“I was quite prepared on March 11, and then the earthquake struck,” said Yuichi, a 12-year-old seventh grader at the Global Indian International School in Tokyo. “And after that the whole month of April I started to relax a little bit because I thought ‘Oh, maybe there won’t be a spelling bee.’ That was a big mistake. I had to study double-time from late April, and somehow I managed to win with a word I didn’t know.”

“I’m Veronica Penny, the first Canadian Scripps National Spelling Bee champion, reporting from the Capitol,” she said.

Veronica is still working to make her proclamation reality. The 13-year-old from Rockland, Ontario, is back this week for her third appearance at the National Spelling Bee, hoping to become the first from her country crowned the top speller in the English language.

“Please make this situation fair to all of us,” prisoner Shauna Barry-Scott wrote from West Virginia to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which oversees federal sentencing guidelines. “Treat us the same.”

The commission meets Wednesday in Washington to consider making the new crack sentencing guidelines retroactive, a step that could bring early release for as many as 1 in every 18 federal prisoners, or approximately 12,000 inmates.

Gates was stopping in Hawaii on Tuesday for a brief visit to Pearl Harbor, where he was touring the Battleship Missouri Memorial.

Later this week, in Singapore, Gates will attend the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s most prominent security conference. Its agenda includes discussion about the challenge of Afghanistan, the implications of China’s military buildup and the dangers of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Xcel Energy and a subsidiary, Public Service Company of Colorado, are each charged in federal court with five counts of violating Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations for the October 2007 fire inside a water tunnel at the Cabin Creek hydroelectric plant near Georgetown, Colo., about 40 miles west of Denver.

The workers were using flammable solvents inside the tunnel when it caught fire, trapping them inside.