Evening Edition

Opposition groups called for the “immediate resignation of President Bashar al-Assad from all functions he occupies,” in a joint declaration at the end of a two-day meeting in Turkey’s Mediterranean resort of Antalya.

They urged the holding of “parliamentary and presidential elections within a period that will not exceed one year” following Assad’s ouster and vowed to work “to bring down the regime.”

State television said Assad had set up a committee and charged it with “formulating general principles of dialogue that will open the way for the creation of an appropriate climate in which the different elements can express themselves and present their proposals.”

The committee will include Syrian Vice President Faruq al-Shara, senior members of the ruling Baath Party and the National Progressive Front (NPF, a coalition of parties led by Baath), as well as one author and one teacher.

The fresh protests are to honour the children killed in the uprising, such as 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib whom activists say was tortured to death, a charge denied by the authorities.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF says at least 30 children have been shot dead in the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s autocratic rule which erupted in mid-March.

The United Nations, meanwhile, denounced war crimes committed both by Kadhafi’s forces and the rebels vying to oust the Libyan strongman.

“There are from my perspective some signs, certainly in the last few days, that Kadhafi is becoming more and more isolated,” Mullen told reporters in Washington.

Libya’s rebel leadership meanwhile welcomed the defection of former oil minister Shukri Ghanem and urged other regime officials to follow suit.

A series of six blasts at around 12:35 am (2235 GMT Wednesday) were followed by several more a few minutes later in the Libyan capital, the target of intensive NATO air raids in the past few weeks, an AFP correspondent reported.

Medics said bodies were lying in the streets of Al-Hasaba neighbourhood, bastion of powerful tribal leader Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar, where the fighting erupted on Tuesday after a truce broke down.

Tribal leaders meanwhile said thousands of armed tribesmen were on their way to Sanaa to boost Ahmar’s forces, but had been stopped at a military post 15 kilometres (nine miles) north of the capital, where clashes broke out.

The WHO advisory came as German and Chinese researchers said they cracked the genetic code of the E. coli strain, which they said in a preliminary analysis was resistant to antibiotics and extremely virulent.

US health officials said Thursday that three people were suspected to have fallen ill from the bacteria after travelling to Germany, where the mystery outbreak has killed 17. Sweden has also reported one victim.

German authorities have failed to pinpoint the origin of the outbreak, which has infected more than 2,000 people in the last month and dealt a blow to the European farm sector amid official warnings to avoid raw vegetables.

As confusion reigned over the killer strain of E. coli bacteria, Russia said it had blacklisted imports of fresh vegetables from European Union countries with immediate effect and slammed food safety standards in the bloc.

The sanction was immediately denounced as “disproportionate” by a European Commission spokesman who said Brussels would demand an official explanation from Moscow.

The Rospotrebnadzor watchdog said the ban was going into effect immediately and would remain in force until the European Union explained what caused the 17 mysterious deaths — all but one of them in Germany.

“I have medical records showing that he was treated for lymphoma in 2009 in a Belgrade hospital,” Belgrade-based lawyer Milos Saljic who has previously said his client won’t live to see trial, told AFP.

The prosecution of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), meanwhile, said the trial of the man dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia” would not start for months.

For long Europe’s most wanted man, Mladic, 69, is to appear Friday before a three-judge bench at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague to plead to 11 counts.

After spending his first night behind bars in a UN detention centre housed in a Dutch jail, the man accused of masterminding Europe’s worst massacre since World War II was on Wednesday informed of the date of his initial hearing.

The colorful design, called MyPlate, was unveiled by First Lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

“Parents don’t have the time to measure out exactly three ounces of chicken or to look up how much rice or broccoli is in a serving,” said Michelle Obama, who is a mother of two daughters, Sasha and Malia.

“We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing,” Google security team engineering director Eric Grosse said in a blog post.

“The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users’ emails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change peoples’ forwarding and delegation settings,” he said.

The comments marked the latest salvo in a battle between the Chinese government and Google dating back to last year when the US Internet giant revealed it had been the victim of a separate China-based cyberattack.

“To put all of the blame on China is unacceptable,” foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters.

The ECB chief suggested creating a second stage of bailouts under which the eurozone would take limited control of a member country’s economic policies if it was not able to successfully implement adjustment programmes.

“Would it go too far if we envisaged, at this second stage, giving euro area authorities a much deeper and authoritative say in the formation of the country?s economic policies if these go harmfully astray?,” said Trichet.

The Spanish economy slumped into recession during the second half of 2008 as the global financial meltdown compounded the collapse of the once-booming property market. It emerged with meagre growth in early 2010.

The crisis sent the unemployment rate soaring to 21.29 percent in the first quarter of 2011, the highest in the industrialised world, and has whipped up nationwide demonstrations against the government’s austerity measures.

The promise to hand over power to a younger generation appeased internal party rebels who had threatened to bring down Kan, the country’s fifth premier in as many years, days before his first anniversary in the job.

The motion brought by the opposition conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its allies was defeated by a comfortable 293-152 margin after most lawmakers of the centre-left ruling party fell into line behind Kan.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc now faces probes by several government authorities into derivatives trades it executed in late 2006 and 2007. On Thursday, sources close to the matter said Goldman received a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney, who joins the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission in examining Goldman’s actions.

The probes follow a scathing report by U.S. lawmakers that cast Goldman as a central villain of the financial crisis and accused it of misleading clients about mortgage-linked securities.

The sweeping Dodd-Frank financial reform law is eliminating the certainty of U.S. governmental support that some “too big to fail” banks needed to survive the financial crisis, Moody’s said on Thursday.

Lower ratings can translate into higher borrowing costs, which can have a big impact on a bank’s bottom line. They can also force banks to post more collateral in derivative trades.

The Economic and Financial Committee of deputy ministers and senior officials of the 17-nation currency zone approved the plan in principle in talks in Vienna that ended in the early hours of the morning, the source said.

The second bailout of Greece, which will effectively replace a 110 billion euro ($160 billion) scheme launched in May last year, will run until mid-2014, giving Athens an additional year of financial support beyond the original plan, the source said.

Initial claims for state jobless benefits slipped 6,000 to 422,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday, which was higher than the 415,000 claims expected by economists.

The disappointing drop fits in with other data on consumer spending and manufacturing indicating the economy has taken a decisively weak tone as the Federal Reserve prepares to wrap up its $600 billion government bond-buying program.

“These allegations are very serious,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

“We take them seriously; we’re looking into them,” Clinton told reporters a day after the Internet giant said it had disrupted a campaign aimed at stealing passwords of hundreds of Google email account holders, including senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists.

“I’m Mitt Romney. I believe in America. And I’m running for president,” Romney said to cheers during an 18-minute speech in Stratham, New Hampshire.

The Republican front-runner so far, Romney started his campaign in this early-voting state where a win in February’s primary election is crucial to his chance of winning the party nomination to face President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election.

Experts in China, part of a global network of laboratories racing to understand the sickness which killed a 17th victim overnight, said they had found the bug carried genes that made it resistant to several classes of antibiotics.

The United Nations said the strain had not infected people before but some consumers, especially in Germany, said they were nervous about eating raw vegetables.

The European Commission said Moscow’s move was disproportionate. The outbreak has killed 17 people and made more than 1,500 others ill, and food poisoning is spreading from Germany across Europe.

Russia extended a ban on German and Spanish fresh vegetables to cover the European Union because it said Moscow had not been given proper information on the situation despite repeated requests. The source of the infection is still unclear.

Kan’s offer to step down buys him time to prepare an extra budget to fund the rebuilding cost of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but does little to resolve the country’s long-running political and policy paralysis.

Thanks to Kan’s maneuvering, the parliamentary no-confidence motion — brought by the opposition over his handling of the country’s deepest crisis since World War Two — was comfortably defeated by 293 to 152 votes.

The blast on Wednesday damaged a hotel used by rebels and foreigners in Benghazi, wounding one person, and rebel authorities said they believed the explosion might be linked to Gaddafi agents still operating in the east.

Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice chairman of the rebel National Transitional Council, said the explosion outside Tibesti hotel was believed to have been caused by a hand grenade thrown in a “desperate attempt” by Gaddafi loyalists to sow terror.

The claim by the world’s largest Web search engine sparked an angry response from Beijing, which said blaming China was “unacceptable,” pointing to further tensions in an already strained relationship with Google.

The perpetrators appeared to originate from Jinan, the capital of China’s eastern Shandong province, Google said. Jinan is home to one of six technical reconnaissance bureaus belonging to the People’s Liberation Army and a technical college U.S. investigators last year linked to a previous attack on Google.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps more than a third of the world’s oil, may raise supply targets by as much as 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) when ministers meet on June 8, two Gulf oil sources told Reuters on Thursday.

“There is a need for an increase to replace the loss from Libya,” one delegate said. “Oil prices are too high. $100 oil is scaring people.”

High unemployment is not a “quickly resolvable problem,” but April’s job gains show that the economic recovery is on a firmer footing, Cleveland Fed President Sandra Pianalto said.

“We’ve got a long way to go before labor markets can be described as healthy again,” Pianalto told the Columbus Metropolitan Club.

In rebel-held eastern Libya, an explosion damaged a hotel used by rebels and foreigners in Benghazi, wounding one person, and police said rebel authorities believed the explosion might be linked to Gaddafi agents still operating in the east.

Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice chairman of the rebel National Transitional Council, told Reuters the explosion outside Tibesti hotel was believed to have been caused by a hand grenade thrown in a “desperate attempt” by Gaddafi’s loyalists to sow terror.

“We’ll get back what we get back,” Ron Bloom, the Obama administration’s point man on manufacturing and restructuring of General Motors Co and Chrysler, said on Wednesday. “It will be what it is.”

While the administration long ago conceded it would write off a portion of the $80 billion bailout, loss estimates have fallen from more than 60 percent to less than 20 percent, according to White House economic advisers.

But while suspicion has fallen on raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce as the source of the germ, researchers have been unable to pinpoint the food responsible for the frightening illness, which has killed at least 18 people, sickened more than 1,600 and spread to least 10 European countries.

An alarmingly large number of victims – about 500 – have developed kidney complications that can be deadly.

While Romney made his candidacy official in New Hampshire on Thursday, political stars Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani caused a stir of their own with visits to the first-in-the-nation primary state. Both made sure to assail the health care law approved while Romney was governor of neighboring Massachusetts.

And rumblings about Texas Gov. Rick Perry, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota further challenged Romney’s standing as the closest thing the GOP has to a front-runner to take on President Barack Obama in November 2012. Bachmann plans to take part in a presidential debate in New Hampshire on June 13, an aide said Thursday.

Mitt Romney knows a thing or two about second chances.

After that long-ago highway collision when he was a young missionary serving in France, Romney earned an outsized reputation and millions of dollars as a corporate turnaround artist, fixing bottom lines, cleaning up the scandal-tarred Salt Lake City Olympics and giving various other endeavors a second wind.

Democratic leaders talking to reporters outside the White House emphasized the need for new revenues as part of any deficit-cutting deal – which generally means new taxes or fees adamantly opposed by Republicans.

They bashed GOP plans to remake Medicare and simultaneously insisted compromise would be reached and acknowledged that the hardest work remains to be done.

With Wednesday’s landing of Endeavour, just one more space shuttle flight remains, putting an end to 30 years of Florida shuttle launches and more than 535 million miles of orbits controlled at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. Now a sense of melancholy has permeated the community that calls itself “the space shuttle family.”

George Mueller, the man considered “the father of the space shuttle,” explained why he’s not going to watch the final launch next month.

A U.N. team that traveled to the village 11 days after the April 23 killings saw more than two dozen corpses and said grass-roofed mud huts clearly contained many more bodies, but the toll of 254 dead civilians from a local official has not been independently verified.

The three U.N. reports obtained by The Associated Press are the first accounts of mass civilian casualties in the southern village of Kaldak caused by soldiers from Southern Sudan. One report was labeled “Confidential & Sensitive Information,” another was “UN RESTRICTED,” and the third had no apparent classification.

The semifinals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee needed 95 minutes of overtime Thursday to whittle the competitors from 41 to 13. Those remaining were to return in a few hours for the prime time finals, with the winner receiving more than $40,000 in cash and prizes.

“There were, like, one or two words I’m glad I didn’t get, but the ones that I got were fairly easy,” said 14-year-old Joanna Ye of Carlisle Pa., who was able to say that with a straight face about her words “brachygraphy,” “pinetum,” “rocaille” and “hypotrichosis.”

The statement marked Gen. David Petraeus’ latest attempt to ease President Hamid Karzai’s anger over civilian casualties. Karzai exploded in rage after a recent air attack that killed at least nine civilians in Helmand province in the south.

After that attack, Karzai ordered the U.S.-led coalition to stop bombing homes because too many civilians were being killed. It was Karzai’s strongest-ever statement against NATO alliance airstrikes and further complicated a difficult relationship with the Obama administration as it prepares a troop drawdown in the increasingly unpopular war.

What started as street demonstrations calling for reforms has evolved into demands for Assad’s ouster in the face of a violent crackdown, especially in Syria’s south and agricultural center, where the challenge to his family’s 40-year-rule is seen as strongest. In the city of Rastan on Thursday, a resident who fled said troops swept through making arrests.

“We have become refugees in our own country,” said the Rastan resident, who said he slept in the woods to avoid capture. He was reached by telephone and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “My family and sisters are still there, and I don’t know how they are doing.”

But Seth Calagna, 21, and Spencer Ondirsek, 20, likely will not see payouts from the judgment anytime soon, said Alamo’s attorney John Wesley Hall Jr.

“Tony Alamo Christian Ministries doesn’t have that kind of money,” he said. “Never has. Never will.”

The case of Alaa “Alex” Mohammad Ali, a former Army translator in Iraq, challenges the notion that courts-martial only have authority over members of the armed forces. But it also runs up against complaints that using U.S. civilian courts to prosecute contractors working with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq has been largely ineffective, and trying them in local courts often has not been possible.

Ali, an Iraqi-Canadian, was prosecuted by the military after an altercation in Iraq during which he allegedly stole a U.S. soldier’s knife and used it to stab another translator. He pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

Instead, the 84-year-old said she watched along with firefighters and police from the shore as he stood in the frigid, neck-deep water for about an hour before his body went limp.

“I can’t even walk. I am too old,” Berry told the Oakland Tribune, recounting her stepson Raymond Zack’s death on Monday in the waters off Alameda. “But if I could, I would have tried to help him myself.”

Facing a balance-of-power showdown and frustration among rank-and-file lawmakers, the leadership pursued an alternative to anti-war Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s proposal to end U.S. involvement in the conflict, according to Republican and Democratic congressional officials. A vote on the issue was postponed on Wednesday, and officials in both parties said it was because Kucinich’s legislation was gaining ground.

The leadership planned to present the alternative at a Thursday meeting of House Republicans. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters he expected the issue to be resolved by Friday.

Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee charged that President Barack Obama added to the woes of the Gulf region by giving BP PLC, the owner of the well, the lead role in responding to the crisis. They also said the administration erred in imposing a moratorium on deep water drilling.

Democrats countered that the spill spurred new safety regulations that ensure there will never be a repeat of the April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers.

When the 91-year-old World War II veteran died in February after a cancer battle, his body tissue was dissolved using heat and lye, turning it into a liquid that could be poured down a drain and a dry bone residue given to relatives, who plan to scatter it when they plant a tree in his honor.

His family in Ohio saw it as a more environmentally friendly option than cremation and a fitting choice for a progressive-thinking guy who used to gather aluminum cans and cardboard for recycling.

The labor force – those who have a job or are looking for one – is getting smaller, even though the economy is growing and steadily adding jobs. That trend defies the rules of a normal economic recovery.

Nobody is sure why it’s happening. Economists think some of the missing workers have retired, have entered college or are getting by on government disability checks. Others have probably just given up looking for work.

“They should change it to `Union Hotel’,” said the nearly toothless jazz musician, who sleeps on the street. “If you have to pay to stay there, it’s not a mission. A lot of people are getting turned away.”

For decades, four missions have given out “three hots and a cot” for free in downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row, where 4,000 down-on-their-luck people cram a 50-block area to form the nation’s densest concentration of homeless people. The overflow from the shelters – nearly 1,000 people – spills nightly onto urine-stained sidewalks in a bedlam of tents, cardboard boxes and sleeping bags.

The Department of Education has finalized its “gainful employment” rule, which will ban for-profit schools like DeVry University or Apollo Group Inc.’s University of Phoenix from accessing federal financial aid dollars if too many of their graduates are unable to find jobs that pay enough to allow them to afford their student loan payments. If graduates owe too much relative to their income, or too few former students are paying back their tuition loans on time, schools stand to lose access to Pell grants and federal student aid. Such a loss would seriously crimp schools’ ability to attract students.

“These new regulations will help ensure that students at these schools are getting what they pay for: Solid preparation for a good job,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Thursday. “We’re giving career colleges every opportunity to reform themselves but we’re not letting them off the hook, because too many vulnerable students are being hurt.”

Bekric, now 32 and living in Florida, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he was shocked but satisfied to hear of Mladic’s recent arrest on charges of orchestrating the bloodshed that wounded him and killed thousands of his countrymen.

“Years have passed by. We have lost our loved ones and they will never return to us,” said Bekric, whose father was killed during the war and whose sister was gang-raped. “When you go through the horror that we went through and losing our loved ones through horrible crimes, you’ll never have closure.”