Evening Edition

Activists who spoke to AFP in Cyprus disputed the official account, speaking instead of a mutiny in the town of Jisrash Shugur, where security forces had been carrying out operations for three days.

“The armed groups are committing a real massacre. They have mutilated bodies and thrown others into the Assi river,” the state broadcaster said. “They have burned government buildings.”

“His excellency is making a strong recovery and will return home in the coming days,” Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi said at a meeting of the ruling General People’s Congress, quoted by Saba state news agency.

Hadi said he had spoken to Saleh by telephone.

Saleh, hurt by an explosion as he prayed at a mosque inside the presidential compound, is convalescing in Riyadh after undergoing two successful operations on Sunday as thousands took to streets in Sanaa to celebrate his departure.

A youths’ committee which has been a key player behind an uprising against Saleh’s nearly 33 years of autocratic rule called on Monday for immediate steps to ensure a power transfer.

Royal Air Force Tornado and Typhoon warplanes hit the military intelligence HQ in Tripoli early on Monday, Major General Nick Pope, spokesman for the Chief of Defence Staff, said in London.

“The strike complemented other allied air missions conducted against other key regime targets in Tripoli during the course of last night,” he said in a statement.

The violence raises major doubts over Iraqi security capabilities ahead of a year-end deadline for the US pullout, with Washington pressing Baghdad to decide soon whether or not it wants an extended American military presence.

“Five US service members were killed Monday in central Iraq,” said a brief US army statement. The names and details of the deceased are being withheld until next of kin can be informed, it added.

The IMF said economic growth was shrinking but gave firm backing to the year-old coalition government’s austerity programme, despite domestic calls for the pace of the cuts to be slowed.

In its annual report on the British economy, the IMF said weak economic growth and a rise in inflation over recent months had been “unexpected” and raised the question “whether it is time to adjust macroeconomic policies”.

The probes were carried out on a farm in the northern state of Lower Saxony after regional agriculture minister Gerd Lindermann said a link had been found to the main areas hit by the E. coli outbreak.

Results available from 23 of the 40 samples of seeds, water, ventilation and work surfaces tested indicated they were free of the bacteria responsible for 23 deaths and more than 2,000 people falling ill, the state’s agriculture ministry said.

The state agriculture ministry of Lower Saxony in northern Germany said it would issue results of the latest tests carried out at a small local organic farm suspected of producing the contaminated sprouts later Monday.

Klaus Verbeck, who runs the farm in Bienenbuettel, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Hamburg, told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung he uses no fertilisers for growing a variety of sprouts and had no idea how they might have been contaminated.

New York’s main contract, WTI light sweet crude for delivery in July, finished the trading session at $99.01 a barrel, a loss of $1.21 from Friday’s closing level.

In London, Brent North Sea crude for July delivery shed $1.36 to settle at $114.48 a barrel.

The hosts, at stumps on the fourth day of the second Test, were 149 for two in their second innings — a lead of 156 — with Alastair Cook 61 not out.

Cook, under skies brightened by the Lord’s floodlights, helped England recover from none for one after Strauss’s exit and together with Jonathan Trott (58) put on 117 for the second wicket.

Humala, a 48-year-old former lieutenant colonel who just lost out in the 2006 election, would win between 52.5 and 52.7 percent, according to polls from CPI, Ipsos-Apoyo and Datum institutes as voting closed at 4:00 pm (2100 GMT).

Humala’s rival, populist right-wing lawmaker Keiko Fujimori, 36, would win between 47.3 and 47.5 percent, the pollsters showed.

“We’ve won the elections in Peru,” Humala shouted over a cheering crowd of supporters in central Lima late Sunday, many waving red and white Peruvian flags, as final results trickled in.

Official results showed his slight lead over his right-wing rival Fujimori creep upwards after quick counts by three polling companies predicted it would be between two and 4.4 percent.

Unease is growing within Papandreou’s ranks about the consequences of waves of budget cuts demanded under successive deals with the European Union and IMF — and this could turn into alarm after at least 80,000 Greeks crammed a central Athens square to vent their anger over the nation’s dire state.

As the government struggles to prevent Greece from defaulting on its debt, the Socialist cabinet began discussing the medium-term economic plan which will impose 6.4 billion euros of extra savings in the rest of this year alone.

Humala claimed victory on Sunday night as results from 89 percent of ballot boxes gave him a narrow but growing lead of more than 2.7 percentage points over right-wing lawmaker Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori.

Exit polls and quick counts from Sunday’s election put Humala clearly ahead and his lead in the official returns was expected to grow as more votes came in from poor, rural areas.

A tenuous truce was holding in Sanaa after two weeks of fighting between Saleh’s forces and a powerful tribal federation which killed more than 200 people and forced thousands to flee.

Saleh’s exit to regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, could facilitate efforts to prise him out of power after nearly 33 years in charge of the Arab world’s poorest country.

Klaus Verbeck, managing director of the “Gaertnerhof Bienenbuettel,” told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung that no fertilizers are used to produce his bean sprouts and that there are no animals on his organic farm.

German officials said on Sunday his bean sprouts could be behind an E.coli outbreak that has killed 22 and made more than 2,200 people ill across Europe. The farm has been shut, produce recalled and further test results are due on Monday.

PSD’s convincing victory on Sunday — with 39 percent of the vote — ended months of political uncertainty following the collapse of the minority Socialist government in March when it failed to pass its latest austerity package in parliament.

Submerged in an acute debt and political crisis, Portugal received a 78-billion-euro bailout last month from the European Union and IMF, whose terms include higher taxes, spending cuts and privatizations that will weigh on the economy.

Communications were cut to the area around Jisr al-Shughour on Monday and the details of the attack were impossible to verify, but there have been unconfirmed reports in the past by residents and activists of Syrians fighting back against security forces and even mutinous troops.

Adnan Mahmoud, the chief government spokesman, acknowledged that Syrian forces had lost control of some areas for “intermittent periods of time” and promised that the army would restore security in the area.

Backtracking for the second time in a week, officials Monday said preliminary tests have found no evidence that vegetable sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany were to blame.

The surprise U-turn came only a day after the same state agency, Lower Saxony’s agriculture ministry, held a news conference to announce that the sprouts appeared to be the culprit in the outbreak that has killed 22 people and sickened more than 2,330 others across Europe, most of them in Germany, over the past month.

A long-studied archaeological site in a mountainous region between Europe and Asia was occupied by early humans as long as 1.85 million years ago, much earlier than the previous estimate of 1.7 million years ago, researchers report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Early human Homo erectus is known to have occupied the site at Dmanisi later. Discovering stone tools and materials from a much earlier date raises the possibility that Homo erectus evolved in Eurasia and might have migrated back to Africa, the researchers said – though much study is needed to confirm that idea.

The company also announced new software to make Mac computers behave more like mobile devices and Apple’s mobile devices more like rival smartphones.

Jobs received a standing ovation as he appeared at Apple Inc.’s annual developers’ conference, his second major public appearance since he went on medical leave in January for unspecified reasons and duration.

Once the No. 3 Republican in the ranks of the Senate GOP leadership, Santorum charged that Obama has worked to undermine Americans’ liberties and has imposed a national health care plan that saps individual choice. He accused Obama of spending billions of dollars that will add to the debt of future generations and said the president lacks faith in the nation’s potential.

“I’m ready to lead. I’m ready to do what has to be done for the next generation, with the courage to fight for freedom, with the courage to fight for America,” Santorum said, speaking the sun-splashed steps of a county courthouse in western Pennsylvania. “That’s why I’m announcing today that I’m running for president of the United States of America.”

Then there’s the 2011 recovery.

The U.S. economy is moving ahead, however fitfully. Yet state and local governments are still stuck in recession. Short of cash, they cut 30,000 jobs in May, the seventh straight month they’ve shed workers. Rather than add to U.S. economic growth, they’re subtracting from it.

A return by Saleh would likely spark new, intensified fighting between his forces and opposition tribesmen determined to topple him. Both sides’ fighters are deployed in the streets of the capital, and a cease-fire brokered by Saudi Arabia only a day earlier was already starting to fray, with clashes killing at least six.

Saleh was rushed late Saturday to the Saudi capital for treatment after being wounded in a rocket attack on his palace amid two weeks of fighting in Sanaa. His departure raised cheers from protesters who have been turning out in the streets by the hundreds of thousands since February demanding his ouster. To them, it seemed inevitable he would be unable to come back.

The attack follows warnings from Shiite militants backed by Iran and anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that they would violently resist any effort to keep American troops in Iraq past their year-end deadline to go home.

Although American casualties have dropped considerably in the two years since U.S. troops pulled back from Iraq cities, Shiite militias have begun hammering U.S. bases and vehicles with rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs over the past three months.

Since the uprising started in mid-February, rebels have seized control of much of the country’s east and scrambled to set up an administration in their de facto capital of Benghazi. Rebels also hold the western city of Misrata and smaller towns in the western mountains.

Both sides have taken prisoners in the fighting.

Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi ruled last month that Republican lawmakers violated Wisconsin’s open meetings law when they met without proper public notice to revise Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s bill stripping public employees of most of their collective bargaining rights.

State attorneys have asked the Supreme Court to step in, overturn Sumi’s decision and declare the law in effect. They say the judge lacked the authority to insert herself into the legislative process and stop the law from taking effect.

The protesters will retell the story of the 7,500 to 10,000 unionizing coal miners who fought for principles that helped shape today’s U.S. labor laws – and, they hope, keep Blair Mountain from becoming just another barren, flat-topped strip mine.

Much of the coal-rich mountain is owned by two energy companies fighting efforts to put it on the National Register of Historic Places. Such a designation wouldn’t automatically stop mining, but it could complicate and slow down the review process.

So on Friday, their attorney showed up at a branch office in Naples with a moving truck and sheriff’s deputies who had a judge’s permission to seize the furniture if necessary. An hour later, the bank had written a check for $5,772.88.

“The branch manager was visibly shaken,” attorney Todd Allen said Monday, recalling the visit to the bank last week. “At that point I was willing to take the desk and the chair he was sitting in.”

Three tribal nations also will receive federal money under the EPA’s “brownfield” program, which is designed to spur growth in cities where contaminated industrial and commercial sites have been a drag on the economy while contributing to joblessness and crime, agency officials said.

The grants will help “make our communities cleaner, healthier and more prosperous places to raise a family and start a business,” Jackson said during a news conference near the site of a former power plant in Lansing that a previous grant helped restore. An insurance company turned the historic brick building towering over the Grand River into new offices, saving Art Deco touches and attaching a new glass office building.

The instrument doesn’t belong to Nidalis Burgos. It is on loan from her school, where the seventh-grader packs it up each weekday to bring it home.

She practices anywhere she can – in her bedroom, in the kitchen, on her back porch so she can hear the sound reverberate off the brick apartment buildings that line the alley. Usually, she warms up with “Ode to Joy,” her mother’s favorite song, and a fitting theme for a girl who truly seems to love playing.

To a large degree, the couple is stuck. While the American information technology consultant and Venezuelan pet groomer wed at a romantic Connecticut ceremony last year, the federal government won’t recognize the marriage between the two men – and as a result, won’t approve their application for a green card.

But the couple, and others facing a similar predicament, are still trying. The men don’t expect to actually obtain a green card any time soon and have already been shot down once but hope filing an application might convince an immigration judge to at least refrain from deporting Benshimol while the fiery legal debate over the country’s same-sex marriage laws simmers.

Responding to soaring tuitions and sagging graduation rates, a conservative policy foundation and Republican Gov. Rick Perry have stirred a tempest on Texas campuses by questioning whether college professors are making good use of their state money and suggesting an assortment of efficiencies. The foundation, for example, is asking whether there’s a need for more critiques of Shakespeare and other esoteric research that doesn’t generate money.

Academics and politicians don’t get along in the best of times. But with tuition increasing and budgets tight, the so-called “Seven Breakthrough Solutions,” created by the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, has opened a new debate over the balance between academic freedom and reasonable cost-benefit analysis.