Evening Edition

German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised the stakes at the weekend, warning that she would attend the emergency meeting on Thursday only if a deal is on the table.

Germany’s insistence on making the private sector share the pain in a new bailout, even if its means causing a Greek debt default, has put Berlin in deep disagreement with the European Central Bank and other eurozone nations.

“The bulk of (Moamer) Kadhafi’s forces have retreated to Ras Lanuf,” rebel spokesman Shamsiddin Abdulmolah told AFP, referring to another oil hub about 50 kilometres (32 miles) to the west.

Abdulmolah added that the remnants of Kadhafi’s troops were holed up among industrial facilities in Brega with supplies dwindling.

At a ceremony in Kabul Petraeus passed the baton to John Allen, a former subordinate who made his name in Iraq by striking tribal alliances considered integral in reversing Al-Qaeda’s momentum after years of appalling violence.

Allen, who was promoted to a four-star general before the handover, becomes the first Marine to serve as head of the US-led war effort in Afghanistan.

“We’re making progress,” President Barack Obama told reporters a day after unannounced talks at the White House Sunday with Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

“The lines of communications are being kept open. But there is nothing to report in terms of an agreement or progress,” Boehner communications director Kevin Smith said after confirming the secret meeting.

Patients with severe dementia showed significantly less agitation when taking ordinary pain medicines than a control group given standard treatment, showed the study, published online by the British Medical Journal.

Extreme aggression and agitation are common symptoms of advanced dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

Local media reported extensively on the reactions of people living in shelters after the March 11 disaster in the northeast destroyed homes, left 21,000 people dead or missing and sparked a nuclear crisis.

Katsuo Mori, a 74-year-old man whose home was washed away by the towering tsunami, told Jiji Press news agency: “This will help brighten the atmosphere at the temporary housing complex. It will boost our efforts to hang on.”

In an opinion piece published by Reuters, Summers — a Harvard professor and former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton — said that if Europe does not get the crisis under control soon, other G20 countries should become more vocal in pressing Europe on doing what they think is best.

“It is to be hoped that European officials can engineer a decisive change in direction but if not, the world can no longer afford the deference that the IMF and non-European G20 officials have shown toward European policy makers over the last 15 months,” Summers wrote.

The quarterly survey of more than 350 economists from all over the world showed a dimmer outlook for most of the rich-world Group of Seven economies since the last survey in April.

Only Germany, booming thanks to buoyant exports, is expected to post growth averaging more than 3 percent this year. Elsewhere, fiscal austerity in Europe and growing debt fears have soured analysts’ sentiment.

French government spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse said she believed the summit of the euro zone’s 17 national leaders scheduled for Thursday in Brussels would agree on a rescue of Greece, supplementing a 110 billion euro ($154 billion) bailout launched in May last year.

But after three weeks of preparatory talks, it was unclear how a consensus could be reached on a way for private owners of Greek government bonds — banks, insurers and other investors — to contribute to the bailout by taking cuts in the face value of their holdings.

While President Barack Obama insists he is focused on a comprehensive long-term deficit reduction deal, debt talks are stalled and there are just two weeks left until the United States runs out of money to pay its bills.

The vast ideological divide between Obama’s Democrats and Republicans over tax increases and spending on popular social programs has driven a shift in focus in Washington to a backup plan that would give Obama responsibility, and potentially blame, for raising the $14.3 trillion limit on U.S. borrowing.

Obama chose a compromise candidate to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray, who is not as recognizable as Wall Street critic Elizabeth Warren but who has his own reputation as a consumer advocate.

Cordray’s nomination is expected to face tough resistance in the Senate, as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his party will demand “serious reforms” to the new agency before considering any nominee to head it.

Petraeus, credited with reversing a spiral toward civil war in Iraq, took over in Afghanistan a year ago after his predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal, was sacked by President Barack Obama for comments made in a magazine story.

He is leaving the military to take over as director of the Central Intelligence Agency as part of a wider shake-up of senior U.S. security officials and takes over from Leon Panetta, the new U.S. defense secretary.

As the head of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit followed Britain’s top policeman in quitting on Monday to fight corruption allegations, Cameron curtailed an already much abbreviated tour of Africa in order to attend an emergency debate on Wednesday in parliament, which delayed its recess.

Though he faces no challenge yet to his leadership, some of his Conservative supporters began to raise the possibility, albeit remote, that Cameron might face pressure to go himself.

Prime Minister David Cameron, feeling the political heat from his own close ties to individuals within Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, cut short his trip to Africa and called an emergency session of Parliament for Wednesday so he could address lawmakers on the scandal.

U.K lawmakers on Tuesday will grill Murdoch, his son James and Rebekah Brooks, the ousted chief executive of Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper arm, in a widely anticipated televised public hearing on the scandal. Lawmakers hope to learn more about the scale of phone hacking by U.K. journalists and who – if anyone – in Murdoch’s empire was aware of what allegedly took place at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid.

The Metropolitan Police said Monday that Alex Marunchak had been employed as a Ukrainian language interpreter with access to highly sensitive police information between 1980 and 2000.

Scotland Yard said it recognizes “that this may cause concern and that some professions may be incompatible with the role of an interpreter” and the matter will be looked into.

The opposition accused the president’s minority Alawite regime of trying to stir up trouble among the Sunni majority to blunt the growing enthusiasm for the four-month-old uprising. The protesters have been careful to portray their movement as free of any sectarian overtones.

The killings over the weekend in the central city of Homs “undermine the peaceful nature of the revolution and serve its enemies who want to turn it into a civil war,” said Rami Abdul-Rahman, the director of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Petraeus, widely credited with turning the tide in Iraq, left to take over the CIA with his signature counterinsurgency strategy having yet to deliver a safer Afghanistan or push the Taliban to reconcile with the country’s Western-backed government.

Allen is known for helping turn Sunni insurgents against al-Qaida in Iraq in one of that war’s most pivotal stages. In Afghanistan, he will be tasked with the overseeing the start of the American troop withdrawal this month even as insurgents step up the violence and attacks on high-profile Afghans, including the assassination last week of President Hamid Karzai’s powerful half brother and the slaying of a close Karzai aid on Sunday.

With pledges spreading like kudzu on the campaign trail, candidates this year are being asked – in some cases, pressured – to profess their fealty to a whole host of positions: supporting marriage, opposing taxes, reducing the deficit, fighting abortion and gay rights and more.

And these aren’t just bland statements of support for broad ideals.

At the same time, President Barack Obama said the two sides are “making progress” after a series of back-channel conversations with Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, with whom Obama met on Sunday morning.

Boehner called the veto threat “unfortunate,” and in a statement Monday said Obama’s threat “should make clear that the issue is not congressional inaction, but rather the President’s unwillingness to cut spending and restrain the future growth of our government.”