Evening Edition

The forces shaping the deal and the deal itself are multifaceted, and so is the right reaction to it. Mine has a number of elements.

Relief. There will be no first default in U.S. history; no economy-damaging short-run austerity; no attack on the nation’s core social protection programs or on universal health care; and no repeat of the last month’s shabby spectacle for at least 15 months. All of this was in doubt even a week ago as congressional intransigence threatened to make the problem of acceptably raising the debt limit insoluble.

Mubarak arrived at the Police Academy in a Cairo suburb where he is to face trial accused of murder and corruption, shortly after being flown to the Almaza military airport in Cairo.

Television footage showed an ambulance driving up to the courthouse, amid intense security and a heavy army presence.

In a scene that Egyptians would have found unthinkable just eight months ago, the man who ruled them for 30 years was wheeled behind the bars of a courtroom cage in a hospital bed to hear charges that could carry the death penalty.

Mubarak is the first Arab leader to stand trial in person since popular uprisings swept the Middle East this year.

The spectacle, aired live on state television, was a stunning moment for Egyptians. Many savored the humiliation of the man who ruled with unquestionable power for 29 years, during which opponents were tortured, corruption was rife, poverty spread and political life was stifled.

After widespread skepticism that Egypt’s military rulers would allow one of their own – a former head of the air force – to be prosecuted in front of the world, the scene went a long way to satisfy one of the key demands that has united protesters since Feb. 11, when Mubarak fell following an 18-day uprising.

Divisions remained among the 15 nations on the wording of any condemnation of President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on protests and whether it should be a formal resolution or a less weighty statement.

European nations, which agreed to change their draft resolution on Syria following pressure from opponents, said progress had been made. But Russia said there was still not the “required balance” in the new version.

In Washington, a US senator warned the catastrophe could be worse than Ethiopia’s 1980s famine that claimed nearly one million lives and criticised the international community for its inadequate response to the crisis.

The new famine areas designated by the UN include two sites where hundreds of thousands of Somalis have fled in desperate search of food as internally displaced people (IDP).

The Norwegian daily VG published a picture on its website of a van it said had transported the confessed killer, rightwing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, to Oslo police headquarters at around 9:00 am (0700 GMT) for interrogation.

While police prosecutor Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby would not confirm the report, he told a news conference questioning would happen this week and “we can say that what will be central to that interrogation is that it will be more confrontational.”

California-based McAfee said in a report it had identified 72 victims in 14 countries of a sophisticated hacking effort dubbed “Operation Shady RAT,” which it traced back to at least 2006.

McAfee vice president for threat research Dmitri Alperovitch described it as a “five-year targeted operation by one specific actor” but declined to identify the country responsible.

Giulio Tremonti, already battling links to a corruption probe in Italy after admitting making cash payments for rent to one of the probe’s targets, meets Luxembourg Prime Minister Juncker in a downtown hotel at 9:50 am (0750 GMT).

The talks follow a dramatic day on bond markets, when investors sold down Italian and Spanish government debt, firing concerns amid slowing economic growth in the third- and fourth-biggest eurozone economies that could ultimately threaten the euro.

Obama, stuck for weeks in dysfunctional Washington, will seek solace among Democratic supporters and has a first chance to put a political spin on a deal which averted a US debt default but was scored as a defeat for the White House.

Aides also said that Obama would embark on a bus tour through unemployment-riddled midwestern states later this month which could prove crucial in his increasingly complicated bid for reelection next year.

After months of bitter negotiations with his Republican rivals, US President Barack Obama finally signed an emergency bill on Tuesday that averted what would have been a disastrous debt default for the world’s biggest economy.

But in a blistering commentary, China’s official Xinhua news agency ridiculed the US political process and warned that the deal had done nothing to change the country’s addiction to borrowing.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said a surge in Italian and Spanish bond yields to 14-year highs was cause for deep concern although they did not reflect the true state of the third and fourth largest economies in the currency area.

“In fact, the tensions in bond markets reflect a growing concern among investors about the systemic capacity of the euro area to respond to the evolving crisis,” Barroso said in a statement.

World stocks tumbled, with the U.S. S&P 500 stock index falling to a new low for the year as worries grew that fiscal cutbacks and stagnating output would prolong a global economic slowdown and aggravate Europe’s debt crisis.

The vast U.S. services sector expanded at its weakest pace since February 2010, with an index from the Institute for Supply Management falling to 52.7 in July from 53.3 in June. Employment conditions also weakened, boding poorly for a closely-watched U.S. jobs report on Friday.

Taken alongside disappointing data on the manufacturing sector earlier in the week, the services data showed an economy that was frustrating hopes for a rebound in the second half of the year after a very weak first half.

“It looks like this confirms that we are in a bit of a soft patch here,” said Rudy Narvas, senior economist at Societe Generale in New York.

Central banks have less room to ease monetary policy than they did three years ago; cash-strapped governments cannot afford to boost spending as much; and political disarray in some countries may make concerted global policymaking harder.

“What can you do? On monetary policy, clearly no one agrees with anyone. On fiscal policy, everyone is blocked,” said Deutsche Bank economist Gilles Moec.

President Barack Obama and lawmakers from across the political divide expressed relief over the hard-won compromise to raise the country’s borrowing authority after weeks of rancorous partisan battles.

Nevertheless, U.S. stocks tumbled, turning negative for the year, as investors shifted their attention to the increasingly grim state of the U.S. economy and the potential for a downgrade of America’s gold-plated debt rating.

The SNB said on Wednesday it would cut its target rate to “as close to zero as possible” from an already rock-bottom 0.25 percent, and said it would very significantly increase the supply of francs to the money market over the next few days.

It said it would not tolerate the effective tightening of monetary conditions imposed by what it called a “massively overvalued” franc which was threatening economic growth and increasing downside risks to price stability.

Comcast Corp, Time Warner Inc and CBS Corp beat Wall Street forecasts because of a mix of content licensing deals, movie box office receipts and advertising growth.

But shares in Time Warner, parent of CNN, HBO and Warner Bros, fell as much 4.5 percent after Wednesday’s results as investors seemed less than impressed by its marginal increase in its forecast for the year.

Forecasters said the center of the storm was expected to pass over the southwestern corner of the Dominican Republic late Wednesday and is likely to weaken somewhat in the high mountains that divide the country from Haiti. But intense rain poses a threat, said Diana Goeller, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

“This storm has a lot of heavy rainfall with it,” Goeller told The Associated Press. “So in those mountainous areas, there could be very dangerous, life-threatening mudslides or flash floods.”

Marla Cooper of Oklahoma City – who was 8 years old at the time of the hijacking – told ABC News in an interview broadcast Wednesday that she is certain her uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper leaped from a Northwest Orient plane not far from her grandmother’s home in Sisters, Ore. She said she made the connection after piecing together remarks made by her father in 1995 and her mother in 2009. She did not say why she chose to speak out now.

“My two uncles, who I only saw at holiday time, were planning something very mischievous. I was watching them using some very expensive walkie-talkies that they had purchased,” she said on “Good Morning America.”

The result: Our planet was left with a single bulked-up and ever-so-slightly lopsided moon.

The astronomers came up with the scenario to explain why the moon’s far side is so much more hilly than the one that is always facing Earth.