Evening Edition

The ex-Soviet president and Nobel Peace Prize winner said on the eve of the failed plot’s 20th anniversary that Bush had relayed the message in a telephone conversation amid signs of Communist Party discontent with liberal reforms.

The revelation came in a wide-ranging newspaper interview in which the 80-year-old Gorbachev again lamented his inability to save the Soviet empire from disintegration and blasted his democratic rival Boris Yeltsin.

In a barely audible telephone call to state television overnight, a defiant and apparently isolated Gaddafi called on his followers to fight rebels he referred to as “rats.”

Gaddafi’s forces fired mortars and rockets at the coastal town of Zawiyah a day after rebels captured its center in a thrust that severed the vital coastal highway from Tripoli to the Tunisian border, a potential turning point in the war.

Police have so far drawn a blank over the kidnapping that saw Warren Weinstein struck on the head with a pistol and driven off from his home in Lahore by gunmen in the early hours of Saturday.

There has been no claim of responsibility and the most officers have been able to establish is that he was targeted because of his nationality, particularly sensitive in a country with rampant anti-Americanism.

Perry, a popular fiscal and social conservative, will pose a major challenge to both the ultraconservative Bachmann and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a moderate who has until now led the polls.

Meanwhile Tim Pawlenty, a low-key former governor of Minnesota who was hoping for a crucial bump from Iowa’s Ames Straw Poll, dropped out after coming in a distant third behind Bachmann and libertarian congressman Ron Paul.

The start of the third week of a federal discrimination trial saw a representative for one of the lead plaintiffs — the Vulcan Society for black firefighters — testify about a corrosive atmosphere.

Paul Washington, a firefighter captain and former head of the Vulcan Society, said that on several occasions he had overheard white firefighters, who make up about 90 percent of the department, refer to “niggers.”

Bradley’s victory at Atlanta Athletic Club over fellow American Jason Dufner in a three-hole aggregate playoff for the PGA Championship on Sunday completed the first majors sweep in a season since 2003 by first-time winners.

“I think majors especially, but the fields, everybody out here is so good now — from the last guy in to the first guy can win,” Bradley said.

Mubarak is the first head of state overthrown during a wave of uprisings in the Arab world to appear in court and the TV coverage has gripped audiences across the Middle East. A public trial was a key demand of protesters who had camped in Cairo’s Tahrir Square for weeks in July to press for a swift hearing.

“Preposterous!” said Sherif Mohamed, an engineer who was watching the trial outside the court building in Cairo. “The case is necessary for public opinion. Not airing it live means there is a deal with Mubarak.”

But he faced renewed questions over how far his plans to cut government spending may further alienate the young and the poor.

In a speech full of tough language likely to please his traditional Conservative supporters, Cameron vowed more “no-nonsense policing” and tougher sentencing to tackle gang culture and known troublemakers, and said he would to do more to promote families, boost discipline in schools and encourage hard work.

Analysts expect the world’s third-largest economy to rebound in July-September, probably expanding at the fastest rate among major industrialized nations as exports and factory output return to pre-disaster levels. But growing risks to this scenario could strain a depleted arsenal of policy tools.

Gross domestic product fell 0.3 percent in the second quarter, less than a median forecast for a 0.7 percent contraction and a 0.9 percent decline in January-March.

The ECB spent a record 22 billion euros ($31 billion) on government debt last week, to try to halt the spread of the euro zone debt crisis.

Spanish and Italian bond yields, which had soared to dangerous levels, fell back as a result of the central bank’s support, which marked its first bond purchases for 19 weeks.

Manufacturing led the U.S. recovery in the past couple of years, even though it represents only about 12 percent of overall national output, but in recent months growth in the sector has slowed sharply.

The New York Federal Reserve’s Empire State index showed the general business conditions index fell to minus 7.72 in August from minus 3.76 the month before. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a reading of zero.

The 80-year-old “Oracle of Omaha,” one of the world’s three richest men, has taken to the pages of the New York Times to call for higher taxes — yes, higher taxes — for himself and his well-off peers.

“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice,” he said.

After his fund lost investors hundreds of millions of dollars in the credit crunch, Micalizzi quietly moved most of its assets into bonds in late 2008.

These were no ordinary bonds.

The surprising scope and sophistication of the bloodbath suggested that al-Qaida remains resilient despite recent signs of weakness. Such attacks, infrequent as they are deadly, will likely continue long after American forces withdraw from the country.

“This is our destiny,” said Eidan Mahdi, one of more than 250 Iraqis wounded Monday. Mahdi was lying in a hospital bed in the southern city of Kut. One of his eyes was closed shut with dried blood, and burns covered his hands and head.

In Washington, the Obama administration said the U.S. was encouraged by the rebel advances and hoped they had broken a monthslong stalemate with Gadhafi’s forces.

“We are closing the roads for Gadhafi so there is no way for him to bring anything to Tripoli,” a rebel field commander, Jumma Dardira, told The Associated Press.

In neighboring Egypt, Libyan Interior Minister Nassr al-Mabrouk Abdullah flew into the capital Cairo on his private plane with nine family members, Egyptian airport officials said. A Tunisian security official said Abdullah had defected after entering Tunisia by land on Saturday and then flying to Cairo from the resort town of Djerba. He entered Egypt on a tourist visa and was not greeted by any Libyan embassy officials at the airport.

“We had no idea of his arrival, but he was in Tunisia on Sunday,” a Libyan embassy official in Cairo told The Associated Press. He confirmed that Abdullah is the interior minister. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.

The U.N.’s World Food Program acknowledged for the first time that it has been investigating food theft in Somalia for two months. The WFP strongly condemned any diversion of “even the smallest amount of food from starving and vulnerable Somalis.”

Underscoring the perilous security throughout the food distribution chain, donated food is not even safe once it has been given to the hungry in the makeshift camps popping up around the capital of Mogadishu. Families at the large, government-run Badbado camp, where several aid groups distribute food, said they were often forced to hand back aid after journalists had taken photos of them with it.

“I respect all the other candidates in the field but there is no one that can stand toe-to-toe with us,” Perry told The Associated Press in an interview at the start of his first full day campaigning in the leadoff caucus state of Iowa.

Perry also offered his first policy proposal as a candidate, calling for a six-month moratorium on federal business regulations that he said were holding back job growth nationally. He brought the proposal forward just as President Barack Obama traveled to the Midwest for a bus tour and speeches on the economy.

“That’s just not common sense,” Obama told the crowd at a town hall-style meeting in Cannon Falls, Minn., as he kicked off a three-day bus tour through Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.

“You need to take a balanced approach,” he insisted.

A rare books collector says he has obtained a manuscript with new evidence that may give credence to that theory. The 200-page manuscript, “Bandit Invincible: The Story of Butch Cassidy,” which dates to 1934, is twice as long as a previously known but unpublished novella of the same title by William T. Phillips, a machinist who died in Spokane in 1937.

Utah book collector Brent Ashworth and Montana author Larry Pointer say the text contains the best evidence yet – with details only Cassidy could have known – that “Bandit Invincible” was not biography but autobiography, and that Phillips himself was the legendary outlaw.