Evening Edition

Stung by a second failed marriage and looking for a way to boost his flagging career, the singer-songwriter holed up at home on Long Island and was contemplating a new direction when a friend gave him a tape of South African “township jive”.

A smitten Simon ventured to South Africa to catch up with the musicians, spending weeks recording with them as a global movement gelled against the racial segregation system known as apartheid.

Lieutenant-General William Caldwell indicated that several thousand international trainers could be needed to support the mission until at least 2020 in an interview with AFP.

All foreign combat troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014 in a process that started last month and will require the Afghan army and police to play an ever-greater role in fighting the Taliban insurgency.

In an interview with two US newspapers, Panetta said the Iraqis had made up their mind to extend the presence of American troops beyond the year-end withdrawal deadline.

“My view is that they finally did say, ‘Yes,'” Panetta told Stars and Stripes and the Military Times.

Meanwhile, Russia and Turkey dismissed growing calls led by US President Barack Obama for Assad to quit, offering the embattled Syrian leader rare support despite a damning UN report on his “apparent shoot to kill” policy.

But the European Union was preparing sanctions against Syria’s key oil sector, a European diplomatic source told AFP.

On the shores of Lake Osoyoos, near the border between British Columbia and the US state of Washington, the sun is scorching hot, the nights are cool and the soil is dry — perfect conditions for growing wine grapes.

Canadians have been producing Riesling, pinot noir and cabernet varieties here — one of the country’s two main viticulture regions — for 40 years.

Canada is “well positioned to face global economic challenges despite renewed uncertainty generated by concerns about the US economic and fiscal situation and the continuing debt problems in Europe,” Flaherty told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance.

“Canada is the only G7 country to have regained all the output and jobs lost in the global recession,” he said.

The “West Memphis Three” — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley — were convicted in a 1994 trial marked by local hysteria over allegations that the grisly killings were part of a Satanic ritual.

The three boys — Steve Branch, Chris Byers, and Michael Moore — were found in a ditch, stripped naked and hog-tied. Byers had bled to death after his penis was cut off and the other two had drowned in the muddy water.

“Fifteen days prior to execution, the inmate is asked which execution method he chooses,” explains David Bass at the Greensville Correctional Center.

“He may choose between the electric chair and the lethal injection.” For the most part, Bass says, “they prefer the injection.”

The day before, Perry — who jumped into the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination less than a week ago — slammed scientists who he said had “manipulated data” to show that human activity caused global warming.

While his remarks at campaign stops in New Hampshire may win over his party’s base, they may make him a poor candidate to take on Barack Obama, said John Brehm, a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

A suicide bomber in car blew himself up in front of the gate of the British Council in Kabul before dawn, and another car packed with explosives detonated moments later while four attackers, three of them men clad in the all-enveloping burqa cloak worn by Afghan women, stormed the compound, police said.

Scores of Afghan and NATO troops surrounded a compound strewn with wooden and metal debris while two helicopters hovered on watch above as the fighting progressed over at least eight hours, interspersed by a total of eight blasts.

Sustained blasts from rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and anti-aircraft guns rang out in the center of Zawiyah, a city on the coastal highway 50 km (30 miles) west of Tripoli that the rebels entered this week, in a clash that killed at least two.

As they pushed to consolidate control of the city and its strategic oil refinery, rebels in Zawiyah’s central square exchanged heavy fire with Gaddafi forces holed up inside a nearby hospital before driving them out, Reuters witnesses said.

Most of the violence was in the southern province of Deraa where the uprising against Assad erupted in March, triggering a harsh response in which U.N. investigators say Syrian forces may have committed crimes against humanity.

“Bye-bye Bashar; See you in The Hague,” chanted protesters in the central city of Homs, waving their shoes in a gesture of contempt. “We want revenge against Maher and Bashar,” shouted others, referring to the Syria leader and his powerful brother.

The demand by London’s High Court will shed further light on how widespread the hacking practice was at the News of the World tabloid and add to the pressure on News International, the British newspaper arm of Murdoch’s News Corp.

Glenn Mulcaire was jailed in 2007 along with the paper’s ex-royal correspondent Clive Goodman for illegally accessing the voicemails of royal aides and five other figures including the model Elle Macpherson.

Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said the bloc should issue common euro bonds and expand its bailout fund to calm repeated market selloffs of government bonds and bank shares of vulnerable debtor countries.

Germany has led resistance to both proposals. Belgium’s support for bonds promoted by high-debt nations such as Italy and backed by some European Commission officials will not necessarily tip the balance.

Investors already reeling from big losses in growth stocks were thumped by a dismal outlook from Hewlett-Packard, which dropped nearly 20 percent, its worst day since the stock-market crash of 1987.

It was the latest discouraging event in a month full of bad surprises ranging from the U.S. credit rating downgrade to a sharp slowdown in world growth. The S&P has lost 13.1 percent so far this month — on track for its worst month since October 2008.

But for everyone else not on a ‘stockation,’ watching the markets rise and fall like giant ocean swells has been an unnerving experience that some finance professionals worry could reshape investor behavior for months and years to come.

“Everyone felt this was idiotic,” says Susan Kaplan, president of Kaplan Financial Services, referring to last week’s volatility. “Most clients didn’t want to deal with the markets anymore and went back to their summer vacations,” said Kaplan, whose firm manages about $1.3 billion in customer money.

Investors also appeared to lose confidence in Chief Executive Leo Apotheker after a flurry of HP announcements on Thursday including an $11.7 billion acquisition offer, a shuttering of its mobile efforts and the potential spin-off its PC business.

This was on top of disappointing financial guidance for the third quarter in a row. HP may also be risking future PC sales as its customers could flee to rivals like Dell Inc in the uncertainty, one analyst said.

The killings, which came as thousands poured into the streets across Syria, suggest the autocratic leader is either unwilling to stop the violence – or not fully in control of his own regime.

Assad, who inherited power from his father in 2000, is facing the most serious international isolation of his rule. On Thursday, the United States and its European allies demanded he step down.

The anxiety in the market was obvious Friday as the major indexes went from modest gains early in the day to another sharp loss. The Dow Jones industrial average had its 10th move of more than 100 points this month.

“We just don’t know whether we’re going to have a recession,” said John Burke, head of Burke Financial Strategies.

But the math isn’t so simple.

The number at the heart of the battle cry of the Republicans and their tea party allies – that federal spending has risen to an alarming 25 percent of the economy – is skewed by recession dynamics.

HP will no longer make smartphones and tablet computers and wants to leave the PC business after spending a decade assembling itself into a technology conglomerate by buying such companies as computer maker Compaq Computer for $19 billion in 2002 and smartphone pioneer Palm for $1.8 billion last year.

HP’s stock plunged 20 percent on Friday, a day after the restructuring announcement. That’s a strong signal that investors are doubtful about HP’s ability to thrive without businesses that have helped set it apart from rivals. Even though the PC division that HP wants to sell or spin off is the company’s least profitable, it accounts for nearly a third of revenue.

Rick Anaya, chief executive of the Council for Educational Travel USA, the nonprofit that helped bring the students to the U.S., said the plan emerged Friday after a two-hour conference call with representatives of the other three companies involved in their employment at a chocolate distribution center just outside Hershey.

“We’re actually doing this on our dime,” Anaya said, including paid time off for the student-workers. “We’re paying for this trip. We’re just fleshing out the details.”

President Barack Obama’s summer of discontent has been marked by rumblings within his Democratic political base over his willingness to fight congressional Republicans and his approach to fixing the economy.

Liberals disappointed with Obama for compromising with the GOP during the debt-ceiling showdown now are calling on him to hold firm against Republicans this fall. They want him to push a bold jobs agenda while drawing a strong line on taxes and protecting Medicare and Social Security.

Doubts about the evidence against the trio had persisted for years and threatened to force prosecutors to put on a second trial in 2012.

Instead, the so-called West Memphis Three were permitted to plead guilty to murder in exchange for time served, ending a long-running legal battle that had raised questions about DNA and key witnesses – and attracted support from celebrities such as Eddie Vedder.

The prosecutors filed arguments disputing Clemens’ position that a second trial would violate his constitutional protection against double jeopardy by making him face the same charges twice.

Clemens had argued the showing of the evidence was a deliberate ploy to invoke a mistrial because the prosecutors’ case was going badly. But the prosecutors say their case remains strong and Clemens wants to “gain an unwarranted windfall from this inadvertent error.”

Center Tyler Horn and running back Mike James were the first Miami players to meet reporters since convicted Ponzi-scheme architect and former university booster Nevin Shapiro claimed that he provided money, prostitutes, cars and gifts to some current and former Hurricanes in a story Yahoo Sports published Tuesday.

The NCAA has been investigating Miami for five months, and the school is bracing for the possibility of stiff penalties at some point.