Evening Edition

Evidence to back the theory has often been contested as sketchy or anecdotal — but the case has been boosted by the first scientific study to declare an unmistakeable link between climate fluctuations and violence.

It says tropical countries affected by the notorious El Nino weather event are twice as likely to be hit by internal unrest compared to the phenomenon’s cooler, wetter counterpart, La Nina.

As the United Nations called a meeting to discuss the unlocking by backers of the insurgency of billions of dollars of Libyan assets, donor countries were meeting in Qatar.

Meanwhile, Washington said Libya’s stockpile of weapons of mass destruction had been secured and that it was confident the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) could set up governing structures after overrunning Tripoli.

China has ramped up efforts to produce anti-ship missiles that could knock out aircraft carriers, improved targeting radar, expanded its fleet of nuclear-powered submarines and warships and made advances in satellite technology and cyber warfare, the Pentagon wrote in an annual report to Congress.

The weapons buildup comes as the Asian economic giant places a growing priority on securing strategic shipping lanes and mineral-rich areas in the South China Sea.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon revised the government’s growth forecast for 2011 downwards to 1.75 percent from 2.0 percent, but said the measures would trim next year’s public deficit to 4.5 percent of GDP.

“Our country cannot live beyond its means for ever,” the centre-right premier announced, laying out supplementary budget proposals drawn up in response to the eurozone sovereign debt crisis.

Moody’s said it was cutting Japan’s government bond rating to Aa3 from Aa2, citing the “large budget deficits and the build-up in Japanese government debt since the 2009 global recession”.

It is the first time since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that a major ratings agency has downgraded Japan’s sovereign debt. Moody’s said the outlook was stable.

The unprecedented accident raised concerns over the reserves of the six crew members on board the station and clouded the future of an ISS programme that relies almost exclusively on Russia following the retirement of US shuttles.

Both Russian officials and NASA said the ISS team — which besides three Russians includes two US astronauts and a spaceman from Japan — had at least two months of supplies and would not require an emergency evacuation.

The guidelines, believed to be among the most stringent in the world, won praise from animal rights activists, although the zoo association said that its primary concern was the working conditions of elephant handlers.

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which accredits 73 US zoos with elephants, concluded in a study that handlers are at greater risk the more time they spend in unrestricted space with the animals.

A day after rebel forces overran his Tripoli headquarters and trashed symbols of his 42-year rule, scattered pockets of loyalist diehards kept the irregular fighters at bay as they hunted Gaddafi and his sons. Rebels also reported fighting deep in the desert and a standoff round Gaddafi’s tribal home town.

In Tripoli, rockets and gunfire kept two million civilians indoors. Most were anxious but hopeful the war would soon end, and with it worsening shortages of food, water and medical supplies — both for hundreds of wounded and for the sick.

The tiny Gulf Arab state, which sought to establish itself as a force independent of regional power Saudi Arabia following a bloodless coup in 1995, stuck its neck out among Arab states to support the rebels and the NATO air operation.

Qatar was one of the first countries to recognize the rebel’s National Transitional Council (NTC) as the legitimate authority in Libya and supplied rebels with water, weapons, more than $400 million in aid, and gave help with selling and marketing Libyan oil.

The rule now applies to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who Reuters reported on Monday has retained Weingarten, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson in Washington.

With that move, Blankfein becomes the latest in a long line of executives and high-profile people in trouble who have turned to Weingarten for help. They range from Tyco corporate counsel Mark Belnick, for whom Weingarten won an acquittal, to ex-Enron accounting officer Richard Causey, who pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy, to film director Roman Polanski, who tapped Weingarten to fight extradition to the Unites States for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Enbridge did not name the companies that have agreed to long-term shipping deals on Northern Gateway, a line aimed at opening up new crude markets for Canada’s vast oil sands region in northern Alberta, but it said they included producers as well as players in Asian markets.

The company, whose pipelines carry the bulk of Canadian oil exports to the United States, filed the agreements with the National Energy Board, which is scheduled to start hearings on Northern Gateway in January.

The company said several aftershocks were felt but had no impact on the plant, 80 miles southwest of Washington, which canceled its emergency alert on Wednesday afternoon.

“There will be an extensive walk-down, including inside the containment (vessel) once both units are in cold-shutdown,” said Joey Ledford, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s regional office in Atlanta.

Reynolds American Inc’s R.J. Reynolds unit, Lorillard Inc, Liggett Group LLC and Commonwealth Brands Inc, owned by Britain’s Imperial Tobacco Group Plc last week sued the Food and Drug Administration for requiring more graphic health warnings on packages and in advertising.

Last year the Supreme Court ruled corporations had a free-speech right to spend freely to support or oppose federal candidates. In June it struck down a law barring use of prescription drug records for marketing and ruled it infringed on commercial free-speech rights of data-mining companies.

The accident occurred about five minutes after a Russian Progress rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9 a.m. EDT, due to an apparent failure of the rocket’s upper-stage motor.

A similar system is used on the Russian Soyuz rockets which, since the retirement of NASA’s space shuttles last month, are now the sole means to fly crew members to and from the station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations.

Laboratory mice bred to produce low levels of this protein — known Niemann-Pick C1 — survived exposure to both Ebola, which causes a hemorrhagic fever, and its cousin, Marburg virus.

“This research identifies a critical cellular protein that the Ebola virus needs to cause infection and disease,” said Sean Whelan of Harvard Medical School, who worked on one of two studies published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Hurricane Irene is on a course that will take it up the East Coast from the weekend. While there is still uncertainty about where it will hit and when, the forecast models increasingly suggest some parts of the greater New York area will face some type of storm or hurricane impact.

According to New York City’s Office of Emergency Management, the last hurricane to pass directly over the city was in 1821 — and it caused tides to rise 13 feet in one hour, flooding all of lower Manhattan to Canal St.

While pockets of die-hard loyalists kept up the fight to defend Gadhafi, his support was crumbling by the hour, and even his foreign minister said his 42-year rule was over.

Asked by the British broadcaster Channel 4 if a negotiated settlement or safe passage for Gadhafi from Libya were still possible, Foreign Minister Abdul Ati al-Obeidi said: “It looks like things have passed this kind of solution.”

The Obama administration has been trying for more than two weeks to get the Security Council committee that monitors sanctions against Libya to unfreeze the assets, but diplomats said South Africa objected. In the committee, agreement of all 15 council nations is required.

To overcome the opposition, the United States decided to introduce a resolution before the full Council, which does not need a unanimous vote.

In a report released Wednesday, the Pentagon said Beijing has closed critical technological gaps and is rapidly modernizing its military equipment, all with an eye toward preventing possible U.S. and allied intervention in a conflict with Taiwan. It also warns that the military expansion could increasingly stretch to the western Pacific in a move to deny U.S. and allies access or movement there.

“The pace and scope of China’s sustained military investments have allowed China to pursue capabilities that we believe are potentially destabilizing to regional military balances, increase the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation and may contribute to regional tensions and anxieties,” said Michael Schiffer, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia.

A day after the East Coast’s strongest earthquake in 67 years, inspectors assessed the damage and found that most problems were minor. But the shaking raised questions about whether this part of the country, with its older architecture and inexperience with seismic activity, is prepared for a truly powerful quake.

The 5.8 magnitude quake felt from Georgia north to Canada prompted swift inspections of many structures Wednesday, including bridges and nuclear plants. An accurate damage estimate could take weeks, if not longer. And many people will not be covered by insurance.

The rocket failed barely a month after NASA’s final space shuttle flight.

While the International Space Station has more than enough supplies, the accident threatens to delay the launch of the next crew, just one month away. That’s because the upper stage of the unmanned Soyuz rocket that failed is similar to the ones used to launch astronauts to the station.

The case is expected to influence the way eyewitness identification of suspects are handled, and not just in New Jersey.

The ruling is being closely watched because New Jersey has long been at the forefront in identification standards. In 2001, the state became the first to establish police guidelines for lineups designed to prevent mistaken suspect identifications. Other states followed suit.

The panicked superintendent dialed 911, sending police and the FBI rushing to the building near Rutgers University on the afternoon of June 2, 2009. What they found in that first-floor apartment, however, was not a terrorist hideout but a command center set up by a secret team of New York Police Department intelligence officers.

From that apartment, about an hour outside the department’s jurisdiction, the NYPD had been staging undercover operations and conducting surveillance throughout New Jersey. Neither the FBI nor the local police had any idea.

Dan Whitney of Shell Exploration and Production Co. said his industry needs a stable regulatory environment and one in which numerous companies can lease public land for research projects.

Researchers noted their need for funding and suggested a specific program focused on Western oil shale.

They’ve witnessed a turbulent stock market, a downgrade of U.S. credit, a spreading European debt crisis and a U.S. economy that seems to be running in place.

And now many say they’re even more hesitant – a retreat that could further delay a rebound in housing. It could hold back the overall economy, too.

Towers Watson also found in its July survey that another one in five companies are unsure about what they will do after 2014. Another big benefits consultant, Mercer, found in a June survey of large and smaller employers that 8 percent are either “likely” or “very likely” to end health benefits after the exchanges start.

The surveys, which involved more than 1,200 companies, suggest that some businesses feel they will be better off dropping health insurance coverage once the exchanges start, even though they could face fines and tax headaches. The percentage of companies that are already saying they expect to do this surprised some experts, and if they follow through, it could start a trend that chips away at employer-sponsored health coverage, a long-standing pillar of the nation’s health system.

Attorneys for WMI, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. accused Washington Mutual’s official equity holders committee and a group of investors who purchased certain securities of trying to block confirmation of the plan in order to win concessions from other creditors.

The proposed reorganization plan is based on settling lawsuits that pitted Washington Mutual, the FDIC and JPMorgan against one another after the FDIC seized WaMu’s Seattle-based flagship bank in 2008 and sold its assets to JPMorgan for $1.9 billion in the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

The settlement means Google will not face criminal prosecution for accusations that it improperly profited from ads promoting Canadian pharmacies that illegally imported drugs into the United States, Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha said. It is the first time an Internet search engine is being held responsible for the illegal distribution of drugs.

“It sends a clear message to both Google and to others that contribute to America’s pill problem that they will be held to account for endangering the health and safety of the residents of this district and to persons all across the United States,” said Neronha, who described the forfeiture as one of the largest in U.S. history.