Evening Edition

The failed launch of the unmanned Progress capsule on a Soyuz-U rocket was a spectacular blow for Russia which proudly became the sole nation capable of taking humans to the ISS after the July withdrawal of the US space shuttle.

Emergency services blocked access to the site of the crash in the Altai region of Siberia, state television said, amid fears the space freighter could have dumped highly-toxic fuel in the area.

Meanwhile diplomatic efforts were launched at the United Nations and in Qatar by backers of the insurgents to secure the unlocking of billions of dollars of Libyan assets for the rebels.

Washington for its part 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.

The device went off in the evening as dozens of people were gathered after breaking the day’s fast. Like the rest of the Muslim world, Pakistan is observing the holy month of Ramadan, when the faithful fast from dawn to dusk.

The bomb was planted on a bicycle parked in the front courtyard of the hotel in the town of Nowshera, police said.

Ingvar Kamprad, the 85-year-old Swedish billionaire who founded and still largely controls furniture giant Ikea, confessed in the 1990s that he had had links to the Nazi youth movement during World War II, when Sweden was neutral, describing it as the “greatest mistake of my life.”

He has always described the decision as the “folly of youth,” but a book published this week by journalist Elisabeth Aasbrink quotes Kamprad in an interview last year still hailing the Swedish fascist leader Per Engdahl.

“Bank of America is a strong, well-led company,” Buffett said in a statement released by BofA.

“I am impressed with the profit-generating abilities of this franchise, and that they are acting aggressively to put their challenges behind them.

“The cross-breeding wasn’t just a random event that happened, it gave something useful to the gene pool of the modern human,” said Stanford University’s Peter Parham, senior author of the study in the journal Science.

Equipped with knowledge of the genome of the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, of whom a tooth and a finger bone were discovered in a Russian cave last year, researchers scoured the data for hints of what genes crossed over.

Senna, previously the team’s test and reserve driver, was promoted in a move that saw him oust experienced German Nick Heidfeld, a 34-year-old veteran of 183 Grands Prix and the outfit’s lead driver and leading points-scorer this season.

Senna said his immediate future with Renault was guaranteed only for Belgium and the Italian Grand Prix at Monza next month.

Rumors of Gaddafi or his sons being cornered, even sighted, swirled among excitable rebel fighters engaged in heavy machinegun and rocket exchanges. But two days after his compound was overrun, hopes of a swift end to six months of war were still being frustrated by fierce rearguard actions.

Western powers demanded Gaddafi’s surrender and worked to release frozen Libyan state funds, hoping to ease hardships and start reconstruction in the oil-rich state. But with loyalists holding out in the capital, in Gaddafi’s coastal home city and deep in the inland desert, violence could go on for some time, testing the ability of the government in waiting to keep order.

Two days after rebels stormed the compound that was the seat of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule and forced him into hiding, most of Tripoli was free of violence but chaotic.

But even in districts that had seemed calm, fierce gunfights broke out suddenly, underlining the fact the rebels’ grip on security in this city is still fragile.

Comments by Pentagon and State Department officials highlighted Washington’s sensitivity toward any perceived shift in NATO’s military mission in Libya toward direct involvement in regime change.

NATO’s mission, as authorized by the United Nations, is to protect Libyan civilians — not take out Gaddafi, even as he becomes the focus of the apparent final chapter in the rebel overthrow of his regime.

Youths blocked roads, threw rocks and set fire to piles of trash at some intersections in Santiago and other cities to block traffic. Police used water cannon and tear gas to defuse the latest rash of social unrest against the conservative billionaire Pinera’s policies.

The government said hundreds of people had been detained since Wednesday and several police officers badly wounded — two of them shot — as violence flared overnight when dozens of shops and supermarkets were looted and buses damaged.

Now some of those same farmers, tired of falling victim to wild price swings, have taken the unique step of learning the complexities of derivatives trading to hedge their risk.

Native Nahuatl speakers from more than 60 small villages growing coffee on tiny plots around the picturesque town of Cuetzalan pool their cash to buy options contracts to cover their production, around 6,900 60-kg bags of coffee a year.

Several negatives contributed to the market’s weakness after three days of gains. Jitters over a sharp drop in German stocks and a report showing continued U.S. job market weakness helped fuel the selling.

Stocks rose earlier this week, partly on expectation the soft U.S. economy could trigger another round of monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve, much like the one suggested by Bernanke at the same conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a year ago.

After two rounds of bond purchases that have pumped $2.3 trillion into the banking system, the Federal Reserve could buy long-term Treasury debt while selling short-term securities it already holds.

The idea, outlined by Bernanke in July, would be to lower long-term interest rates without increasing the money supply. That in theory could spur home purchases by lowering benchmark rates for mortgages. It could also make it cheaper for companies to borrow so they can buy more equipment.

Harrisburg — a city of 50,000 about 100 miles west of Philadelphia — is one of a handful of U.S. cities and counties that have teetered toward economic collapse in the wake of the 2007-’09 recession.

A news report on Thursday saying the city may miss a September 15 debt payment caused a brief sell-off in the stock market.

Bank of America shares rose nearly 26 percent at one point, but gave up most of those gains by early afternoon, closing 9.4 percent higher at $7.65. Trading was so heavy that, at one point midday Bank of America shares made up nearly 13 percent of the composite volume for the entire stock market.

Buffett and Bank of America said he made an unsolicited call to the bank on Wednesday morning offering to make an investment. Buffett told CNBC the idea came to him while taking a bath and the deal was done in 24 hours.

Buffett is buying preferred shares with ample warrants thrown in as a sweetener– a deal not available to the general public.

“Bank of America won’t sell them to Joe Blow. They only will sell them to a guy named Warren Buffett,” said Jeff Matthews, a fund manager in Greenwich, Connecticut and the author of the book “Secrets in Plain Sight: Business and Investing Secrets of Warren Buffett.”

This week a trio of opinion surveys showed Romney trailing Texas Governor Rick Perry, who jumped into the 2012 race less than two weeks ago and generated a blaze of mostly favorable publicity.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist, has been the nominal front-runner among Republicans so far, partly reflecting his name recognition after finishing second to John McCain in his 2008 run.

The average one-year life span of the eastern lubber might seem lackluster, but the distinctive black grasshopper relatives make quite a splash as they gorge their way in locust-like clouds across the Southeast.

Marion Humphreys, 54, wasn’t prepared for what he witnessed on a recent Sunday in downtown Mobile, Alabama.

The battle for the Abu Salim neighborhood, which rebels appeared to have won by sundown, was part of their struggle to take complete control of Tripoli, four days after they swept into the capital and sparked the collapse of Gadhafi’s regime. Even though they have captured the leader’s compound and seized most of the city, the rebels know they cannot declare a full victory in the 6-month-old civil war as long as Gadhafi has not been captured or killed.

There was no sign of the leader or his sons, despite rumors that swirled around the battlefield that they may be hiding inside some of the besieged buildings.

The bullet-ridden bodies of three Gadhafi soldiers in military uniforms lay on the ground outside a fire station in the battle-scarred Abu-Salim neighborhood and a few bodies of rebel soldiers were wrapped in blankets nearby. The sewers ran red with blood.

Deafening explosions of outgoing mortars and the whistle of sniper fire filled air clogged with smoke from burning buildings and weapons fire. A mother ran out of one the buildings under siege, screaming for first aid for her wounded son. Behind her, the building’s glass windows were shattered and black smoked poured out of a burning apartment. Amid the din, the call to prayer wafted out from neighborhood mosques.

The country has been under intense international pressure to sweep away the draconian measures now that more than two years have passed since the government’s victory in its bitter civil war against separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

The emergency laws, which Parliament had extended every month, had allowed the government to detain suspects without trial, displace residents from their land and set up ubiquitious military checkpoints.

Economists say a major new program is unlikely. But Bernanke will likely lay out the Fed’s options for lowering long-term interest rates even further.

His speech comes at a pivotal moment for the U.S. economy. Growth has slowed. Stock prices have been gyrating. Europe is struggling to contain a spreading debt crisis. And analysts have been reducing their forecasts for growth this year and next.

The poll finds conservative tea party activists, who favor shrinking government and lowering taxes, have lost support, Republican House leader John Boehner is increasingly unpopular and people are warming to the idea of not just cutting spending but also raising taxes – anathema to the Republicans – just as both parties prepare for another struggle with deficit reduction.

To be sure, there is plenty of discontent to go around. The poll finds more people are down on their own member of Congress, not just the institution, an unusual finding in surveys and one bound to make incumbents particularly nervous ahead of next November’s elections.

That may change soon, however, as events shift the contest to a higher gear. September will bring several GOP debates that will include Texas Gov. Rick Perry for the first time, as well as renewed attention to the question of how to create desperately needed jobs.

The former Massachusetts governor may be pushed out of his comfort zone even sooner if Perry’s fast rise seems real and lasting.

In a letter, O’Malley said 248 of Boston’s priests and two deacons have been accused of child sex abuse since 1950. But he said he decided against releasing 91 of the names, including the deceased priests who weren’t publicly accused; those working in Boston under religious orders or other dioceses; and priests named in unsubstantiated accusations that never went public.

Each of the 159 names published Thursday has been made public previously, though not necessarily by the archdiocese. They include still-active priests who were cleared of abuse after being publicly accused.

Speaking to reporters in New York, commissioner Raymond Kelly acknowledged that the Central Intelligence Agency trains NYPD officers on “trade craft issues,” meaning espionage techniques, and advises police about events happening overseas. Kelly also said he was unaware of any other U.S. police department with a similar relationship with the CIA.

“They are involved in providing us with information, usually coming from perhaps overseas and providing it to us for, you know, just for our purposes,” Kelly said.

There are those that spent huge sums on themselves, those that cannot account for the money they received, those that have few results to show for their spending and those that have yet to file required income tax returns. Yet many of the charities continue to raise money in the name of Sept. 11.

One charity raised more than $700,000 for a giant memorial quilt, but there is no quilt. Another raised more than $4 million to help victims, but didn’t account publicly for how it spent all of the money. A third helps support a 9/11 flag sold by the founder’s for-profit company.

Prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Monti Belot to set aside Lazare Kobagaya’s visa fraud conviction and dismiss a charge of lying during his citizenship application. Jurors earlier this year found that Kobagaya, 84, of Topeka lied on immigration forms about where he was at the time of the genocide, but said the government did not prove he took part in the atrocities. They hung on the second count related to lying on his citizenship application.

In their motion, prosecutors said that they have identified a potential issue with the jury instructions and witness information that likely would warrant a new trial even on the single count for which Kobagaya was convicted.

The newer grandparents are mainly baby boomers who are still working, with greater disposable income. Now making up 1 in 4 adults, grandparents are growing at twice the rate of the overall population and sticking close to family – if their grandkids aren’t already living with them.

Grandparents in recent decades have often filled in for absent parents who were ill or battled addiction, or were sent to prison. The latest trend of grandparent involvement, reflected in census figures released Thursday, is now being driven also by the economy and the graying U.S. population, including the 78 million boomers born between 1946 and 1964 who began turning 65 this year.

The shuttles were awarded in April to museums in suburban Washington, Los Angeles, Cape Canaveral, Fla., and New York, based on recommendations by a special NASA team and a decision by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former shuttle commander.

Congressional and local officials for two of the losing cities – Houston and Dayton – had asked for an investigation, alleging political influences in the bidding process.