Evening Edition

Kan’s resignation comes after nearly 15 turbulent months in power during which his response to the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and resulting nuclear plant accident drew fierce criticism and sent his approval ratings plummeting.

“I propose to you that I resign as the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan today,” Kan told party lawmakers on Friday.

“I declare the beginning and assumption of the executive committee’s work in Tripoli,” committee vice-chairman Ali Tahuni told a press conference. “Long live democratic and constitutional Libya and glory to our martyrs.”

Tarhuni, minister of oil and economics in the provisional administration, also named the holders of key cabinet posts including interior minister, information minister and infrastructure minister, as well as the head of security for Tripoli.

Although the military and the State Department sought to distance Washington from the manhunt, current and former officials acknowledged that finding the fugitive strongman was an important priority for US spy agencies.

“It’s a question of getting to him before he tries to form an insurgency against the new government,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

For days he lay unattended, as the hospital had been commandeered by Kadhafi snipers, most of the medical staff had fled in fear, and people around him died by the scores for lack of treatment.

On Friday, he lay on a stretcher inside an ambulance, one of 17 survivors being evacuated by the Red Cross, in too much pain to talk.

A fourth man died Friday in detention, his family told rights groups.

Spurred by calls posted on the Internet, protesters flooded the streets in the north, centre and south of the country, chanting “Bashar, we don’t love you, even if you turn night into day,” according to activists.

“Growth in Sweden will be strongly dampened in the wake of the global debt crisis,” the ministry warned in a statement.

It said the Scandinavian country’s economy was now expected to expand by 1.3 percent next year instead of the 3.8 percent estimated in the spring budget presented in April.

In a long-awaited environmental impact statement on the massive Keystone XL project, which has prompted repeated protests, the US State Department said the pipeline would be safer than most current oil transport systems.

“There would be no significant impact to most resources along the proposed pipeline corridor,” Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones told reporters upon the release of the report.

Shod in cowboy boots and firing off sound bites with the flair of a multiple election winner, the Texas governor now tops several polls after vaulting long-time front runner Mitt Romney.

“Part of this is Perry being the new face in the Republican race — but I think a lot of the Republican primary electorate is looking for a forceful conservative voice,” said University of New Hampshire professor Dante Scala.

The Australian, who is the only man among the leading drivers still without a win this year, clocked a fastest time of one minute and 50.321 seconds to outstrip his nearest rival Fernando Alonso of Ferrari by one-tenth of a second.

“The weather was a little bit up and down today — we got some dry running in, but only around four laps, two laps on the soft tyre and two on the medium,” said Webber.

Heidfeld was ousted from his seat in the team on Wednesday by Brazilian Bruno Senna, nephew of the late legendary former champion Ayrton Senna.

An interim agreement has given Senna an opportunity to race for Renault at both this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix and the Italian Grand Prix next month.

As Heidfeld’s management confirmed they are preparing to take legal action against Renault for breach of contract at a High Court hearing in London, due to be heard on September 19, Boullier went on the attack.

In an exceptional verbal onslaught, he accused 34-year-old Heidfeld of lacking leadership and speed and said he had not become part of the Renault team since being drafted in as an emergency replacement for injured Pole Robert Kubica.

“The revolutionaries control the area, but there are no services, water or electricity,” he said, fleeing an area where bodies still lay in the streets from recent battles.

Libya’s new rulers face vast challenges if they are to convince Abdul Qader, and the wider public, that they can protect and provide for their traumatized people — and prevent any descent into the bloody chaos of postwar Iraq.

Leaders of the National Transitional Council, which has Western support, pressed foreign governments to release Libyan funds frozen abroad, warning of its urgent need to impose order and provide services to a population traumatized by six months of conflict and 42 years of eccentric, personal rule.

But Gaddafi’s long-time allies in Africa, beneficiaries of his oil-fueled largesse and sympathizers with a foreign policy he called anti-colonial, offered the fugitive strongman a grain of comfort and irked the rebels by refusing to follow Arab and Western powers in recognizing the NTC as the legal government.

Cash-strapped rebels will be counting on a quick resumption of foreign investment and oil exports if they manage to consolidate this week’s military gains, including large parts of the capital Tripoli, and take full control of Libya.

Staff from some companies, such as Italy’s ENI, may already be returning, which is essential to a rapid resumption of crude shipments — most likely first from Libya’s rebel-held east.

The snub showed how much influence fallen Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had on the bloc — he was one of its main financiers and presented several African leaders with large sums of money.

The stand was also at odds with the dozens of countries that have announced their recognition of the National Transitional Council, whose fighters ousted Gaddafi from his Tripoli power base this week and forced him to go on the run.

Scottish authorities told Reuters that until late last week they had been in regular contact with alleged former Libyan intelligence operative Abdel Baset al-Megrahi as part of the conditions for his release from a Scottish prison in 2009.

They attribute the loss of contact with Megrahi, who had been serving a minimum 27-year prison sentence for the bombing of Pan Am 103, to chaotic conditions in Libya caused by rebels’ climactic push to oust long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the final casualty toll was likely to be considerable and Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan ordered tighter security around the capital after what he called a “most despicable assault.”

Security sources and witnesses said the car rammed into the building and blew up, badly damaging parts of an office complex where close to 400 people normally work for U.N. agencies.

Police identified the youth as 16-year-old Manuel Gutierrez and said he was shot in the chest as protesters battled authorities overnight in Santiago, in the aftermath of a 48-hour national strike against Pinera marked by violent clashes and sporadic looting.

Local media said the teenager’s brother blamed police for firing the shots during the incident in a modest neighborhood in the south of the capital. Police denied officers were to blame, saying they had not used firearms.

The Ontario Securities Commission said Sino Chief Executive Allen Chan and other officers are apparently responsible for misrepresenting revenue in public filings and keeping bogus accounts.

The tough new stance by the OSC, long criticized as toothless, comes three months after Hong Kong short-seller Carson Block made the initial accusations against Sino.

They represent a shocking new statistic in the world’s most populous country. According to some estimates, a third of China’s population — some 429 million — are overweight or obese, prime candidates for heart disease and diabetes.

It is growing fatter faster than any developing nation except Mexico, with grave implications for the work force and economic growth in the world’s second biggest economy.

At the end of a trip to Asia, Biden also said a final decision had not been made on whether Washington would sell Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan and noted Beijing knew America viewed its one-child policy as “abhorrent.”

Biden made political waves back in the United States when he said in a speech in China that he was not second-guessing the country’s restrictions on parents having just one child.

Bernanke said the Fed had marked down its outlook for U.S. economic growth and announced it would extend its September policy meeting to two days to consider its options. However, he also said the onus for boosting long-term growth prospects lay at the feet of the White House and the U.S. Congress.

“It is clear the recovery from the crisis has been much less robust than we had hoped,” he told an annual Fed conference here.

Gross domestic product rose at an annual rate of 1 percent, the Commerce Department said on Friday, as restocking by businesses and growth in exports proved less strong than initially estimated.

“While confidence indicators have plummeted of late, the most timely hard numbers certainly do not suggest that the economy has fallen back into a recession,” said Harm Bandholz, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Research in New York.

According to a Friday court filing, 11 entities sharing the name Walnut Place want to move the case to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan from the state supreme court in that borough.

They said the case qualifies as a “mass action” because of its size and complexity, making federal court jurisdiction appropriate. The matter has been in state court since June 29.

Randy Babbitt, Federal Aviation Administration administrator, presented Boeing with certification declaring the long-delayed aircraft fit for service at a ceremony under sunny, blue skies in Everett, Washington, north of Seattle.

Boeing will make the first delivery of its plastics-based airplane next month to Japan’s All Nippon Airways Co Ltd <9202.T>. The first Dreamliner will arrive at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on September 28.

The report found that the Keystone XL pipeline by itself would not likely boost output of Alberta’s oil sands because demand for the oil means it will get to the market one way or another.

“Even without it … the oil is going to develop and is going to get to different refineries that are demanding it,” a State Department official said.

The blaze at the Idaho National Laboratory, an 890-square-mile complex with three active reactors in the high desert of eastern Idaho, presents “no known radiological hazard to the public at this time,” lab officials said in a statement.

As the fire grew in size and intensity, the lab on Thursday evening had ordered nonessential personnel to leave a key facility called the Materials and Fuels Complex, where spent nuclear fuel and radioactive wastes are processed. The facility normally is staffed by about 800 workers during the day.

Their LDL levels were in the 300 to 400 range, making them prone to early heart attack and death. Using gene-mapping, Boileau and colleagues at Paris-Ouest Medical School theorized that a gene in a specific area of Chromosome 1 was responsible.

She published her limited findings in the American Journal of Human Genetics the same year, an important step in what may pave the way for the next big breakthrough in treating heart disease.

The contest is taking place largely out of public view, but researchers and industry analysts say excitement is building over the injectable medicines. They work by blocking PCSK9, a protein whose natural function is to preserve levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol in the bloodstream.

Researchers in Paris, Montreal and Dallas, through experiments with thousands of patients that began in 1999, discovered the gene behind PCSK9 and deciphered its function.

The exercises only take about 10 minutes, and can be done without any extra equipment, researchers said. Hamstring strains are the most common injury among soccer players, and “it’s also the injury that takes out the most days from training and matches,” said study author Dr. Per Holmich, from the University of Copenhagen.

The injuries typically happen when players are sprinting and the hamstrings — the muscles that run down the back of the thigh to the knee — extend to prevent the knee from overstretching. That tension while the muscle is extending is known as eccentric contraction. It means very high pressure on the muscles, sometimes for long periods of time, Holmich said. He and his colleagues figured that mimicking that type of pressure in a strengthening exercise might mean the hamstrings were more prepared to deal with high force in practices or matches. The researchers studied 50 professional and amateur men’s soccer teams in Denmark during a full year of practice and play.

Researchers found hemorrhaging in the brain was roughly six times as likely in patients who underwent carotid artery stenting, which inserts a tube into the artery to clear the passage, as in patients who had an endarterectomy, a surgical procedure that scrapes the plaque from the artery.

The findings conflict with previous work showing that stenting appears to be as safe as surgically removing blockages in the artery (see Reuters report of February 26, 2010).

Seven-times world champion Schumacher and Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg were the only drivers in the early session to lap on a dry track before rain set in.

Webber, who was on pole at Spa last year and celebrates his 35th birthday on Saturday, then set the day’s fastest lap of 1:50.321 in the second wet afternoon session, with Schumacher fading back to 11th.

“We have reviewed our performance, our level of motivation and a lot of things through the summertime and I think I had to take some decision to show clearly some new direction,” the Frenchman told reporters at the Belgian Grand Prix.

The team announced on Wednesday that the experienced Heidfeld, who has scored more points than Russian team mate Vitaly Petrov in 11 races, was being replaced by Brazilian reserve Bruno Senna.

As the fighting waned, the International Red Cross in Geneva expressed concern about treatment of detainees on both sides.

Associated Press reporters saw eight wounded men, apparently Gadhafi supporters, who had been abandoned in a bombed out fire station in the Tripoli neighborhood of Abu Salim, scene of ferocious clashes on Thursday. Abu Baker Amin, 24, his right leg broken by a grenade, said he had not received food or water for two days. An emaciated man lay on the floor and pleading for water. Local residents made no attempt to get the wounded to a hospital.

The airstrikes came a day after fierce clashes erupted in the Libyan capital, which remained tense as rebels hunted for the elusive leader and his allies, detaining suspected loyalists and raising concerns about human rights violations.

Rebels were searching Friday for the remnants of pro-Gadhafi forces in Tripoli’s Abu Salim neighborhood, which saw very heavy fighting the day before. The rebels had detained seven men and one woman and loaded them into a pickup truck in a rural area between Abu Salim and the airport, saying Gadhafi forces might be trying to blend in with civilians.

The brazen assault in a neighborhood surrounded by heavily fortified diplomatic posts represented the first suicide attack to target foreigners in oil-rich Nigeria, where people already live in fear of the radical Boko Haram sect. The group, which has reported links to al-Qaida, wants to implement a strict version of Shariah law in the nation and is vehemently opposed to Western education and culture.

While police officers and local officials have primarily bore the brunt of Boko Haram’s rage, now everyone seems to be a target in a nation often divided by religion and ethnicity.

Pinera, who leads Chile’s center-right political coalition, made the call for dialogue as people recovered from a two-day nationwide strike called by the country’s largest union organization. As students, teachers and pot-banging families around the country joined in, the strike turned into a huge protest against his 18-month old government.

Most marchers were peaceful but scattered violence marred the protests, and a 16-year-old boy was shot to death early Friday, allegedly by a police bullet, as officers responded to looting and riots. Nearly 1,400 people were arrested nationwide, and more than 200 police and civilians were injured.

For the first time, government workers’ pensions will be partially paid by a levy imposed on their salaries. Government workers will also take a pay cut of 1.5 to 3.5 percent for two years according to how much they earn.

Opposition parties, which hold a majority in the 56-seat parliament, voted to increase the levy to 3 percent – half a percentage point more than powerful trade unions had conceded in negotiations with Finance Minister Kikis Kazamias.

Bernanke proposed no new steps by the Fed to boost the economy. But at a time when Congress has been focused on shrinking long-run budget deficits, he warned lawmakers not to “disregard the fragility of the current economic recovery.”

Bernanke, who spoke at an annual economic conference in Jackson Hole, left open the possibility that the Fed will take further steps to strengthen the economy. He said its September policy meeting will be held over two days, instead of just one, to allow for a “fuller discussion.”

Party leaders have been looking for a new contender who is strong enough to take on President Barack Obama. As recently as this week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush – again – insisted they weren’t running for president despite urging from supporters.

But an Associated Press-GfK poll released Friday found that Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are coming around to the choices already on the table: About two-thirds are pleased with the party’s presidential field, compared with just half in June. And they’re paying more attention, with 52 percent expressing a “great deal” of interest in the GOP nomination fight – compared with 39 percent earlier this summer – after a period that saw Perry enter the race and Michele Bachmann win a test vote in Iowa, the lead-off caucus state, threatening Mitt Romney’s standing at the top of the pack.

The thousand-page report on the proposed 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline says no significant problems have emerged since a similar report was issued last year.

Calgary-based TransCanada wants to build a massive pipeline to carry crude oil extracted from tar sands in Alberta to refineries in Texas. The pipeline, which would travel through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma, would carry an estimated 700,000 barrels of oil a day, doubling the capacity of an existing pipeline from Canada. Supporters say it could significantly reduce U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

The law limiting teacher-student conversations through social networking sites such as Facebook had been scheduled to take effect Sunday. But Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem issued a preliminary injunction blocking it until at least February, saying the restrictions “would have a chilling effect” on free speech rights.

A couple of hours later, Gov. Jay Nixon said he would ask lawmakers to repeal the restrictions during a previously scheduled special session that starts Sept. 6. Nixon’s request goes even further than the judge’s order, which was confined to private conversations on non-work-related websites. The governor also wants lawmakers to reverse new restrictions on work-related websites and abolish a requirement for schools to develop written policies by January on teacher-student communications.

The Australian clocked 1 minute, 50.321 seconds, with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso second quickest in 1:50.461, and McLaren’s Jenson Button third in 1:50.770.

Heavy rain affected the first practice, and another big downpour arrived nearly one hour into the second session.