Evening Edition

Proposed amendments to “residential surveillance” laws would allow police to hold suspects in secret locations in cases involving national security, terrorism or major corruption, the official Legal Daily said this week.

Residential surveillance is a form of house arrest.

A proposal for a general amnesty was raised in the lower house on Friday, the New Light of Myanmar reported.

“They firmly hope that the president would make (an) assessment and release an order of amnesty,” the newspaper said, without giving further details on who would be included.

Their declaration kicked off two days of campaigning that will culminate in the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) voting on Monday for a new leader, with trade and industry minister Banri Kaieda emerging as a strong contender.

Kan announced his resignation on Friday after less than 15 turbulent months in power, during which his response to the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and resulting nuclear plant accident drew fierce criticism.

Doctors said they were worried about the condition of Anna Hazare as his hunger strike entered its 12th day, saying they would soon decide whether the self-styled Gandhian reformer should continue his protest.

“Today is the 12th day of his fast, his weight has gone down further and there is considerable weakness,” said Dr Naresh Trehan, head of the medical team monitoring Hazare’s health.

Top UN officials, including the world body’s security chief, were due to arrive in Nigeria on Saturday night and rescue workers combed through rubble at the building to ensure no one remained trapped.

Emergency officials visited area hospitals to check on casualties amid calls for blood donations. Dozens were wounded with various degrees of injuries, and a doctor at the national hospital called the situation “overwhelming.”

The Pakistani military blamed what it claimed was inaction by Afghanistan and NATO in the latest flaring of tensions between the neighbours.

“The Afghan charge d?affairs was called in today at the foreign ministry to lodge a protest on attacks from Kunar and Nuristan,” foreign office spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported the United States and Israel are monitoring Syria’s suspected weapons of mass destruction, fearing chemical agents and long-range missiles could fall into terrorist hands.

In the latest bloodletting, one demonstrator was killed and 10 hurt when club-wielding security forces attacked a group of people leaving prayers at the Rifai mosque in the capital’s western quarter of Kafar Susseh, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

As insurgent leaders moved into Tripoli to begin a political transition, the African Union called Friday for that process to be “inclusive”, while the UN human rights chief warned against assassinating Kadhafi, whose whereabouts are unknown and who has a $1.7 million rebel price on his head.

On the ground, the rebels claimed a new military success Friday with the capture of Ras Jdir, a post on the border with Tunisia, which it was feared Kadhafi might use to escape Libya.

The Wallabies have not lifted the southern hemisphere crown since John Eales’s team won in 2001, while the All Blacks have dominated the Australians this decade and are chasing their 11th Tri-Nations crown.

The fierce rivals enter the final game in Brisbane tied on nine points, but the All Blacks have the better points differential and enjoyed a commanding 30-14 victory in Auckland three weeks ago.

Australia boosted their hopes of a third World Cup success in New Zealand next month, with a spirited three tries to two victory after dominating 20-3 at half time.

The Wallabies have not lifted the southern hemisphere crown since John Eales’s team won in 2001.

The defending world champion and current series leader drove his Red Bull to the 24th pole of his career on a day that also saw Lewis Hamilton emerge unscathed after an ugly incident involving Pastor Maldonado.

Venezuelan Maldonado appeared to steer his Williams deliberately into the side of Hamilton’s McLaren as they came out of the La Source hairpin at the end of Q2, and after the chequered flag.

The race to select Japan’s sixth leader in five years is shaping up as a battle between allies and critics of party powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, a 69-year-old political mastermind who still wields clout despite facing trial on charges of misreporting political donations.

The successor to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who resigned on Friday as Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) leader after months of criticism of his response to the March tsunami and the nuclear crisis it triggered, faces a mountain of challenges.

The 74-year-old Anna Hazare has tapped a groundswell of public anger against endemic corruption, uniting the country’s bulging middle-class against a hapless political class and underlining voter anger at Singh and the ruling Congress party.

India’s parliament Saturday backed landmark anti-corruption legislation, meeting Hazare’s key demands. Tens of thousands of mostly urban and wired voters across India will claim victory in an unprecedented movement that may usher in a new force in Indian politics and hit the ruling Congress party hard in crucial state elections next year.

The campaign to get the legislation passed by 74-year-old Anna Hazare has struck a chord with millions of Indians tired of endemic corruption, sparking nationwide protests and exposing the ruling Congress party as out-of-touch with voters.

Lawmakers from the ruling Congress party and the main opposition agreed in principle to Hazare’s three key demands for the bill during a fractious special session of parliament, but cautioned that the legislation would take time to be resolved.

The warning came as Syria’s closest ally Iran said Damascus must listen to the “legitimate demands” of its people, but also said that any change in Syria’s ruling system or power vacuum in Damascus would be dangerous for the Middle East.

“The Interior Ministry calls on citizens not to respond to social Internet sites to participate in rallies or assemble in public squares in Damascus. This is for their safety,” a statement by the ministry published on official media said.

The Syrian government has spent five months trying to crush street unrest using troops and tanks, killing at least 2,200 protesters according to the United Nations.

“There has been an agreement in talks held between the Arab states on … pressuring the Syrian regime to completely stop the military operations and withdraw its forces,” the delegate to the 22-member Arab League’s council told Reuters.

Opposition figures and activists fear the successful use of force to topple Gaddafi may encourage Syrians to follow Libya’s example. Syrian protests have been mainly peaceful but there have been increasing reports of attacks on security forces.

Upheaval in Syria would affect its allies and enemies in the volatile Middle East, and a softening in rhetoric from Arab countries this week indicated they might still be prepared to support President Bashar al-Assad if he implements reform.

Authorities put the death toll at 19 in Friday’s attack, when a car slammed through security gates of the United Nations offices in the capital, crashed into the basement and exploded, sending vehicles flying and setting the building on fire.

“I and all Nigerians are shocked,” Jonathan told reporters and emergency workers at the charred U.N. building. “We will work with the U.N. and other world leaders to ensure that terrorism is brought under control.”

Pakistan’s support is crucial to U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, but cross-border raids have raised tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent months.

Soldiers of the Chitral Scouts and police were among the dead in the string of attacks that began with an assault on paramilitary check posts in the border village of Arandu in the Chitral district just across from Afghanistan’s Nuristan province.

Obama’s preference to tackle foreign threats via painstakingly built international partnerships has been dubbed by critics as a doctrine of “leading from behind.”

“Leading from behind assumes that there is someone to be behind,” said Anthony Cordesman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The stench of decomposing bodies and burning garbage hung over the city as it faced a potential humanitarian catastrophe due to collapsing water and power supplies, shortages of medicine and no effective government.

The rebels now in control of most of Tripoli vowed to take Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte by force if negotiations with loyalists in one of their last strongholds there failed.

“Developments this summer have indicated we are in a dangerous new phase,” International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Saturday at an annual conference hosted by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.

“The stakes are clear; we risk seeing the fragile recovery derailed. So we must act now,” she said.

Schaeuble was quoted telling the Tagesspiegel am Sonntag newspaper he was confident deputies in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition would pass the measures on the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) on September 23 without having to rely on opposition votes.

“We’ve got to find a reasonable balance between the EFSF and the understandable needs of parliament to have a say in the concrete work on the EFSF so that the markets don’t have any doubts about Europe’s ability to act,” Schaeuble said.

Traders juggling European debt worries and soft economic data are now staring at satellite images, tracking the path of Hurricane Irene, expected to hit New York over the weekend.

The unusually large storm traveled up the U.S. East Coast on Friday, threatening 55 million people, and was expected to cause billions of dollars in property damage.

But as the storm moves up the U.S. East Coast, it is presenting a greater flooding risk than some had expected. With the overwhelming majority of flood insurance in the United States written by the government’s National Flood Insurance Program, that storm surge could turn out to be a huge headache for Washington at a time of deficit-cutting pressure.

Catastrophe modelers say Irene caused up to $1.1 billion in insured losses just in the Caribbean, and depending on the storm’s track in New England some have said losses north of $10 billion are possible.

Google TV, which allows viewers to mix Web and television content on TV screens via a browser, has received lukewarm reviews and been blocked by the major U.S. networks since its launch in the United States in October.

Schmidt told the Edinburgh television festival its lack of success so far was partly because it was a feature designed into televisions, devices which consumers tend to replace only about once every five years.

The two-day-old 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,” the lab said in a statement.

As the lightning-sparked fire had grown in size and intensity on Thursday evening, about 90 nonessential personnel were ordered out of a facility used for processing spent nuclear fuel and radioactive wastes.

In a wet and eventful session, the 24-year-old German secured Red Bull’s 13th pole in a row and his ninth of the season.

Vettel’s Australian team mate Mark Webber, celebrating his 35th birthday with a new one-year contract, will line up third and alongside Ferrari’s Brazilian Felipe Massa.

Gadhafi was the Brother Leader, the Guide of the Revolution, the King of Kings of Africa. He had no need for an effective government.

Now, a motley assortment of rebels who have forced Gadhafi from power must move fast to create what modern Libya never had, from the rule of law to an inclusive political system. It’s a tall order, but the alternative could be similar to post-Saddam Iraq.

When rescue came this week, Matthew VanDyke told Associated Press on Saturday, he did not at first believe his ordeal was over.

A crowd wrestled open his Libyan jail cell after six months of tortuous solitary confinement. He feared an angry mob that believed he was a CIA spy. It was rebels and prisoners breaking the 32-year-old from Baltimore out of Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison, he told Associated Press Saturday.

Controlling the road from the Tunisian border to Tripoli would help ease growing shortages of fuel and food, particularly in the battle-scarred capital. Mahmoud Shammam, information minister in the rebels’ transitional council, said the rebels already control most of the road, but that regime fighters are shelling it in the area of the city of Zwara, midway between Tripoli and the Tunisian border. Rebels had captured the border crossing known as Ras Ajdir, the gateway to the road to Tripoli.

“We hope to be able to control the road today,” he told reporters.

Now Moammar Gadhafi is on the run in Libya, but chasing after him is a much smaller and less well-equipped force of Libyan rebels. They’re trying to track down a fugitive who, like Saddam, is well-armed, well-funded and capable of winning popular support and sowing instability simply by evading his pursuers.

If the rebels fail to find Gadhafi quickly as they battle to take his hometown of Sirte, they could face more than just a protracted manhunt. His continued evasion could fuel a Gadhafi-led counterinsurgency that bolsters his mythic status and stymies attempts by the rebels’ fledgling government to bring stability and basic services to the country.

The 5-month-old uprising in Syria has left Assad with few international allies – with the vital exception of Iran, which the U.S. and other nations say is helping drive the deadly crackdown on dissent.

Saturday’s comments by Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi were a subtle shift in tone toward comprise by Tehran, which encouraged the Assad regime to answer to its people while reiterating its support for its key ally. Most previous comments focused on a “foreign conspiracy” driving the unrest.

President Goodluck Jonathan stepped through shattered glass and past dried pools of blood at the damaged building as U.N. employees salvaged printers, computers and all they could carry to keep the mission running. The U.N.’s top official in Nigeria promised humanitarian aid would continue to flow through the world body to Africa’s most populous nation, even though the Boko Haram sect – which claimed responsibility for the attack – views it as a target.

“I think it gives us more strength to continue helping the population,” said Agathe Lawson, the U.N.’s acting resident coordinator in Nigeria.

The 74-year-old Anna Hazare had demanded sweeping legislation to create a government watchdog, but said Parliament’s move was enough to persuade him to begin eating.

“It’s only a half victory. Total victory is yet to come,” he told thousands of cheering supporters at a protest ground in New Delhi. Hazare, who has lost more than 16 pounds (7.5 kilograms), said he planned to break his fast Sunday morning.

Alexander Ankvab obtained 55 percent of Friday’s vote, Election Commission chairman Batal Tabagua said.

The presidential election is the first in Abkhazia – sandwiched geographically between the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains and caught politically between Russia and Georgia – since Moscow recognized its independence in 2008.

Bush’s comments were included in more than 700 pages of emails released by an attorney who worked on Scott’s transition team. The new emails were recovered from Scott’s campaign manager and give some insights into those trying to influence the new administration. The emails also highlight some tensions between members of the transition team – including exchanges over who had the authority to offer jobs in the new administration.

The emails were written before Scott took office in January but after he was elected. They were released to the media late Friday. They were lost when the private company handling email for Scott’s transition office shut down the accounts. Scott last week ordered an investigation into why the email accounts were shut down and why the public records were deleted in a possible violation of law.

All are important Democratic constituencies that helped him win the White House in 2008 and whose support he’ll need to keep it next year.

An analysis of Associated Press-GfK polls, including the latest survey released last week, shows that Obama has lost ground among all those groups since he took office. The review points to his vulnerabilities and probable leading targets of his campaign as he seeks to assemble a coalition diverse enough to help him win re-election in tough economic times.

For Gillian Caldwell and Louis Spitzer, these things disappeared along with the towers, when terror struck home on a September morning 10 years ago.

Now, a decade later in the lives of this couple, there is a Queen Anne Victorian in a close-knit Maryland suburb with a yard big enough for a dog and seven chickens. And days filled with soccer, karate and school. And lives keenly focused on family and, most of all, love.

But the new mayor says resolution of the case is little consolation for Columbus. The town was defrocked, losing its reputation and sense of trust, and was brought to the brink of financial ruin by its former leaders now being tried in the conspiracy.

And that “is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Nicole Lawson, a former city employee and losing mayoral candidate who was appointed to take the reins after Mayor Eddie Espinoza, former village trustee Blas Gutierrez and police chief Angelo Vega were accused of helping smuggle more than 200 guns into Mexico.

Then a study released in 1979 showed just how close El Paso was to a crisis: At its rate of water use, the city would run dry within 36 years.

Over the next couple of decades the city took drastic measures to stabilize its water supply, undergoing a philosophical and physical facelift that included ripping up grass from many public places, installing rock and cactus gardens and offering financial incentives for residents to do the same.

It sounds crazy, but it’s true: Something would catch his attention out of the corner of his eye – maybe another shopper would make a sudden move for a Hershey bar – and he was mentally and emotionally transported to another world.

World of Warcraft, to be exact.

Getting here legally is the hard part.

Nearly four decades after capricious flood waters were tamed by concrete, the 51-mile river has largely existed as a no-man’s land, a fenced-off, garbage-strewn scar running through the city that serves as occasional set for Hollywood car chases and frequent canvas for graffiti artists. Trespassers risk getting fined for damaging county property.

The defending Formula One champion will start from the front for the ninth time this season. Red Bull teammate Mark Webber, celebrating his 35th birthday and a new one-year contract with Red Bull, secured third place.

Jenson Button’s hopes of following up his win at the Hungarian Grand Prix took a blow as he failed to make the third and final qualifying session, and the British driver will start back in 13th on the grid.