Evening Edition

A monk at the flashpoint Kirti monastery in a mainly Tibetan area of Sichuan province named Phuntsog set himself on fire on March 16, the third anniversary of protests in Lhasa and neighboring areas against Chinese rule.

His death triggered a fresh clampdown by authorities nervous about renewed anti-government unrest.

National Transitional Council (NTC) chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil told reporters in the rebel stronghold Benghazi Tuesday that the respite was offered to mark the three-day Eid al-Fitr Muslim feast which follows the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

“This window of opportunity will be closed at the end of Eid al-Fitr (Friday in Libya),” Abdel Jalil said, adding that talks were under way with officials in towns including Kadhafi’s birthplace Sirte to arrange their peaceful surrender.

France and Germany are still waiting for a green light to free more than $8.6 billion in assets that they seized as part of UN action against strongman Moamer Kadhafi, who is now on the run, diplomats said.

The UN secretary general appealed to the Security Council to give urgent consideration to requests for money by the Libyan rebel National Transitional Council (NTC).

“The Libyan ambassador and his staff decided to renounce their allegiance to the government of Colonel Kadhafi. This act deprives the Libyan ambassador and his staff of any diplomatic status in Zimbabwe because Zimbabwe does not recognise the TNC,” Mumbengegwi told journalists.

“So it is in this context that the Libyan ambassador and his staff are required to leave Zimbabwe within the next 72 hours.”

“Aisha gave birth very early this morning. She had a little girl. Mother and daughter are doing fine,” said a government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Earlier Tuesday, foreign ministry spokesman Amar Belani insisted that Aisha, her brother Hannibal, their mother Safiya, Kadhafi’s second wife, and the fugitive leader’s eldest son Mohammed were allowed into the country “for strictly humanitarian reasons.”

The Kremlin has refused to join Western powers in celebrating the rapid sweep into Tripoli by NATO-backed rebels and has also shown no sign of recognising the National Transitional Council as the legitimate authorities.

But such caution — a traditional hallmark of Russian foreign policy — may prove damaging from Russia in a new Libyan order that remembers who its friends were at times of bitter war.

Guma al-Gamaty’s assertion comes after the rebel National Transitional Council’s justice minister Mohammed al-Allagy told reporters in Tripoli that Libya would not “give any Libyan citizen to the West”.

Al-Gamaty said that once a suspect for the 1984 killing of Yvonne Fletcher is identified, they should face justice, either in Libya or elsewhere if an agreement could be struck.

The sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department are the third in a series of punitive US measures placed on Assad and top government officials and follow calls by US President Barack Obama for Assad to step down.

Asset freezes and bans on business interactions were imposed on Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, top presidential advisor Bouthaina Shaaban, and Syrian ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdul Karim Ali, the Treasury Department said.

The suspects, who have been involved in recent anti-China protests and other activities, were rounded up in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and the north-central province of Nghe An, Le Quoc Quan told AFP.

The eight, all of them belonging to the minority Catholic faith, have been formally arrested for “activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s administration”, he said. They include Paulus Le Van Son, a blogger.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland would not confirm the authenticity of the latest documents, but said “the United States strongly condemns any illegal disclosure of classified information.

“In addition to damaging our diplomatic efforts, it puts individuals’ security at risk, threatens our national security and undermines our effort to work with countries to solve shared problems,” Nuland told reporters.

Both countries were unhappy with ElBaradei’s “unhelpful” response to Iran’s nuclear program, but the bid to prevent his re-election to the nuclear regulatory agency’s leadership ultimately failed for lack of international support.

The February 18, 2005 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks Tuesday opens a window into the effort, describing a lunch conversation between Australian officials and a US special envoy for nuclear non-proliferation, Jackie Sanders.

The groups called on Barclays, Standard Bank and other banks with ties to Zimbabwe to audit their local partners for evidence of involvement in the sale of gems from the Marange diamond fields, which have been restricted since 2009 under the Kimberley Process, the international “blood diamond” watchdog.

The call comes as the groups, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), released what they say is a leaked document from the parastatal Mineral Marketing Corporation (MMC) of Zimbabwe offering to sell more than $200 million (138 million euros) in illegal Marange diamonds through three Zimbabwean banks.

Only 63.8 percent of homes in England will be owned by their occupiers in a decade’s time as more and more people are locked out of the housing market, according to the National Housing Federation (NHF). The figure represents the lowest level since the mid-1980s.

The agency said huge deposits, high house prices and strict lending criteria had combined to leave millions unable to climb onto the property ladder.

A spokesman for the Japanese-owned company said operations in highly automated areas like welding and painting had restarted — but no cars had rolled off the assembly line since Monday.

The Japanese-controlled company has demanded that workers sign a “good conduct” pledge before allowing them back into the Manesar plant in the northern state of Haryana.

As anti-Gaddafi fighters converged on his birthplace Sirte from east and west, Libya’s interim council gave the loyalists holed up there a four-day deadline to surrender or face a bloody end.

“By Saturday, if there are no peaceful indications for implementing (a negotiated surrender), we will decide this matter militarily. We do not wish to do so but we cannot wait longer,” council chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil said.

Along with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem, the Treasury Department action targets Bouthaina Shaaban, a top political adviser and spokeswoman for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Syria’s ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdul Karim Ali.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters the United States had imposed the sanctions on the three because of the “role that they play in propagating and advancing the reign of terror that Assad is exacting on their own people.”

The victims, who included a 13-year-old boy, were killed in the towns of al-Hara and Inkhil in southern Deraa province.

Demonstrations broke out elsewhere across the country, notably in Damascus suburbs, the city of Homs, 165 km (100 miles to the north) and the northwestern province of Idlib, the sources said.

Ignazio Visco, deputy director-general of the Italian central bank, said growth was likely to be under 1 percent in 2011 and even weaker in 2012 and warned that market tensions remained high, despite government austerity measures.

“The problems of economic growth are perceived as a strong limit to the ability to rebalance the finances of our country,” Visco told a hearing of the Senate budget committee.

The announcement ended any hope that Britain’s BP would be able to revive its deal with state-owned Rosneft to develop the same Arctic territory. That deal was blocked in May by the billionaire partners in another BP Russian venture.

For Exxon, the agreement gives the biggest oil company access to substantial reserves in Russia, the world’s top oil producer. For Rosneft, it’s about bringing in one of the few companies capable of drilling in the harsh, deep waters of the Arctic.

Asked about working with the New Democrats, Liberal leader Bob Rae said Liberals needed to focus on rebuilding into a strong fighting force that occupied the center and would be able to grow the economic pie.

“The problem I have with NDP polices is quite clear,” Rae, himself a former New Democratic premier of Ontario. “They always take the pie for granted.”

Tuesday’s data kept alive concerns the United States could slide back into recession, spurring investors to buy government bonds on bets the Federal Reserve would try harder to push down borrowing costs.

The private-sector Conference Board said its index of consumer attitudes sank to 44.5, from a downwardly revised 59.2 in July. The August reading was the weakest since April 2009, when the country still languished in recession, while the drop was the largest since October 2008.

One sign of worry is the increasing reluctance of banks to use their balance sheets to facilitate trades, which has hit sectors from corporate bonds to the short-term repurchase market, where there is $1.6 trillion in triparty loans.

For example, banks have reduced activity in the intra-dealer Treasury repurchase agreement market by 63 percent since the end of June, according to Barclays Capital.

Before settling on a promise to keep rates near zero at least until mid-2013, the Fed examined an array of policy options to shore up a flagging recovery, including tying the path of interest rates to either unemployment or inflation.

“Participants noted a deterioration in labor market conditions, slower household spending, a drop in consumer and business confidence and continued weakness in the housing sector,” according to minutes from the central bank’s August 9 meeting released on Tuesday.

Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank and a noted policy dove, said he favored strong central bank accommodation “for a substantial period of time,” since the economy now looks to be moving “sideways.”

But Naryana Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, speaking separately on Tuesday, stopped well short of signaling support for further easing, showing he remains firmly on the hawkish wing of the Fed’s policy-setting panel.

As Obama puts the finishing touches on a speech next week on his ideas for reviving the jobs market and the economy, he is facing rising pressure from Democrats to push for aggressive measures even if those proposals are likely to be declared dead on arrival by Republicans in Congress.

Supporters are calling on him to steer clear of an overly cautious approach and spell out an economic vision that will frame his argument for re-election in 2012.

According to the Census, local and state governments had 203,321 fewer full-time equivalent employees in 2010 than in 2009 and 27,567 fewer part-time employees.

Most local governments cut full-time jobs in 2010, with the biggest decline in Rhode Island, where the workforce shrank 7.7 percent. Those in North Dakota, one of few states to go through the 2007-09 recession unscathed, added jobs in 2010, with its full-time workforce growing 7.5 percent in 2010.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck in Manhattan said he would enter an order approving the outline of Lehman’s plan and send it to creditors for a November 4 vote, overruling a handful of objections from corporate creditors.

The disclosures in the plan outline are “abundant and adequate as to the issues in this too-big-to-fail enterprise,” Peck told a packed courtroom.

The company, seeking bankruptcy court permission to let creditors vote on its plan, reached new settlements with affiliates in Singapore and the Netherlands, Lehman lawyer Harvey Miller said at a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing.

It still faces objections from Fidelity National Title Insurance Co, Mason Capital Management LLC, Centerbridge Credit Advisors LLC and others, Miller said.

Challenges by the Federal Housing Finance Agency and others were filed as investors who bought securities covered in the settlement faced a Tuesday deadline over whether to intervene in the case, which is overseen by New York State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Kapnick in Manhattan.

Some of the challenges were filed simultaneously in federal court, where some of the objectors hope to move the case.

Bank of America shares fell more than 20 percent on August 8, the day the lawsuit was filed, adding to worries about the stability of the largest U.S. bank. It wasn’t until Warren Buffett stepped up with a $5 billion investment that those fears were eased, though hardly eliminated.

The bank made no mention of the lawsuit threat in a quarterly regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission just four days earlier. Nor did management discuss it on conference calls about quarterly results and other pending legal claims.

The U.S. elections will be the most expensive ever, with a total price tag of $6 billion or even more, fueled by millions of dollars in unrestricted donations as Republicans and Democrats vie for control of the White House, Congress and state governments.

“It’s safe to say that, given that we had a $5 billion cycle in 2008, it will certainly be more than that and very likely over $6 billion, which is just an astonishing growth rate,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign spending.

HP stunned markets two weeks ago, when it announced it may shed its PC business — the world’s largest after the $25 billion acquisition of Compaq in 2002 — as part of a wrenching series of moves away from the consumer market. Those included killing off the TouchPad tablet computer.

Now, the board of the largest U.S. technology company by revenue is expected to decide before the end of the year whether to hive off its PC arm — which began selling the TouchPad in July — into a separate company, considered the best option for shareholders.

Kenneth Melson, who has been acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives since 2009, was reassigned after admitting mistakes in the sting operation meant to try to crack down on weapons reaching violent drug gangs from U.S. gun stores.

In further fallout from the operation, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, has resigned effective immediately after acknowledging mistakes in the operation. The lead prosecutor on the case, Emory Hurley, has also been reassigned, an Obama administration official said.

Last October, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declined to approve lorcaserin as an obesity treatment, citing research in rats that suggested there could be a cancer risk.

This latest study, reported in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, backs up earlier research showing that lorcaserin can shave off some extra pounds.

“We have a good idea where he is,” a top rebel leader said.

The rebels, tightening their grip on Libya after a military blitz, also demanded that Algeria return Gadhafi’s wife and three of his children who fled there Monday. Granting asylum to his family, including daughter Aisha who gave birth in Algeria on Tuesday, was an “enemy act,” said Ahmed al-Darrad, the rebels’ interior minister.

The dramatic birth of Gadhafi’s granddaughter after her mother and other relatives escaped Libyan territory into Algeria, lends a human dimension to the dictator’s downfall and the ongoing mystery of his whereabouts.

The birth in exile was disclosed by the Algerian Health Ministry on Tuesday.

The three-day holiday marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, a time of introspection that many protesters had hoped would become a turning point in the 5-month-old uprising. Instead, the government crackdown on dissent intensified and the conflict has become a bloody stalemate.

“They can shoot and kill as much as they want, we will not stop calling for regime change,” an activist in Daraa told The Associated Press by telephone, asking for anonymity out of fear of reprisals.

The 66 U.S. service members killed this month eclipses the previous record of 65 killed in July 2010, according to an Associated Press tally. Nearly half the August deaths occurred when insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter Aug. 6, killing 30 American troops, mostly elite Navy SEALs.

Violence is being reported across Afghanistan despite the U.S.-led coalition’s drive to rout insurgents from their strongholds in the south.

Petraeus is bidding an official farewell to the Army on Wednesday and then opening a new chapter as director of the CIA, where he will try to keep up the pressure on al-Qaida and other terrorist groups plotting attacks from havens in Pakistan and beyond. He is to be sworn in as the nation’s spy chief on Sept. 6, less than one week before the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

After a series of six command assignments as a general officer, including three in Iraq, many expected Petraeus would ascend to the military’s top post, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Instead, President Barack Obama asked him to take over at the Central Intelligence Agency as part of a major shuffle of top national security officials that included Leon Panetta moving from CIA director to succeed the retiring Robert Gates as secretary of defense.

Minutes of the Aug. 9 policy meeting released Tuesday show that Fed officials discussed a range of actions, including another round of Treasury bond purchases. Some Fed officials said a weaker economy called for such a step.

Fed officials in the end said they planned to keep rates low until at least mid-2013, assuming the economy remained weak. They also added a second day to their September meeting. That raised speculation that the Fed would announce some further action after that meeting.

Biden said the nation is already trailing China and Germany in green technology. It will trade its dependence on foreign oil for a dependence on foreign clean energy technology if its leaders don’t act to help fledging green researchers and businesses, he said.

“If we shrink from deciding whether we are going to lead in the area of alternative energy, renewable energy, then we will be making the biggest mistake that this nation has made in its history,” Biden said during his keynote speech at the fourth-annual National Clean Energy Summit.

The blast occurred Monday at an oil production site on a private ranch, about 40 miles northeast of Casper.

It came as the men worked on a fuel line supplying a heater treatment facility that separates oil from water as the substances are pumped from the ground, said Dennis Neill, spokesman for Samson Resources Co. in Tulsa, Okla.

The five-member National Transportation Safety Board voted that substandard welds and other problems dating to the 1956 installation of a Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s gas transmission line beneath San Bruno, Calif., were the direct cause of the accident. The board also said the company’s inadequate inspection program for pipelines, which allowed the bad welds and other weaknesses to go undetected, helped cause the accident.

Contributing to the accident was lax oversight by state and federal regulators, the board said. Among the problems with government oversight was a lack of federal or state regulations on testing for older pipelines to detect defections, the board said.

“I support training. But I need a job!” declared Linda Overbey, 54, an unemployed union painter who became the first of a three people escorted by uniformed Las Vegas police from the otherwise polite hearing at the Opportunity Village Ralph and Betty Englestad campus.

Overbey and about a dozen union members who got up and left after the demonstration inside to set up a picket line outside, directed their ire at Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev.

“I am a conservative businessman. I spent most of my life outside of politics, dealing with real problems in the real economy,” Romney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars annual convention in San Antonio. “Career politicians got us into this mess and they simply don’t know how to get us out.”

Romney didn’t mention Perry by name during the speech, which comes as national polls show Perry with more support than Romney. For months, Romney has led the pack seeking the GOP presidential nomination.

“It was the worst experience of my life. It was the most devastating experience for the city I was responsible for,” Giuliani told The Associated Press in a wide-ranging interview.

A decade later, the man most connected with 9/11 – earning the enduring moniker of “America’s Mayor” – parlayed his experience into a lucrative security consulting career. But he proved a flop as a presidential contender in 2008, when the heroics of 9/11 didn’t translate into a plausible strategy for winning the Republican nomination. And he says he’s bothered by suggestions that he profited from his 9/11 fame.

The operation, known as Fast and Furious, was designed to track small-time gun buyers at several Phoenix-area gun shops up the chain to make cases against major weapons traffickers. It was a response to longstanding criticism of ATF for concentrating on small-time gun violations and failing to attack the kingpins of weapons trafficking.

A congressional investigation of the program has turned up evidence that ATF lost track of many of the more than 2,000 guns linked to the operation. The Justice Department inspector general also is looking into the operation at the request of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Vermont Emergency Management spokesman Mark Bosma said the helicopters would bring relief to people in a string of small towns where roads and bridges were washed out: Cavendish, Granville, Hancock, Killington-Mendon, Marlboro, Pittsfield, Plymouth, Rochester, Stockbridge, Strafford, Stratton and Wardsboro.

Officials also used heavy-duty National Guard vehicles to reach communities where roads may be passable.

Some 51 “loss of control” accidents occurred in which planes stalled in flight or got into unusual positions from which pilots were unable to recover, making it the most common type of airline accident, according to the International Air Transport Association.

“We’re seeing a new breed of accident with these state-of-the art planes,” said Rory Kay, an airline captain and co-chair of a Federal Aviation Administration advisory committee on pilot training. “We’re forgetting how to fly.”

The drug was approved Friday in the U.S. along with a companion diagnostic test for just a small subset of lung cancer patients. It epitomizes drugmakers’ new strategy of developing very expensive but effective medicines for relatively few patients to replace the blockbusters for the masses now getting competition from generic drugs.

It’s also in the vanguard of long-awaited personalized medicine, in which doctors identify patients with gene changes or variations that fuel their disease and then try to match them with new medicines that specifically target those genes.

For the first time, the network plans to show every event live in some form – even if it’s just raw video streaming online. But the prime-time broadcasts will still use that traditional formula of human-interest features and taped competition.

The man behind that coverage will be someone steeped in the NBC philosophy of packaging the Olympics for a wide audience. NBC announced Tuesday that “Today” executive producer Jim Bell would serve in that role for the 2012 Games.