Evening Edition

From New York to Tokyo it was a brutal day for investors as countless billions of dollars were wiped off the value of companies globally.

The 30 firms that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average alone lost $103 billion of their value — or around 3.5 percent — while major indexes in Europe, Asia and Latin America commonly suffered losses of around five percent.

Transport workers, taxi owners, civil servants, air traffic controllers and teachers walked out in protest at planned cutbacks and deregulation demanded by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund after bailing out Greece with a massive loan last year.

“They have already cut two of our monthly wages, they’ve destroyed Greece,” said municipal worker Theoni Valkou, one of some 2,000 protesters who marched through the capital to demand an end to tight austerity.

The measure aims to make it harder for the US Treasury Department to avoid labeling Beijing a currency cheat, triggering various sanctions, while making it easier for US companies to seek retaliatory tariffs on Chinese goods.

China’s leaders “get away with economic murder” by keeping the yuan, and thereby the country’s exports, artificially cheap, charged Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, a key backer of the bill.

An assassin with a bomb strapped under his turban and purporting to be a peace emissary from the Taliban leadership killed Rabbani at his Kabul villa on Tuesday as he clasped him to his chest in greeting.

He was the most senior national leader assassinated in Afghanistan since the 2001 American invasion, depriving President Hamid Karzai of a key Tajik ally in the increasingly fractious world of ethnic-riven Afghan politics.

In a scathing and unprecedented US condemnation of Pakistan, Admiral Mike Mullen said the country’s main intelligence agency ISI was actively supporting Haqqani network militants blamed for an assault on the US embassy in Kabul last week.

“The Haqqani Network, for one, acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan?s Inter-Services Intelligence agency,” Mullen told the US Senate Armed Services Committee.

Experts now suspect that the turban bomber who killed Burhanuddin Rabbani while claiming to bring a special message from the Taliban may not have been sent by the militia’s supreme leader Mullah Omar, or had his approval.

With a range of factions standing to benefit from Rabbani’s death, the lack of clarity on the identity of the assassins fans concern about political instability, ethnic tensions and a nebulous insurgency in Afghanistan.

The trial, long awaited by survivors of the brutal regime, will be divided into smaller sections, beginning with the forced movement of population and the related charges of crimes against humanity, the court said.

The elderly defendants, including “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea and former head of state Khieu Samphan, face a range of charges over the deaths of up to two million people from starvation, overwork, torture or execution during the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-79 reign of terror.

International condemnation flooded in after the southern US state of Georgia put Davis to death by lethal injection late Wednesday, brushing aside doubts about his guilt for the 1989 slaying of a white police officer.

“If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated,” former president Jimmy Carter said in a statement.

The government of the majority Muslim Russian Northern Caucasus region, recovering after two separatist wars and still battling Islamic insurgents, boasted that the cup was 1,400 years old and had belonged to the Prophet.

The cup had earlier been flown into the Chechen capital Grozny from London where it was kept by unnamed descendants of Mohammed’s cousin Ali.

“We will have no American access to, and return from, low Earth orbit and the International Space Station for an unpredictable length of time in the future,” Armstrong told the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

“For a country that has invested so much for so long to achieve a leadership position in space exploration and exploitation, this condition is viewed by many as lamentably embarrassing and unacceptable.”

The Dutch and the Finns refused to let them in, at a meeting of EU interior ministers dogged by concerns about illegal migration, citing poor progress in the fight against corruption and organised crime.

“Two member states today made it impossible for us to make a decision on Schengen enlargement,” Polish Interior Minister Jerzy Miller, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, lamented after the talks.

The Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology said the trials will involve 12 patients with Stargardt’s disease and will be based at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, with more European sites planned for the future.

“This is the first time an embryonic stem cell trial has ever been approved anywhere else in the world,” said Bob Lanza, chief scientific officer at ACT and a longtime researcher in human embryonic stem cells.

The outcome was never in doubt as the Springboks hoisted a record 87-0 victory over the largely amateur Namibians with winger Bryan Habana snaring his first Test try in 15 months to become South Africa’s all-time leading tryscorer.

While the floodgates were flung opened in the final 20 minutes as Namibia’s herculean defensive effort told and seven converted tries inflated the final margin, the Springboks were guilty of missed opportunities in the opening half.

As finance ministers and central bankers gathered for talks amid growing concern about sharply slowing growth and plunging stock markets, the leaders of seven big economies stressed the need to contain the euro zone crisis.

“Euro zone governments and institutions must act swiftly to resolve the euro crisis and all European economies must confront the debt overhang to prevent contagion to the wider global economy,” the leaders of Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Britain, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea wrote in an open letter to France, chair of the Group of 20 leading economies.

The commitment by the so-called BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — fell short of expectations for more direct support to debt-crippled European countries.

Finance ministers of the group, meeting on the sidelines of an IMF gathering in Washington, called on the G20 nations to act swiftly and decisively to ease the euro-zone debt crisis, the same way they fought the global financial crisis in 2008.

The U.S. dollar climbed to a seven-month high against major currencies <.DXY> as investors fled risky assets and sought safety in Treasuries, where benchmark yields again touched lows not seen in 60 years.

Data showing contraction in China’s manufacturing sector for a third straight month helped drive down oil prices by more than 4 percent and sent the price of copper to a one-year low. Weak euro zone data added to the gloom.

Add in signs that Chinese growth is slowing by the day, and it explains why financial markets took a hammering on Thursday, with global stock markets, oil, metals and even gold sliding.

And investors now fear there isn’t much that authorities can do to stop the slide: central banks are running out of ammunition and political will among U.S. and European leaders is in short supply.

The heavy volume of Thursday’s plunge signaled investors are selling in anticipation of more losses. Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” the CBOE Volatility Index, jumped 12 percent, giving the index its biggest 2-day percentage spike in a month as investors protected against more losses to come.

Energy and materials shares were among the hardest hit areas on worries of slowing worldwide demand. Signs of a slowdown in China fed those fears.

After a month of unprecedented volatility that has rattled some investors’ confidence in gold’s decade-long winning streak, the question is obvious: Is this what the popping of a gold bubble looks like?

The answer, of course, isn’t obvious. The bursting of asset bubbles is best seen in retrospect, and gold’s 10 percent decline from a record high just three weeks ago is far from its worst tumble; it last suffered such a setback in late 2009, and multiple times in 2008. It is only halfway to the 20 percent mark that separates a correction from a bear market.

A draft of the final rule by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, reviewed by Reuters late on Wednesday, maintains that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street overhaul law requires position limits — caps on the number of contracts a single trader can hold — to prevent excessive speculation in oil, grain, silver and other commodity markets.

But the CFTC modified areas of the plan that were a major concern for big banks like Morgan Stanley and firms like Shell, including whether or not different arms of a single company must count separately managed positions as one, and whether swaps and futures positions can be offset.

After consulting with experts and weighing possible outcomes for solar start-up Solyndra, the first recipient of a government loan guarantee for renewable energy, the department knew that new terms for the loan would not help the ailing company, said Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman said.

“The assessment was that the taxpayers’ best interest would not be served by doing another turn of the wheel at that point,” Poneman told reporters after a congressional hearing on green jobs.

Applications for unemployment benefits dropped 9,000 to 423,000 in the week ended September17, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was roughly in line with expectations.

With recession fears mounting, the Federal Reserve warned on Wednesday of “significant” risks to the economy as it announced a new program to boost growth through cheaper borrowing costs.

In the latest stop on what has become a “pass this bill” tour, Obama stood on the banks of the Ohio River to tout his package for reducing high unemployment, and warned Republicans against letting election politics delay action.

Republicans mocked Obama’s trip to the Brent Spence Bridge, a dilapidated span between Ohio and Kentucky, as political theater. They have given Obama’s jobs plan a cool reception and oppose tax hikes on wealthier Americans that would pay for it, but have voiced a willingness to consider some of his ideas.

The bill’s unexpected failure suggested that, even in the face of rock-bottom approval ratings, Democratic and Republican lawmakers may not be able to bridge their differences to pass a measure that would help disaster victims and avoid a government shutdown.

The House of Representatives and Senate must pass legislation to keep the government fully functioning beyond October 1 while lawmakers continue to debate a full budget. They also need to replenish a disaster-relief fund that could run dry on Monday during one of the most extreme years for weather in U.S. history.

Democratic co-chair Senator Patty Murray, at the start of the committee’s hearing on the roughly $1 trillion in special interest breaks and loopholes that permeate the U.S. tax code, made clear she expects the panel to include some tax increases along with spending cuts in its final product.

“We have to address both spending and taxes,” Murray said.

Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA analyst who advised President Barack Obama on Afghan policy, told Reuters administration officials have told him militants who attacked the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul on September 13 telephoned individuals connected with Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) before and during the attack.

Following the attacks, Riedel said, U.S. security forces collected cell phones which the attackers had used. These are expected to provide further evidence linking militants to ISI.

Directly addressing the sectarian issue for the first time, the United States said President Bashar al-Assad risked plunging Syria into civil strife by intensifying a crackdown on the uprising which began six months ago.

“The government violence is actually creating retaliation and creating even more violence in our analysis, and it is also increasing the risk of sectarian conflict,” the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, told Reuters by telephone from Damascus.

The pope met Chancellor Angela Merkel, leading politicans and Jewish figures and received warm applause during a speech to parliament in the Reichstag building, a rare honor.

But about 100 deputies in the 620-seat parliament boycotted his speech, which sparked heated debates among ordinary Germans about the separation of church and state.

Russian plans to revive the Soviet-era shipping lane as polar ice cover receded to near record lows this summer could speed energy deliveries to China and boost business for cargo suppliers such as state-owned Sovkomflot.

Officials at the Arctic Forum in the White Sea port city of Arkhangelsk said Russia must develop infrastructure to guard against oil spills, revamp ports and build more icebreakers to realize Putin’s vision of year-round shipments.

Blockbuster, the once-dominant video store chain that Netflix pushed into bankruptcy, wants to reclaim its crown as the current king of video rentals struggles. Now a unit of Dish Network, Blockbuster is expected to announce its jump into the streaming market on Friday.

That would better position Blockbuster to compete with Netflix, now facing a subscriber backlash over a price increase for DVD subscribers and pressure from Hollywood studios to pay more for content. The shares of the one-time Wall Street darling have plummeted 50 percent in two months, spurring an apology from CEO Reed Hastings to try to win customers back.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last-minute plea for a stay of execution, and Davis, 42, received a lethal injection at a prison in Georgia.

“The Troy Davis case is going to bring a lot of doubt into people’s minds,” said Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno, an opponent of the death penalty.

“Enough is enough,” state Senator John Whitmire wrote in a letter on Thursday to prison officials, prompting the move. “It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege. It’s a privilege which the perpetrator did not provide to their victim.”

The letter was in apparent response to the dinner requested, but not eaten, by white supremacist Lawrence Brewer before he was put to death on Wednesday night for the 1998 dragging death of James Byrd Jr.

In addition to the partial retraction, Science published on Thursday new research that cast doubt on the theory. A U.S.-backed study found no trace of the XMRV virus, and a related mouse virus, in blood samples taken from healthy people and those with chronic fatigue syndrome.

The disease causes muscle pain, memory loss and overwhelming fatigue. While the XMRV research had offered some hope of identifying its cause, and therefore a treatment, scientists say the link was likely the result of contaminated lab samples.