Evening Edition

The man was killed alongside an Afghan companion in the usually stable central Afghan province of Ghor.

The incident came in the same month that two German nationals were found dead after apparently going climbing in mountains north of the Afghan capital Kabul.

After a series of dramatic attacks, including a firefight outside the US embassy and the killing Tuesday of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the insurgents were resorting to headline-grabbing violence because they had been defeated on the battlefield.

Panetta told senators Thursday the tactics were the “result of a shift in momentum in our favor and a sign of weakness in the insurgency.”

Only a dozen people were present on Saturday morning when the polling station opened in the fifth northern district, near the Shiite village of Saar outside Manama, witnesses said.

“I came because this is my country. I’m unemployed but it’s not a reason not to vote,” said Ali Ahmad al-Jamri, 34, a Shiite electrician who has been without work for three years.

As a plume of smoke rose over Tripoli, reportedly from an explosion at a naval base munitions dump, National Transitional Council chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil said a transitional government would be announced next week.

At a makeshift field hospital in a mosque west of Sirte, Dr Fatih Danini reported two NTC fighters were killed and 30 wounded in an apparent pincer movement also launched from the south and east.

The Dalai Lama made the statement in a 4,200-word document issued after a gathering of leaders of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamshala.

“When I am about 90, I will consult the high lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan public, and other concerned people who follow Tibetan Buddhism, and re-evaluate whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue or not,” he said.

In media interviews Princess Helene of Yugoslavia, estranged wife of Thierry Gaubert, also linked him with Nicolas Bazire, the best man at Sarkozy’s wedding, and Ziad Takieddine, the alleged middleman in an arms deal with Pakistan.

All three men have been charged by police investigating alleged kickbacks on the arms deal and illegal funding of former prime minister Edouard Balladur’s failed 1995 presidential campaign.

“Sovereign and banking stresses in Europe are the most serious risk now confronting the world economy,” US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a speech to the International Monetary Fund’s steering body.

“Further action to expand the effective capacity of these commitments is still necessary to create a firewall against further contagion,” Geithner said, according to the prepared text.

NASA has said there is only a “very remote” risk to the public from any of the fragments of the 6.3 tonne Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) that may have survived the journey back into the atmosphere.

The satellite fell back to Earth between 11:23 pm Friday and 1:09 am Saturday (0323-0509 GMT Saturday), but the precise re-entry time and location “are not yet known with certainty,” NASA said.

New Zealand gave the full house 60,800 Eden Park crowd what they wanted with a dominant display to justify their tournament favouritism and take a five-point lead in Pool A with one game left in the group stage.

The All Blacks controlled all but the opening 10 minutes to part-exorcise the demons of their stunning quarter-final exit to the French at the 2007 World Cup.

The 24-year-old dominated the floodlit night session as Red Bull extended their supremacy with a 14th successive pole, a 100 percent record that gives Vettel a good chance to retain his title in the 61-lap race on Sunday.

His Red Bull team-mate Australian Mark Webber was second fastest thanks to a last-gasp lap of a competitive and tense session that featured a red flag interruption, accidents and punctures at the steamy Marina Bay circuit.

“Nevermind”‘s release in late September 1991 also sucked Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain into a whirlwind that he would not get out of alive.

Two decades on, Universal is marking the anniversary with the release Monday of a remastered box set of the album, complete with bonus tracks and demos.

Black smoke billowed over Sirte as National Transitional Council (NTC) forces massed in Zafran Square about 1 km (half a mile) from the center of the Mediterranean coastal town.

Gunfire could be heard from the town center as the forces moved tanks and mortars to the square. Pick-up trucks mounted with machineguns and loaded with NTC fighters raced into the town and ambulances hurtled back and forth ferrying casualties.

Abdelraouf al-Kurdi, a representative of fighters from Tripoli’s Souq al-Jum’a district, made the statement as Libya’s new leaders struggled to form a transitional government, in which roles allotted to regions was a key stumbling block.

“There is a proliferation of weapons, either from the old regime or from people who, after the 20th, entered warehouses and took weapons,” he said, referring to the day last month when fighters launched the assault that drove Gaddafi from power.

Hundreds fled from the midnight raid, involving mortar and sniper fire, that lasted until noon on Saturday on “Change Square,” the heart of an uprising where thousands have camped for eight months calling for Saleh to relinquish power.

The president’s main military rival, General Ali Mohsen, said Saleh’s return on Friday was a “major catastrophe” and called on Gulf and Western powers to stop him igniting a civil war.

The low turn-out of voters would appear to favor pro-government candidates in the Gulf island state, home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

As evening fell, the Shi’ite enclave of Sanabis adjacent to the capital of Manama, erupted for a second night. Youths taunted police with vuvuzelas and anti-government chants.

Erdogan, in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” to be aired on Sunday, maintained his stern tone toward Israel and warned relations may “never become normal again” but he had warm words for U.S. President Barack Obama as Turkey rises as a diplomatic power in the Middle East.

“You can never remain in power through cruelty. You can never stand before the will of the people,” Erdogan said in a transcript released by CNN on Saturday.

“Whoever killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, the intention was to kill any opportunity for peace and stability in Afghanistan,” said Abdullah Anas, a former anti-Soviet fighter and Algerian Islamist activist who has worked behind the scenes in recent years to prepare contacts between warring Afghan factions.

“After this assassination, to be honest, I do not know what will happen … Any group who was behind this assassination meant to close the door of stability in Afghanistan.”

The announcement, greeted by a standing ovation at a congress of the prime minister’s ruling United Russia party, ended months of speculation over whether he or President Dmitry Medvedev would run.

The two have ruled in a power ‘tandem’ since Putin was forced by the constitution to yield the presidency in 2008 after serving a maximum two consecutive terms, and Putin said they had agreed several years ago how to divide power between them.

Anna, a Muscovite and a young mother, was not fooled.

“It was obvious to everyone who would become the next president,” she said, strolling with her parents and holding her baby daughter, Valya, who will almost certainly spend much of her childhood with Putin as president.

Knox, a 24-year-old from Seattle, is serving a 26-year term after being found guilty in 2009 of murdering Meredith Kercher with her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.

Prosecutors also asked for Sollecito’s 25-year jail term to be increased to life imprisonment.

Signs are growing that Europe is readying new measures to prevent fallout from Greece’s near-bankruptcy from spreading to other euro zone countries, threatening the region’s banks and hurting the world economy.

The European official said on Saturday the euro zone countries cannot boost the size of the 440 billion-euro fund, known as the EFSF, because Germany would not agree to such an increase.

With concern swelling about a possible Greek sovereign debt default as Athens struggles to meet the terms for its European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout, policymakers in the euro zone are readying for an escalation of the crisis.

Nobert Barthle of the Christian Democrats (CDU), who sits on parliament’s budget committee, told Reuters on Saturday an early introduction of the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM), currently due in mid-2013, would help frame a more forceful response.

ECB heavyweight Stark, who announced his shock resignation from the bank this month, said the world was still deep in crisis.

“The global financial crisis is far from over,” Stark warned in a speech on the role of monetary policy.

The bank, which said it would beef up risk controls under an accelerated restructuring of that part of its business, named its Europe, Middle East and Africa head Sergio Ermotti — only at UBS since April — to replace Gruebel on an interim basis.

Gruebel, appointed in 2009 to rebuild Switzerland’s flagship bank after a near collapse, said in a message to staff that the trading loss announced last week had shocked him deeply.

While millionaire racing drivers sped around the floodlit street circuit jockeying for the fastest times, their equivalents at the Swiss bank were left pondering the future after Saturday’s resignation of Chief Executive Oswald Gruebel in the wake of a $2.3 billion alleged rogue trading loss.

The board of the Swiss bank – including motor sport fan Gruebel – had been expected to host key clients at a plush hospitality suite in the pit building of the Marina Bay Circuit. Instead they hurriedly left the city-state on Friday, with some members flying back to Zurich as the bank sought to regain its equilibrium.

Vettel, who could be only a day away from becoming the sport’s youngest double world champion, lapped the Marina Bay Circuit in one minute 44.381 seconds to edge out team mate Mark Webber by 0.351.

McLaren’s Jenson Button was third fastest in Saturday’s qualifying for the night race with a time of 1:44.804.

Perry, the Texas governor, created doubts among some conservatives at a debate with his Republican rivals on Thursday when he appeared to struggle to answer a foreign policy question and had difficulty driving home an attack on chief adversary Mitt Romney.

As many as 3,500 Florida Republican delegates were to vote in the straw poll later on Saturday with the results expected about 6 p.m. EDT. The straw poll is important to Perry because he actively participated in it.

In 1897, mayoral candidate Carter H. Harrison II successfully campaigned as “the cyclists’ champion.” Bike-riding mayor Richard M. Daley expanded on-street marked bike lanes to 115 miles in his 22 years in office.

Emanuel plans to outdo both Daley and other bike-friendly U.S. cities.

To loud applause, National Transitional Council premier Mahmoud Jibril addressed the U.N. General Assembly, saying he was saddened by the thousands who had died in the fight to topple Moammar Gadhafi and whose “sacred blood was shed to write a new history for a new Libya.”

In his first address to the world body since Gadhafi’s ouster from 42 years in power, Jibril spoke from the same rostrum where, two years earlier, Gadhafi ripped apart a copy of the world body’s charter during a lengthy rant. Jibril ridiculed that as “a pathetic theatrical move.”

Explosions rocked the city of Sirte and smoke rose into the sky as Gadhafi’s forces fired mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades at the fighters. Ambulances sped from the direction of the front line, and a doctor said at least one fighter was killed and 25 others wounded in the battle.

The two sides have been locked in a standoff since former rebels tried to advance on the city a week ago but were repelled by fierce resistance. More than a months since the then-rebels swept into Tripoli and pushed Gadhafi out of power, they are still struggling to overrun his remaining strongholds in the center of the country and the south.

Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi gave his testimony under a total media blackout, with journalists barred from the court and forbidden to report any leaked details of what he told the court. Many believe Tantawi – who was Mubarak’s defense minister for two decades – can be crucial in addressing the key question of whether Mubarak ordered lethal force used against protesters during the 18-day uprising against his rule.

Mubarak is charged with complicity in the deaths of nearly 840 protesters in the crackdown against the uprising, which ended with his ouster on Feb. 11 and the handover of power to a military council headed by Tantawi. Mubarak could face the death penalty if convicted, but so far most testimony, including from police officers, has distanced Mubarak from any orders to shoot at protesters.

The violence signaled an accelerated attempt by President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his loyalists to crush their rivals and tighten his grip on the country after his return a day earlier from Saudi Arabia, where he has been undergoing treatment for the past three months for wounds suffered in an assassination attempt.

One of Saleh’s top rivals – Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar – called for international help, asking the U.S. and other regional powers to rein him in. He warned that Saleh is pushing the country into civil war and compared him to the Roman emperor Nero, burning down his own city.

Seven Afghans died in the insurgent attack on Sept. 8 near a Marine battalion headquarters in southern Afghanistan. Sgt. Kenneth Fischer and his dog, Drak, were flown by helicopter to a bigger base for emergency treatment, then out of the country for surgery. Both will head to Texas for rehabilitation, and eventually, in line with military custom, Fischer will adopt Drak and take him home.

“I have literally spent more time with Drak than I have my own daughter,” Fischer, 27, said by telephone earlier this week from his hospital bed at a military medical center in Bethesda, Maryland. The Marine had worked with 4-year-old Drak for two years and spent a total of nine months in Afghanistan. His daughter, Cheyenne, is 19 months old.

Although Putin departed the Kremlin in 2008 due to term limits and moved about two kilometers (1.5 miles) down the road to the prime minister’s office, in a sense he never left at all. He cannily used Russia’s state-controlled national TV channels to remain the country’s pre-eminent political figure, with appearances portraying himself as a bold adventurer in Russia’s wilderness, a vigorous advocate of the country’s global importance and, occasionally, as a bit of a rogue consorting with scruffy motorcyclists.

His hand-picked successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, appeared as little more than a tame youngster in comparison – enthusing about Twitter and issuing earnest statements about the need for reforms, but achieving few tangible results.

The 24-year-old American sat motionless as Prosecutor Giancarlo Costagliola made his request. The prosecutor sought the same sentence for Knox’s co-defendant, former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, capping two days of closing arguments by the prosecutors.

Costagliola also requested six months of daytime solitary confinement for Knox and two months for Sollecito.

The high drama surrounding the historic Palestinian bid for statehood has to a degree overshadowed other issues facing the U.N. General Assembly, which Saturday heard from the leaders of island nations where the impact of climate change is already having a profound effect.

They argue that the U.N. is moving too slowly despite many initiatives designed to reduce carbon emissions worldwide. U.N. officials have recognized climate change as the greatest environmental threat to the planet but efforts to slow its inexorable progress have foundered.

“I don’t think there were any newspaper articles about it or anything like that,” the author recalls.

But the headline on the 1975 report was bold: “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” And this article that coined the term may have marked the last time a mention of “global warming” didn’t set off an instant outcry of angry denial.

The agency did not give a more specific location in a midday update on its website, which also said officials were not aware of any reports of injuries or property damage. Most of the spacecraft was believed to have burned up.

The bus-sized satellite first penetrated Earth’s atmosphere somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, according to NASA and the U.S. Air Force’s Joint Space Operations Center. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it all fell into the sea.

NASA space junk scientists believe that all – or nearly all – of the parts of their 20-year-old dead satellite safely plunged into the Pacific Ocean, likely missing land. But if their estimates are off, by only five minutes or so, fiery pieces could have fallen on parts of northwestern North America.

No injuries or damage have been reported on land, which NASA officials said was a good indication the satellite went into the ocean.

Gruebel, who had come under heavy pressure from shareholders over the scandal, said he hoped his resignation would allow the bank to restore its reputation in the eyes of clients and investors.

“As CEO, I bear full responsibility for what occurs at UBS,” he said in a memo to staff. “From my first day on the job I placed the reputation of the bank above all else. That is why I want to and must act according to my convictions.”

Why? Because the 1.9 million new jobs the White House says the bill would produce in 2012 falls short of what’s needed to put the economy back on track to return to pre-recession jobless levels of under 6 percent, from today’s rate of 9.1 percent.

That’s how deep the jobs hole is. The persistent weakness of the U.S. economy has left 14 million people unemployed and more than 25 million unable to find full-time work.

She loved working with kids, could be home in the summer with her own children and had always heard that someone with an education degree would never have trouble finding a job.

Five years later, she has a degree in early childhood education and tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to repay, but no teaching job. Instead, she files records at a law firm in South Carolina’s capital.

A state appeals court in July struck down the financing system used by Michigan’s Low Income and Energy Efficiency Fund, and the state Legislature has not enacted a new one. With the program now running out of money as winter approaches, state officials are working to tide over needy families at least until Nov. 1, when they will be protected from a utility shut-off by state law.

Though Michigan law forbids utility companies from shutting off heat to customers between Nov. 1 and March 30, social service workers are worried about the impact on the 95,000 people now helped by the program if the aid is not restored by next spring.

But prosecutors say the recorder captured something entirely different: the officer murdering a defenseless man suffering from schizophrenia.

Police agencies across the country are increasingly using audio and video devices to collect evidence, and they played a crucial role in prosecutors bringing murder charges this week against Ramos and an involuntary manslaughter count against a colleague, Cpl. Jay Cicinelli.

That helps explain their appearances Saturday in Michigan, where GOP voters will have their say in 2012, but only after Iowa, New Hampshire and several other states that second-tier contenders must win to survive.

“It’s really about these two up here,” said Jase Bolger, the speaker of Michigan’s House of Representatives.

But it doesn’t help.

Denny Hamlin, inconsistent all season, is stuck in 12th place and already 41 points behind leader Kevin Harvick. He struggled all day in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship kickoff last week at Chicagoland and staggered to a 31st-place finish.