Evening Edition

An explosion at the ageing Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant blew apart the building housing one of its reactors Saturday, a day after the biggest quake ever recorded in Japan unleashed a monster tsunami.

The atomic emergency escalated Sunday as crews struggled to prevent overheating at a second reactor where the cooling system has also failed, and the government warned that it too could be hit with a blast.

Economists say it is still too early to assess the full cost of the destruction from the record 8.9-magnitude quake and the 10-metre wall of water that laid waste to the northeastern coast and triggered an atomic emergency.

The official death toll so far is 1,200, but is certain to rise substantially, with one hard-hit prefecture saying as many as 10,000 could be dead.

The port town of Minamisanriku was practically erased, over half its 17,500 population unaccounted for after huge waves inundated the area following the 8.9 magnitude quake, a hospital one of few structures remaining.

For the lucky ones, such as some residents in Kamaishi city, tsunami evacuation sirens came quickly enough for them to scramble up to higher ground before watching in horror as the raging sea tore through their homes.

But the rebel commander, Kadhafi’s former interior minister, vowed to defend the “vital” next town.

A lightning counter-offensive over the past week has pushed ragtag rebels out of Mediterranean coastal towns, allowing the regime to wrest back momentum against a month-long uprising to end Kadhafi’s four-decade grip on power. ]

Dozens of rebels were seen leaving the coastal town of Brega and heading for Ajdabiya, 80 kilometres (50 miles) away on the road to the main rebel cities of Benghazi and Tobruk.

Rebel sources said forces loyal to Moamer Kadhafi were approaching from the west, and Libyan state television, quoting an unspecified military source, later declared Brega “purged of the armed gangs.”

Dozens were injured when police and loyalists of the ruling General People’s Congress party attacked protesters occupying Sanaa’s University Square with live gunfire and tear gas, witnesses said.

Six demonstrators were shot in the head during clashes with police overnight in the southern city of Aden, with two dying of their wounds, medical officials said.

As international sanctions have cut off his funding and tighten the noose around his command, Gbago troops launched a “make or break” offensive to rid opponents from the Abobo district north of the capital Abidjan.

Gbagbo forces were “blindly launching artillery, which fell on civilian houses. The majority of those killed are innocent,” Patric Achi, spokesman for the internationally-recognised president Alassane Ouattara told AFP.

Violence in parts of the capital escalated in his absence in what Ouattara’s camp says is a show of force by strongman Laurent Gbagbo who has “his back to the wall” after the African Union endorsed Ouattara’s presidency.

“He has returned to the Abidjan Golf Hotel,” said a member of Ouattara’s entourage, referring to the hotel where the leader had been holed up under United Nations protection since being declared the winner of the November 28 presidential runoff election.

A second-half try from replacement flanker Tom Croft and 17 points from the combined boots of Toby Flood and Jonny Wilkinson clinched victory for England as Scotland’s 28-year losing streak at Twickenham continued.

Scotland’s points came from a late try by wing Max Evans while fullback Chris Paterson added two penalties and a conversion. Fly-half Ruaridh Jackson added a drop goal.

Australia extended their unbeaten World Cup record to 33 matches with a 60-run run win over Kenya in Bangalore while the Black Caps pulled off a 97-run victory over the Canadians in Mumbai.

The trans-Tasman neighbours joined Sri Lanka in qualifying from Group A with Pakistan poised to complete the four qualifiers from the pool with victory over Zimbabwe on Monday.

Some wearing headscarves, all in tracksuits, the slightly built young women pummel four heavy old punchbags hard, moving fast and light on their feet while their male trainer barks instructions.

The women are among a small number in Afghanistan training hard across a range of sports in the hope of being able to bring some pride to their war-torn country at next year’s Olympic Games.

Organisation problems persisted on the morning of the vote, with a number of polling stations opening late in the economic capital Cotonou and elsewhere due to the late arrival of material and workers.

“It’s a total mess,” said Affo Djouneidou, a 45-year-old painter, after waiting for nearly two hours before voting began at a Cotonou polling place where hundreds stood in line. “It’s a catastrophe this year.”

The world’s third-largest economy opens for business later on Monday, a badly wounded nation that has seen whole villages and towns wiped off the map by a wall of water, leaving in its wake an international humanitarian effort of epic proportion.

A grim-faced Prime Minister Naoto Kan described the crisis at Japan’s worst since 1945, as officials confirmed that three nuclear reactors were at risk of overheating, raising fears of an uncontrolled radiation leak.

Engineers were dousing the plants with seawater in a desperate effort to prevent a calamity on Sunday, even as the government evacuated 140,000 from the area after radioactive steam was released from the stricken plant.

The nuclear crisis was a triple whammy for Japan, coming on top of the earthquake — Japan’s biggest and the fifth strongest ever recorded in the world — and one of the most powerful tsunami in history, which caused scenes of unimaginable destruction in northeast Japan.

One sentiment that is emerging is that such a calamitous event could occur again at any time, in any place.

“We don’t know when it will happen to us,” said Masatoshi Masuda, 52, a seal carver in the southwest city of Kagoshima, far from the deadly, three-meter-high waves that surged across farmland, villages and cities in Japan’s northeast Friday.

Tokyo battled to avert a meltdown at three stricken reactors at the Fukushima plant in the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, triggered by Friday’s tsunami. Radiation levels were also up at the Onagawa atomic plant.

“This is not a serious public health issue at the moment,” Malcolm Crick, Secretary of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, told Reuters.

Fire-fighters, sniffer dogs, clothing and food have been proposed in an outpouring of solidarity with Japan, with offers pouring in from nearly 70 countries, U.N. officials said.

Even the poor southern Afghan city of Kandahar announced it was donating $50,000 to the “brothers and sisters” of Japan.

Electronics giant Sony Corp has suspended operations at eight factories including one making optical film that was flooded by the tsunami triggered by Friday’s 8.9-magnitude quake. Nissan Motor halted output at all four of its domestic assembly factories and said restarting them could depend on whether it can get parts.

These are just two in a long list of companies unsure of how quickly they can get their plants back up and running. The widespread damage to infrastructure as well as power rationing after an accident at a nuclear plant could also hamper efforts to resume shipments, even if factory equipment is intact.

As officials on Sunday predicted the death toll could top 10,000, the country mobilized 100,000 soldiers to deliver food, water and fuel, and pull stranded survivors from buildings and damaged homes. More than 450,000 people had been evacuated.

It is one of the largest aid deployments of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and doubles the number of troops from Saturday.

The instinctive reaction when viewing the extensive damage and frantic efforts to secure damaged nuclear reactors is to assume economic havoc will follow.

But researchers who have studied similar disasters in rich countries reach a reassuring conclusion: human resilience and resourcefulness, allied to an ability to draw down accumulated wealth, enable economies to rebound quickly from what seem at first to be unbearable inflictions – be it the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York or Friday’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the worst in Japan’s history.

“I was relying on conventional media initially, but Twitter is by far the best,” said Kosuge, a 35-year-old music manager living and working in London. “You realize you can share the sense of fear more easily, it makes you feel close to the people affected and those who are concerned about Japan.”

Across the globe, Japanese expatriates are hungry for the least scrap of news about a double disaster that their prime minister has dubbed the country’s most serious crisis since World War Two.

Two days after a ferocious earthquake and tsunami submerged Japan’s northeast coast, killing thousands and leaving millions of people without electricity or running water, many are struggling to comprehend the scale of the disaster.

“Is it a dream? I just feel like I am in a movie or something,” said Ichiro Sakamoto, 50, in Hitachi, a city in Ibaraki Prefecture. “Whenever I am alone I have to pinch my cheek to check whether it’s a dream or not.”

The government offensive had already driven the rebels out of Ras Lanuf, another oil terminal 100 km to the west on the coast road, and the seizure of Brega and its refinery deprived the rebels of more territory and yet another source of fuel.

The government, in a message on state television, said it was certain of victory and threatened to “bury” the rebels, who it linked to al Qaeda and “foreign security services.”

Witnesses said most of the injured in the capital were suffering severe effects from tear gas but some were hit by bullets. Two were thought to be in serious condition in the clashes near Sanaa University, site of a weeks-long sit-in.

In the southern port of Aden one person died after being shot as protesters clashed with police, a hospital doctor said.

“The rebels have left Brega. It is evacuated,” said 33-year-old anaesthesiologist Osama Jazwi. At about 10:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) the bombardment started. “We saw, it was on the main gate,” Jazwi told Reuters by telephone.

Abdul Hakim, also a resident of the bombarded town, told Reuters that the rebels had left. There were no details of the Gaddafi forces attack immediately available.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement issued by the State Department that she accepted P.J. Crowley’s resignation with “regret.” He has served as the department’s assistant secretary for public affairs and chief spokesman.

Crowley said in the statement he submitted his resignation “given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility.” His resignation came two days after President Barack Obama was asked about Crowley’s remarks during a televised news conference.

Leaders in both parties backed a plan by U.S. House of Representatives Republicans for a temporary three-week spending bill to keep the federal government operating through April 8 while they try to find a broader compromise.

“I don’t think we ought to let the government shut down,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on “Fox News Sunday,” predicting the Senate would approve the House Republican plan.

Nuclear plant operators worked frantically to try to keep temperatures down in several reactors crippled by the earthquake and tsunami, wrecking at least two by dumping sea water into them in last-ditch efforts to avoid meltdowns. Officials warned of a second explosion but said it would not pose a health threat.

Near-freezing temperatures compounded the misery of survivors along hundreds of miles (kilometers) of the northeastern coast battered by the tsunami that smashed inland with breathtaking fury. Rescuers pulled bodies from mud-covered jumbles of wrecked houses, shattered tree trunks, twisted cars and tangled power lines while survivors examined the ruined remains.

Nuclear plant operators were frantically trying to keep temperatures down in a series of nuclear reactors – including one where officials feared a partial meltdown could be happening Sunday – to prevent the disaster from growing worse.

But hours after officials announced the latest dangers to face the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, including the possibility of a second explosion in two days, there were few details about what was being done to bring the situation under control.

Survivors of the 2004 tsunami that started off Indonesia sat glued to their TV sets, stroking each other’s hands, as images of last Friday’s disaster in northern Japan flashed repeatedly across the screen.

“I heard someone screaming and ran to see what was going on,” said Mucharam, who also lost her husband and two other daughters.

“This harbor is the lifeblood of our community,” Del Norte County Sheriff Dean Wilson said as he scanned the wreckage from waves touched off by a massive earthquake in Japan late last week.

Last year saw landings of crab and fish worth $12.5 million. “The fishing industry is the identity and soul of this community, besides tourism,” he said Saturday.

At least for the time being.

The chain of events started Friday when a magnitude-8.9 earthquake and tsunami severed electricity to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex 170 miles (270 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, crippling its cooling system. Then, backup power did not kick in properly at one of its units.

One rebel said that after their initial defeat, opposition forces destroyed armored vehicles and captured dozens of fighters from Gadhafi’s elite Khamis Brigade in the oil town of Brega, driving others back into the town’s airport.

Another opposition fighter told The Associated Press by telephone that celebrations had broken out in the nearby city of Ajdabiya, and celebratory gunfire, honking and shouting could be heard in the background.

Embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh has resorted to increasingly violent tactics to try to put down the burgeoning uprising against his 32-year rule, deploying dozens of armed supporters on the streets in an attempt to intimidate protesters.

Wielding clubs and knives, police and regime supporters described by protesters as government sponsored thugs attacked activists camped out near Sanaa university, said Mohammed al-Abahi, a doctor in charge of a makeshift hospital near the university.

The ruler of Oman, another key Western partner, shifted some lawmaking powers to officials outside the royal family in what an analyst called a historic change.

Meanwhile, Saudi authorities tolerated 200 activists demanding the release of detainees in defiance of stern warnings of crackdowns on pro-democracy rallies.

In nearby Jordan, too, an outside assist on election day 2007 helped put that kingdom’s undemocratic political structure in a harsh spotlight – and the king in a bind.

And when 2011’s winter of discontent exploded into a pro-democracy storm in Tunisia and then Egypt, opposition activist Bilal Diab broke away from his six-month “young leaders school” and its imported instructors, and put his new skills to use among the protest tents of Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

“Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation” to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a department statement attributed to the office of the spokesman. In a separate statement released simultaneously, Clinton said she had accepted the resignation “with regret.”

Crowley’s comments about the conditions for Army Pfc. Bradley Manning at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., reverberated quickly, from the small audience in Massachusetts where Crowley spoke, to a White House news conference Friday where Obama was asked to weigh in on the treatment of the 23-year-old believed responsible for the largest leak of classified American documents ever.

Last weekend, the longtime owner of the Sawmill Tavern served up what he said was the last of the free buffets he has offered every Sunday afternoon since 1980, two years after opening his biker bar in the Little Italy neighborhood in this economically depressed city on New York’s Mohawk River.

Anyone who needed a meal – the homeless, the unemployed, the elderly, whole families struggling to make ends meet – could show up at the Sawmill, no questions asked.

The survey did find signs of progress in a number of states, especially in technological efforts to make much more information available online. But there also are restrictions being put in place for recent electronic trends, such as limits on access to officials’ text messages.

The AP analysis was done in conjunction with this year’s Sunshine Week, an annual initiative begun in 2002 to promote greater transparency in government. To observe Sunshine Week, which runs March 13-20, AP journalists in all 50 statehouses reported on both recent improvements and the obstacles that still exist in many places.

The Republican from Bismarck became the focus of criticism when he missed six days of the Legislature in January to take a trip to India, financed by an organization that promotes trade relationships between that country and the United States.

It wasn’t the only one. Since he became the GOP’s Senate leader a decade ago, Stenehjem (pronounced STEN’-jum) has traveled to Germany, China, Lithuania and other countries at the behest of a corporate-supported nonprofit foundation that arranges educational trips for state legislative leaders. Stenehjem is the foundation’s vice chairman.

The Republican lawmaker stepped away from his companions, Coca-Cola executives, to take the call. When the exchange was over, Aronoff and then-Democratic House Speaker Vernal Riffe had agreed to wedge an unpopular carbonated beverage tax into that year’s state budget. At a penny per 12 ounces, the decision would cost distributors of Coke and other sodas $67 million – that’s $148 million in today’s dollars.

And it happened right under their noses.

Most of the more than 2,200 cases in Georgia reviewed by The Associated Press were resolved when attorneys explained the law. In hundreds of those cases, the agency handed over the records after state attorneys intervened, and the complaints were resolved satisfactorily.

But in a handful of complaints – the AP review found at least a dozen – the office declined to pursue probable violations in court. In several of those instances, state attorneys identified clear breaches of the law but suggested the individual who filed the complaint hire private counsel to pursue the case in court.

That’s what Commissioner Roger Goodell keeps saying. So do many of the owners and lots of players, even though labor talks collapsed, the union dissolved itself, and star players including MVP Tom Brady asked for a preliminary injunction to prevent a lockout hours before the league even implemented one.

Despite the nasty rhetoric of last week, no one would paint the doomsday scenario of no football come September. Instead, we hear Chargers president Dean Spanos say, “We will get through this. There will be a new agreement and we’re looking forward to playing football this season.”

But donors aren’t eager to shell out until the hopeful prove they’re credible.

Which they can’t – until they have the cash lined up to start their campaigns.

Before headlining a GOP fundraiser, the possible presidential hopeful told a group of students and conservative activists in Manchester, “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord.”

But those first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.

Protests have rocked the Capitol almost every day since Gov. Scott Walker proposed taking nearly all collective bargaining rights away from public workers, but the largest came a day after the governor signed the measure into law. Madison Police estimated the crowd at 85,000 to 100,000 people – along with 50 tractors and one donkey – by late afternoon. No one was arrested.

Speakers delivered angry diatribes while the crowd carried signs comparing Walker to dictators and yelled thunderous chants of “this is what democracy looks like.”

“They are my passion,” said Kessler, a 35-year San Francisco resident who has been observing and photographing coyotes in four city parks. “It’s this contradiction of an urban, settled environment and wild animals, and I find it thrilling.”

Wildlife researchers estimate that about a dozen coyotes live in San Francisco, with the first sighting in decades reported in 2001 in the Presidio, a federal park and residential neighborhood located on the city’s northern tip.

The arrest of four ex-soldiers in a little more than a year has raised hopes among advocates of victims’ relatives that at least one might stand trial for the killings.

Human rights advocates are pinning their hopes on the prosecution of Jorge Sosa Orantes, who was arrested in January in Canada on U.S. charges of lying on his citizenship application about his ties to the Guatemalan military.

The $3 billion-plus plan, to be announced by the Bloomberg administration Monday, would add 50 new acres of parks, expand dozens more, overhaul the city’s sewage system to reduce waste pushed into the rivers and dredge waterways to make room for giants ships that are rarely seen on the East Coast.

The blueprint is New York City’s attempt to reverse more than a century of planning that left much of the city’s 520 miles of shoreline inaccessible to residents and instead directed them inland for their recreation and relaxation.

They are among the most iconic trees on Earth, remnants of once-vast populations decimated by logging, development, pollution and disease. A nonprofit organization called Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is rushing to collect their genetic material and replant clones in an audacious plan to restore the world’s ancient forests and put them to work cleansing the environment and absorbing carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas largely responsible for global warming.

“In our infinite wisdom, we’ve destroyed 98 percent of the old growth forests that kept nature in balance for thousands of years,” said David Milarch, the group’s co-founder. “That’s what we intend to put back.”

Prosecutors have accused the party in a lawsuit of helping a political consultant obscure his alleged theft of $1.1 million from Mayor Michael Bloomberg – money the billionaire mayor and marquee Independence Party candidate gave the party for poll-watching. The Independence Party hasn’t been criminally charged; it says it did nothing wrong and didn’t know anything about any scheme to divert the money. But a judge has frozen its bank accounts and said this week that its conduct “doesn’t smell right.”

It’s a difficult moment even for a party that has weathered controversy before in its 16-year history. The party’s lawyers have said the financial freeze could cause significant hardship, and political observers say the case could damage the party’s image.

On hot issues that Democrats and Republicans have found cause to fret about – from spending reductions to state labor disputes – President Barack Obama is keeping a low profile.

Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia want him more publicly engaged in budget negotiations in Congress; some lawmakers want him to denounce Republican proposed program cuts.