Evening Edition

Officials said the bombings occurred at around 8:30 am (0530 GMT) at the western gate into the Green Zone, which houses the offices of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq’s parliament and the US and British embassies.

A queue of cars was waiting to enter the Green Zone when the vehicles exploded, a security official said.

The attack, which the militants said was aimed at France’s visiting defence minister Gerard Longuet, was the third major assault on Afghan security targets in four days and one of the worst security breaches in years.

“A person in Afghan army uniform opened fire on his comrades, killed two soldiers, injured seven others, then was targeted himself and was brought down,” Afghan army spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP.

The safe passage was part of an accord on humanitarian access to the capital and other Libyan cities secured in Tripoli on Sunday by UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos, said deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq.

The Kadhafi government also agreed to let a United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs mission into Misrata, said UN humanitarian spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker.

The intense pounding of Ajdabiya came a day after at least eight people were killed and 27 wounded as the forces loyal to Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi fired rockets at rebel positions there, hospital officials said.

“Kadhafi’s forces approached the city, they bombed the western gate. The sound of the guns are coming closer, that’s why many are leaving,” said Omar Salim Mufta, a 27-year-old resident rebel supporter who has not taken up arms.

With fears growing that refugees will attempt a chaotic mass escape by sea from the city of 400,000, UN envoys in Tripoli demanded an end to attacks on Misrata by forces loyal to strongman Moamer Kadhafi.

The International Organisation for Migration warned that the vast numbers wanting to flee Misrata, about 215 kilometres (130 miles) east of Tripoli, was threatening to overwhelm an international sea rescue operation.

Regime supporters also broke up two rallies in southern Syria, wounding five people after a presidential vow to end emergency rule within a week was dismissed as not enough and was followed by new protests.

In the country’s major port, Latakia, around 10,000 people took to the streets late on Sunday after the funeral of a protester killed on Friday, a rights activist told AFP.

Results from all of Nigeria’s states announced by the electoral commission showed Jonathan had handily beaten his northern rival, ex-military ruler Muhammadu Buhari. The electoral commission was yet to officially declare him the victor.

Returns from all 36 states and the capital showed Jonathan with more than 22 million votes compared to some 12 million for Buhari.

“Because… the path to addressing these (problems) is not clear to us, we have revised our outlook on the long-term rating to negative from stable,” S&P said.

Other countries with the same coveted AAA rating had taken firm action to deal with their deficits, S&P officials said, but Washington remained locked in a political battle that only fueled further deterioration.

Negotiations on a deal expected to be worth up to 80 billion euros ($115 billion) follow a technical mission last week to Lisbon by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

A spokesman for the EU representative in Lisbon said the officials were in Lisbon to get “the opinions and arguments of all the parties” as they went into talks with Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos and other leaders.

The 26-year-old McLaren driver, world champion in 2008, surged through the field on fresh tyres in the closing stages before brilliantly passing the German with less than five laps remaining.

The win in Shanghai was the 15th victory of Hamilton’s Formula One career and brought Vettel’s recent winning streak to an end.

Even if allied governments conclude that building in a remote control to disable anti-tank launchers might be more trouble than it’s worth, the mere possibility is transforming the role of high-tech weapons in warfare.

“The more advanced technology becomes, the more it becomes integrated in networks, the more opportunities there are for attacks,” David Lindahl, a research scientist at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, told AFP.

The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of Indian (Marxist), or CPI-M had, until recently, won every election in the eastern state since 1977.

But straight successive losses in council, parliamentary and municipal polls have left the communists struggling for survival.

Rajaratnam, the central figure in the biggest Wall Street insider trading trial in decades, sat expressionless in Manhattan federal court as the jury heard a September 30, 2008 FBI phone tap with co-conspirator and fellow trader Danielle Chiesi.

“Look, the other thing is right, it’s been widely speculated. What people don’t know is the time,” Rajaratnam was heard telling Chiesi as they discussed chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s then imminent sale of a manufacturing business.

The results highlighted how the third-largest U.S. bank, which teetered on the brink of collapse in the financial crisis, has stabilized but is still struggling to generate real growth.

The results were better than expected, which supported Citigroup’s stock on a day when the U.S. equity market was falling. But like other big banks, the company’s profit came mainly from dipping into money previously set aside to cover bad loans.

Philips is moving its loss-making TV business to a 30/70 joint venture with Hong-Kong based monitor maker TPV and has the option to sell out. The Dutch group has struggled to compete with lower-cost Asian rivals Samsung and LG Electronics.

Van Houten, a restructuring expert who took over as CEO this month, said he was assessing the profitability of Philips’s 400 or so business areas and “taking the blanket off” its laggards, a hint that further sales could be on the cards.

S&P, which assigns ratings to guide investors on the risks involved in buying debt instruments, slapped a negative outlook on the country’s top-notch credit rating and said there’s at least a one-in-three chance that it could eventually cut it.

A downgrade, which would leave Germany and France with a higher rating, would erode the status of the United States as the world’s most powerful economy and the dollar’s role as the dominant global currency.

Portuguese debt premiums rose to new record highs, also pushed up by mounting speculation that Greece will be forced to restructure its debt.

Representatives of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are in Lisbon to set the terms for what would be the euro zone’s third bailout in a year after multi-billion euro deals for Greece and Ireland.

German government sources told Reuters in Berlin that they did not believe Greece, which sealed a 110 billion euro ($158 billion) bailout from the EU and IMF a year ago, would make it through the summer without a restructuring.

Market confidence was also hit by a new threat to Portugal’s pending bailout from the rise of an anti-euro party in Finnish elections.

Financial markets are increasingly convinced Greece will have to renegotiate the terms of its public debt, recognizing that its economy cannot grow fast enough to service a burden that is set to swell to 160 percent of national output.

German government sources said on Monday that Athens, which is struggling to impose national belt-tightening aimed at regaining creditors’ faith, would not avoid opting for a restructuring before the end of the summer.

The True Finns’ hostility to the bailout is the biggest hurdle in talks that begin this week, when the right-leaning National Coalition will reach out to the populist party and opposition Social Democrats to form a majority government.

“Of course there will have to be changes,” Timo Soini said of the Portugal package, a day after the party more than quadrupled its share of the vote to turn Finland’s pro-EU politics on their head.

“We wanted to be able to take more people out but it was not possible,” said Jeremy Haslam, who led the International Organization for Migration (IOM) rescue mission.

“Although the exchange of fire subsided while we were boarding … we had a very limited time to get the migrants and Libyans on board the ship and then leave.”

Doctors said around 200 more demonstrators were overcome by tear gas during the clashes when they marched outside their normal protest zone in the streets near Sanaa University, a hub of pro-democracy demonstrations that have lasted three months.

“We neared the Sanaa Trade Center when police confronted us with tear gas, and suddenly opened heavy gunfire on us from all directions,” said Sabry Mohammed, a protester.

Two witnesses said security forces killed three mourners when they opened fire on a funeral for a man killed the day before, which turned into a demonstration on a highway outside the town of Talbiseh, north of the central city of Homs.

One resident said he counted five tanks and saw soldiers wearing combat gear deployed around the town.

A man in an Afghan army uniform opened fire in the ministry in central Kabul, killing two employees and wounding seven, said Defense Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimy.

The man was also wearing a suicide-bomb belt, but did not have time to detonate it, said Azimy, who had earlier described the man as a soldier rather than an insurgent in army uniform.

Japan is struggling to bring the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant under control after it was crippled by the March 11 natural disasters, a process that could take the rest of the year.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said on Sunday it hoped to achieve a cold shutdown to make the reactors stable within six to nine months.

A list of the things that could go wrong shows that the operation could take longer — or be derailed altogether if unknown factors are considered, like another powerful quake.

Even the government was quick on Monday to lower expectations. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference that the time frame could be achieved if “everything goes smoothly.”

Buhari, a former military ruler from the arid, dustblown north, had hoped to at least force a second round against Jonathan, the first head of state from the swamps and creeks of the oil-producing Niger Delta.

But a Reuters tally of results from 35 of 36 states across Africa’s most populous nation showed Jonathan on 22 million votes to 12 million for Buhari. Nowhere near enough voters were registered in the remaining state for him to catch up.

The government, however, blamed the weeks of anti-government unrest in the country on ultraconservative Muslims seeking to establish a fundamentalist state and terrorize the people, in the latest official effort to portray the reform movement as populated by extremists.

The Egypt-style standoff in the central city of Homs followed funeral processions by more than 10,000 mourners for some of those killed in clashes Sunday that a rights group said left at least 12 people dead. It also brought a high-stakes challenge to security forces over whether to risk more bloodshed – and international backlash – by trying to clear the square.

For the first time, Standard & Poor’s lowered its long-term outlook for the federal government’s fiscal health from “stable” to “negative,” and warned of serious consequences if lawmakers fail to reach a deal to control the massive federal deficit.

An impasse could prompt the agency to strip the government of its top investment rating in the next two years, S&P said. A loss of the triple-A rating would ripple through the American economy, making loans more expensive and credit more difficult to obtain.

Nevertheless, officials remained hopeful they can stick to their freshly minted “roadmap” for cleaning up the radiation leak and stabilizing the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant by year’s end so they can begin returning tens of thousands of evacuees to their homes.

“Even I had expected high radioactivity in those areas. I’m sure (plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.) and other experts have factored in those figures when they compiled the roadmap,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.

Like Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi plant they lie within a few hundred miles of the type of fault known to unleash the largest tsunami-spawning earthquakes.

Called subduction zones, these happen when one tectonic plate is lodged beneath another. And because the so-called Manila Trench hasn’t been the source of a huge quake in at least 440 years, some experts say tremendous stresses are building, increasing the chances of a major rupture.

The blasts marked the start of a violent day in the Iraqi capital, where two more bombings and a jewelry heist left three more dead and 15 wounded.

The twin suicide car bombs rattled windows across Baghdad shortly after 8 a.m. The cars blew up just outside a security checkpoint on a heavily traveled road leading into the Green Zone from Baghdad’s international airport.

More than three dozen scientists grade the Gulf’s big picture health a 68 on average, using a 1-to-100 scale. What’s remarkable is that that’s just a few points below the 71 the same researchers gave last summer when asked what grade they would give the ecosystem before the spill. And it’s an improvement from the 65 given back in October.

At the same time, scientists are worried. They cite significant declines in key health indicators such as the sea floor, dolphins and oysters. In interviews, dozens of Gulf experts emphasized their concerns, pointing to the mysterious deaths of hundreds of young dolphins and turtles, strangely stained crabs and dead patches on the sea floor.

The oil giant at the center of one of the world’s biggest environmental crises is making strong profits again, its stock has largely rebounded, and it is paying dividends to shareholders once more. It is also pursuing new ventures from the Arctic to India. It is even angling to explore again in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where it holds more leases than any competitor.

“BP has a critical role to play in meeting the world’s ever-growing need for energy,” BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said at the company’s annual meeting in London last week.

The company introduced an edgy design Monday for its signature model, giving it a flatter roof, a less bulbous shape, narrowed windows and a sharp crease along the side. Gone is the built-in flower vase on the dashboard.

It’s the first overhaul since 1998, when Volkswagen came up with the New Beetle. VW, which wants to triple its U.S. sales of cars and trucks over the next decade, says the changes will appeal to more buyers, especially men.

Those factors raised the odds and were a substantial influence on suicide attempts even when known risk contributors like depression and being bullied were considered, said study author Mark Hatzenbuehler, a Columbia University psychologist and researcher.

His study found a higher rate of suicide attempts even among kids who weren’t bullied or depressed when they lived in counties less supportive of gays and with relatively few Democrats. A high proportion of Democrats was a measure used as a proxy for a more liberal environment.

Their successes, spurred by big election gains in November, go well beyond the spending cuts forced on states by the fiscal crunch and tea party agitation. Republican governors and state legislators are bringing abortion restrictions into effect from Virginia to Arizona, expanding gun rights north and south, pushing polling-station photo ID laws that are anathema to Democrats and taking on public sector unions anywhere they can.

All this as the thinned ranks of Democrats find themselves outmaneuvered in statehouses where they once put up a fight. In many states, they are unable to do much except hope that voters will see these actions as an overreach by the Republicans they elected – an accidental revolution to be reversed down the road.

Customers were clamoring. The backlog of orders swelled.

The zinc and aluminum widgets made by his company, Horio Seisakusho Co., appear insignificant at first glance. But the tiny metal components represent a vital fraction of the thousands of parts used in a single car.

“On my watch, controllers will not be paid to take naps. We’re not going to allow that,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said.

That’s exactly the opposite of what scientists and the Federal Aviation Administration’s own fatigue working group say is needed after five cases disclosed since late March of sleeping controllers. The latest one occurred just before 5 a.m. Saturday at a busy regional radar facility that handles high altitude air traffic for much of Florida, portions of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

Ibrahim Coulibaly, whose so-called “Invisible Commando” suddenly emerged two months ago to fight soldiers loyal to strongman Laurent Gbagbo, denied rumors his fighters might challenge the authority of the government installed at the cost of thousands of deaths and injuries.

In an exclusive interview Sunday with The Associated Press, he called himself a general, used his nickname IB, and pledged his allegiance to democratically elected President Alassane Ouattara.

The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.

Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.

But U.S. diplomats in the southern port city say they’re here to stay – even if it’s at their peril.

It’s a quandary for the Obama administration as the U.S. tries to move from invading power to normal diplomatic partner. But with the last American troops obligated to be gone by year’s end, the protection of American diplomats will fall almost entirely to private contractors and Iraqi security forces.

The shells from Maine’s signature seafood are being used to manufacture decorative tiles, trivets and drinking-glass coasters. Work is under way to utilize them in countertops and tabletops. And at the University of Maine, a professor has developed prototypes of biodegradable golf balls and plant pots made out of ground-up lobster shells.

“Instead of dumping the shells at landfills, the idea is to add value to the product, which hopefully will funnel back into the industry,” said David Neivandt, a professor of chemical and biological engineering who created a biodegradable golf ball with a core made of lobster shells.

“And that is what Chicago students need today,” Emanuel said of Brizard, whom he called “J.C.” while introducing him at a press conference at a nearly empty Chicago high school because students are on spring break. Chicago is the nation’s third-largest district with more than 400,000 students and 675 schools.

Brizard’s appointment was Emanuel’s first major personnel announcement as he prepares to take over City Hall from retiring Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who didn’t seek a seventh term. Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s former White House chief of staff, easily won February’s election and will be sworn in to office May 16. He’s out to remake the city’s schools, including crusading for a longer school day and other reforms to improve student learning and teacher quality.

The president, who has been campaigning to raise taxes on the wealthy, paid the government $453.770 in federal taxes, about a quarter of the income. Just last week, he renewed his push to end Bush-era tax cuts for households with annual incomes above $250,000 – noting that that would include him.

The White House released tax returns for the Obamas and for Vice President Joe Biden and his wife on Monday, the deadline for Americans to file.

New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., which recently won a new 20-year license for Vermont Yankee but has fought with state officials since the discovery of radioactive tritium at the plant, says the state doesn’t have the authority to prevent continued operation of Vermont Yankee.

“The question presented by this case is whether the state of Vermont … may effectively veto the federal government’s authorization to operate the Vermont Yankee Station through March 21, 2032,” the lawsuit says. “The answer is no.”

Her home was across the street and she saw “a big shiny car pull up and three men in suits get out.” It was an unusual sight. Most men in town worked in the steel and iron mills and only wore suits to church on Sundays.

She later learned the men worked for the federal government and told her mother that her father had been killed in a plane crash in Cuba. It would be years before she would learn he was one of the four Alabama guardsmen killed in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

A federal jury heard closing arguments in the case against Lee B. Farkas, the former chairman and majority owner of Ocala, Fla.-based Taylor Bean and Whitaker. Prosecutors said Farkas was the ringleader of a scheme that has already resulted in six guilty pleas to a fraud that totaled nearly $3 billion. Taylor Bean collapsed in 2009, causing its more than 2,000 employees to lose their jobs. Taylor Bean’s primary banker, Alabama-based Colonial Bank, also collapsed in 2009 – the sixth-largest bank collapse in U.S. history.

Federal officials have said the case against Farkas is the most significant to develop out of the nation’s financial crisis.

Forty-five years later, gay rights advocates say similar arguments are being advanced to defeat a bill that would make the state the first to require the teaching of gay history in public schools. The California Senate approved the landmark measure last week, but it needs to clear the Democrat-controlled Assembly and Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk.

Yet the debate about what children should learn about sexual orientation mirrors earlier disputes over whether groups such as 20th Century German immigrants, women, Muslims and Jews would have a place for their heroes and heartbreaks in the history books.