Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Libya offers truce to UN as revolt enters 4th month

by Imed Lamloum, AFP

1 hr 21 mins ago

TRIPOLI (AFP) – Moamer Kadhafi’s prime minister offered on Sunday a truce to the visiting UN special envoy to Libya, Abdul-Ilah al-Khatib, in return for an immediate NATO ceasefire, as an anti-regime revolt entered a fourth month.

The head of Britain’s armed forces, meanwhile, said NATO should widen its bombing campaign to ensure Kadhafi is unable to cling to power, while Pope Benedict XVI called for negotiations to end the violence.

Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi, quoted by JANA state news agency, said after meeting Khatib that Libya is keen for “an immediate ceasefire to coincide with a stop to the NATO bombardment and the acceptance of international observers.”

AFP

2 Money-hungry US to hit borrowing cap

by Paul Handley, AFP

Sun May 15, 12:11 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The debt-laden US government’s credit card will hit its limit Monday, creating a cash crunch that puts the country’s credit standing at risk as politicians battle over its long-term deficit.

US President Barack Obama warned if no deal is brokered on raising the $14.29 trillion debt ceiling set by Congress then the United States risked plunging back into recession.

“If investors around the world thought that the full faith and credit of the United States was not being backed up, if they thought that we might renege on our IOUs, it could unravel the entire financial system,” Obama warned at a CBS town hall meeting broadcast on Sunday.

3 Greeks mobilise to protect endangered seeds

by Eleni Colliopoulou, AFP

37 mins ago

MESOHORI, Greece (AFP) – The remote valley of Mesohori in northeastern Greece seems an unusual choice for a stand against genetically modified crop conglomerates who are knocking on Europe’s door.

Yet thousands of organic farming advocates seeking to bar so-called “Frankenstein” foods from the continent made the journey here to help raise awareness about dangers to seed diversity.

The event was an annual seed exchange festival organised by the Peliti alternative community, a Mesohori-based non-government organisation working to preserve Greece’s vegetal wealth against an encroaching global economy.

4 Jubilant Azerbaijan seeks new image with Eurovision

by Emil Guliyev, AFP

Sun May 15, 7:54 am ET

BAKU (AFP) – Azerbaijan on Sunday revelled in its first Eurovision Song Contest win, hoping the victory will transform the image of an ex-Soviet state until now known as an energy exporter on Europe’s fringe.

Tradition dictates that Azerbaijani duo Ell and Nikki’s triumph in the annual pop extravaganza will bring the contest to Baku next year — one of the biggest events in the mainly Muslim country’s history since independence in 1991.

The win was portrayed as national triumph by the main television channels in the small, relatively young state wedged between Iran, Russia and Turkey that went through war and political conflict after the Soviet collapse.

5 Syria bloodshed spills over into LebanonSyria bloodshed spills over into Lebanon

AFP

Sun May 15, 6:59 am ET

DAMASCUS (AFP) – The deadly unrest in Syria spilled over into Lebanon where a woman was killed at a border crossing as protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime entered a third month on Sunday.

Gunfire from Syria raked a crowd at Al-Boqayah crossing near the town of Wadi Khaled, killing the Syrian woman and wounding five people including a Lebanese soldier, a Lebanese security official and an AFP correspondent said.

The shooting came as hundreds of Syrians fled violence in their homeland on foot into Lebanon.

Reuters

6 Citi CEO addresses MBA grads on post-crisis rehab tour

By Maria Aspan, Reuters

1 hr 5 mins ago

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Citigroup Inc Chief Executive Vikram Pandit, whose bank barely survived the financial crisis, on Sunday stepped into a once-unlikely position: role model to America’s future financial leaders.

“Over the last two years, I too, received a great education, facing crises and making decisions — many of them very difficult,” Pandit told graduating business students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School on Sunday.

He told the students the only way they could have learned more about the American economy and global economics over the last two years “is to have lived it — an experience, that I can assure you, was not full of pure enjoyment.”

7 Army shelling kills 7 in Syrian protest town: group

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Reuters

52 mins ago

AMMAN (Reuters) – At least seven Syrian civilians were killed Sunday when Syrian troops shelled the town of Tel Kelakh near the border with Lebanon to quell a pro-democracy uprising, an activists’ protest group said.

The town, just a few miles (km) from Lebanon’s northern border, is the latest focus of an intensified crackdown by Syrian troops and tanks, sent to quell demonstrations against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

The shelling on Tel Telakh concentrated on al-Burj, Ghalioun, Souk and Mahata neighborhood, the Local Coordination Committees said in a statement, adding wounded people had little access to care because the main hospital in the town was sealed by security forces and the main road to Lebanon blocked.

8 NATO must step up pace in Libya: British official

By Joseph Logan, Reuters

Sun May 15, 2:15 pm ET

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – NATO must broaden the range of targets it is bombing in Libya or risk failing to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power, Britain’s most senior military officer was quoted as saying Sunday.

NATO warplanes, acting under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians, have stopped government troops advancing on rebel strongholds but the collapse of Gaddafi’s rule, which many Western governments seek, has not materialized.

After a fresh series of air strikes on his Bab al-Aziziyah compound in Tripoli, Gaddafi taunted the Western military alliance, saying in an audio recording aired Friday that he was in a place where NATO could not reach him.

9 Blackwater founder builds foreign force in UAE: report

Reuters

Sun May 15, 8:22 am ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The crown prince of Abu Dhabi has hired the founder of private security firm Blackwater Worldwide to set up an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the United Arab Emirates, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

The Times said it obtained documents that showed the unit being formed by Erik Prince’s new company Reflex Responses with $529 million from the UAE would be used to thwart internal revolt, conduct special operations and defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from attack.

The newspaper said the decision to hire the contingent of foreign troops was taken before a wave of popular unrest spread across the Arab world in recent months, including to the UAE’s Gulf neighbors Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

10 Japan readies new tactics for Fukushima after setback

By Rie Ishiguro and Kevin Krolicki, Reuters

Sun May 15, 7:04 am ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese officials are readying a new approach to cooling reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant after discovering an Olympic swimming pool-sized pond of radioactive water in the basement of a unit crippled by the March earthquake and tsunami.

The discovery has forced officials to abandon their original plan to bring under control the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant as they focus on how to deal with the rising pool that some experts see as a threat to groundwater and the Pacific coast.

Despite the setback, Japanese nuclear safety officials and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), plan to stick to a target of stabilizing the plant and bringing its reactors to a state of “cold shutdown” by January.

11 Canada banks propose TMX deal to rival LSE bid

By Pav Jordan and Claire Sibonney, Reuters

Sat May 14, 7:12 pm ET

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada’s TMX Group, operator of the Toronto Stock Exchange, has received a takeover proposal from a group of Canadian banks and pension funds that could trump a friendly $3 billion bid from the London Stock Exchange.

A bid from the Canadian financial institutions could represent a more palatable alternative for opponents of the LSE proposal, many of whom are concerned about control of the country’s largest stock market falling into foreign hands.

Legislators and other elected officials in Ontario, the province where Toronto is located, want assurances that the city will not lose its status as a world financial center. The latest proposal, announced by TMX in a statement on Saturday, could address those concerns.

12 Bin Laden informant’s treatment key to torture debate

By Mark Hosenball and Brian Grow, Reuters

Sat May 14, 8:06 am ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A central figure in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the debate over harsh interrogation methods was held in secret CIA detention, then sent back to Pakistan and now believed to have returned to the battlefield.

U.S. counter-terrorism officials said Hassan Ghul is an al Qaeda operative who at one point carried messages between Iraqi insurgents who established an al Qaeda affiliate after U.S. troops overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein.

Precise details of the mysterious Ghul’s role in al Qaeda and the circumstances of his arrest are murky. But five U.S. officials familiar with Ghul’s role in the epic hunt for bin Laden said he gave up what turned out to be vital information about an al Qaeda courier who eventually led U.S. intelligence to bin Laden’s fortified hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

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