Evening Edition

His owner, Cibele Dominigues, admitted the little white terrier for weeks of costly treatment in Veterinarian Hospital Dr. Hato, an ultra-modern animal clinic in Sao Paulo that boasts it is the best and most sophisticated in South America.

There he had access to a dialysis machine, a round-the-clock staff of attendants and a level of care that would be out of reach for most of Brazil’s human population.

Speaking via video link to an audience in London, Assange said the site was preparing to release the final 15,000 classified files, the remaining documents from a huge cache which were published last month.

“We are about 7,000 reports in,” he said, without giving a date when the files would be released.

Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling came as he rejected a formal motion by opponents of same-sex marriage to stay any further weddings until the appeals process had been exhausted.

But Walker disappointed couples who had been hoping to tie the knot immediately, saying in an 11-page finding that same-sex weddings would only be able to take place from August 18 onwards.

Fears were also raised that that fires could stir up radioactive particles on land still contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster but the authorities warned against any panic.

Medvedev reported success in containing the fires that have killed over 50 people and destroyed entire villages, saying he has given orders to lift the state of emergency in three of seven regions.

His visit came as the United States increased its financial contribution to the flood relief effort by 21 million dollars, signalling Washington’s support for a key ally in combating terrorism.

Zardari came under fire from victims, the political opposition and critics for failing last week to cut short a visit to Europe to deal personally with what is now the country’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Initial claims were well above most economists’ expectations of 465,000, climbing by 2,000 to 484,000 in the week to August 7 from the previous week’s upwardly revised figure of 482,000.

“Claims’ failure to move lower in the latest week was a disappointment and could point to further labor market weakness,” warned Moody’s Economy.com economist Andrew Gledhill.

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes on Wednesday said the funds would be used for food, clean water, shelter and medical supplies for the millions affected by the natural disaster in a nation already beset by extremist violence.

“We have a huge task in front of us to deliver all that is required as soon as possible,” he told donors in New York.

Revenues and profits swelled under Whitacre, 68, who was brought out of retirement last year by the Obama administration to lead the troubled company after a government-financed restructuring under bankruptcy protection.

“It was my public duty to help return this company to greatness and I didn’t want to stay a day beyond that,” said Whitacre, announcing he will step down as CEO on September 1 and as chairman of the board by year-end.

Day was in the opening group that teed off from the 10th hole but he had to wait over three hours to get started because of a fog delay.

He finished with five birdies and made the turn at 34 on the Whistling Straits course.

But Ibrahim al-Qosi has already agreed a plea deal with prosecutors, the details of which remain secret, raising the possibility that he could serve a much shorter sentence, or be repatriated to Sudan.

The 10-member jury deliberated for just over an hour before handing down the sentence against the 51-year-old Qosi, who pled guilty in July to material support to terrorism.

Lieutenant General Babaker Zerbari said American forces may be needed in the conflict-wracked nation for a further decade, in comments that called into question Washington’s policy of a phased and “responsible drawdown.”

The general’s remarks, which could irk political leaders in Baghdad, came after eight of his soldiers were killed in a brazen attack that exposed shaky security here less than three weeks before US troop numbers fall to 50,000.

The car exploded at 5:30 am (1030 GMT) near a building housing the offices of Radio Caracol, breaking windows and causing other damage but no deaths.

It had been packed with some 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of ammonium nitrate and a pipette of propane gas, said city mayor Samuel Moreno.

Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani’s lawyer told The Guardian newspaper on Thursday that his client, a 43-year-old mother of two, was forced to give the interview, recorded in Tabriz prison where she has been held for the past four years.

“She was severely beaten up and tortured until she accepted to appear in front of camera,” lawyer Houtan Kian said on the newspaper’s website.

France’s higher education minister travelled to Jiaotong University’s suburban campus last month to discuss the rankings, the Norwegian education minister came last year and the Danish minister is due to visit next month.

Dozens of university presidents have also made the trip.

Issa Ahmed Ruyima said he was a member of Somalia’s Islamist insurgent group Shebab, which has claimed responsibility for the double suicide blasts that killed 76 people on the evening of the football World Cup final.

Ruyima, 33, identified as the ring-leader of the attack gang, was presented to the media with three other suspects by Ugandan authorities who said all those behind the blasts had been captured.

“Safe-haven trades are back in the ascendancy as investors increasingly fret about the outlook for the global economy,” said Nick Stamenkovic, macro strategist at RIA Capital Markets in London.

A worldwide sell-off erupted on Wednesday after the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England cut their outlooks this week, while investors also shunned risk on signs of slowing industrial growth and rising inflation in China.

There are now 64,000 American soldiers in Iraq, but this number is due to fall to 50,000 by the end of the month when the United States is set to declare an end to combat operations and switch to a training and advisory mission.

“We’re on target by the end of the month to end our combat mission,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told a press briefing.

Beckham was unable to play in the World Cup due to an Achilles injury suffered while on loan to AC Milan in March, but the LA Galaxy midfielder had hoped to return to England duty when he was fully fit.

The former Manchester United and Real Madrid star went to the World Cup as part of Capello’s backroom staff but the Italian, speaking ahead of Wednesday’s friendly against Hungary at Wembley, which England won 2-1 without Beckham, said there was no chance of a recall for the Euro 2012 qualifying campaign.

“We have a full network of monitoring and we carry out frequent observations,” the deputy head of Russian state weather forecaster Rosgidromet Valery Dyadyuchenko told the Interfax news agency.

“A worsening of the radiation situation and a growth in the background radiation as a result of a transfer of materials from the fires have not been recorded anywhere in Russia,” he said.

Two mammal bones found in Ethiopia’s Afar region with chips missing that could only have been removed by sharp-edged tools are about 3.4 million years old, said the study, published in Nature.

Cut marks show that implements were used to slice flesh, while hammer-like marks suggest blows used to crack open the bone to get at nutritious — and perhaps tasty — marrow.

Investors from New York to Tokyo poured money into safer assets after the Federal Reserve warned the US recovery would be “more modest” than expected.

In an effort to bolster market confidence the central bank on Tuesday announced a return to crisis-era stimulus spending. But the policy shift was seen more like a plumb line that revealed the depths of the Fed’s concerns.

Discontent with Obama and his fellow Democrats in Congress as the economy struggles and the deficit soars has energized some conservatives, including the Tea Party movement, and boosted Republican chances of winning the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday for Ohio confirmed national surveys showing Republicans with a big advantage in enthusiasm, with 75 percent of registered Republicans in the battleground state certain they would vote, compared with 52 percent of Democrats.

Dan Akerson, 61, a veteran private equity investor little known in auto circles, replaces Whitacre, 68, as of September. Akerson had been appointed by the Obama administration as one of the directors meant to safeguard the government’s $50 billion financing to restructure GM.

Whitacre’s departure had been expected, but the timing of his announcement caught even GM insiders off guard, just a day before GM was expected to file the paperwork for a landmark stock offering that would mark its reemergence as a publicly traded company a year after bankruptcy.

The order to allow gay marriage will take effect at 5 p.m. PDT on Wednesday.

That will give an appeals court time to consider “in an orderly manner” whether the voter-approved ban, known as Proposition 8, should be left intact while appellate judges weigh the merits of the overall case, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker ruled.

Thursday’s data came two days after the Federal Reserve spooked investors by downgrading its assessment of the economy. The increase in jobless claims added to worries in the stock market, which has failed to make any gains this year.

The number of new claims for state unemployment insurance rose by 2,000 to 484,000 in the week ended August 7, the second straight increase, the Labor Department said. Economists had expected claims to edge down to 469,000.

Amid news reports that WikiLeaks plans to soon release about 15,000 documents it had held back last month, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell repeated a U.S. demand for the whistle-blower site to expunge all classified material from the Internet and return the material it had to the U.S. government.

“It is hard to believe anything WikiLeaks says, but our position on this matter should be well-known by now to everyone,” said Morrell, who was traveling with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on a trip to California.

The floods, triggered by torrential monsoon downpours, have swamped Pakistan’s Indus river basin, killing more than 1,600 people, forcing two million from their homes and disrupting the lives of about 14 million people, or 8 percent of the population.

The deluge, which began two weeks ago, has caused extensive damage to the country’s main crops, agriculture officials said, after the United Nations appealed for $459 million in emergency aid and warned of a wave of deaths if help failed to arrive.

But Khadr’s defense attorney said those were the words of a scared and wounded child whose interrogators frightened him into giving a false confession by making up a tale of a young boy gang-raped and killed in prison.

“It is only after that story is told to Omar Khadr that he admits to throwing anything. He told them what they wanted to hear,” Army Lieutenant Colonel Jon Jackson said in defense opening statements.

The ultimatum was issued hours after senior officials from government, intelligence and state-run telecom operators met to discuss how to gain access to the content, the latest global headache for Research In Motion (RIM).

In a matter of a few weeks, the BlackBerry device — long the darling of the world’s CEOs and politicians, including U.S. President Barack Obama — has become a target for its sealed email and messaging services with governments around the world.

“I would make a few calls to friends of mine, like one guy in Chicago, and we would just sit there and say, ‘Is the stock going to go any lower?'” Kasich, 58, said during an interview at his gubernatorial campaign headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, the city where he ran a two-man investment banking office until after Lehman’s bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. “I didn’t really fixate on it. You just kept doing your job and you saw crazy things happening.”

In the wake of Lehman’s demise, some of its 26,000 employees found new jobs with Barclays, Nomura Holdings or other surviving rivals. Others headed for the unemployment lines with the tarnished Lehman name atop their resumes.

U.S. military leaders, engaged in a massive troop withdrawal that will see American forces reduced to 50,000 by month’s end from about 150,000 at their peak, say Iraq’s army and police are up to the challenge of militant attacks.

Under the security pact between Baghdad and Washington, all U.S. troops are scheduled to leave by the end of next year.

Banks repossessed the second highest monthly number of homes ever last month, working through distressed loans already on their books rather than sharply stepping up new default notices, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

This reflects problem management instead of a fix of the root problem, said the company, which expects more than 1 million homes to be repossessed this year.

The campaign to secure the Taliban’s birthplace of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan is a central objective of President Barack Obama’s revised war effort and will factor prominently in a White House strategy review in December.

But U.S. officials are playing down expectations of any quick turnaround, despite Obama’s July 2011 deadline to start withdrawing forces from Afghanistan, conditions permitting.

A final decision was expected Friday on whether crews need to go ahead with drilling relief wells to allow for a so-called “bottom kill,” in which mud and cement are pumped from deep underground to permanently seal the well.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration’s point man on the oil spill, said at a news conference that an earlier effort to temporarily plug the well may have had the unintended effect of creating a permanent seal.

The news raised hopes among gay couples that they soon could tie the knot after years of agonizing delays.

“We just want equal rights. We’re tired of being second-class citizens,” said Amber Fox, 35, who went to the Beverly Hills Municipal Courthouse on Thursday morning in hopes of marrying her partner. The couple wed in Massachusetts in June but wanted to make it official in their home state.

GM said Thursday that it made $1.3 billion from April through June, its second straight quarter in the black and a complete reversal from last year, when it was forced into bankruptcy and the U.S. government took a majority stake.

CEO Ed Whitacre said he would leave his post Sept. 1. He said the GM board knew all along that he would do so after the company returned to health, and industry analysts said it was an important step leading up to the stock sale.

That extraordinary disclosure, which laid bare classified military documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010, has angered U.S. officials, energized critics of the NATO-led campaign, and drawn the attention of the Taliban, which has promised to use the material to track down people it considers traitors.

The Pentagon says it believes it has identified the additional 15,000 classified documents, and said Thursday that their exposure would be even more damaging to the military than what has already been published.

The voice vote in the nearly empty Senate chamber sends the legislation to President Barack Obama, who planned to sign it into law on Friday. Obama had urged Congress to channel more money toward border security amid complaints from states besieged by undocumented immigrants and illegal drug trafficking.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the chief sponsor, said the measure would provide Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano “with the boots on the ground and the resources necessary to combat the crime and violence.”

Steven Slater, 38, said through his lawyer Thursday that he loves flying and wants to go back to work.

“His hope is to return to the aviation business,” his attorney, Howard Turman, told reporters as Slater stood by his side outside his home in Queens. Flying, he added, “is in his blood.”

The ministry said that if no technical solution is provided by then, it will take steps to block the services from the country’s mobile phone network. The phones are made by Canada’s Research In Motion Ltd.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also threatened to cut off popular BlackBerry services unless they get greater access to user information. Like India, they’ve cited security concerns in pushing for access to encrypted information sent by the cell phones that gets routed through servers overseas.

Whitacre, 68, will be replaced by GM board member Daniel Akerson. Like Whitacre, Akerson has a background of leading telecommunications companies.

Akerson, 61, will be GM’s fourth CEO in 18 months when he takes over the job. He could be the executive who takes GM public again if an expected public offering takes place later this year.

The weather-related cataclysms of July and August fit patterns predicted by climate scientists, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization says – although those scientists always shy from tying individual disasters directly to global warming.

The experts now see an urgent need for better ways to forecast extreme events like Russia’s heat wave and wildfires and the record deluge devastating Pakistan. They’ll discuss such tools in meetings this month and next in Europe and America, under United Nations, U.S. and British government sponsorship.

It’s a sign that hiring remains weak and employers may be going back to cutting their staffs. Analysts say the increase suggests companies won’t be adding enough workers in August to lower the 9.5 percent unemployment rate.

First-time claims for jobless benefits edged up by 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 484,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s the highest total since February. Analysts had expected claims to fall.

A weekly employment report that was weaker than expected also made investors uneasy about the strength of the economic recovery. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 58 points and now has an almost 380-point loss the past three days. The Dow has also fallen five of the last six days. The Nasdaq composite index had a steeper loss in percentage terms, a reflection of the drop in tech stocks.

Cisco Systems Inc. released earnings after the market closed Wednesday. Cisco is seen by many traders and analysts as an indicator of the economy’s health, and it disappointed investors in several ways. The computer networking company’s revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter and forecast for revenue fell short of analysts’ expectations. Investors are focused on the connection between revenue and the economy. If revenue is weak, that could be a sign that consumers are reluctant to spend and could start to affect companies’ profits.

NATO forces rejected the claim, saying they had killed several suspected insurgents and detained a local Taliban commander in the overnight raid.

The gulf between the two accounts is a reminder of how sensitive every NATO operation in Afghanistan has become. In Taliban-heavy areas it is hard to distinguish villagers from insurgents and sometimes public opinion turns against coalition forces even when they say they are certain they targeted the correct people.

Billions of dollars in U.S. rescue funds wound up in big banks in France, Germany and other nations. That was probably inevitable because of the structure of the Treasury Department’s program, the Congressional Oversight Panel says in a new report issued Thursday.

The U.S. program aimed to stabilize the financial system by injecting money into as many banks as possible, including those with substantial operations overseas. Most other countries, by contrast, focused their efforts more narrowly on banks in their nations that usually lacked major U.S. operations.

Patrick Joseph McCabe, 74, faces charges he sexually assaulted six boys in Ireland from 1973 to 1981. He turned himself in to federal authorities July 30 and is being held without bail.

His defense attorney, David Cohen, did not return calls for comment. Dublin authorities and archdiocese officials also declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

U.S. District Judge James Selna’s ruling removes an FBI supervisor from Craig Monteilh’s lawsuit and dismisses the only cause of action against the U.S. government with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be refiled. The claims against the FBI supervisor, however, can be amended and refiled within 20 days.

Selna plans to hear arguments and issue a final ruling Friday.

The now-suspended aide, David Johnson, did not enter a plea at his arraignment Thursday in Bronx Criminal Court and was released but ordered to stay away from his accuser, ex-girlfriend Sherr-una Booker. He had surrendered earlier in the day on charges of assault, menacing, harassment and criminal mischief, all misdemeanors.

Johnson, wearing a suit, did not comment outside court as he got into his attorney’s silver Mercedes, while Booker’s attorney said his client felt a step closer to getting justice.

The college says he was simply unqualified and that a state investigation that found probable cause this month to support his allegations was “poor and incomplete.”

Dr. Csaba Marosan, 53, is awaiting his day in court against Trocaire College in Buffalo, a two-year school founded by the Sisters of Mercy.

“For those who doubt the federal government’s resolve in the enforcement of immigration law, let me say this: We are committed to strong, effective immigration enforcement, and the facts speak for themselves,” ICE Director John Morton said.

He said his agency removed a record 380,000 illegal immigrants from the U.S. last fiscal year, and about a third of them were convicted criminals. So far this fiscal year, ICE removed 136,000 illegal immigrants who are convicted criminals, also a record, Morton said.

Caretakers of the 11-story Bald Knob Cross of Peace near Alto Pass, Ill., some 130 miles southeast of St. Louis, insist the grant was legally awarded to the 50-year-old landmark in mid-2008 by classifying it as a tourist attraction, not a religious symbol.

Rob Sherman disagrees, pressing in his federal lawsuit in Springfield, Ill., that the grant violates the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause used to argue a separation of church and state.

“If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t even be in school,” Carol Jones, 51, said after finishing classes for the day at the Maxine Waters Education & Career Center, one of the institutions the congresswoman has supported during her decades in state and federal government.

“Whenever somebody is doing something good for the community, they’ll find something to make them look bad,” said Jones, who is enrolled in high-school equivalency and nursing programs at the gleaming mirrored glass and adobe building on an otherwise run-down boulevard of shops and homes. “That’s just the way the world is.”

The blaring alarms had been muted, for fear they could trigger terror in children who recently arrived from war zones and other conflict areas. The silent fire drill was part of the balancing act for staff at the six-week program that helps youngsters who have survived wars and refugee camps prepare for a new experience – American public school.

For some of the kids, formal education has been haphazard or nonexistent, said Elizabeth Demchak, principal of the school, run by the International Rescue Committee, which works with refugees and asylum-seekers.

That’s the backdrop of the country’s premier money show, the World’s Fair of Money, which has brought about 1,000 coin dealers and hundreds of collectors to Boston, seeking to tap into the surprising resilience of the coin industry.

Held in a sprawling hall monitored by armed uniformed and undercover police officers, federal agents, private security contractors, electronic surveillance equipment and vigilant participants, the fair features seldom-seen gold treasurers brought from the Smithsonian Institution’s vaults including America’s first $20 gold coin – valued by independent experts at $15 million today – and its last $20 coin.

In his first media interview since he was freed safely in March, Issa Salomi told The Associated Press he was handed over in exchange for four militants in Iraqi detention.

Shiite extremist group Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or “the League of the Righteous,” claimed responsibility for his kidnapping. The group is believed to be close with Iran, and agreed last year to lay down its arms and join the Iraqi political process. Their current role is unclear.

Some peddle schemes that use fictional legal loopholes to eliminate debt and avoid foreclosures.

A few such believers are violent: Two police officers in Arkansas died in a shootout in May after stopping an Ohio sovereign citizen and his son.

David Robinson, a lawyer for Lt. Monique Patterson, said Wednesday that he has more than 100 text messages sent to her in 2009 and 2010 from her boss, acting Police Chief Ralph Godbee, including messages that show the two had romantic “rendezvous.”

He said Patterson ended her relationship with Godbee when she started dating Warren Evans last year.

Environmentalists derided the proposal, vowing to challenge in court any new plans for hunting the estimated 1,367 wolves in Idaho and Montana.

“They’re adopting the Japanese whaling approach of holding hunts under the obviously erroneous concept of research,” said Mike Leahy, Rocky Mountain director for Defenders of Wildlife. “They’re trying to be too clever by half.”