Evening Edition

Until officials figure out what went wrong with Russia’s essential Soyuz rockets, there will be no way to launch any more astronauts before the current residents have to leave in mid-November.

The unsettling predicament comes just weeks after NASA’s final space shuttle flight.

The head of Russia’s manned spaceflight programme also warned that a significantly longer delay would force the six people on board the station to abandon the orbiter due to problems of fatigue and supplies.

“We expect that the next manned launch will take place in late October or early November — not earlier. That is our plan,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Russia’s manned spaceflight programme director Alexei Krasnov as saying.

Fierce fighting also raged in the west of the country as rebels trying to take full control of the region said they had fallen into an ambush in a town southwest of Zuwarah.

Rebel forces moved to within 30 kilometres (18 miles) of Sirte from the west and captured Bin Jawad 100 kilometres to the east, the rebel commander in Misrata, Mohammed al-Fortiya, told AFP.

A child was among five people killed when troops and security forces opened fire during search operations in the Sarmin district of the northwest province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

One person died when part of his home was levelled as Syrian forces raked houses in Sarmin with heavy machine-gun fire, the head of the Britain-based Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman, said.

Medvedev informed party leaders of his decision and then signed the corresponding decree fixing the date for the elections for the State Duma lower house, Russian state news agencies reported.

“The decree sets December 4 as the date for the State Duma elections. It comes into force the moment it is published officially,” Medvedev said at the meeting at his summer residence in the Black Sea city of Sochi.

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema — who has caused controversy with his racially charged rhetoric and flashy lifestyle — faces charges of “bringing the ANC into disrepute” and “sowing divisions” in the party.

Malema, who is charged along with five other top youth league officials, could be kicked out of the ANC at the closed-door hearing, after being found guilty of criticising Zuma by the party’s disciplinary committee last year.

The second day of festivities passed largely peacefully with 6,500 police officers, the biggest number in recent years at the Caribbean-themed extravaganza, on duty as spectators watched Samba-style dancers perform on floats.

“It’s wonderful, there hasn’t been any trouble,” Francesca, 42, from French Guiana, told AFP.

The eurozone gave itself until early September to put in place a second Greek rescue and expand the powers of their debt rescue fund after leaders approved the package at an emergency summit on July 21.

But the Greek bailout is stalling over Finnish demands for Athens to offer collateral and the package must also be approved by all national parliaments.

Obama described Krueger as one of America’s top economists who understood the challenges that the country faces, with a recovery that has been too tepid to make significant cuts in an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent.

Krueger, if confirmed by the Senate, will serve as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and succeed long-time Obama confidante Austan Goolsbee who left the administration to return to academia in Chicago.

In its final report to Congress due to be released Wednesday, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting warns that waste and fraud have undermined American diplomacy, fomented corruption in host countries and tarnished the US image abroad.

“Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted through poor planning, vague and shifting requirements, inadequate competition, substandard contract management and oversight, lax accountability, weak interagency coordination, and subpar performance or outright misconduct by some contractors and federal employees,” the co-chairs of the panel, Christopher Shays and Michael Thibault, wrote in a commentary in the Washington Post.

An eye-opening example of the PTSD on view in New York’s daily life a decade after the attacks: last Tuesday, when a relatively rare earthquake was felt up much of the US east coast including in New York City, locals spontaneously evacuated high-rises here, pouring into the streets in distress.

“The first thing to come to their minds was ‘Oh, my God, is there another bombing, what’s going on?'” said Dr. Jacob Ham, who leads the program for Healing Emotions and Achieving Resilience to Traumatic Stress at Beth Israel Medical Center and St. Luke?s Roosevelt Hospital Center.

Some survivors like Hardej tirelessly retell the story of the fiery collapse ten years ago of the World Trade Center. Others absolutely refuse to speak of it. And some have radically remade their lives because of it.

In Hardej’s case, he goes four times a month to the site of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan to the Tribute Center, a small museum established by an association of families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Whether one is afflicted by a heart attack, high blood pressure or constricted arteries depends in large measure on a host of lifestyle choices.

But the ideal formula for avoiding heart problems remains elusive: it is hard to tease apart the factors that impact cardiovascular health, and the right mix of things to do — or not do — can vary from person to person.

That’s not all. The 23-year-old student and Jakarta resident refuses to shake hands with women, will not marry a non-Muslim and approves of such Islamic Hudud sanctions as cutting off the hands of thieves and stoning adulterers to death.

“I wholeheartedly agree that sharia law should be implemented in Indonesia. If beheading and hand-chopping put people off crimes which then results in a more orderly society, why not?” he told AFP.

Around 60,000 bare-breasted girls from across the landlocked kingdom, some as young as 10 years old, were presenting reeds they had cut from surrounding hills to the royal kraal on Monday while they danced before King Mswati III.

Mswati, Africa’s last monarch who already has 13 wives, has often used the ceremony to choose a new spouse.

Bin Hammam was slapped with the ban last month after he was found guilty of trying to buy votes in the FIFA presidential race by offering Caribbean football officials $40,000 each.

The former head of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has denied the charges, calling them “politically motivated”, and is appealing the ban.

Algeria’s Foreign Ministry said Gaddafi’s wife Safia, his daughter Aisha and his sons Hannibal and Mohammed had entered Algeria on Monday morning.

The development threatened to create a diplomatic rift as the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) worked to consolidate its position as Libya’s new government.

Fighters tested their cannons in the desert and cleaned their weapons at the main defense line, about 180 kilometers (110 miles) from Sirte along the dusty coastal highway. Rebel forces were also gathering to the east.

“The Libyans in Sirte don’t want to fight, but there are senior Gaddafi people there who are in control,” said Abdul Rahman Omar, a 27-year-old fighter from Misrata. “We don’t want any more blood.”

Visitors to one police station step on a rug featuring Gaddafi’s face and drivers roll over a poster of him at a checkpoint outside.

The district’s policemen on Monday spent their first day in uniform since Gaddafi’s overthrow. Senior officers had for days urged colleagues to return to work, through announcements at mosques and word of mouth.

In a rapid return to normality, even the notorious Abu Salim hospital, where 75 bodies were found after staff fled fighting in the area, is welcoming patients once again.

“This hospital has just reopened yesterday and it’s beginning to function. It was cleaned up and everything is supposed to be in place now,” said Robin Waudo, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Tripoli.

One woman, 45 year-old Amal Qoraman, was killed and five other people were injured, they said, adding that tens of people were arrested in house to house raids in the town of 40,0000.

Since the demise of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule in Libya, activists and residents have reported increasing defections among Syrian troops, as well as more intense street protests in a five-month-old uprising against President Bashar al Assad.

Boko Haram, which has been behind almost daily shootings and attacks with homemade bombs in the remote northeast, was the prime suspect in Friday’s car bombing of the United Nations’ Abuja office — one of deadliest attacks on the world body in its history.

“We are responsible for the bomb attack carried out on the U.N. building in Abuja,” a Boko Haram spokesman calling himself Abu Kakah told local journalists in a statement over the weekend.

Medvedev set December 4 as the date for the election to the 450-seat State Duma, the lower house of parliament, dominated by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party.

“What we definitely need to eliminate during the campaign are the attempts to incite ethnic hatred. This is categorically unacceptable,” Medvedev told leaders of seven political parties. “Such attempts and calls will be decisively suppressed.”

Noda appears to be a safe pair of hands to lead the world’s third-biggest economy but there are serious doubts whether he will have sufficient support to tackle Japan’s myriad economic woes, lift it out of decades of stagnation and cope with a nuclear crisis.

The 54-year-old Noda, who defeated Trade Minister Banri Kaieda in a run-off vote in the ruling party, must deal with a resurgent yen that threatens exports, forge a new energy policy while ending the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, and find funds to rebuild from the March 11 tsunami at a time when huge public debt has already triggered a credit downgrade.

Some 23 lawmakers from Merkel’s own coalition have said they would not back the reforms of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in a vote in the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) next month, German media reported at the weekend.

Yet Norbert Barthle, the chief budget expert of Merkel’s conservatives, said he thought the number of critical voices was just half that.

The proposal, drafted in June, remains a central plank of Finnish demands for collateral in return for providing more aid to Greece. Senior euro zone officials held another conference call on Monday to try to resolve the collateral issue.

If Finland does not get its way, it may pull out of the Greek bailout, unleashing renewed trouble in financial markets.

A group of investors is buying 13.1 billion CCB shares from Bank of America, with the deal expected to close in the third quarter. The U.S. bank declined to name the investors but two sources said Singapore state fund Temasek was among the buyers.

Bank of America needs to boost capital by some $50 billion in the coming years to meet new global rules, according to multiple analyst estimates.

And it may be a long time before the battered stock begins to trade again, even though an initial order from the Ontario Securities Commission on Friday called for a trading halt of just 15 days.

“What I expect is an appearance in front of the commission in the next two weeks and if I had to predict the future, they will likely agree to push the hearing forward by several weeks or even months,” said Joseph Groia, a securities lawyer and the former director of enforcement at the OSC.

Early signs show consumers are postponing sales, cutting budgets, sticking to buying essentials and searching for the best bargains.

That’s bad news for retailers, but what’s worse is the knowledge that the fight for sales will only get tougher with the arrival of U.S.-based discount retailer Target Corp in the market in 2013.

The report found that the Keystone XL pipeline by itself would not likely boost output of Alberta’s oil sands because demand for the oil means it will get to the market one way or another.

“Even without it … the oil is going to develop and is going to get to different refineries that are demanding it,” a State Department official said.

The initiative aims to reduce the stubbornly high 9.1 percent unemployment rate — the top concern of voters ahead of next year’s congressional and presidential elections.

Democrats have been increasingly criticizing Republicans for focusing on shrinking government spending, even at the expense of jobs, since taking control of the House eight months ago.

Negotiations between Verizon and the unions representing its wireline workers are expected to resume on Wednesday after both sides last week agreed on a new framework for bargaining. About 45,000 technical and customer service workers — roughly half of Verizon’s wireline workforce — returned to work last week after a two-week work stoppage.

“With the workforce returning to work, both sides realize that an extended strike would be very costly and they’re both backing down,” said Professor Harry Katz, a labor specialist at Cornell University. Katz added, however, “Verizon is going to get meaningful concessions in the negotiations. They’re just not going to get the extreme draconian concessions they were after.”

The gathering of those frustrated with the political process in Washington will provide a forum to talk about whether it makes sense to organize a constitutional convention, event organizers said.

The expected 400 attendees would like reforms on a number of issues, said organizer David Segal, a former Democratic state representative from Rhode Island who said moving toward a convention could provide the momentum needed to spur change.

The selection signaled a fresh attempt by Obama to make good on his promise to focus on the economy and jobs with Americans deeply dissatisfied with his handling of those issues.

Krueger, an expert on unemployment, would succeed Austan Goolsbee as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Gadhafi’s whereabouts were still unknown and rebels are worried that if he remains in Libya, it will stoke more violence. In Washington, the Obama administration said it has no indication Gadhafi has left the country.

Rebels also said one of Gadhafi’s other sons, elite military commander Khamis, was probably killed in battle.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was the only person convicted for the bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people. He was released from a Scottish prison on humanitarian grounds in 2009, only eight years into a life sentence, after doctors predicted he would die of prostate cancer within three months.

Many victims’ families were infuriated by his release. That fury only grew when he returned to a hero’s welcome in Libya, remained alive long past those doctors’ predictions and even appeared at a recent pro-Gadhafi rally. The downfall of the Gadhafi regime spurred calls from some in the United States and Europe that he be returned to prison.

The department said it wants the opposition to look into the handling of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi’s return to Libya, with an eye toward potentially expelling him if he does not die in the meantime. Al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 and returned home to a hero’s welcome from supporters of Moammar Gadhafi. He is now near death and slipping in and out of consciousness, according to his brother. His release by Scottish authorities was loudly protested by the U.S., as were the circumstances of his return to Libya.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said U.S. officials have spoken to senior members of Libya’s Transitional National Council about the case. She said the TNC had agreed to look into it once it consolidates control over the country and establishes a fully functioning government.

Featured prominently in the talks was the whereabouts and eventual release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl of Hailey, Idaho, who was captured more than two years ago in eastern Afghanistan, according to a senior Western diplomat in the region and a childhood friend of the Taliban negotiator, Tayyab Aga.

The U.S. negotiators asked Aga what could be done to gain Bergdahl’s release. The discussion did not get into specifics but Aga discussed the release of Afghan prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Field.

Abuja, Nigeria’s modern city of paved highways and shining government buildings, now looks militarized as the nation struggles to cope with the bombings. The latest one, on Friday, killed 23 people at the headquarters of the United Nations.

Nigerians say they’re losing faith in the ability of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to stop the killings, especially those committed by the radical Muslim sect that claimed responsibility for the U.N. attack.

The two-day carnival, launched in 1964, celebrates Caribbean culture and attracts about 1 million people with its mix of flamboyant dancers, colorful costumes, rousing steel bands and booming outdoor sound systems.

British police flooded the prosperous west London neighborhood of Notting Hill with extra officers and authorized the use of tough search powers on Sunday and Monday. Sound stages pumping out music also turned off at around 7 p.m., earlier than usual, so the carnival could end before dark.

After a three-week trial, a federal court jury found retired Cmdr. Charles Coughlin of Severna Park, Md., guilty of making a false claim and stealing public money after he got $331,034 from the fund set up by Congress after the 2001 attacks. The charges carry maximum penalties of up to 15 years in prison, but prosecutors say they expect to argue for three to four years based on his lack of a criminal record and the nature of the offense when U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth sentences Coughlin on Nov. 21.

Coughlin’s claim said he was in constant pain after being injured twice on Sept. 11, 2001 – first when objects fell on him when a hijacked plane struck the building and later when he went back inside to rescue others and hit his head. But prosecutors said Coughlin, now 52, continued playing lacrosse and ran a marathon after the attacks and lied when he claimed he needed surgery.

The Texas governor, said the nation’s “entrepreneurial spirit” would create jobs and that his tax policies would allow Americans to keep more of what they earn.

“No. 1 is don’t spend all the money, you can figure out what that means,” Perry said at the Tulsa Press Club event also attended by U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. “You won’t have stimulus programs under a Perry presidency. You won’t spend all the money.”

In nominating Alan Krueger as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Obama gains an economist with expertise in the labor market and unemployment, a key drag on the U.S. economy and Obama’s presidency. Krueger, a former Treasury Department official and Princeton University economist, has advocated for hiring tax credits for businesses and increased government spending on infrastructure, two programs Obama aides are considering proposing this fall.

His appointment also caps a wholesale makeover of Obama’s economic leadership team during the past year. Several high-ranking advisers, including Lawrence Summers, Christina Romer and Austan Goolsbee, have all left the administration, leaving Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as the only top official remaining from the president’s original economic team.

Kaplan’s latest creation, The Melt, opens its first location Tuesday in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood. Plans are in the works for two more restaurants in San Francisco and one in nearby Palo Alto by Thanksgiving. With financial backing from a venture-capital heavyweight, Sequoia Capital, Kaplan hopes to open 25 to 50 restaurants within the next year and about 500 across the country within five years.

No matter how much people like grilled cheese, Kaplan’s plan is audacious, considering the state of the economy. Still, he believes building this kind of business makes sense, particularly during a time of uncertainty.