“We’d like to tell people it’s over, but the oil will still wash up every time it storms,” said Jay LaFont, Grand Isle’s deputy mayor.

People here are used to dealing with disasters. They’ve had to rebuild from four major hurricanes — Katrina, Rita, Ike and Gustav — in the past five years alone.

The official MENA news agency reported that the 82-year-old Mubarak, in police custody in a Red Sea resort hospital, was in “unstable” condition.

Mubarak’s “health condition is unstable, and he is under observation,” the agency quoted a hospital source as saying.

In a final statement at the end of the day-long meeting, the international contact group on Libya decided to set up a “temporary financial mechanism” to aid the rebels seeking to oust Kadhafi.

It “affirmed that Kadhafi’s regime has lost all legitimacy and he should leave and allow the Libyan people to decide their future.”

UN chief Ban Ki-moon, meanwhile, warned at the Libya contact group meeting in Doha that as many as 3.6 million people, or more than half of Libya’s population, could need humanitarian assistance.

Ban also urged the international community to “speak with one voice” on Libya, as a rift appeared to be opening between EU partners, with Belgium expressing opposition to arming the rebels and Germany insisting there could be “no military solution.”

On the eve of the first meeting of an international contact group, a spokesman for the rebel Transitional National Council said it will accept nothing short of the removal of Kadhafi and his sons from the country.

Mahmud Shammam, whose council is seeking international approval, stressed: “We want to move from the de facto recognition of the council to an internationally-recognised legitimacy.”

Seeking to heal a nation broken by a four-month crisis pitting him against his strongman predecessor Gbagbo, Ouattara also called on the International Criminal Court to probe massacres carried out in the west of the country.

“I will speak shortly with the ICC’s chief prosecutor so the court can begin investigations,” Ouattara told journalists during his first major press conference since being able to exercise executive power.

Rights group Amnesty International warned that Gbagbo’s supporters were at risk of violent reprisals following his arrest on Monday for having stubbornly refused to admit defeat to Ouattara in a November presidential election.

While both Ouattara and Gbagbo have called for fighters to lay down arms to help the formerly wealthy west African nation get back on its feet, Amnesty warned that supporters of the former regime faced deadly reprisals.

In strongly worded comments on state television, the Belarussian strongman said that the worst attack in the country’s history that also wounded 200 had been “solved” but admitted its motive remained unclear.

“The crime was solved at 5:00 am. KGB officers and police took one day to complete a superb operation and detain the perpetrators without noise and chatter,” he said. The security service is still called the KGB in Belarus.

With talks underway in Lisbon on the debt rescue, European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso said he hoped party leaders “will assume their responsibilities” to the public finances and their European Union partners.

Portugal goes to early polls on June 5 after the government fell last month when parliament rejected its latest austerity plan, forcing Lisbon to bow to market pressure and seek an EU-IMF bailout.

The emotional ceremony came about thanks to a new drive to research the provenance of state holdings with the aim of restitution, German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said.

“The 13 books being returned today preserve the memory of the Berlin Jewish community which was decimated and its members murdered or driven out,” Neumann said. “That is why such projects are so important now and in the future.”

Another strong aftershock from the 9.0-magnitude quake that struck the northeast coast more than a month ago hit the disaster region, further fraying nerves amid tense stop-and-go containment efforts at a stricken atomic plant.

Emergency workers at the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear site northeast of Tokyo started syphoning off tonnes of highly radioactive water and eyed long-term plans to encase dangerous spent fuel rods in steel caskets.

The move came after the Bank of Japan last week downgraded its view of an economy ravaged by the quake and the monster wave it unleashed, which destroyed entire towns and left more than 28,000 dead or missing.

“The economy was picking up, but it has shown weak signs recently due to the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake,” the Cabinet Office said in its monthly report. “It remains in a severe condition.”

Spanish and Chinese firms signed deals worth about one billion euros ($1.4 billion) during Zapatero’s lightning visit to Beijing, aimed at securing fresh investment to shore up Madrid’s embattled economy.

“There are no new plans on the horizon to have to take any new (deficit reduction) measures. None,” Zapatero said.

Many European banks need bigger capital cushions to restore market confidence and assure they can borrow, and some weak players will need to be closed, the International Monetary Fund said in its Global Financial Stability Report.

The debt rollover requirements are most acute for Irish and German banks, with as much as half of their outstanding debt coming due over the next two years, the fund said.

The bank’s book of consumer loans shrank by 10 percent in the quarter, and loans to corporate customers did not grow enough to make up for it. The No. 2 U.S. bank also took $1.75 billion of charges linked to collecting payments on bad mortgages and foreclosures, and said an upcoming settlement with regulators over mortgage servicing abuses could force it to hire as many 3,000 people.

The quarterly results were the first from a major Wall Street bank, and although they beat expectations, they raised investor concerns about lending profits. Bank shares broadly edged lower.

In another sign that economic growth slowed in the first quarter, the government on Wednesday separately reported a sharp slowdown in the accumulation of inventories by businesses in February.

Economists, who have steadily lowered growth forecasts as first quarter data has come in, swiftly cut them again. Still, they expect the recovery to regain momentum later this year.

The proportion of people who believe the United States is on the wrong track jumped 5 points to 69 percent from March, the poll found, the highest wrong-track figure in an Ipsos poll since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

More than six of every 10 Americans have cut back on other expenses and reduced their driving as a result of the rising gas prices caused by tumult in North Africa and the Middle East.

In a victory for Britain and France, which are leading the air campaign in Libya and pushed for an unequivocal call for regime change, the “contact group” of some 16 European and Middle Eastern nations, plus the United Nations, the Arab League and the African Union, said Gaddafi must go.

“Gaddafi and his regime has lost all legitimacy and he must leave power allowing the Libyan people to determine their future,” a final statement obtained by Reuters said.

Engineers moved a step closer to emptying highly radioactive water from one of the six crippled reactors, which would allow them to start repairing the cooling system crucial to regaining control of the reactors.

Japan’s nuclear safety agency said the latest tests showed radiation nearly doubled last week, to 23 times above legal limits, in the sea off Minamisoma city near the plant.

Companies trying to sell goods to Wal-Mart Stores Inc often find it difficult to figure out the best ways to work with the world’s largest retailer, as each buyer has his or her own style and there are vast amounts of sales data to decipher.

Sales executives who sell their goods to Wal-Mart said that while the retailer willingly shares data, it is up to the vendors to crunch the numbers.

As Washington’s point man on healthcare fraud, the 66-year-old Budetti knows there are no quick fixes to a mind-boggling mess that ranks as one of America’s top crime problems. But he has been working to develop new technological tools and a comprehensive, long-term strategy to rein in fraud since his appointment as director of Program Integrity at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last year.

Although fraudsters have had the run of the place for some two decades, life is about to get “an awful lot tougher” for them, Budetti told Reuters in a recent interview. He promised new measures to curb waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, the massive federal programs that provide healthcare for America’s elderly and poor, will soon pay big dividends.

With shareholder balloting season well underway, companies have been challenging proxy advisers’ opinions, demanding more disclosure about their work and asking regulators to rein in the firms.

Proxy firms such as ISS, part of investor services firm MSCI, and Glass Lewis & Co advise some of America’s biggest investors and have gained influence as shareholder voting rights increased.

The Libyan National Council (LNC), with the help of OPEC member Qatar has been able to export a “minimal” amount of crude oil and needs international help to continue overseas shipments, said spokesman Mahmud Awad Shammama.

“We have a dreadful situation in the east. Lack of food, lack of fuel, there is no income except oil, financial reserves are depleting and we need to sort these issues out to ensure the people do not suffer,” said Aref Ali Nayed, who coordinates the LNC’s efforts to secure overseas supplies, in an interview.

The three men he approached — Hisham Morsy, a physician, Wael Adel, a civil engineer by training, and Adel’s cousin Ahmed, a chemist — had all left Egypt for jobs in London.

Inspired by the way Serbian group Otpor had brought down Slobodan Milosevic through non-violent protests in 2000, the trio studied previous struggles. One of their favorite thinkers was Gene Sharp, a Boston-based academic who was heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. The group had set up a webpage in 2004 to propagate civil disobedience ideas in Arabic.

Mubarak, toppled on February 11 after mass demonstrations against his 30-year rule, was admitted to hospital on Tuesday suffering what state media called a “heart crisis.” There were conflicting reports about the seriousness of his illness.

The public prosecutor had summoned Mubarak for questioning on Sunday over the killing of protesters and embezzling of public funds. His two sons, Alaa and Gamal, were also summoned for questioning over graft and ordered detained, state TV said.

The meeting of the Group of 20 rich and emerging-market nations comes at a time of conflicting economic signals.

Just as signs of a strengthening recovery in some rich countries have pushed their central banks to begin to pull back on economic supports, world markets have been rocked by fears that high oil prices will put the brakes on global growth.

“I do expect a short list of countries to emerge from this process and those countries will be the focus of a second stage of analysis,” the official told reporters at a briefing ahead of a meeting of the Group of 20 rich and emerging-market nations on Thursday and Friday.

The G20 is aiming to develop “indicative guidelines” to detect imbalances such as excessive trade deficits or surpluses and then develop policy recommendations to address them. The official said this week’s meeting will focus on the first stage of the process — the language for identifying imbalances.

Army chiefs who fought for Laurent Gbagbo, including chief of staff General Philippe Mangou, swore loyalty to Ouattara on Tuesday, a day after his forces captured Gbagbo, who had refused to relinquish power after November elections.

In a boost to his legitimacy, the former military top brass were shown on Ouattara’s TCI television station meeting him.

NATO aircraft destroyed five tanks close to Misrata — the last big rebel stronghold in the west of the country — which were “threatening the civilian population,” the alliance said.

“Our aircraft will continue to hit regime targets around Misrata,” the NATO operation commander, Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, said in a statement.

Mubarak’s two sons, Gamal and Alaa, were also detained for questioning and taken to Cairo’s Torah prison, where a string of former top regime figures – including the former prime minister, ruling party chief and Mubarak’s chief of staff – are already languishing, facing similar investigations on corruption.

The move was brought by enormous public pressure on the ruling military, which was handed power when Mubarak stepped down on Feb. 11. Tens of thousands protested in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square on Friday, the biggest rally in weeks, demanding Mubarak and his family be put on trial. Many in the crowd accused the military of protecting the former president.

President Alassane Ouattara said Laurent Gbagbo had been moved out of the Golf Hotel, where he was taken after his capture on Monday. He said Gbagbo will be kept in a villa and that his rights as a former head of state will be respected. A U.N. official said that its peacekeeping forces are providing personal security protection for Gbagbo.

“Gbagbo is in a residence under surveillance somewhere in Ivory Coast,” Ouattara told reporters at the Golf Hotel.

The appeals reflected the urgent backdrop for meetings among the U.N. secretary-general and other top Western and Arab envoys gathered in Qatar’s capital to discuss ways to end the Libyan crisis.

While peace efforts remain the top objective, there also appeared to be a shift toward trying to boost the rebels’ ability to protect their territory. One proposal noted by Italy – Libya’s former colonial ruler – calls for allies to provide defensive weapons.

But the campaign has come at a dear cost. Officials tell The Associated Press that more than 50 peacekeepers have been killed, along with an unknown number of Somali dead.

The casualty rate is so high that the AU has not announced it, saying that is the responsibility of Uganda and Burundi, the two countries that currently contribute troops to the mission that is shoring up the weak U.N.-backed government.

The head of the KGB, Belarus’ security service, said a man in his mid-20s was arrested and confessed to carrying out the bombing that killed 12 people and wounded over 200 Monday at the main subway station in Minsk, the capital.

KGB chief Vadim Zaitsev did not identify the man and refused to discuss his motives but said he was “not only unhealthy in his psychological state but unhealthy in his ambitions.”

People are increasingly growing frustrated with Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s handling of the nuclear crisis, which has progressed fitfully since the March 11 tsunami swamped the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, knocking out important cooling systems. Restoring them will take months.

“I am not asking for anything more than I am entitled to,” said Ichijiro Ishikawa, 69, who dug roads and tunnels and is now living in a shelter because his home is in a 12-mile (20-kilometer) evacuation zone around the plant. “I just want my due.”

But don’t tell Pensacola residents that the Jan. 8, 1861, skirmish meant nothing – the event is the stuff of legend in this military town. Some even claim the clash was the Civil War’s first, three months before the battle on April 12, 1861, at South Carolina’s Fort Sumter, which is widely recognized as the start of the war.

Dale Cox, the unofficial historian for the Florida Panhandle chapter of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, wrote on his blog that he considers the Pensacola shot the first of the Civil War, saying in an interview that it marked the first time federal troops fired toward Confederate agitators.

The protest movement is posing an increasing threat to Assad’s iron rule as it attracts an ever-wider following, with tens of thousands of people demanding political freedoms and an end to the decades-old emergency laws that extend state authority into nearly all aspects of Syrians’ lives.

“We will not be humiliated!” shouted some 2,000 women and children who blocked a main coastal road in northeastern Syria, where security forces and pro-government gunmen have cracked down on dissent in recent days. The protesters were demanding the release of hundreds of men who have been rounded up in the villages of Bayda and Beit Jnad.

The strikes were the first since a mid-March attack took out what the Pakistanis said were dozens of peaceful tribesmen. A U.S. official at the time denied innocent people had been targeted.

The U.S. relies heavily on the covert, CIA-run missile program to kill al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in Pakistan’s northwest, and with a few exceptions keeps up a steady pace of strikes even when relations with Pakistan are tense.

BP and the government appeared on the list, compiled by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, for their roles in restricting news media access to the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Other recipients included the Transportation Security Administration, which arrested a passenger who stripped to his shorts to protest security measures; a Mississippi judge who jailed a lawyer for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the Virginia prisons agency for banning a “Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook.”

But the second-generation of BMW’s smallish X3 crossover sport utility vehicle impressed just the same with its strong turbo power, standout road composure and quiet and upscale interior.

I even managed to best the federal government’s combined city/highway fuel mileage rating during an X3 test drive, managing 22.1 miles per gallon during comfortable driving in the city, on mountainous roads and on multi-lane highways. I just wish the required fuel for the turbocharged X3 xDrive35i test vehicle hadn’t been premium gasoline. At $4.32 a gallon, this gasoline cost me nearly $50 for just over 10 gallons.

A federal jury convicted Officer Melvin Williams of violating Raymond Robair’s constitutional rights by kicking and beating him with a baton while he and Officer Matthew Dean Moore patrolled the Treme neighborhood on July 30, 2005. The jury of seven men and five women also convicted Williams and Moore of submitting a false report on the incident and found Moore guilty of lying to the FBI.

The case is one of several probes of alleged misconduct by New Orleans police officers opened by the Justice Department. The investigations have resulted in charges against 20 current or former officers.

Now that authorities have identified a body that washed up on an Oregon beach as his son, Dustin Weber, Jon Weber is thinking he will scatter some of his ashes along a trail leading to the hot springs where they used to go together.

“The last time, it was just him and I and the bald eagles and the golden eagles, and we sat there and enjoyed life a few moments,” he said Tuesday as he described the site on the shores of Paulina Lake south of Bend.

Jeff Anderson, an attorney for the man making the allegations, said he had been notified the papers were successfully filed through official diplomatic channels.

“Every time we make a step forward, as long as that takes, we are going in the right direction,” Anderson said. “And the direction we’re headed is a measure of accountability. We really believe that we need to put some heat on the Vatican to bring some light.”

The events marked the 150th anniversary of the Confederate bombardment of Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, an engagement that plunged the nation into four years of war at a cost of more than 600,000 lives.

Several hundred people gathered on Charleston’s Battery in the pre-dawn darkness, much as Charleston residents gathered 150 years ago to view the bombardment of April 12, 1861.

Wildlife advocates conceded Tuesday the wolf provision was all but certain to remain in the spending bill after efforts to remove it failed. Congress faces a tight deadline on a budget plan already months overdue, and the rider has bipartisan support.

It orders the Interior Department to lift protections for wolves within 60 days in five Western states. A federal judge in Montana has turned back three prior attempts by Interior officials to declare wolves recovered, under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

President Dmitry Medvedev hosted a glittering Kremlin reception that brought together legendary cosmonauts and astronauts with the rarely seen widow of Gagarin, and pledged that space exploration would remain a priority for modern Russia.

“Fifty years ago, Yuri Gagarin opened a new era in human history,” Medvedev said as Gagarin’s widow Valentina Gagarina looked on along with their two daughters.

“Former president Hosni Mubarak went into intensive care at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Hospital after suffering a heart attack,” the official MENA agency said.

His sons, Alaa and Gamal, who were being questioned by prosecutors in the south Sinai capital of al-Tor, headed back south to Sharm el-Sheikh after hearing their father had gone into intensive care, a security official said.

Libya’s former foreign minister Mussa Kussa will be present in Doha but rebels made it clear he would not be representing them in any way at talks ahead of the meeting.

An African Union peace plan for Libya was in tatters after rebels stuck to their demand that Moamer Kadhafi step down and NATO came under pressure to drop more bombs on the strongman’s forces.

The rebel rejection came after NATO chiefs warned that any deal must be “credible and verifiable,” and as alliance warplanes were again in action against heavy Kadhafi weaponry pounding Ajdabiya and Misrata.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also stuck to US demands for Kadhafi to step down and leave Libya as part of a peaceful transition, but declined to comment on the proposed African Union deal before being fully briefed.

The British Foreign Office meanwhile said Libyan former foreign minister Mussa Kussa was leaving Britain on Tuesday to travel to Qatar for talks ahead of a meeting there of an international contact group on Libya.

Having managed to secure Kadhafi’s agreement to a ceasefire, the African Union delegation encountered resistance from the rebel leadership in Benghazi, who argued that the initiative was obsolete and insisted Kadhafi be forced to quit.

Gunfire and explosions were heard in areas largely loyal to Gbagbo, the central Plateau district and Cocody in the north, as pro-Ouattara forces tried to return the city to normality after 10 days of bitter street battles.

“There were clashes using heavy weapons,” around midday (1200 GMT), a resident of Plateau, largely deserted since fighting erupted and home to the presidential palace, told AFP by telephone.

“I ask you to remain calm and show restraint,” Ouattara, the internationally recognised president of the west African nation, said in a televised address, while hailing “the dawn of a new era of hope”.

He also announced the launch of “legal proceedings against Laurent Gbagbo, his wife and his allies,” adding that “all measures are being taken” to protect them.

The reassessment to a “major accident” with “widespread health and environmental effects” was based on the total radiation released, which officials said was one-tenth of the 1986 accident in the then Soviet Union.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan, however, also stressed that “step by step, the reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi power plant are moving toward stability. The level of radioactive materials released is declining.”

Even countries that move decisively to contain and cut the costs of keeping their populations healthy will find it is not enough and will have to cut spending elsewhere for fiscal stability, it said.

“Rising spending on health care is the main risk to fiscal sustainability, with an impact on long-run debt ratios that, absent reforms, will dwarf that of the financial crisis,” it said.

NASA’s declaration sparked anger in Texas, the home of mission control in Houston, which was left out in favor of New York, Florida, Virginia and California. One key Texas senator slammed the move as political and misguided.

Discovery, the oldest space shuttle of the fleet, will land at the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space museum in Virginia, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said.

When it is finished in 2012, The Shard, a glistening triangle by world-renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano, will stand 310 metres (1,016 feet) high, becoming the highest tower in Europe.

Already the view from the 72nd floor — there are 15 more above it — is enough to bring on a serious bout of vertigo.

He was speaking shortly after new data showed more radiation leaked from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the early days of the crisis than first thought.

That new information put Japan’s nuclear calamity in the same category as the world’s worst nuclear disaster, Chernobyl, officials said, but the upgrade in its severity rating to the highest level on a globally recognized scale did not mean the situation had suddenly become more critical.

The move to kill a gadget that won rave reviews for jump-starting low-cost handheld video and was the top-selling camcorder in the United States last year comes less than a week after Chambers said he had to make “tough decisions” about cutting spending on some product areas.

The surprise decision to shut down Flip rather than sell it underscores pressure on Chambers to whittle down a money-losing consumer division that also includes Scientific Atlanta set-top boxes and Linksys home routers.

The trade gap totaled $45.8 billion and was down 2.6 percent from January as imports fell faster than exports, even as oil prices hit their highest level since October 2008, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday.

The impact of the oil price jump was tempered by a drop in the volume of oil imports to the lowest in 12 years. A separate Labor Department report showed petroleum prices surging 10.5 percent in March, suggesting bigger trade shortfalls ahead.

Finance chiefs from the Group of 20 countries will try to advance a complex plan for better balancing the world economy, even as concerns about rising oil prices and surging capital flows — two immediate recovery threats — crowd the agenda.

Ahead of the G20 meeting on Friday, No. 2 economy China warned it was not about to permit others to draw up a “political tool” for curbing its red-hot economic expansion by trying to cap its hefty trade surpluses.

Officials from the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund will pore over Portugal’s public accounts to decide on additional austerity measures they deem necessary for Lisbon to reduce its budget deficit in return for a three-year loan that could reach 80 billion euros ($115.7 billion).

Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos acknowledged Lisbon only had its financing needs covered for this month and next, and will need the bailout loans from June onwards.

“It is not acceptable that Misrata is still under fire and being bombarded by Gaddafi’s troops,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in Luxembourg.

NATO took over air operations from a coalition of the United State

Gbagbo’s arrest on Monday ended a four-month power struggle that had descended into all-out conflict.

But Ouattara — recognised internationally as the West African nation’s president — now faces a huge task reuniting a divided country.

Assad has responded to the mass protests, now in their fourth week, with force, pledges of reform and attempts to appease minority Kurds and conservative Sunnis. But the unprecedented calls for more freedoms have yet to abate.

The activists said Syrian secret police and soldiers had surrounded the town of Baida, 10 km (six miles) south of Banias, which security forces had sealed off on Sunday after pro-democracy protests and an attack by irregular forces loyal to Assad on people guarding a Sunni mosque.

Former Galleon chief operating officer Rick Schutte testified that well before the government contends Rajaratnam was tipped to a $5 billion investment in Goldman, discussions were already under way about what positions to take in the bank in light of the looming market crisis.

Schutte described a lunch on July 31, 2008, with Rajaratnam, Goldman president Gary Cohn and others during his second day of testimony at Rajaratnam’s insider trading trial in Manhattan federal court.

As police hunted those responsible for planting and detonating the bomb on Monday evening by remote control, a top official from the prosecutor general’s office described the attack as an act of terrorism, unprecedented in Belarus.

The KGB state security service issued the description of a heavily-built man of medium height in his 20s, who it said was a suspect in the attack. Three other people had been detained for questioning but were not suspects, the KGB chief said.

An international group is due to hold talks on the future of Libya in the Qatari capital on Wednesday after an African Union attempt to broker a peace deal between rebel groups and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi collapsed.

Koussa, a long-time top aide to Gaddafi, will not participate in the meeting but is expected to hold talks on the sidelines, British sources said.

Nasdaq and partner IntercontinentalExchange Inc were unbowed on Monday after NYSE Euronext’s board rejected their takeover offer in favor of a lower bid from Deutsche Boerse.

Shareholders at the center of the increasingly bitter fight were bracing for a bidding war and weighing a stark choice: The short-term gain from Nasdaq’s higher but probably riskier offer or leaving cash on the table for what could be a better long-term fit with Deutsche Boerse.

“I have spent a surreal morning,” he told a cheering crowd of supporters gathered outside the Milan court where the latest in a related series of hearings was held on tax fraud charges related to his Mediaset broadcasting empire.

“The prime minister is being accused by prosecutors who are slinging mud at him and at the country at a time when we should be stronger so as to be able to defend the country on the international stage,” he said.

The events marked the 150th anniversary of the Confederate bombardment of Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, an engagement that plunged the nation into four years of war at a cost of more than 600,000 lives.

Several hundred people gathered on Charleston’s Battery in the pre-dawn darkness, much as Charleston residents gathered 150 years ago to view the bombardment of April 12, 1861.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe had said NATO should be doing more to take out strongman Moammar Gadhafi’s heavy weaponry that is targeting civilians in Libya.

Juppe said NATO’s actions were “not enough” and insisted the alliance should be firing on the weapons being used by Gadhafi’s forces to target civilians in the rebel-held city of Misrata. Juppe spoke on France-Info radio the day after Libyan rebels rejected a cease-fire proposal by African mediators because it did not insist that Gadhafi relinquish power.

Ouattara’s spokesman Patrick Achi confirmed that the generals who had been fighting on Laurent Gbagbo’s side right up until his capture swore allegiance before Ouattara one by one at the Golf Hotel, where he set up his presidency after Gbagbo refused to acknowledge losing the November presidential election.

Doh Ouattara, a member of the security team at the hotel, said Gbagbo, his wife and entourage were in a suite there. He said the lower-level officials traveling with Gbagbo had been sealed inside the bar of the luxury hotel.

The higher rating is an open acknowledgement of what was widely understood already: The nuclear accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is the second-worst in history. It does not signal a worsening of the plant’s status in recent days or any new health dangers.

Still, people living nearby who have endured a month of spewing radiation and frequent earthquakes said the change in status added to their unease despite government efforts to play down any notion that the crisis poses immediate health risks.

The Vatican on Tuesday clarified the punishment against the former Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe after Belgian bishops reported over the weekend that he had merely been sent outside Belgium for spiritual and psychological counseling, a seemingly cushy punishment given the seriousness of the crime.

The decision was the first known application of the Vatican’s new sex abuse norms approved last year giving the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith jurisdiction to investigate and punish bishops – not just priests – who abuse minors. The ultimate possible penalty: defrocking, or laicization in church-speak.

Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs – Pell grants for college students, health research and “Race to the Top” aid for public schools, among others – from Republican knives, according to new details of the legislation released Tuesday morning.

And big holes in foreign aid and Environmental Protection Agency accounts were patched in large part. Republicans also gave up politically treacherous cuts to the Agriculture Department’s food inspection program.

The newly declassified FBI field office report, obtained by The Associated Press, casts doubt on the authenticity of a Nazi ID card that is the key piece of evidence in allegations that Demjanjuk served as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland.

Throughout three decades of U.S. hearings, an extradition, a death sentence followed by acquittal in Israel, a deportation and now a trial in Munich, the arguments have relied heavily on the photo ID from an SS training camp that indicates Demjanjuk was sent to Sobibor.

Attorneys and Hall of Fame defensive end Carl Eller sat down with U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan in a session that lasted well into the afternoon. All declined comment on a day the NFL released its preseason schedule with the opener an Aug. 7 showcase in Canton, Ohio, between Chicago and St. Louis.

Whether the games are held remains an open question. The NFL’s attorneys are scheduled to meet with Boylan on Wednesday before mediation begins on Thursday.

France’s defense minister declared that without full American participation, the West probably would not be able to stop attacks by Gadhafi loyalists on besieged rebel cities.

U.S. officials said they were comfortable with their role and had no plans to step up involvement, even as British and French officials said Washington’s military might was needed to ensure the mission’s success. The Americans said NATO could carry out the operation without a resumption of the heavy U.S. efforts that kicked it off last month.

In a sign that his ailment might not be very serious, however, Justice Minister Mohammed el-Guindi said the former president was now being questioned in the hospital.

The 82-year-old Mubarak was deposed Feb. 11 after 18 days of popular protests and has been under house arrest in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for the last two months. The public prosecutor announced Monday he was under investigation.

In Damascus, Pa., about 1,500 miles away, drilling advocate Marian Schweighofer awoke one morning to the word “LORAX” – from the Dr. Seuss book about environmental destruction – spray-painted on the road near her family’s 712-acre farm.

Hilliard and Schweighofer have never met, yet both are living with the nastiness and rancor erupting in communities nationwide over the volatile issue of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Its supporters think skyrocketing gas prices will make car sharing more popular. They praise Zipcar’s technological savvy and its plans for overseas expansion.

Zipcar is “one of the long-awaited hot tickets in the IPO valley,” said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPOscoop.com. Investors are warming up to IPOs again after the market sputtered in 2008 and 2009.

Syria’s leading pro-democracy group, the Damascus Declaration, urged the Arab League to impose sanctions on the regime and said the death toll from more than three weeks of unrest had topped 200. The White House joined a growing chorus of international condemnation, saying the “escalating repression by the Syrian government is outrageous.”

Protests erupted in Syria more than three weeks ago and have been growing steadily, with tens of thousands of people calling for sweeping reforms. The Assad family has kept an iron grip on power for 40 years, in part by crushing dissent.

The opposition, meanwhile, voiced fears that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko would use the attack to launch an increased crackdown on dissent.

Belarus’ domestic security agency, which still goes under its Soviet-era name KGB, said it had identified the likely perpetrator of Monday’s explosion at a busy downtown subway station and was searching for him. It described him as a well-built man in his 20s, but didn’t elaborate.

The about-face comes after several quarters of disappointing results and challenges in its core businesses. Analysts say the company has been trying to do too many different things.

A week ago, CEO John Chambers acknowledged the criticism, sending employees a memo vowing to take “bold steps” to narrow the company’s focus.

Recounting her story in graphic detail for the first time alone with two female reporters, al-Obeidi claimed she was brutalized for two days and wept as she recalled the ordeal. She said she was repeatedly raped by 15 different men – one of them a cousin of Gadhafi – who were drinking alcohol that they poured in her eyes, nose, mouth and vagina. She said she was sodomized with a Kalashnikov rifle.

Al-Obeidi spoke to The Associated Press and another reporter at her home. It was a rare interview without Libyan government minders, who keep almost constant watch over dozens of foreign journalists the regime has invited in to cover its side of the uprising against Gadhafi’s 42-year rule of this North African Arab country.

Most economists and budget analysts say a comprehensive mix of spending cuts and tax increases is essential to any viable deficit-reduction plan. Yet few players in the negotiations have gone there.

It comes in the scramble to heed what is widely viewed as a loud clamor from voters to slam the brakes on runaway government spending. There has been no corresponding public demand for raising taxes. That’s not surprising, but the top-bracket U.S. tax rate now is the lowest it’s been in decades, and it’s far lower than those in many other industrialized countries, especially in western Europe.

But an Associated Press review of lobbying by the powerhouse firm Barbour helped found before his first campaign for governor shows that he represented clients on issues and interests that could provide his Republican primary opponents ample ammunition and raise eyebrows among some Republican voters. How Barbour addresses his lobbying past could determine his fate if he decides to seek the Republican nomination.

Barbour Griffith & Rogers Inc., which Barbour helped establish in 1991, represented foreign governments on trade and immigration issues, advocated for a fuel additives association that was working in opposition to the ethanol industry dear to Iowa voters, and helped a number of universities get federal funding through a tactic that is anathema to cut-spending conservatives.

But hopes for a rebel military victory have faded and diplomatic efforts to find a solution were picking up momentum. On Wednesday, diplomats will gather in the tiny Gulf nation of Qatar for a meeting of the Libya contact group, which aims to coordinate an international response to the conflict.

On Monday, African leaders tried to broker a cease-fire but were immediately shot down when the opposition insisted that Gadhafi give up power immediately.

Backed by leftist President Jose Mujica, the measure would then return to the lower house for minor changes and could become law by May 20 – the day Uruguay honors the political prisoners who were kidnapped and killed during the military junta’s crackdown on leftists.

Courts could then prosecute human rights violations committed in Uruguay, fulfilling a key demand of the leftist wing of the governing Broad Front coalition and complying with a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that found the amnesty unconstitutional.

Obama’s speech will set a new long-term deficit-reduction goal and establish a dramatically different vision from a major Republican proposal that aims to cut more than $5 trillion over the next decade, officials said Monday.

Details of Obama’s plan are being closely held so far, but the deficit-cutting target probably will fall between the $1.1 trillion he proposed in his 2012 budget proposal and the $4 trillion that a fiscal commission he appointed recommended in December.

Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that the month-old crisis in Japan has not yet stabilized. But he said conditions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant have not changed significantly for several days.

“We describe the situation as static but not yet stable,” Jaczko said.

Romney declared that “with able leadership, America’s best days are still ahead,” vigorously asserting that President Barack Obama had failed to provide it.

The Republican, who has been plotting a comeback since losing the GOP presidential nomination to John McCain three years ago, offered himself as the person best able to lead a country struggling to recover from economic crisis.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned down an appeal filed by Gov. Jan Brewer. She had asked the appeals court to lift an injunction imposed by a federal judge in Phoenix the day before the law was to take effect on July 29, 2010.

The U.S Justice Department sued to block the law, saying it violates the U.S. Constitution because enforcing immigration law is a federal issue.

But in a ringing defense of Obama’s policies, Medicare chief Donald Berwick pleaded Tuesday for more time on the health care law, and branded a leading Republican plan “unfair and harmful” and “a form of withholding care.”

The Associated Press-GfK poll showed that support for Obama’s expansion of health insurance coverage has slipped to 35 percent, while opposition stands at 45 percent and another 17 percent are neutral. That nearly ties the previous low in September 2009, when after a summer of heated town hall meetings dominated by critics, only 34 percent supported Obama’s approach.

The plan from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would cut spending in part by making significant changes to Medicare and Medicaid. When asked about the proposal, Bachmann told The Associated Press that she supported the plan “in principle, yes.”

“The aspirational goal of making Medicare and Medicaid sound and secure, yes, I support that,” said Bachman, a favorite among tea party activists.

The oil giant opened its checkbook while the crisis was still unfolding last spring and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Gulf Coast communities with few strings attached.

In sleepy Ocean Springs, Miss., reserve police officers got Tasers. The sewer department in nearby Gulfport bought a $300,000 vacuum truck that never sucked up a drop of oil. Biloxi, Miss., bought 14 SUVs and pickup trucks. A parish president in Louisiana got herself a deluxe iPad, her spokesman a $3,100 laptop. And a county in Florida spent $560,000 on rock concerts to promote its oil-free beaches.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the 300-member contingent is helping train the Pakistani military. The U.S. wants to maintain the program and is having conversations with Pakistani authorities about requirements and force levels, he said.

“We want to keep that program alive,” Toner told reporters. “We think it’s important.”

The complaint was filed Tuesday by the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has led a series of campaigns against what critics call the “genius baby” industry.

Your Baby Can Read – which consists of interrelated videos, flash cards and books – was developed in the late 1990s by Robert Titzer, an educator with a Ph.D in human performance from Indiana University. More than 1 million families have used the product since then, according to Titzer’s Carlsbad, Calif.-based company, Your Baby Can LLC, which advertises it extensively on TV, at exhibitions, and on its own website, Facebook page and YouTube channel.

The investigation is looking into the deaths of a Marine and a Navy medic killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator after they apparently were mistaken for insurgents in southern Afghanistan last week, two senior U.S. defense officials said Tuesday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Unmanned aircraft have proven to be powerful weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq and their use have expanded to new areas and operations each year of those conflicts. Some drones are used for surveillance and some, such as the drone in this case, are armed and have been used to hunt and kill militants.