The Morning News

Henderson said GM faced no pressure from the Obama administration’s autos task force to make a decision on whether to file for bankruptcy before an established June 1 deadline and said it was “feasible” that the automaker could still avoid bankruptcy despite the short time frame remaining.

But Henderson also said the automaker was drawing up a game plan that would let it emerge as quickly as possible from bankruptcy if it needed to take that route.

Environmental activists and their supporters in Congress were jubilant and industry groups were wary at the news of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s move. The White House said President Barack Obama would prefer legislation over administrative action to curb greenhouse emissions.

Congress is already considering a bill to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, which is emitted by cars, coal-fired power plants and oil refineries, among other sources.

Before addressing his counterparts in the hemisphere at the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, Obama also initiated a handshake with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, one of Washington’s most virulent critics in the region.

“We cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements,” Obama told the opening session of the summit after entering the conference center to warm applause.

They include strict rules on making sure that people who donate unused embryos for research know what they are doing, and why, and are not coerced or paid in any way.

They reverse long-standing limits placed on funding the research by former president George W. Bush, which scientists had said restricted potentially lifesaving medical research.

Commanders acknowledge that soaring civilian death tolls from U.S. and NATO strikes over the past year have cost them the vital support of ordinary Afghans — and a perception that they were reluctant to take responsibility made the situation worse.

In an effort to blunt the damage, they have put in place new drills in recent months — responding more quickly, coordinating their investigations with Afghan authorities, apologizing publicly and offering compensation.

Several Democratic candidates have raised more than $1 million in the first three months of 2009, while available data shows only two Republicans crossing that threshold: Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who faces a potentially tough re-election, and Ohio Senate hopeful Rob Portman.

While the 2010 mid-year election is 17 months away, the races are moving into high gear to suck up money as quickly as possible for a battle both sides expect to be a referendum on President Barack Obama’s expansive agenda.

The assassination attempt came hours before the government extended a state of emergency in the capital at a cabinet meeting to discuss the past week’s political violence. It also agreed to increase government borrowing to support the beleaguered economy.

Sondhi Limthongkul received a bloody head wound but survived after gunmen riddled his car with bullets at a petrol station before dawn.

The decision came at an ICC executive board meeting here with the international body saying it had acted after noting the “uncertain political situation” in Pakistan.

Ijaz Butt, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, expressed his regret at the decision to AFP.

Of the 52 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index that have reported first-quarter earnings so far, 62 percent have posted results that beat Wall Street expectations. And recent data has provided faint hope of a comeback.

Not so fast, economists say.

In a strongly worded statement, the Vatican defended the pope’s view that condoms aren’t the answer to Africa’s AIDS epidemic and could make it worse. On his way to Africa last month, he said the best strategy is the church’s effort to promote sexual responsibility through abstinence and monogamy.

France, Germany, the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency and the British medical journal The Lancet called the remarks irresponsible and dangerous. The Belgian parliament passed a resolution calling them “unacceptable” and demanded Belgium’s government officially protest.

Former CIA chiefs Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet and John Deutch all called the White House in March warning that release of the so-called “torture memos” would compromise intelligence operations, current and former officials say. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to detail internal government discussions.

President Barack Obama ultimately overruled those concerns after internal discussions that intensified in the weeks after the former directors intervened. The memos were released Thursday.

Framed behind glass in the Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum and Library in northeast Philadelphia is a small piece of bloodstained pillowcase on which the head of the dying president rested after he was shot at Ford’s Theater in Washington 144 years ago.

Sotos, a cardiologist and author, is hoping a DNA test of the strip will reveal whether Lincoln was afflicted with multiple endocrine neoplasia, type 2B. The disorder, which occurs in one in every 600,000 people, would explain Lincoln’s unusual height, his relatively small and asymmetric head and bumps on his lips seen in photos, he said.

Jules Carey said a second autopsy was conducted on Ian Tomlinson after videotape emerged appearing to show the newspaper vendor being shoved to the ground by police. The first autopsy had said he died as the result of a heart attack.

Carey said Friday that the findings increase the possibility that the officer implicated in the incident could face charges.

Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said that Mohammed Ajmal Kasab had a direct hand in the deaths of 72 people and was part of “a criminal conspiracy hatched in Pakistan,” which could not have been undertaken without training from “intelligence professionals” in Pakistan.

Nikam said the ultimate goal of the attack was the capture of Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan; both countries claim the region and have fought two wars over it.

Donors including the United States, Japan, Europe, Saudi Arabia and Iran pledged more than $5 billion in fresh aid over two years at the conference in Tokyo after President Asif Ali Zardari vowed to step up the fight against militants.

The pledges, bigger than an expected $4 billion, reflect the international community’s worries that an economic meltdown in nuclear-armed Pakistan, propped up with a $7.6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund over two years, could fan popular support for al Qaeda and other militant groups.

U.S. officials said there were no immediate plans to lift targeted sanctions or give any substantial aid to help rebuild Zimbabwe until there is firm evidence that President Robert Mugabe is serious about sharing power with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

“We can’t seriously decide to take decisions on aid or lifting sanctions until much, much more is done,” said a State Department official, who declined to be named as the issue is under review and his comments were sensitive.

Three suspected mercenaries were killed in a shootout on Thursday in the anti-Morales stronghold of Santa Cruz after police moved to arrest a gang that officials say traveled from Ireland or Croatia to kill leading public figures in the Andean nation.

“The investigative work is now in the hands of prosecutors. I hope they do their work quickly so we can have clear and concrete information” about who was behind the conspiracy, police chief Victor Hugo Escobar told state television.

But tensions caused by the pull toward protectionism may also simmer at the first-ever meeting of G8 farm ministers and their counterparts from major developing nations.

The idea of creating a global grain reserve was likely to be on the agenda, said host Italy’s Agriculture Minister Luca Zaia.

Russia fought a brief war with Georgia last year and is vexed by what it describes as NATO support for the ex-Soviet state, a crucial transit route for Caspian Sea oil and gas to Europe long controlled by Moscow.

NATO says it does not understand why Moscow is upset by the long-planned exercises involving 1,300 troops from 19 countries from May 6 to June 1.

In an interview with Zimbabwe’s state broadcaster ahead of Saturday’s 29th independence anniversary, Mugabe said Zimbabweans should help the government put pressure on the Western powers and work together, rather than against each other.

“The sanctions are unwarranted and it is important that we sing the same song,” Mugabe was quoted as saying in the interview which was published in the state-owned Herald newspaper. The television interview will be broadcast Friday night.

Flown in on a NATO-backed helicopter and escorted by heavily-armed peacekeepers, Tadic was welcomed by Serbian Orthodox monks at Visoki Decani, a UNESCO-listed monastery dating from the 14th century.

“My message today in Decani is a message of peace for Serbs, peace for Albanians, peace for all people living in Kosovo, in our Serbia,” Tadic told reporters after lighting a candle in the church.

“It’s a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution,” said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Pakistan’s fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan ; and for the security of India , the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia , the U.S. and its allies.

Bearded men packed the mosque, long associated with extremist Islam and with links to al Qaida , while outside on the sidewalk rows of women sat clad in all-enveloping black burkas, only their eyes showing. Many were young adults who had come from Islamic seminaries.

“We will continue our struggle until Islamic law is spread across the country, not just in Swat,” Aziz, who’d been chief cleric at the mosque, told the fired-up congregation. Dressed in white flowing traditional clothes, with a white turban and his long white beard, he looked a messianic figure.

The memos were made public by the Justice Department with assurances from President Barack Obama that the intelligence officials who followed their guidance won’t be prosecuted. However, the president’s assurances don’t apply to the former administration officials who crafted the legal justification for the interrogation program.

The newly released memos offer the public the most unvarnished and explicit look yet at once-top secret efforts to psychologically break high-level terrorism suspects.

New York University filed the documents as part of its lawsuit against Merkin and his Gabriel Capital fund, which gave Madoff $24 million of the school’s endowment before the massive scheme collapsed and the money was lost. The court papers were filed in response to a lawsuit by the Fox Business Network cable news channel asking the documents be unsealed.

The documents unsealed by state Supreme Court Justice Richard Lowe include e-mails by Victor Teicher, a former financial analyst and convicted felon sometimes employed by Merkin in the 1990s. They also include Merkin’s sworn depositions and letters from Merkin to investors telling them how well Gabriel Capital was doing.

Adm. Michael Mullen took a brief tour of the border in and around El Paso, Texas, but said his first trip to the area should not be taken as a sign of any intentions to send the military to the border as a bloody drug cartel war plagues Mexico.

“There are (no plans) that I am aware of or that I would talk about,” Mullen said. “I’m here to learn more about it (the border), specifically because of my responsibilities, and we’ll continue to support just as we have in the past.”

As Jindal’s national profile in the Republican Party rises, so does the bill for the troopers’ hotels, food and transportation when the possible presidential contender heads out of state, even for campaigning.

An Associated Press review of travel records shows that providing legally mandated security on the trips has cost the state tens of thousands of dollars since Jindal took office in January 2008 – money that hasn’t been reimbursed by him or his campaign. Jindal insists he’s only interested in being re-elected governor, but he has traveled to a dozen states to collect campaign dollars and stump for himself or other Republicans.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. ordered the Interior Department to rewrite the 2007-2012 plan, which was challenged by a coalition of environmental groups and Alaska Natives.

That entire leasing program, which includes several lease sales to be held as well as a 2008 sale in the Chukchi Sea that drew a record $2.66 billion in high bids, is vacated because its “environmental sensitivity rankings are irrational,” the ruling said.

Rattner was one of the executives involved with payments being probed by New York state and federal regulators in the alleged scheme, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday.

He is the person only identified as a “senior executive” of Quadrangle Group in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission complaint against two former New York political officials and others, the source said. His identity was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Unhappy with Obama’s promise not to prosecute CIA officials, human rights groups have demanded criminal investigations of officials who approved or used the interrogation techniques chillingly detailed in the Justice Department memos.

But in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, former CIA director Michael Hayden and former attorney general Michael Mukasey charged that disclosure of the memos “was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy.”

The 59-year-old Las Vegas Art Museum went broke and shut down, the latest in a string of bad news for the arts that also included the closure last year of a Guggenheim outpost in the Venetian Hotel-Casino and the decision in 2007 by Steve Wynn to convert a gallery at his Wynn Las Vegas resort into a Rolex shop.

“This is a community of two million people and it doesn’t have a museum,” said Libby Lumpkin, the LVAM’s last executive director, who quit in January hoping to save the institution money.

Ohio is the latest state to propose early release for non-violent offenders and increasing community-based probation programs.

“We’re facing an historic economic downturn here and we have to do something differently,” said Terry Collins, Ohio’s director of corrections.