Weekend News Digest

A day after reshuffling his cabinet to try to secure the loyalty of ministers after several walked out of his government, Brown said: “I think it is important to recognize that in these unprecedented times you are bound to have up and downs in politics.

“You are bound to have difficulties because the public are waiting to see the results, but you have got to stick with the policies and make sure that they come through,” he told reporters after attending a cathedral service in France to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

Pakistan had been braced for attacks by militants since the army launched an offensive to flush out the Taliban from the northwestern Swat valley and nearby districts in late April.

At least 40 people, including 12 children, were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque in Upper Dir district, near Swat, on Friday.

Even so, he is being called a hero.

Warnings from McMurray are cited often in a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against Countrywide’s co-founder Angelo Mozilo and two lieutenants.

It is here that terrorists linked with al-Qaida traffic everything from weapons and drugs to illegal migrants. They have planted at least a half-dozen cells in Europe, according to French, Italian and Belgian intelligence. Last week, they announced on the Internet that they had killed a British hostage in Mali, and are still holding a Swiss hostage.

The al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is perhaps the best example of how al-Qaida is morphing and broadening its reach through loose relationships with local offshoots. The shadowy network of Algerian cells recruits Islamist radicals throughout northern and western Africa, trains them and sends them to fight in the region or Iraq, according to Western and North African intelligence officials who asked to remain anonymous because of the nature of their jobs. In turn, AQIM gets al-Qaida’s brand name and some corporate know-how.

Tiller’s funeral at College Hill United Methodist Church also drew small groups of protesters. Police and federal marshals provided heavy security.

Tiller, one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions, was killed by a gunshot last Sunday in the foyer of his own church, Reformation Lutheran, while he was serving as an usher and his wife was singing in the choir. His family had the funeral at the Methodist church to accommodate the large number of mourners.

“‘I don’t know what was wrong with me, but it took me six months to realize that you don’t bite,'” Sotomayor recalled the paralegal telling her.

“But her reaction was not uncommon and it is unfortunately the reaction of many people who don’t get to know me immediately in a social setting. But they can get over it, fortunately,” Sotomayor acknowledged.

The deal announced Friday is another example of how the cataclysm that hit Detroit’s three carmakers is reshaping the global automotive landscape in profound ways, reducing their worldwide influence and – if Saturn turns out as Penske envisions – opening new markets to smaller companies.

“There’s no doubt that the automotive deck chairs are changing,” said Michael Robinet, vice president of CSM Worldwide, a Detroit-area auto industry consulting firm.

On Saturday, Italians can weigh in on whether the conservative leader has finally gone too far.

The country is picking its members of the European Parliament against a backdrop of accusations that Berlusconi had an inappropriate relationship with an 18-year-old model and used a government plane to ferry friends to his vacation villa.

Some of their ancestors were among the mostly Chinese immigrants detained on this island in San Francisco Bay.

Back in their classroom, these fourth-graders will do some writing of their own, joining ethnic groups, outdoor enthusiasts and educators in petitioning Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to spare Angel Island from a proposal that 220 state parks be closed because of California’s $24.3 billion budget deficit.

“We are the small-car plant,” said Cliff Goff, 53, a longtime employee at Spring Hill who has worked for GM since 1975. “We introduced ourselves to the world as the Saturn company that was going to build the small car in America and be competitive with the Japanese.”

GM is planning a new subcompact to compete with foreign models and has decided to build it in the U.S. instead of China. Workers at Spring Hill, where GM in 1990 started production of the Saturn brand, are on a short list along with Orion Township, Mich., and Janesville, Wis.

Adams isn’t gunning for a promotion. She just wants to keep her job.

Bosses around the country these days are discovering it’s not too much ask for a little extra help around the office. Anything but.

“They didn’t put the stripers there,” said the 31-year-old baker. “Why should I pay to catch them?”

Starting in 2010, federal law requires all the nation’s saltwater fishermen to be registered, whether they fish from a boat, dock or the Cape canal’s rocky borders. In most states, the registration will come with an annual fee of about $10 to $25.

Amid the serenity and isolation of southern Colorado, hamlets like Westcliffe, La Jara and Monte Vista are welcoming Amish families who are moving West to escape high land prices and community overcrowding back East in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“The reason we moved out West is the farm land is a little bit cheaper and it’s not as heavily populated, a little more open space and a little more opportunity for young people to get started with their own farms,” said Ben Coblentz, a 47-year-old alfalfa farmer from Indiana. “The general public seems to have a little slower pace of life than what it was back east. Everybody here respects us.”

Survival was the focus of her first 16 years. But drive, determination and some luck have given Candide the opportunity to live a completely different life in the suburbs north of Seattle, where she saw snow for the first time and is about to graduate from high school.

Can she afford a new dress to wear under her gown? Will she go on to a university next or study at a community college and continue working and saving money from her job at the Safeway grocery store?

That was before the landlord died, setting in motion events that left Michelle DeStoop, Bobby Landry and their six children without a place of their own.

After losing their home, they sold their car to a junkyard when they couldn’t afford to have it repaired. Without a car, they couldn’t get around. Low on money, they lost their meager possessions when they couldn’t pay the bill for storage.

“We have been calling for years trying to get the public to understand what their lifestyle is really like,” said Capt. Paul Rice, first vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association, International, the nation’s largest pilot’s union, representing 54,000 flyers.

Like Flight 3407’s co-pilot, Rebecca Shaw, Capt. Dave Ryter earned around $17,000 in his first year with a regional carrier and flew coast-to-coast just to get to work because of his placement in Miami.

Shannon Finley said Friday that he resents months of being portrayed as a racist responsible for killing Brandon McClelland, a close friend for more than a decade. Jacquline McClelland said the dropped charges show that the justice system treats blacks and whites in Paris unequally.

“I said from the start they were going to sweep this under the rug,” she said. “And nine months later, that’s exactly what happened.”

Embassy spokesman Mohammed Albasha denied claims by Abdulhakim Muhammad’s lawyer that abuse radicalized the man into becoming a terrorist. Instead, Albasha said, the once-idealistic college student from Tennessee found his own way to religious anger after converting to Islam in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Muhammad’s claims “are not credible because he is attempting to find any pretext to justify his violent actions, even those that are completely false,” Albasha said in a statement to The Associated Press. “He was not subjected to torture that has driven him to become a terrorist against his own fellow American citizens. These allegations are absurd.”

But if no agreement is reached by June 12, the government will seize the land.

The announcement came after Salazar and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter met with the owners of 500 acres where the hijacked flight crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. The meeting came a month after the National Park Service announced that talks to get the remaining land for the memorial were unsuccessful and that they would use eminent domain.

Marcus Schrenker, 38, still faces millions of dollars in judgments and penalties related to his failed business dealings in Indiana and officials in that state are waiting their turn to prosecute Schrenker following his Aug. 19 sentencing in Florida.

“He still has to deal with all of those things up there,” his attorney, Thomas Keith, said after a brief hearing. Schrenker pleaded guilty to crashing his single-engine Piper Malibu and placing false distress calls to aviation authorities.

Both the Alabama and federal officials say the ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plant in Kingston, Tenn., isn’t dangerous despite containing toxic materials like arsenic and lead. Alabama officials say the material can be safely stored in the dump, which most often receives household garbage.

An environmental activist, however, said the potentially dangerous waste was another example of government and industry dumping on poor people who live in a vulnerable area.

The attack happened during prayers in a remote, mountainous village in Upper Dir, which borders the district of Swat, where the military has focused a concerted air and ground assault against the Taliban.

Friday’s bombing comes after a series of similar blasts on civilian targets in retaliation for the offensive in Swat, which was launched in late April and would appear to have the rebels on the run.

From a shady bench at the American war cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Lee Allsopp looks out over the soft green slopes dotted with white crosses, to the sand dunes below, where Allied troops turned the tide of the war 65 years ago.

Now a frail 85, the British D-Day veteran is one of several hundred ex-servicemen attending Saturday’s commemorations in Colleville, joined by US President Barack Obama and the leaders of France, Britain and Canada.

A three-judge panel from Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld without comment a decision by a bankruptcy judge approving the US government-backed plan to create a new entity to buy the assets of the troubled number three American automaker.

The panel allowed the opponents of the plan until 2000 GMT Monday to obtain any further delay from the US Supreme Court.

While Chinese authorities made sure there were no mainland commemorations of the army’s crushing of mass pro-democracy protests in 1989, organisers said more than 150,000 people filled a Hong Kong park to remember the victims.

Another 50,000 marked the event in the surrounding streets, unable to join the main crowds, they said. The sea of candles stretched across the huge park, an image that blanketed the front pages of the city’s newspapers Friday.

Ironically, the measure is backfiring on some US firms that are being disqualified from contracts if they use non-American materials, and making it difficult to determine who can qualify, say some business leaders.

The plan was included by President Barack Obama’s administration in the nearly 800-billion-dollar US stimulus package adopted earlier this year that required projects funded with stimulus money to use only US-made steel, iron and manufactured goods.

Rio Tinto announced Friday it was pulling out of the deal that had sparked political and shareholder opposition and would instead raise capital from existing shareholders and forge a joint venture with arch rival BHP Billiton.

“It’s a commercial decision that has been taken by the companies,” Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan told state radio on Saturday, adding that the move would not harm Chinese-Australian business ties.

His message? America recognizes a universal yearning for the right to self-government, but regime change in democracy’s name is over.

“No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation on any other,” Mr. Obama said.

In recent weeks, Minnesota outlawed baby-food containers made with the chemical that some scientific studies suggest is a health hazard for young children as well as adults. Chicago decided to nix baby bottles made with BPA from city shelves, and a ban in Connecticut passed the legislature and awaits the governor’s signature.

In total, some 55 bills in 20 states aim to curtail the use or sale of baby-food jars and cans of formula that contain BPA, which is widely used to harden plastic bottles, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.