Weekend News Digest

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, said the disclosure was a “firm blow” to Western powers opposed to Tehran’s atomic work.

“This site will be under the supervision of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and will have a maximum of five percent (uranium) enrichment capacity,” Iran’s atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on state television.

“We have achieved our goal of gaining a stable majority for a new government,” a beaming Merkel told cheering supporters in Berlin. “I want to be the chancellor of all Germans, so that things improve for our country.”

Initial results released on public television showed the 55-year-old Merkel’s conservative Christian Union bloc (CDU/CSU) as the clear winners with about 33.5 percent of the vote.

“The foreign ministers will come together on October 10 and sign the drafted document,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters, without giving details.

The signing is to take place in Zurich, a government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Compromises on action to deal with symptoms, such as bonuses, rather than action on real causes could even end up doing more harm than good, the OECD said in a report and remarks to AFP.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says that progress on new rules to strengthen the capital base of finance companies and related regulations does go in the right direction.

Hammered by world-record hyperinflation, the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange was shut down last November as the central bank sought to curb traders using dud cheques as well as activities of market speculators.

Trading resumed in February, after the local currency was abandoned and a unity government was formed between President Robert Mugabe and his long-time rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

“Unfortunately here in Hungary, the government didn’t jump to the aid of car retailers,” said the head of the auto retailers’ association, Attila Fojt.

Fojt forecast sales of 70,000 units for the whole of 2009, compared with 160,000 in 2008. The record was 208,000 in 2003.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Silva rejected the ultimatum on Sunday and demanded an apology from Honduras’ de facto leader Roberto Micheletti, who issued a harsh statement late on Saturday warning that his government would be forced to take action if Brazil does not define Zelaya’s status soon.

“Brazil will not comply with an ultimatum from a government of coup mongers,” Lula told reporters at a summit in Venezuela, adding that international law ensures the sovereignty of its embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital.

“It worked,” G20 leaders declared on Friday of their response to the global financial crisis. “Our forceful response helped stop the dangerous, sharp decline in global activity and stabilize financial markets,” they said in the final summit communique.

The summit host, U.S. President Barack Obama, called the gathering a success for a commitment to global economic growth that is “balanced and sustained” and cited in particular a deal to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.

President Barack Obama has pledged to close the facility, which has been the target of international condemnation, by January 2010 but has faced legal, political and diplomatic difficulties that could make it hard to meet that deadline.

“We are doing everything we can to close it by the date,” the official said, declining further identification. “We are in the final stages of locating a secure facility in the U.S. where detainees can be held.”

Shortly after the bombing in the western city of Herat, Energy Minister Ismail Khan railed against the dramatic rise in violence in Afghanistan, saying that thousands of new refugees are seeking shelter in Herat because of militant attacks in outlying districts. Five civilians died in the failed assassination attempt, police said.

Two days ago, Khan said, a young man was hanged by militants only a couple miles (kilometers) outside a NATO base and Afghan government center. Kidnappings of wealthy family members are on the rise, including the abduction of girls, he said.

The government is starting an unprecedented system to track possible side effects as mass flu vaccinations begin next month. The idea is to detect any rare but real problems quickly, and explain the inevitable coincidences that are sure to cause some false alarms.

“Every day, bad things happen to people. When you vaccinate a lot of people in a short period of time, some of those things are going to happen to some people by chance alone,” said Dr. Daniel Salmon, a vaccine safety specialist at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The deficits – $10 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2011 – won’t affect payments to retirees because Social Security has accumulated surpluses from previous years totaling $2.5 trillion. But they will add to the overall federal deficit.

Applications for retirement benefits are 23 percent higher than last year, while disability claims have risen by about 20 percent. Social Security officials had expected applications to increase from the growing number of baby boomers reaching retirement, but they didn’t expect the increase to be so large.

The Fox News personality’s visit Saturday to Mount Vernon, an agricultural city of 31,000 people 60 miles north of Seattle, had sparked weeks of protests and petitions calling for the cancellation of the visit.

But Beck was received warmly inside the sold-out event at the city’s McIntyre Hall. Mount Vernon Mayor Bud Norris, who weeks earlier proclaimed Saturday “Glenn Beck Day” as a way to mark the conservative commentator’s success as a nationally known broadcaster, introduced Beck and handed over the key.

FBI agents have yet to find those elements and connect them to Najibullah Zazi, charged with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction in a plot authorities say was aimed at commuter trains, attorney Arthur Folsom told a federal judge in Denver Friday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer ultimately ordered Zazi’s transfer to New York, and Zazi was taken there by federal marshals.

Aquatic biologists say it’s a problem that falls somewhere between a human health concern and a nuisance, but will eventually lead to more human poisoning. State officials are telling people who live on algae-covered lakes to close their windows, stop taking walks along the picturesque shorelines and keep their dogs from drinking the rank water.

Peggy McAloon, 62, lives on Wisconsin’s Tainter Lake and calls the algae blooms the “cockroach on the water.”

Now, he’s governor, and things have never been worse.

For nearly a year, Paterson has been battered by a faltering economy and with poll numbers hovering at record lows. This week, he learned the Obama administration is worried he’ll drag other Democrats down in 2010 if he runs for a full term, perhaps even threatening the narrow margin the party needs to ward off filibusters in the U.S. Senate.

They now pay higher taxes on their income and on limousines and yachts, more to enter a horse in a race and more to dabble in real estate. Meanwhile, many are losing millions from the closing of business tax loopholes and those making over $1 million are losing tax deductions others get.

It even costs more to hunt foxes or pheasants and have their taxes prepared.

Known for their acrobatic leaps from the sea and complex singing patterns, humpback whales were nearly hunted to extinction for their oil and meat by industrial-sized whaling ships well through the middle of the 20th century. But the species has been bouncing back since an international ban on their commercial whaling in 1966.

“Humpbacks by and large are an example of a species that in most places seems to be doing very well, despite our earlier efforts to exterminate them,” said Phillip Clapham, a senior whale biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The language was lofty when Gov. Frank Rollins invited all New Hampshire natives and their descendants to “return and visit the scenes of their youth” during the nation’s first Old Home Week celebration 110 years ago.

“When you think of the old home, you bring back the tenderest memories possessed by man; true love, perfect faith, holy reverence, high ambitions,” he wrote in 1899.

That sense of community is what’s missing from Starbucks, a conclusion Simon reached after visiting about 425 of its coffee shops in nine countries. And yet millions of people patronize the outlets each day.

Simon, a history professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, has spent the past few years figuring out why. His new book, “Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks,” is meant “to be part of a public debate about what our purchases mean … (and) how consumption shapes our lives even when we don’t intend it to,” Simon said.

The containers however won’t end up being recycled any time soon. Their destination: A mound of glass at the city landfill, an ever-growing monument to the difficulty many communities across the country face in finding a market for a commodity that’s too cheap for its own good.

“We are stockpiling it in a desperate search for a market,” landfill foreman Monty Landers said.

“It’s my decision to move forward as U.S. attorney and not dwell in the past,” Bogden said as he prepares to become the only one of nine federal prosecutors ousted in 2006 to return to his appointed post. He expects to begin before Oct. 10.

“I did not do anything wrong that merited my firing without notice,” said Bogden, a 53-year-old career criminal prosecutor who measures words and their meaning and calls himself politically nonpartisan. Bush nominated him in 2001 at the suggestion of Republican U.S. Sen. John Ensign of Nevada.

Some of the world’s largest consumer product companies are promoting freezers and refrigerators in the U.S. that use propane, butane and other coolants that don’t trap heat in the atmosphere as much as Freon and other conventional refrigerants.

The new so-called hydrocarbon coolers – already popular in Europe – are being tested by Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company at stores in the Washington and Boston areas. Meanwhile, General Electric is seeking approval to market a home refrigerator in the U.S. using a hydrocarbon refrigerant.

“Let’s keep in mind why we were chosen,” Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said this past week. “The president of the United States picked Pittsburgh because of the fact that our story is real.”

And there it was again, a sliver of the powerful energy force that politicians are hungry to harness, that forever pops up in the national discourse: the ability to summon, for strategic purposes, the notion of a “real America.”

Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.

“Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,” the president said earlier this year. “Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.”

OAS Special Adviser John Biehl told reporters in the capital, Tegucigalpa, that he and four other members of an advance team – including two Americans, a Canadian and a Colombian – were stopped by authorities after landing at Tegucigalpa’s airport Sunday. Biehl, who is Chilean, said he was later told he could stay, but the others were put aboard flights out of the country.

“We were detained in the airport,” Biehl said. “A high-ranking official told us we were expelled, that we had not notified (the interim government) that we were coming.”

The second day of Benedict’s pilgrimage to this highly secular country was marked by a joyous open-air Mass that drew tens of thousands of pilgrims and a sober message for the entire continent.

“History has demonstrated the absurdities to which man descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his choices and actions,” Benedict said.

The U.S. military announced the arrest in a statement Sunday, but did not say when it took place or identify the suspect. The Iraqi military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Athletes and sports officials were frequent targets of threats, kidnappings and assassination attempts at the height of the civil strife in 2006 and 2007. Sportsmen were targeted for ransom or as victims of the sectarian violence.

Twenty-two people were killed and more than 150 wounded Saturday in two attacks hours apart in North West Frontier Province. The Taliban claimed responsibility for one of the strikes.

Pakistan is battling al-Qaida and Taliban militants close to the Afghan border blamed for scores of attacks over the last two years. The insurgents are linked to those in Afghanistan, where violence against NATO and U.S. troops is running at record levels.

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern asked for the media to give privacy to the two Uzbeks, one of whom has been identified as 31-year-old Oybek Jabbarov. Both men were arrested by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2001 and held at the U.S. facility in Cuba since 2002.

“The resettlement of the two individuals is a humanitarian gesture. They should be allowed time and space to rebuild their lives,” Ahern said.

Negotiations on a new U.N. climate pact have already been bogged down by a broad unwillingness to commit to firm emissions targets, and a refusal by developing countries to sign a deal until the West guarantees tens of billions of dollars in financial assistance – something rich countries have so far refused to do.

“The more specific we can be, the easier it is to press others to be equally specific,” Jonathan Pershing, the chief U.S. negotiator at the talks, told The Associated Press. “We have a lot of things we want from countries. We want significant action from other developed and developing countries. … The less we can put on the table, the harder it is to achieve that outcome.”

But when the sermon ended, the Afghans draped bright scarves over the soldiers’ tanned necks. Then they pushed Chief Warrant Officer Chaka, a Puerto Rican with a thick black beard and a deep tan who could easily pass for Afghan, up front to speak. Chaka thanked the elders and showed them his hands stained orange for the Eid celebration.

“This is our home away from home,” said Chaka. “We wanted to come over and be with our neighbors.”

Prime Minister Jose Socrates, an energetic 52-year-old, is expected to win about 38 percent of the vote, according to the last opinion polls, meaning his center-left Socialists would be unable to replicate their current majority rule.

His challenger is Manuela Ferreira Leite, 68, leader of the center-right Social Democrats, who has campaigned for vigorous public sector spending cuts to reduce growing debt caused by the worst economic recession in decades.

Moussa Dadis Camara arrived in Labe — his first visit outside the capital since December’s coup — after an hours-long road journey in an armed convoy.

Opposition sources predicted he would use the trip to declare he is running in the presidential elections in January despite the threat of African Union sanctions.

As the first ex-premier to face criminal charges in court, Olmert acknowledged at the arraignment hearing in Jerusalem that he understood the accusations against him. He is scheduled to enter a plea on December 21.

Olmert resigned as prime minister under pressure last September after police recommended he be indicted but has insisted on his innocence and told journalists on Friday he was confident the trial would vindicate him.

The military regime forced through a new constitution in 2008 — just days after Cyclone Nargis devastated the country leaving 138,000 people dead — under which the first national polls for 20 years will be held.

But so far the conditions are acceptable only to the junta. Critics say the sole aim of the elections is to legitimise the generals’ grip on power and entrench their proxies in parliament.

The Pirate Party is highly unlikely to pass the 5% vote threshold necessary to win a seat in parliament this year. But the major parties better watch out or the Pirates – and other Internet-savvy groups – may just hijack the political process next time around.

The Kremlin, always eager to stomp out political rivalry, nationalize industry and control the flow of gas and oil, may have its reservations about globalization, with all its inherent unpredictability. But the future of Khabarovsk – riddled with sushi bars, Internet cafes, boutique hotels and endless streams of Chinese and Korean tourists – is not in Moscow. For now, most of the Moscow nomenklatura don’t seem to get this. That’s why they keep having forums and talking about Air Force bases and throwing back shots of Ruskiy Standart at the Parus Hotel.

“The real story is what’s missing,” said Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney who obtained the recordings through the federal Freedom of Information Act as part of an unofficial inquiry he is conducting into the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

Trentadue gave copies of the tapes to The Oklahoman newspaper, which posted them online and provided copies to The Associated Press.

Polanski’s arrest as he arrived Saturday in Switzerland for a film festival honor could potentially spur on his legal team’s recent motion to dismiss charges that have dogged him since he fled the U.S. for France in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

But it could also elevate his case into an international ordeal – involving the governments of Switzerland, France, Poland and the United States – and potentially complicate his possible extradition.

It is 4 a.m. and only a few solitary street lamps light the darkened roads in this rural central Florida community. She climbs into an old white Ford work van and starts the engine.

Pineda, the 20-year-old daughter of migrant farmworkers, is heading to the peanut fields.

Asked if there was tension between military and civilian leaders over the pace of decision-making on the US-led mission, Gates said: “I don’t think that’s the case at all.”

Citing “an extensive conversation on the telephone” on Wednesday with the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, Gates said the military leader supported President Barack Obama’s preference to take time to review strategy before weighing a request for more troops.