The Kimbell Art Museum will soon be the only U.S. museum to display a Michelangelo painting after acquiring his earliest known work, a rare treasure that was tucked away and doubted as authentic for more than a century.

“The Torment of Saint Anthony,” is a 15th-century oil and tempera painting on a wood panel that depicts scaly, horned, winged demons trying to pull the saint out of the sky. Experts believe he painted it when he was only 12 or 13 years old.

And only four such works — including this one — by the artist exist, and two of them are unfinished. Most of his paintings are frescos, the famous scenes on the ceiling and wall of Rome’s Sistine Chapel.

Experts in the Met’s paintings conservation department carefully cleaned it by removing decades of dirt, as well as paint layers that art restorers had applied through the ages to fill in chips or dull areas, Lee said.

When they examined the painting further using X-rays and infrared technology, they were able to see how the artist made certain brush strokes, scraped paint layers to achieve detail and even changed elements of the painting before the final version.

The generations of dirt and paint buildup had obscured the painting’s identity, and some doubted its authenticity because a similar painting existed, Lee said. But an art expert who extensively studied both paintings said the other was done in the 17th century.

Michelangelo’s piece has previously been known as “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” because he was inspired by a similar engraving of that name while learning to be an artist. But after the Kimbell acquired the oil painting, Lee decided to change its name because that engraving depicts a different scene, he said.

The painting will be displayed at the Kimbell starting this fall after a summer exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Lee said he may loan the painting to other museums later for traveling exhibits.

The New Hampshire Senate have voted to allow same-sex couples to marry, setting the state in motion to become the fifth in the country to legalize same-sex marriage.

New Hampshire’s House of Representatives has already approved the bill, but the Senate amended the language slightly before passing it on a 13-to-11 vote, meaning the House must approve the changes, reject them, or confer with the Senate before sending the bill to the governor.

With House approval expected, supporters and opponents are closely watching Governor John Lynch, a Democrat who has opposed same-sex marriage in the past and has not indicated whether he would sign or veto the latest measure.

On a day when the Senate also approved the use of medicinal marijuana, supporters of same-sex marriage hailed yesterday’s vote as a landmark victory for individual liberty in the “Live Free or Die” state.

“It is such an important statement, especially to young people, to say if you are gay, if you are lesbian, you are no different,” said Claire Ebel, executive director of the state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “You have the same rights.” But opponents said the vote would undermine traditional definitions of marriage.

Swine flu emerged in Mexico months earlier than previously thought, the country’s health minister has said, giving possible clues about the origins of the killer virus. Officials had previously said that the first recorded case of the H1N1 virus in Mexico was from a woman who died in the southern state of Oaxaca on April 12. Jose Cordova confirmed that a four-year-old boy in the eastern state of Veracruz had suffered from the virus as early as February. He survived the influenza.

A sample from the boy was sent to a US laboratory for anaylsis after swine flu was discovered in America.The announcement came as the probable death toll from the virus rose to 152. However, Mr Cordova said there had been no evidence that a mutant human-to-human flu strain had emerged at that time.

“We never had this kind of epidemic in the world,” he said. “This is the first time we have this kind of virus.”Mexico’s Agriculture Department said that inspectors found no sign of swine flu among pigs in the region, adding that no infected pigs have been found yet anywhere in Mexico.

Swine flu has hospitalized almost 2,000 people in Mexico and spread to several countries including Britain, America, Spain and Israel. Cases are also feared in New Zealand, Australia and South Korea.

The WHO announcement in Geneva followed a decision by the top EU health official urging Europeans to postpone nonessential travel to parts of the US and Mexico because of the virus.

U.S. automaker Chrysler showed signs of progress with its unionized workers in its battle to stay alive on Sunday with just days left to complete deals to slash labour and debt costs or face bankruptcy.

No. 1 U.S. automaker General Motors is also restructuring in an effort to secure the government funding it needs to stay in business, and was expected to announce a fresh round of cost cutting on Monday.

Chrysler – 80 percent controlled by private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management CBS.UL – has been given until April 30 by the Obama administration to agree on cost-cutting deals with its creditors and the unions, plus cement an alliance with Italian automaker Fiat SpA.

Failure to meet those goals could shut off access to U.S. government aid for Chrysler, leaving it facing potential liquidation.

In a first significant step towards meeting those goals, the Canadian Auto Workers union on Sunday ratified a new collective agreement with the automaker that will save Chrysler about C$240 million (135.1 million pounds) annually.

The union said its members voted 87 percent in favour of the new agreement. Chrysler has 8,000 unionized workers in Canada.

Chrysler LLC is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as next week, whether or not it reaches a deal with its lenders or forges an alliance with Fiat SpA, said several people familiar with the matter.

If an agreement with the car maker’s lenders can be reached, Chrysler would file for bankruptcy protection to rid itself of some liabilities. That would let Fiat pick and choose which operations it wants, these people said. The U.S. government would provide bankruptcy financing while the reorganization plays out.

The United Auto Workers union is on board with the plan and likely would end up owning a sizable stake in the restructured car maker, said these people.

A relatively orderly bankruptcy filing along these lines would represent a measure of success for the Obama administration. But if a deal with Chrysler’s banks and Fiat cannot be reached, the company would begin the process of liquidation, with assets potentially sold to many buyers or shut down, said these people. Chrysler has shrunk radically in recent years but still employs 66,000 people in the U.S.

Meantime, Fiat has begun talks with General Motors Corp. about joining forces in Europe and Latin America, people familiar with the matters said, a surprise move that could have profound implications for the restructuring of GM and Chrysler. GM and Fiat have begun discussions about the Italian company buying a majority stake in Opel, the heart of GM’s European unit, these people said.

But no GM deal would go forward until Fiat’s plans with Chrysler are settled. Fiat has said it wants to take an initial 20% stake in Chrysler.

The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin, the lead defense contractor for the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, suggested yesterday that cyber-attacks had not caused any serious security breaches in the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program.

Still, defense and corporate officials said attacks on the Pentagon as well as the F-35 program are constant and former defense officials familiar with the program said some of the F-35’s less sensitive systems have been infiltrated by cyber-intruders.

“We know we are probed on this every day. We have very aggressive defensive systems. The more sensitive the information, the greater the safeguards are,” said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said he was not aware of any sensitive F-35 technology having been compromised by a cyber-attack.

The comments came in response to a Wall Street Journal story Monday reporting that cyber-attackers copied and siphoned off data related to design and electronics systems, “potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.”

The F-35 is the Pentagon’s most expensive, complex and ambitious aircraft program. According to program estimates, the total investment required in the F-35 exceeds $1 trillion — more than $300 billion to buy 2,456 aircraft and $760 billion to keep them flying beyond their expected life cycle.

British Treasury chief Alistair Darling presents the government’s budget on Wednesday, with his options constricted after pumping billions into stabilizing a foundering economy.

Some tax breaks intended to stimulate spending may be introduced or continued, but the government’s mounting debt has sown caution about any further big gestures — and some sort of tax increases appear inevitable.

Economists’ forecasts for the rise in borrowing for each of the next two years range from around £150 billion to £175 billion. That could push the budget deficit to as much as 12% of GDP, the highest since World War II.

During the last recession in the early 1990s, debt peaked at 8% of GDP, but that downturn was nothing like this one.

Since Mr. Darling presented his previous budget, the Treasury has had to rescue Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, taking a more than two-thirds stake in the business, and take a majority stake in Lloyds Banking Group PLC, which got into trouble after a government-encouraged takeover of Halifax-Bank of Scotland.

The government spent £37 billion ($54.28 billion) to shore up those banks, and has insured £585 billion worth of their most risky assets.

The International Monetary Fund reported Tuesday that the cost of stabilizing the financial sector in Britain may reach 12% of GDP.

Mr. Darling also faces intense political pressure to please as many people as possible, with a national election just a year away. Home builders, the auto industry, savers and pub owners are among those clamoring for relief from the impact of a downturn that, the government insists, was born in the U.S.

Chrysler LLC’s future leadership will be determined by the U.S. government and Fiat SpA if Chrysler succeeds at merging with the Italian auto maker.

Chrysler Chief Executive Officer Bob Nardelli, in a note to employees obtained by Dow Jones Newswires, said a new board of directors will be appointed by the federal government and Fiat once a deal is completed. The majority of the directors will be independent.

“The board will have the responsibility to appoint a chairman,” Nardelli said in the letter distributed to employees via e-mail on Thursday. “The board also will select a CEO with Fiat’s concurrence.”

Nardelli’s comments clarify speculation on who will control Chrysler if a merger deal with Fiat is completed and what role Nardelli might play in that new company.

Chrysler is racing to secure new union cost-cutting deals, reduce its debt and ink a Fiat partnership before the federally mandated April 30 deadline.

The Obama administration said it would not provide Chrysler additional access to low-interest loans if the requirements are not met, which could result in the third-largest U.S. auto maker filing for bankruptcy protection.

The identity of the first puppy — the one that the Washington press corps has been yelping about for months, the one President Obama has seemed to delight in dropping hints about — leaked out yesterday. This despite White House efforts to delay the news until the big debut planned for Tuesday afternoon.

The little guy is a 6-month-old Portuguese water dog given to the Obama girls as a gift by that Portuguese water dog-lovin’ senator himself, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. The girls named it Bo — and let it be noted that you learned that here first. Malia and Sasha chose the name, because their cousins have a cat named Bo and because first lady Michelle Obama’s father was nicknamed Diddley, a source said.

With 19 days to go, talks among Chrysler LLC, the Obama administration and Chrysler’s creditors have yet to produce a firm proposal for how the company’s debt should be reduced, people familiar with the process said on Friday.

President Barack Obama’s auto task force says it believes reducing the debts of Chrysler and General Motors Corp. is the key to making them viable, warning it could use bankruptcy to force whatever cuts it seeks. Chrysler has until April 30 to bring back a new viability plan; GM has until May 31.

The automakers and the task force still haven’t given new proposals to the bondholders, but their pitches will be less generous than the automakers’ previous offers that aimed to reduce overall debts by two-thirds.

Chrysler’s debt talks pose a greater challenge than GM’s, and not just because its deadline is first. About 50 firms hold $6.8 billion in loans to Chrysler backed by the company’s assets, known as secured debt, which would be paid back in bankruptcy before the government’s $4-billion loan made last year.

In its February plan, Chrysler warned that secured debtors might get between 11% and 43% of the value of their debt in a bankruptcy, while the government would recover 4% to 7%. The task force has indicated that deeper debt cuts will be needed even if Chrysler joins forces with Fiat SpA.

A steering committee representing Chrysler’s secured bondholders said Friday that they were “engaged in ongoing discussions with the U.S. Treasury and Chrysler and continue to work diligently toward achieving a thoughtful solution prior to the April 30th deadline.”

A tornado ripped through Mena, Arkansas, on Thursday, killing at least two people and damaging more than 100 homes, authorities said.

Mena is located in Polk County near the Oklahoma state line.

Two people are confirmed dead and at least 22 people were injured, according to James Reeves of Polk County’s Department of Emergency Management.

Authorities plan to go door-to-door to check on residents. Reeves said one of the victims was an elderly man who died when his house collapsed.

The tornado damaged the county hospital, City Hall, library and the courthouse, which houses the 911 emergency dispatch center, and a detention center, Reeves said.

Bells tolled in hilltowns across central Italy today as the first funerals got underway for victims of the country’s devastating earthquake. The Vatican granted a dispensation so a funeral Mass for most of the 275 dead could be celebrated on Good Friday.

As more bodies were pulled from the rubble, some of the 28,000 homeless spent another day lining up for food and water at some of the 20 tent camps that have sprouted up around this quake-devastated city.

Pope Benedict XVI said he would visit the area soon.

Rescue efforts continued for the 15 people still missing, but officials began discussing rebuilding the stricken region and reopening schools. They stressed it would take a month or two to have a clear idea of the extent of the damage.

“For now the needs are basic. The people in the camps, they don’t have toothbrushes, they don’t have toothpaste,” said Massimo Cialente, mayor of the hard-hit city of L’Aquila. “You can’t find a place to buy cigarettes or get a coffee.”

The magnitude-6.3 quake hit L’Aquila and several towns covering 230 square miles (600 square kilometers) in central Italy early Monday, leveling buildings and reducing entire blocks to piles of rubble. It was the worst quake to hit Italy in three decades.

The death toll stood at 275, six of whom hadn’t been identified. Sixteen of the dead were children, Premier Silvio Berlusconi said.

Of the injured, 100 remained in serious condition, he said.

Colorado State University’s hurricane forecast team’s latest prediction calls for 12 named storms, including six hurricanes. Of those six, two are expected to be major hurricanes with maximum wind speeds of 111 mph or greater. The first of the storms in the Atlantic, which are named in alphabetical order, will be Ana.

There will be fewer Atlantic hurricanes this season than in 2008, and fewer even than predicted only last December, according to a forecast released Tuesday. In 2008, there were 16 named storms including eight hurricanes, five of them major.

Colorado State’s December forecast predicted 14 named storms for this year. Yet even the revised forecast indicates a slightly-above-average season. Since 1950, a typical Atlantic hurricane season has had 10 named storms, six of them hurricanes and two of those major hurricanes.

The team will issue another update on June 2. Others will be released as the hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, progresses.

Crowds gathered in solemn reflection near the Rwandan capital of Kigali on Tuesday, marking the 15th anniversary of the start of a 100-day genocidal massacre in Rwanda in which an estimated 800,000 people were brutally killed.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame addressed thousands during an emotional candle-lighting ceremony, criticizing the international community for not doing more to prevent the bloody wave of violence.

“I remind those experts that they need to go back to school,” Kagame told reporters. “These children you saw here — you think they are standing there because they are exploiting everybody’s guilt?

Sparked by the assassination of then-Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, extremist militias made up of ethnic Hutus slaughtered ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus across Rwanda after Belgian peacekeepers left the country.

During a ceremony at the United Nations, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon reflected on what he described as a “horrifying scene and experience.”

“Today is a day to open our eyes to this suffering and honor the memory of those killed in Rwanda 15 years ago,” he said. “But beyond reminding us of the horror, that silence should spur us to action.”

The actor Kal Penn, known for his roles in movies such as Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and in television on House, will join the Obama team as an associate director in the Office of Public Liaison, said White House spokesman Shin Inouye. Penn will not be acting while he is working at the White House, Inouye said.

Penn, who is of Indian descent, will be connecting President Barack Obama with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and with arts groups such as the Southern Arts Federation and the New England Foundation for the Arts, Inouye said.

Penn was an ardent supporter of Obama during the presidential campaign. He visited Penn State in September and November and canvassed with students.

Orlando International Airport may be one of the busiest airports in the country, but federal officials say too many of its air traffic controllers have too little experience.

U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel cited Orlando as having the nation’s highest percentage of controllers in training to become certified when he testified before Congress. Orlando has the 11th largest passenger volume in the U.S.

Forty-seven percent of air traffic controllers at the Orlando airport lack certification – about double the percentage of uncertified controllers nationwide.

Across the country, rookies are replacing retiring controllers who started work as replacements during the 1981 controllers strike. Critics say new hires are also trained faster and have less expertise when they start work. Some come from jobs as waiters and bank tellers.

In the past, controllers had to become proficient at six work stations in the control tower plus 15 other stations in a separate radar room to become fully certified. In January, the FAA split the work force so controllers become certified in either the control tower or the radar facility, but not both. The change will cut training time from three years to one.

“They’re putting kids right in the big leagues,” said Mitch Herrick, a Miami controller and lobbyist for the union. “The federal government likes to say it has hired 2,000 controllers. They’ve hired 2,000 kids who don’t know anything.”

Payroll records from an employees union show about half of the 32 controllers at the Orlando airport have five years or less experience.

The much awaited meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President Barack Obama will include a high-profile team from Washington, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Officials accompanying the Prime Minister to the G20 meeting here said both countries attached much importance to the first meeting Manmohan Singh will have with Obama since he took office in January.

‘A lot of preparatory work has gone into it,’ an official said.

‘From their side there will be six top people including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner,’ the official added.

He said the Indian side will include Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon.

The Prime Minister is here to primarily attend the G20 summit on ways to tackle the current global financial crisis, and has scheduled bilateral talks with his host and British counterpart Gordon Brown as well as Obama.

Ahead of the visit, the Prime Minister had said he would like to discuss a host of issues with the US President during what officials said would be a 45-minute affair.

‘This will be our first meeting and will be an opportunity for us to review our bilateral relations as well as hold discussions on important regional and global issues such as terrorism, the situation in Afghanistan, energy security and climate change,’ the Prime Minister had said.

Chairman and CEO of General Motors Corp., Rick Wagoner has resigned as head of the Detroit automaker.

In a statement, Wagoner said he stepped aside at the request of the Obama Administration.

Replacing him as CEO is Fritz Henderson, GM’s president and chief operating officer. Kent Kresa was named interim non-executive chairman of the board of directors. Kresa is chairman emeritus of Northrop Grumman Corp., and a GM director since 2003.

Wagoner’s departure comes at a time when the company and the U.S. auto industry is reeling under pressure from foreign automakers and effects of the worst global recession in 70 years.

GM has received $13.4 billion in government loans and is asking for another $16.6 billion to help sustain it during the worst downturn in auto sales in 27 years.

GM and Chrysler LLC, which also has received federal aid but might not survive, must show the government the extent of the restructuring they have enacted to become profitable.