The hurricane’s maximum sustained winds decreased to near 110 mph (175 kph) early Friday. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami says some weakening is expected but that Bud is still forecast to reach Mexico’s coast as a hurricane.

A hurricane warning is in effect for Mexico’s Pacific coast from Manzanillo northwestward to Cabo Corrientes. A hurricane watch and tropical storm warning are in effect from Punta San Telmo westward to east of Manzanillo.

The hurricane is centred about 130 miles (210 kilometres) southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico, and is moving north-northeast near 8 mph (13 kph).

The unmanned SpaceX Dragon was right on track to deliver a half-ton of supplies and become the first commercial vessel to visit the space station.

“It’s a great view,” Dutch space station astronaut Andre Kuipers said as the Dragon drew to within 900 feet (275 metres), its strobe light flashing. “The solar panels are nicely lit.”

On Thursday, the capsule came within 1 1/2 miles (1.6 kilometres) of the space station in a practice fly-by. It returned to the neighbourhood early Friday so Kuipers and U.S. astronaut Donald Pettit could capture it with a robot arm. First, the capsule had to go through a series of stop-and-go demonstrations to prove it was under good operating control.

A collision at orbital speed — 17,500 mph (28,160 kph) — could prove disastrous for the space station.

This is the first time a private company has launched a vessel to the space station, an achievement previously reserved for a small, elite group of government agencies.

President Barack Obama is pushing commercial ventures in orbit so NASA can concentrate on grander destinations like asteroids and Mars. Once companies master supply runs, they hope to tackle astronaut ferry runs.

The California-based SpaceX — officially known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — is one of several companies vying for the chance to launch Americans from their homeland. That ability ended with NASA’s final shuttle flight last summer. To get to the space station, NASA astronauts must go through Russia, an expensive and embarrassing situation for the U.S. after a half-century of orbital self-sufficiency.

SpaceX’s billionaire maestro, Elon Musk, who helped create PayPal, said he can have astronauts riding his Dragon capsules to orbit in three or four years. His Falcon 9 rockets lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Musk monitored Friday’s operation from the company’s Mission Control in Hawthorne, California.

The space station has been relying on Russian, Japanese and European cargo ships ever since the shuttles retired. None of those, however, can bring anything of value back; they’re simply loaded with trash and burn up in the atmosphere.

By contrast, the Dragon is designed to safely re-enter the atmosphere, parachuting into the ocean like the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules did back in the 1960s. Assuming all goes well Friday, the space station’s six-man crew will release the Dragon next Thursday after filling it with science experiments and equipment.

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Online:

SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/

This is likely to bring Mohammed Morsi to run-off elections scheduled for June 16-17 but leaves the question wide open as to whether he will win.

Egyptians voted Wednesday and Thursday to choose their first president after last year’s popular uprising that ousted ruler Hosni Mubarak.

Contending for second place are Mubarak’s last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh and leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, whose surprise last-minute surge brought a new element to a contest that looked like it was going to pit Islamists against former regime officials.

Across the country, election workers cracked open the transparent ballot boxes — sealed by serial-numbered plastic bands to ensure they had not been tampered with — and began working their way through the paper ballots. Ballots from 18 of Egypt’s 27 governorates had been counted by mid-morning on Friday.

The Brotherhood is hoping for a presidential victory to seal its political domination of Egypt, which would be a dramatic turnaround from the decades it was repressed under Mubarak. It already holds nearly half of parliament after victories in elections late last year.

Results showed drops in the group’s popularity since then, with the ballots cast for Morsi significantly fewer than the number the Brotherhood’s party received in parliamentary elections. In several provinces, Morsi came in second or third place.

Many Egyptians who said they have voted before for the Brotherhood said they were let down by the group’s hunger for power and poor performance in parliament. However, the group has a formidable ability to mobilize voters, and it was unclear how many disappointed Brotherhood voters chose another candidate or just did not cast a ballot.

The group’s political arm said in a statement that Morsi is going to enter a runoff with Shafiq, which means another round of highly polarizing campaigning, since the Mubarak-era official is strongly opposed by leaders of the protest movement which were behind the revolution.

About 400 tons of fuel oil spilled on Astrolabe Reef near Tauranga and at least 2,000 sea birds died in the Oct. 5 grounding of the cargo ship Rena.

Judge Robert Wolff from the Tauranga District Court sentenced the ship’s captain, Mauro Balomaga, and navigating officer, Leonil Relon, both of the Philippines. The two had already pleaded guilty to operating the ship dangerously and altering documents after the crash. They had earlier been granted name suppression by the court, but that expired when they were sentenced.

A preliminary report released by transport investigators in March found that the Rena took shortcuts to try to reach port by a deadline.

Maritime New Zealand, the agency responsible for shipping in New Zealand, said it was pleased with the sentences.

Keith Manch, Maritime New Zealand’s director, said in an email Friday that an investigation by his agency found that the two senior officers, who were responsible for navigating the ship, had breached basic principles of safe navigation in their rush to get to the port. He said that even after a series of missteps, there was still a chance the men could have averted the disaster.

About 10 minutes before the 2 a.m. crash, he said, the reef appeared as an echo reading on the Rena’s radar.

“At this stage, there was sufficient time to make an effective alteration of course and avoid the reef,” Manch wrote.

Instead, the captain assumed the reading came from a small ship, Manch said. After unsuccessfully trying to look for the ship in the dead of night, Manch said, the captain dismissed it as a false reading and continued on into the reef.

Manch said that both officers acknowledged making alterations after the grounding to the ship’s GPS log, its passage plan and its computer to mislead investigating authorities.

“This offending is also very serious in that it caused genuine confusion for investigators trying to piece together the events that led to the grounding,” he said. “It is vital that when these types of events do take place, we can find out how and why they have happened to help prevent such an event happening again.”

Costamare, the Greek-based company that owns the Rena, said in a statement that it acknowledged the verdict against the two men.

“We will continue to meet our responsibilities, as their employer, to ensure their welfare and that of their families, as they complete their sentences,” the company wrote.

The wreck of the Rena remains on the reef. It split in two earlier this year, with the stern section sinking and the bow section remaining above water. Salvage crews continue the slow process of removing containers from the wreck.

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Follow Nick Perry on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nickgbperry

The two suspects sped through a police check point and detonated the powerful bomb outside the police station in the town of Pinarbasi, in the province of Kayseri, said Idris Naim Sahin, the interior minister.

A police officer was seriously wounded and some of the injured were the children of police officers staying in nearby police lodgings, Sahin said.

The vehicle was first spotted at the check point in the neighbouring province of Kahramanmaras, some 90 kilometres (56 miles) away, when it ignored calls by police to stop, he said.

Sahin hinted that Kurdish rebels, fighting for autonomy in southeast Turkey, might have been behind the attack.

“The crazy attacks of the terrorist organization are continuing,” he said, in an apparent reference to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Private NTV television and the Dogan news agency said a policeman standing guard outside the police station opened fire at the assailants, triggering a clash with police guards outside the building. The bomb went off soon after the clashes.

Suspected Kurdish rebels have also kidnapped 10 villagers in a raid on the village of Bayirli near the southeastern town of Tunceli on Tuesday, the state television said Friday. The motive of the kidnapping was unclear.

The PKK has carried out several bombings, including suicide attacks throughout Turkey in the past. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984.

Now prosecutors hope that Clemens’ own DNA will help them convict him of a federal crime.

The government is expected to show test results Friday in Clemens’ perjury trial that link the former pitcher’s DNA to a used needle and other medical waste that also tested positive for steroids.

Forensic scientist Alan Keel returns to the stand to testify about the genetic tests he did for prosecutors.

Chief prosecution witness Brian McNamee, Clemens’ former strength and conditioning coach, has testified that he saved the needle and other materials from an alleged steroids injection of Clemens in 2001.

Clemens is accused of lying to Congress in 2008 when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs.

Pfc. Bradley Manning’s civilian defence attorney, David Coombs, posted the documents late Wednesday on his website. A military judge will consider the motions at a pre-trial hearing June 6-8 at Fort Meade.

Manning, 24, faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy. He allegedly sent to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables and war logs downloaded from government computers while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad in late 2009 and early 2010.

The defence contends the government used unconstitutionally vague language in eight counts charging Manning with unauthorized possession and disclosure of classified information. The motion specifically targets the government’s use of the phrases, “relating to the national defence” and “to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”

Both phrases are so sweeping in their scope that they fail to provide the accused with fair warning of what conduct is prohibited, the defence said.

The defence is also seeking dismissal of two counts alleging Manning exceeded his authorized access on computers linked to the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, a Defence Department intranet system.

The government alleges Manning used the computers to obtain certain State Department cables that were then transmitted to a person not entitled to receive them. The defence argues that someone’s purpose in accessing a computer is irrelevant to the charge of exceeding authorized access.

“Pfc. Manning clearly had authorization to access the government computers in question,” the motion reads.

Prosecutors didn’t immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment on the filings.

The motions were dated May 10. Coombs released them under a military court order last month permitting him to publicly release defence filings, often with portions redacted for security and privacy reasons. The ruling came in response to requests from news media, including The Associated Press, for access to all records of the proceedings.

On Thursday, the New York-based Center for constitutional Rights filed a petition asking an Army appeals court to order public and media access to the government’s motion papers, the court’s written orders and transcripts of the proceedings.

Coombs also revealed Wednesday that Army Maj. Thomas Hurley, who formerly represented a soldier charged with fatally shooting 17 Afghan villagers, has re-joined Manning’s defence team.

Hurley was originally detailed to Manning’s defence team in 2010. He was removed earlier this year to help defend Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. He stepped aside from that job after he and Bales’ civilian attorney disagreed about defence strategy.

Coombs wrote that Manning personally asked to have Hurley defend him.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, once known for his active and highly publicized work on behalf of the country’s poor, has almost disappeared from public life since he was hospitalized in September 2009 for what the palace called a lung inflammation.

Since then he has had a variety of ailments and has lived in a royal wing of Bangkok’s Siriraj Hospital, leaving only on rare occasions and always in a wheelchair.

His hospitalization has coincided with the often violent political turmoil that has roiled the country in recent times and increased discussion on the still taboo subject of what role the monarchy should play in Thai politics and society.

The reverence most Thais have for their king was on full display Friday. People dressed in yellow and pink — colours associated with the monarch — lined the roads from Bangkok to the country’s central plains hours before the royal convoy was due to pass by.

The trip was to centre on a visit to a rice paddy that the king toured in 1996 as part of a royal project to develop a water retention system to mitigate flooding in Ayutthaya. During the country’s devastating floods last year much of Ayutthaya was submerged, damaging ancient temples, crops and hundreds of factories in the area.

Grand pageantry was planned elsewhere in Ayutthaya, including a parade of rare white elephants.

The palace has given little explanation for the trip, which was announced a week ago. It likely serves as a chance to publicize the king’s improved health — a matter of such public interest that a major Bangkok newspaper carried a front page headline Thursday that stated: “His Majesty The King Takes 50 Steps Without His Cane.”

Bhumibol took the throne in 1946 and is the world’s longest reigning monarch.

Hollande’s office confirmed the arrival in a statement. The trip was not announced in advance for security reasons.

Hollande will meet with some of the 3,300 French troops in Afghanistan and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the statement said.

Hollande announced plans at a NATO summit this week to pull out French troops by the end of the year, well ahead of the alliance’s 2014 withdrawal date.

Hollande’s conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy had already moved up the pullout plan to 2013 after French troops were killed by an Afghan they were training, and amid increasing French disillusionment with the war.

Tension over Hollande’s pledge to end his country’s combat mission two years early infused the NATO summit in Chicago, and unleashed fears of a domino effect of other allies withdrawing early. Hollande has suggested noncombat troops may remain beyond Dec. 31.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius are also in Kabul with Hollande.

Royal Caribbean said Friday its 3,114-passenger Voyager of the Seas is due to arrive in Singapore this weekend en route to Shanghai.

Its sister ship Mariner of the Seas will be sent to China next year. The two ships are due to carry Chinese passengers on routes to Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea.

Royal Caribbean chairman Richard Fain said the company is taking the unusual step of committing a second ship to a new market before its first vessel has arrived because it sees tapping Chinese tourists as a “major strategic objective.”