INDIANAPOLIS - Chicago rediscovered its winning formula Sunday night. Play tough defense, control the ball and make no major mistakes.

No, it wasn’t enough to win a Super Bowl 19 months ago against Indianapolis, but it was the perfect scenario to ruin the Colts’ grand reopening of the new Lucas Oil Stadium 29-13.

Chicago’s win ended Indy’s remarkable streak of 21 consecutive victories in September and October, the league’s longest run since the Green Bay Packers won 23 pre-November games from 1928-32. It’s also the first time since 2004 the Colts won’t start at least 7-0.

How did the Bears do it? With an old style and a new look.

Matt Forte, the first Chicago rookie to start at running back since Walter Payton in 1975, ran for 123 yards — 50 on a first-quarter TD run in which he broke one tackle and then outran Bob Sanders, last season’s defensive player of the year, to the end zone.

Kyle Orton, who wrested the starting job from Rex Grossman, was 13-of-21 for 150 yards and had no turnovers.

Meanwhile, two-time league MVP Peyton Manning wasn’t himself. He burned timeouts to save the play clock and didn’t have that precision timing with his receivers after missing six weeks of practice. It was Manning’s first game action since having surgery to remove an infected bursa sac from his left knee in mid-July.

And the Colts’ defense, which allowed the fewest points in the NFL last season, couldn’t get off the field.

Heck, coach Tony Dungy even lost two replay challenges.

The combination led to a predictable result.

Chicago’s defense limited the Colts to 53 yards rushing, which forced Manning to win it with his arm.

Problem was Manning was just 30-of-49 for 257 yards with one TD and instead of scoring touchdowns inside the red zone, the Colts settled for field goals by Adam Vinatieri on their first two trips inside the Chicago 20.

It wasn’t what Indy fans expected from what is traditionally one of the league’s best offenses.

But the Bears followed the game plan perfectly.

Forte erased an early 3-0 lead with his TD burst, and when the Colts closed to 7-6, Orton led the Bears on a drive that ended with the first of Robbie Gould’s two field goals.

The second came as time ran out in the first half after Orton hooked up with Greg Olsen on a 29-yard completion with 10 seconds left.

But the Colts nearly recovered in the second half, thanks in part to Devin Hester.

The Pro Bowl returner took the opening second half kickoff about 7 yards deep in the end zone and waited a few seconds before coming out. He was tackled at the Bears 3.

When the Colts got the ball back in good field position, Manning converted with a 6-yard TD pass to Reggie Wayne, making it 15-13 with 9:18 left in the third quarter.

That’s when the Bears took control.

Charles Tillman slapped the ball away from Marvin Harrison at the Colts 21, Lance Briggs scooped up the fumble on a bounce and rumbled into the end zone. And Jason McKie scored on a 1-yard plunge in the fourth quarter to close it out.

CABARET, Haiti - Hurricane Ike’s torrential rains swelled rivers across Haiti and sent floodwaters gushing into homes in the dead of night in one eastern town, killing at least 58 people.

Flooding also collapsed a bridge that had been the last land route to the starving northern city of Gonaives, where residents fled to rooftops as waters rose for the second time in a week. Three more bodies were found in Gonaives on Sunday, according to civil defense director Maria Alta Jean-Baptiste, all victims of previous storms.

The latest deaths pushed Haiti’s toll to at least 319 from four storms in less than a month.

Most of Sunday’s 58 deaths were in the Cabaret region north of Port-au-Prince. A swollen river unleashed mudslides and floods and crushed homes and sent people fleeing in the middle of the night.

In the Always Funeral Home, 21 muddy bodies were piled in a dank room, unclaimed. Two of them were pregnant, one still clutching a small girl to her chest. Morgue workers roughly separated the bodies to count them, grabbing one baby boy by the head and tossing him aside like a doll.

Waters reached chest-high levels before receding Sunday morning, leaving people to shovel mud from their houses. Others sat outside, surrounded by salvaged pots and mattresses, staring glumly at their collapsed homes.

“We took refuge in one room and waited there all night and prayed,” said Sister Marie Denise, who was trapped by waist-high waters in the house she shares with four nuns. They evacuated to the nearby school they run after the waters receded.

“We don’t know if one of our girls is among the dead,” she said of her students.

No foreign aid has reached the town even though hundreds of people have been forced from their homes, said local civil defense director Henri Luis Praviel. Still, with the waters swiftly retreating and all roads leading into Cabaret still open, the town may have been better off than isolated Gonaives, Haiti’s fourth-largest city.

Pummeled by rains for four days last week during Tropical Storm Hanna, the city was cut off again Sunday when flooding caused the collapse of the Mirebalais bridge in central Haiti. And while the rain finally stopped, high waters will likely keep running down from deforested mountains into the coastal flood plain.

Much of Gonaives remained inaccessible, even to United Nations peacekeepers already in the city, because of rising waters and strong currents. Desperation was increasingly evident among people who have had very little to eat or drink for days, prompting peacekeepers to beef up security.

A line of 3,000 people snaked around a warehouse-turned-U.N. shelter, and several hundred pushed and shoved to break down the door, only to be quickly subdued by Bolivian troops in riot gear.

As peacekeepers delivered aid to areas their trucks could reach, scores of young men splashed alongside, begging for help. One called out with a bullhorn: “Hey, hey, my friend. Give me some water.”

Food and fuel prices both skyrocketed, with gasoline reaching $13 a gallon. While relief workers in Gonaives said they had enough emergency food supplies for the next couple of days, distributing it is becoming ever more complicated.

Workers spent four hours handing out water and high-protein biscuits. But people were growing tired of relief food and started to demand rice, which has gone up 60 percent in price since the storms.

“We would like to eat some real food,” said shelter resident Esaie St. Juste. “Rice, beans, sardines. Haitian people like real food.”

Above Haiti’s coastal floodplain, in the Artibonite Valley, authorities prepared to open an overflowing dam, inundating more homes and possibly causing lasting damage to Haiti’s “rice bowl,” a farming area whose revival is key to rescuing the starving country.

“Please evacuate as soon as you can,” Agriculture Minister Joanas Gay urged Artibonite residents on state-run Radio Nationale.

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Associated Press Writer Jonathan Katz in Gonaives contributed to this report.

TOKYO - Asian stock markets soared Monday after Washington announced a bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — a move that could help bolster a shaky U.S. housing market and renew global investor confidence.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 stock index was up more than 414 points, or 3.4 percent, at 12,627.07 in afternoon trading in Tokyo.

Seoul’s Kospi index was up 5.4 percent, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index surged 3.9 percent and Singapore’s Straits Times Index jumped 3.9 percent. Key indexes in Australia and Taiwan were also higher.

The U.S. Treasury’s decision Sunday to place the two companies, which own or guarantee about half of U.S. mortgage debt, into a conservatorship removes a big cloud that had been weighing on global markets.

“I think what the American authorities have done, in the brief look I’ve had, it is the right thing,” said Glenn Stevens, the head of Australia’s central bank, at an appearance before a parliamentary committee in the southern city of Melbourne.

“Their implications are likely to be positive for markets because it’s a source of uncertainty close to resolution,” he said.

U.S. futures signaled that Wall Street was poised to advance Monday as well. The Standard & Poor’s futures index was up more than 2 percent.

Japanese officials also hailed Washington’s bailout.

“We welcome the plan as an appropriate measure as it is believed to contribute to stabilizing the financial markets,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura was quoted as saying by Kyodo News.

Jacky Choi, a Hong Kong-based fund manager at Value Partners Ltd., which manages about $5 billion in Asia, said the U.S. move comes as a relief to the many Asian governments and institutions with the mortgage giants’ debt on their books.

He added, however, that Monday’s surge in equities didn’t necessarily foreshadow a broader turnaround and noted that trading volumes weren’t very large in some markets. Many investors were still hesitant to place long-term bets, he said.

“There’s not really a sentiment change. People are still reluctant,” Choi said. “It takes time for sentiment to recover in a market like this.”

For now, the news injected life into recently listless banking names, with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia up 5.9 percent and National Australia Bank 7.8 percent higher.

In Tokyo, Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group both gained more than 12 percent. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group skyrocketed almost 17 percent.

The three major banks said they each had about 200 billion yen ($1.8 billion) in exposure to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bonds, but declined to comment on the bailout.

Nomura Holdings, Inc. jumped 9.1 percent following weekend reports that Japan’s largest brokerage group is considering buying a stake in U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers. Nomura has funds exceeding $1.87 billion for investment in U.S. and European financial institutions and is considering Lehman as one of its investment candidates, Nomura President Kenichi Watanabe was quoted as saying by the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri.

In Hong Kong, HSBC soared 4.5 percent and No.1 China lender ICBC rose 4.7 percent.

Bucking the regional trend was China’s Shanghai Composite index, which was down more than 2 percent on heavy losses in property developers, refiners and airlines. But major banks rose, with Bank of China up 2.3 percent, and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China adding 0.7 percent.

Elsewhere, Taiwan’s key index shot up 5.6 percent, while India’s Sensex jumped 3.9 percent.

Monday’s gains in Asia follow a dismal trading session Friday when concerns about the U.S. economy and its impact on global growth sent markets tumbling across the region.

In currencies, the dollar was mixed. It climbed to 108.72 yen from 107.72 yen late Friday, but fell against the euro, which rose to $1.4371 from $1.4266.

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Associated Press writers Rohan Sullivan in Sydney, Jeremiah Marquez in Hong Kong and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.

HAVANA, (AFP) - Hurricane Ike raged over Cuba early Monday, pummeling the island with gale force winds and torrential rain after killing dozens in beleaguered Haiti and worsening its growing humanitarian disaster.

The second hurricane to strike in less than a week prompted more than 800,000 people to evacuate coastal areas of eastern Cuba. More than 9,000 foreign tourists were moved out of the resort of Varadero.

The hurricane made landfall at Punta Lucrecia late Sunday, the head of Cuba's meteorological service, Jose Rubiera, told state television.

Packing 120-mile (195-kilometer) per hour winds, Ike is the second powerful storm in just eight days to strike Cuba, following Hurricane Gustav.

"In all of Cuba's history, we have never had two hurricanes this close together," lamented Rubeira.

Just before dawn, the eye of storm was practically over Cabo Lucrecia on the northern coast of eastern Cuba, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) east of Camaguey and moving west, according to the US National Hurricane Center which said it was a Category Three storm on a scale going up to five.

Ike plowed across the Turks and Caicos as a powerful Category Four storm late Saturday, causing injuries and extensive damage on the British territory and tourist haven, before weakening.

The hurricane raked the Bahamas island of Great Inagua, toppling trees, blowing off roofs, causing an island-wide power failure and forcing many of its 1,000 to seek emergency refuges.

The main concern is now in Haiti , where four storms in three weeks have killed at least 600 people and left hundreds of thousands in desperate need of food, clean water and shelter.

Officials continued aid operations in the flood-stricken town of Gonaives, devastated by flooding from Tropical Storm Hanna. Another 47 people perished in the village of Cabaret, near Port-au-Prince, in flooding caused by Ike, officials said.

"Many homes were destroyed in Cabaret, and we have seen some bodies of children in the water," a journalist for UN radio who spent the night on the roof of his house told AFP.

Hundreds of bodies were found in Gonaives, a town of 350,000 in northwestern Haiti, after a five-meter (16-foot) wall of water and mud engulfed much of the town.

UN peacekeepers on Saturday evacuated several thousand residents from Gonaives, a local official said, but thousands more are still awaiting relief.

Some 650,000 Haitians have been affected by the flooding, including 300,000 children, and the task of delivering crucial aid has been complicated by dismal transport conditions, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). Officials said 200,000 people were without food and clean water, many for four days.

"What has happened here is unimaginable," member of parliament Pierre-Gerome Valcine told AFP from Cabaret, 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of the capital.

Massive flooding over the past week in the poorest country in the Americas has triggered a humanitarian crisis that was worsening by the day.

Pope Benedict XVI said special prayers for the stricken country.

"I want to remember the dear population of Haiti, greatly distressed in recent days by passing hurricanes," Benedict told pilgrims on the Italian island of Sardinia.

More stormy weather hampered relief efforts Sunday. Heavy rains brought down a key bridge which severed the only viable land route to Gonaives.

The bridge gave way at the town of Mirebalais in central Haiti, forcing three trucks loaded with emergency supplies and bound for Saint-Marc, where thousands of desperate refugees from Gonaives were crowding into shelters, to turn back, according to a World Food Programme official.

Many bridges in other areas of Haiti have also collapsed, homes have been washed away and crops ravaged.

Ike was expected to eventually careen past Florida into the Gulf of Mexico and sweep toward Louisiana and the storm-battered city of New Orleans as early as Tuesday.

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Missiles fired by U.S. drone aircraft killed at least three people on Monday in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border where a religious school founded by an old friend of Osama bin Laden is located, witnesses said.

"There were two drones and they fired three missiles," said a resident of Dandi Darpakheil, a village near Miranshah, main town of the North Waziristan tribal region.

A military official said a house and madrasa founded by Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani was the target of the attack.

The resident said three people had been killed in the attack while doctors said 15 to 20 wounded people, most of them women and children, had been brought to Miranshah's main hospital.

Haqqani's younger son said his father and son Sirajuddin had been away from the house at the time.

"Haqqani and Sirajuddin were in Afghanistan at the time of the attack. They are alive," Badruddin, the commander's third son, told Reuters by telephone.

Badruddin said one of his aunts had been killed in the attack, and women and children were among the wounded.

Military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas confirmed an "incident" had taken place in North Waziristan and its cause was being ascertained.

Haqqani is a veteran commander of the U.S.-backed Afghan war against Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1908s.

CLOSE LINKS WITH ISI

He also has had close links with Pakistani intelligence agencies, notably the military Inter-Services Intelligence

(ISI).

The New York Times reported in July that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had given Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani evidence of the ISI's involvement with Haqqani along with evidence of ISI connections to a suicide bombing at the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed nearly 60 people on July 7.

While the senior Haqqani is believed to be in poor health and less active, Sirajuddin has been leading the Taliban faction.

Coalition forces in Afghanistan have stepped up cross-border attacks in recent weeks against al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistani tribal areas.

U.S. commandos carried out a helicopter-borne ground assault in the neighboring South Waziristan region on Wednesday in what was the first known incursion into Pakistan by U.S. troops since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Pakistani officials said 20 people, including women and children, had been killed in the attack which drew a furious response from the government.

A day later, four Islamist militants were killed and five wounded in a missile attack in North Waziristan, believed to have been launched by a U.S. drone aircraft.

Intelligence officials and witnesses said five people had been killed in another suspected drone attack on Friday but the Pakistan military denied it.

(Writing by Zeeshan Haider; editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Roger Crabb)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government on Sunday seized control of mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae (FNM.N) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N), launching what could be its biggest bailout ever to support the U.S. housing market and ward off more global financial market turbulence.

The action, prompted by worries over the companies' shrinking capital, was the latest in a series of emergency steps taken by U.S. authorities to quell what is now a year-long credit market crisis that has helped push many economies toward recession.

"Our economy and our markets will not recover until the bulk of this housing correction is behind us," U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in a statement.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee almost half of the country's $12 trillion in outstanding home mortgage debt, were so large that "a failure of either of them would cause great turmoil in our financial markets here at home and around the globe," Paulson said.

The congressionally chartered companies, the two largest sources of U.S. housing finance, have suffered combined losses of nearly $14 billion in the last four quarters and large holders of their debt, including overseas central banks, have shown increasing nervousness over their health.

Japan, the world's second biggest economy flirting with a recession, said the U.S. move should help the global economy.

"Japan welcomes the step as it removes one unstable factor in the United States, especially because the dollar is a key international currency," Finance Minister Bunmei Ibuki told reporters. He said Paulson would explain the details of the rescue to his Group of Seven counterparts, including Ibuki, on Monday evening.

U.S. stock index futures surged on Sunday evening, signaling a sharp rise when Wall Street opens on Monday. Asian shares soared 4 percent at the start of the new trading week, showing the plan had shored up investor sentiment.

However, U.S. bond futures and U.S. Treasuries fell sharply as it raised concerns the government might have to borrow more. The benchmark 10-year yields jumped 19 basis points to 3.900 percent as the new trading week opened in Asia.

The U.S. dollar rose against the yen but slid against the euro.

The two government-sponsored enterprises, which are publicly traded but which serve a government mission to support housing, were put in a conservatorship that allows their stock to keep trading but puts common shareholders last in line in any claims.

The normal powers of the companies' directors and officers will be held by the conservator, their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, until the businesses are restored to "safe and solvent" financial health.

U.S. President George W. Bush said the action was necessary because the troubles at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have $1.6 trillion in debt outstanding, posed "an unacceptable risk to the broader financial system and our economy."

However, U.S. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said he planned to hold hearings to examine the government's decision, saying many questions were unanswered.

GOVERNMENT BECOMES SHAREHOLDER

As part of the plan, the Treasury is taking an equity stake in the companies, will purchase mortgage-backed securities they issue and will extend a credit line to them.

In addition, the top executives were ousted. Freddie Mac chief executive Richard Syron and Fannie Mae's CEO Daniel Mudd were replaced by David Moffett, a former top official at US Bancorp and Herb Allison, a former top official at both Merrill Lynch and pension fund TIAA-CREF.

The Treasury took $1 billion of preferred senior stock in each company but its equity stake could reach as much as $100 billion in each and will be senior to both existing preferred and common shares. The Treasury will also receive warrants to buy up to 79.9 percent of the common stock.

The Treasury this month will begin buying mortgage-backed securities issued by the companies. The credit line, which will also serve the 12 federal home loan banks, will be in place through the end of next year.

The actions reflect a growing willingness of the devoutly free-enterprise Bush administration to get involved in business to help an economy mired in a housing and credit crisis. The plan should help instill some confidence in shaky credit markets and lower mortgage costs, fund managers said.

"By preserving the GSEs in current form — at least for now — and injecting sizable billions of dollars into the mortgage market, mortgage rates should come down, and the housing market will be healthier for it," Bill Gross, manager of Pimco, the world's largest bond fund, told Reuters.

But managers said the rescue was not a cure-all for the global credit market turmoil.

"What you have is the U.S. government not putting in immediate cash, but putting its credibility on the line. It's a tremendous help, but it doesn't solve all the problems," said Scott Bennett, a fund manager at Aberdeen Asset Management in Singapore. "This news will likely be displaced going forward by other credit negative news."

TAXPAYERS ON THE HOOK

The Treasury Department said the ultimate cost of the plan depends on how well the companies perform. In July, congressional budget analysts estimated a rescue would likely cost taxpayers $25 billion.

The proposals outlined on Sunday, less than two months away from the U.S. election, leave the ultimate fate of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the hands of the next president.

Democratic presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama said it would be necessary to clarify whether they are truly public companies, subject to market discipline, or special entities that investors feel they can put money in risk-free.

A senior adviser to Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain described them as examples of "crony capitalism" and said McCain believed they should eventually be privatized.

Foreign central banks reduced their holdings of "federal agency" debt in custody at the Federal Reserve in the past week for the seventh week in a row.

Paulson said information on the companies' capital gained over the past four weeks led him to conclude officials needed to act. The Treasury hired Morgan Stanley on August 5 to advise on whether the companies were adequately capitalized.

FHFA Director James Lockhart said the companies lacked sufficient capital to support the housing market at a time they were suffering big losses.

"As house prices, earnings and capital have continued to deteriorate, their ability to fulfill their mission has deteriorated," he said. "They have been unable to provide needed stability to the market."

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve — the U.S. central bank — strongly endorsed the action. "These necessary steps will help to strengthen the U.S. housing market and promote stability in our financial markets," he said.

(Additional reporting by David Lawder, Mark Felsenthal and Patrick Rucker in Washington, Jason Szep in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Deborah Charles in Chicago, and Tamora Vidaillet in Basel; Editing by James Dalgleish and Tomasz Janowski)

CAMAGUEY, Cuba - Hurricane Ike’s winds and massive storm surge ripped apart houses and toppled trees Monday as the deadly storm roared across Cuba toward Havana and its historic but decaying old buildings.

Forecasters said it could enter the Gulf of Mexico next, with Louisiana among the likely targets.

More than 770,000 Cubans evacuated to shelters or higher ground ahead of the Category 3 hurricane, which earlier raked the Bahamas and worsened floods in Haiti that have already killed at least 319 people.

“We are preparing for a strong hit,” Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage told state television.

On Florida’s Key West, tourists and residents alike were ordered to evacuate ahead of Ike’s expected arrival Tuesday and a steady stream of traffic filled the highway from the island. Ike was forecast to make landfall later in the week between the Florida Panhandle and the Texas coast — with New Orleans once again in the crosshairs.

The hurricane also slowed efforts to bring oil and gas production back online in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Gustav.

Ike first slammed into the Turks and Caicos and the southernmost Bahamas islands as a Category 4 hurricane, but thousands rode out the storm in shelters and there was no immediate word of deaths on the low-lying islands.

It made landfall in eastern Cuba late Sunday night, said meteorologist Todd Kimberlain at the U.S. National Hurricane Center, and was forecast to hit Havana, the capital of 2 million people, before it moves into the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday morning.

At 2 a.m. EDT, Ike was a Category 3 hurricane with top sustained winds of 120 mph. It was centered about 85 miles east of Camaguey, moving westward at 14 mph. The hurricane center said Ike is likely to weaken as it moves over Cuba during the next day or so.

State television broadcast images of the storm surge washing over coastal homes in the easternmost city of Baracoa, and reported that dozens of dwellings were damaged beyond repair. Former President Fidel Castro released a written statement calling on Cubans to heed security measures to ensure no one dies.

Foreign tourists were pulled out from vulnerable beach resorts, workers rushed to protect coffee plants and other crops, and plans were under way to distribute food and cooking oil to disaster areas.

“There’s no fear here, but one has to be prepared. It could hit us pretty hard,” said Ramon Olivera, gassing up his motorcycle in Camaguey, where municipal workers boarded up banks and restaurants before heavy rain started falling.

More than 100 people waited in chaotic bread lines at each of the numerous government bakeries around town as families hoarded supplies before the storm. And on the provincial capital’s outskirts, trucks and dented school buses brought about 1,000 evacuees to the sprawling campus of an art school.

Classrooms at the three-story school built on stilts were filled with metal bunk beds. The approaching hurricane brought a stiff breeze through the open windows.

Mirtha Perez, a 65-year-old retiree, said hardly anyone was left in her nearby town of Salome.

“It’s a huge evacuation,” she said. “We are waiting and asking God to protect us and that nothing happens to us.”

Strong gusts and steady rains fell at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in southeast Cuba, where all ferries were secured and beaches were off limits. The military said cells containing the detainees — about 255 men suspected of links to the Taliban and al-Qaida — are hurricane-proof. But the base was spared the strongest winds.

In flooded Haiti, Ike made an already grim situation abysmal.

At least 58 people died as Ike’s winds and rain swept the impoverished Caribbean nation Sunday — and officials found three more bodies from a previous storm — raising Haiti’s death toll from four tropical storms in less than a month to 319. A Dominican man was crushed by a falling tree.

The coastal town of Cabaret was particularly hard hit — 21 victims were stacked in a mud-caked pile in a funeral home there, including two pregnant women, one with a dead girl still in her arms.

Off Mexico, Tropical Storm Lowell was moving northwest parallel to the coast with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph. But the hurricane center predicted it will veer into the Baja California Peninsula late in the week.

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Associated Press writers Ben Fox in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos; Mike Melia in Nassau, Bahamas; Jonathan Katz in Gonaives, Haiti; Alexandra Olson in Cabaret, Haiti; Anita Snow in Havana, Cuba; and Danica Coto and David McFadden in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES - It took a year, but Britney Spears got the comeback she was seeking from the MTV Video Music Awards — and she didn’t even have to sing or dance.

Spears nabbed three VMAs, including video of the year, erasing last year’s career-low performance. Her first Moonman trophies came during a 25th anniversary show that otherwise lacked a defining moment, with most of the zaniness coming from host Russell Brand.

“Wow, thank you, I’m in shock right now. I was not expecting this,” Spears, looking spectacular in a shimmering silver dress, said as she accepted her third trophy of the evening for “Piece of Me.”

Spears kept all three of her acceptance speeches short.

“This is such an honor to have this award right now,” she said. “I want to thank my fans, this is dedicated to you.”

There was no such honor for Spears last year, when the declining diva — by then known more for her tabloid exploits and erratic behavior — kicked off the Las Vegas telecast. Looking haggard and dazed, Spears bumbled her way through a performance of “Gimme More” that gave new meaning to the phrase “Sin City.”

Though Spears didn’t perform this time, she still opened the show, giving a blink-and-you-missed-it introduction of Rihanna. Still, just being there was enough for a standing ovation from the star-studded crowd long before she opened her mouth to get things rolling.

Spears did provide a few laughs during a pre-taped comedic segment with “Superbad” actor Jonah Hill that preceded the live telecast. There were a few more laughs during comedian Brand’s opening monologue, but the celeb audience seemed more nervous than amused, as the frenetic Brit took aim at Madonna, the virginity of teen sensations the Jonas Brothers and President Bush, whom he called “a retarded cowboy fellow.”

He clearly got under the skin of one celebrity, however, with his jokes about promise rings, which the Jonas Brothers wear to signify their virginity. Another famous promise-ring wearer, Jordin Sparks, said before giving out one award:

“I just wanna say, it’s not bad to wear a promise ring because not every guy and a girl wants to be a slut, OK?” she quipped.

Afterward, a somewhat contrite Brand apologized to a stone-faced Jonas Brothers, saying, “I didn’t mean to take it lightly” before adding, “a little sex once and a while never hurt anybody.”

Though the VMAs have been defined by zany, wild moments in the past — the Michael and Lisa Marie kiss, the Britney-Madonna kiss, Prince’s butt-out jeans just to name a few — there were more head-scratching moments than outrageous ones at the sprawling Paramount Studios lot.

The prim and proper Leona Lewis gave a graceful opening performance for a song by … Lil Wayne, who appeared on stage barechested, displaying his tattooed torso as his pants hung below his buttocks (Ralph Lauren’s underwear line got a nice plug, however). He performed hits “A Milli” and a song with T-Pain.

The Jonas Brothers performed a version of their song “Lovebug” that was so genteel one might have thought they were doing a tribute to the Osmonds. But the trio then segued to a rocked-out version of the song in the final moments, as a throng of screaming fans surrounded them on one of the movie’s many sets.

Pink gave perhaps the show’s most rousing performance, a pyrotechnic-fueled performance of her new song, “So What.”

T.I.’s performance was also noteworthy, since the last time he was due to perform at an awards show, he was arrested instead. At last year’s BET Hip-Hop Awards, he was accused of trying to buy machine guns and silencers (he was sentenced earlier this year to serve about a year in prison after completing at least 1,000 hours of community service).

He performed a new song with Rihanna, who also appeared on last year’s show. But the dazzling singer from Barbados is hardly in need of any second chances, coming into the VMAs as one of music’s hottest acts thanks to her two No. 1 hits of the summer, “Take a Bow” and “Disturbia.”

Closing the night was Kanye West who, like Spears, was hoping for a second chance after a disappointing VMA experience last year. In Las Vegas, he had a Kanye-sized hissy fit backstage and vowed never to appear at the VMAs again after he didn’t get a Moonman trophy despite several nominations.

This time, he had a stage all to himself, but he still may have reason to be miffed: he won no trophies during the ceremony, and, appearing after Spears accepted her third and final trophy of the evening, may have been more of an afterthought.

___

On the Net:

http://www.mtv.com

KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military said it planned to reopen an investigation into civilian deaths in a coalition air strike in western Afghanistan last month after new evidence

emerged about casualties.

The military had earlier disputed an Afghan government allegation that more than 90 people, many of them women and children, died in the August 22 raid in western Herat's Shindand district, a figure backed by the United Nations

But late on Sunday, the military issued a statement saying it was seeking a review of its original finding that five to seven civilians had died in the operation.

"In light of emerging evidence pertaining to civilian casualties in the August 22 counter-insurgency operation in the Shindand District, Herat province, I feel it is prudent to request that US Central Command send a general officer to review the US investigation and its findings with respect to this new evidence," General David McKiernan, senior US officer in Afghanistan said.

"The people of Afghanistan have our commitment to get to the truth."

CELLPHONE VIDEOS

He did not say what new evidence had emerged. But the New York Times said on Sunday cellphone videos and other images showed bodies of women and children laid out in the village mosque where the strike occurred.

It said its reporter had seen cellphone images shot by a villager of at least 11 dead children, some apparently with blast and concussion injuries. Ten days after the airstrikes, villagers dug up the last victim from the rubble, a baby just a few months old, it said.

An Afghan doctor who runs a clinic in a nearby village told the newspaper he counted 50 to 60 bodies of civilians, most of them women and children and some of them his own patients, laid out in the village mosque on the day of the strike.

The U.S. military said earlier its investigation found that 30 to 35 Taliban militants were killed, including a commander, in the U.S.-led coalition air strike.

It said its findings were based on video taken during the operation and topographic photo comparisons of the area before and after the strikes, including analysis of burial sites in the area.

Reports from local clinics and hospitals were also examined, the military said.

More than 500 civilians have been killed during operations by foreign and Afghan forces against the militants so far this year, according to the Afghan government and some aid groups, fueling public anger and driving a wedge between the government and its Western backers.

(Editing by Bill Tarrant)

KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military said it has new evidence of civilian deaths in a coalition air strike in western Afghanistan last month, and is sending an officer to review the findings.

The U.S. military had earlier disputed an Afghan government allegation that more than 90 people, many of them women and children, died in the August 22 raid in western Herat's Shindand district, a figure backed by the United Nations

But late on Sunday, the military issued a statement saying it was seeking a review of its original finding that five to seven civilians had died in the operation.

"In light of emerging evidence pertaining to civilian casualties in the August 22 counter-insurgency operation in the Shindand District, Herat province, I feel it is prudent to request that US Central Command send a general officer to review the US investigation and its findings with respect to this new evidence," General David McKiernan, senior US officer in Afghanistan said.

He did not say what new evidence had emerged.

(Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Bill Tarrant)