BEIJING (AP) -- A cloud hung over annual talks between the United States and China on Thursday as a blind Chinese dissident who took refuge in the U.S. Embassy appealed to Washington for more help, saying from his hospital room in Beijing that he now fears for his family's safety unless they are all spirited abroad.

China already demanded an apology from the U.S. even before Chen Guangcheng balked at a deal in which he would remain in his homeland. Now that he wants to leave, the case could overshadow talks in which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are to discuss foreign policy and economic issues with their Chinese counterparts.

After six days holed up in the U.S. Embassy, as senior officials in Beijing and Washington tussled over his fate, Chen left the compound's protective confines Wednesday for a nearby hospital for treatment of a leg injury suffered in his escape. A shaken Chen told The Associated Press from his hospital room that Chinese authorities had warned he would lose his opportunity to be reunited with his family if he stayed longer in the embassy.

U.S. officials verified that account. But they adamantly denied his contention that one American diplomat had warned him of a threat from the Chinese that his wife would be beaten to death if he did not get out of the embassy.

"I think we'd like to rest in a place outside of China," Chen told the AP, appealing again for help from Washington. "Help my family and me leave safely."

Only hours earlier, U.S. officials said they had extracted from the Chinese government a promise that Chen would join his family and be allowed to start a new life in a university town in China, safe from the rural authorities who had abusively held him in prison and house arrest for nearly seven years.

Clinton spoke to Chen on the phone when he left the embassy and, in a statement, welcomed the resettlement agreement as one that "reflected his choices and our values."

But the murky circumstances of Chen's departure from the embassy, and his sudden appeal to leave China after declaring he wanted to stay, again threatened to overshadow talks that were to focus on the global economic crisis and hotspots such as North Korea, Iran, Syria and Sudan.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry signaled its unhappiness with the entire affair, demanding that the U.S. apologize for giving Chen sanctuary at the embassy.

"What the U.S. side should do now is neither to continue misleading the public and making every excuse to shift responsibility and conceal its wrongdoing, nor to interfere in the domestic affairs of China," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said late Wednesday in a statement that was a response to comments from Clinton praising the deal on Chen.

Chen, 40, became an international human rights figure and inspiration to many ordinary Chinese after running afoul of local government officials for exposing forced abortions carried out as part of China's one-child policy. He served four years in prison on what supporters said were fabricated charges, then was kept under house arrest with his wife, daughter and mother, with the adults often being roughed up by officials and his daughter searched and harassed.

Blinded by childhood fever but intimately familiar with the terrain of his village, Chen slipped from his guarded farmhouse in eastern China's Shandong province at night on April 22. He made his way through fields and forest, along roads and across a narrow river to meet the first of several supporters who helped bring him to Beijing and the embassy. It took three days for his guards to realize he was gone.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner disputed Chen's claim that he was left alone by the Americans at the hospital.

"There were U.S. officials in the building," the spokesman told reporters. "I believe some of his medical team was in fact with him at the hospital." He said U.S. officials would continue visiting Chen while he was there.

Chen's supporters in the U.S. called on Clinton to meet him directly, and one of them, Republican Rep. Christopher Smith of New Jersey, said it appeared the resettlement agreement "seems to have been done under significant duress."

"If ever there was a test of the U.S. commitment to human rights, it should have been at that moment, potentially sending him back to a very real threat," he said.

But no one appeared to know precisely what to make of Chen's change of heart. He had welcomed a deal that let him stay in China and work for change, telling his lawyer Li Jinsong on the way to the hospital, "I'm free, I've received clear assurances," according to Li.

Toner said three U.S. officials heard Chen tell Clinton in broken English on the phone that he wanted to kiss her in gratitude. Chen told the AP that he actually told Clinton, "I want to see you now."

Nor is it clear how the U.S. could be party to an agreement on Chen's safety inside China when it has no power to enforce the conditions of his life there.

PARIS (AP) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy failed to deliver a knockout blow against leftist front-runner Francois Hollande in their only head-to-head debate in France's presidential campaign, the last major hurdle just four days before Sunday's election finale.

Hollande - an understated man whom many expected to wither under Sarkozy's sharp attacks - stood his ground, surprising some observers and even himself. But Wednesday's much-awaited TV debate produced no outright winner, and appears unlikely to shake up the campaign.

The debate had shaped up as Sarkozy's last stand and last chance to draw blood against Hollande, and it quickly turned into a verbal slugfest that broke little new ground on substance but exposed big differences in style.

Sarkozy, an America-friendly conservative who has linked up with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to try to revive Europe's finances and economic prospects, came out slugging and sought to cast himself as the best man to keep France both decisive and competitive.

The incumbent president assailed Hollande's plans to raise taxes and boost spending - repeatedly accusing him of lying.

"The job of president isn't a normal job and the situation we're in isn't normal," snapped Sarkozy, riffing off of the Socialist Hollande's promise to bring a "normal" presidency compared to the incumbent's high-energy tenure. "Your normalcy isn't up to the stakes."

But for Hollande, the stakes boiled down to depicting presidential demeanor, and showing that he could hold his own against Sarkozy - a longtime political nemesis whom he has faced in TV debates dating to the 1990s.

"Hollande held up well," political scientist and former pollster Stephane Rozes told France-3 TV, adding that he doesn't think the debate will "shake things up" ahead of Sunday's vote.

Hollande said on France-3 television afterward that he showed voters "what I was capable of." But he acknowledged, "I don't think this is a debate ... that could bring out new voters."

The campaign has largely focused on domestic issues such as the weak economy, immigration, and integration of French Muslims. Yet the outcome is considered crucial to the rest of Europe as well because France is a major economic engine at a time when the eurozone is trying to climb out of a debt crisis.

Sarkozy says France needs to do more to cut spending and high state debt, while Hollande backs government-funded stimulus programs. Both have pushed for similar approaches for the rest of the continent, too.

The two debaters quibbled over statistics; they scoffed sarcastically or spoke over each other, pointed fingers and raised their voices. Their debates came across at times as wonkish, esoteric or nitpicky.

"It's a lie! It's a lie!" Sarkozy insisted in one heated exchange on economic policies. The Socialist contender, meanwhile, forcefully denied some of Sarkozy's claims about his intentions, insisting, "I never said that."

Hollande accused Sarkozy of appointing cronies to government posts, and the president shot back, calling his rival "a little slanderer" and noting he had named some ministers from the political left in his first Cabinet.

A high point came as Hollande teed off on a presenter's question about what kind of president he'd be. He tipped back in his chair, folded his arms, and launched into a litany of points starting with the phrase: "As president of the Republic, I ..." on issues like the independence of judges, his plan to defer much policy-making to the prime minister or energy policy.

"You've just gave us a nice speech - we got teary-eyed," retorted Sarkozy, trying to break down some of Hollande's points. "Your bit about independence of judges is a joke."

Hollande repeatedly using one of his campaign catchwords: like "unity" and "change" to stress the contrast between him and the divisive Sarkozy. Pollsters say the incumbent turned off a lot of voters early in his five-year term with his brash personal style. A stagnant economy made those troubles worse.

Sarkozy said he's being unfairly blamed for France's economic problems after years of crisis, and insisted he's not "the only guilty one."

NEW YORK (AP) -- It's on.

Independent groups favoring Mitt Romney already are launching TV advertisements in competitive states for the November general election, providing political cover against President Barack Obama's well-financed campaign while the Republican candidate works to rebound from a bruising and expensive nomination fight. Some conservative organizations also are planning big get-out-the-vote efforts, and Romney backers are courting wealthy patrons of his former GOP rivals.

Taken together, the developments underscore how dramatically the political landscape has changed since a trio of federal court cases - most notably the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling - paved the way for a flood of campaign cash from corporations and tycoons looking to help their favored candidates.

"Citizens United has made an already aggressive anti-Obama movement even more empowered," said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. "There's now a regular Republican line of attack on Obama, even when the Romney campaign is taking a breather, raising money and preparing for the general election."

The general election spending - and advertising - has only just begun. Voters in roughly a dozen hard-fought states will be inundated with TV ads, direct mail, automated phone calls and other forms of outreach by campaign staff members and volunteers pleading for their votes. While Obama and Romney both will spend huge amounts of money in the coming months, an untold additional amount will come from outside organizations called super PACs that can collect unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals.

Already, Obama's campaign has spent $3.6 million on commercials in key battlegrounds in the weeks since Romney became the presumptive Republican nominee.

Its latest ad depicts Romney, a wealthy former private equity executive, as a corporate raider who once maintained a Swiss bank account. The president had $104 million on hand at the end of March, giving his campaign a 10-1 advantage over Romney who had just $10 million his campaign bank at the same time.

But Obama is unlikely to receive anywhere near the kind of financial backup Romney is already getting from outside groups. The pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action has raised just $10 million since its inception, and few other Democratic-leaning groups have signaled they plan to compete with the pro-Romney efforts.

The latest of these comes from Restore Our Future, a super PAC run by former Romney advisers.

The group announced Wednesday it will go up with $4.3 million in ads this week in nine states that will be key to winning the White House. The ad, "Saved," describes Romney's efforts that helped lead to the rescue of the teenage daughter of a colleague after she disappeared in New York for three days.

ROF was by far the biggest advertiser during the Republican nominating contest, spending $36 million on ads attacking Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. The group has raised more than $51 million since its inception.

Its initial general election push follows a $1.7 million, three-state ad buy from Crossroads GPS. That group's spot attacks Obama's energy policies. And it is an arm of American Crossroads, a super PAC with ties to President George W. Bush's longtime political director Karl Rove and one of the most prolific spenders in the 2010 cycle that put the House in Republican hands. The two Crossroads groups have already raised $100 million collectively for 2012 and plan to spend as much as $300 million to defeat Obama and other Democrats.

Americans for Prosperity, a conservative-leaning independent group backed by the billionaire energy tycoons Charles and David Koch, dropped $6.1 million on ads in eight general election swing states last week hitting Obama for allowing millions in federal stimulus money to be directed to green energy companies overseas. The group spent $6.5 million earlier this year on ads criticizing Obama over Solyndra, a California-based solar energy company that went bankrupt despite a $535 million federal loan guarantee.

AFP president Tim Phillips said the group planned to raise $100 million and that slightly less than half would go to advertising. Much of the remaining amount, he said, would be used for field operations like rallies, bus tours, canvassing, phone banks and micro-targeting.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As slogans go, President Barack Obama's promise of the "light of a new day" in Afghanistan isn't nearly as catchy as the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln the day President George W. Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq in 2003.

One was jubilant, conveying triumph - prematurely so, as more than 4,000 U.S. combat deaths over the next several years demonstrated. The other, more restrained, optimistically cites progress toward an ultimate victory over the terrorists who attacked the United States more than a decade ago.

Yet the take-away messages fit the political circumstances of the president in office at the time. Then it was Bush prosecuting an Iraq war that was intensely controversial from the outset.

Now it's Obama seeking re-election in a campaign against Mitt Romney that is anything but certain, polishing his credentials as commander in chief.

The polls all say the economy will be the overarching issue this fall, but Obama can hardly be blamed for wanting the singular triumph of his term - Osama bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. special operations forces - to gain plenty of attention.

After all, the death of the terrorist leader got equal billing with the slowly recovering economy in Vice President Joe Biden's own suggested campaign slogan: "Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive."

As a political strategy after three years in office, blaming Bush for the war in Afghanistan is probably not any better than trying to saddle him with responsibility for the economy.

Still, Obama chose to reprise his 2008 campaign criticism of Bush's war policy in his brief 10-minute address from Bagram Air Field on Tuesday night.

"Despite initial success, for a number of reasons, this war has taken longer than most anticipated," he said, beginning his account neutrally before pivoting.

"In 2002, (Osama) bin Laden and his lieutenants escaped across the border and established safe haven in Pakistan," this president said, referring to the battle at Tora Bora. "America spent nearly eight years fighting a different war in Iraq."

But over the past three years, he said, referring to his own time in office: "The tide has turned. We broke the Taliban's momentum. We've built a strong Afghan security force. We devastated al-Qaida's leadership, taking out 20 of their top 30 leaders. And one year ago, from a base here in Afghanistan, our troops launched the operation that killed Osama bin Laden."

Romney decided he wanted no part of it.

In a written statement issued as Air Force One carried Obama homeward, he said he was pleased the president had returned to Afghanistan, and that the troops and the American people deserved to hear from him what is at stake in the war. "Success in Afghanistan is vital to our nation's security," he said.

It was a different Romney earlier in the week, struggling to outmaneuver Obama in the run-up to the anniversary of the bin Laden's death.

In fact, Obama and Biden had set him up over the course of a week.

"We know what President Obama did," Biden said in New York last week, referring to the decision to send Navy SEALs to bin Laden's lair in Pakistan. "We can't say for certain what Gov. Romney would have done."

An Obama campaign web video soon followed, including a quote from a 2007 Romney interview in which he said it was not worth "moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

NEW YORK (AP) -- When hiring slumps, so do stock prices.

That was at least the message investors sent Wednesday, when they ignored flashes of positive news about the economy and instead homed in on troubling reports about jobs in the U.S. and Europe.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell as much as 87 points after a company that tracks payrolls said the U.S. added far fewer jobs in April than in March. The Dow ended the day down 10.75 points, at 13,268.57.

It was a turn from the day before, when investors chose to focus on a couple of positive reports on U.S. manufacturing and sent the Dow up 66 points to its highest close in more than four years.

While the market's day-to-day fluctuations may be difficult to predict, some investors say they're certain that stocks will generally climb for the rest of the year. As justification, they cite strong first-quarter earnings.

Of the 330 companies on the S&P 500 that have reported first-quarter earnings, 77 percent have beaten the estimates of stock analysts, said John Butters, senior earnings analyst at FactSet, a provider of financial data.

"The market has room to run," said Karyn Cavanaugh, market strategist with ING Investment Management in New York. "It doesn't always go up in a straight line."

The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 3.51 points to 1,402.31. The Nasdaq composite index was the outlier. It fell throughout the morning, then finished up 9.41 points at 3,059.85.

The report on private sector hiring weighed on investors, who see jobs as the key ingredient to an economic recovery.

The payroll processor, ADP, said U.S. businesses added 119,000 jobs in April, down from 201,000 in March. The government releases its monthly figures, which include the public sector, on Friday. The two reports can vary sharply.

Another jobs report from Europe underscored the gravity of the continuing debt crisis there. The 17 countries that use the euro reported that unemployment rose to 10.9 percent in March, the highest since the euro launched in 1999.

Markets fell across most of Europe, including Germany and Greece.

There was also good news out of Europe, even if it didn't seem to sway investors. Standard & Poor's lifted Greece's credit rating out of default, noting how the country had recently secured a massive writedown on its debt to private investors.

Germany also reported that the number of people seeking work in April slipped below 3 million, a psychologically important barrier that it hasn't broken in that month for two decades.

LONDON (AP) -- The 17 countries that use the euro are facing the highest unemployment rates in the history of the currency as recession once again spreads across Europe, pressuring leaders to focus less on austerity and more on stimulating growth.

Unemployment in the eurozone rose by 169,000 in March, official figures showed Wednesday, taking the rate up to 10.9 percent - its highest level since the euro was launched in 1999. The seasonally adjusted rate was up from 10.8 percent in February and 9.9 percent a year ago and contrasts sharply with the picture in the U.S., where unemployment has fallen from 9.1 percent in August to 8.2 percent in March. Spain had the highest rate in the eurozone, 24.1 percent - and an alarming 51.1 percent for people under 25.

Austerity has been the main prescription across Europe for dealing with a debt crisis that's afflicted the continent for nearly three years and has raised the specter of the breakup of the single currency. Three countries - Greece, Ireland and Portugal - have already required bailouts because of unsustainable levels of debt.

Eight eurozone countries, including Greece, Spain and the Netherlands, have seen their economies shrink for two straight quarters or more, the common definition of a recession.

Economies are contracting across the eurozone as governments cut spending and raise taxes to reduce deficits. That has prompted economists to urge European Union policymakers to dial back on short-term budget-cutting and focus on stimulating long-term growth.

"The question is how long EU leaders will continue to pursue a deeply flawed strategy in the face of mounting evidence that this is leading us to social, economic and political disaster," said Sony Kapoor, managing director of Re-Define, an economic think-tank and policy advisory company.

In a nod to shifting attitudes about austerity, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi recently called for a "growth pact" in Europe to work alongside the "fiscal pact" that has placed so much importance on controlling government spending.

Bailout fears have intensified in recent months as Spain, Italy and other governments face rising borrowing costs on bond markets, a sign that investors are nervous about the size of their debts relative to their economic output. Austerity is intended to address this nervousness by reducing a government's borrowing needs, but there has been a negative side effect: As economic output shrinks, the debt burden actually looks worse.

Economists recommend pro-growth measures including reducing red tape for small businesses, making it easier for workers to find jobs across the eurozone and breaking down barriers that countries have created to protect their own industries. Some economists go a step further and say governments should actually increase spending while economies are so weak - and make reining in deficits a longer-term goal.

The central bank has tried to reinvigorate Europe's financial system by lowering interest rates and extending $1.3 trillion in cheap, three-year loans to banks. Banks have used some of the money to purchase government bonds, which briefly eased pressure on countries' borrowing costs. But interest rates on Spanish and Italian bonds have crept even higher in recent weeks.

Across Europe, austerity has come in the form of layoffs and pay cuts for state workers, scaled-back expenditures on welfare and social programs, and higher taxes and fees to boost government revenue.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The first commercial cargo run to the International Space Station has been delayed again for more software testing.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, was aiming for a Monday liftoff of its Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule. But on Wednesday, the California-based company announced its latest postponement and said a new launch date had not been set.

The test flight already is three months late.

The earliest possible launch date would be next Thursday. Otherwise, SpaceX will need to wait until the Russians send a new crew to the space station on May 15.

It will be the first time a private entity launches a supply ship to the space station. Only government space agencies currently do that.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Four months ago the U.S. government sought to block publication of two studies about how scientists created an easily spread form of bird flu. Now a revised version of one paper is seeing the light of day with the government's blessing.

The revision appears online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

It's the near-conclusion to a drama that pit efforts to learn how to thwart a global flu epidemic against concerns about helping terrorists create bioweapons. The second paper, which is more controversial because it involves what appears to be a more dangerous virus, is expected to be published later in the journal Science.

For some experts, the affair underscores a more basic question about whether creating potentially risky versions of bird flu is a good idea.

"Clearly, research like this can be beneficial" for dealing with the bird-flu threat, said Dr. Eric Toner of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's biosecurity center.

But there's the question of calculating risk versus benefit, he said. "If we're taking a highly lethal virus and making it more transmissible, it's a tough judgment... These sorts of decisions should be made in advance of the research being done, not when the papers are ready for publication."

The bird flu that has spread among poultry in Asia for several years now can be deadly, but it rarely sickens people. And people generally catch it from chickens and ducks, not from other people. Scientists have worried that as virus strains mix in nature, they could produce a deadly bird flu that transmits easily from one person to another. That could set the stage for a flu pandemic.

The new studies come from two teams of scientists, one in a U.S. lab and another in the Netherlands. They created virus strains that spread easily among ferrets, which were used as a stand-in for people. The researchers wanted to study what genetic mutations helped the virus spread. That way scientists could identify such red flags in wild viruses and act quickly to avoid potential pandemic, as well as test vaccine and drugs.

The journals Nature and Science each planned to publish one of the studies.

But the federal government, which funded the research, asked the scientists not to publish details of their work. Officials were worried that the full papers would give bioterrorists a blueprint for creating weapons. That led to a wide-ranging debate among scientists, many of whom argued that sharing details of such work is essential in fighting the threat of dangerous viruses.

Both teams eventually submitted revised versions of their research to a U.S. biosecurity panel. That group and, later, federal health officials agreed to support publication. For one thing, the panel said, it would be difficult for others to do harm using the data provided, and for another, scientists had good reasons for publishing the results.

CBS newsman Mike Wallace, the dogged, merciless reporter and interviewer who took on politicians, celebrities and other public figures in a 60-year career highlighted by the on-air confrontations that helped make "60 Minutes" the most successful primetime television news program ever, has died. He was 93.

Wallace died Saturday night at a care facility in New Canaan, Connecticut, where he had lived in recent years, CBS spokesman Kevin Tedesco said.

Until he was slowed by heart surgery as he neared his 90th birthday in 2008, Wallace continued making news, doing "60 Minutes" interviews with such subjects as Jack Kevorkian and Roger Clemens. He had promised to still do occasional reports when he announced his retirement as a regular correspondent in March 2006.

Wallace said then that he had long vowed to retire "when my toes turn up" and "they're just beginning to curl a trifle. ... It's become apparent to me that my eyes and ears, among other appurtenances, aren't quite what they used to be."

Among his later contributions, after bowing out as a regular on "60 Minutes," was a May 2007 profile of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, and an interview with Kevorkian, the assisted suicide doctor released from prison in June 2007 who died June 3, 2011, at age 83.

In December 2007, Wallace landed the first interview with Clemens after the star pitcher was implicated in the report by former Sen. George Mitchell on performance enhancing drugs in baseball. The interview, in which Clemens maintained his innocence, was broadcast in early January 2008.

Wallace's "extraordinary contribution as a broadcaster is immeasurable and he has been a force within the television industry throughout its existence," Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. president and CEO, said in a statement Sunday. Wallace didn't just interview people. He interrogated them. He cross-examined them. Sometimes he eviscerated them. His weapons were many: thorough research, a cocked eyebrow, a skeptical "Come on" and a question so direct sometimes it took your breath away.

He was well aware that his reputation arrived at an interview before he did, said Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman and Wallace's long-time producer at "60 Minutes."

"He loved it," Fager said Sunday. "He loved that part of Mike Wallace. He loved being Mike Wallace. He loved the fact that if he showed up for an interview, it made people nervous. ... He knew, and he knew that everybody else knew, that he was going to get to the truth. And that's what motivated him."