Today's Politics - Bloomberg News Headlines - Yahoo! News: | | Romney under pressure to score debate win against Obama Tue,2 Oct 2012 11:05 PM PDT Reuters - DENVER (Reuters) - Republican candidate Mitt Romney is under pressure to produce a strong performance on Wednesday at his first face-to-face debate with President Barack Obama to try to turn around a race for the White House that has been edging away from him. The 90-minute encounter offers the chance to reach more than 60 million people on television, a far greater audience than watched either candidate speak at the Democratic and Republican conventions. ...
Full Story | Top | Insight: Delays dog U.S. government loans to green energy projects Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:52 PM PDT Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A year after the U.S. government raced to meet a deadline to finish loan agreements with dozens of clean energy companies, less than half the total money promised has been handed over. Technical questions and companies' own failures in hitting contractual milestones are behind some of the holdups. But government officials fearful of taking a risk on firms that could collapse may have also caused some of the delays. ...
Full Story | Top | Spain's tax take tumbles as companies go abroad Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:51 PM PDT Reuters - MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's corporate tax take has tumbled by almost two thirds from pre-crisis levels as small businesses fail and a growing number of big corporations seek profits abroad to compensate for the prolonged downturn at home. Attractive tax benefits can accrue to companies expanding overseas, but for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government, which now seems resigned to accepting a European financial rescue, the income flow is reversed. ...
Full Story | Top | Islamist governor shakes up Egypt province Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:45 PM PDT Reuters - KAFR EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - Battling corruption is a top priority for the Muslim Brotherhood man just named as a provincial governor in Egypt but he faces another problem before he even begins: while everyone knows graft is there, it has scarcely ever been investigated. Saad al-Hoseiny's first weeks in a job once kept for retired generals offer a glimpse of the knot of problems inherited by the new Islamist-led administration from decades of autocratic rule that failed to address the problems of a bloated state. It also points to the Islamists' early efforts to shake up the status quo. ... Full Story | Top | Somalia favours firms with pre-1991 deals for oil exploration Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:43 PM PDT Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - Somalia, hoping to share in East Africa's oil and gas boom, has invited back international oil companies that held exploration licences before civil war broke out two decades ago, an adviser to the government said. Abdullahi Haider, a senior adviser to Somalia's Ministry of Energy, said the country would honour contracts signed prior to 1991 with oil majors including Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Chevron. "They will be given priority," Haider said of the companies that had signed exploration deals before the conflict. ... Full Story | Top | Ivory Coast holds first trial over post-election violence Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:42 PM PDT Reuters - ABIDJAN (Reuters) - The trial of a top military ally of Ivory Coast's former president Laurent Gbagbo, the first involving an accused instigator of last year's post-election violence, opened in the commercial capital Abidjan on Tuesday. General Bruno Dogbo Ble headed the elite Republican Guard during the brief conflict, which killed more than 3,000 people and erupted after Gbagbo refused to accept his defeat to rival Alassane Ouattara in an election in late 2010. ...
Full Story | Top | Somali militants hit Kismayu as African troops move in Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:38 PM PDT Reuters - MOGADISHU (Reuters) - African Union troops and tanks occupied al Shabaab's former stronghold of Kismayu on Tuesday, but the Somali Islamist militants gave notice of their intention to fight back, saying they detonated a bomb in the port city. The blast points to the al Qaeda-linked rebels' ability to hit back with covert strikes and continues a pattern of attacks in other urban strongholds from where they have retreated under military pressure, including the capital. ...
Full Story | Top | Libya yet to work out US cooperation in Benghazi probe Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:33 PM PDT Reuters - TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya and the United States have yet to agree how a U.S. investigative team will cooperate in a probe into a deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, a senior Libyan official said on Tuesday. FBI agents were sent to Libya after the September 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission and another facility in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans died. So far they have conducted interviews in Tripoli and have yet to go to Benghazi. ...
Full Story | Top | IMF raises growth forecast for Ivory Coast to 8.6 pct in 2012 Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:32 PM PDT Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday raised its 2012 economic growth forecast for Ivory Coast to 8.6 percent and said the country, a top cocoa producer, was on track for the release of another $100 million in IMF loans. The IMF previously forecast growth at 8.1 percent. Inflation was 1.7 percent as of June, below 1.9 percent at the end of last year. "The prospects for 2013 are positive, with continued strong growth and low inflation," said Michel Lazare, the head of the IMF mission in Ivory Coast. ...
Full Story | Top | Mali Islamists execute accused murderer in Timbuktu Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:31 PM PDT Reuters - BAMAKO (Reuters) - Islamist fighters in the northern Malian city of Timbuktu executed a man on Tuesday for murdering his neighbour in an application of sharia, Islamic law, the Islamist group and witnesses said. Armed Islamist groups, some with links to al Qaeda, have controlled the northern two-thirds of Mali since April, when they hijacked a rebellion launched by ethnic Tuareg separatists. They have since imposed sharia in many of the areas under their control. A spokesman for Ansar Dine, which controls Timbuktu, said the executed man was a member of the group. "He turned himself in... ...
Full Story | Top | U.S. Border Patrol agent shot dead in Arizona, another wounded Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:30 PM PDT Reuters - NACO, Arizona (Reuters) - A U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot dead and another wounded when they came under fire on Tuesday while responding to a tripped ground sensor in a drug smuggling corridor in Arizona near the border with Mexico, authorities said. Authorities said three agents were on foot about 5 miles north of the border in rocky terrain when gunfire erupted well before daybreak, but provided few additional details on the circumstances of the violence. "As they were walking up the trail, they reported taking gunfire," Cochise County Sheriff's spokeswoman Carol Capas said. ...
Full Story | Top | Analysis: "Critical but stable" world nods at more risk Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:15 PM PDT Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - Like a patient in a critical but stable condition, the world economy may be in for years of low, spluttering growth and yet a lack of volatility may be acting as a green light for investors. The paralyzing effect of economic uncertainty on investment, business and household planning has been stark over the past five years of credit crisis and the deep and synchronized global recession of 2008/2009 is seared into many minds. Extraordinary monetary and fiscal policy stimuli around the globe look set to continue for the foreseeable future. ...
Full Story | Top | Michelle Obama rallies supporters as early voting opens in Ohio Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:03 PM PDT Reuters - CINCINNATI, Ohio (Reuters) - First lady Michelle Obama rallied supporters to back her husband as early voting began on Tuesday in the key electoral swing state of Ohio where the Democrats hope to take advantage of a lead in opinion polls. "Are we going to just sit back and watch everything we worked for and fought for just slip away?" she asked a boisterous crowd of 6,800 in downtown Cincinnati. ...
Full Story | Top | U.S. had early indications Libya attack tied to organized militants Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:01 PM PDT Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Within hours of last month's attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, President Barack Obama's administration received about a dozen intelligence reports suggesting militants connected to al Qaeda were involved, three government sources said. Despite these reports, in public statements and private meetings, top U.S. officials spent nearly two weeks highlighting intelligence suggesting that the attacks were spontaneous protests against an anti-Muslim film, while playing down the involvement of organized militant groups. ...
Full Story | Top | Pennsylvania judge: Voter ID law a no-go for November 6 Tue,2 Oct 2012 10:01 PM PDT Reuters - HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - A judge on Tuesday blocked Pennsylvania from requiring voters to show photo identification in November's U.S. election, a decision that could influence turnout in a top electoral prize in the presidential race. In a setback for Republican state officials who championed the controversial law and had hoped it would help them deliver Pennsylvania for their party's presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson delayed its implementation until after Election Day, November 6. ...
Full Story | Top | ADB cuts Asia growth estimates, still sees China soft landing Tue,2 Oct 2012 09:14 PM PDT Reuters - MANILA (Reuters) - The Asian Development Bank cut most of its 2012 and 2013 growth estimates for developing Asia on Wednesday as a slump in global demand weighs on the region's powerhouses China and India and on its other export-dependent economies. The ADB cut its GDP growth estimate for China by nearly 1 percentage point to 7.7 percent from the previous 8.5 percent, warning that risks to the world's second-largest economy were likely to intensify in the short run given bleak global demand and the uncertain outlook for its largest trading partners. ... Full Story | Top | SolarWorld confident as U.S. nears decision on Chinese solar panels Tue,2 Oct 2012 09:11 PM PDT Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. solar panel producers, who have already won preliminary duties on billions of dollars of solar panel imports from China, appear well positioned to win longer-term relief in coming weeks as the U.S. government makes its final decisions. The high-profile case, which has been copied by producers in Europe and spawned threats of retaliation from Beijing, now largely turns on whether the U.S. International Trade Commission finds U.S. manufacturers have been "materially injured," or are threatened with material injury, by the imports. ... Full Story | Top | Government scraps $9 billion West Coast rail deal Tue,2 Oct 2012 09:10 PM PDT Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - Britain scrapped on Wednesday a $9 billion (5.5 billion pounds) deal that had awarded the West Coast rail line to FirstGroup Plc, citing flaws in the government's figures, just a day after the company had said it was prepared to take over the key mainline train service this year. FirstGroup in August won the 13-year deal for the London-to-Scotland line with a bid of around 6 billion pounds, but the decision was challenged by Virgin Trains, a joint venture between high-profile billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Stagecoach. ...
Full Story | Top | Los Angeles repeals ban on medical marijuana shops Tue,2 Oct 2012 07:47 PM PDT Reuters - LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Los Angeles City Council voted to rescind a newly enacted ban on storefront medical marijuana shops on Tuesday, allowing the city to avoid a referendum next year that some officials said would likely succeed in reversing the prohibition. The council, in a blow to an industry that operates in violation of federal law, voted in July to ban pot dispensaries and replace them with a system that would allow up to three patients to collectively grow marijuana. ... Full Story | Top | Labour leader Miliband plays the class card Tue,2 Oct 2012 07:24 PM PDT Reuters - MANCHESTER (Reuters) - Labour leader Ed Miliband cast himself as a humble man of the people on Tuesday in a confident speech, seeking to win over doubters and portray Prime Minister David Cameron as the product of a snobby education who has hurt the economy. Hoping voters will punish the coalition government for a recession and hand Labour power in an election in 2015, Miliband is grappling with polls which show he is far less popular than his own party and is seen as a worse leader than Cameron. ...
Full Story | Top | Analysis: New York suit against JPMorgan makes a ripple, not a splash Tue,2 Oct 2012 07:22 PM PDT Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New York state's lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase & Co alleging fraud in mortgage-backed securities sold by Bear Stearns may be one of the broadest cases to come out of the financial crisis, but its impact is likely to be limited. The biggest beneficiaries may be investors who have taken out private lawsuits against the bank. The civil suit, brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, is the first from a federal-state financial fraud task force. It did not unearth any previously unknown details or attempt to assign criminal liability. ...
Full Story | Top | Libya yet to work out U.S. cooperation in Benghazi probe Tue,2 Oct 2012 06:38 PM PDT Reuters - TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya and the United States have yet to agree how a U.S. investigative team will cooperate in a probe into a deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, a senior Libyan official said on Tuesday. FBI agents were sent to Libya after the September 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission and another facility in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans died. So far they have conducted interviews in Tripoli and have yet to go to Benghazi. ...
Full Story | Top | Palins yet to claim Exxon Valdez oil spill compensation money Tue,2 Oct 2012 06:37 PM PDT Reuters - ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is not shy about voicing her opinions to national audiences, headlining big-ticket political events and exposing her family and personal life on reality TV. But so far the former Alaska governor and her husband Todd Palin have not come forward to claim their share of a settlement fund established for victims of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The pair was among the nearly 1,000 plaintiffs who have not claimed their payouts on a list released last week by managers of the settlement fund. Some on the list are dead. ...
Full Story | Top | Trudeau scion hopes for Trudeaumania 2.0 in Canada Tue,2 Oct 2012 06:19 PM PDT Reuters - MONTREAL (Reuters) - The charismatic son of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal Party on Tuesday, hoping to recreate the sort of buzz that made his father prime minister in 1968. Justin Trudeau said he was entering the race to lead Canada's oldest political party to serve his country. "I love this country, I want to spend my life serving it. This is why tonight I am offering myself for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada," Trudeau told a packed hall in Montreal for the well-publicized announcement. ...
Full Story | Top | Chavez calls for pre-dawn turnout at Venezuela vote Tue,2 Oct 2012 05:54 PM PDT Reuters - (Note: Election law forbids publication of polls in Venezuela a week before October 7 vote.) YARITAGUA/CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his supporters to vote early at Sunday's election, saying the key to him winning another six-year term as leader of South America's biggest oil exporter was organization and logistics. Chavez, 58, is in a close race with 40-year-old state governor Henrique Capriles, and both camps are now focused on their final rallies and getting their supporters to the polls. ...
Full Story | Top | Chinese firm sues Obama for blocking wind farm near drone site Tue,2 Oct 2012 05:42 PM PDT Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A small Chinese firm has sued President Barack Obama for squashing its bid to build wind farms close to a naval training site, but experts say the suit is long shot for a firm that greatly underestimated U.S. suspicions about Chinese intentions. Ralls Corp, which is owned by two Chinese nationals, was installing wind turbines close to the training site in Oregon, which, according to the facility's web site, is used to test unmanned drones - a highly sensitive and prized U.S. technology. The U.S. ...
Full Story | Top | Philippines defies church to push family planning Tue,2 Oct 2012 05:37 PM PDT Reuters - MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Benigno Aquino is squaring off against his country's powerful Catholic church in a bid to give people free access to the means to limit the size of their families. The predominately Catholic country has one of Asia's fastest-growing populations together with significant levels of chronic poverty. While neighbours have accelerated towards prosperity, the Philippines has lagged. Economists say high population growth is a primary factor for that, but the church disagrees. ...
Full Story | Top | Deportees flown to Mexico City in new program to bypass border towns Tue,2 Oct 2012 04:57 PM PDT Reuters - (Reuters) - Immigration officials on Tuesday flew 131 deportees to Mexico City in the maiden flight of a new program to send illegal immigrants to the interior of Mexico, rather than border towns where they are more likely to be exposed to criminals. The two-month project is a collaborative effort between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Mexican Ministry of the Interior, and is geared toward immigrants who come from the interior regions of Mexico. ... Full Story | Top | Pablo Escobar T-shirts a hit in Mexico drug war states Tue,2 Oct 2012 04:54 PM PDT Reuters - MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Nearly two decades after Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar died in a hail of bullets, his eldest son is conquering new markets in Mexico - with a fashion line in his father's image. Sebastian Marroquin's designer T-shirts, plastered with photos of Escobar, are hot sellers in Mexican states that are on the front lines of the country's deadly drug war. The shirts are emblazoned with images of the Medellin cartel boss, who flooded the world with cocaine before he was shot dead in 1993. ...
Full Story | Top | Women lawmakers call for tough measures to combat sex abuse in military Tue,2 Oct 2012 04:36 PM PDT Reuters - SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - Three female Democratic members of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday called for broad changes to end what they say is an epidemic of sexual assault in the military that goes beyond the sex-with-recruits scandal at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The comments by U.S. Representatives Loretta Sanchez, Susan Davis and Jackie Speier came after the California Democrats visited the San Antonio base and spoke with victims of the scandal. ... Full Story | Top | U.S. officials sought more security before Libya attack: lawmakers Tue,2 Oct 2012 04:35 PM PDT Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials in Washington denied repeated requests from Americans in Libya for more security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi before last month's attack that killed four Americans there, two Republican lawmakers said on Tuesday. U.S. Representatives Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding details of the requests for more security - which they said were made amid numerous attacks on Westerners in Libya in recent months. ...
Full Story | Top | Man mounts protest on dome of St. Peter's Basilica Tue,2 Oct 2012 04:34 PM PDT Reuters - VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - An Italian man clambered onto a ledge on the huge dome of St Peter's Basilica on Tuesday to stage a precarious protest against Prime Minister Mario Monti and the European Union. Video footage showed the man, identified as Marcello Di Finizio, jumping over railings near the top of the 137-m- (450- ft-) high dome on Tuesday afternoon, shocking visitors taking a tour. He then tied a cord to the railings and abseiled to a ledge over a window in the cupola. ...
Full Story | Top | Analysis: How opponents held back the voter ID tide Tue,2 Oct 2012 04:31 PM PDT Reuters - NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania judge's decision to block a voter ID law on Tuesday is only the latest in a series of setbacks for new state laws that require voters to show identification before voting. Voter ID laws have also been turned back in Wisconsin and Texas this year and some others may also not go into effect before the U.S. presidential election just five weeks away. The fact that tighter voting laws are faring poorly in court was not expected by some legal experts. That's because in 2008, the U.S. ...
Full Story | Top | New York prisons' use of solitary confinement "unjustified": report Tue,2 Oct 2012 04:20 PM PDT Reuters - (Reuters) - More than 13,500 times last year, New York's state prison system isolated one of its 56,000 inmates from the general prison population and each stay in solitary confinement lasted an average of five months, according to a New York Civil Liberties Union report released on Tuesday. The report calls the state's use of isolation and segregation of inmates "arbitrary and unjustified" and urges the adoption of clear criteria for employing confinement to punish prisoners. ...
Full Story | Top | Detroit police chief suspended after reports of affair with officer Tue,2 Oct 2012 04:19 PM PDT Reuters - DETROIT (Reuters) - Detroit Mayor Dave Bing on Tuesday suspended the city's police chief and ordered a full investigation after media reports that he had been dating a female internal affairs officer in the department. Police Chief Ralph Godbee Junior is the latest Detroit city leader to face accusations of a sexual relationship with a subordinate after former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his immediate predecessor as chief, Warren Evans. ... Full Story | Top | EU bank watchdog set to stick to capital target Tue,2 Oct 2012 04:03 PM PDT Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - The European Union's banking watchdog will stick to a target for banks to raise more capital to help shield them from the euro zone debt crisis when it publishes a new report on Wednesday. Banks have hoped that part of this capital buffer would be cut back but with the euro zone crisis still creating volatility in markets, the EBA is unlikely to change tack. EU banks were given until June to replenish their capital to give them a core capital "buffer" equivalent to 9 percent of their risk weighted assets. ... Full Story | Top | Romney softens immigration stance, seizes upon Biden comment Tue,2 Oct 2012 03:37 PM PDT Reuters - DENVER (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Mitt Romney positioned himself on Tuesday for a high-stakes presidential debate, softening his stance on immigration while his campaign accused the White House of a "stunning admission" that it had failed on the economy. Trailing in many polls, Romney is widely seen as needing to score a win at the televised debate in Denver on Wednesday night when the two men square off over domestic issues like the economy, immigration and healthcare. ...
Full Story | Top | Federal review to keep Mississippi voter ID law on hold for election Tue,2 Oct 2012 03:30 PM PDT Reuters - TUPELO, Mississippi (Reuters) - Mississippi's controversial new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls will not be in effect for the November general election while federal officials review whether the measure is discriminatory, the state said on Tuesday. It was the second setback for voter ID laws in a single day, coming on the heels of a judge in Pennsylvania ordering officials there to delay implementing a photo ID requirement until after the November 6 election. Voters in Mississippi approved a voter ID ballot initiative by a wide margin last November. ... Full Story | Top | U.S. to buy prison once viewed as a Guantanamo successor Tue,2 Oct 2012 03:23 PM PDT Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The federal government will buy an Illinois prison that the Obama administration once considered as a successor to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday. Holder said the Thomson Correctional Center will house U.S. inmates and that there are no plans to revive a 2009 effort to move some Guantanamo detainees to the United States. Congress blocked funding for President Barack Obama's idea and tightly restricted all transfers from the camp at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba. ... Full Story | Top | Colombia unveils tax reform to create jobs, close loopholes Tue,2 Oct 2012 03:14 PM PDT Reuters - BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia unveiled a tax reform bill on Tuesday aimed at creating jobs, closing loopholes and simplifying the tax system, but not increasing the tax take as the Andean country was on track for record collections this year. Colombia's battle against corruption and evasion helped boost tax revenue 25 percent last year, to about 86.3 trillion pesos ($48 billion), and Colombia's tax office will likely collect a record 103 trillion pesos this year. ... Full Story | Top |
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