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| Key U.S. official faces grilling over how Obamacare website became fiasco Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 10:08 PM PDT  By David Morgan and Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two months before the troubled October 1 launch of Obamacare exchanges, a key administration official overseeing the program assured a congressional oversight panel that work was on track to roll out a tested website that would make it easy for Americans to enroll in affordable health insurance coverage. ... Full Story | Top |
| Argentina's ailing president faces tough midterm congressional election Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 10:04 PM PDT  By Hugh Bronstein BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentine President Cristina Fernandez is expected to lose some of her congressional clout in Sunday's midterm election as the ailing leader faces complaints over galloping inflation and a weakening currency. Re-elected in 2011 on promises of increasing state control of Latin America's No. 3 economy, Fernandez's political coattails have been shortened by inflation, clocked by private economists at 25 percent, while heavy-handed currency controls and falling central bank reserves dent confidence. ... Full Story | Top |
| Colombia ex-leader Uribe's movement names candidate for president Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 09:35 PM PDT  BOGOTA (Reuters) - Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's political movement chose economist Oscar Ivan Zuluaga on Saturday as its candidate for presidential elections in May, a vote he looks set to contest echoing Uribe's tough stance against leftist guerrillas. A businessman and former finance minister under Uribe, Zuluaga, 54, would be a key opponent of President Juan Manuel Santos if the incumbent runs for another term, a decision he must announce by late November. ... Full Story | Top |
| Series of car bomb blasts across Baghdad kill 21: sources Sunday, Oct 27, 2013 12:35 AM PDT BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Six car bombs exploded across Baghdad early on Sunday, killing at least 21 people, police and medics said. The blasts targeted busy streets in predominantly Shi'ite districts of the Iraqi capital. (Reporting by Kareem Raheem; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Jeremy Laurence) Full Story | Top |
| Exclusive: Aiming to avoid Facebook chaos, NYSE runs Twitter IPO test Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 02:13 PM PDT  By John McCrank NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Stock Exchange on Saturday did a test run of Twitter's highly anticipated market debut, as it seeks to avoid the types of problems that plagued Facebook's initial public offering on rival Nasdaq. The Big Board, run by NYSE Euronext, regularly does systems testing on the weekends, but this was the first time it had run a simulated IPO, and it did so at the request of its member firms - many of whom took part in Facebook's 2012 IPO on Nasdaq OMX Group's main exchange. ... Full Story | Top |
| Protesters march in Washington against NSA spying Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 03:51 PM PDT  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Protesters marched on Capitol Hill in Washington on Saturday to protest the U.S. government's online surveillance programs, whose vast scope was revealed this year by former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden. People carried signs reading: "Stop Mass Spying," "Thank you, Edward Snowden" and "Unplug Big Brother" as they gathered at the foot of the Capitol to demonstrate against the online surveillance by the National Security Agency. Estimates varied on the size of the march, with organizers saying more than 2,000 attended. U.S. ... Full Story | Top |
| Israel dismisses reports Iran halting higher-grade enrichment Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 11:41 AM PDT  JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel on Saturday dismissed as "irrelevant" reports that Iran had halted its most sensitive uranium enrichment activity, and said Tehran's nuclear program must be dismantled. A senior member of Iran's parliamentary national security commission was quoted as saying Iran had stopped refining uranium above the 5 percent required for civilian power stations, as it already had all the 20-percent enriched fuel it needed for a medical research reactor in Tehran. But diplomats accredited to the U.N. ... Full Story | Top |
| United States tracked Merkel's phone since 2002: report Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 11:04 AM PDT  BERLIN (Reuters) - The United States may have bugged Angela Merkel's phone for more than 10 years, according to a news report on Saturday that also said President Barack Obama told the German leader he would have stopped it happening had he known about it. Germany's outrage over reports of bugging of Merkel's phone by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) prompted it to summon the U.S. ambassador this week for the first time in living memory, an unprecedented post-war diplomatic rift. ... Full Story | Top |
| Macy's joins Barneys in NYC 'shop-and-frisk' scandal Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 07:07 PM PDT  NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York civil rights leaders on Saturday decried the city's brewing "shop-and-frisk" scandal, in which major retailers Barneys and Macy's are accused of profiling black shoppers who say they were detained by police after buying luxury items. Also on Saturday, rap star Shawn "Jay Z" Carter defended his partnership with Barneys after coming under pressure to cut ties with the company. ... Full Story | Top |
| Czech center-left ekes out slim poll victory, tough coalition talks loom Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 10:39 AM PDT  By Jana Mlcochova and Robert Muller PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech Social Democrats won a slim victory in a parliamentary election on Saturday but faced a tough task forming a government after a wave of voter anger over sleaze and budget cuts propelled new protest parties into parliament. With most results in, Bohuslav Sobotka's center-left, pro-European Social Democrats had 21 percent of the vote, well short of the 30 percent they had targeted and in need of more than one coalition partner to build a stable government. ... Full Story | Top |
| Italy's right could split after Berlusconi move: lawmakers Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 11:17 AM PDT  ROME (Reuters) - Italy's political center-right could split, lawmakers said on Saturday, after Silvio Berlusconi resurrected his old Forza Italia party and suspended the People of Freedom (PDL), part of the wobbly left-right coalition government. Several parliamentarians allied to the former prime minister were critical of Berlusconi's move, and five senior PDL members boycotted Friday's meeting where the decision was made. ... Full Story | Top |
| Militants say ex-army major carried out Cairo suicide attack Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 09:30 AM PDT By Hadeel Al Shalchi CAIRO (Reuters) - A Sinai-based Islamist militant group that claimed a September assassination attempt on Egypt's interior minister released a video on Saturday saying a former major in the army carried out the suicide bombing. The video, which Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis released on militant websites, runs to 30 minutes and identifies former major Waleed Badr as being responsible for the attack, but does not say if he was a member of the group. ... Full Story | Top |
| Kurdish fighters seize Syrian border post from Islamists Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 07:33 AM PDT BEIRUT (Reuters) - Kurdish militants seized a Syrian border post on the frontier with Iraq early on Saturday, fighters and monitors said, after three days of clashes with an al Qaeda-linked group which had held the crossing since March. The armed Kurdish group YPG told Reuters fighting carried on through the day and a senior security official on the Iraqi side of the crossing said he could hear gunshots, mortar fire and shelling. ... Full Story | Top |
| Italy's Mount Etna volcano erupts Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 10:12 AM PDT ROME (Reuters) - Europe's tallest and most active volcano Mount Etna erupted on Saturday, spewing glowing lava into the air and sending a vast plume of smoke over the southern Italian island of Sicily. The eruption did not require any mountain villages to be evacuated or cause significant disruption, though airspace over Sicily was briefly closed on Saturday morning, according to Catania airport. The volcano is in almost constant activity, although the last major eruption was in 1992. The latest eruption was preceded by a series of underground tremors on Friday. ... Full Story | Top |
| Macy's joins Barneys in brewing NYC 'shop-and-frisk' scandal Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 02:15 PM PDT  NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York's civil rights leaders on Saturday angrily decried the city's brewing "shop-and-frisk" scandal, in which two major retailers stand accused of profiling black shoppers who say they were detained by police after buying luxury items. "We've gone from stop-and-frisk to shop-and-frisk," said Reverend Al Sharpton, president of National Action Network, alluding to a police crime-fighting tactic that critics say amounts to racial profiling. ... Full Story | Top |
| Gunfight pits Afghan against foreign soldiers - one dead Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 03:38 AM PDT  KABUL (Reuters) - A gunfight broke out between Afghan and foreign soldiers on the outskirts of the capital Kabul on Saturday, killing at least one Afghan serviceman and injuring a number of other soldiers, according to Afghan and NATO officials. So-called "insider attacks" are severely straining ties between the NATO-led alliance and the Kabul authorities and further undermine waning support for the war in the West. They have become one of the Taliban insurgents' most effective weapons against the coalition. "There was an argument between an Afghan and foreign soldier inside a military base... ... Full Story | Top |
| After tough week, White House buys time for Obamacare website fix Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 03:01 AM PDT  By Steve Holland and Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama promised on Saturday that his troubled healthcare website was just weeks away from a cure as he struggled to convince Americans he is on top of what has become a self-inflicted wound to his signature first-term achievement. His administration unveiled a plan on Friday to make Obamacare insurance marketplaces on healthcare.gov - a website riddled with error messages, long delays and bugs - work better by the end of November. It was the end to an embarrassing week where Obama discovered he had overshot on an Oct ... Full Story | Top |
| Japan PM says ready to be more assertive against China: media Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 03:50 AM PDT  TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in an interview published on Saturday, said Japan was ready to be more assertive towards China as Beijing threatened to strike back if provoked. A top retired Chinese diplomat said any move by Tokyo to contain China could amount to an attempt to conceal ulterior motives in the region and prove to be "extremely dangerous". And the defense ministry warned Japan not to underestimate China's resolve to take whatever measures were needed to protect itself. ... Full Story | Top |
| Greenpeace activist dangles from Eiffel Tower in Russia protest Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 03:39 AM PDT  PARIS (Reuters) - A Greenpeace activist suspended himself from the Eiffel Tower on Saturday to call for the release of 30 people who have spent more than a month in a Russian jail over a protest against oil drilling in the Arctic After lowering himself from the second tier of the Paris landmark, the man unfurled a large yellow sign saying: "Free the Arctic 30." He was brought down about two hours later by firemen without incident. ... Full Story | Top |
| China leader promises 'unprecedented' reforms at key Party meeting Saturday, Oct 26, 2013 01:18 AM PDT  BEIJING (Reuters) - A top Chinese leader has promised "unprecedented" economic and societal reforms at the Communist Party's much anticipated plenum meeting next month, state media reported on Saturday. Yu Zhengsheng, the fourth-ranked member in the elite Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party, said the closed-door meeting would "principally explore the issue of deep and comprehensive reforms". "The reforms this time will be broad, with major strength, and will be unprecedented," he said, according to the official Xinhua news agency. ... Full Story | Top |
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