News Summary: Apple-Google lawsuit dismissed

CASE CLOSED: A federal judge in Madison, Wis., has thrown out a suit by Apple Inc. claiming that Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility is seeking unreasonably high license fees for the use of patents on wireless technology.

THE BACKDROP: The suit is part of a world-spanning battle between Apple and Google, whose Android software powers the smartphones that compete with Apple’s iPhone.

THE DISPUTE: In the suit filed last year, Apple said the license fee Motorola sought was too high. The devices at issue include the iPhone and iPod Touch, as they incorporate Motorola’s patented technologies.

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

“Dad’s Army” star Clive Dunn dies aged 92

LONDON (Reuters) – British actor Clive Dunn, best known as a bumbling old butcher in the popular World War Two sitcom “Dad’s Army”, has died, his agent said on Wednesday.

Dunn passed away on Tuesday, Peter Charlesworth said, adding that he believed the actor died in Portugal where he has lived for many years. He was 92.

As Lance-Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army – a hit television series in the 1960s and 1970s about a group of local volunteer members of the Home Guard – Dunn was famous for catchphrases such as “Don’t panic!” and “They don’t like it up ‘em.”

He also had a No. 1 hit song with “Grandad” in 1971, which he performed several times on TV music show “Top of the Pops”.

Dunn was born in London in 1920 and enrolled in an acting academy after leaving school.

He played several small roles in films in the 1930s before serving in the army in World War Two, ending up in prisoner-of-war and labor camps for four years.

After the war he worked in music halls before enjoying success as Jones in Dad’s Army.

Underlining his ability to play characters far older than his real age, he followed Dad’s Army with a five-year run in children’s comedy series “Grandad” as an elderly caretaker.

According to the BBC, he is survived by his wife Priscilla Morgan and two daughters, Jessica and Polly.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Obama win clears health law hurdle, challenges remain

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama‘s re-election eliminates the possibility of a wholesale repeal of his signature healthcare reform law, but leaves questions about how many of the changes will be implemented as the national focus shifts to tackling the U.S. debt and deficit.

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the biggest overhaul of the $ 2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare system since the 1960s, aims to extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans beginning in January 2014.

Republican challenger Mitt Romney had vowed to repeal the law if elected, calling it a costly government expansion despite the fact that the reforms are based on healthcare legislation he signed as governor of Massachusetts.

“There’s sort of an immediate acceptance that this law will stay in place in some meaningful way,” said Chris Jennings, a top healthcare adviser to former Democratic President Bill Clinton. “It’s sort of like a big barrier has been removed.”

Shares in hospitals and insurers that cater to Medicaid, the government insurance for the poor, rose slightly on Wednesday as markets expected the reform laws to be enacted. But health insurers with large employer-based businesses were off slightly, as the health reform law sets limits on their profits and mandates on coverage.

Obama still faces challenges in Congress. Republicans who retained control of the House of Representatives are expected to press for healthcare reform concessions, including delaying and 7scaling back a planned expansion of Medicaid, during negotiations to cut the federal deficit later this month.

But Julie Barnes, director of healthcare policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said Tuesday’s victory should give the president added leverage to set the healthcare segment of any deficit-cutting compromise largely on his own terms.

“President Obama has the opportunity to make bold leadership moves toward a bipartisan compromise on healthcare and the economy,” she said. “He has the standing to demand that each party see the investment all Americans have in reforming our broken healthcare system.”

DID MEDICARE HELP OBAMA?

In a related issue, Obama’s staunch defense of Medicare, the healthcare program for the elderly and disabled, may have helped his re-election, giving him an edge in close states including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

Obama and his allies vigorously attacked Romney’s plan to convert the popular program that provides guaranteed benefits to one that gives beneficiaries a fixed payment to help them purchase their own health coverage.

Polls show older Americans oppose the idea by margins of 2-to-1, though it was unclear to what extent that opposition translated into votes.

Major provisions of the Affordable Care Act call for cooperation from individual U.S. states, including an expansion of Medicaid and the introduction of subsidized health insurance exchanges for individuals to buy their own coverage.

Governors and legislatures in as many as a half-dozen Republican-majority states oppose those plans and can refuse to act on them.

Other states may be ill-prepared for implementation but could begin to take action now that repeal is no longer a threat. States have until November 16 to say whether they intend to set up their own exchanges. Most will need to partner with the federal government to have one ready by 2014.

Soon after Obama emerged the winner, reform advocates called on his administration to encourage state support for Medicaid by assuring governors and legislatures that $ 930 billion in federal funds for financing the expansion will be pumped into struggling state budgets.

“This guarantee is essential for governors as they decide whether their programs should cover more low-income adults. It is therefore crucial that upcoming federal budget decisions give governors clear assurances that this funding is stable and won’t be reduced,” said Ron Pollack of Families USA, a Medicaid advocacy group.

The healthcare law that Republicans deride as “Obamacare” has already survived repeated attacks and emerged mostly intact.

The Supreme Court upheld the reforms in a landmark June ruling, but empowered states to opt out of the planned Medicaid expansion without losing federal funding for current programs.

The reform law is still the subject of about two-dozen lawsuits seeking to overturn a requirement that church-affiliated institutions cover birth control for employees.

(Editing by Michele Gershberg, Marilyn Thompson and David Storey)

Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Asia-Europe Meeting: build growth with cooperation

VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) — Leaders from Asia and Europe called Tuesday for closer cooperation between the two continents in addressing the current global economic and financial crisis.

The president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, also unequivocally affirmed the euro’s future.

A two-day Asia-Europe Meeting in Laos was attended by leaders and ministers from 51 countries, including new members Norway, Switzerland and Bangladesh.

The meeting, known as ASEM, endorsed closer economic ties between the two continents to promote stronger and sustained growth. Combined, the two regions produce half the world’s GDP and have 60 percent of the world’s population.

The crisis in Europe has affected not only most economies there but also their trading partners in Asia. But Van Rompuy said there was no sign of Asian resentment that it was being asked to carry its ailing European friends.

“There was no blame game,” he said. “Rather a clear sense that in Asia as well as in Europe, we are all on the same boat.”

The leaders also reaffirmed a commitment to fight against trade barriers that have crept in some places as a result of the crisis, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.

He said there was “a strong rejection of protectionism” and a commitment to the “importance that trade can have for strong sustainable growth.”

Although not on the ASEM agenda, the issue of financially battered Greece was on many minds at the summit.

Greece’s international bailout creditors are demanding a series of painful spending cuts and tax hikes in exchange for rescue loans. Debt inspectors from the European Central Bank, European Commission and International Monetary Fund, collectively known as the troika, are preparing a report on the state of Greece’s compliance with its bailout terms.

Van Rompuy played down fears of problems with the disbursement of Greece’s next bailout payment.

“I urge the Greek government and leading political parties to decide what is needed to reach a final agreement with the troika,” he said.

The next ASEM summit will be in Brussels in two years.

Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Cautious reformers tipped for new China leadership

BEIJING (Reuters) – China‘s ruling Communist Party will this month unveil its new top leadership team, expected to again be an all-male cast of politicians whose instincts are to move cautiously on reform.

Sources close to the leadership say 10 main candidates are vying for seven seats on the party’s next Politburo Standing Committee, the peak decision-making body which will steer the world’s second-largest economy for the next five years.

Only two candidates are considered certainties going into the party’s 18th congress, which starts on Thursday: leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping and his designated deputy, Li Keqiang, who are set to be installed as president and premier next March.

Of the remaining eight contenders, only one has the reputation as a political reformer and only one is a woman.

Following are short biographies of the candidates, including their reform credentials and possible portfolio responsibilities.

XI JINPING

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Considered a cautious reformer, having spent time in top positions in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, both at the forefront of China‘s economic reforms.

Xi Jinping, 59, is China‘s vice president and President Hu Jintao’s anointed successor. He will take over as Communist Party boss at the congress and then as head of state in March.

Xi belongs to the party’s “princeling” generation, the offspring of communist revolutionaries. His father, former vice premier Xi Zhongxun, fought alongside Mao Zedong in the Chinese civil war. Xi watched his father purged and later, during the Cultural Revolution, spent years in the hardscrabble countryside before making his way to university and then to power.

Married to a famous singer, Xi has crafted a low-key and sometimes blunt political style. He has complained that officials’ speeches and writings are clogged with party jargon and has demanded more plain speaking.

Xi went to work in the poor northwest Chinese countryside as a “sent-down youth” during the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and became a rural commune official. He went on to study chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing and later gained a doctorate in Marxist theory from Tsinghua.

A native of the poor, inland province of Shaanxi, Xi was promoted to governor of southeastern Fujian province in 1999 and became party boss in neighboring Zhejiang province in 2003.

In 2007, the tall, portly Xi secured the top job in China‘s commercial capital, Shanghai, when his predecessor was caught up in a huge corruption case. Later that year he was promoted to the party’s standing committee.

- – - -

LI KEQIANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen as another cautious reformer due to his relatively liberal university experiences.

Vice Premier Li Keqiang, 57, is the man tipped to be China‘s next premier, taking over from Wen Jiabao.

His ascent will mark an extraordinary rise for a man who as a youth was sent to toil in the countryside during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

He was born in Anhui province in 1955, son of a local rural official. Li worked on a commune that was one of the first places to quietly revive private bonuses in farming in the late 1970s. By the time he left Anhui, Li was a Communist Party member and secretary of his production brigade.

He studied law at the elite Peking University, which was among the first Chinese schools to resume teaching law after the Cultural Revolution. He worked to master English and co-translated “The Due Process of Law” by Lord Denning, the famed English jurist.

In 1980, Li, then in the official student union, endorsed controversial campus elections. Party conservatives were aghast, but Li, already a prudent political player, stayed out of the controversial vote.

He climbed the party ranks and in 1983 joined the Communist Youth League’s central secretariat, headed then by Hu Jintao.

Li later served in challenging party chief posts in Liaoning, a frigid northeastern rustbelt province, and rural Henan province. He was named to the powerful nine-member standing committee in 2007.

- – - -

WANG QISHAN

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer and problem solver with deep experience tackling tricky economic and political problems.

Wang Qishan, 64, is the most junior of four vice premiers and an ex-mayor of Beijing. But he has a keen grasp of complex economic issues and is the only likely member of the Standing Committee to have been chief executive of a corporation, leading the state-owned China Construction Bank from 1994 to 1997. As such, he may take a leading role in shaping economic policy, including trade and foreign investment.

Wang is an experienced negotiator who has led finance and trade negotiations as well as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue with the United States. He is a favorite of foreign investors and has long been seen as a problem solver, sorting out a debt crisis in Guangdong province where he was vice governor in the late 1990s and replacing the sacked Beijing mayor after a cover-up of the deadly SARS virus in 2003.

Wang is also a princeling, son-in-law of a former vice premier and ex-standing committee member, Yao Yilin. His possible portfolio could be chairman of the National People’s Congress (China’s rubber-stamp parliament), head of parliament’s advisory body, executive vice premier (responsible for economic issues) or the party’s top anti-corruption official.

- – - -

LIU YUNSHAN

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative who has kept domestic media on a tight leash.

Liu Yunshan, 65, may take over the propaganda and ideology portfolio for the Standing Committee.

He has a background in media, once working as a reporter for state-run news agency Xinhua in Inner Mongolia, where he later served in party and propaganda roles before shifting to Beijing.

As minister of the party’s Propaganda Department since 2002, Liu has also sought to control China‘s Internet, which has more than 500 million users. He has been a member of the wider Politburo for two five-year terms ending this year.

Liu has not worked directly for the Communist Youth League, but is aligned to it through his lengthy career in an inland, poor province, long ties to the party’s propaganda system and close relationship with Hu Jintao.

- – - -

LI YUANCHAO

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A reformer who has courted foreign investment and studied in the United States.

Li Yuanchao, 61, oversees the appointment of senior party, government, military and state-owned enterprise officials as head of the party’s powerful organization department. On the Standing Committee, he could head the fight against corruption.

Li, whose father was a vice-mayor of Shanghai, has risen far since his parents were persecuted and he was a humble farm hand during the Cultural Revolution.

Politically astute, Li can navigate between interest groups, from Hu’s Youth League power base to the princelings.

As party chief in his native province, Jiangsu, from 2002 to 2007, Li oversaw a rapid rise in personal incomes and economic development, attracting foreign investment from global industrial leaders such as Ford, Samsung and Caterpillar.

He earned mathematics and economics degrees from two of China‘s best universities and a doctorate in law. He also spent time at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the United States.

- – - -

ZHANG DEJIANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative trained in North Korea.

Zhang Dejiang, 65, saw his chances of promotion boosted this year when he was chosen to replace disgraced politician Bo Xilai as Chongqing party boss. He also serves as vice premier in charge of industry, though his record has been tarnished by the downfall of the railway minister last year for corruption.

Zhang is close to former president Jiang Zemin who still wields some influence. He studied economics at Kim Il-sung University in North Korea and is a native of northeast China.

On his watch as party chief of Guangdong, the southern province maintained its position as a powerhouse of China‘s economic growth, even as it struggled with energy shortages, corruption-fuelled unrest and the 2003 SARS epidemic.

- – - – -

ZHANG GAOLI

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer with experience in more developed parts of China.

Zhang Gaoli, 65, party chief of the northern port city of Tianjin and a Politburo member since 2007, is seen as a Jiang Zemin ally but also acceptable to President Hu, who has visited Tianjin three times since 2008. Zhang is an advocate of greater foreign investment and he introduced financial reforms in a bid to turn the city into a financial center in northern China.

He was sent to clean up Tianjin, which was hit by a string of corruption scandals implicating his predecessor and the former top adviser to the city’s lawmaking body. The adviser committed suicide shortly after Zhang’s arrival.

A native of southeastern Fujian province, Zhang trained as an economist. He also served as party chief and governor of eastern Shandong province and as Guangdong vice governor.

Zhang is low-key with a down-to-earth work style, and not much is known about his specific interests and aspirations. But with his leadership experience in more economically advanced cities and provinces, including party secretary of the showcase manufacturing and export-driven city of Shenzhen, he could be named executive vice premier.

- – - – -

WANG YANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen by many in the West as a beacon of political reform.

Wang Yang, 57, is party chief of the export dependent economic hub of Guangdong province. He was not included in a list of preferred Standing Committee candidates drawn up by Xi, Hu and Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, according to sources close to the leadership, but is firmly in the running.

Born into a poor rural family in eastern Anhui province, Wang dropped out of high school and went to work in a food factory at age 17 to help support his family after his father died. These experiences may have shaped his desire for more socially inclusive policies, including his “Happy Guangdong” model of development designed to improve quality of life.

Concerned about the social impact of three decades of blistering development, he lobbied for social and political reform. However, this approach has drawn criticism from party conservatives and Wang has more recently adopted the party’s more familiar method of control and punishment to keep order.

- – - – -

YU ZHENGSHENG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Relatively low-key but considered a cautious reformer.

Yu Zhengsheng, 67, is party boss in China‘s financial hub and most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai.

His impeccable Communist pedigree made him a rising star in the mid-1980s until his brother, an intelligence official, defected to the United States. His close ties with Deng Pufang, the eldest son of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, spared him the full political repercussions but he was taken off the fast track.

Yu bided his time in ministerial ranks until bouncing back, joining the Politburo in 2002. However, the princeling’s age would require him to retire in 2017 after one term.

- – - – -

LIU YANDONG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Uncertain.

Liu Yandong, who turns 67 this month, is the only woman given a serious chance to join the Standing Committee but is considered a dark horse. She is a princeling also tied to President Hu’s Youth League faction.

If promoted, she could head up parliament’s advisory body, but her age would also force her to retire after only one term.

Her bigger challenge is that no woman has made it into the Standing Committee since 1949. Not even Jiang Qing, the widow of late Chairman Mao Zedong, made it that far.

Liu, daughter of a former vice-minister of agriculture, is currently the only woman in the 25-member Politburo, a minority in China‘s male-dominated political culture. She has been on the wider Politburo since 2007 as one of five state councilors, a rank senior to a cabinet minister but junior to a vice-premier.

(Reporting by Terril Yue Jones, Ben Blanchard, Benjamin Kang Lim and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing. Additional reporting by Chris Ip, Grace Li, Jean Lin, Young Wang, Alice Woodhouse and Julie Zhu; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Mark Bendeich)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Whale injures three boatmen off South Africa’s coast

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Three men were injured on Monday when a whale leaped out of the water and landed on their inflatable boat off South Africa’s south coast near the harbor city of Port Elizabeth, the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) said on Tuesday.

The weight of animal, believed to be a humpback whale, pushed the craft underwater but the boat popped back to the surface and one of the men was able to raise the alarm with a cell phone, the NSRI said in a statement.

Illuminating flares were then used to search for the men and their stricken boat on a moonless night.

“The boat was found about one nautical mile off-shore with all three men clinging onto the hull,” said Ian Gray, NSRI Port Elizabeth station commander.

One of the men was in a stable but serious condition, having sustained suspected rib fractures, an arm and a leg injury. The other two escaped with lesser injuries, the NSRI said.

(Reporting by Sherilee Lakmidas; Editing by Ed Stoddard and Paul Casciato)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Ivorian reggae singers bury rivalry for “peace” tour

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – As darkness falls over Ivory Coast‘s lagoon-side commercial capital a steady thumping cuts through the tropical night.

But where once the thud of heavy weapons set the Abidjan‘s residents scrambling indoors for cover, tonight it is a reggae bass line that draws them out.

Here, little over a year ago, supporters of then-president Laurent Gbagbo and his rival Alassane Ouattara were fighting a brief post-election civil war, the final deadly showdown of a decade-long political crisis.

After years teetering precariously between war and peace, the flames of division, xenophopia and anger – fanned in no small degree by some of the country’s most famous musicians – exploded into a conflict in which more than 3,000 people died.

One of Ivory Coast’s leading reggae artists, Serge Kassy, even rose to become a leader and organizer of Gbagbo’s Young Patriots street militia – a group accused of numerous atrocities during the war. Kassy is now in exile.

“When I looked at the musical scene in Ivory Coast, I realized that we ourselves went too far,” said Asalfo Traore of the zouglou band Magic System, one of the few groups that refused to take sides during the crisis years.

“It was when everything was ruined that we wanted to glue the pieces back together. But it was too late.”

Now, long-divided musicians are once again coming together, hoping to use their influence, so destructive for so long, to help Ivory Coast heal its deep wounds, and the country’s leading rival reggae artists are showing the way.

REGGAE RIVALRY

The long feud between Alpha Blondy and Tiken Jah Fakoly is a thing of legend in the reggae world, though neither has been willing to say what was behind the bad blood.

Both men come from Ivory Coast’s arid north and share a musical genre. But the similarities stop there.

Alpha, considered the father of Ivorian reggae, takes the stage in Abidjan clad in a shimmering pink suit, golden tie and Panama hat of an urban dandy. Tiken wears the traditional flowing robes of his northern Malinke tribe.

During the crisis, Alpha remained in Ivory Coast, while Tiken, a vocal critic of President Gbagbo‘s regime, went into exile in neighboring Mali.

They had so successfully avoided each other during their long parallel careers that before he picked up the phone to approach Alpha with the idea of uniting for a series of peace concerts, Tiken claimed they’d met only twice.

“Before going to the Ivorians to ask them to move towards reconciliation, it was important for us to show a major sign. That’s what we did,” Tiken told Reuters.

Out of a meeting in Paris was born a simple idea: six concerts in six towns across a country once split between a rebel north and government-held south, bringing together musicians from across the political spectrum to push for peace.

“No one’s died over the problems between Tiken and me,” said Alpha. “There are things that are more serious than our little spats, our pride and our vanities.”

Uniting the Ivorian music scene proved relatively easy in the end. Uniting the country could prove a tougher task.

BUSINESS AS USUAL

Some 18 months since the war ended, reconciliation in Ivory Coast is going nowhere.

Though Ouattara is praised by international partners for quicky turning around the economy, critics complain he has done little to foster unity. He has so far refused to prosecute those among his supporters accused of atrocities during the war.

Meanwhile Gbagbo, who lost the run-off election but garnered 46 percent of votes, is in The Hague on war crimes charges.

The leaders of his FPI political party are either dead, in jail or living in exile, from where they are accused by United Nations investigators of organizing deadly armed raids on Ivorian police, military and infrastructure targets.

“People came here for Alpha, Tiken Jah and artists they only ever see on TV, not for reconciliation,” said high school teacher Michel Loua in Gagnoa, the second stop on the tour in Gbagbo’s home region.

“The politicians have made a business of it. They talk up reconciliation when it suits them, otherwise they could care less,” he said.

Unity was never a problem, Alpha said, until politicians began to play the ethnic identity card in the struggle for power that followed the death of independence President Felix Houphouet-Boigny in 1993. And even after the violence and massacres, it is still not the problem today.

“Ivorians are not divided. That’s what I discovered,” he said on the last night of the tour. “If there are people that need reconciliation, it’s not the artists or the people. It’s the politicians,” he said.

Minutes later he was on stage singing “Course au Pouvoir”, a 16-year-old song that has found new relevance today with its lyrics: “There’s blood on the road that leads to the tower of power. Innocent blood.”

Having wrapped up their tour, Tiken, Alpha and the rest of the musicians are due to meet with President Ouattara and plan to call for the release of all pro-Gbagbo prisoners not accused of involvement and killings as a sign of good will.

The move has been called for by human rights groups as well as the FPI, who list it as one of their pre-conditions for dialogue. And though Ouattara has given no indication he is open to the possibility, many feel it is an unavoidable step towards lasting peace.

(Editing by Richard Valdmanis, editing by Paul Casciato)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Amgen drug cuts bad cholesterol up to 66 percent in statin patients – trial

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Amgen Inc‘s experimental cholesterol-lowering drug, AMG145, reduced levels of “bad” cholesterol up to 66 percent in patients already taking statin drugs, according to results from a mid-stage trial that were presented on Tuesday.

The trial results were in line with two other studies showing significant reductions in LDL cholesterol that were unveiled on Monday at the American Heart Association scientific meeting in Los Angeles.

The latest study of 629 patients is the largest trial so far of a drug in a new class, known as PCSK9 inhibitors, designed to target a protein that prevents the body from removing artery blocking LDL cholesterol from the bloodstream.

The Phase 2 trial showed a mean reduction in LDL versus a placebo of 42 percent for patients injected with 70 mg of AMG145 every two weeks, 60 percent in the 105 mg group and 66 percent in the 140 mg group.

When the drug was administered every two weeks, the mean reduction in LDL was 42 percent for the 280 mg group, 50 percent for the 350 mg group and 50 percent in the 420 mg group.

“We had some patients with entry LDLs as low as 85,” said Dr. Robert Giugliano, associate professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and the study’s lead investigator, “At the end, some had LDLs measured in the teens.”

Current guidelines from the American Heart Association call for LDL levels to be 100, but some cardiologists believe even lower levels would be beneficial.

The most common side effects seen in the trial were cold-like symptoms, cough and nausea.

The results were presented at the AHA meeting and published in the Lancet medical journal.

(Editing by Ken Wills)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Wall Street ticks lower ahead of presidential vote

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks slipped in low volume on Monday as traders awaited Tuesday’s U.S. election to place bets on sectors seen performing better under one or the other political party.

Democratic President Barack Obama and his challenger, Republican Mitt Romney, sprinted through key states on the last day of the race for the White House. Investors also eyed congressional races to gauge how the United States will deal with the $ 600 billion in spending cuts and tax hikes that could kick in next year and send the economy reeling.

“People are pausing ahead of the election and what that means for the fiscal cliff,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis.

Leading world economies pressed the United States on Sunday to act decisively to avert the fiscal cliff, calling it the biggest short-term threat to global growth.

The market’s reaction to data showing the pace of growth in the U.S. services sector slowed modestly in October was muted. Data from the Institute for Supply Management showed new orders slipped, but employment improved.

Paulsen said economic data could soon start to show the impact of superstorm Sandy on the economy after battering the U.S. northeast.

A week after Sandy wreaked havoc on New York City and the surrounding area, close to 2 million people still have no power as cold weather sets in. On Sunday 30,000 to 40,000 people in New York City were in need of shelter.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> fell 47 points, or 0.36 percent, to 13,046.16. The S&P 500 <.SPX> dropped 5.43 points, or 0.38 percent, at 1,408.77. The Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> was down 2.82 points, or 0.09 percent, at 2,979.31.

Transocean Ltd reported a higher-than-expected adjusted profit for the third quarter and its shares were up 5.4 percent at $ 48.55.

Stifel Financial Corp shares gained 1.9 percent to $ 32.50. KBW Inc climbed 7.3 percent to $ 17.49 after Stifel said it would buy the smaller rival in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $ 575 million to form an investment bank focused on the financial services industry.

A private survey of China’s growing services sector slipped in October, with weaker-than-expected new orders injecting a note of caution after three previous PMI surveys for October showed the world’s second-largest economy regaining momentum.

Greece’s government will present a new austerity package to parliament on Monday, facing a week of strikes and protests over proposals which must win deputies’ approval if the country is to secure more aid and stave off bankruptcy.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Business News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Bomb shakes Damascus, opposition holds unity talks

AMMAN (Reuters) – A bomb exploded near army and security compounds in Damascus, Syrian television reported, and fractured opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad began unity talks abroad to win international respect and arms supplies.

The 50-kilogram (110-pound) bomb, near a large hotel in a heavily guarded district, was described by state media as an attack by “terrorists” – the government’s term for insurgents in the 19-month-old uprising against Assad.

Opposition activists said Sunday’s blast appeared to be the work of the Ahfad al-Rasoul (Grandsons of the Prophet) Brigade, an Islamist militant unit that attacked military and intelligence targets several times in the last two months.

The mainly Sunni rebels have carried out a series of bombings targeting government and military buildings in Damascus this year, extending the war into the seat of Assad’s power.

The Syrian conflict has aggravated divisions in the Islamic world, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad — whose Alawite faith derives from Shi’ite Islam — and U.S.-allied Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar backing his foes.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an activist monitoring group, said government forces had killed 179 people on Sunday. It said most of the dead were civilians killed in shelling of Damascus suburbs and included 14 women and 20 children. The rest were rebels killed in battles in the capital and the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

Opposition campaigners said the Syrian army shelled rebel positions inside a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus on Sunday, killing at least 20 people. They said the Yarmouk camp had become the latest battleground in the war.

In northern Idlib, opposition sources said rebels were forced to halt an offensive to take a big air base because of a shortage of ammunition, a problem that has dogged their campaign to cement a hold on the north by eliminating Assad’s devastating edge in firepower.

Islamist insurgents had launched the attack on the Taftanaz military airport at dawn on Saturday, using rocket launchers and at least three tanks captured from the military.

The Syrian government restricts journalists’ access in Syria, making it difficult to verify reports from the ground.

The Jaafar bin Tayyar Division, a rebel unit in Deir al-Zor, said its fighters had taken control of the al-Ward oilfield near the Iraqi border on Sunday, after overrunning a loyalist outpost that had 40 militiamen defending it.

Rebel commanders, former Syrian officials and the Syrian head of an oil services company familiar with oil production in the area said the fields, mostly not operational, had been under de facto rebel control for months.

FEARS OF WIDER CONFLAGRATION

The conflict began with peaceful protest rallies that morphed into armed revolt when Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since 1971, tried to stamp them out with military might. About 32,000 people have been killed, wide swathes of the major Arab state have been wrecked and the civil war threatens to widen into a regional sectarian conflagration.

The opposition talks that began in Qatar marked the first concerted attempt to meld feuding, disparate groups based abroad and coordinate strategy with rebels fighting in Syria.

Divisions between Islamists and secularists as well as between those inside Syria and opposition figures based abroad have foiled prior attempts to forge a united opposition and deterred Western powers from intervening militarily.

Analysts were skeptical the planned four days of opposition talks in the Qatari capital Doha would bring immediate results.

They aim to broaden the Syrian National Council (SNC), the largest of the overseas-based opposition groups, from some 300 members to 400, to pave the way for talks in Doha on Thursday including other anti-Assad factions to crystallise a coalition.

“The main aim is to expand the council to include more of the social and political components. There will be new forces in the SNC,” Abdulbaset Sieda, current leader of the Syrian National Council, told reporters in Doha ahead of the meeting.

The meetings would also elect a new executive committee and leader for the SNC, he said.

A Qatar-based security analyst, who asked not to be named, said the meetings would bring a small step forward, at most. “The Syrian National Council is just too divided,” he said.

In Cairo, the international mediator on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, called on Sunday for world powers to issue a U.N. Security Council resolution based on a deal they reached in June to set up a transitional Syrian government.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the same news conference, dismissed the need for a resolution and said others were stoking violence by backing rebels. His comments highlighted the impasse over Syria’s civil war.

Russia and China, both permanent council members, have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad’s government for the violence. The other three permanent members are the United States, Britain and France.

(Additional reporting by Rania el Gamal and Regan Doherty in Qatar, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Stephen Powell)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..