Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

NST Online Top Stories - Google News

---

Lawmakers: House, Senate working on competing plans - Washington Post Posted: 15 Oct 2013 09:13 AM PDT House Republican leaders want to put forward their own plan to reopen the federal government, raise the debt ceiling and amend President Obama's health-care law, lawmakers said Tuesday. But it is not clear whether they can muster enough votes to pass the bill, and Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) was noncommittal when asked by reporters whether the legislation would move forward. Both the White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) quickly attacked the House GOP effort, saying it could sabotage bipartisan negotiations that had been gaining traction in the Senate, and stood no chance being passed there or accepted by President Obama. "It's nothing more than a blatant attack on bipartisanship," Reid said in a speech on the Senate floor. Democrats, he said, "felt blind sided." At a late-morning news conference, Boehner — whose previous efforts at compromise have been defeated by his party's right wing — said "there have been no decisions about what exactly we will do." He said he was talking to lawmakers from both parties to find "a way forward" and was keenly aware that the nation was very close to reaching the limits of its borrowing authority. "I have made clear for months and months that the idea of a default is wrong and we shouldn't get anywhere close to it," Boehner said. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said earlier Tuesday that the bill being formulated by House Republicans was designed to be attractive to Democrats,, because it would follow key timelines that have been established in the Senate negotiations. For example, the bill would fund government agencies until Jan. 15, and raise the debt ceiling until Feb. 7. But unlike the Senate proposal, the plan would also include significant changes and restrictions on Obama's signature health-care law, other lawmakers said, such as a two-year repeal of the medical device tax and a provision eliminating the employer health-care contribution for members of Congress and White House officials. Such changes have previously been rejected by Democrats, however, and a White House spokeswoman was quick to express opposition on Tuesday. "The President has said repeatedly that members of Congress don't get to demand ransom for fulfilling their basic responsibilities to pass a budget and pay the nation's bills," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the latest proposal from House Republicans does just that, in a partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans." The White House said Obama would meet with House Democratic leaders on Tuesday afternoon. It remains far from clear whether the House will be able to pass the bill it is proposing. If Democratic lawmakers refuse to support it, the bill would need votes from all but 15 of the 232 Republican lawmakers. Emerging from the meeting Tuesday morning, Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) said many members have "sincere, deep concerns" with the plan. He noted that he is willing to reopen the government but has not voted to raise the debt ceiling since 1997, and has vowed never to do so again.

2 arrests made in death of bullied Florida girl - CBS News Posted: 15 Oct 2013 09:12 AM PDT WINTER HAVEN, Fla. Two girls have been arrested in the death of a 12-year-old central Florida girl who authorities say committed suicide after being bullied online by several girls for nearly a year, a sheriff said Tuesday. The girls are 12 and 14, and they have been charged with felony aggravated stalking, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office. Sheriff Grady Judd scheduled a news conference Tuesday morning in Winter Haven regarding the arrests. Authorities have said Rebecca Ann Sedwick was "terrorized" by as many as 15 girls who ganged up on her and picked on her for months through online message boards and texts. Some of the girls' computers and cellphones were seized in the investigation. Play Video Mother says cyber-bullying drove 12-year-old daughter to commit suicide Play Video 12-year-old commits suicide after months of online torment Last month, CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reported that the one message that her mother, Tricia Norman, cannot forget urged Rebecca Ann to kill herself. "'You haven't killed yourself yet,'" Norman recalled the message saying. "'Go jump off of a building.'" On Sept. 9, authorities say, Rebecca climbed a tower at an abandoned concrete plant and hurled herself to her death. The bullying began over a "boyfriend issue," and Rebecca had become depressed, Judd has said. After the suicide, police looked at the girl's computer and found search queries for topics including "what is overweight for a 13-year-old girl," ''how to get blades out of razors" and "how many over-the-counter drugs do you take to die." One of her screensavers also showed Rebecca with her head resting on a railroad track. Florida has a bullying law named after a teenager who killed himself after being harassed by classmates. Amended July 1 to cover cyberbullying, the law leaves punishment to schools, though law enforcement also can seek more traditional charges.

You are subscribed to email updates from Top Stories - Google News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

NST Online Top Stories - Google News

---

Senate seeks deal to avoid US default as time runs short - Reuters Posted: 14 Oct 2013 09:38 AM PDT By Susan Heavey WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 14, 2013 11:32am EDT (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers in the Senate said on Monday they hoped to reach a deal soon to reopen the government and avert a looming default as investors worried that Republicans and Democrats might not be able to resolve their differences by a Thursday deadline. After weekend negotiations proved fruitless, senators from both parties said they still thought they could reach agreement in the coming hours. With the most unrealistic demands off the table, the two sides were trying to craft a temporary measure that would allow Washington to step back from the ledge. "I'm hopeful we can have something meaningful by the end of the day," Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi said on MSNBC. The Treasury Department says it cannot guarantee that the U.S. government will be able to pay its bills past October 17 if Congress does not raise the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling by then. It's not clear whether Congress can meet that deadline. Even if Republicans and Democrats in the Senate reach agreement on Monday, hard-liners such as Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz might be able to delay a vote for several days. The House of Representatives also would need to sign off on the plan. Republican leaders there face strong pressure from a vocal conservative flank that is deeply reluctant to make concessions to President Barack Obama and his Democrats. Many say they won't back any deal that doesn't undercut Obama's 2010 healthcare reform law, the Affordable Care Act - a non-starter for Democrats. "We've got to draw some lines in the sand now. This, to me, is an epic battle over Washington versus America, and I hope America wins," Republican Representative Matt Salmon of Arizona said on CNN. Analysts expect that any deal is likely to come down to the wire. Though Treasury likely will have enough cash on hand to meet its obligations for a week or so, it might be forced to pay a higher interest rate on the bonds it is due to issue on Thursday. Banks and money market funds are already shunning some government bonds that are normally used for short-term loans. In China, the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, the state news agency Xinhua said it was time for a "de-Americanized world." U.S. stocks fell at the open on Monday. The S&P 500 Index was down 0.53 percent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.48 percent by mid-morning. The ongoing government shutdown is beginning to weigh on the economy as well. The hundreds of thousands of federal employees who have been temporarily thrown out of work are likely to get back-pay when the standoff is resolved. But they aren't getting paid now, forcing many to dial back on personal spending and cancel holiday travel plans. Any agreement that would come in the following days would not resolve disagreements over long-term spending and the Affordable Care Act that led to the standoff in the first place. Despite the objections of rank-and-file conservatives like Salmon, many Republicans are eager to move the discussion away from "Obamacare" and toward possible spending cuts. "All of us now are talking about spending, which is where we should have been in the first place," Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee said on MSNBC. Republicans have floated plans that would push back any possible default for several weeks and keep the government open for several months, but Democrats say that would simply set up another market-rattling confrontation which could spook consumers and further weigh on the economic recovery. "If we just extend this to January, we'll be right back in the middle of this," Democratic Senator Mark Begich of Alaska said on MSNBC. (Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Claudia Parsons)

Shiller, two others win economics Nobel for 'bubble' warnings - CNN Posted: 14 Oct 2013 04:38 AM PDT Robert Shiller, one of three Americans to win the Nobel Prize in economics Monday. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) Shiller is a professor at Yale University. He is joined by Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen, who both teach at the University of Chicago. The award was for their work on the pricing of financial assets. Together they concluded that predicting the price of stocks and bonds in the short term is virtually impossible. But they showed it is possible to forecast the broad course of prices over longer periods, such as the three to five years. Shiller was among those who warned in the 1990s that the run-up in stock prices as part of the Internet stock bubble was the result of "irrational exuberance." Last decade, Shiller made similar warnings about the run-up in U.S. home prices. That proved to be correct when the housing bubble burst and plunged the nation into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. He helped to develop the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index, which is one of the most closely watched measures of home values. In a press conference Monday, Shiller said economists are still drawing lessons from the bursting of the housing bubble. "I think there's much more to be done. I think it will take decades," Shiller said. "But we've been through financial crises many times in our history and we've generally learned from them." Fama and Hansen are not as well known as Shiller outside the field of economics. Starting in the 1960s, Fama helped to demonstrate that new information is quickly incorporated into stock prices, a fact that makes short-term price predictions difficult. The Nobel committee said that finding helped lead to the emergence of index stock funds, which are now a staple of so many investors' portfolios today. Hansen developed a statistical method that was well suited to testing theories of asset pricing, the committee said. Fama and Hansen were not immediately available for comment early Monday. Last year's prize went to Alvin Roth of Harvard University and Lloyd Shapley of UCLA, whose work on resource allocation was used for everything from matching job applicants to openings to coming up with way to allocate transplant organs to patients. First Published: October 14, 2013: 7:28 AM ET

You are subscribed to email updates from Top Stories - Google News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

NST Online Top Stories - Google News

---

Senate Leaders Talk; GOP Blames Obama for Gridlock - New York Times Posted: 13 Oct 2013 09:03 AM PDT By JEREMY W. PETERS and ASHLEY PARKER Published: October 13, 2013 WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Sunday kept up the drumbeat of blame against President Obama for what they say is his failure to negotiate with them on the fiscal crisis that will come to a head on Thursday, when the government will run out of money to pay its bills. As the Republicans pointed fingers at the White House, Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell were set to sit down again on Sunday in an effort to come up with some sort of agreement — even one that will kick the most pressing problems down the road for a few weeks or months. Their discussions appear to be the only hope, at least on Sunday, for a deal after talks between House Republicans broke down on Saturday, with no indication when they would resume. The House was not meeting on Sunday, although the Senate would be called into session. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on ABC's "This Week" that he could feel a deal "coming together" as Mr. Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, and Mr. McConnell, the chamber's top Republican, prepared for their second day of talks. But Mr. Graham also warned his colleagues that the longer the showdown lasted, the more damage they were doing to Congress. "To my colleagues in the House on both sides, and to my friends in the Senate, we're ruining both institutions," he said. Some of the senators also sought to redirect the conversation from the shutdown and debt ceiling fight to the issue that closed the government on Oct. 1: the House Republicans' insistence that they would not pass any spending bill that included financing for the new health care law. Mr. Graham, for one, said that "defunding Obamacare" or delaying it for a year was "not a realistic possibility now." The law partly went into effect the same day the government shut down. "The shutdown will be old news next year," he added. "Obamacare's faults will be front and center in 2014 if we don't screw this up." But Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said Mr. Obama was to blame for his refusal to deal with the fiscal crisis. "This is the first time in history that a president of the United States has said, 'Look, I'm not even going to talk about it,' " Mr. Portman said on NBC's "Meet the Press." He added later: "The president should engage. You've got to deal with the underlying problem, which is the spending problem." On CNN's "State of the Union," Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, played down fears that a default on the debt this week would be the cause of a downgrade of the nation's credit rating, as happened during a similar showdown in 2011. The downgrade, he said, was not caused by the threat of default, but by the size of the United States' debt. "The vast majority of people are afraid of what this growth of our debt is going to do to us," he said. On Saturday, Mr. Reid said he was slightly optimistic about his dialogue with Mr. McConnell. "I hope that our talking is some solace to the American people and the world," he said. (Not far away, officials meeting in Washington at the annual sessions of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank publicly expressed alarm that the United States might provoke a global debt crisis by Congress's inaction.) "Senator McConnell and I have been in this body a long time," Mr. Reid added. "We've done things for a long time together. We don't agree on everything, and that's, as you know, an understatement." The relationship between the two men has been so chilly that it took two other senators, Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, to arrange the meeting. For Speaker John A. Boehner and other House Republicans, the options were much grimmer. If Mr. Boehner compromises, he risks angering the conservatives who dominate his conference. For its part, the White House is sticking with its stance that it will not negotiate until the government is reopened and the debt ceiling is raised. The White House has no public events planned on Sunday, although aides did not rule out that Mr. Obama might confer with some lawmakers, as he did with Senate Democrats on Saturday afternoon. Mr. Schumer, who was at that meeting, said: "There's a will among all three parties — the president, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans. Now we'll see if there's a way." Earlier on Saturday, conservatives left their meeting at the Capitol in a sour mood, with many saying they were outraged that Mr. Obama had refused to meet them halfway. Representative John Carter of Texas described Mr. Obama as "acting like a royal president." "He's still 'my way or the highway,' " Mr. Carter said. With concerns growing that global financial markets could be thrown into turmoil if Congress does not agree to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans said they did not know whether Mr. Boehner would have enough support from the most conservative members in his conference to put a Senate plan up for a vote — if the leaders reach a deal. "The question is: What will Senate Republicans do; what will Senate Democrats do?" said Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois. Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, added: "The problem here is that we don't have a functioning majority. After three weeks of this, they're still not figuring it out. I don't know what it takes." The failure of talks with the White House further strained the relationship between House Republicans and the president. It was the House Republicans' refusal to approve a spending bill unless it stripped financing from the health care law that shut down the government. And now Republicans in the Senate and the House are looking for a way out of the crisis. With the latest developments, Representative Aaron Schock, Republican of Illinois, said there had been "a total breakdown in trust" between House Republicans and the administration. Feelings ran so high on the House floor on Saturday morning that there was a brief altercation between Representative Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat, and Chris Vieson, the floor director for Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader. There were conflicting reports about whether the conflict became physical or was confined to words, but both sides said they had apologized. If Republicans needed any reminder about how outraged their most conservative supporters would be if they committed to a compromise that did not include provisions to weaken the health care law, they needed look no further than out the window. Glenn Beck, the fiery radio personality, was leading a group of Tea Party activists on the National Mall.

Cousin confesses to killing missing toddler in decades-old 'Baby Hope' case - New York Daily News Posted: 13 Oct 2013 09:01 AM PDT The answer to the Baby Hope murder mystery was all in the family. Cops arrested a cousin of the toddler brutally murdered 22 years ago — marking a dramatic turn in one of the city's most notorious cold cases. Conrado Juarez, 52, confessed Saturday to killing the girl and disposing of her body in a cooler with the help of his sister, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. His tiny victim, whose name had been a mystery for more than two decades, was identified for the first time as 4-year-old Anjelica Castillo. Juarez, a dishwasher from the Bronx, told cops he sodomized and then quietly smothered Anjelica with a pillow in a hallway at his sister's home in Astoria, Queens. When the little girl went motionless, Juarez summoned his sister, Balvina Juarez-Ramirez, from another room, Kelly said. Juarez-Ramirez, who was caring for the girl, insisted they secretly get rid of her body, Kelly said. RELATED: LUPICA: ARREST IN BABY HOPE CASE A 'EUREKA!' FOR KELLY She brought him a filthy cooler — as the other family members living there remained unaware of the cruelty underway just down the hall, Kelly said. Juarez and his sister, who is now dead, carried the cooler out of the apartment and took a black livery cab to Manhattan, where they dumped the icebox along a wooded stretch of the Henry Hudson Parkway. "They then separated and Juarez returned to the Bronx and his sister to Queens," Kelly said, "never to speak of the heinous act again until the NYPD investigators, through their relentless investigation, caught up with Juarez." The man's arrest on Friday capped a case that vexed some NYPD investigators throughout their entire careers. "You know that phrase, 'I'm on cloud nine'? That's where I am right now," said former NYPD Detective Jerry Giorgio, who had the case for more than two decades until retiring from the NYPD in 1997. The child's rotting remains were found stuffed inside the blue and white picnic cooler along the parkway near Inwood on July 23, 1991. The little girl weighed only 28 pounds and had been folded in half. She was naked, bound and sexually abused. Detectives pursued hundreds of leads that turned up nothing. As the years passed, the investigators' affection and sorrow for the mystery child grew. They eventually named her Baby Hope. RELATED: BABY HOPE'S FATHER NOW PRIME SUSPECT: SOURCE Investigators paid for the the nameless girl's burial at St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx and inscribed a touching message on her tombstone: "Because we care." "I'm very happy and certainly I'm relieved to the fact that when we visit this plot out in St. Raymond's we can now attach a name to this little girl," Joseph Reznick, the former commander of the detectives in the 34th Precinct in Washington Heights, said Saturday. The case returned to the spotlight last week when cops announced that an anonymous phone tip led them to identify the dead girl's mother. Detectives obtained the mom's DNA profile from an envelope she had licked. Her DNA matched a sample taken from Anjelica's remains, a source said. Investigators built up the family tree, tracing relatives from Queens to the Bronx and all the way to Mexico, where Anjelica's father was born. They learned that when the child's parents split, her father took her and a sister to the home in Queens. Anjelica's mother, who a source said had 10 children by three men, took custody of a third sister, Kelly said. The girl's unidentified father has not been found, a source said. RELATED: 'BABY HOPE' MOM'S LAST IMAGE OF CHILD 22 YEARS AGO WAS CHILLING GOODBYE FROM DAD Through old-fashioned street work, detectives tracked down Juarez's Bronx address. Juarez's daughter answered the door and told cops a lie: that Juarez now lived in Mexico and had been there for the past 12 years, Kelly said. But his wife told investigators a different story, saying he was at work at a downtown Manhattan restaurant. Investigators used a ruse to lure Juarez out of the eatery and then persuaded him to talk with them, a law enforcement source said. The interrogation lasted five hours, the source added. "At the beginning he was blowing smoke, but he finally just gave it up," the source said. When Juarez confessed, "it was like there was a big weight lifted off his shoulders," a different source said. The mustachioed monster said nothing as he was led out of the cold case offices in Brooklyn, his hands cuffed behind his back. Juarez, a father of four also known as Enidino Juarez, was charged with second-degree murder and showed no remorse at his arraignment late Saturday night. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail. RELATED: BABY HOPE DETECTIVE KEEPS FAITH IN FINDING KILLER "I think we have a long way to go before we know what really happened," his court-appointed lawyer, Michael Croce, said after the hearing. Juarez's neighbors in Morris Heights recalled seeing the quiet, unassuming man pushing shopping carts full of bottles he had collected. "He would be digging through trash cans," said Andre Holloway, 30. "He was always by himself." Giorgio said he expects Juarez to draw quite a bit of unwanted attention behind bars. "They will have their way with this guy in prison, even though he's in his 50s," the ex-detective told the Daily News. "But what bugs me is that he got to live for another 20 years with no conscience at all." With Jan Ransom and Ryan Sit On a mobile device? Click here to watch the video.

You are subscribed to email updates from Top Stories - Google News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

NST Online Top Stories - Google News

---

Obama, Republicans keep talking as government shutdown enters second ... - CBS News Posted: 12 Oct 2013 08:42 AM PDT The past week began with Republicans and Democrats at an impasse over the government shutdown. No resolution has been reached yet, but at least the two parties have started talking - making them closer to a deal than they were a week ago. Play Video Government shutdown: Where do things stand now? Play Video Economic impact: Small businesses hit hardest in shutdown "We're obviously in a better place than we were a few days ago in terms of the constructive approach we've seen," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Friday. President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, spoke on the phone Friday afternoon after the latest Republican offer, a modified deal for a short-term debt limit hike that sets up a framework for negotiations on a bigger budget deal. Though Mr. Obama did not accept the offer, Carney said "the two of them agreed all sides need to keep talking on the issues here that ... have lead to the shutdown of the government and the situation that has put us on the precipice of potential default." A Boehner spokesman similarly said the two sides will keep talking, but provided scant details. After hearing on Thursday the initial Republican offer to pass a no-strings-attached bill to raise the debt limit for just another six weeks, the president asked Republicans to end the shutdown as part of the deal. He also reiterated that ongoing budget negotiations could and would cover all potential GOP hot button subjects -- but only after the default and shutdown issues were resolved. Carney said Friday that Mr. Obama "appreciates the constructive nature of the conversation and the proposal that House Republicans put forward." However, he added, "He has some concerns with it." Play Video W.H. describes shutdown talks as "constructive" "The president's position that we the United States should not, and the American people cannot, pay a ransom in exchange for Congress doing its job remains as true today as it has throughout this period," Carney continued. Furthermore, he said, increasing the debt limit to extend the nation's borrowing authority for just another six weeks would leave the nation once again on the brink of default right around Thanksgiving and the significant holiday shopping season. "Our economy can't endure that kind of approach to resolving our budget differences." If negotiations hold together, it will be a matter of both parties and chambers of Congress feeling out what everyone else's bottom line is. Here is an overview of what all sides want: The White House Mr. Obama has insisted that he'll talk to Republicans about any subject - as long as they pass legislation to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling without any policy conditions attached. Carney has described this as the Republicans demanding a "ransom" several times since the government shut down. But Mr. Obama is also likely to resist any major changes to the healthcare law since he sees it as having been affirmed by both the Supreme Court and the American people during the 2012 election. "Two of [Congress'] very basic jobs are passing a budget and making sure that America's paying its bills. They don't also get to say, 'You know, unless you give me what the voters rejected in the last election, I'm going to cause a recession.' That's not how it works," he said in a news conference this week. The administration has also indicated they would be open to a short-term measure that raised the debt ceiling but also paved the way for negotiations - if the government is reopened as well. House Republicans At the start of the shutdown, House Republicans were seeking to either defund or at least delay the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Then, they changed their strategy: they sought negotiations over the spending bill to reopen the government before they would pass anything, though it is expected they would still seek changes to the Obamacare. On the floor of the House earlier this week, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, "How can we tax people for not buying a product form a website that doesn't work?...This is why we need to sit down and have a conversation about the big challenges that face our country." In an attempt to put political pressure on Democrats, they have passed a series of bills that would allocate the funding to re-open parts of the government, like the national parks and cancer research. Most recently, the House Republican leadership put forward a plan to increase the debt-limit for six weeks with no strings attached and enter into negotiations. Mr. Obama didn't bite at that offer but the two sides kept talking. A modified proposal they presented Friday that also sets up a framework for negotiations on a bigger budget deal. That offer has not been accepted either, but the two sides are still talking. Senate Democrats Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has kept his caucus marching in lockstep during the shutdown. He refuses to take up any Republican bill that doesn't reopen the government and lift the debt ceiling with no attached policy conditions, and he has berated Republicans for demanding negotiations to reopen the government when he has been asking for budget negotiations all year long. "Open the government, we'll get back to the so-called conversations he talks about, we'll get back to the negotiating table, work out our budget disagreements. We can even start talking about ways to make the Affordable Care Act better. Not worse but better. We can get back to the business of legislating. That's what our job has always been and should be," he said earlier this week. He has made a few exceptions, passing a bill that authorized continued pay for active-duty military and support staff, as well as a bill to ensure death benefits were paid to the families of soldiers who died during the shutdown. Reid and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., have introduced a bill that would lift the debt ceiling through the end of 2014. Senate Republicans Play Video Repeated hecklers prompt Cruz offer to Obama Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, helped spark the shutdown with a 21-hour floor speech last month that called for the defunding of the health-care law, which helped propel the House Republican demands. This angered many of his colleagues in the Senate, who saw Cruz as pushing a shutdown with no exit strategy. Now, many have rallied around a plan from Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who put forward a proposal that focuses on re-opening the government rather than raising the debt limit. Her plan would fund the government for six months, repeal the medical device tax (part of Obamacare) and give agencies greater flexibility to deal with across-the-board spending. House Democrats House Democrats have largely remained in lockstep with the president, insisting that the Republicans pass a "clean" short-term spending bill to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling, although some Democrats have voted with Republicans to re-open parts of the government. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has thrown doubt on House Democratic support for a six-week debt-limit extension like the one House Republicans proposed earlier this week, saying that it didn't give the financial markets enough certainty. But she remains open to seeing what they put on the table. On Saturday, House Democrats will start signing a "discharge petition" that could force Boehner to put a clean spending bill on the floor.

Rain and wind batter Indian coast as huge storm approaches; three dead - Reuters Posted: 12 Oct 2013 08:29 AM PDT By Sruthi Gottipati and Jatindra Dash ICHAPURAM/BHUBANESWAR, India | Sat Oct 12, 2013 10:08am EDT (Reuters) - Rain and wind lashed India's east coast on Saturday, forcing about 450,000 people to flee to shelters as one of the country's largest cyclones closed in, threatening to cut a swathe of devastation through farmland and fishing hamlets. Filling most of the Bay of Bengal, Cyclone Phailin was about 90 km (124 miles) off the coast by late afternoon and was expected to strike the coast by nightfall with winds of between 210 kph (130 mph) and 220 kph (137 mph). The storm was expected to affect 12 million people, most of them in the densely populated states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, weather and disaster management officials said. Even before landfall, coconut trees in villages along the coast were bent and broken in the gusting wind. Electrical poles were brought down and roads were littered with debris. In the first reported deaths, two people were killed by falling trees while a third when the walls of her mud house collapsed. Terrified children clung to their mothers as they sought shelter. Most towns along the coast were deserted but there were still some people trying to flee. Some people took refuge in temples, others crammed into three-wheel auto-rickshaws and headed inland. "This is one of the largest evacuations undertaken in India," said Shashidhar Reddy, vice chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, who estimated that more than 440,000 people had fled from their homes. The size of the storm made extensive damage to property more likely, he told reporters in New Delhi. "Our priority is to minimize loss of life." Phailin is expected to bring a 3.4-m (11-foot) surge in sea levels when it hits the coast between 1230 GMT and 1430 GMT. EXTENSIVE DAMAGE The weather department warned of extensive damage to mud houses, major disruption of power and communication lines, and the flooding of rail tracks and roads. Flying debris is another threat. "In a storm of this magnitude there is the potential for widespread damage to crops and livestock in the low-lying coastal areas and houses completely wiped away," said Kunal Shah, the head of the aid group World Vision's emergency response team in India. "While we are praying this storm loses intensity, we're also preparing." London-based Tropical Storm Risk classed the storm in Category 5 - the strongest such rating. The U.S. Navy's weather service said wind at sea was gusting at 314 kph. Many of the people along the coast are subsistence fishermen and farmers, who live in mud-and-brick or thatched huts. In 1999, a typhoon battered the same region, killing 10,000 people. India's disaster preparations have improved significantly since then and aid workers praised precautions for Phailin such as early warnings, stocking of rations in shelters and evacuations. "A lot has been learnt since 1999 and my guess is that while there could be extensive damage to property and crops, the death toll will be much less," said G. Padmanabhan, emergency analyst at the U.N. Development Programme. But despite all the warnings, some people refused to leave their homes. "I have a small child, so I thought, how will I leave?" asked Achamma, 25, as she clutched on to her boy in Donkuru, a fishing village in Andhra Pradesh, as waves crashed on to a nearby beach. Police said a rescue had been launched for 18 fishermen stranded at sea off Paradip, a major port in Odisha, after their trawler ran out of fuel. Paradip halted cargo operations on Friday. All vessels were ordered to leave the port, which handles coal, crude oil and iron ore. An oil tanker holding about 2 million barrels of oil, worth $220 million, was also moved, an oil company source said. But the storm was not expected to hit India's largest gas field, the D6 natural gas block in the Cauvery Basin further down the east coast, field operator Reliance Industries said. (Additional reporting by Sruthi Gottipati and Nita Bhalla; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel and Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Robert Birsel)

You are subscribed to email updates from Top Stories - Google News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

NST Online Business Times : latest

---

US stocks rise on hope of budget deal Posted: 11 Oct 2013 04:42 PM PDT NEW YORK CITY: US stocks rallied for a second straight session on Friday on rising optimism about a Washington deal to avert a debt default. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 111.04 (0.73 per cent) to 15,237.11. The broad-based S&P 500 rose 10.64 (0.63 per cent) to 1,703.20, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index tacked on 31.13 (0.83 per cent) to reach 3,791.87. Investor anxiety eased on Thursday after Republican leaders offered President Barack Obama a short term extension of the US government's borrowing authority so as to stave off a possible debt default. By Friday, there was still no deal, but markets appeared encouraged by continued talks. "Yesterday was like the best day of the year and today is a good, strong follow-on," said Greg Peterson, director of investment research at Ballentine Partners. "Everybody's pricing in that we'll have some kind of agreement," said Anthony Conroy, a trader at BNY ConvergEx Group. Earnings season began picking up in earnest with reports from Dow component JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. A score of additional reports will follow in the next few weeks. JPMorgan finished unchanged after reporting its first quarterly loss since 2004 due to large legal charges. However, the bank's underlying performance was solid and it beat expectations when special items were excluded. Wells Fargo, another banking giant, also finished flat after earnings rose 13 per cent compared with the year-ago period. On the downside, the company's key mortgage business suffered declines compared with the prior quarter in the wake of higher interest rates. Retailer The Gap fell 6.7 per cent after September sales showed Gap Global comparable store sales sank 3 per cent versus last year. The company's Banana Republic and Old Navy chains also reported lower sales. The results suggest the retail sector's "overall weakness has caught up" with The Gap, which had previously outperformed its peers. Semiconductor company Micron fell 8.6 per cent after reporting a gain of US$1.7 billion compared with a loss of US$243 million a year ago. However, the results were lifted by a recent acquisition of Elpida Memory, Inc. Without those gains, profits would have missed expectations by four cents a share. -- AFP

You are subscribed to email updates from Business Times : latest To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

NST Online Top Stories - Google News

---

Obama meets with Senate Republicans - USA TODAY Posted: 11 Oct 2013 09:13 AM PDT 4 Share This Story! Let friends in your social network know what you are reading about Obama meets with Senate Republicans Obama met with the Senate Republicans as their House GOP counterparts discussed a short-term increase in the debt ceiling. The president met for 90 minutes Thursday evening with House Republican leaders, and Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Sent! A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Facing a fresh deadline, House Speaker John Boehner says Republicans would vote to extend the government's ability to borrow money for six weeks - but only if President Barack Obama first agrees to fresh negotiations on spending cuts. VPC David Jackson, USA TODAY 12:04 p.m. EDT October 11, 2013 A Uniformed Secret Service Division officer stands watch as a bus carrying Republican senators arrives through the North Gates at the White House.(Photo: Charles Dharapak, AP) Story Highlights President Obama met Friday with Senate Republicans The White House and House Republicans are discussing a debt ceiling debate President Obama met Friday with Senate Republicans as their House GOP counterparts discussed a short-term increase in the debt ceiling that would head off an historic government default. Obama and the Republican senators also planned to discuss ways to end the government shutdown, now in its 11th day. The Senate meeting came the morning after Obama sat down for 90 minutes with House Republican leaders, and authorized further staff talks about a deal based on a temporary hike in the nation's $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. Republicans said Obama asked them to include in the package funding to reopen the government. Prior to leaving for the White House, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Tex., said, "Members on both sides of the aisle here in Congress are discussing solutions and those discussions will continue when we return from the White House." If Congress does not increase the debt ceiling by Thursday, the government will lose authority to borrow money to pay its bills and would have to default on some of them. A plan offered by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, would extend borrowing authority until Nov. 22, while Republicans and the White House negotiate a new spending plan to end the shutdown. After Obama's meeting with Boehner and other House GOP members, a White House statement said that "no specific determination was made" on a path forward. "The President's goal remains to ensure we pay the bills we've incurred, reopen the government and get back to the business of growing the economy, creating jobs and strengthening the middle class," the statement said. USA NOW Bizarre details surround Ga. teen's death | USA NOW video Oct 11, 2013

In Afghanistan, US losing patience as deadline for long-term deal nears - Washington Post Posted: 11 Oct 2013 09:12 AM PDT During a testy video conference in June, President Obama drew a line in the sand for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. If there was no agreement by Oct. 31 on the terms for keeping a residual U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Obama warned him, the United States would withdraw all of its troops at the end of 2014. With that deadline less than three weeks away and deep rifts persisting, the White House appears increasingly willing to abandon plans for a long-term, costly partnership with Afghanistan. Despite the Pentagon's pleas for patience, much of the rest of the administration is fed up with Karzai and sees Afghanistan as a fading priority amid far more ominous threats elsewhere in the world. Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrived in Kabul Friday on an unannounced visit in an effort to convince Karzai that the administration is serious. "October 31st is our goal," a senior administration official said. "The president has been clear. There can be no reason" for failure "other than the fact that the Afghans don't want what we're offering." Meanwhile, serious new irritants in the relationship have convinced Karzai that he was right to question American good faith in year-old negotiations on a deal. The accord is considered critical for the international community to continue funding the Afghan government and shoring up its nascent security forces. Under the Bilateral Security Agreement, or BSA, the United States plans to leave a still-unspecified number of troops — between 5,000 and 10,000, most probably — in Afghanistan to train and advise its security forces after the final withdrawal of what are now 52,000 combat and support troops. Karzai was enraged several weeks ago, Afghan officials said, when U.S. forces forcibly took custody of a senior Pakistani Taliban leader whom Afghan intelligence was trying to recruit. In the previously unreported incident, U.S. forces intercepted an Afghan government convoy and seized the leader in Logar province, Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi said. In doing so, Faizi added, the Americans foiled a months-long bid by the Afghan government to wean the Taliban commander, identified by others as Latif Mehsud, from the battlefield and use him to help launch substantive peace talks. Faizi called the seizure a major breach of sovereignty. Although Karzai has not mentioned the case publicly, his private fury has been reflected in recent suggestions that Afghanistan might forgo a bilateral pact. In a separate incident, Pakistan last month freed a top Afghan Taliban official, Abdul Ghani Baradar, whom Karzai sees as a possible interlocutor for his peace efforts and whose release he had long demanded. This week, however, Pakistan again placed Baradar under house arrest in the port city of Karachi. Karzai immediately suspected an American hand at work; U.S. officials said they feared that Baradar would return to plotting attacks against American forces in Afghanistan if he were left on the loose. Both the CIA and the Defense Department declined to comment on either incident.

You are subscribed to email updates from Top Stories - Google News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

NST Online Business Times : latest

---

Ringgit opens higher against US dollar Posted: 10 Oct 2013 07:09 PM PDT The ringgit opened higher against the US dollar this morning on strong buying interest for the local unit, dealers said. It was quoted at 3.1865/1895 against the greenback from Thursday's 3.1900/1930. One dealer said investors' confidence in the ringgit was growing on expectation that it would appreciate by five per cent by year-end. However, against other major currencies, the ringgit was traded mixed. It declined against the Singapore dollar to 2.5498/5524 from 2.5485/5515 yesterday but soared against the yen to 3.2386/2420 from 3.2601/2648 on Thursday. The local currency fell against the British pound to 5.0888/0949 from 5.0839/0900 on Thursday and versus the euro, it rose to 4.3081/3128 from 4.3175/3229 on yesterday.-- Bernama

Hyundai wins Petronas' order for LNG carriers Posted: 10 Oct 2013 07:17 PM PDT SEOUL: South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries said Friday it has secured a US$850 million order to build four LNG carriers for Malaysian oil company Petronas. The world's largest shipbuilder said it would deliver the double-hulled LNG tankers from the second half of 2016. The contract includes an option to order four additional LNG carriers, it said. Hyundai said its total orders, including the deal with Petronas, have reached US$20.7 billion so far this year, or 87 per cent of its annual target of US$23.8 billion.-- AFP

You are subscribed to email updates from Business Times : latest To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Kredit: www.nst.com.my