President Barack Obama, offering an election-year prescription to spur the economy, said the wealthiest Americans should pay more taxes in the name of fairness, to bring down the deficit and ensure those trying to make ends meet don
The U.S. bond market is neutralizing budget deficits as an election-year campaign weapon.
Interest payments will cost the government 3.1 percent of gross domestic product this year, according to Office of Management and Budget and International Monetary Fund data compiled by Bloomberg. That
The body of a woman wearing a life vest was recovered by Italian coast guard divers Saturday from a narrow underwater corridor of the capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia, raising the death toll to 12 in the week-old accident that has sent some light fuel spilling into the Mediterranean off Tuscany.
Coast Guard Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro told The Associated Press that the victim was found during a particularly risky inspection of an evacuation staging point at the ship’s rear.
“The corridor was very narrow, and the divers’ lines risked snagging” on objects in the passageway, Nicastro said. To permit the coast guard divers to get into the area, Italian navy divers had preceded them, setting off charges to blast holes for easier entrance and exit, he said.
The woman’s nationality and identity were not immediately known.
Before the corpse was found, 21 people were listed as missing. One of the women on the list is a Peruvian crew member, the others are passengers.
Three bodies were found in the waters near the ship in the first hours after the accident’ since then the rest of the victims have all been found inside the Concordia, apparently unable to get off the ship during a chaotic evacuation via lifeboats and later by helicopters. Some survivors jumped off and swam to safety.
The Concordia hit a reef and ran aground on Jan. 14, while passengers dined, about two hours after the ship had set sail from the port of Civitavecchia on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Costa Crociere has said the captain had deviated without permission from the vessels in an apparent maneuver to sail close to Giglio, a Tuscan island, to impress passengers aboard.
Search and rescue efforts for survivors and bodies have meant that an operation to remove heavy fuel in the Concordia’s tanks hasn’t yet begun, although specialized equipment has been standing by for days.
On Saturday, light fuel, apparently from machinery aboard the capsized Costa Concordia, was detected near the ship.
But Nicastro said there was no indication that any of the nearly 500,000 gallons (2,200 metric tons) of heavy fuel oil has leaked from the ship’s double-bottomed tanks. He said the leaked substance appears to be diesel, which is used to fuel rescue boats and dinghies and as a lubricant for ship machinery.
There are 185 tons of diesel and lubricants on board the crippled vessel, which is lying on its side just outside Giglio’s port. Nicastro described the light fuel’s presence in the sea as “very light, very superficial” and appearing to be under control.
Although attention has been concentrated on the heavy fuel oil in the tanks, “we must not forget that on that ship there are oils, solvents, detergents, everything that a city of 4,000 people needs,” Franco Gabrielli, the head of Italy’s civil protection agency, told reporters in Giglio.
Gabrielli, who is leading rescue, search and anti-pollution efforts for the Concordia, was referring to the roughly 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew who were aboard the cruise liner when it ran into the reef, and then, with sea water rushing into a 70-meter (230-foot) gash in its hull, listed and finally fell onto its side.
Considering all the substances aboard the Concordia, “contamination of the environment, ladies and gentlemen, already occurred” when the cruise liner capsized, Gabrielli told a news conference.
Vessels equipped with machinery to suck out the light fuel oil were in the area, officials told Italian TV.
Earlier on Saturday, crews removed oil-absorbing booms used to prevent environmental damage in case of a leak. Originally white, the booms were grayish.
Divers resumed their search of the wreckage Saturday after data indicated the cruise ship had stabilized in the sea off Tuscany. Italian news reports said that the divers were also trying to locate the captain’s safe, in case it might contain documentation useful to the criminal probe.
The Italian captain, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest for investigation of alleged manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all were evacuated. Schettino insists he helped coordinate the evacuation from Giglio’s docks after leaving the ship when the Concordia lurched to one side.
The search had been suspended Friday after the Concordia shifted, prompting fears the ship could roll off a rocky ledge of sea bed and plunge deeper into the sea. An abrupt shift could also cause a leak in the Concordia’s fuel tanks, polluting the pristine waters around Giglio, part of a seven-island Tuscan archipelago.
Strikes and demonstrations against Greek austerity measures hit the capital Athens on Tuesday, as international debt inspectors returned to decide whether the country’s reforms are strong enough for it to secure a vital bailout.
The officials from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, which are lending money to Greece to keep it from bankruptcy, are expected to press the government for faster cost-cutting reforms.
Greece’s continued access to bailout loans depends not only on delivery on its austerity promises but also on negotiations with private creditors on a bond swap deal aiming to cut its debt by euro100 billion ($127 billion). It needs to get an agreement soon if it is to secure more rescue loans, with a bond repayment of euro14.5 billion due in late March.
Some 10,000 protesters took part in rallies in central Athens over potential pay cuts in the recession-battered private sector. Anti-austerity strikes in the capital disrupted public transport and other services. Journalist unions also launched a 48-hour strike.
Police said a plain-clothed officer from the anti-terrorism division was beaten and seriously injured by a group of some 30 protesters who took his handgun. The rally was otherwise peaceful.
Under government pressure, unions and employers are due to launch talks Wednesday to explore ways of slashing labor costs. Lower-level members of the debt of the debt inspection team started the talks in Athens on Tuesday, with the mission chiefs due Friday.
Meanwhile, Greece saw its borrowing rates ease marginally in a bill auction on Tuesday. Unable to issue long-term debt due to untenably high borrowing interest rates of 33 percent, the country maintains a market presence through regular treasury bill auctions.
The public debt agency said it raised euro1.625 billion ($2.06 billion) in a sale of 13-week treasury bills, an interest rate of 4.64 percent, compared with 4.68 percent in the last such auction in December.
Demand for the bills was 2.90 times the amount on offer, roughly the same as last month.
Banks will be allowed go below minimum liquidity levels set by global regulators during financial crises to avoid cash-flow difficulties.
(Corrects number of electoral votes in next to last paragraph. For more campaign news, see ELECT)
President Barack Obama called yesterday
Labor unions on Wednesday ramped up the pressure on Republican lawmakers to approve a Senate plan that would extend jobless benefits for millions of unemployed Americans.
Congress is deadlocked over how to provide the relief after Republicans in the House of Representatives on Tuesday scuttled a short-term measure that had been approved in the Senate with overwhelming Republican and Democratic support.
Most House Republicans voted against the Senate bill, which would extend by two months long-term jobless benefits and a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans.
“We’ll be hitting them in the media in their home districts,” said labor union umbrella group AFL-CIO spokeswoman Amaya Tune. “We’ll continue to look at what ways we can shame Republicans for this horrible vote,” she said.
Republicans refused to approve the Senate bill, saying they wanted to work on a full-year extension — a plan Democrats support but have failed to broker because the sides disagree on how to cover the costs.
If Congress fails to extend jobless benefits, nearly 700,000 people would lose them by the second week of January and nearly 2.2 million would be cut off by mid-February, according to the Labor Department. Some 13 million Americans are unemployed, of whom nearly 6 million have been without a job for more than a year cash advance loans.
The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor group, and other advocacy groups such as Working America, the Philadelphia Unemployment Project and the National Employment Law Project are gearing up to push Republicans to vote on the two-month deal.
“We are going to challenge those representatives to get back to work and put these fixes in,” said Mark MacKenzie, president of the AFL-CIO’s New Hampshire office.
The National Employment Law Project is mobilizing thousands of its constituents from unemployed Americans to community advocates to call Republican lawmakers.
“This is pressure on leadership first and foremost but really it is on everybody. Get back here and pass the bill,” said Judy Conti, the federal advocacy coordinator for the project.
Other labor organizers are planning a protest outside Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s office in Ohio later this week.
It was unclear how lawmakers would resolve their differences before the December 31 deadline. Democrats have refused to start negotiating a full-year extension until Republicans pass the Senate’s short-term measure. Republicans have proposed cutting long term benefits from 99 weeks to 59.
The president of scandal-battered Olympus on Thursday called business partnerships an option for shoring up the gaping hole that the huge investment losses it hid for years have left in its balance sheet.
Olympus Corp. met its deadline to avoid being removed from the Tokyo Stock Exchange by filing correct earnings for the April-September first half and for the past five fiscal years on Wednesday.
The deception at Olympus, dating back to the 1990s, to hide 117.7 billion yen ($1.5 billion) in investment losses came to light when former President and Chief Executive Michael Woodford blew the whistle, questioning expensive acquisitions and exorbitant fees for financial advice.
Woodford, a 51-year-old Briton and a rare foreigner to lead a major Japanese company, was fired in October after confronting Olympus directors. Woodford, in town this week to meet with investors and other stakeholders to attempt a comeback, is demanding that the entire board, including President Shuichi Takayama, resign.
The battle over who will lead the camera and medical equipment maker _ embroiled in one of Japan’s worst corporate scandals _ could come to a head at the next shareholders’ meeting. Takayama said that might be held in March or April.
“Capital adequacy ratio is a big problem, and we are considering how we can overcome it,” he told reporters at a Tokyo hotel. “We are considering various options, including a capital tie-up and operational or sales tie-ups.”
Olympus appointed three outsiders to a new reform committee to beef up governance and present a plan to shareholders. The committee is in addition to an earlier panel announced by Takayama, which is investigating the scandal.
The company’s loss of 32.3 billion yen ($414 million) for the first half of the fiscal year, through September, a reversal from a 3.8 billion yen profit the same period a year earlier, was mainly from the economic downturn and losses from Thai flooding, Takayama said.
Woodford said he was opposed to tie-ups and had better ways to get capital for Olympus to shore up its hobbled balance sheet. He promised not to break it up or seek a partner, which may reduce its independence.
“I am very fearful of the current management working with parties to look for strategic alliances, which would mean in the end the loss of our independence,” he told The Associated Press on Thursday.
“Because of the strong cash flows and profitability of the medical business, we could raise funding from additional sources without losing our sovereignty,” he said at a Tokyo hotel.
Olympus should focus on core businesses _ medicine, microscopes, industrial products and cameras and other consumer products _ and stop acquiring unrelated companies, as it had in recent years, he said.
Woodford said he was talking with investors and many “influential people in the Japanese establishment” to line up support for his return at the top. He declined to give specifics, saying the discussions were “delicate.”
It is still unclear if Woodford will manage a comeback. Some people, such as former board member Koji Miyata, see him as a hero and have begun an online campaign to bring back Woodford.
The scandal has prompted soul-searching in Japan Inc. on living up to global standards in governance.
Some experts say laws need to be updated, corporate boards need more outside members and transparency needs to be strengthened. Ruling and opposition legislators met with Woodford earlier this week to hear his ideas about better corporate practices.
No one has been charged in the scandal. But Olympus management has said several top company men were involved in the scheme and has promised to investigate 70 officials, including former and current executives and auditors, to pursue possible criminal charges.
A third-party panel set up by Olympus, including a former Japanese Supreme Court judge, released the findings of an investigation earlier this month, which said top executives who were “rotten to the core” had orchestrated the accounting cover-up spanning three decades.
The fees for financial advice and overvalued acquisitions were part of an elaborate deception utilizing overseas banks and several funds to keep the massive losses off the company’s books, according to Olympus.
Japanese magazine Facta was first to report the dubious money.
Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who was behind Woodford’s appointment as chief executive and later his firing, has since resigned as chairman. He is among several executives suspected of knowing about the scheme.
The Toronto stock market was set for a higher open Tuesday as crude oil prices rose and traders took in positive data from Europe
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