Swiss central bank interim Chairman Thomas Jordan
Get instant health insurance quotes, compare medical insurance plans, and find affordable health insurance to fit your health care coverage needs.
Indonesia
Get instant affordable car insurance rates from multiple carriers online.
Consumer prices in the euro zone fell more than previously expected in December, the start of a retreat from a November peak that should give the European Central Bank more room to cut interest rates as the economy heads for recession.
Inflation in the 17 countries sharing the euro was 2.7 percent in December on an annual basis, revised down from an earlier estimate of 2.8 percent for the month, the European Union’s statistics office Eurostat said.
“The pressure is abating although the risks from energy are still there,” said Fabio Fois, an economist at Barclay’s Capital. “We think the ECB could bring rates as low as 0.5 percent in March,” he said.
The bank made two 25 basis points cuts after Mario Draghi took over as president in November before holding fire this month.
Many economists expect it to take rates below 1 percent for the first time ever in the coming months but comments by Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny published on Tuesday hinted that the bank was in no hurry to move again.
“We are all agreed that now the point is to allow these measures to take full effect. Only then will we take further decisions,” he told the Wall Street Journal’s German website.
“For the ECB ‘We never precommit’ always applies, but there are no plans whatsoever at the moment.”
Reuters’ latest polling of some 66 economists before the ECB met earlier this month suggested the bank will cut interest rates to a new record low of 0.75 percent in February or March no fax payday loans.
Economists had expected euro zone inflation to remain at 2.8 percent in December.
IRAN EFFECT
Stripping out volatile energy prices, the main driver behind a 3 percent peak in the headline number in September, October and November, inflation was 1.9 percent.
Without energy and food, it was 1.6 percent.
That sits better with the ECB’s target of below, but close to 2 percent, which the Frankfurt-based bank judges to be right for price stability and a healthy economy.
The euro zone’s economy, however, is anything but. The bloc’s gross domestic product probably contracted in the fourth quarter of 2011 and is expected to do so again in the first quarter of 2012 - showing it has fallen into a recession.
The weakening economy and rising unemployment across the bloc are cutting demand for goods and with it pressuring retailers to reduce prices. That has offset continuing high prices for crude oil globally due to concerns about a supply disruption in Iran.
Oil futures rose on Monday after Saudi Arabia told its Gulf Arab neighbors not to make up any shortfall caused by an embargo on Iranian crude oil exports.
In the euro zone in December, fuels for transport, heating oil, gas and electricity had the biggest impact on inflation in December. Energy inflation was a massive 9.7 percent in the month, compared to December 2010, Eurostat said.
For the first time, Indian prosecutors are taking Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other networking sites to court for refusing to remove material considered insulting to Indian leaders and major religious figures.
Government officials are upset about material insulting to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and major religious figures. Some illustrations have shown Singh and Gandhi in compromising positions and pigs running through Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.
On Friday, the federal government told a New Delhi court that there was sufficient material to proceed against 21 social networking sites for offenses of “promoting enmity between classes and causing prejudice to national integration,” according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
The cases, which PTI said name companies including Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft, represent a new risk of doing business in the nation of more than 1 billion people, which is looking to technology to boost its economy and standard of living. The dispute highlights India’s difficulty in balancing the Internet culture of freewheeling discourse with its homegrown religious and political sensitivities.
Convictions could bring fines and up to five years’ imprisonment, through prosecutors have named only the companies involved rather than any executives. Metropolitan Magistrate Sudesh Kumar on Friday asked India’s External Affairs Ministry to serve summons to officials of foreign-based companies for court appearances March 13 my credit score.
In December, Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal said he had spoken repeatedly with officials from major Internet companies over the past three months and asked them to come up with a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the Internet. He said that the companies told him there was nothing they could do.
There was no immediate comment by the networking sites after Friday’s court proceedings.
However, Facebook said last month that it would remove content that “is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity.”
Google said in a December statement that it removes content that violates local law and its own standards.
“But when content is legal and doesn’t violate our policies, we won’t remove it just because it’s controversial, as we believe that people’s differing views, so long as they’re legal, should be respected and protected,” Google said in a statement in December.
Sibal had shown reporters Web illustrations showing Singh and Gandhi in compromising positions as well as a site showing pigs running through Islam’s holy city of Mecca, a clear insult to Muslims.
Sibal said the Internet companies had told him that they were applying U.S. standards to their sites, and he objected, saying that they needed to be sensitive to Indian sensibilities.
The editor of a British tabloid has outlined a culture where reporters exaggerate headlines, dramatize stories, and occasionally go too far.
Daily Star Editor Dawn Neesom was speaking at the judge-led inquiry into British media ethics set up in the wake of the phone hacking scandal centered on the now-defunct News of the World tabloid
She shied away from claims that her paper played fast and loose with the truth, but acknowledged that the paper’s mission was “to put a smile on people’s faces payday loans.”
Neesom said Thursday: “Occasionally, I admit, we do cross lines. But we do have standards.”
The Star is owned by media magnate Richard Desmond, who is also to give evidence at the inquiry.
Desmond also publishes the Daily Express and celebrity magazines OK! and New!
The French and German leaders are stressing that they view boosting economic growth a priority as they push through with efforts to stem the eurozone’s debt crisis.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that Europe should compare countries’ labor market practices and learn from the best; and they called for European funds to be used in a way that create jobs.
Both leaders also said they’re prepared to consider speeding up payments into the 17-nation eurozone’s permanent rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, in an effort to bolster confidence.
They’re calling for a quick conclusion to negotiations on a new treaty enshrining fiscal rules.
Still, Merkel says that resolving the crisis will be “step-by-step … there’s no single-dimension solution.”
The addition of 200,000 new jobs in December shows that the economy is strengthening, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said on Friday.
“We have seen a steady firming up of our economy” in recent months with two million jobs created in the private sector of the past year, she told CNBC television.
“Now we are seeing a better trajectory, we are moving in the right direction.”
“In the last few months, on the whole I have seen good incremental increase in the private sector jobs, so on that side of the factor I would say, ‘Hey, that is not a bad thing at all,” she said free business cards.
But she urged the extension of the payroll tax cut and further measures to support continued improvement in the jobs market.
Egypt’s military sought to isolate pro-democracy activists protesting against their rule, depicting them as conspirators and vandals, as troops and protesters clashed for a third straight day, pelting each other with stones near parliament in the heart of the capital.
At least 10 protesters have been killed and 441 others wounded in the three days of violence, according to the Health Ministry. Activists say most of the 10 fatalities died of gunshot wounds.
The fighting, sparked when troops sought to break up a sit-in outside the Cabinet headquarters, has seen a particularly heavy hand by the military. Military police have been shown in video footage dragging women by the hair, even stripping the shirt off one veiled woman, and ferociously beating, kicking and stomping on protesters cowering on the ground.
Still, the protesters’ numbers have remained smaller than earlier rallies _ suggesting even anger over the disturbing images was not drawing the broader Egyptian public into a confrontation with the military, which activists behind the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic regime 10 months ago accuse of mismanaging the transition period and committing human rights abuses.
In a statement posted on its Facebook page, the ruling military council on Sunday called the clashes part of a “conspiracy” against Egypt. It said its forces had the right to defend the “property of the great people of Egypt.”
Seeking to depict the protesters as hooligans _ and apparently to counter the widely published images of protesters being beaten _ it also posted on the page footage of young men throwing rocks at a basement window of the parliament building and of at least one man trying to set the place ablaze.
The ruling generals have taken advantage of the growing frustration of many Egyptians over worsening economic hardships and tenuous security, blaming demonstrations, strikes and sit-ins for their predicament. The tactic, coupled with the military’s efforts to stain the reputation of the youth groups behind Mubarak’s ouster, appears to have worked.
The military has been using the state media and loyal private TV stations to project an image of itself as the protector of the nation and filling its public statements with patriotism and grave warnings of a dire future if political turmoil persisted.
Protest leaders increasingly complain that they feel isolated in a society that has grown more concerned with making ends meet than political rights. Many Egyptians see the ongoing, multistage parliamentary elections as a path to stability and an end to military rule.
“The military council uses every opportunity to show itself as the land’s strongest institution,” said Mohammed Abbas, an activist who defected from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest and best organized political group, to side with youth groups more active in protests. “We are making it easier for the generals by our divisions and isolation.”
In Sunday’s clash, protesters and troops battled on two main streets off of central Tahrir Square, trading volleys of stones and firebombs around barriers that the military set up to block the avenues.
One of the streets is site of a research center set up during the three-year occupation of Egypt by France in the late 18th century. The building was almost completely gutted by a fire which broke out during the height of the clashes on Saturday, when troops on its roof and on other nearby rooftops hurled rocks down on protesters below.
Protesters, who blame the fire on the troops, have been trying to salvage valuable books and documents from the center, whose two-story building is now in danger of collapsing after its roof caved in.
The deepening hostility between the ruling military council and the protest leaders is in sharp contrast to the days of the popular uprising against Mubarak in January and February when army troops ordered out on the streets to take over from the hated police were given a warm welcome by hundreds of thousands of protesters in Cairo and elsewhere. The military at the time said it wouldn’t fire on protesters.
When the military stepped into power after Mubarak’s Feb. 11 resignation, it was largely embraced by the public.
Sunday’s renewed violence was also taking place as unofficial results from a second round of voting in parliamentary elections showed Islamist parties, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, continuing their dominance at the polls. Liberal and left leaning parties, many of which sympathetic to the revolutionaries, have been trounced at the ballots.
The third and final round of voting is slated for next month in nine of Egypt’s 27 provinces.
The Islamists have been staying clear of the recent violence, fearing that they could jeopardize their electoral gains by taking part in the protests. Their stance has prompted many activists to accuse them of political opportunism.
The clashes began early Friday when one of several hundred peaceful protesters staging a sit-in outside the Cabinet offices near parliament was detained and beaten by troops. The protesters began their sit-in three weeks ago to demand that the nation’s ruling military immediately step down and hand over power to a civilian administration.
Activists have been trying to drum up public sympathy for their cause by flooding social network sites with photos and video from the troops’ brutal assaults he past two days.
“Liars,” proclaimed a red headline on the front page of the independent Al-Tahrir newspaper, referring to repeated denials by the military council and military-appointed Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri that no force or live ammunition were used against the protesters. With the headline, the paper ran a photo of the woman protester who was half-stripped by attacking soldiers. Other widely circulating footage shows an army officer running toward protesters while firing a pistol at them, though it is not clear from the footage whether he was using live ammunition.
Deep into overtime, negotiators from 194 nations worked straight through a second night, parsing drafts and seeking compromises to map out the future pathway to fight global warming.
Delegates, working on little sleep, huddled with allies to prepare for a decisive meeting later Saturday, when it will become clear whether the diverse and long-bickering parties can come together on a plan to extend and broaden the global campaign to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
“We think it’s important not to give up now. We have come a long way,” said a weary Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner on climate issues, speaking more than 12 hours after the two-week conference had been scheduled to close Friday evening.
But she was concerned that the process was taking so long that ministers would leave before decisions could be adopted, costing hard-won momentum. “It would really really be a pity if we lose that now,” she told The Associated Press.
Small island countries and the world’s poorest nations lined up behind an EU plan to begin talks on a future agreement that would come into effect no later than 2020.
As negotiations progressed, the United States and India eased objections to compromise texts, but China remained a strong holdout, EU officials said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the continuing talks.
Under discussion was an extension of binding pledges by the EU and a few other industrial countries to cut carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Those commitments expire next year.
The EU, the primary bloc bound by commitments under the 1997 protocol, conditioned an extension on starting new talks on an accord to succeed Kyoto. The talks would conclude by 2015, allowing five years for it to be ratified by national legislatures. The plan insists the new agreement equally oblige all countries _ not just the few industrial powers _ to abide by emission targets.
Developing countries are adamant that the Kyoto commitments continue since it is the only agreement that compels any nation to reduce emissions. Industrial countries say the document is deeply flawed because it makes no demands on heavily polluting developing countries. It was for that reason that the U.S. never ratified it.
Host country South Africa organized the final stages of negotiations into “indabas,” a Zulu-language word meaning important meetings that carry the weight of a rich African culture.
At the indaba, the chief delegate from fewer than 30 countries, each with one aide, sat around an oblong table to thrash over text. Dozens of delegates were allowed to stand and observe from the periphery of the room but not to participate.
After the first meeting that ran overnight into Friday morning, conference president Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who is South Africa’s foreign minister, drafted an eight-point compromise on the key question of the legal form of a post-2020 regime. The wording would imply how tightly countries would be held accountable for their emissions.
But the text was too soft for the Europeans and for the most vulnerable countries threatened by rising oceans, more frequent droughts and fiercer storms.
With passion rarely heard in a negotiating room, countries like Barbados pleaded for language instructing all parties to dig deeper into their carbon emissions and to speed up the process, arguing that the survival of their countries and millions of climate-stressed people were at risk.
Nkoana-Mashabane drafted new text after midnight Saturday that largely answered those criticisms. The U.S. told the indaba it could live with the language, but the reactions of China and India were not clear.
House Republican leaders previewed legislation to extend Social Security payroll tax cuts and long-term unemployment benefits at a meeting of the rank and file Thursday, aiming for a vote next week.
One official who attended the closed-door meeting said lawmakers responded particularly favorably to a provision that would assure construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, despite a veto threat from President Barack Obama.
The measure has been in the drafting stage for more than a week as House Speaker John Boehner and other leaders try to coax lawmakers to support a payroll tax cut extension that critics say has not contributed to job creation.
Boehner said Thursday he believed he had enough support to start pushing a payroll tax cut through the House next week.
In addition to extending the Social Security payroll tax cut and benefits for the long-term unemployed, the measure has been broadened to avert a threatened 27 percent cut in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients. All three items carry a Dec. 31 deadline for action.
The House measure varies on several points from legislation that Obama and congressional Democrats want, but the president seemed eager on Wednesday to draw a line at items he described as extraneous.
His veto threat was specifically linked to any requirement for the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project that he recently put on hold until after the 2012 election.
“Efforts to tie a whole bunch of other issues to what’s something that they should be doing anyway will be rejected by me,” he said.
Obama did not say which other items he had in mind.
Republicans said they welcomed a fight over the pipeline, which they have described as shovel-ready and promising 20,000 new jobs at a time of high unemployment.
“We are working on a bill to stop a tax hike, protect Social Security, reform unemploym
ent insurance and create jobs,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. “If President Obama threatens to veto it over a provision that creates American jobs, that’s a fight we’re ready to have.”
Obama would lower the 6.2 percent payroll tax that workers normally pay to 3.1 percent next year, part of his effort to breathe life into the country’s ailing job market. He also wants to trim the payroll taxes that employers pay to give them an incentive to hire people.
The House bill would drop next year’s payroll tax to 4.2 percent, the same as this year’s level, with no tax breaks for companies. It would be financed by extending the current pay freeze on federal workers through 2015 and a host of smaller savings, including charging higher Medicare premiums to higher-earning seniors.
A 2 percentage point reduction in the payroll tax means a tax cut of $1,000 to an earner making $50,000 a year.
A similar battle is brewing in the Democratic-run Senate, where leaders plan a symbolic vote as early as Thursday that is designed for political purposes.
That Democratic-written bill would lower next year’s payroll tax to 3.1 percent. It is financed chiefly by a 1.9 percent surtax on income over $1 million, a proposal that is almost universally opposed by Republicans, who say it would discourage business owners from hiring.
GOP senators are expected to easily kill the measure, but Democrats hope the roll call will produce fodder for campaign ads against Republicans.
Asked Wednesday by reporters whether he might eventually accept spending cuts to pay for the bill, Reid showed some flexibility.
“We’re ruling nothing out, OK?” Reid said, other than budget cuts to federal agencies, which have already been sliced twice this year.