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Obama requests $1.2T increase in debt ceiling

WASHINGTON – President Obama is kicking off 2012 with an uncomfortable but inevitable request -- for Congress to permit another $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. With the U.S. debt at about $15.2 trillion, it is now estimated to be larger than America's entire economic output. The proposed increase would boost the debt ceiling to $16.4 trillion, which should be enough to allow the government to keep borrowing until the end of 2012, or just after the presidential election. The request was expected. It was the third and final such request the president was allowed under a deal the White House reached with lawmakers in August to prevent a government default. But Republicans surely will use the request to criticize the president over his debt and deficit record in an election year. "Washington's mounting...

MF Global May Not Be Able to Pay Clients Back: Trustee

Former customers of MF Global Holdings' collapsed brokerage were disappointed to hear on Thursday that the trustee hunting for funds missing from their accounts has no immediate plans to transfer more money to them. More than 250 customers met in New York on Thursday with James Giddens, the trustee in charge of liquidating the brokerage and returning money to customers, for an update on the status of his investigation into what may be $1.2 billion missing from their accounts. Giddens and his team of lawyers said they may not be able to make...

China to slow sharply: Citigroup's Richard Cookson

CHINA'S economy is likely to slow sharply this year as the country's recent growth has been unstable and driven by credit and property bubbles, a senior Citigroup private bank executive said yesterday. "Bubbles don't end well," global chief investment officer Richard Cookson of Citi Private Bank said at a briefing in Singapore. He said China's economic rise has been fuelled by a "phenomenal" growth in credit. The bank calculates as a percentage of gross domestic product, total outstanding credit in China has risen by 60 percentage points in the last...

Gross: Global Economy, Markets at Risk in 2012

Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said the global economy and financial markets are at risk in 2012, boosting the appeal of U.S. Treasuries. “Banks should be eight-to-one or nine-to-one in terms of leverage,” Gross said in a Bloomberg Television interview with Trish Regan. “Right now, the system is an 18-times to 20-times overleveraged system,..

David Wolman: A universal currency could end the financial crisis

Despite all the evidence that it could never work (we're looking at you, euro zone), the idea of a universal currency just won't die. Thanks to the debt crisis, some Greek officials are contemplating dumping the common currency for the drachma. Meanwhile, Italy and Spain teeter. A decade after the shared currency was heralded as a 21st-century tool for peace and prosperity, it turns out that...

US election 2012: Rick Santorum's relatives were Communists

But Mr Santorum has a skeleton in the family closet – his Italian relatives are from a long line of Communists and Socialists. The presidential hopeful's family, who come from the picturesque town of Riva del Garda, on the shores of Lake Garda in northern Italy, have been left aghast by some of his stances on gay marriage, welfare and immigration. "There are Santorums who would be turning in their graves," one cousin told Oggi ('Today'), a weekly news magazine that tracked down the Italian branch of the Santorum family. The Santorums of Italy were...

Syria: Nato 'planning direct military intervention', Russia claims

The head of Russia's security council said he had seen intelligence indicating plans for a military incursion were well advanced. "We are getting information that Nato members and some Persian Gulf States, operating according to the Libya scenario, intend to move from indirect intervention in Syrian affairs to direct military intervention," Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Kremlin security body said in an interview published in Russia's Kommersant newspaper on Thursday. "This time it is true that the main strikes forces will not be provided by...

Israel raises security after Iran scientist killed

The defense establishment is tightening security over Israeli delegations overseas out of concern that Iran will avenge the assassination on Wednesday of a senior nuclear scientist and ahead of the anniversary of the killing of Hezbollah’s military chief. Security officials said that meetings were being held regularly by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the Counterterrorism Bureau to assess the threat and make adjustments to the security of delegations and senior officials overseas. On Thursday, a hardline Iranian newspaper...

U.S. boosts its military presence in Persian Gulf

Reporting from Washington— The Pentagon quietly shifted combat troops and warships to the Middle East after the top American commander in the region warned that he needed additional forces to deal with Iran and other potential threats, U.S. officials said. Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis, who heads U.S. Central Command, won White House approval for the deployments late last year after talks with the government in Baghdad broke down over keeping U.S. troops in Iraq, but the extent of the Pentagon moves is only now becoming clear. Officials said...

Another ATF weapons operation comes under scrutiny

Reporting from Washington— In the late summer of 2010, the ATF agent leading the failed Fast and Furious gun-smuggling operation in Arizona flew to Mexico City to help coordinate cross-border investigations of U.S. weapons used by Mexican drug cartels. Hope A. MacAllister wanted access to police and military vaults for American weapons recovered by Mexican authorities in raids and at crime scenes. She especially was interested in firearms from another ATF investigation, code-named White Gun, that she was running. Now members of...

Uganda's Gruesome 'General of God' - US Advisers Raise Hopes in Hunt for Rebel Warlord

He's like a phantom. Of course, thousands have seen him, tens of thousands have died because of him, and hundreds of thousands have suffered thanks to him and his supporters. But the people on his trail haven't been able to catch him. The man is 49-year-old Joseph Kony, the self-appointed general of God, guerrilla fighter and mass murderer. For more than two decades, he and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have terrorized people living in an area of roughly 100,000 square kilometers (40,000 square miles) of jungle in Uganda,..

Military Networks ‘Not Defensible,’ Says General Who Defends Them

The Defense Department’s networks, as currently configured, are “not defensible,” according to the general in charge of protecting those networks. And if there’s a major electronic attack on this country, there may not be much he and his men can legally do to stop it in advance. Gen. Keith Alexander, head of both the secretive National Security Agency and the military’s new U.S. Cyber Command, has tens of thousands of hackers, cryptologists, and system administrators serving under him. But at the moment, their ability to protect the Defense...

Russian spacecraft to crash to Earth on Sunday

The minibus-sized Russian craft has been in a low orbit around Earth since losing contact with engineers shortly after its launch on November 8. It had been intended to explore Phobos, one of Mars's two moons, but became stranded while still orbiting Earth and attempts to put it back on its original course failed. Most of its mass is expected to burn up as the craft re-enters the atmosphere but 20 or 30 pieces of small debris collectively weighing about 200kg could reach Earth. In a normal re-entry about 20 per cent of the space junk's mass would be likely...

'Internet addiction' linked to brain differences

The brains of "internet-addicted" teenagers may differ significantly from those of non-addicted teens, a small study suggests. MRI scans of their brains appear to show damage to white matter as well as the fibres that connect it, suggesting that heavy internet use, like alcoholism and gambling, may be linked with cognitive impairment. Internet addiction, though not officially recognized by health-care authorities, has been defined in several studies as an impulse-control disorder. It has been characterized by an overwhelming desire to stay online...

Russian Quasicrystals Might Come From Space

An unusual type of rock known as a quasicrystal was found deep in the Russian mountains in 2010. Now scientists think it may have come from outer space, and dates back to the earliest days of our solar system. If you followed news of last year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, you heard about quasicrystals, an unusual type of material first described in the 1980s by Israeli scientist Daniel Schechtman. A quasicrystal has a strange atomic structure that gives it unique properties, falling somewhere between a true crystal and glass. ANALYSIS: Farmer...

India’s UID scheme - Reform by numbers

FOR a country that fails to meet its most basic challenges—feeding the hungry, piping clean water, fixing roads—it seems incredible that India is rapidly building the world’s biggest, most advanced, biometric database of personal identities. Launched in 2010, under a genial ex-tycoon, Nandan Nilekani, the “unique identity” (UID) scheme is supposed to roll out trustworthy, unduplicated identity numbers based on biometric and other data. Any resident who wants one can volunteer. The scheme combines work by central and state...

Lost in Saint Lucia: Where the outside comes inside and the volcanoes are drive-in

Admittedly, the idea of visiting the world’s only drive-in volcano appeared to have hazardous potential. As the refreshing aroma of the rainforest melts away, it is replaced by the none-too-pleasant smell of sulphur, an odour similar to that of rotten eggs, and one that could be detected for miles. But we soon learn that it is nothing to turn our noses up at - the locals believe that if the smell and steam from Saint Lucia’s Sulphur Springs stop, the dormant volcano will erupt. Luckily, the only pressure that builds up during my visit to this most...

Anchorage copes with another big snowfall

Valdez and Cordova aren't the only ones getting slammed with record-setting snow this winter. Add Alaska's largest city to that list. A day of heavy snowfall Thursday in Anchorage put the city at a total of 88.8 inches for the winter, as of 3 p.m. That's a record at this point in the winter, the National Weather Service says. Another 2 to 4 inches was expected Thursday night, followed by clear skies and cold temperatures for several days, forecasters said. The snow forced the Anchorage School District to cancel participation in all out-of-district sports...

Radioactive Metal Tissue Box Holders Pulled from NY Stores

Health officials said they've removed a dozen metal box tissue holders containing small amounts of radioactive material from four Bed, Bath and Beyond stores in New York. None of the boxes were sold to the public, said the company. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission notified state health officials Tuesday that a shipment of metal box tissue holders to four Bed, Bath and...