Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney arrived at the White House on Thursday for his lunch with President Obama, stepping out of the passenger side of a dark Lincoln Navigator and into the West Wing just before 12:30 p.m.
Romney, wearing a dark suit and tie, opened his own door and entered alone, according to pictures taken by photographers at the scene. He and Obama were scheduled to have a private, one-on-one lunch in the president’s private dining room.
MADRID: Spain is engulfed in a long recession with little hope of a quick recovery and its towering unemployment rate will soar further, the OECD club of industrialised nations said Thursday.
Spain must quickly fix its banks to avert the "substantial risk" of being cut off from external financing and plunging into an even deeper recession, the body warned in a report.
"The economy is undergoing a prolonged recession," the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report, citing the 2008 global financial crisis and the bust of a Spanish housing boom.
"The prospect of an immediate recovery remains remote," the OECD said, noting that people and businesses were struggling to repay loans and the nation was stuck in a debt crisis.
OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria called for Spain's European partners to make a declaration that they would support Madrid in any bailout request, though it has staunchly resisted making such a call over recent months.
Addressing Spain's 25-percent unemployment rate, the OECD urged drastic labour market changes, on top of much-protested reforms already taken by conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy that make it cheaper to fire staff.
It called for cutting compensation for unfair dismissal, considering abolishing an extension of industry-wide collective bargaining, and more training and job-search help for the young.
Gurria highlighted the level of youth unemployment -- more than 52 percent among 16 to 24-year-olds. The OECD forecast the overall jobless rate would reach 26.9 percent in 2013.
Spain's economy has been shrinking for 15 months, with output slumping 0.3 percent in the third quarter, according to official data, and the recession is expected to last right through 2013.
Spain's "immediate policy priority" is to restore trust in banks by fixing weak balance sheets, making orderly resolution of non-viable banks, and shifting bad assets into a new bad bank, the body said.
"In the short-term, there is a substantial risk that the economy, notably the banks, will remain cut off from external funding," it said.
"This would deepen the recession, especially if measures taken at the European level provide ineffective in easing tensions in interbank and sovereign markets."
Spain's banks are struggling with loans turned sour after the property crash.
Eurozone powers agreed in June to extend to Madrid an emergency rescue loan of up to 100 billion euros ($129 billion) to fix their balance sheets and reform the sector.
Now, Spain also is pondering whether to apply to the eurozone's bailout fund for a sovereign rescue, which would open the way for the European Central Bank to buy Spanish bonds and curb Madrid's borrowing costs.
"The thing we need now is to ask that Spain's European partners, given its performance, make an unequivocal declaration that in case Spain asks for support, that this support will be given," Gurria told a news conference.
The ECB's offer to make unlimited purchases of stricken states' bonds if they accept strict conditions has brought down Spain's interest rates even before Madrid decides whether to seek the help.
On another sensitive reform that has fuelled mass street protests, the OECD urged the Spanish government to broaden a hike in sales tax to more goods and services and increase tax on fuel.
The Madrid stock exchange strengthened Thursday, with the IBEX-35 index closing 1.74 higher as tensions eased over Greek debt. Banks' shares picked up after sharp losses Wednesday linked to their restructuring.
-AFP/ac
Incessant rains made way for heavy snowfall in Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, Yamnotri, Auli and Harsil in Garhwal and Dharchula and Munsyari in Kumaon.
Rains lashed Dehradun in the afternoon making the day temperature drop sharply from yesterday's 24 degrees Celsius to 20 degrees Celsius, the MeT department said.
The minimum temperature recorded in the capital today was 7.6 degrees Celsius, a notch below yesterday's 8.6, it said.
In the Tibetan mountains, a fungus attaches itself to a moth larva burrowed in the soil. It infects and slowly consumes its host from within, taking over its brain and making the young caterpillar move to a position from which the fungus can grow and spore again. (Learn about other fungi that invade brains.)
Sounds like something out of science fiction, right? But for ailing Chinese consumers and nomadic Tibetan harvesters, the parasite called cordyceps means hope—and big money. Chinese markets sell the "golden worm," or "Tibetan mushroom"—thought to cure everything from cancer to asthma to erectile dysfunction—for up to $50,000 per pound. Patients, following traditional medicinal practices, brew the fungal-infected caterpillar in tea or chew it raw.
Now the folk medicine is getting scientific backing. A new study published in the journal RNA finds that cordycepin, a chemical derived from the caterpillar fungus, has anti-inflammatory properties.
"Inflammation is normally a beneficial response to a wound or infection, but in diseases like asthma it happens too fast and to too high of an extent," said study co-author Cornelia H. de Moor of the University of Nottingham. "When cordycepin is present, it inhibits that response strongly."
And it does so in a way not previously seen: at the mRNA stage, where it inhibits polyadenylation. That means it stops swelling at the genetic cellular level—a novel anti-inflammatory approach that could lead to new drugs for cancer, asthma, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and cardiovascular-disease patients who don't respond well to current medications.
From Worm to Pill
But such new drugs may be a long way off. The science of parasitic fungi is still in its early stages, and no medicine currently available utilizes cordycepin as an anti-inflammatory. The only way a patient could gain its benefits would be by consuming wild-harvested mushrooms.
De Moor cautions against this practice. "I can't recommend taking wild-harvested medications," she says. "Each sample could have a completely different dose, and there are mushrooms where [taking] a single bite will kill you."
Today 96 percent of the world's caterpillar-fungus harvest comes from the high Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan range. Fungi from this region belong to the subspecies Ophiocordyceps sinensis, known locally as yartsa gunbu ("summer grass, winter worm"). While highly valued in Chinese traditional medicine, these fungi have relatively low levels of cordycepin. What's more, they grow only at elevations of 10,000 to 16,500 feet (3,000 to 5,000 meters) and cannot be farmed. All of which makes yartsa gunbu costly for Chinese consumers: A single fungal-infected caterpillar can fetch $30.
Brave New Worm
Luckily for researchers, and for potential consumers, another rare species of caterpillar fungus, Cordyceps militaris, is capable of being farmed—and even cultivated to yield much higher levels of cordycepin.
De Moor says that's not likely to discourage Tibetan harvesters, many of whom make a year's salary in just weeks by finding and selling yartsa gunbu. Scientific proof of cordycepin's efficacy will only increase demand for the fungus, which could prove dangerous. "With cultivation we have a level of quality control that's missing in the wild," says de Moor.
She adds: "There is definitely some truth somewhere in certain herbal medicinal traditions, if you look hard enough. But ancient healers probably wouldn't notice a 10 percent mortality rate resulting from herbal remedies. In the scientific world, that's completely unacceptable."
If you want to be safe, she adds, "wait for the medicine."
One of David Petraeus' closest friends says the former CIA director admitted that he "screwed up royally" by having an affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell.
Retired Brigadier Gen. James Shelton has been friends with Petraeus for more than three decades and reached to out to him after he resigned from the CIA. Shelton told ABC News that the former four-star general wrote him a letter recently confessing to the affair.
Petraeus, 60, writes in the letter, "Team Petraeus will survive…. though [I] have obviously created enormous difficulty for us," according to Shelton.
A former spokesman for Petraeus told ABC News that fury was an inadequate description for Holly Petraeus after learning her husband of 38 years had an affair.
But in the letter, Petraeus writes that his wife is "…once again demonstrating how incredibly fortunate I was to marry her."
Shelton said he has shocked when news of the affair broke. Shelton says he has never met Broadwell but talked to her on the phone as she worked on the Petraeus biography, "All In." Broadwell thanked Shelton in the book's acknowledgments as "being wonderfully helpful."
Shelton says he found Broadwell engaging.
"I don't think she wove a web around Dave and dragged him in, I don't think that at all. I think it was mutual," Shelton told ABC News.
The disgraced general also stuck by his decision to step down as head of the CIA, writing, "I paid the price (appropriately) and I sought to do the right thing, at the end of the day."
Neither Broadwell nor Petraeus would comment when ABC News tried to reach them overnight.
However, there are many in Washington who now wonder if Shelton's talking about this letter is the beginning of a carefully choreographed campaign by Petraeus to rehabilitate his image.
Shelton says while he was disappointed in Petraeus' actions, he thinks it was a one-time mistake.
"I believe that Dave Petraeus was that kind of guy. He wasn't looking for it, it happened," he said.
While it is unclear who may have initiated the affair, what is clear is the scope of their relationship. An FBI investigation has uncovered hundreds if not thousands of emails exchanged between the two.
The 40-year-old author was stripped of her military security clearance after a federal probe alleged she was storing classified military material at her home.
The FBI found classified material on a computer voluntarily handed over by Broadwell earlier in the investigation.
Prosecutors will now have to determine how important the classified material is before making a final decision on how to proceed. Authorities could decide to seek disciplinary action against her rather than pursue charges.
Since announcing his resignation from the CIA last month, Petraeus has kept a low profile only appearing in closed door hearings before the House and Senate intelligence committees to testify about what he learned first-hand about the Sept. 11 attack in the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
ABC News' Mosheh Gains contributed to this report.
President Obama urged Americans on Wednesday to pressure Congress to extend an income tax freeze for the middle class, warning that failure to agree on such a measure could cost families more than $2,000 next year, harm job growth and “drag our economy down.”
Speaking with 15 middle-class Americans standing behind him, Obama called on people to use a new Twitter hashtag, #my2k, and tell Congress what the loss of $2,000 would mean to them by tweeting, calling or e-mailing lawmakers or posting messages on their Facebook pages.
ROME: Italian and Chinese firms signed deals worth $1.27 billion (984 million euros) on Wednesday in Rome at talks attended by Prime Minister Mario Monti and senior Chinese politburo member Jia Qinglin.
The six deals included agreements between Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and Italian Internet provider Fastweb for $557 million and between China Everbright and Chinese-owned Italy-based yacht company Ferretti for $480 million.
"These agreements show that many sectors of the Italian economy can attract foreign investors, raising the growth potential of the country and expanding its international exchanges," Monti was quoted as saying in a statement.
Monti has sought to raise Italy's status among international investors.
After a visit to Qatar earlier this month, Italy and Qatar set up a two-billion-euro joint venture for making investments in Italy.
The two countries are set to sign another deal soon for a one-billion-euro fund for small and medium-sized enterprises, the government said.
-AFP/ac
Also read: Statutory warning: Old laws hurt industry
Some of these 'legal provisions' were actually born out of the need of our erstwhile British rulers to keep us in line -- but have, incredibly enough, not been struck off the statute books because it now suits our Indian rulers to keep them handy. More often than not, they are 'enforced' to extract bribes, scare off political rivals, or 'settle scores'. Even business leaders who are known for their high ethical standards privately tell TOI that their companies at times have no choice but to 'take care' of the inspectors and other government officers who come calling. "Some of the rules and regulations they cite are unbelievably stupid and archaic, and they come in the way of doing business honestly. We all know why they do it. Apart from the harassment we are subjected to, it increases our cost of doing business," said a prominent and universally well-regarded industrialist.
If we pride ourselves as a liberal democracy, such laws must go.
This newspaper has often written against them, as and when they have been used to harass innocent people. Over the next few weeks, we will run a series titled 'OUTLAWS' on laws that have no place in a law-abiding society. Please post your comments and suggestions here.
Astronomers have witnessed a record-breaking blast of gas and dust flowing out of a monster black hole more than 11.5 billion light years away.
The supermassive gravity well, with a mass of one to three billion suns, lurks at the core of a quasar—a class of extremely bright and energetic galaxies—dubbed SDSS J1106 1939. (See "Black Hole Blasts Superheated Early Universe.")
"We discovered the most energetic quasar outflow ever seen, at least five times more powerful than any that have been observed to date," said Nahum Arav, an astronomer at Virginia Tech and co-author of the study to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Using the powerful telescopes of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, Arav and his team were able to clock the speed and other properties of the outflow.
Belching out material as much as 400 times the weight of our sun every year, the blast is located nearly a thousand light years from the quasar and has a velocity of roughly 18 million miles (29 million kilometers) per hour.
"We were hoping to see something like this, but the sheer power of this outflow still took us by surprise," said Arav.
The central black hole in this quasar is true giant dynamo. It's estimated to be upward of a thousand times more massive than the one in the Milky Way, producing energy at rates about a hundred times higher than the total power output of our galaxy. (See black hole pictures.)
Clues to Galaxy Evolution
Supermassive black holes are large enough to swallow our entire solar system and are notorious for ripping apart and swallowing stars. But they also power distant quasars and spew out material at high speeds.
(See "Monster Black Holes Gobble Binary Stars to Grow?")
The outflows have been suspected to play a key role in the evolution of galaxies, explained Arav, but questions have persisted for years in the astronomical community as to whether they were powerful enough.
This newly discovered super outflow could solve major cosmic mysteries, including how the mass of a galaxy is linked to its central black hole mass and why there is a relative scarcity of large galaxies across the universe.
"I believe this is the smoking gun for several theoretical ideas that use the mechanical energy output of quasars to solve several important problems in the formation of galaxies and cluster of galaxies," said Arav.
While Kirk Korista, an astronomer not connected to the study, believes these claims may be a bit premature, the research is expected to shed new light on the most powerful and least understood portions of typical quasar outflows.
"The superb spectroscopic data of this quasar have allowed for a breakthrough in quantifying the energetics of what is probably a typical quasar outflow," said Korista, an astronomy professor at Western Michigan University.
"This definitely is an important step in piecing together the story of galaxy evolution, and in elucidating the role of quasars in that story."
When members of Congress need factual information and insights into the effectiveness of the financial laws put in place after the 2008 economic crisis, they regularly turn to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Orice Williams Brown.
Initially as director and now as managing director of the GAO’s financial markets and community investment section, Brown and her staff have issued dozens of reports examining the flaws and offering recommendations to improve the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout fund, the Wall Street regulatory reform law and the initiatives to prevent housing foreclosures.
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