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Tuesday, November 1, 2011

UK economic growth rises to 0.5%

1 November 2011 Last updated at 05:45 ET

Breaking News

The UK economy grew by 0.5% in the third quarter of 2011, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The growth in the July-to-September period compared with a 0.1% expansion in gross domestic product (GDP) in the previous quarter.

The ONS said that growth in the second quarter of the year had been affected by one-off factors such as the Japanese tsunami and the extra bank holiday.

GDP is the total amount of goods and services produced by the UK economy.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/business-15535518

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Syria Reportedly Mining Lebanese Border

SERHANIYEH, Lebanon -- Syria is planting landmines along parts of the country's border with Lebanon as refugees stream out of the country to escape the crackdown on anti-government protests, officials and witnesses said Tuesday.

The exodus to neighboring Lebanon and Turkey has proven a deep embarrassment for increasingly besieged President Bashar Assad, who warned over the weekend that the Middle East will burn if foreign powers try to intervene in his country's conflict.

A Syrian official familiar with government strategy claimed the mines are meant to prevent arms smuggling into Syria. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition that his name not be published because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Witnesses on the Lebanese side of the border also told the AP they have seen Syrian soldiers planting the mines in recent days in their territory.

"Syria has undertaken many measures to control the borders, including planting mines," said the Syrian official.

Three residents of the Lebanese border village of Serhaniyeh showed an AP reporter a long sand dune barrier along the frontier where they said Syrian troops laid mines. Ahmed Diab, 26, said several trucks carrying about a 100 soldiers arrived in the area on Thursday and spent the entire day planting mines on the side of the barriers that is toward Lebanon.

"Since they planted the mines, no one dares to go to the border line," said Diab, as he sat on his motorcycle near his home that overlooks parts of the Syrian province of Homs. Homs has seen some of the worst violence of the uprising.

Many Syrians cross the border into Lebanon regularly, some of them to flee the violence in their country. And the mines are the latest in a number of signs that Syria is working to prevent Lebanon from becoming a safe haven for the Syrian opposition.

There have been at least three cases this year of Syrian dissidents being snatched off the streets in Lebanon and spirited back across the border, Lebanese police say. The abductions have raised alarm among some in Lebanon that members of the country's security forces are helping Assad's regime in its crackdown on anti-government protesters, effectively extending it into Lebanon.

A senior Lebanese security official confirmed that Syrian troops are planting mines on the Syrian side of the border, but said Beirut will not interfere with actions on Syrian territory.

"What concerns us are violations of Lebanese territories and Syrian troops pursuits of people on the Lebanese side of the border," the official said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Syria and Lebanon share a 230-mile (365-kilometer) long border, although it appears the landmines have been planted in several small areas in Homs province ? where some of the worst violence of the uprising has occurred ? and Irsal in the Baalbek region, which borders Homs and Damascus countryside.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/01/syria-mining-lebanon-border_n_1069024.html

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Libya struggles to create army out of militias

TRIPOLI, LIBYA ? Libya has emerged from its civil war with more than 300 militias and no political consensus on forming a national army, raising concerns that irregular, gun-toting groups could become entrenched and pose a long-term challenge to the government, officials here said.

On Monday, Libyan leaders began to establish a new interim government with the authority to create the armed forces, choosing the technocratic Abdurrahim el-Keib as prime minister. But the militiamen who won the eight-month war have made it clear that they will not submit meekly to the new civilian authorities.

?Creating a new army is not going to be by an official statement or resolution. It has to come after a negotiation,? said Anis Sharif, a spokesman for Abdulhakim Belhadj, an Islamist seen as the dominant militia leader in Tripoli.

Reining in the militias is crucial to restoring order after the fighting between NATO-backed revolutionaries and loyalists of longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi, diplomats say. NATO officially ended its operations in Libya on Monday night, giving the country full responsibility for its own security.

Although many of the fighters have been in a celebratory mood since the war ended, several confrontations between rival militias have threatened to escalate into bloodshed ? including one at Tripoli?s airport Monday.

?The danger is that you have young men returning from battle, bored and with a newfound sense of regional identity and personal pride,? said a Western official in Tripoli, who was not authorized to comment on the record.

Militia and military leaders recognize the need to demobilize or integrate fighters into the security services, the official said. ?But the key will be agreeing and implementing a plan to do this.?

?A political vacuum?

Efforts to relaunch the army have been hobbled by the central government?s weakness and rivalries among revolutionaries.

Sharif said that one of the main goals of the Transitional National Council was to avoid a political vacuum.

?On this point, they failed ? and failed completely,? he said, recalling that many of the council?s members remained in the eastern city of Benghazi, the bastion of the revolution, after Gaddafi?s forces were driven from Tripoli in August. ?They left the capital with a political vacuum,? he said, and militias from other areas have moved in and set up camp.

Islamist fighters have squabbled with revolutionaries who once belonged to the national army over who should lead Libya?s new armed forces, so the top post is vacant, officials said. The military?s No. 2 officer ? Deputy Chief of Staff Suleiman Mahmoud al-Obeidi ? was stunned last month when a militia from the western Zintan region seized control of his Tripoli base while he was out of town, his aides said.

In response, Obeidi summoned about 700 heavily armed revolutionaries and threatened to wrest back control of the base, an old army supply headquarters in western Tripoli, said his son and legal adviser, Haytham al-Obeidi.

?It could have been a real confrontation. We were very, very angry,? the younger Obeidi said. The crisis was defused only when President Mustafa Abdel Jalil intervened, he said.

Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=9d227f6d63c1bb1c74df751f44f8905f

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European debt crisis live: Greek referendum spooks markets

A seamstress sews a European Union (EU) flag in a small workshop in Belgrade

The Eurozone debt crisis continues to alarm the financial markets, with the FTSE 100 expected to suffer more losses on Tuesday. Photograph: Ivan Milutinovic/REUTERS

Evangelos Venizelos shaking hands with Philipp Rösler

Evangelos Venizelos (left) pictured with German economy minister Philipp R�sler last month. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

7.52am: Greece's finance minister Evangelos Venizelos - who is also George Papandreou's deputy - has checked into a clinic having suffered stomach pains.

Here's the official statement from the finance ministry:

The Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos visited early this morning Athens's Central Clinic with abdominal pain, which has since improved.

It is expected that he will remain in the clinic until late this afternoon.

Since being appointed finance minister in June, 54-year old Venizelos has been engaged in seemingly non-stop negotiations over the euro debt crisis.

As Reuters puts it:

Like many of their EU counterparts, Greek officials have worked punishing hours under enormous stress for months. The debt crisis has taken its toll not only on their country and the euro, but on their health.

7.37am: Traders are braced for a sharp sell-off when trading begins at 8am. Will Hedden of IG Index says some "vicious pre-market calls" are flying around, with Germany's DAX tipped to tumble by 3%.

Looking at the future market now, the FTSE 100 index is expected to fall by over 100 points, which would wipe another chunk out of last week's relief rally.

Michael Hewson, market analyst at CMC Markets, has warned that the next few weeks are "likely to remain fraught with uncertainty":

While it may be the democratic thing to do given the loss of fiscal sovereignty to the troika until 2020, what happen if Greece votes "no", which is possible given how unpopular the bailout plan appears to be amongst Greece's voters?

The resulting fallout could well result in a complete meltdown of the European banking system and throw Europe into turmoil.

7.30am: Morning all. Just when Europe appeared to have made progress over its sovereign debt crisis, it faces more uncertainty and confusion.

The cause? Greece's decision to propose a public referendum on the bailout deal agreed last week. As we reported last night, the move has stunned European leaders, who must have left Brussels feeling a sense of achievement.

City traders have already predicted fresh losses on the FTSE 100 today, on top of Monday's 158-point drop.

We'll also be tracking the latest developments at MF Global, the US brokerage firm which filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday after running up $6.3bn worth of exposure to European debt.

And in the UK, economists and politicians are eagerly awaiting the publication of UK GDP for the third-quarter of 2011. How well, or badly, did Britain's economy fare during the summer?

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2011/nov/01/european-debt-crisis-greece-referendum

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Cain 'trying to think back' on claims

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain continued to deny allegations of sexual harassment in a series of interviews Monday but offered more details on the incidents that he believes triggered the complaints and a resulting settlement deal that he earlier said was inked without his knowledge.

"As I have been beat upon all day on this, I'm trying to think back to, well what could it have been?" Cain told reporters outside PBS Newshour studios in Shirlington, Va.. after a day of responding to a report, which first surfaced in Politico, that he has sexually harassed two female subordinates at the National Restaurant Association. Cain, a former pizza company executive, headed the trade association from 1996-99. The two women later left the association after reaching undisclosed financial settlements.

Cain said he only recalls innocuously commenting about the height of one of the women who complained about inappropriate behavior.

"And then I did recall one mention in the formal complaint that my general counsel shared, and that was, one day I was gesturing standing near this lady that she was as tall as my wife," he said, gesturing to his own chin. "Five feet tall. Because my wife comes up to my chin, and I was gesturing to this lady, standing next to her, almost shoulder to shoulder, saying you're about the same height as my wife. That was mentioned in the allegation, to my surprise. And so that was the only thing I could recollect that was mentioned as one of the possible things."

At left: Cain yells "no!" on Monday when reporters asked if he'd ever engaged in sexual misconduct with anyone at the National Restaurant Association.

Once a formal charge had been launched, Cain said he directed his general counsel and the head of the human resources department to investigate.

"They then went and reviewed the formal charge, worked on the situation for several months, and came back and said, it's baseless. No facts, baseless," Cain said.

He added he did not recall the amount of the financial settlement, only that it was not large enough to warrant coming to his desk.

"It started out where she wanted a lot of money. I don't even remember what that amount was. But because it was baseless and it was shown that it was not true, she ended up leaving with several months severance, which would have been what she would have left with if we had involuntarily dismissed her," he said. "I don't know if it was three months, whether it was two months, it might have been six months. I don't think it was because of the way it was settled."

At the National Press Club earlier in the day, Cain said he knew nothing about a financial deal with the women. "I am unaware of any settlement," he said. "I hope it wasn't for much, because I didn't do anything."

In the interview with Newshour when Cain was asked if there was any behavior on his part that might have been considered inappropriate, he answered: "In my opinion, no. But, as you would imagine, it's in the eye of the person who thinks that maybe I crossed the line. I worked for the Department of the Navy, the Coca-Cola company, Pillsbury, Burger King, Godfather's Pizza. Years and years and years of working in the business environment working around men, women, all types of people - never, never accused of any sort of sexual harassment. I have never sexually harassed anyone. And, so, this false allegation to now come up is kind of baffling."

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Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsMain/~3/y8CpUKOIheY/

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Watch: Cain Fires Back at Press for Harassment Story

Home > Video > Politics > Political News

Cain Fires Back at Press for Harassment Story

GOP frontrunner Herman Cain responds to allegations of past sexual harassment.

Cain: This Many Whites 'Can't Pretend' to Like Me

GOP presidential candidate discusses race, his candidacy at National Press Club.

Herman Cain Sings Gospel Song 'He Looked Beyond My Faults'

Moments after denying sexual harassment allegations, Cain sings gospel hymn.

VIDEO: Herman Cain say he has never sexually harassed anyone.

Cain: 'I Have Never Sexually Harassed Anyone'

Herman Cain says he's unaware of any settlement regarding allegations.