USA - The newspaper industry is suffering "market failure" and the GOVERNMENT WILL NEED TO HELP PRESERVE SERIOUS JOURNALISM essential to democracy, an influential US congressman said Wednesday.
WASHINGTON, USA - Senators debating health care legislation are headed for a clash over abortion, the issue that threatened to derail the bill in the House. Anticipating the showdown, hundreds of abortion rights supporters gathered on Capitol Hill Wednesday to call on senators to keep new abortion restrictions out of the health care bill.
USA - US regulators have approved 13 new lines of human embryonic stem cells for use in scientific research. They are the first batches of embryonic stem cells - the building blocks of the body - that have been made available to US researchers in almost a decade.
USA - It's no secret that ONE OF THE BIGGEST DANGERS FACING BANKS today is that LOANS TO BUILDERS OF OFFICE TOWERS, MALLS AND OTHER COMMERCIAL PROPERTIES are going sour at a quickening pace. Financial regulators, including Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp chief Sheila Bair, have warned of the risk.
BRUSSELS, EUROPE - EU plans to call for East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state have been described as a "provocation" of Israel's right-wing government by a key figure in the history of the Middle East Peace Process.
EUROPE - The Telegraph reports that European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and the newly appointed EU President and Foreign Minister, Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton last night celebrated the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty in the Portuguese capital.
BRUSSELS, EUROPE - EU Finance Ministers will today discuss the formation of a new EU-wide system of financial supervision, including the creation of three new EU authorities WITH THE MANDATE TO OVERRULE NATIONAL REGULATORS on issues such as short-selling and the recapitalisation of banks. The authorities would also have the power to supervise and intervene in individual firms - moves which the UK is said to resist.
UK - At midnight last night, (1st December) we CEASED TO BE AN INDEPENDENT STATE, bound by international treaties to other independent states, and became instead A SUBORDINATE UNIT WITHIN A EUROPEAN STATE.
NEW YORK, USA - Inside the offices of Tradeworx, an emerging player in the secretive and controversial world of high-frequency trading, it's dead quiet as staffers pore over the "tape," financial industry speak for the record of the day's transactions.
WASHINGTON, USA/KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - President Barack Obama's national security team heads to Congress on Wednesday to sell lawmakers on his dramatic escalation of the Afghan war, which his field commander said gives him the resources he needs.
USA - Senator James Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is calling on Chairman Barbara Boxer to conduct hearings on a POSSIBLE CONSPIRACY between some of the world's most PROMINENT CLIMATOLOGISTS to, among other things, MANIPULATE DATA on so-called global warming.
USA - The past year has seen some of the most devastating wildfires in California since records began. Lives have been lost, great swathes of land have been blackened and hundreds of homes have been destroyed.
AUSTRALIA - Australia's Senate has rejected a bill on the government's flagship climate change policy for a second time. Two opposition senators crossed the floor but it was not enough to secure passage of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to reduce greenhouse gases.
UK - Chancellor Alistair Darling has warned against more European Union regulation of the UK financial services industry. Writing in the Times ahead of a meeting of finance ministers in Brussels, he said giving the EU extra powers in the City would be a "recipe for confusion".
USA - Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced. The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages.