EU ministers to decide who pays when banks fail

LUXEMBOURG (AP) ? European Union finance ministers sought an agreement Friday on how best to downsize or close banks without sowing panic or having to call on taxpayers to bail out ailing lenders.

The EU's 27 finance chiefs' met in Luxembourg to agree on the order in which investors and creditors would have to absorb losses during bank restructurings. One of the stumbling points is who would be hit hardest: Should losses be limited to banks' shareholders and creditors, or should ordinary savers holding uninsured deposits worth more than 100,000 euros ($132,000) also be included?

Ministers said they were bracing themselves for marathon negotiations as they headed into the meeting. The EU's top economic official, Commissioner Olli Rehn, voiced confidence that an agreement can be reached in what would be another important step to stabilize the bloc's financial system and establish a so-called banking union.

The banking union, which will make the supervision and rescue of banks the job of European institutions rather than jeopardizing member states' finances, is a key part of the EU leaders' plans to restore financial and economic stability to the region.

"We have a fair chance to concluding the work, and it will be very important to maintain the momentum on the banking union," Rehn said.

One controversial issue was how much leeway member states should be granted in making decisions on winding down banks. Some countries like Britain don't want to be bound by too rigid European rules. Other nations warned that too much flexibility would create new imbalances between the bloc's weaker and stronger economies and destroy the project's very aim ? establishing a single set of rules that creates certainty for investors and restores trust in the financial system.

"I think it's necessary that we have a joint solution in Europe to ensure that the European single market won't be further fragmented," said Luxembourg's Finance Minister Luc Frieden. "It's about ensuring that people in Europe know that we have strong financial institutes but they also have to know what happens when a bank is being wound down," he added.

Europe has already had to deal with the problems involved in restructuring banks this year. Cyprus' government had to seek a rescue loan after it could no longer shoulder the cost of bailing out its banks. An initial agreement with the island's European creditors and the International Monetary Fund sparked market fears since it involved a bank restructuring that would have imposed losses even on deposits covered by Europe's 100,000 euro guarantee. The deal was rapidly overhauled, but holders of large deposits in some banks were forced to take harsh losses.

In the U.S., the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s rules specify that deposits larger than $250,000 might have to take losses in case of bank failures, but Europe still lacks a joint rule.

On Thursday, the finance ministers of the 17 EU countries that use the euro agreed on broad guidelines on how to use the bloc's permanent bailout fund to inject fresh capital into ailing banks as a means of last resort to keep banks from failing.

Enabling the 500 billion euro ($670 billion) rescue fund to shore up struggling banks directly is another long-promised pillar of the banking union.

"It is good news for the eurozone that the ESM will be allowed to recapitalize banks directly," said analyst Marie Diron of Ernst & Young.

"The restructuring of the banking system has been delayed for too long which is one of the reasons why the eurozone cannot grow out this recession the way the U.S. economy has done," she added.

Several finance ministers, however, have cautioned that despite a political agreement on the broad strokes for the new ESM mechanism, many details have yet to be hammered out before it can become operational.

"Given the fact that these steps are not exactly taken at lightning speed, the banking union should be up and running just in time to prevent the next crisis but clearly too late to make a difference in the current crisis," said analyst Carsten Brzeski of ING bank.

___

Follow Juergen Baetz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jbaetz

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/eu-ministers-decide-pays-banks-fail-111826932.html

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Gandolfini autopsy confirms heart attack killed 'Sopranos' star: source

ROME (Reuters) - An autopsy on the body of James Gandolfini, star of the U.S. Emmy-winning series "The Sopranos," confirmed on Friday that he died of a heart attack, a hospital source said.

The source, who asked not to be identified, said Gandolfini's death late on Wednesday in a Rome hotel was the result of "natural causes, a heart attack".

Gandolfini, 51, whose performance as Tony Soprano made him a household name and help usher in a new era of American television drama, was vacationing in Rome and had been scheduled to attend the closing of the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily on Saturday.

The actor's 13-year-old son, Michael, found him collapsed in the bathroom of his Rome hotel room, Gandolfini's manager, Mark Armstrong, said in an email.

Doctors at the Italian capital's Umberto I hospital were due to announce the autopsy findings later on Friday after officially informing the U.S. embassy and family members, the hospital source said.

Claudio Modini, the emergency room chief, told Reuters on Thursday that doctors had tried to resuscitate Gandolfini for 40 minutes when he arrived at the hospital before declaring him dead.

(Reporting By Steve Scherer and Antonio Denti, writing by Catherine Hornby; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gandolfini-autopsy-confirms-heart-attack-cause-death-source-092303001.html

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Howard Dean Presidential Campaign Remembered Fondly By Former Staffers

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Don't take this as the doctor's advice on what to eat, but what Howard Dean remembers best is the ham sandwich.

Dean, a physician by training, sat in front of a webcam chatting between bites one day during his 2004 bid for the White House while then-Vice President Dick Cheney attended an event in South Carolina. Both were trying to raise campaign cash.

In that instance, Dean raised more.

It was a sea change in American politics that continues to resonate as the former Vermont governor, his campaign staff and supporters gather this weekend for the 10th anniversary of his campaign kickoff. That came June 23, 2003, when Dean drew a crowd of more than 5,000 to Burlington's Church Street Marketplace.

It all flamed out seven months later, when, after a disappointing third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, Dean gave a concession speech that ended with a war whoop described as the "Dean scream" and replayed countless times in the days following.

But while it lasted, Dean scored several firsts, said Daniel Kreiss, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina who has written extensively on the role of the Internet in politics.

Among them were the systematic uses of email to raise funds and blogging and social networking to organize supporters, Kreiss wrote in an email.

Dean also attracted young, tech-savvy bloggers through his campaign's willingness to use open-source software, Kreiss has written.

"On a cultural level, using open-source technologies reflected what these volunteers saw as the openness of the campaign," he wrote. Dean's volunteers "believed that the campaigns of Dean's rivals did not have the same open culture and therefore would be unable to take full advantage of this organizing tool."

The result, said Nicco Mele, who served as Dean's webmaster and now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, was a campaign that used online video in the days before YouTube and social networking before Facebook existed.

"It was the first political campaign to really aggressively utilize the Internet to raise money and organize people," Mele said. "We tried literally hundreds" of emerging Internet-based tools.

But all the new media would be for naught without Dean's positions on issues, said campaign manager Joe Trippi. As governor in 2000, Dean signed Vermont's first-in-the-nation civil unions law providing legal recognition to same-sex couples. Dean also scored points with young people with his opposition to the war in Iraq, which he called "the wrong war at the wrong time."

Trippi said in an interview that what he's most proud of about the campaign is the number of staffers who've gone on to senior roles in other campaigns, the tech world or the media. Former staffer Joe Rospars is founder and CEO of Blue State Digital and was principal digital strategist for both of Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. Garrett Graff, whom Trippi credits with coming up with the ham sandwich idea, is editor of The Washingtonian magazine. Trippi himself has been media strategist for several foreign campaigns and for that of California Gov. Jerry Brown in 2010.

"I don't remember a losing presidential campaign to launch that many successes across the country in different parts of government and politics," said Trippi. "It certainly has left its mark in a lot of ways."

Dean said he's looking forward to a gathering set for Sunday at Burlington's Oakledge Park for staffers and volunteers to reflect and reminisce. Dean insisted that he was not the key to his campaign's lasting impact.

"It isn't me; it's the movement that gathered under the banner of the campaign," he said. "It was the coming of age of the millennial generation politically. Even though I bear no resemblance to Gene McCarthy," who rallied young, anti-war activists to his 1968 presidential campaign, "it's sort of the same phenomenon for this generation."

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/howard-dean-presidential-campaign_n_3473785.html

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Brazil's president grasps for answer to protests, violence

By Brian Winter

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will hold an emergency meeting of top aides on Friday to figure out how to respond to massive protests that brought 1 million people into the streets and also resulted in widespread vandalism and injuries.

Demonstrations across the country on Thursday night were the biggest yet by a movement that came from seemingly nowhere over the past week, and has rallied Brazilians angry about a range of issues from corruption and poor public transportation to billions of dollars being spent to host the soccer World Cup next year.

While the protests are not targeted at Rousseff herself - or any specific politician - the left-leaning leader is under huge pressure as marches have become increasingly violent and also contributed to a recent selloff in Brazil's financial markets.

Rousseff was set to meet with members of her Cabinet at around 9:30 a.m. (8.30 a.m. EDT) in Brasilia, a government official said.

The demonstrations have been mostly peaceful and led by the middle class. But on Friday, many Brazilians woke up to TV images from overnight of masked youths looting stores, setting fires and defacing buildings including the foreign ministry in Brasilia, which had its windows shattered.

Unlike previous demonstrations, much of the violence on Thursday was generated by the protesters themselves, rather than a heavy-handed police response.

At least 77 people were injured, newspaper Estado de S.Paulo reported. One person was killed in the interior of Sao Paulo state after someone drove their car into a group of protesters.

"I support these (protests), but I think it's out of control," said Nilson Chabat, a 31-year-old gas station attendant on his way to work on Friday in Sao Paulo. "Many of us are angry but you can't just go make a mess every day."

The sudden unrest, which started on June 13 when police cracked down on a small demonstration over rising bus fares in Sao Paulo, has shocked a country that until recently was considered a successful emerging-market power on the rise.

The demonstrations have unfolded as Brazil hosts the Confederations Cup, an international soccer tournament that serves as a test run for the much bigger World Cup. Protesters have used the tournament to amplify their outrage at public spending on lavish stadiums, casting a dark cloud over an event that was supposed to bolster Brazil's image globally.

FRUSTRATION WITH STATUS QUO

Polls show that most Brazilians remain happy with Rousseff, and with an economy that has slowed recently but has still been able to keep unemployment at record lows. Unlike recent youth protesters in the Arab world, the demonstrators are not trying to bring down the government, and Brazil's robust democracy appears able to address some of their complaints.

Yet the protests have revealed clear frustration with the status quo. Brazil has some of Latin America's highest taxes but one of the lowest rates of public investment, leaving many Brazilians frustrated with subpar schools, hospitals, infrastructure and police forces.

It's unclear what Rousseff can do in the short term, apart from making a general appeal for calm. Mayors of several cities already tried to yield to one of the protesters' main demands this week by rolling back a recent hike in bus and subway fares, but the demonstrations only grew.

Rousseff, a leftist guerrilla in the 1970s, has expressed solidarity with the protesters' aims and has appeared hesitant to order a crackdown that could just make the crowds even angrier.

But she is also at risk of having her probable re-election bid next year complicated by both the growing unrest and a possible backlash against the scenes of violence.

Some think she is already tardy in her response.

Fernando Rodrigues, a columnist for Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, wrote that Rousseff's silence on Thursday night "sums up the lack of action by politicians."

"They seem, in essence, to be only rooting for the tsunami to pass," he said.

(Reporting by Brian Winter; Editing by Todd Benson and Eric Beech)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/brazils-president-grasps-answer-protests-violence-115545564.html

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Militants try to shape Pakistani election with bombs

The wave of political violence has killed at least 60 people in recent weeks, and many of the attacks have been directed at candidates from secular parties opposed to the Taliban.

By Hussain Afzal,?Associated Press / April 28, 2013

Taliban bombs targeting politicians in northwestern?Pakistan?on Sunday killed 11 people, the latest in a series of attacks meant to disrupt next month's parliamentary election, police said.

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The wave of political violence has killed at least 60 people in recent weeks, and many of the attacks have been directed at candidates from secular parties opposed to the Taliban. That has raised concern the violence could benefit hard-line Islamic candidates and others who are more sympathetic to the Taliban because they are able to campaign more freely without fear of being of being attacked.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the three attacks, plus two others against secular parties in the southern port city of Karachi on Saturday that killed four people and wounded over 40.

"We are against all politicians who are going to become part of any secular, democratic government," Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The first bomb on Sunday ripped through the campaign office of Syed Noor Akbar on the outskirts of Kohat city, killing six people and wounding 10, police officer Mujtaba Hussain said.

A second bomb targeted the office of another candidate, Nasir Khan Afridi, in the suburbs of Peshawar city. That attack killed three people and wounded 12, police officer Saifur Rehman said.

The politicians were not in their offices at the time of the blasts. They are both running as independent candidates for parliament to represent constituencies in?Pakistan's?rugged tribal region along the Afghan border, the main sanctuary for Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in the country.

Many politicians running in the May 11 election from the tribal region have their offices located elsewhere and find it hard to campaign in their constituencies because of the danger. The two who were attacked Sunday are considered to hold relatively progressive views compared to the deeply conservative Islamic beliefs of many in the tribal region.

The third attack occurred in the town of Swabi, where a bomb went off during a small rally held by the Awami National Party, which has been repeatedly targeted by the Taliban. The blast killed two people and wounded five, said police officer Farooq Khan. The two candidates targeted in the attack, Ameer Rehman and Haji Rehman, were not hurt.

The Pakistani Taliban have been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years that has killed thousands of civilians and security personnel. The group's goal is to oust?Pakistan's?democratic government and implement a system based on Islamic law.

In mid-March, the Taliban threatened attacks against three secular parties that have earned the militants' ire by supporting military operations against them in the northwest: the Awami National Party, the Muttahida Quami Movement, and the?Pakistan?People's Party. The Taliban have carried out at least 20 attacks against politicians and campaign workers since then, mostly from these three parties.

The violence has forced the parties to close dozens of campaign offices and has prevented them from holding large political rallies that are normally the hallmark of Pakistani elections. Many of the candidates have had to find ways to campaign from a distance, relying more on social media, advertisements and even short documentaries to rally support.

That has put these candidates at a disadvantage, and many have complained the militant violence amounts to vote rigging.

Candidates from Islamic parties and others who have advocated negotiating peace with the militants rather than fighting them have been able to campaign with much less fear of being attacked.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, head of the?Pakistan?Muslim League-N party, held a rally with several thousand people in the northern town of Murree on Sunday without incident. Many analysts predict Sharif's party will come out on top in the parliamentary election.

The Taliban issued a statement earlier this year requesting that Sharif and the heads of the country's two largest Islamic parties mediate peace negotiations. Sharif declined but said he was a supporter of the talks.

The parties that have been targeted by the Taliban also support peace negotiations with the militants, but only if they lay down their weapons and accept the constitution first ??conditions the militant group has rejected.

* Associated Press Writers Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar contributed to this report.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Eiv4LiaKRtI/Militants-try-to-shape-Pakistani-election-with-bombs

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Authorities investigating if Boston suspect had training

>>> we turn to the boston bombing investigation. now new questions tonight about the bapath the suspects may have taken leading up to that violent and deadly day two weeks ago tomorrow. nbc 's michelle franzen is in boston now with the very latest. michelle, good evening.

>> reporter: good evening, lester. nbc news has confirmed that russian authorities in the initial days after the bombing here in boston reached out to u.s. authorities and told them back in 2011 that russian authorities had had actually had a wiretapped conversation that they had recorded between tamerlan tsarnaev and his mother and a conversation where the russians say they justed jihad. this conversation, authorities tell us, say there is no link or connection at this time to the bombings here in boston but investigators are still tracking leads here and overseas. a key focus for investigators centers on tamerlan 's tsarnaev's visit to dagestan in 2012 and what he did during his six-month stay. authorities tell nbc news they are weighing russian reports on what they learned about tamerlan while he he was visiting family. big question sunday for lawmakers, whether tamerlan received training during his trip.

>> i suspect that ultimately we're going to conclude that a lot of the radicalization took place before the trip, that these brothers particularly the older brother, were more self-radicalized, online sources were among the most significant factors.

>> reporter: several former counterterrorism officials tell nbc news investigators are leaning toward a theory that the two suspects did not have training and acted alone. pointing to serious flaws in the operation. the suspect had no escape plan and returned home after the bombing. police say they car jacked a vehicle and stole money from the victim. and on the day of the bombing, authorities say they stood out an, unlike everyone else, were not in a panic. in boston this morning, at the old south church , a moving walk and vigil to the marathon finish line. healing moments for young and old alike, and signs the boston strong spirit is thriving. and all along boylston street only one business is now not open. the rest of them have opened here and the memorial back here, there is much more than just an outpouring of people and written notes. we're also learning that the one fund created to help victims has received nearly $27 million in donations. lester?

>> michelle franzen tonight, thank you.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2b47a839/l/0Lvideo0Bmsnbc0Bmsn0N0Cid0C51695750A/story01.htm

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Minneapolis council member drops DFL endorsement bid (Star Tribune)

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