Evening Edition

“Separate ways in the central bankers’ brotherhood,” ING senior economist Carsten Brzeski commented.

“Just one day after the Fed launched a new round of quantitative easing (QE), the ECB stressed that it has no intention to follow,” he said.

The Fed’s top policy panel cast aside its long-held reluctance to micro-manage the economy, as members faced down the prospect of a lost decade of growth.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said it would buy up new Treasury debt at a rate of around 75 billion dollars a month, a scale not seen since the depths of the economic crisis of 2008-2009.

The signings kicked off a three-day visit by Hu that France hopes will result in a massive boost to its high-tech manufacturing exports and get China onside during the upcoming French presidency of the G20 power grouping.

China’s deputy foreign minister Fu Ying revealed the scale of the deals to reporters after talks between the two presidents and the signing ceremony at the Elysee Palace, where a state dinner was laid on for Hu on Thursday evening.

The UN’s annual A-to-Z of global wealth, poverty, health and education highlighted however that it is becoming ever more difficult to break into the rich club of nations.

Norway — with its 81.0 years of life expectancy and average annual income of 58,810 dollars — has now topped the Human Development Index (HDI) for all but two years since 2001.

A court official said that Panayotis Argyrou, 22, a chemistry student, and Gerassimos Tskalos, 24, had refused to speak when brought before the judge, saying they did not recognise the procedure, a court source said.

They were charged with committing acts of terrorism, belonging to a criminal organisation, possession and use of bombs and explosives, as well as lesser offences including refusing to give their identities and fingerprints.

Obama refused to see the vote result as a repudiation of his transformative domestic agenda, instead blaming the loss of the House of Representatives to opposition Republicans and their gains in the Senate on frustration at the sluggish recovery and his failure to clean up the “ugly mess” in Washington.

“It feels bad,” Obama said, digesting his defeat in a White House news conference Wednesday.

Mission experts agreed on the launch attempt after a close study of the latest electrical glitch found that a circuit-breaker was the origin of a cockpit problem, not the main engine controller which would have been more serious.

But after three postponements so far to Discovery’s final flight before it is retired, NASA experts said poor weather could push back efforts again.

“I am here to pay respects to the victims and to express words of apology and regret,” Tadic said at Ovcara memorial, a notorious site where around 200 people were gunned down and buried in a mass grave in 1991.

“By admitting the crimes, apologising for them and regretting them we are creating possibilities for forgiveness and reconciliation,” he added.

Internet users in the military-ruled country have reported slow connections and sporadic outages for more than a week, and some suspect the junta may be intentionally disrupting services to block news flowing out.

Web service providers have blamed the troubles on outside attacks.

Tropical Storm Tomas was barreling toward Haiti, threatening a direct hit early Friday as a hurricane bringing “life-threatening flash floods and mudslides over mountainous terrain,” according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).

A hurricane warning was issued, which means hurricane conditions are expected in the affected area within 24 to 36 hours, while tropical storm-force winds and rain were expected to buffet the Caribbean nation from late Thursday.

He instead blamed the loss of the House of Representatives and Republican gains in the Senate on deep voter frustration at the sluggish recovery and his failure to clean up the “ugly mess” in Washington.

“It feels bad,” Obama said, digesting his defeat in a White House news conference.

Indonesian TV showed pictures of debris on a nearby island which it said belonged to the Qantas Airways plane, and one passenger aboard flight QF32 reported hearing a “massive bang.” Qantas described it as a “significant” engine failure.

Authorities said none of the 459 people on board were hurt.

Two days after Republicans scored big victories in congressional elections, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took a hard line against Obama’s landmark law and showed no sign of compromise when the new Congress opens for business in January. “We can and should propose and vote on straight repeal repeatedly” of the healthcare law, he said.

McConnell’s remarks, in a speech delivered to the conservative Heritage Foundation, acknowledged that Obama would veto such legislation, which probably would be blocked by the president’s fellow Democrats in the Senate anyway.

“Damn right,” he said.

Bush’s approval of waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning condemned by human rights activists as torture, to try to wrench information from captured al Qaeda operatives was among the most controversial decisions he made during eight years in the White House.

GM’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the final step before it begins marketing what is expected to be one of the largest-ever IPOs. The investors are expected to span the globe and include sovereign wealth funds.

The automaker plans to sell 365 million common shares at $26 to $29 each, raising about $10 billion at the midpoint, according to updated initial public offering papers filed with the SEC.

The study sponsored by the U.S. National Cancer Institute is the first to show that people can be screened for lung cancer, akin to mammograms for breast cancer and tests for colon and prostate cancer.

“Nothing has ever shown a 20 percent decrease in mortality in this disease ever before. This is huge,” said Regina Vidaver, executive director of the National Lung Cancer Partnership.

Julian Assange said WikiLeaks would release thousands of documents this year concerning not only the United States, but other countries including Russia and Lebanon.

It has made public nearly 500,000 classified U.S. files on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, drawing ire from the Pentagon. Some U.S. secret documents contained accounts of Iraqi forces torturing Iraqi prisoners and the failure of the U.S. military to investigate those instances.

The decision takes the Fed into largely uncharted waters and is aimed at further lowering borrowing costs for consumers and businesses still suffering in the aftermath of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The U.S. central bank said it would buy about $75 billion in longer-term Treasury bonds per month through the end of June 2011 and could adjust purchases depending on the strength of the recovery.

Economic ties are booming but Obama’s visit from Saturday to Monday may fail to live up to President Bill Clinton’s 2000 trip that helped break the diplomatic ice, or President George W. Bush’s visit in 2006 when a civil nuclear deal was hailed as a landmark in ties.

Obama’s drubbing in the mid-term elections may also tie his political hands when it comes to bold policy moves on India as growing worries emerge that outsourcing in cities such as IT hub Bangalore is worsening mass unemployment in the United States.

“It’s pretty clear the American people want a smaller, less costly and more accountable government,” Republican John Boehner, in line to become the next House of Representatives speaker, told reporters. “Our pledge is to listen to the American people.”

Voters, anxious about the economy and unhappy with Obama’s leadership, punished Democrats in an election rout on Tuesday that gave House control to Republicans and weakened the Democratic majority in the Senate.

Then, in 2007, with the coffee chain in the midst of a building binge, the worst downturn since the Great Depression hit, hammering Starbucks’ bottom line. Sharp cost-cuts, the introduction of corporate efficiency tools like scheduling software and an increased emphasis on pushing product sales have helped the company return to record profitability.

They also led Swanson to quit in May. The disappearing perks and the financial fixes dampened her enthusiasm for recruiting potential new partners, as Starbucks calls its employees. “I found it really sad. I was really invested,” said Swanson, who was in charge of a Starbucks in the Florida Panhandle. “I just didn’t feel proud anymore. I wasn’t in it to manage a McDonald’s.”

But on issue after issue, Obama gave little ground on his positions as the two sides gear up for negotiations over how to tackle the sluggish economy, the main reason the electorate has soured on his leadership.

At a White House news conference, Obama confessed to having suffered a long night on Tuesday as Republicans seized control of the House of Representatives and made gains in the Senate, handing him the biggest defeat of his career and threatening to block his agenda for the second half of his term.

All 80 economists in a recent Reuters poll predicted the ECB will leave rates at a record low 1 percent for the 18th consecutive meeting this month.

With policymakers likely to wait until December to decide if they can continue to reel in the ECB’s crisis support measures, economists expect the bank to stick to its view that the euro zone’s recovery has enough momentum to ride out any bumps.

Emerging market economies said the Fed’s move made any substantive deal on cutting global economic imbalances less likely at next week’s Group of 20 meeting in Seoul.

Developing countries also threatened fresh steps to curb capital inflows which are pushing up their currencies against the U.S. dollar.

China must set up a firewall via currency policy and capital controls to cushion itself from external shocks, Xia Bin said in a commentary piece in the Financial News, a Chinese-language newspaper managed by the central bank.

“As long as the world exercises no restraint in issuing global currencies such as the dollar — and this is not easy — then the occurrence of another crisis is inevitable, as quite a few wise Westerners lament,” he said.

Navy spokesman Commander Danny Hernandez, confirming reports by sources familiar with the plan, said the new approach would help stabilize the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program and the shipbuilding industrial base, while also expanding prospects for sales to foreign countries.

He said the Navy would proceed with its current plan to buy a single design of the new ships if Congress or industry were unwilling to support the new approach, adding: “Either approach will ensure the Navy procures affordably priced ships.”

In a sign that combat and the 2012 elections rather than compromise could mark the next two years, Sen. Mitch McConnell on Thursday called for Senate votes to repeal or erode Obama’s signature health care law, to cut spending and to shrink government.

“The only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things,” McConnell said in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation.

An estimated 1.3 million homeless faced their hardest decision since the earthquake: Do they follow the government’s advice and leave their slapped together shelters ahead of the storm and risk never being allowed to return? Or do they risk their lives and stay?

“I’m scared that if I leave they’ll tear this whole place down. I don’t have money to pay for a home somewhere else,” said Clarice Napoux, 21, who lives on a soccer field behind the St. Therese church in Petionville.

Obama risks criticism he’s fleeing the Democrats’ midterm election wreckage for friendlier territory as sets out Friday on the longest foreign trip of his presidency, a sojourn through India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan aimed at highlighting America’s increasing engagement with Asia.

The trip is anchored by must-attend gatherings of world leaders in South Korea and Japan, timing unconnected to Tuesday’s midterm elections. The abbreviated stop in Indonesia, where Obama spent four years as a boy, was already canceled and rescheduled twice.

Rep. Eric Cantor wants every committee chairman to investigate administration programs to make sure taxpayers are getting their money’s worth. He’s proposing a featured “oversight” hearing of the week. He’s even ready to limit naming of post offices to one day a month, so that committees can spend their time on investigations.

Cantor, in a letter to fellow Republicans outlining his plans for running the House next year, said President Barack Obama “is now actively working to enact his agenda through agency regulations.” He proposed using committee investigations and the “congressional power of the purse” to stop wasteful spending and programs that don’t create jobs.

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz had intended to announce the final unofficial tally Thursday afternoon. Instead, she said she still had not received the final count from Bridgeport, which was due by 6 p.m. on Wednesday.

“We don’t know when we’re going to receive their numbers,” Bysiewicz said.

Coons and O’Donnell rode together in a parade of horse-drawn carriages and old-time automobiles that ended with party leaders burying a hatchet in a box of sand. Coons sat by his wife, Annie, while O’Donnell was accompanied by a bodyguard.

Coons gave a thumbs-up signal when asked how he and O’Donnell were getting along.

An estimated 1.3 million homeless faced their hardest decision since the earthquake: Do they follow the government’s advice and leave their slapped together shelters ahead of the storm and risk never being allowed to return? Or do they risk their lives and stay?

“I’m scared that if I leave they’ll tear this whole place down. I don’t have money to pay for a home somewhere else,” said Clarice Napoux, 21, who lives on a soccer field behind the St. Therese church in Petionville.

Now the hurdle is deciding who should get these spiral CT scans and how often, because the tests carry their own risks, including repeated radiation exposure and a lot of false alarms that trigger unnecessary repeat testing and even surgery.

“This finding has important implications for public health, with the potential to save many lives among those at greatest risk for lung cancer,” said National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Harold Varmus, who released the study results Thursday. But, “we don’t know the ideal way yet to do this screening.”

Internet companies, privacy activists and the EU’s executive commission are likely to wrestle over the specifics of the rules, which cut to the heart of funding models not only for technology firms but also for many online news sites and blogs.

“People should be able to give their informed consent to the processing of their personal data,” the European Commission said Thursday in a new strategy paper.

And that might not be a bad thing if you’re a GOP strategist. It keeps the issue Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell calls the “tipping point” in the midterm elections alive for 2012, when they’ll try to unseat Obama himself.

Republicans will control the House in January, but they don’t have the votes to overcome a Senate filibuster, much less Obama’s veto on repeal. Plan B, denying funds to carry out the law, could backfire if it escalates to a government shutdown.

The Nov. 18 meeting will be closely watched, in particular, for any signs of cooperation between Obama and his two frequent Republican antagonists, incoming House speaker-in-waiting John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. They will be joined by the top Democrats in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Four other lawmakers will attend: Republicans Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia and Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, and Democrats Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin.

The increase undermines hopes that unemployment claims, after falling four times in the previous five weeks, were on a sustained downward trend. That would signal layoffs were slowing and hiring was picking up. Instead, claims remain stuck at an elevated level.

The report comes a day before the Labor Department is scheduled to release the jobs figures for October. With claims dropping only modestly over the past month, economists aren’t expecting much progress. They forecast that the jobs report will show employers added a net total of 60,000 jobs last month, while the unemployment rate remained 9.6 percent for the third straight month.

For Christmas shoppers, that means that heavy discounts will be coming early and often.

“The deals will be so attractive that shoppers may not want to wait,” said John Long, retail strategist at Kurt Salmon Associates. “This is going to be a great (time) to be a consumer.”

Even as Francesco Molinari of Italy made a charge to a 7-under 65 for a one-shot lead, the focus in the final World Golf Championship of the year quickly shifted to what could be a prolonged and fascinating battle for No. 1.

In his debut as golf’s top-ranked player, Westwood birdied some of the toughest holes at Sheshan International and showed hardly any signs of rust from playing in his second stroke-play tournament in three months. He finished with back-to-back birdies for a 66.

The “prepackaged” bankruptcy plan, more than a year in the making, should go quickly. MGM is to restructure and be managed by the co-CEOS of Spyglass Entertainment.

MGM lenders will trade about $4 billion in debt for stock in the new company, valued at around $2 billion.

The company also forecast that it earned as much as $2.1 billion from July through September, a strong financial performance as the company prepares for an initial stock offering on Nov. 18.

The third-quarter earnings, which GM will report next week, bolster the automaker’s contention that it is leaner and more profitable since restructuring under a government-funded bankruptcy last year.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed the lawsuit on behalf of eight men – including a state lawmaker – it says were subjected to illegal searches since the city started using “stop and frisk,” a controversial element of first-term Mayor Michael Nutter’s 2007 mayoral campaign.

In the lawsuit, the ACLU cites city data showing that 253,333 pedestrians were stopped last year, compared with 102,319 in 2005. More than 70 percent of the people stopped last year were black and only 8.4 percent of the total stops led to an arrest, the ACLU said.

DeLay, charged with money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering, is being accused of using his PAC to illegally funnel $190,000 in corporate donations into Texas legislative races eight years ago. DeLay, who faces up to life in prison if convicted, has denied any wrongdoing.

While questioning Warren Robold, the PAC’s fundraiser, prosecutors showed jurors a series of e-mails which indicated that in the weeks leading up to the 2002 elections in Texas, the political group was having great difficulty raising money from individuals donors, the only type of funds that could be given to candidates under Texas law.

And yet for years, she lived a life of secrecy that most of us would have trouble fathoming, unable to tell her best friends what she actually did for a living, or her own husband where she was flying off to in the middle of the night.

How do you go from one life to the other? Not very easily – still, she says, as she prepares for another round in the spotlight with the release Friday of “Fair Game,” the movie based on her infamous 2003 “outing” as a CIA agent.

Now as winners, they’re faced with the hard reality of having to make unpopular decisions about who will feel the pain of layoffs, service cuts or even tax increases.

Some of the newly elected leaders got started right away, naming their budget directors and meeting with legislative leaders. But others immediately began tempering voters’ expectations by acknowledging that tough decisions and hard work lie ahead.

The limits imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration at John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports in 2008 are too generous and are based on good weather conditions, resulting in a glut of flights when the weather turns ugly, according to the report by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of the Inspector General. To maintain safety, air traffic controllers must hold flights on the ground or add spacing between planes.

“These delays not only affect aircraft traveling to and from the region but can also create a ripple effect as those aircraft fly throughout the nation,” the report said.