Obama wins second term, Romney concedes defeat

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama won a second term in the White House on Tuesday, overcoming deep doubts among voters about his handling of the U.S. economy to score a clear victory over Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Americans chose to stick with a divided government in Washington, by keeping the Democratic incumbent in the White House and leaving the U.S. Congress as it is, with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans keeping the House of Representatives.

Obama told thousands of supporters in Chicago who cheered his every word that “we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back” and that for America, the best is yet to come.

He vowed to listen to both sides of the political divide in the weeks ahead and said he would return to the White House more determined than ever to confront America’s challenges.

“Whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you. And you have made me a better president,” Obama said.

The nationwide popular vote remained extremely close with Obama taking about 50 percent to 49 percent for Romney after a campaign in which the candidates and their party allies spent a combined $ 2 billion.

Romney, the multimillionaire former private equity executive, came back from a series of campaign stumbles to make it close after besting the president in the first of three presidential debates.

The 65-year-old former Massachusetts governor conceded in a gracious speech delivered to disappointed supporters at the Boston convention center. He had called Obama to concede defeat after a brief controversy over whether the president had really won Ohio.

“This is a time of great challenge for our nation,” Romney told the crowd. “I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.”

He warned against partisan bickering and urged politicians on both sides to “put the people before the politics.”

Obama told his crowd that he hoped to sit down with Romney in the weeks ahead and examine ways to meet the challenges ahead.

The president Obama scored impressive victories in the crucial state of Ohio and heavily contested swing states of Virginia, Nevada, Iowa and Colorado. They carried the Democrat past the 270 electoral votes needed for victory in America’s state-by-state system of choosing a president, and left Romney’s senior advisers shell-shocked at the loss.

Obama, America’s first black president, won by convincing voters to stick with him as he tries to reignite strong economic growth and recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. An uneven recovery has been showing some signs of strength but the country’s 7.9 percent jobless rate remains stubbornly high.

Obama’s victory in the hotly contested swing state of Ohio – as projected by TV networks – was a major step in the fight for the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the White House and ended Romney’s hopes of pulling off a string of swing-state upsets.

Obama scored narrow wins in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire – all states that Romney had contested – while the only swing state captured by Romney was North Carolina, according to television network projections.

Romney initially delayed his concession as some Republicans questioned whether Obama had in fact won Ohio despite the decisions by election experts at all the major TV networks to declare it for the president.

The later addition of Colorado and Virginia to Obama’s tally – according to network projections – meant that even if the final result from Ohio were to be reversed, Romney still could not reach the needed number of electoral votes.

While Obama supporters in Chicago were ecstatic, Romney’s Boston event was grim as the news was announced on television screens there. A steady stream of people left the ballroom at the Boston convention center.

THE SAME PROBLEMS

At least 120 million American voters had been expected to cast votes in the race between the Democratic incumbent and Romney after a campaign that was focused on how to repair the ailing U.S. economy.

The same problems that dogged Obama in his first term are still there to confront him again.

He faces a difficult task of tackling $ 1 trillion annual deficits, reducing a $ 16 trillion national debt, overhauling expensive social programs and dealing with a gridlocked U.S. Congress that kept the same partisan makeup.

Obama’s Democrats held their Senate majority – taking hotly contested Republican-held seats in Massachusetts and Indiana – while the Republicans kept House control.

Democrat Claire McCaskill retained her U.S. Senate seat from Missouri, beating Republican congressman Todd Akin, who stirred controversy with his comment in August that women’s bodies could ward off pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.

Democrats gained a Senate seat in Indiana that had been in Republican hands for decades after Republican candidate Richard Mourdock called pregnancy from rape something that God intended. Democratic congressman Joe Donnelly won the race.

In another high-profile Senate race, Democrat Elizabeth Warren, a law professor who headed the watchdog panel that oversaw the government’s financial sector bailout, defeated incumbent Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown.

Former Maine Governor Angus King won a three-way contest for the Senate seat of retiring Republican Olympia Snowe. King ran as an independent, but he is expected to caucus with Democrats in what would amount to a Democratic pick-up.

Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson easily beat back a challenge from Republican congressman Connie Mack to win a third term, while Democratic congressman Chris Murphy beat Republican Linda McMahon, a businesswoman who had served as chief executive of a professional wrestling company.

Democrats were also cheered by several state referendums. Maryland voters approved same-sex marriage, the governor said, and a similar measure in Maine appeared on track to pass as well – marking the first time marriage rights have been extended to same-sex couples by popular vote.

In addition, Wisconsin Democratic congresswoman Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay U.S. Senator, defeating Republican former governor Tommy Thompson.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Chicago, Patricia Zengerle in Boston, Edith Honan in New York, Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Dave Warner in Philadelphia, Philip Barbara in New Jersey, Matt Spetalnick, Lisa Lambert, Susan Heavey, Thomas Ferraro, Susan Cornwell, Anna Yukhananov and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Writing by Steve Holland and John Whitesides; Editing by Claudia Parsons and Will Dunham)

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Cautious reformers tipped for new China leadership

BEIJING (Reuters) – China‘s ruling Communist Party will this month unveil its new top leadership team, expected to again be an all-male cast of politicians whose instincts are to move cautiously on reform.

Sources close to the leadership say 10 main candidates are vying for seven seats on the party’s next Politburo Standing Committee, the peak decision-making body which will steer the world’s second-largest economy for the next five years.

Only two candidates are considered certainties going into the party’s 18th congress, which starts on Thursday: leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping and his designated deputy, Li Keqiang, who are set to be installed as president and premier next March.

Of the remaining eight contenders, only one has the reputation as a political reformer and only one is a woman.

Following are short biographies of the candidates, including their reform credentials and possible portfolio responsibilities.

XI JINPING

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Considered a cautious reformer, having spent time in top positions in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, both at the forefront of China‘s economic reforms.

Xi Jinping, 59, is China‘s vice president and President Hu Jintao’s anointed successor. He will take over as Communist Party boss at the congress and then as head of state in March.

Xi belongs to the party’s “princeling” generation, the offspring of communist revolutionaries. His father, former vice premier Xi Zhongxun, fought alongside Mao Zedong in the Chinese civil war. Xi watched his father purged and later, during the Cultural Revolution, spent years in the hardscrabble countryside before making his way to university and then to power.

Married to a famous singer, Xi has crafted a low-key and sometimes blunt political style. He has complained that officials’ speeches and writings are clogged with party jargon and has demanded more plain speaking.

Xi went to work in the poor northwest Chinese countryside as a “sent-down youth” during the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and became a rural commune official. He went on to study chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing and later gained a doctorate in Marxist theory from Tsinghua.

A native of the poor, inland province of Shaanxi, Xi was promoted to governor of southeastern Fujian province in 1999 and became party boss in neighboring Zhejiang province in 2003.

In 2007, the tall, portly Xi secured the top job in China‘s commercial capital, Shanghai, when his predecessor was caught up in a huge corruption case. Later that year he was promoted to the party’s standing committee.

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LI KEQIANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen as another cautious reformer due to his relatively liberal university experiences.

Vice Premier Li Keqiang, 57, is the man tipped to be China‘s next premier, taking over from Wen Jiabao.

His ascent will mark an extraordinary rise for a man who as a youth was sent to toil in the countryside during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

He was born in Anhui province in 1955, son of a local rural official. Li worked on a commune that was one of the first places to quietly revive private bonuses in farming in the late 1970s. By the time he left Anhui, Li was a Communist Party member and secretary of his production brigade.

He studied law at the elite Peking University, which was among the first Chinese schools to resume teaching law after the Cultural Revolution. He worked to master English and co-translated “The Due Process of Law” by Lord Denning, the famed English jurist.

In 1980, Li, then in the official student union, endorsed controversial campus elections. Party conservatives were aghast, but Li, already a prudent political player, stayed out of the controversial vote.

He climbed the party ranks and in 1983 joined the Communist Youth League’s central secretariat, headed then by Hu Jintao.

Li later served in challenging party chief posts in Liaoning, a frigid northeastern rustbelt province, and rural Henan province. He was named to the powerful nine-member standing committee in 2007.

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WANG QISHAN

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer and problem solver with deep experience tackling tricky economic and political problems.

Wang Qishan, 64, is the most junior of four vice premiers and an ex-mayor of Beijing. But he has a keen grasp of complex economic issues and is the only likely member of the Standing Committee to have been chief executive of a corporation, leading the state-owned China Construction Bank from 1994 to 1997. As such, he may take a leading role in shaping economic policy, including trade and foreign investment.

Wang is an experienced negotiator who has led finance and trade negotiations as well as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue with the United States. He is a favorite of foreign investors and has long been seen as a problem solver, sorting out a debt crisis in Guangdong province where he was vice governor in the late 1990s and replacing the sacked Beijing mayor after a cover-up of the deadly SARS virus in 2003.

Wang is also a princeling, son-in-law of a former vice premier and ex-standing committee member, Yao Yilin. His possible portfolio could be chairman of the National People’s Congress (China’s rubber-stamp parliament), head of parliament’s advisory body, executive vice premier (responsible for economic issues) or the party’s top anti-corruption official.

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LIU YUNSHAN

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative who has kept domestic media on a tight leash.

Liu Yunshan, 65, may take over the propaganda and ideology portfolio for the Standing Committee.

He has a background in media, once working as a reporter for state-run news agency Xinhua in Inner Mongolia, where he later served in party and propaganda roles before shifting to Beijing.

As minister of the party’s Propaganda Department since 2002, Liu has also sought to control China‘s Internet, which has more than 500 million users. He has been a member of the wider Politburo for two five-year terms ending this year.

Liu has not worked directly for the Communist Youth League, but is aligned to it through his lengthy career in an inland, poor province, long ties to the party’s propaganda system and close relationship with Hu Jintao.

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LI YUANCHAO

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A reformer who has courted foreign investment and studied in the United States.

Li Yuanchao, 61, oversees the appointment of senior party, government, military and state-owned enterprise officials as head of the party’s powerful organization department. On the Standing Committee, he could head the fight against corruption.

Li, whose father was a vice-mayor of Shanghai, has risen far since his parents were persecuted and he was a humble farm hand during the Cultural Revolution.

Politically astute, Li can navigate between interest groups, from Hu’s Youth League power base to the princelings.

As party chief in his native province, Jiangsu, from 2002 to 2007, Li oversaw a rapid rise in personal incomes and economic development, attracting foreign investment from global industrial leaders such as Ford, Samsung and Caterpillar.

He earned mathematics and economics degrees from two of China‘s best universities and a doctorate in law. He also spent time at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the United States.

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ZHANG DEJIANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative trained in North Korea.

Zhang Dejiang, 65, saw his chances of promotion boosted this year when he was chosen to replace disgraced politician Bo Xilai as Chongqing party boss. He also serves as vice premier in charge of industry, though his record has been tarnished by the downfall of the railway minister last year for corruption.

Zhang is close to former president Jiang Zemin who still wields some influence. He studied economics at Kim Il-sung University in North Korea and is a native of northeast China.

On his watch as party chief of Guangdong, the southern province maintained its position as a powerhouse of China‘s economic growth, even as it struggled with energy shortages, corruption-fuelled unrest and the 2003 SARS epidemic.

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ZHANG GAOLI

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer with experience in more developed parts of China.

Zhang Gaoli, 65, party chief of the northern port city of Tianjin and a Politburo member since 2007, is seen as a Jiang Zemin ally but also acceptable to President Hu, who has visited Tianjin three times since 2008. Zhang is an advocate of greater foreign investment and he introduced financial reforms in a bid to turn the city into a financial center in northern China.

He was sent to clean up Tianjin, which was hit by a string of corruption scandals implicating his predecessor and the former top adviser to the city’s lawmaking body. The adviser committed suicide shortly after Zhang’s arrival.

A native of southeastern Fujian province, Zhang trained as an economist. He also served as party chief and governor of eastern Shandong province and as Guangdong vice governor.

Zhang is low-key with a down-to-earth work style, and not much is known about his specific interests and aspirations. But with his leadership experience in more economically advanced cities and provinces, including party secretary of the showcase manufacturing and export-driven city of Shenzhen, he could be named executive vice premier.

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WANG YANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen by many in the West as a beacon of political reform.

Wang Yang, 57, is party chief of the export dependent economic hub of Guangdong province. He was not included in a list of preferred Standing Committee candidates drawn up by Xi, Hu and Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, according to sources close to the leadership, but is firmly in the running.

Born into a poor rural family in eastern Anhui province, Wang dropped out of high school and went to work in a food factory at age 17 to help support his family after his father died. These experiences may have shaped his desire for more socially inclusive policies, including his “Happy Guangdong” model of development designed to improve quality of life.

Concerned about the social impact of three decades of blistering development, he lobbied for social and political reform. However, this approach has drawn criticism from party conservatives and Wang has more recently adopted the party’s more familiar method of control and punishment to keep order.

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YU ZHENGSHENG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Relatively low-key but considered a cautious reformer.

Yu Zhengsheng, 67, is party boss in China‘s financial hub and most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai.

His impeccable Communist pedigree made him a rising star in the mid-1980s until his brother, an intelligence official, defected to the United States. His close ties with Deng Pufang, the eldest son of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, spared him the full political repercussions but he was taken off the fast track.

Yu bided his time in ministerial ranks until bouncing back, joining the Politburo in 2002. However, the princeling’s age would require him to retire in 2017 after one term.

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LIU YANDONG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Uncertain.

Liu Yandong, who turns 67 this month, is the only woman given a serious chance to join the Standing Committee but is considered a dark horse. She is a princeling also tied to President Hu’s Youth League faction.

If promoted, she could head up parliament’s advisory body, but her age would also force her to retire after only one term.

Her bigger challenge is that no woman has made it into the Standing Committee since 1949. Not even Jiang Qing, the widow of late Chairman Mao Zedong, made it that far.

Liu, daughter of a former vice-minister of agriculture, is currently the only woman in the 25-member Politburo, a minority in China‘s male-dominated political culture. She has been on the wider Politburo since 2007 as one of five state councilors, a rank senior to a cabinet minister but junior to a vice-premier.

(Reporting by Terril Yue Jones, Ben Blanchard, Benjamin Kang Lim and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing. Additional reporting by Chris Ip, Grace Li, Jean Lin, Young Wang, Alice Woodhouse and Julie Zhu; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Mark Bendeich)

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Family defends Malaysian held over Facebook insult

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The family of a Malaysian man detained for allegedly insulting a state sultan on Facebook called for his release Monday, saying the government is violating his free-speech rights.

Police arrested 27-year-old Ahmad Abdul Jalil in Kuala Lumpur and took him to southern Johor state late Friday. He was freed briefly Monday after a magistrate court in Johor refused to extend his remand order but police immediately arrested him again, said his sister Anisa Abdul Jalil.

Anisa said the family was told he was being investigated for seditious remarks against the Johor sultan.

She said the family did not know what the offensive postings were. Local media have reported that the Facebook postings at issue question Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar‘s abilities as leader of a special forces group.

Anisa said police told family lawyers they are pursuing the case under the Communications and Multimedia Act for improper use of the Internet.

“This is too much. He has a right to free speech and he should be freed immediately. There should be no charges against him,” Anisa told The Associated Press.

Fadiah Nadwa Fitri, a lawyer for the family, said the court has ruled that Ahmad’s detention was unjustifiable and that his rearrest was a “blatant abuse of power” by police in defiance of the court order.

District police chief Ruslan Hassan said the case is “highly sensitive” and should be referred to the state police headquarters. The state police chief didn’t answer his phone.

Nine Malaysian states have sultans and other royal figures. Though their roles are largely ceremonial, they command wide respect after centuries of hereditary rule.

Under Malaysian law, acts that provoke hatred against royal rulers are considered seditious. Only a few people have been charged with the crime in recent years.

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Brad Pitt turns designer for high-end furniture collection

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actor Brad Pitt has turned his talents to creating furniture for a luxury design house with a high-end collection inspired by both Art Nouveau and Art Deco, according to Architectural Digest.

Pitt, who collaborated on the collection with U.S. furniture designer Frank Pollaro, discussed his inspirations for the capsule collection in the December issue of the magazine.

“I’m drawn to furniture design as complete architecture on a minor scale,” Pitt said. “I am obsessively bent on quality, to an unhealthy degree.”

Pitt said it was his obsession that introduced him to Pollaro, whom he said embodies the “same mad spirit of the craftsmen of yore, with their obsessive attention to detail.”

The dozen-piece collection, which will be unveiled by the Pollaro furniture house in New York between November 13 and 15, will include tables, chairs, an elaborate bed and a bathtub made of marble.

The 48-year-old “Fight Club” actor said he was influenced by Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow Rose, drawn with a continuous line. He designed his collection with the fluidity of a single line, be it geometric or circular.

“There is something more grand at play, as if you could tell the story of one’s life with a single line — from birth to death, with all the bloody triumphs and perceived humiliating losses, even boredoms, along the way,” the actor said.

Pitt has previously worked with well-known architects for his Make It Right foundation to create affordable quality housing for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He also designed a diamond ring for his partner, Angelina Jolie, when the couple got engaged earlier this year.

The actor also became the latest and first male face of Chanel’s iconic women’s fragrance Chanel No.5 last month, mystifying critics and fashionistas with an enigmatic video commercial.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Patricia Reaney, Bernard Orr)

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Congressional panels to hold hearings on meningitis outbreak

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two congressional oversight committees will hold hearings next week on the deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak linked to tainted steroid injections and one panel has invited an official from the compounding pharmacy involved, aides said on Monday.

The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee expects to hear testimony from Food and Drug Administration commissioner Margaret Hamburg on November 14.

The Republican-led panel has also invited Barry Cadden, co-owner of the New England Compounding Center, and James Coffey of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy, to appear.

A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Health did not say immediately whether Coffey would testify. A lawyer for Cadden was not immediately available for comment.

On November 15, the Democratic-controlled Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold its own hearing. It has invited a half-dozen witnesses including Hamburg, Cadden and health officials from Massachusetts and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Both committees have been investigating the outbreak that has sickened 419 people, killing 30, in 19 states, according to the CDC.

Lawmakers are trying to determine why NECC was allowed to continue operating after federal and state officials had identified problems at its facility including potential health risks posed by its production of injectable drugs.

The committees are also considering possible legislative action to enhance the FDA’s oversight powers over compounding pharmacies, which are regulated mainly by state pharmacy boards.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Toni Clarke; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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The Greeks Are on the Brink Once More

Not too long ago, the only people who would watch votes in the Greek Parliament were those paid to do so as part of their jobs. Over the last couple of years, though, ballots in the historic and often raucous Parliament House have become required viewing for audiences around the world. It seems that every few months Greece’s future hangs on the voting intentions of a handful of deputies that hardly anyone outside their constituencies knows. This week, the world is in for another tension-filled episode of this particular Greek drama.

Greece’s 300 MPs are being called upon to approve the structural reforms and fresh spending cuts demanded by the country’s lenders. If the bills pass, the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund will allow the disbursement of Greece’s next bailout installment of 31.5 billion euros ($ 40 billion). However, some coalition MPs have already said they will not approve the measures. If the three-party government fails to get the majority it needs, it will likely collapse and Greece’s relationship with the euro will enter a new realm of uncertainty.

In two divisive elections this summer, Greece’s traditionally dominant political forces, center-right New Democracy and center-left Pasok, just about fended off the rising anti-austerity leftist party Syriza and clung to power. They had to call on the support of the pro-European Democratic Left, though. This means the stakes are higher for the upcoming parliamentary votes than they have ever been before.

“The outcome of national elections led to a fragile coalition government, which for the first time in recent history had a main mandate to keep Greece in the euro zone, an issue that was never in question in the past,” says Manos Giakoumis, research director at Euroxx Securities, a financial-services firm in Athens. “International lenders as well as the leaders of New Democracy and Pasok view the upcoming votes in Parliament as an answer to this indirect question of whether Greece should remain part of the euro zone or not, something like a referendum.”

The government has heightened the intensity of these votes by piling all the structural reforms and austerity measures—worth 13.5 billion euros, or 4.5 percent of GDP—into one draft law. The legislation, which runs to more than 500 pages, was submitted to Parliament on Monday evening, giving MPs about 48 hours to read it before the ballot on Wednesday night. This vote will be followed by one on the 2013 budget at midnight on Sunday.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, the leader of New Democracy, is looking for a positive outcome in time for a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday, Nov. 12, when the release of the Greek bailout should be rubber-stamped. But unrest within the coalition could scupper the premier’s plans.

Some deputies are unhappy about certain reforms demanded by the so-called troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank, and IMF, while others are loath to approve a new round of austerity knowing that it will guarantee a deepening of Greece’s five-year recession. The budget foresees a contraction of 4.5 percent of GDP next year and unemployment leveling out at almost 23 percent. Some analysts regard these predictions as optimistic and forecast the recession to be far deeper and the jobless rate, already at 25 percent, to rise further.

Democratic Left leader Fotis Kouvelis has indicated his party will not back the structural reforms because he opposes further changes to labor legislation, which has already been deregulated substantially over the past two years. One of the party’s 17 lawmakers has already quit and there are several others who have suggested they might leave if Kouvelis gives in to pressure to change his stance. On Monday, a potential compromise emerged by which Democratic Left MPs would vote “present” on Wednesday but in favor of the budget on Sunday. This would prevent Kouvelis and his deputies having to leave the coalition and thereby weakening its legitimacy.

Pasok, which had 33 seats in Parliament, also lost an MP last week after the departing deputy told party chief Evangelos Venizelos that he would vote against the bill. Since then, two more of the party’s lawmakers have said they will not support the measures. Ex-minister Andreas Loverdos said he feels he is being blackmailed into supporting the package.

Samaras met with his 127 MPs on Sunday and urged them to back the measures, arguing that this would secure Greece’s place in the euro zone. As of Monday night, the maximum votes the coalition could secure were 173 out of 300. A decision by the Democratic Left not to back the reforms would leave the government with 157 votes, still a majority but one slim enough to be threatened by desertions from Pasok or New Democracy.

To add to the tension, Alexis Tsipras, the leader of leftist Syriza, which has placed first in all of the opinion polls carried out since last month, issued on Sunday a call for new elections and more popular resistance to the government’s plans. Labor unions begin a 48-hour strike on Tuesday.

However, Giakoumis, the financial analyst, argues that receiving the next loan tranche, of which 23 billion euros will go directly toward recapitalizing Greek banks, is “probably the last chance for a rebound of the Greek economy.”

“Although recapitalization will not lead to a direct liquidity boost in the economy, it will help restore some of the lost confidence in the markets,” he says. “But potentially the clearest message would be to eliminate Greek euro exit scenarios. The approval of the disbursement should be the first step of a wider process, which would involve clear commitment by international lenders and restoring growth and confidence domestically.”

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Bomb shakes Damascus, opposition holds unity talks

AMMAN (Reuters) – A bomb exploded near army and security compounds in Damascus, Syrian television reported, and fractured opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad began unity talks abroad to win international respect and arms supplies.

The 50-kilogram (110-pound) bomb, near a large hotel in a heavily guarded district, was described by state media as an attack by “terrorists” – the government’s term for insurgents in the 19-month-old uprising against Assad.

Opposition activists said Sunday’s blast appeared to be the work of the Ahfad al-Rasoul (Grandsons of the Prophet) Brigade, an Islamist militant unit that attacked military and intelligence targets several times in the last two months.

The mainly Sunni rebels have carried out a series of bombings targeting government and military buildings in Damascus this year, extending the war into the seat of Assad’s power.

The Syrian conflict has aggravated divisions in the Islamic world, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad — whose Alawite faith derives from Shi’ite Islam — and U.S.-allied Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar backing his foes.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an activist monitoring group, said government forces had killed 179 people on Sunday. It said most of the dead were civilians killed in shelling of Damascus suburbs and included 14 women and 20 children. The rest were rebels killed in battles in the capital and the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

Opposition campaigners said the Syrian army shelled rebel positions inside a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus on Sunday, killing at least 20 people. They said the Yarmouk camp had become the latest battleground in the war.

In northern Idlib, opposition sources said rebels were forced to halt an offensive to take a big air base because of a shortage of ammunition, a problem that has dogged their campaign to cement a hold on the north by eliminating Assad’s devastating edge in firepower.

Islamist insurgents had launched the attack on the Taftanaz military airport at dawn on Saturday, using rocket launchers and at least three tanks captured from the military.

The Syrian government restricts journalists’ access in Syria, making it difficult to verify reports from the ground.

The Jaafar bin Tayyar Division, a rebel unit in Deir al-Zor, said its fighters had taken control of the al-Ward oilfield near the Iraqi border on Sunday, after overrunning a loyalist outpost that had 40 militiamen defending it.

Rebel commanders, former Syrian officials and the Syrian head of an oil services company familiar with oil production in the area said the fields, mostly not operational, had been under de facto rebel control for months.

FEARS OF WIDER CONFLAGRATION

The conflict began with peaceful protest rallies that morphed into armed revolt when Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since 1971, tried to stamp them out with military might. About 32,000 people have been killed, wide swathes of the major Arab state have been wrecked and the civil war threatens to widen into a regional sectarian conflagration.

The opposition talks that began in Qatar marked the first concerted attempt to meld feuding, disparate groups based abroad and coordinate strategy with rebels fighting in Syria.

Divisions between Islamists and secularists as well as between those inside Syria and opposition figures based abroad have foiled prior attempts to forge a united opposition and deterred Western powers from intervening militarily.

Analysts were skeptical the planned four days of opposition talks in the Qatari capital Doha would bring immediate results.

They aim to broaden the Syrian National Council (SNC), the largest of the overseas-based opposition groups, from some 300 members to 400, to pave the way for talks in Doha on Thursday including other anti-Assad factions to crystallise a coalition.

“The main aim is to expand the council to include more of the social and political components. There will be new forces in the SNC,” Abdulbaset Sieda, current leader of the Syrian National Council, told reporters in Doha ahead of the meeting.

The meetings would also elect a new executive committee and leader for the SNC, he said.

A Qatar-based security analyst, who asked not to be named, said the meetings would bring a small step forward, at most. “The Syrian National Council is just too divided,” he said.

In Cairo, the international mediator on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, called on Sunday for world powers to issue a U.N. Security Council resolution based on a deal they reached in June to set up a transitional Syrian government.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the same news conference, dismissed the need for a resolution and said others were stoking violence by backing rebels. His comments highlighted the impasse over Syria’s civil war.

Russia and China, both permanent council members, have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad’s government for the violence. The other three permanent members are the United States, Britain and France.

(Additional reporting by Rania el Gamal and Regan Doherty in Qatar, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Stephen Powell)

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U.S. Coast Guard suspends search for captain of replica HMS Bounty

Charleston, South Carolina (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday suspended a four-day, round-the-clock search for Robin Walbridge, 63, the missing captain of the replica tall ship HMS Bounty, which sank in heavy seas stirred up by Hurricane Sandy.

Fourteen crew members were rescued from life rafts by Coast Guard helicopters on Monday, but Walbridge and another crew member, Claudene Christian, were washed overboard before they could make it to the rafts.

Christian, 42, was pulled from the sea later and flown to hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the Walbridge and Christian families,” Captain Doug Cameron, chief of incident response for the Coast Guard 5th District, said in a statement. “Suspending a search and rescue case is one of the hardest decisions we have to make.”

Crews searched more than 90 hours and covered some 12,000 square nautical miles in the Atlantic Ocean, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard said earlier this week that all members of the crew wore survival suits, which had flotation capability, and that water temperatures were about 77 degrees F (25 C), raising hopes Walbridge might be found.

The three-masted, 180-foot (55-metre) ship, built for the 1962 movie, “Mutiny on the Bounty,” was on its way from New London, Connecticut, to its winter berth in St. Petersburg, Florida, and was about 160 miles from the eye of the hurricane when it foundered.

The original Bounty, a British transport ‘square rigger,’ is famed for a mutiny in 1789. Marlon Brando starred as lead mutineer Fletcher Christian in the movie for which the ship was built.

In a short video of Walbridge posted on the Bounty’s Facebook page this week, he described being captain of the Bounty as “probably one of the greatest jobs in the world.”

Walbridge worked on the Bounty for 17 years, said his wife, Claudia McCann, who spoke with Reuters by telephone earlier this week.

“That was his passion,” McCann said.

Growing up in Vermont, his mother “encouraged us to smell the sea air” on trips to visit relatives in Boston, recalled his sister, Lucille Jansen, 67.

“He always looked after his crew first,” she added. “That’s the last memory we’ll have of him because he did exactly what a captain should do. He made sure the crew was safe.”

(Editing by David Adams and Peter Cooney)

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California GMO measure may fail after food industry fights back

(Reuters) – Major food and seed companies appear to be on the verge of defeating a California ballot initiative that, if passed on Tuesday, would create the first labeling requirement for genetically modified foods in the United States.

In a campaign reminiscent of this summer’s successful fight against a proposed tobacco tax in California, opposition funded by Monsanto Co, DuPont, PepsiCo Inc and others unleashed waves of TV and radio advertisements against Proposition 37 and managed to turn the tide of public opinion.

Four weeks ago, the labeling initiative was supported by more than two-thirds of Californians who said they intended to vote on November 6, according to a poll from the California Business Roundtable and Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy. On Tuesday, their latest poll showed support had plummeted to 39 percent, while opposition had surged to almost 51 percent.

The swing in sentiment in the final weeks was predicted by pollsters, based on the power of a $ 46 million “No on 37″ campaign, one of the best-funded for a California ballot measure fight. The ads claim the “badly written” initiative would increase the average family’s grocery bills by $ 400 annually and hobble California farmers. Opponents also take aim at what they call “special interest exemptions” for restaurant food and products from animals fed with grain containing genetically modified organisms, popularly known as GMOs.

Backers of the labeling initiative say consumers have the right to know what is in the food they eat. They dispute opponents’ cost projections and say labeling would not be burdensome to families or businesses.

They could still prevail on Tuesday if the polling turns out to be wrong, or if a last minute push by grassroots supporters takes root.

Many processed foods sold in the United States are made at least in part with corn, soybeans or other crops that have been genetically modified – crossed with DNA from other species to do things like make them resistant to insects or weed killer.

Each side accuses the other of resorting to desperate measures to mislead voters and using science that falls short of rigorous standards.

Such polarized debate is common in California, where ballot measures play a big role in governing. But labeling proponents say it also speaks to the research gap around GMOs, specifically a lack of mandated government studies that would show whether long-term consumption of GMOs causes health problems.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has determined labels are not needed for GM crops that are “substantially equivalent” to non-GM crops. The United States does not require labeling or mandatory independent pre-market safety testing for GMOs. At least three dozen countries require labeling and mandatory pre-market safety testing, said Michael Hansen, senior scientist from watchdog group Consumer Reports.

Some food and agriculture experts predict food companies would remove genetically modified ingredients rather than label them just for California – a move that would hit the multi-billion genetically modified seed business, where Monsanto and DuPont are market leaders.

Monsanto, the largest backer of the campaign with more than $ 8 million in funding, and DuPont say Proposition 37 would mislead consumers. PepsiCo referred reporters to the “No on 37″ campaign.

TARGETING FLAWS IN INITIATIVE

Consumer advocates say the “No on 37″ campaign has employed many of the same tactics the tobacco industry used this summer in California in a $ 47 million campaign that defeated Proposition 29, which would have raised cigarette taxes by $ 1 per pack to fund cancer research and other health efforts.

Opponents of the tobacco tax overcame early support approaching 70 percent by flooding airwaves with ads, including one featuring a doctor in a white coat warning that tobacco tax proceeds would not be spent on cancer treatment and could be shipped out of state. Outgunned supporters said those claims were false.

The food and tobacco industry campaigns both employed messages that weren’t “arguing with the premise of the initiatives, but rather making picky criticisms of the details of the initiatives,” said anti-smoking activist Stanton Glantz, a professor and researcher at the University of California-San Francisco.

“No on 37″ spokeswoman Kathy Fairbanks rejects the notion of copycat tactics and said the similarities between the two campaigns are limited to pointing out flaws in the initiatives and spending significant money on ads.

Backers of Proposition 37, including thousands of individual donors, organic food companies and natural health news provider Joseph Mercola, have been outspent roughly six to one, according to campaign reports filed with the California Secretary of State. In their final push, they are trying to trumpet cases where they say opponents have used misinformation to sway the public.

MISSTEPS ON BOTH SIDES

Both sides have made missteps.

Supporters of Proposition 37 got a boost when the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics said “No on 37″ inaccurately stated in the California official voter information guide that the academy had concluded that GMOs were safe.

“We are concerned that California’s voters are being misled to believe the nation’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals is against Proposition 37, when in fact, the academy does not have a position on the issue,” its president said in a statement in early October.

“No on 37″ said it based its information on a policy statement on the academy’s website and that it was not aware the position had expired in 2010.

The FDA also set the record straight on a “No on 37″ mailer that put the FDA’s logo below a quote criticizing efforts like the California labeling measure as “inherently misleading.” The use of the quote next to the logo made it appear that FDA had weighed in on the fight.

FDA spokeswoman Morgan Liscinsky said the agency made no such statement and had no position on the initiative. “Yes on 37″ also asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the allegedly fraudulent misuse of FDA’s seal in that mailer – something that won’t be resolved until well after the election.

Then, just four days before the vote, supporters of Proposition 37 fumbled the facts about the status of its DOJ request, releasing a statement titled: “FBI opens investigation into No on 37 shenanigans.”

The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California quickly responded: “Neither the FBI nor this office has a pending investigation related to this matter.”

“Yes on 37″ said it issued its statement after a field agent for the FBI called its attorney. It later revised its statement to say that the U.S. Attorney’s office had referred the matter to the FDA, which like other federal agencies has its own criminal investigations unit.

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Stacey Joyce)

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HSBC profits to gain from cuts to bad debts, costs

LONDON (Reuters) – HSBC Holdings is expected to report a jump in quarterly profits on Monday as lower losses from bad debts and a cost-cutting plan outweigh mis-selling charges and the impact of tough economic conditions across the world.

Europe’s biggest bank will be the last of Britain’s major lenders to report and all are facing intense scrutiny on how far they are streamlining operations, the impact of tougher regulations, and their standards as they get hit with fines and compensation charges for past misconduct.

HSBC <0005.HK> Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver kicked off the bank’s restructuring in early 2011, before most rivals, and the benefit is starting to feed through to the bottom line.

The bank should report an underlying profit – after stripping out the impact of disposals and changes in the value of its own debt – in the July-September quarter of between $ 4.9 billion and $ 6.6 billion, according to a range of analysts’ forecasts, up from $ 3 billion a year earlier.

Profits will come in at $ 5.4 billion, according to Credit Suisse analysts.

HSBC, whose origins date back to 1865 as a financier of trade between Europe and Asia, operates in 84 countries and Gulliver is well into his plan for $ 3.5 billion in cuts, axe unprofitable areas and direct investment to Asia.

He has cut 27,000 jobs and sold or closed 26 businesses, including selling its U.S. credit card arm and half of its U.S. branches.

HSBC’s bad debts in the third quarter are predicted to drop to $ 2.2-2.5 billion from $ 3.9 billion a year ago. Operating costs should also drop by more than $ 1 billion.

But Gulliver faces scrutiny on whether he can get costs to below 52 percent of revenue from around 57.5 percent in the last year.

He also aims to lift return on equity, a key measure of profitability, to 12-15 percent in 2013. In H1 2012, it was 10.5 percent.

Other problems also continue to cast a shadow, including the size of a fine it faces for lax anti-money laundering controls in the United States.

On Sunday, Sky News reported that HSBC was about to raise its provision for fines from U.S. authorities by $ 800 million to $ 1.5 billion. HSBC declined to comment.

Analysts have said the bank may also have to set aside about 150 million pounds more to cover mis-selling of UK payment protection insurance.

HSBC is also one of more than a dozen banks under scrutiny in the Libor global interest rate-rigging scandal that has put the industry’s culture and standards under fire.

Chairman Douglas Flint on Monday will appear before UK lawmakers investigating standards. He will appear alongside new Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins and Santander UK boss Ana Botin at 1600 GMT.

HSBC benefits from its strong position in faster growing Asian markets, and analysts estimate its investment bank should deliver profits of more than $ 2 billion as revenues rise to $ 4.4-4.7 billion, mirroring the strong fixed income performance shown by rivals.

(Reporting by Steve Slater, additional reporting by Natalie Huet; editing by Jason Neely)

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