HK & SK Led the Region

Asian stock markets extended their advance Monday as investors eyed another raft of corporate earning in the U.S. and struggling lender CIT Group neared an eleventh-hour deal to stave off bankruptcy.

Hong Kong and South Korean stocks led the region with gains of over 2 percent, while oil prices traded above $64 a barrel. Japanese financial markets were closed for a holiday.

Investors seem encouraged as Wall Street futures rose amid news U.S. commercial lender CIT was closing in on a deal with bondholders for $3 billion in emergency funding. The New York-based bank has been scrambling to raise $2 billion to $4 billion after the federal government refused to bail out the company last week.

The news could add more support to a market already relieved that second-quarter results from major American companies have largely turned out better than expected. Reports this week from American Express, aerospace manufacturer Boeing, industrial equipment maker Caterpillar, among others, will likely to provide more clues about any rebound in the world's largest economy and could dictate trade in the near term.

"It's hard to see a big correction right now," said Andrew Orchard, Asian strategist for Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong. "Earnings have helped the market rally a bit and there's still a lot money out there, so I think we could move higher."

Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 446.98 points, or 2.4 percent, to 19,252.64, and South Korea's Kospi added 34.22, or 2.4 percent, to 1,474.25.

Most other major markets were also in the green, with benchmarks in Australia, Shanghai and Taiwan higher by about 1.5 percent.

Indonesian's market suffered Asia's only decline, falling 0.5 percent and adding to losses after Friday's deadly bomb blasts at two luxury hotels in the capital Jakarta.

Wall Street closed little changed Friday.

The Dow Jones industrials rose 32.12, or 0.4 percent, to 8,743.94, but the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index slipped 0.36, or less than 0.1 percent, to 940.38.

U.S. futures pointed to a higher open Monday. Dow futures were up 34, or 0.4 percent, at 8,731 and S&P futures gained 3.3, or 0.4 percent, to 940.20.

Crude prices bounced in Asian trade, the benchmark contract rising 52 cents to $64.08 a barrel. The contracted advanced $1.54 in Friday trade.

The dollar was higher at 94.62 yen from 94.32 yen. The euro strengthened to $1.4154 from $1.4115.

AP

Obama is Changing

President Barack Obama made his personal icy cool the trademark of his campaign, the tenor of his White House and the hallmark of an early run of successes at home and abroad. But as the glamour wears off and a long, frustrating summer wears on, he is being forced to improvise — stooping to respond to political foes and adjusting his tactics and demeanor for the trench warfare of a legislative agenda.

The root of the change is one that faces every president: Economic and international realities that resist political charm. Iran and North Korea have shown no interest in the president’s outstretched hand. The economy has delivered a double-whammy, with rising unemployment stirring voters’ concerns while sluggish growth deprives the government of tax revenues Obama would like to spend on new programs.
Health care reform, which once appeared flush with momentum from earlier congressional victories, is now on a slog through no less than five committees, which include Democrats who either aren’t sold on Obama’s expansive vision or can’t figure out how to convince voters to pay for it.

“This is when it gets harder,” the president told supporters June 30.

And so it has.

In turn, Obama has adjusted, deviating from the playbook on every front.

The cool president has turned hot on the stump, stripping to shirtsleeves to lambaste doubters in New Jersey Thursday. He departed from his prepared remarks last week to accept a Republican challenge to take personal ownership of the economy: “That’s fine. Give it to me,” he said.

Even Obama's scripted speeches are deliberately more forceful, aggressive and direct in taking on critics, aides say. Friday remarks at the White House had a trash-talk edge – count me out and you’ll be sorry.

Obama’s political operation has dispensed with its post-inauguration cocktails for Republicans – or more often, ignoring them outright — in favor of the old politics of engage, attack and cajole. Obama’s even engaging in a little Democrat-on-Democrat politics, as his ex-campaign arm is beaming TV ads into the home states of moderate fence-sitters on health care.

yahoonews

9 Killed, 36 Injured in Two Bomb Blast

President Barack Obama … is there still no war on terror? Would the following fall under an ‘Overseas Contingency Operation’? We are glad to see that a softer name was provided to the efforts to deal with terrorists, unfortunately Barack, they didn’t get the memo.

According to the BBC, a fatal bombing has occurred this morning in the Indonesian capital Jakarta at the Ritz-Carlton. It is being reported that 9 people have been killed including the suicide bomber.

One explosion hit the Ritz-Carlton, ripping off its facade, and the other the JW Marriott. As many as 50 people were hurt, including many foreigners.

At least one attacker was a guest at the JW Marriott, police said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has visited the scene and condemned “the cruel and inhuman attack”.

CNN is reporting that 40 people have been injured and 8 people dead in the coordinatd terrorist attack.

Police sealed off the area around both hotel blasts, one in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and the other at the J.W. Marriott Hotel, about 50 meters away. Djalal said the attacks were coordinated.

Forensics experts are collecting evidence at the “disturbing scene,” Djalal said. He said he had few details about the blasts, which occurred about 7:45 a.m. (8:45 p.m. Thursday ET) on Friday, Islam’s holy day.

scaredmonkey.com

Debbie Rowe denies pay off

Michael Jackson's ex-wife Debbie Rowe has denied reports she was paid by the singer to give up parental rights to their two children.

The New York Post reported that Rowe agreed to take about $4m (£2.4m) to give up her rights to children Prince Michael Jr, 12, and Paris, 11.

In a letter to the newspaper, her lawyer Eric George called the claims "blatant falsehoods".

New York Post editor-in-chief Col Allan said the paper "stands by its story".

That was despite Mr George asking the newspaper to publish an immediate retraction.

'Reckless'

The lawyer said Ms Rowe, who was married to Jackson from 1996 to 1999, "has not and will not" give up her parental rights and the claim was "unequivocally false".

He said the story had been "concocted with reckless disregard for the truth", adding that Ms Rowe had also not taken, and would not accept, any additional money beyond the spousal support she had agreed with the singer years ago.

Mr George said that, following Jackson's death, "no determination has been reached concerning custody or visitation".

Jackson's mother, Katherine, was granted temporary guardianship of her son's three children on 29 June.

A custody hearing on the three is set for next Monday.

The surrogate mother of Jackson's youngest child, seven-year-old Prince Michael II, has never been identified.

In a 2002 will signed by Jackson, he said he had "intentionally omitted" to provide for Ms Rowe.

She gave up custody rights to the children but sought them again in 2003.

They agreed a settlement in 2006 but the terms were never disclosed.

Intervention

Meanwhile, sales of Jackson's music have continued to rocket in the US.

Early figures show the singer's catalogue of solo albums sold 1.1 million copies in the past week.

It brings the total number of Jackson album sales in the US to more than 2.3 million in two-and-a-half weeks.

Meanwhile, Tito Jackson has said he and his brothers and sisters confronted the star over claims he was addicted to prescription drugs.

In an interview with the Daily Mirror, he said: "We had to act - it was me, my sisters Janet, Rebbie and La Toya and my brothers Jackie and Randy.

"We kept asking him if it was true."

He added: "He kept denying it. He said we were over-reacting. We talked about it again and again for hours but we just couldn't get through to him."

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Los Angeles coroner said results of Jackson's autopsy would not be released "this week or next" while final work on the case was carried out.

bbcnews.com

The world's oldest mum dies in Spain

A Spanish woman who became the world's oldest new mother when she gave birth in 2006 to twin boys at the age of 66 has died, her family has said.

The brother of Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara told the paper Diario de Cadiz she passed away on Saturday, aged 69.

It said she had been diagnosed with cancer shortly after giving birth.

In 2007, Ms Bousada de Lara said she had lied about her age to doctors at a fertility clinic in California to get IVF treatment, telling them she was 55.

Ms Bousada de Lara argued that there was no reason to believe she would not have as long a life as her mother, who died at the age of 101. She even joked that she might live to see her grandchildren.

She also insisted that if she died prematurely her sons Christian and Pau, who are now two years old, would never be alone.

"There are lots of young people in our family," she added.

When the twins were born in Barcelona on 29 December 2006, Ms Bousada de Lara was aged 66 years 358 days, 130 days older than Romanian Adriana Iliescu, who gave birth in 2005 to a baby girl.

bbcnews.com

Obama May Rely on Partisan Vote for Health-Care Bill

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress if Republican resistance doesn’t eventually give way, two of the president’s top advisers said.

“Ultimately, this is not about a process, it’s about results,” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political strategist, said during an interview yesterday in his White House office. “If we’re going to get this thing done, obviously time is a- wasting.”

Both Axelrod and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said taking a partisan route to enacting major health-care legislation isn’t the president’s preferred choice. Yet in separate interviews, each man left that option open.

“We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,” Axelrod said. “But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.”

House Democrats yesterday unveiled legislation that would expand health care to millions of Americans over the next decade by raising taxes on the wealthiest households. The Senate has yet to agree on a bill, as Democratic lawmakers struggle to get Republican support.

“This is nothing but a job-killing, tax-raising measure that will actually take away the quality of care we’ve been used to,” said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia in an interview today with CNBC.

Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, criticized a provision of the bill that would penalize employers who don’t offer benefits.

Republican Ideas

Emanuel, making a theoretical case for a party-line vote, offered a definition of bipartisanship based not on roll-call votes but on whether Democrats have accepted Republican ideas during the process of negotiations.

He said Democrats already have passed that test, pointing to Republican amendments that the Democratic-controlled Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has adopted.

“That’s a test of bipartisanship -- whether you took ideas from both parties,” Emanuel said. “At the end of the day, the test isn’t whether they voted for it,” he said, referring to Republicans. “The test is whether the final product represented some of their ideas. And I think it will.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement last night that “Americans want us to work together on proposals that are likely to garner strong bipartisan support --- not rush through bills like the stimulus with little scrutiny and predictable results.”

McConnell referred to the Obama-backed economic stimulus bill that was passed into law in February with no Republican support in the House and three Republican votes in the Senate.

Dole, Daschle

Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, said in a statement he was “very disappointed to hear recent reports that the administration may give up on a bipartisan solution to health-care reform.” Health care “is not a Democrat or Republican issue, it is an American issue, but, from the start of this health-care debate, Democrats have shut us completely out the process,” he also said.

Two former Senate majority leaders -- Robert Dole, a Republican from Kansas, and Tom Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota who is a White House adviser on health-care policy -- are among those who have inveighed against a partisan approach on such a contentious issue.

‘Couldn’t Agree More’

During a joint appearance in June as they unveiled their own bipartisan health-care proposal, Dole said he believed Democrats could pass a bill by a party-line vote, even as he expressed disapproval of such a tactic.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Dole said. “If there’s not a Senate Republican vote for the package, then the American people are going to be very skeptical.

The Democrats have 60 votes in the Senate to 40 for the Republicans, and have a 255-178 advantage in the House, with two vacancies.

Daschle at the joint appearance said he “couldn’t agree more” with Dole’s warning about the political fallout from a partisan vote.

Moreover, he expressed doubt that Democrats alone could prevail, because that scenario “assumes unanimity” among the party’s lawmakers, and that isn’t the case.

Senate Democrats

Obama has yet to secure the support of a pivotal group of Senate Democrats, which includes Evan Bayh of Indiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. In addition, Senators Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Robert Byrd of West Virginia may miss votes because of poor health.

In the Senate, it takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

Time is running short for the House and Senate to pass versions of the legislation before their August recess, a deadline Obama set for each chamber to act.

In entertaining the possibility of a party-line vote on health care, Emanuel cited “reconciliation,” a parliamentary procedure that a dominant party can use to prevent the other party from blocking legislation in the Senate. Invoking reconciliation would allow Senate Democrats to pass a health- care bill with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes needed to overcome stalling tactics.

“It’s not the first priority, or the second priority, or the third priority. We think we can get it done without it,” Emanuel said.

Yet reconciliation “exists as an alternative vehicle,” he said. “That’s what it was created for.”

Obama Involvement

With time running out, some Democrats have urged Obama to get more deeply involved in the nitty-gritty of legislative negotiations.

Axelrod said the president is likely to do that.

“I can’t guarantee whether his sleeves will be rolled up or not,” he said. “Obviously, as this process evolves, I think he will be very clear about things.”

The White House and Congress are trying to agree on ways to cover the estimated 46 million uninsured Americans and rein in health-care costs.

bloomberg.com

Hole in Jetliner Disrupts Flight

A Southwest Airlines jetliner headed for Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport made an emergency landing in West Virginia yesterday evening after a hole opened in the body of the plane and the cabin lost pressure, an airline spokeswoman said.

Flight 2294, which was carrying 126 passengers and a crew of five, landed at Charleston, W.Va., about 50 minutes after its 4:05 p.m. departure from Nashville.

No injuries were reported.

"Nothing like this has ever happened before," airline spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said.

What caused the damage to the Boeing 737-300 was not immediately known and would be investigated, she said. In the meantime, she said, all of the airline's 737-300s would be inspected overnight.

The loss of cabin pressure was detected about 30 minutes into the flight. Oxygen masks deployed and were used, and the plane descended to a safe altitude, McInnis said. Oxygen is usually needed above 10,000 feet.

She said the hole that apparently led to the depressurization was considerably smaller than a basketball and appeared on the side of the airplane, near the top.

Another airplane was sent to Charleston to pick up the passengers, and they arrived at BWI shortly before 11 p.m., McInnis said.

wahington post