Tag: news at noon

BP executives have held talks with a number of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) including Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar and Singapore, the source told Reuters under condition of anonymity.

“BP is seeking a strategic partner so it doesn’t get taken over by other major oil companies such as Exxon and Total,” the source said. “It’s BP that is approaching the sovereign wealth funds not the other way round. They are the ones in need of a partner.”

Over the weekend, while U.S. Independence Day holidaymakers shunned Gulf of Mexico beaches tarred by the leaking well, media reports said BP was looking for a strategic investor among the sovereign wealth funds of the Middle East and Asia.

An investor would help ward off a takeover and raise funds for the liabilities racking up behind the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the reports said.

Petraeus told hundreds of guests at a U.S. embassy party held to mark U.S. independence day that it was essential to show unity of purpose to solve Afghanistan’s problems.

“This is a tough mission, there is nothing easy about it,” he said at the sprawling and heavily fortified U.S. embassy complex in Kabul, Washington’s biggest foreign mission anywhere in the world and boasting 5 ambassadors.

“A nuclear explosion over the leak,” he says nonchalantly puffing a cigarette as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where he is a director. “I don’t know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and the problem is solved.”

A nuclear fix to the leaking well has been touted online and in the occasional newspaper op-ed for weeks now. Washington has repeatedly dismissed the idea and BP execs say they are not considering an explosion — nuclear or otherwise. But as a series of efforts to plug the 60,000 barrels of oil a day gushing from the sea floor have failed, talk of an extreme solution refuses to die.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 472,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected claims to slip to 452,000 from the previously reported 457,000, which was revised slightly up to 459,000 in Thursday’s report.

Joseph Cassano, the much-maligned ex-chief of AIG’s Financial Products division, told a congressionally appointed commission on Wednesday that he truly believed what he told an earnings call with analysts and investors.

“I meant exactly what I said in August 2007,” Cassano said, according to prepared testimony for the hearing held by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

“Inventory data and foreclosure activity have not shown any signs of improvement,” David Blitzer, chairman of S&P’s index committee, said in a statement. “Consistent and sustained boosts to economic growth from housing may have to wait to next year.”

The S&P composite index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas for April rose 0.4 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis after a downwardly revised 0.2 percent drop in March, compared with a 0.1 percent decline forecast in a Reuters survey. March prices were previously reported as unchanged.

Republicans have questioned whether Kagan, a former Harvard law school dean who has served in the past two Democratic administrations, is driven more by politics than law.

Democratic backers call the 50-year-old nominee, who last week received the American Bar Association’s top rating, a perfect fit for the highest U.S. court.

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Nearly 2,000 soldiers filed into polling booths in a university in Osh, epicenter of the bloodshed, two days before the main round of voting which the interim government hopes will cement its rule of the poor but strategic country.

“The boys are voting today so they can be on high alert on election day,” said Abdykalyk Boltabayev, a local election commission official.

Democrats in charge of the process appear likely to retain tough restrictions on banks’ trading and investment activities that could crimp profits for the foreseeable future.

But with a self-imposed deadline of Thursday evening, last-minute dealmaking could lead to exemptions for mutual funds, manufacturers and other business interests.

“German policy is a danger for Europe, it could destroy the European project,” he told German weekly Die Zeit.

Soros, who earned $1 billion in 1992 by betting against the British pound, added that he “could not rule out a collapse of the euro.”

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The move comes a day after General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, apologized for comments by his aides insulting some of President Barack Obama’s closest advisers in an article to be published in Rolling Stone magazine.

The controversy comes at an inopportune time for Obama, who already is dealing with huge BP Plc oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, trying to get financial industry reform legislation through Congress and hoping to prevent Republicans from taking back control of Congress in November elections.

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