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| Obama says Russia has violated international law in Ukraine Monday, Mar 03, 2014 07:18 PM PST  By Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday that Russia violated international law with its military intervention in Ukraine and warned that the U.S. government would look at a series of economic and diplomatic sanctions to isolate Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to allow international monitors to mediate a deal in Ukraine acceptable to all Ukrainian people, Obama told reporters before he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. is weighing its response to Russia's so far bloodless incursion into Crimea. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. halts military engagements with Russia in rebuke over Ukraine Monday, Mar 03, 2014 07:16 PM PST By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Monday suspended all military engagements with Russia, including military exercises and port visits, as Washington sought ways to punish Moscow over its military intervention in Ukraine without escalating the crisis. The announcement from the Pentagon came hours after President Barack Obama warned the U.S. government will look at a series of economic and diplomatic sanctions that would isolate Moscow. Full Story | Top |
| Detroit asks bankruptcy court to approve new deal to end swaps Monday, Mar 03, 2014 07:03 PM PST  Detroit on Monday said it reached an agreement with two investment banks to end costly interest rate swaps, a move that could give Detroit access to revenue from casino taxes and give it leverage in efforts to win court approval for the city's plan to restructure its debt. The deal to terminate the swaps, which were used to hedge interest rate risk on some Detroit pension debt, would cost the bankrupt city just $85 million. That is a steep drop from two previous deals that carried price tags of $165 million and around $230 million, respectively and were rejected by U.S. bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes as being too expensive for the broke city. Detroit late Monday filed a motion asking Rhodes, who is overseeing the city's historic municipal bankruptcy case, to approve the new deal. Full Story | Top |
| Russian markets plunge as Putin tightens Crimea grip Monday, Mar 03, 2014 07:00 PM PST  By Lidia Kelly and Alissa de Carbonnel MOSCOW/PEREVALNOYE, Ukraine (Reuters) - Russia paid a heavy financial price on Monday for its military intervention in neighboring Ukraine, with stocks, bonds and the ruble plunging as President Vladimir Putin's forces tightened their grip on the Russian-speaking Crimea region. The Moscow stock market fell 10.8 percent, wiping nearly $60 billion off the value of Russian companies, more than the $51 billion Russia spent on the Winter Olympics in Sochi last month. Putin declared at the weekend he had the right to invade Ukraine to protect Russian interests and citizens. Moscow's U.N. envoy told a stormy meeting of the Security Council on Monday that Ukraine's ousted leader Viktor Yanukovich had sent a letter to Putin requesting he use Russia's military to restore law and order in Ukraine. Full Story | Top |
| Melbourne will be an "anxious weekend" - Renault Monday, Mar 03, 2014 06:49 PM PST  Renault have made some progress in ironing out the engine problems that have blighted Formula One preseason testing, but will head into the season-opener in Melbourne with doubts about "incomplete" preparations. Renault supplies champions Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Caterham and Lotus, and the performance of their new engine disappointed at the tests in Jerez and Bahrain. Renault were also considerably slower, with four-times world champion Sebastian Vettel's fastest time on Sunday's final day of pre-season testing 4.190 seconds slower than table-topping Lewis Hamilton's best with Mercedes. "We can't escape the fact that we did not complete the entire program with all the teams and that some Melbourne preparations are incomplete," Renault Sport F1's deputy managing director Rob White said on the manufacturer's website (www.renaultsportf1.com/). Full Story | Top |
| U.S. Navy to order 33 fewer F-35s than planned in next 5 yrs -source Monday, Mar 03, 2014 06:46 PM PST By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy is set to order 33 fewer Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets than originally planned over the five years starting in fiscal 2015 due to budgetary pressures, a defense official said Monday. In a move that will sharply slow work on the F-35 model built to land on aircraft carriers, the Navy will ask Congress to fund 36 F-35Cs instead of 69, said the official, who could not speak publicly ahead of Tuesday's release of the 2015 budget request. The Air Force is also deferring orders for four conventional landing F-35 A-models in fiscal 2015, but is expected to resume its planned orders for the jet in 2016 and beyond, said a second source familiar with the plans. That adds up to 343 F-35s to be funded by the U.S. military through fiscal 2019, excluding three Marine Corps jets that could be added to the Pentagon's war funding request, which will be submitted in April or May. Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale told a conference last week that the department's decision to buy eight fewer F-35s in fiscal 2015 was based on affordability, not the aircraft's performance. Full Story | Top |
| Dish, Disney reach long-term programming deal Monday, Mar 03, 2014 06:44 PM PST  (Reuters) - After months of talks, Dish Network Corp and Walt Disney Co have reached a long-term programming agreement that allows the No.2 satellite provider to carry Disney-owned networks such as ABC and ESPN, the companies said. Dish will disable "AutoHop" commercial-skipping feature functionality for ABC content on its digital video recorder as a part of the agreement. Disney and Dish's programming agreement expired at the end of September, but the companies averted blackout of Disney's top networks for the satellite provider's 14 million customers. The extensive and expanded distribution agreement grants Dish rights to stream cleared linear and video-on-demand content from the ABC-owned broadcast stations, ABC Family, Disney Channel, ESPN and ESPN2, as part of an Internet-delivered, IP-based multichannel offering. Full Story | Top |
| Obama, advisers discuss ways to 'further isolate' Russia Monday, Mar 03, 2014 06:34 PM PST President Barack Obama met for over two hours on Monday with his national security advisers and discussed ways the United States and its allies could "further isolate" Russia over its military intervention in Ukraine, a White House official said. The group discussed ways to "reinforce that the Russians still have an opportunity to take immediate steps to de-escalate the situation or they face further political and economic repercussions from the international community," the official said about the meeting. Full Story | Top |
| Motor racing-Melbourne will be an "anxious weekend" - Renault Monday, Mar 03, 2014 06:32 PM PST Renault have made some progress in ironing out the engine problems that have blighted Formula One preseason testing, but will head into the season-opener in Melbourne with doubts about "incomplete" preparations. Renault supplies champions Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Caterham and Lotus, and the performance of their new engine disappointed at the tests in Jerez and Bahrain. Renault were also considerably slower, with four-times world champion Sebastian Vettel's fastest time on Sunday's final day of pre-season testing 4.190 seconds slower than table-topping Lewis Hamilton's best with Mercedes. "We can't escape the fact that we did not complete the entire programme with all the teams and that some Melbourne preparations are incomplete," Renault Sport F1's deputy managing director Rob White said on the manufacturer's website (www.renaultsportf1.com/). Full Story | Top |
| U.S. and EU marshal economic tools to punish Russia Monday, Mar 03, 2014 06:11 PM PST By Warren Strobel, Arshad Mohammed and Anna Yukhananov WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has a number of economic weapons to punish Russia for its military intervention in Ukraine, ranging from asset freezes to kicking Moscow out of the exclusive G8 group of countries, and President Barack Obama is focusing first on measures that would not require congressional action. But Washington needs Europe to join it to make sanctions tough enough to potentially deter Russian President Vladimir Putin. Obama is seriously considering an executive order imposing asset freezes and visa bans on Russian officials, a U.S. official said on Monday. Such an order could be drawn narrowly to focus on Russian officials directly involved in the intervention in Ukraine's Crimea or more broadly to target a wider range of Russian officials, two officials said. Full Story | Top |
| Obama 2015 budget seeks $60 billion tax credit expansion: White House Monday, Mar 03, 2014 06:04 PM PST  By Mark Felsenthal and Jeff Mason WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will strike a firmly populist tone in his 2015 budget plan on Tuesday, proposing to pay for an expansion of a popular tax credit for the working poor by eliminating tax breaks claimed by wealthy Americans. The proposal to expand one of the most popular U.S. government poverty reduction programs, the Earned Income Tax Credit, would cost $60 billion, a modest amount in a budget in which the president has $1.014 trillion in spending to parcel out, the White House said. Obama would pay for the tax credit expansion by closing tax loopholes used typically by wealthy investors or employees of professional service companies such as law, consulting or lobbying firms. Even so, Obama's budget recommendation stands little or no chance of being approved as is by Congress, where Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, disagree with the president's policy priorities, such as spending government money on job training. Full Story | Top |
| Fear of losing tech edge factors into Pentagon budget plans Monday, Mar 03, 2014 05:36 PM PST  By David Alexander WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Concerns that cuts in defense spending could erode the U.S. military's technological edge over rivals such as Russia and China are in part driving the Pentagon's plans to slash troop levels and retire aging weapons. U.S. defense officials have watched in recent years as Moscow and Beijing have tested a string of sophisticated weapons, from radar-evading aircraft and anti-ship missiles that fly many times the speed of sound, to integrated air defenses. "The development and proliferation of more advanced military technologies by other nations means that we are entering an era where American dominance on the seas, in the skies, and in space can no longer be taken for granted," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last week. Hagel will unveil a 2015 budget on Tuesday that includes cutting the Army by 40,000 to 50,000 troops to levels last seen before the United States entered World War Two and killing off the fleet of tank-killing A-10 "Warthog" aircraft. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. court rejects BP appeal over Gulf spill losses Monday, Mar 03, 2014 05:26 PM PST  A divided U.S. appeals court on Monday rejected BP Plc's bid to block businesses from recovering money over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, even if they could not trace their economic losses to the disaster. By a 2-1 vote, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld a December 24 ruling by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans, authorizing the payments on so-called business economic loss claims. Monday's decision is a setback for BP's effort to limit payments over the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and rupture of BP's Macondo oil well. Barbier had ruled that BP would have to live with its earlier interpretation of a multi-billion dollar settlement agreement over the spill, in which certain businesses claiming losses were presumed to have suffered harm. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. suspends trade, investment talks with Russia over Ukraine Monday, Mar 03, 2014 05:17 PM PST The United States has put trade and investment talks with Russia on hold as a rebuke for Russia's incursion into Ukraine, a U.S. official said on Monday. Full Story | Top |
| Japan finance minister: Gathering facts on bitcoin, unsure whether crime involved Monday, Mar 03, 2014 05:14 PM PST  Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Tuesday that the government is still trying to figure out what has led to the collapse of the Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox and is not sure whether crime is involved. "(We) don't know if it was a crime or just a bankruptcy." Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan on Friday, saying it may have lost nearly half a billion dollars worth of the virtual currency due to hacking into its faulty computer system. Full Story | Top |
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