Coal company announces layoffs in response to Obama win

A coal company headed by a prominent Mitt Romney donor has laid off more than 160 workers in response to President Obama's election victory.Murray Energy said Friday that it had been "forced" to make the layoffs in response to the bleak prospects for the coal industry during Obama's second term. In a prayer circulated by the company, CEO Robert Murray said Americans had voted "in favor of redistribution,...

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U.S. to Pass Saudi Arabia in Energy Production, IEA Says: Huge Foreign Policy, Economic Implications

A new report by the International Energy Association says the U.S. will become the world's largest oil producer by 2017, overtaking current leaders Saudi Arabia and Russia. U.S. energy policies initiated by the George W. Bush administration and implemented by President Barack Obama have moved the U.S. toward energy independence and away from Middle East energy sources. U.S. oil production has risen...

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Eurozone back in recession in Q3

LONDON (AP) -- The 17-country eurozone has bowed to the inevitable and fallen back into recession for the first time in three years as a sprawling debt crisis took its toll on the region's stronger economies.And with surveys pointing to increasingly depressed conditions across the eurozone at a time of high unemployment in many countries, there are fears that the recession will deepen, and make the...

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Are We Regulating Ourselves Back Into Recession?

Let us put an end to self-inflicted wounds," President Gerald Ford told Congress in 1975. "And let us remember that our national unity is a most priceless asset." While Ford was talking about the scars from the Vietnam War, his words seem relevant today. Our nation grapples with not one divisive issue, but a basket of them, each pulling and undermining our already battered confidence, while testing...

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Israeli-Palestinian clashes erupt in West Bank

TAMOUN, West Bank (AP) — An arrest raid by undercover Israeli soldiers disguised as vegetable vendors ignited rare clashes in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, residents said, leaving at 10 Palestinians wounded. Israeli army raids into Palestinian areas to seize activists and militants are fairly common. The raids are normally coordinated with Palestinian security forces, and suspects are usually...

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Ten crushed to death, 120 injured at Angola church event

Ten people were crushed to death and 120 injured in the Angolan capital Luanda as they tried to enter an overcrowded stadium for a vigil organized by a Pentecostal church, the state news agency Angop reported on Tuesday. Angop cited an emergency services spokesman as saying the victims, including four children, were crushed at the gates of the Cidadela Desportiva stadium, where the Universal Church...

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Iraq PM warns Sunni protesters, makes small concession

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Shi'ite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has warned he will not tolerate Sunni anti-government rallies indefinitely, but made a concession to their demands by promising to free some women prisoners.Thousands of Sunnis have been taking to the streets of Iraq for more than a week in protest against Maliki, whom they accuse of discriminating against their sect and being under...

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India paying welfare directly, aiming to end fraud

NEW DELHI (AP) — India will pay billions of dollars in social welfare money directly to its poor under a new program that aims to cut out the middlemen blamed for the massive fraud that plagues the system.Previously officials only handed out cash to the poor after taking a cut — if they didn't keep all of it for themselves — and were known to enroll fake recipients or register unqualified people....

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Venezuelans on edge amid shifting news on Chavez

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Supporters and opponents of President Hugo Chavez alike nervously welcomed the new year Tuesday, left on edge by shifting signals from the government about the Venezuelan leader's condition three weeks after cancer surgery in Cuba.With rumors swirling that Chavez had taken a turn for the worse, Vice President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised interview in Cuba that he had...

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1 Indian gang rape suspect may be juvenile

NEW DELHI (AP) — A bone test is being conducted to confirm the age of a young suspect in custody in the fatal assault and gang rapeof a woman on a bus in India's capital, while prosecutors will seek the death penalty for five other men arrested with him, police said. The six will be formally charged in court on Thursday on accusations that they kidnapped, gang raped and...

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