Murdoch faces £38.5m break-fee if bid for BSkyB does not go ahead
James Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News International, will have to pay a £38.5m break-fee to BSkyB if the giant media group fails to go ahead with plans to bid for the broadcaster in which it owns a majority stake.
The fee was part of the terms agreed when Mr Murdoch, who is also chairman of BSkyB, launched its controversial 700p-a- share bid last year for the shares it doesn't already own. The fee, equivalent to 0.5 per cent of the then value of the bid, covers regulatory and other costs.
Nearly £2bn has been wiped off the value of BSkyB since the fresh allegations of phone-hacking. Shares fell another 7 per cent to 750p on Friday.
Huffington Post: Somalia Drought Is 'Worst Humanitarian Crisis': U.N.
The head of the U.N. refugee agency said Sunday that drought-ridden Somalia is the "worst humanitarian disaster" in the world after meeting with refugees who endured unspeakable hardship to reach the world's largest refugee camp.
The Kenyan camp, Dadaab, is overflowing with tens of thousands of newly arrived refugees forced into the camp by the parched landscape in the region where Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya meet. The World Food Program estimates that 10 million people already need humanitarian aid. The U.N. Children's Fund estimates that more than 2 million children are malnourished and in need of lifesaving action.
Antonio Guterres, the head of UNHCR who visited Dadaab on Sunday, appealed to the world to supply the "massive support" needed by thousands of refugees showing up at this camp every week. More than 380,000 refugees now live there.
CBS: Migrate, revolt or die; A Somali's only choices
In one child's eyes, it is easy to see that he knows something you and I will never know: How it feels to be desperately hungry.
There are many children like him in one hospital in Mogadishu. They are malnourished children, some close to death, all refugees from the drought and violence destroying Somalia.
"If you are a hungry person, someone once told me you feel as if bleach is in your belly it hurts so much," says Bettina Luescher with the World Food Programme.
The World Food Programme will feed 6 million people in the Horn of Africa this year, but that's not nearly enough.
New York Times: Wall St. Banks Expected to Post Weak 2nd-Quarter Results
Only a few short months ago, JPMorgan Chase traders were on such a roll that they did not have a single losing day in the first quarter.
But when the bank reports its second-quarter results this week, that hot streak will have come to an end. Analysts expect JPMorgan to count an almost 20 percent drop in its sales and trading revenues, reflecting a slowdown in investor activity and the dismal performance of its fixed-income and commodities groups.
Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are expected to report similar news. After helping prop up Wall Street during the financial crisis, core trading revenue is projected to drop, on average, by as much as 25 percent from the first quarter, according to Credit Suisse research.
That will put further pressure on the banks’ growth prospects, which are already strained by stagnant loan growth and more stringent regulation. It is also prompting nearly every major Wall Street firm to contemplate another round of layoffs amid growing concerns that at least part of the weak results are permanent.
MSNBC: Obama to lawmakers: Meet every day on debt deal
President Barack Obama told top lawmakers on Sunday to be prepared to meet every day this week to hash out a deal to cut the federal budget and raise the debt limit, a Democratic source with knowledge of the talks said.
The Democratic official said that Obama pressed Republicans at a White House meeting Sunday evening to aim for a broad, $4 trillion deficit-reduction package rather than a more modest one.
"If not now, when?" the president asked them when some said it was not the right time to try to craft a far-reaching deal, the official said.
Both sides remained divided over the size and the components of a plan to reduce long term deficits. Saying "we need to" work out an agreement over the next 10 days, the president and lawmakers agreed to meet again Monday.
Huffington Post:
Farouk al-Sharaa, Syrian Vice President, Calls For Transition To Democracy
Syria's vice president on Sunday called for a transition to democracy in a country ruled for four decades by an authoritarian family dynasty, crediting mass protests with forcing the regime to consider reforms while also warning against further demonstrations.
Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa spoke at a national dialogue that opened Sunday, with some critics of the government in attendance. However, key opposition figures driving the four-month-old uprising boycotted the meeting, saying they refuse to talk until a deadly crackdown on protesters ends.
"I hope that we will reach ... transition to a pluralistic democratic state that enjoys equality for all citizens who participate in forming their own shining future," al-Sharaa said at the start of two days of talks in the capital, Damascus
CBS: Cairo protesters block access to gov't building
Protesters blocked access to the Egyptian capital's largest government building Sunday and threatened to expand sit-ins to other sites unless authorities speed up reform efforts, including probing alleged abuses during the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
The protest encampment underscored the growing frustration that political momentum has stalled since Mubarak's downfall in February.
The protesters want justice for the nearly 900 protesters killed by security forces during the uprising and seek a faster pace for trials of corrupt, Mubarak-era figures.
New York Times: Envoy Meets With Leader of Yemen on Accord
President Obama sent his counterterrorism chief to Saudi Arabia over the weekend to meet with Yemen’s badly injured president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, with the envoy telling him that the only way to get American aid flowing again was to sign an accord that would effectively remove Mr. Saleh from power.
The envoy, John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. station chief in Saudi Arabia who has been the administration’s middleman to the embattled Yemeni leader, is presumed to have urged Mr. Saleh not to return to Sana, the Yemeni capital, following weeks of statements from administration officials that they believe his return would incite more violence. Mr. Saleh was rushed to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, after he was severely burned in a bombing of his presidential compound on June 3. He appeared on television last week for the first time since the attack, and much of his skin was covered during the appearance.
In a written statement on Sunday, the White House said Mr. Brennan “called on President Saleh to fulfill expeditiously his pledge to sign” an agreement brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council, which would lead to a transition ending his 33 years in office and grant the president immunity. The statement said that “much needed assistance will flow to Yemen as soon as the G.C.C. proposal is signed and implemented.”
SwissInfo: Libyan rebels must talk to Gaddafi's government - France
A French minister said on Sunday it was time for Libya's rebels to negotiate with Muammar Gaddafi's government, but Washington said it stood firm in its belief that the Libyan leader cannot stay in power.
The diverging messages from two leading members of the Western coalition opposing Gaddafi hinted at the strain the alliance is under after more than three months of air strikes that have cost billions of dollars and failed to produce the swift outcome its backers had expected.
French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet signalled growing impatience with the progress of the conflict when he said the rebels should negotiate now with Gaddafi's government and not wait for his defeat.
The rebels have so far refused to hold talks as long as Gaddafi is still in power, a stance which before now none of NATO's major powers has publicly challenged.
Asahi.com: Beef from Fukushima found with high levels of radioactive cesium
The Tokyo metropolitan government on July 8 detected levels of radioactive cesium 4.6 times the national standard in meat from a cow raised in Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, officials said.
The beef, from the neck of an animal raised at a Minami-Soma ranch, showed cesium levels of 2,300 becquerels per kilogram. The national standard is 500 becquerels.
Metropolitan government officials said it was the first time radioactive elements at levels exceeding national standards were detected in beef.
Huffington Post: India Train Accident Leaves At Least 31 Dead, 100 Injured
Officials say the death toll from a train derailment in northern India has risen to 60 as more bodies are being pulled out of the mangled coaches.
The senior army official in charge of rescue operations at the accident site says volunteers and soldiers have pulled out 60 bodies from 12 coaches of the Kalka Mail, which went off the tracks Sunday afternoon.
Col. Amarjit Dhillon told the Associated Press on Monday that many more bodies were trapped under the twisted coaches and soldiers were using gas cutters to slice through the metal.
Rescue workers working through the night rescued many of the more than 100 injured in the accident near the town of Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh state.
ABC: U.S. Slashes $800 Million in Military Aid to Pakistan
In a sign of tensions with Pakistan following the U.S. raid on former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, White House chief of staff Bill Daley said today that the U.S. will suspend some $800 million in aid to Pakistan's military.
"Obviously they have been an important ally in the fight on terrorism. They've been the victim of enormous amounts of terrorism," Daley said. "But right now they have taken some steps that have given us reason to pause on some of the aid which we were giving to their military, and we're trying to work through that."
Daley confirmed a report in The New York Times this morning that "up to about $800 million in military aid and equipment, or over one-third of the more than $2 billion in annual American security assistance to Pakistan, could be affected" because of concerns over Pakistan's expulsion of American military trainers, as well as Pakistan's ineffectiveness in fighting militants.
Reuters: Boat with over 170 people sinks in Russia's Volga
A boat carrying over 170 people sank in Russia's Volga river on Sunday, a spokeswoman for Emergency Ministry said.
Two bodies had been recovered and 96 people were unaccounted for after the Bulgaria sank at 1358 local time (0858 GMT) in the Tatarstan region, she said.
"We don't know yet why it sank. There were 140 passengers and 33 staff. Two were found dead, a passing boat saved some people. Ninety six are unaccounted for," she said.
Huffington Post: Zetas And Other Gang Fighting In Mexico Results In At Least 40 Deaths In 24-Hour Period
Fighting among the Zetas gang and other vicious drug cartels led to the deaths of more than 40 people whose bodies were found in three Mexican cities over a 24-hour span, a government official said Saturday.
At least 20 people were killed and five injured when gunmen opened fire in a bar late Friday in the northern city of Monterrey, where the gang is fighting its former ally, the Gulf Cartel, said federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire.
Eleven bodies shot with high-powered rifles were found earlier Friday, piled near a water well on the outskirts of Mexico City, where the gang is fighting the Knights Templar, Poire said. That is an offshoot of the La Familia gang that has terrorized its home state of Michoacan.
Poire said an additional 10 people were found dead early Saturday in various parts of the northern city of Torreon, where the Zetas are fighting the Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
Huffington Post: Polish Ceremony Honors Jewish Villagers Killed During World War II
Poland's president made a repeated apology during ceremonies on Sunday marking 70 years since Polish villagers murdered hundreds of their Jewish neighbors in a World War II massacre that caused painful soul-searching in Poland when it was revealed in 2000.
An agonizing debate at the time forced Poles to modify their belief, shaped by decades of communist-era propaganda, that they were always heroic victims – never collaborators – in Nazi-era atrocities.
The date of the massacre in the village of Jedwabne, some 190 kilometers (120 miles) northeast of Warsaw, has entered Poland's remembrance calendar and the state and church leaders have apologized. But it still remains to be seen to what extent the entire nation has acknowledged cases of Polish wrongdoing against the Jews.
CBS: Ala. plane crash kills 2 adults and their 5 kids
A small plane crashed in Alabama after one of its engines failed, killing all seven people onboard, the Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday.
The pilot of the Cessna C421 tried landing at an airport in Demopolis after it lost its right engine Saturday night, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Holly Baker said in an email. The plane — which was flying from St. Louis to Destin, Fla. — crashed in a wooded area within two miles of the airport.
Marengo County Coroner Stuart Eatmon told Montgomery television station WAKA that the people killed were a mother, father and their five children who ranged in age from 2 to 10. Their names hadn't been released.
MSNBC: Prince William, Kate visit skid row, arts center
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge saw Los Angeles's less-glamorous side Sunday when they visited an inner-city school in downtown's notorious Skid Row area.
Prince William and his wife Catherine were welcomed to the Inner City Arts academy by six elementary-aged children holding a welcome banner while a crowd of about 150 people looked on, some waving British and American flags.
Kate was wearing a cream-colored pleated dress with a black lace top and black high heels.
Cynthia Harnisch, the academy's president and chief executive officer, spoke to the couple about Skid Row and the challenges of poverty and homelessness faced by many students at the school.