Tag: news at noon

“These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history,” Obama will say, according to an advance excerpt of his speech released by the White House.

“These protections will be enforced by a new consumer watchdog with just one job: looking out for people – not big banks, not lenders, not investment houses – in the financial system. Now, that’s not just good for consumers, that’s good for the economy,” he will say.

BP Plc shares traded up 1.1 percent at 0931 GMT (5:31 a.m. EDT), outperforming a 0.2 percent rise in the STOXX Europe 600 Oil and Gas index, after Thad Allen, the top U.S. oil spill official said a seep detected about 3 km (1.9 miles) from the well was not caused by a pressure test on the well.

The test has stemmed the flow of oil since Thursday, bringing hope to residents in the Gulf region, and to BP investors, that the crisis has turned a corner.

BP shares, which have been rallying over the past three weeks, slipped 2.6 percent after the top U.S. government spill official said that engineers had detected seepage, raising fears of problems with the cap that stopped oil spewing into the water nearly three months after a rig explosion.

A BP spokesman said the seep was detected by its engineers but it was unclear whether the source was the blown-out well, adding that seeps were a natural phenomenon in the Gulf.

BP (BP.N) finally choked off the leak on Thursday, the first time it has managed to cap the flow since the blowout on April 20 which has caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history and an environmental disaster for the U.S. Gulf coast region.

Investors welcomed the news that the leak has been capped but remained cautious since BP needs to complete 48 hours of tests on whether the well will remain intact after a new tight-sealing containment cap was installed on the mile-deep subsea wellhead three days earlier.

The group, which is in lawmakers’ crosshairs over the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, also confirmed on Thursday that it had lobbied the UK government over a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya in late 2007. In August 2009, the UK released a Libyan convicted of blowing up a U.S. jet, provoking an angry American reaction.

The spill started after an explosion at a rig on April 20 ruptured an undersea well and killed 11 workers, and has soiled hundreds of miles of shoreline and shut down about a third of Gulf fisheries.

“It’s too late for me now,” she said, fighting back tears at the Freestore Foodbank in the low-income Over-the-Rhine district near downtown Cincinnati. “But it will be terrible for the people who’ll lose their benefits if Congress does nothing.”

For nearly two years, Coleman says she has filed an average of 30 job applications a day, but remains jobless.

The results of the Washington Post/ABC News poll are a reversal of what voters said at the start of Obama’s presidency 18 months ago when about 60 percent expressed confidence in his decision making.

Confidence in Obama is at a new low but the poll found that his numbers are still higher than lawmakers of either major party four months ahead of the November congressional elections.

Suspicion fell on the al Shabaab rebel group, which claims links with al Qaeda, after the severed head of a suspected Somali suicide bomber was found at one of the blast sites.

The explosions ripped through two bars packed with soccer fans watching the final moments of World Cup final in an Ethiopian-themed restaurant and at a gathering in a Kampala rugby club on Sunday.

The Obama administration has been pressing the British energy giant to install the new cap, which could capture up to 80,000 barrels (3,360,000 gallons/12,700,00 liters) of oil a day, versus the 25,000 barrels currently being contained.

The government has estimated the well is leaking a maximum of 60,000 barrels a day, although independent estimates have been as high as 100,000 barrels a day.

Google said last week that it would stop automatically rerouting users to its uncensored Hong Kong-based search page, explaining that Beijing had indicated it would not renew its Internet Content Provider (ICP) license if it continued to do so.

That had prompted speculation that China might use the opportunity to shut down Google’s China search page, which would have been a blow to its other business in the country.

Oil production next year is expected to be cut by 82,000 barrels per day, or almost 30 million barrels total, due to delayed or canceled drilling caused by the moratorium, the Energy Information Administration said. That is 17 percent more from the 70,000 bpd in lost output the agency predicted just last month.

Monthly production losses could reach nearly 100,000 bpd by December 2011, the EIA said.

The attack took place after a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force aircraft mistook Afghan National Army soldiers for Taliban insurgents during an operation in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, a spokesman for the Afghan defense ministry said.

“ISAF aircraft bombed and martyred five of our soldiers,” spokesman Zaher Azimi said. “We condemn this incident and regret that this is not the first time such an incident has occurred. We hope it is the last time.”