Greece has until mid-Nov to get bailout loans

Greece has enough money to service all its financial obligations, including paying salaries, pensions and bondholders, until mid-November, the finance minister said Tuesday, as markets fell on fears the country could eventually default.

Greece had previously said it would start running out of money in mid-October if it didn't get the next €8 billion ($11 billion) installment of its €110 billion bailout package, from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund on which it has been relying since May 2010.

But Venizelos sought to reassure Greeks and investors that the country has more breathing space.

"Until mid-November it is clear there will be no problem," said Venizelos, who returned from a eurozone finance ministers' meeting in Luxembourg early Tuesday.

At the meeting, the ministers indicated that while Greece would get the next batch of loans, that decision would not be made until later this month, after the international debt inspectors currently in Athens complete their review of Greece's reforms.

The inspectors from the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission, collectively known as the troika, had suspended their review for several weeks in September amid concern over delayed implementation of austerity measures and missed targets. They returned to Athens late last month, and are continuing negotiations over reforms.

The delay had raised the possibility that Greece would run out of money to pay salaries and pensions. If it had found itself unable to pay bondholders, a messy default could have roiled financial markets across the world.

To convince the troika that it should get the next bailouts loans, the Greek government announced a series of new measures, including extra taxes on property, and began pushing through plans to suspend tens of thousands of civil servants on reduced pay.

But the measures have outraged Greeks who have had to endure more than a year and a half of austerity measures that have seen their incomes slashed and their living costs climb due to multiple tax hikes. Locked in a recession that is forecast to see the economy contract by 5.5 percent this year, even members of the government have voiced concern and said the public cannot face any more taxes.

Unions have responded with repeated demonstrations and strikes. They have taken over government buildings, forcing ministers to reschedule meetings with the troika on several occasions.

Venizelos, speaking at a press conference whose location had to be changed after protesting civil servants occupied the finance ministry, said the troika was discussing the outlook for 2013 and 2014 with the debt inspectors.

On Monday, the government submitted its 2012 budget to Parliament, with figures showing it had missed its deficit reduction targets for this year. The budget gap is expected to reach 8.5 percent of GDP, higher than the original target of 7.8 percent.

This could increase further to reach 9 percent if strikes and civil protests continue, weakening the implementation of reforms, Venizelos said.

He noted, however, that the country is projected to post a primary surplus — growth before the repayment of interest on outstanding debt is taken into account — next year.

Venizelos added that Greece will issue €880 million in bonds to Finland as collateral for the country's bailout loans to Athens under a second, €109 billion bailout deal agreed on in July. Finland had demanded guarantees in exchange for participating in the second package.

Other countries had threatened to demand similar guarantees if Finland got its way, but Venizelos said that no other eurozone states wanted the same collateral deal.

The minister insisted the Greek banking sector was completely safe, and that the ministry had received responses from all 57 countries it had sent letters of inquiry to over a bond swap deal that is part of the second bailout. He said the ministry was evaluating the responses.

Greece has said it would require a 90 percent participation rate in the bond swap...More.

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Ford, UAW leaders have tentative contract deal

Ford Motor Co. and the United Auto Workers have come to terms on a new four-year contract that trades annual pay raises for profit sharing and a signing bonus and promises thousands of new jobs building cars and trucks.

Details weren't released, but the deal is expected to be sweeter for workers than the contract approved by factory employees at General Motors Co. last week.

Both the union and company said in statements that they would announce details on Tuesday. Ford shares fell 11 cents to $9.26 in premarket trading.

The agreement is expected to reduce Ford's hourly labor costs, which are the highest in the U.S. auto industry. But it is likely to add thousands of new union jobs, depending on growth in U.S. auto sales. Already Ford has promised to add more than 7,000 jobs in the next two years, including engineers and factory workers.

The pact still must be approved by Ford's 41,000 UAW members in voting that will start next week. Approval could be a problem because many expected the company to restore pay raises and other benefits they sacrificed to help Ford through tough financial times starting in 2007.

Talks between the union, Ford and GM went fairly smoothly this year, with Ford settling a month ahead of the last contract reached in 2007. Four years ago, Ford and the union didn't reach agreement until Nov. 3. This year, bargaining began on July 29.
Up next is Chrysler, where the talks could be more contentious. The company isn't making as much money as Ford and GM and probably can't afford the same deals.

The UAW talks are watched closely because they set wages for more than 112,000 workers in the auto industry and set the bar for pay at auto parts makers and in other manufacturing industries.

At Ford, workers are expected to get a better deal than the union got at GM because Ford is making more money and it didn't go through bankruptcy protection or take government bailouts. Ford was expected to promise a substantial number of new jobs, exceeding GM's promise of at least 5,100.

The GM deal gives workers $5,000 signing bonuses, $1,000 a year for three years to cover inflation and at least $3,500 in profit-sharing this year. The worst GM workers can do is $11,500 over the four years of the contract. GM was able to avoid a pension increase for the first time since 1953, and Ford's terms are expected to match that.

More than 1,900 entry-level workers at GM, who make about half the roughly $29 per hour paid to a GM factory worker, got raises of more than 20 percent. Ford has only about 70 entry-level workers, and will try to lower its labor costs by hiring more of them.

At Ford, approval by workers is not a certainty. Ford's turnaround over the last five years has resulted in big profits, but it also has bred resentment from some workers. Many want the company to restore pay raises and other benefits they sacrificed to help Ford get through financial problems starting in 2007.

Workers also are upset that the company gave CEO Alan Mulally a $26.5 million pay package based on the company's 2010 performance. Ford has had nine straight profitable quarters and earned $4.95 billion in the first half of this year.

Gary Walkowicz, a worker at Ford's Dearborn truck plant who helped shoot down a round of concessions in 2009, said Tuesday he was awaiting details of the agreement. But he said he wouldn't support it unless it includes pay raises,More...

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Knox leaves Italy to head home to US

Amanda Knox headed home to the United States a free woman Tuesday, the morning after an Italian appeals court dramatically overturned the American student's conviction of sexually assaulting and brutally slaying her British roommate.

The Italy-US Foundation, which has championed Knox's cause, said she departed shortly after noon (1000 GMT) from Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport on the way to London, from where she will catch a connecting flight to the United States.

The 24-year-old Knox, who is returning to Seattle, arrived at the airport in a Mercedes with darkened windows and waited for boarding inside a private waiting area, out of public view.

Back in Perugia, the family of slain British student Meredith Kercher remained stunned by the verdict and searching for answers.

"It was a bit of a shock," said Stephanie Kercher, the victim's older sister. "It's very upsetting ... We still have no answers."

Lyle Kercher, a brother, said the family is still trying to understand how a decision that "was so certain two years ago has been so dramatically overturned."

Lyle Kercher said the family has been left to wonder who is guilty in the 21-year-old Kercher's death after the release of Knox and her one time boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito on appeal. A third man has been convicted in the brutal slaying, however his trial concluded he did not act alone.

"If the two released yesterday were not the guilty parties, we are obviously left to wonder who is the other guilty person or people. We are left back at square one," Lyle Kercher said.

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini expressed disbelief in the verdict, and vowed an appeal to Italy's highest criminal court.

"Let's wait and we will see who was right. The first court or the appeal court," Mignini told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

"This trial was done under unacceptable media pressure. The decision was almost already announced; this is not normal," he said.

If the highest court overturns the acquittal, prosecutors would be free to request Knox's extradition to Italy to finish whatever remained of a sentence. It is up to the government to decide whether they make such a request.

Knox and Sollecito were convicted in 2009 of sexually assaulting and murdering Kercher, a 21-year-old British student who shared an apartment with Knox in Perugia. Knox was convicted to 26 years, Sollecito to 25. Both had been in prison since Nov. 6, 2007, four days after Kercher's body had been found at the apartment.

But, the prosecution's case was blown apart by a court-ordered DNA review that discredited crucial genetic evidence.

Knox dissolved into tears as the verdict was read in a packed courtroom after 11 hours of deliberations, and she needed to be propped up by her lawyers on either side.

Two hours later she was in a dark limousine that took her out of the Capanne prison just outside Perugia, where she had spent the past four years, and headed to Rome.

"During the trip from Perugia to Rome, Amanda was serene," said Corrado Maria Daclon, the secretary general of the Italy-US Foundation, who was with Knox in the car. "She confirmed to me that in the future she intends to come back to our country."

On Tuesday, Knox thanked those Italians "who shared my suffering and helped me survive with hope," in a letter to the foundation.

"Those who wrote, those who defended me, those who were close, those who prayed for me," Knox wrote. "I love you, Amanda."

Sollecito, meanwhile, arrived back home near the southern Italian city of Bari before dawn on Tuesday. He was quoted by Italian news agencies on Monday night as saying he was looking forward to seeing the sea, but he declined to make any appearances after reaching home.

Sollecito's father Francesco said that his son remained stunned by the events.

"He is trying to recover himself," Sollecito's father told reporters outside, the news agency ANSA reported. "He is going around touching things as if he is a child who needs to take back the things of his life, to acquire forgotten elements."

While waves of relief swept through the defendants' benches in the courtroom, members of the Kercher family, who flew in for the verdict, appeared dazed and perplexed. Her sister Stephanie shed a tear, while her mother Arline looked straight ahead.

"We still trust the Italian justice system and hope that the truth will eventually emerge," the Kerchers said in a statement.

The Kerchers had pressed for the court to uphold the guilty verdicts, and resisted theories that a third man convicted in the case, Rudy Hermann Guede, had acted alone.More...

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Studies of universe's expansion win physics Nobel

Three U.S.-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace, a stunning revelation that suggests the cosmos will eventually freeze to ice.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said American Saul Perlmutter would share the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award with U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt and U.S. scientist Adam Riess. Working in two separate research teams during the 1990s — Perlmutter in one and Schmidt and Riess in the other — the scientists raced to map the universe's expansion by analyzing a particular type of supernovas, or exploding stars.

They found that the light emitted by more than 50 distant supernovas was weaker than expected, a sign that the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate, the academy said.

"For almost a century the universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago," the citation said. "However the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the universe will end in ice."

Perlmutter, 52, heads the Supernova Cosmology Project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley.

Schmidt, 44, is the head of the High-z Supernova Search Team at the Australian National University in Weston Creek, Australia.

Riess, 41, is an astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

Schmidt said he was just sitting down to have dinner with his family in Canberra, Australia, when the phone call came.

"I was somewhat suspicious when the Swedish voice came on," Schmidt told The Associated Press. "My knees sort of went weak and I had to walk around and sort my senses out."

The academy said the three researchers were stunned by their own discoveries — they had expected to find that the expansion of the universe was slowing down. But both teams reached the opposite conclusion: faraway galaxies were racing away from each other at an ever-increasing speed.

The discovery was "the biggest shakeup in physics, in my opinion, in the last 30 years," said Phillip Schewe, a physicist and spokesman at the Joint Quantum Institute, which is operated by the University of Maryland and the federal government.

"I remember everyone thinking at the time (that) there was some mistake," Schewe said. But there was no mistake, and in fact the basic finding was confirmed later by other measurements. Other scientists found evidence for it when they analyzed the microwave radiation left over from the big bang that still bathes the universe, he said.

Perlmutter told AP his team made the discovery in steps, analyzing the data and assuming it was wrong.

"And after months, you finally believe it," he said. "It's not quite a surprise anymore. I tell people it's the longest "ah-ha" experience that you've ever had."

An accelerating universe means it will get increasingly colder as matter is spread out across ever-vaster distances in space, said Lars Bergstrom, secretary of the Nobel physics committee. The acceleration is believed to be driven by an unknown cosmic power, called dark energy, one of the great mysteries of the universe.

Fred Dylla, executive director of the American Institute of Physics, said the prize confirmed an idea from Albert Einstein, called the cosmological constant, that Einstein inserted in his general theory of relativity, a cornerstone of modern physics.

Einstein later repudiated that idea as his "biggest blunder," but it did lead to a lot of theoretical and experimental studies, Dylla said.

The research implies that billions of years from now, the universe will become "a very, very large, but very cold and lonely place," said Charles Blue, spokesman for the American Institute of Physics.

In contrast to the big bang, that fate has been called the "big rip" to indicate how galaxies would be torn apart, he said. Galaxies will be flying away so quickly that their light could not travel across the universe to distant observers as it does today, making the sky appear black, he said.

The Nobel committee's comment that the universe would "end in ice" is "an eloquent way of putting it," Blue said.

The physics prize was the second Nobel to be announced this year. On Monday the medicine prize went to American Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann who shared it with Canadian-born Ralph Steinman for...More.

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Jailed China Nobel winner's wife still silenced

In a quiet, leafy neighborhood of Beijing, a woman has been living in enforced isolation in her book-lined, fifth-floor apartment. Her apparent misdeed: being married to a Nobel Peace Prize winner the Chinese government calls a criminal.

In the year since jailed democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo was awarded the prize, his wife Liu Xia has also become a prisoner. She has largely been held incommunicado, effectively under house arrest, watched by police, without phone or Internet access and prohibited from seeing all but a few family members.

"Liu Xia has been completely cut off from communication with the outside world, and leads a lonely and oppressed life," said Beijing activist Zeng Jinyan, the wife of another well-known dissident who has endured bouts of surveillance and harassment. "It has already been a year, I dare not imagine how much longer she must bear this pain."

The Nobel prize announced last Oct. 8 cheered China's fractured, persecuted dissident community and brought calls from the U.S., Germany and others for Liu's release, but also infuriated Beijing, and authorities harassed and detained dozens of his supporters in the weeks that followed.

China has a long history of punishing family members of government critics. But the Liu case is different because he's the first to win the Peace Prize and by isolating Liu Xia the government seems intent on preventing the frail-looking 51-year-old poet with close-cropped hair and wire-rimmed glasses from becoming a rallying point for political activists.

"The Chinese government simply just do not want people to be reminded of the emotional, the human aspect of Liu Xiaobo in jail, and to do that they also want to erase Liu Xia from people's memory," said Wang Songlian, a researcher with China Human Rights Defenders in Hong Kong.

The harsh treatment of Liu Xia seemingly runs afoul of China's laws and might be the most severe retaliation ever suffered by the family of a Peace Prize laureate.

"As far as I know, the way she is treated is unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize," said Geir Lundestad, secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. "Her situation is extremely regrettable."

Lundestad said the committee is also worried about Liu Xiaobo because it has not received any new information about his situation since late last year.

The government did not comment.

A literary critic and dogged campaigner for peaceful political change, Liu Xiaobo tried to negotiate the retreat of pro-democracy student demonstrators from Tiananmen Square in 1989. He co-authored a manifesto in 2008 calling for an end to single-party rule. Both acts earned him jail terms, the latter an 11-year sentence he is now serving.

Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia's friendship began in the early 1980s over a shared love of literature and poetry. Her father, a senior finance official, had set up a cushy job at the national tax bureau for her, but she quit because she wanted more freedom, according to an essay about the couple by dissident writer and friend, Yu Jie.

They wedded in 1996 while he was in a labor re-education camp in order for Liu Xia to be granted permission to visit him. Yu's essay says she told police: "I just want to marry that 'enemy of the state'!"More...

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