NEW YORK (AP) ― Citigroup’s first-quarter income fell 32 percent on lower revenue from investment banking and a decline in consumer loans. The bank was able to set aside fewer reserves for losses as more borrowers were able to keep up with their debt payments.The New York bank said Monday that it earned $3 billion, or 10 cents per share, compared with $4.4 billion, or 15 cents a share in the first

Foreign direct investment surged 33 percent in March from a year earlier as rising inflation and interest rates failed to damp overseas confidence in the world’s fastest-growing major economy. Foreign investments added $12.5 billion to China’s economy, the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement in Beijing Tuesday. Investments increased at an annual rate of 29 percent in the first quarter. China’

Treasury secretary says Republicans agreed to increase the $14.3 trillion ceilingWASHINGTON (AP) ― Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says Republican leaders have privately assured the Obama administration that Congress will raise the government’s borrowing limit in time to prevent an unprecedented default on the nation’s debt.But a top Republican quickly pushed back Sunday and said there was no

MUMBAI (AFP) ― Indian housewife Sujata Budarapu was shocked when she was told that her two sons were on the verge of developing Type 2 diabetes.“It had never even occurred to me that this could happen. I had heard that outside India this happens to other people’s kids but I never thought it would happen to my own,” the 38-year-old from Mumbai told AFP.Sujata’s children are not exceptional cases, e

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Global finance chiefs moved to aid strife-torn North Africa Thursday as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank warned of more potential social unrest from high food prices and joblessness.Finance ministers of leading economies and development bank heads discussed ways to help Egypt, Tunisia and other regional economies rebuild, as the annual spring meetings of the World

 

 

Record spending cuts win approval, on way to Obama for signing, but bigger deficit fights loomWASHINGTON (AP) ― Congress sent President Barack Obama hard-fought legislation cutting a record $38 billion from federal spending on Thursday, bestowing bipartisan support on the first major compromise between the White House and newly empowered Republicans in Congress.“Welcome to divided government,” sai

SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- Joe Pavelski scored 14:44 into overtime to give the San Jose Sharks a 3-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings in Game 1 of their all-California opening round playoff series Thursday night.Pavelski took a pass from Kyle Wellwood as the trailer on a three-on-two advantage and fired a forehand past Jonathan Quick for his third career playoff overtime goal.Dany Heatley and

NEW YORK (AP) ― Nick Swisher hit a sacrifice fly in the 10th inning and the New York Yankees rallied from a five-run deficit for an 6-5 victory over the Baltimore Orioles Thursday night to sweep the rain-shortened series.After Joba Chamberlain used his big body to save a run in the eighth by blocking the plate and keeping the Yankees within 5-4, Jorge Posada led off the bottom of the ninth with a

 

U.S. president pitches spending cuts, laying down markers for 2012 campaignWASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) ― President Barack Obama coupled a call for $4 trillion in long-term deficit reductions with a blistering attack on Republican plans for taxes, Medicare and Medicaid on Wednesday, laying down markers for a roiling debate in Congress and the 2012 presidential campaign to come.Obama said spending cuts an

 

 

JAKARTA (AFP) ― An Indonesian woman exhales cigarette smoke into the mouth of a gaunt, naked patient at a Jakarta clinic, where tobacco is openly touted as a cancer cure.The Western patient is suffering from emphysema, a condition she developed from decades of smoking. Along with cancer and autism, it’s just one of the ailments the Griya Balur clinic claims it can cure with cigarettes.“I missed th

 

Abandoned town, reactor building lure hundreds of visitors a week to site of 1986 disasterCHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AP) ― For the visitor, Chernobyl makes heavy demands on the imagination ― much of what’s important can be seen only in the mind’s eye.From the outside, the building where a reactor blew up April 26, 1986, in the world’s worst nuclear disaster mostly looks like an ordinary, dull industrial

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) ― Libyan rebels, backed forcefully by European leaders, rejected a cease-fire proposal by African mediators on Monday because it did not insist that Moammar Gadhafi relinquish power.A day after an announcement that the Libyan leader had accepted the truce, a doctor in rebel-held Misrata said Gadhafi’s forces battered that western city and its Mediterranean port with artillery

Rush-hour explosion wounds 150; terrorist attack suspectedMINSK (AFP) ― Belarus on Tuesday sought to identify the perpetrators behind the bombing on the Minsk metro that killed 12 and wounded 150, the first major apparent act of terror in its post-Soviet history.The explosion at a busy metro station in the heart of the Belarussian capital near the headquarters of President Alexander Lukashenko stu