Citi, Wells Fargo seek to repay TARP loans

Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. are seeking to repay billions in federal bailout aid but so far haven't received permission from the government, people familiar with the talks told The Associated Press.

The main sticking point is how much capital the banks would need to raise to repay taxpayers the money they received at the height of the financial crisis, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks who requested anonymity because the discussions are ongoing.

Citigroup received $45 billion in bailout money and is now 34 percent owned by the government. Wells Fargo received $25 billion.

Citigroup and Wells Fargo declined to comment. Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams would not discuss the negotiations but said banks "are pursuing discussions to understand what needs to be done to move ahead with repayment."

The efforts of Citigroup and Wells Fargo to repay the money come after Bank of America last week announced it would return $45 billion it had received, adding to the $71 billion already repaid by about 50 other financial companies. Bank of America is using available cash and $19 billion raised from a securities offering to repay its funds.

Bernanke: Too soon to tell if recovery will last

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Monday that it's too soon to know whether the economic recovery will last and again pledged to hold rates at record-low levels for an "extended period."

The Fed chief's speech to the Economic Club of Washington made clear he thinks the economy will struggle even as it recovers from the recession. He said the economy confronts "formidable headwinds" — including a weak job market, cautious consumers and tight credit.

Those forces "seem likely to keep the pace of expansion moderate," he said.

Asked about prospects for such a "double dip" recession, Bernanke said he could not guarantee it won't happen. He stuck with his forecast for a moderate recovery but said a "vigorous snapback" is less likely.

Bernanke said he expects "modest" economic growth next year. That should help push down the nation's unemployment rate — now at 10 percent — "but at a pace slower than we would like," he acknowledged.

Defense secretary visits Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived Tuesday in Afghanistan with plans to assure officials and American troops there that the United States is committed to winning the war despite plans to begin pulling forces out in 2011.

"We are in this thing to win," Gates told reporters while traveling to Kabul, where he plans to meet privately with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and later with troops bearing the brunt of combat.

The secretary's trip to Afghanistan is the first by a Cabinet member since President Barack Obama's announcement last week that he will deploy 30,000 more troops with the intention of starting to bring them home in July 2011.

McChrystal's appearance before the House Armed Services Committee starts the first of three days of congressional Afghanistan hearings that are expected to draw hard questions from both anti-war Democrats and conservative Republicans about Obama's stated intention to begin paring down the U.S. role in July 2011.

McChrystal's appearance before the House Armed Services Committee starts the first of three days of congressional Afghanistan hearings that are expected to draw hard questions from both anti-war Democrats and conservative Republicans about Obama's stated intention to begin paring down the U.S. role in July 2011.

U.S. missile kills 3 in Pakistan tribal area

Pakistani intelligence officials say a U.S. missile strike has killed at least three people in a troubled northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border.

The two officials said the two missiles early Tuesday destroyed a car carrying three people in a village near Mir Ali, which is a main town in North Waziristan.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly to the media.

Deadly bomb blasts rock Pakistani city

Bombings in two Pakistan cities killed 46 people Monday, as militants struck back in the wake of an army offensive against a Taliban stronghold in the northwest near the Afghan border.

Two synchronized bombs ripped through a market popular with women in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore about 9 p.m., igniting a massive fire that killed 36 people, authorities said. Hours earlier a suicide bomber killed 10 people outside a courthouse in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

About 100 people were wounded in the attacks in Lahore, which were timed to take place when the Moon Market was as its busiest. Authorities initially said both bombs were believed to be remote-controlled, but they later said a suicide bomber was suspected to have carried out at least one of them.

Most of the militant attacks in recent weeks have been directed at security forces, though several have targeted crowded public spaces like markets, apparently to create public anger and increase pressure on the government to call a halt to the offensive. More than 400 people have been killed since the beginning of October, including 105 in a Peshawar market frequented by women. That attack occurred while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was visiting Pakistan.

The Taliban generally claim responsibility for those attacks killing security officers, but they do not acknowledge carrying out the attacks targeting civilians. Government officials and security analysts say there is little doubt the militants are behind all the attacks.

8 killed, 26 injured in China school stampede

Chinese media say eight students have been killed and 26 others injured in a school stampede in the central province of Hunan.

The reports say the students were charging out of evening study sessions at 9:10 p.m. on Monday night at Xiangxiang city's private Yucai Middle School when students began to fall on top of one another in a stampede on the steps.

Leaders of the city 720 miles (1,160 kilometers) south of Beijing immediately removed the head of the education bureau and were questioning school officials as part of the accident investigation, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.

Such deadly stampedes have occurred repeatedly in China's schools, usually as students are rushing to exams or charging out of class down tight corridors and narrow stairwells.

Monday's incident was among the deadliest since the crushing deaths of 21 children in a northern China middle school in 2002 after a railing collapsed as hundreds of children were funneling down a pitch-dark staircase after evening review classes

Microsoft, Yahoo seal search deal

Microsoft and Yahoo have signed off on their plan to team up against Google in Internet search.

The step announced Friday seals the terms of a preliminary agreement announced in late July.

Government regulators still must approve the proposed partnership before Microsoft and Yahoo can begin working together.

Microsoft and Yahoo were supposed to sign the final papers in late October, but held off to work out some fine points.

Combined, Microsoft and Yahoo handle 28 percent of the Internet searches in the United States, well behind Google's 65 percent, according to online measurement firm comScore Inc. Google is even more dominant in the rest of the world, with a global share of 67 percent compared to a combined 11 percent for Microsoft and Yahoo.

I do take thee, Facebook and Twitter updates

A Maryland groom has created a viral storm after he interrupted his wedding last month to update his Facebook and Twitter accounts from the altar.

Dana Hanna, who works for a pet Web site, also posted a short video of the ceremony on the Internet. It showed him reaching into his pocket for his phone as the minister was about to pronounce the couple husband and wife.

After Hanna finished twittering he continued the ceremony.

"As I was saying, I now pronounce you husband and wife. It's now official on Facebook. It's official in my book. Dana you may kiss your bride."

Hanna, who lists his profession on the networking site LinkedIn as chief architect at Next Day Pets, described his reaction to the ceremony on his YouTube account the day after the ceremony.

"I surprised not only my guests, but also Tracy (his wife) by pulling out my phone and posting on Facebook and Twitter from the altar during out wedding," he said.

Seventeen kids among dozens killed in Pakistan attack

Militants stormed a mosque near Pakistan's army headquarters, killing at least 36 people, including six military officers and 17 children, during Friday prayers as they sprayed gunfire and threw grenades before blowing themselves up, officials said.

It was the latest in a wave of strikes by suspected Islamist insurgents that has killed more than 400 people in Pakistan since October.

The Associated Press put the death toll at 36. Reuters, meanwhile, reported that said 40 had been killed in the incident, noting that it was not clear if that figure included attackers.

A military statement said four attackers hurled grenades, then opened fire as they rushed toward the mosque, which was located on Parade Lane in a military residential colony, just a few miles from the capital. Two suicide bombers then blew themselves up inside, while the other two militants were killed in an exchange of gunfire, it said.

City residents said access to the mosque was mostly restricted to soldiers and their families.

Attackers slay dozens in Pakistan mosque

Pakistan - Up to three suicide attackers stormed a mosque close to Pakistan's army headquarters, killing dozens of people during Friday prayers as they sprayed gunfire at worshippers and threw grenades before blowing themselves up, officials said.

The Associated Press put the death toll at 36, while Reuters said 40 had been killed in the incident. There was no explanation for the discrepancy in numbers, although the exact number of dead is often difficult to determine in the immediate aftermath of such an attack.

Seventy were wounded in the attack and the identities of the dead were not known, the AP reported.

The brazen attack in what should be one of the most secure areas of Pakistan was the latest challenge by militants against the writ of the state. A local television station said people were executed in cold blood.

Pakistan is fighting Taliban fighters blamed for bombings that have killed hundreds of people since an offensive was launched on their stronghold South Waziristan in October.

The nuclear-armed country faces mounting U.S. pressure to root out Islamist militants operating along forbidding border areas to help in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Bangladesh passenger boat capsizes; 47 dead

Bangladesh - An overcrowded passenger boat capsized in northern Bangladesh on Friday after being hit by a small ferry, leaving at least 47 people dead and several missing, police said.

Rescuers recovered 47 bodies from the capsized boat in the Daira river in Kishoreganj district, local police Chief Anwar Hossain said. The area is 50 miles north of Dhaka.

All the casualties were from the passenger boat, which was carrying more than 80 people, and there was no damage to the ferry, Hossain said by phone from the site of the accident.

He said some passengers managed to swim to safety, while several others were rescued by villagers.

The Big Money’s Twitter 12

If there was going to be a Facebook 50, there had to be a Twitter 12.

After all, 2009 has been Twitter’s year. Traffic has quadrupled, investors have recommitted, the media has fawned. Even if Twitter isn’t the future of social media, it’s certainly the shiniest, newest thing flitting in front of us. And businesses love shiny new things.

Thus, this year has also seen corporate America come into its own on Twitter. Some use it for customer service, others for exclusive coupons, and still others to pump out RSS feeds of in-house events. In Twitter, PR departments have found a two-way loudspeaker: an unfiltered way to reach a company’s fans and a Big Brother opportunity to keep tabs on its detractors. As an entire social media platform devoted to self-marketing, it’s amazing Twitter isn’t funded by the Chamber of Commerce.

The Big Money set out to figure out which companies sit on top of the Twitter heap. The overarching question: Which companies get the most out of Twitter?

To figure out the answer, we took a mix of the salient metrics: number of followers, growth over the last two months, number of tweets, and whether the account is doing anything besides providing a transplanted RSS feed. We only included companies with follower counts higher than a million. (There were other stipulations—for instance, the feed needed to represent the company, not the CEO of the company, and the business couldn’t be a derivative of Twitter.) The assumption was that a company with 100,000 followers couldn’t be getting more out of Twitter than the one with a million. That left us with 32 companies. With the help of Twitterholic, a site that tracks Twitter accounts’ metrics, we aggregated the sites’ stats and created a weighted rubric by which to judge.

Nepal holds Cabinet meeting at Mount Everest

Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks Friday and held a Cabinet meeting amid the frigid, thin air of Mount Everest to highlight the danger global warming poses to glaciers, ahead of next week's international climate change talks.

The government billed the stunt as the world's highest Cabinet meeting. The ministers posed for pictures, signed a commitment to tighten environmental regulations and expand the nation's protected areas, and then quickly flew away.

"The Everest declaration was a message to the world to minimize the negative impact of climate change on Mount Everest and other Himalayan mountains," Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal later said.

The prime minister, his two deputy prime ministers and the 20 Cabinet ministers were examined by doctors before boarding helicopters to Kalapathar, a flat area at an altitude of 17,192 feet next to Everest base camp, the jumping point for climbers seeking to scale the peak.

The Himalayan Rescue Association's Bikram Neupane said the politicians — bundled in thick jackets, windproof gear and woolen hats — all had adequate oxygen levels in their blood and they were in no immediate danger.

Polanski begins house arrest in his Swiss chalet

Roman Polanski began his house arrest on $4.5 million bail Friday, rolling into the luxury resort of Gstaad in a police convoy to a warm welcome from his wife and children at his Alpine chalet.

Polanski persuaded Swiss authorities to end his two months of incarceration in a Swiss jail pending their decision on whether to extradite him to the United States in a 32-year-old sex case.

Polanski's family had been waiting eagerly at the chalet, peeking out the windows to look for him as Swiss authorities worked out the last-minute details of his transfer. He has two children — Elvis, 9, and Moorage, 16 — with his wife, French actress Emmanuelle Signer.

"Roman Polanski was today released from custody pending extradition and transferred to Gstaad, where he is under house arrest at his chalet," the Swiss Justice Ministry said. "Polanski has undertaken not to leave his house and property at any time."

Police in gray and blue jackets and private security guarded his property. Red-and-white striped police security tape and a wooden fence marked out an area around the house that was closed to strangers.