Quiet media night explodes suddenly, Rove protests

NEW YORK (AP) — Careful media coverage of a close presidential election Tuesday exploded so suddenly Tuesday that it left the bizarre spectacle of Fox News Channel analyst Karl Rove, a major fundraiser for Republican Mitt Romney, publicly questioning his network’s declaration that President Barack Obama had been re-elected.

ABC News was also frantically trying to repair a power outage that left much of its set inoperable precisely at the time the election was being decided.

For several hours, election coverage resembled the run-up to a Super Bowl, with plenty of talk signifying little. Then NBC News, at 11:12 p.m. ET, was the first to declare Obama had won by virtue of winning the battleground state of Ohio. “He remains president of the United States for a second term,” said anchor Brian Williams.

Other networks followed suit, including Fox five minutes later. But Rove, the former top political aide to President George W. Bush whose on-air presence on Fox this campaign raised some eyebrows because of his prominent role supporting Romney, suggested the call was premature.

“We’ve got to be careful about calling things when we have like 991 votes separating the candidates and a quarter of the vote left to count … I’d be very cautious about intruding in this process,” said Rove, a behind-the-scenes player in the wild 2000 election between Bush and Al Gore that took weeks to decide. (Gore was on TV Tuesday, too, as anchor of Current TV’s election coverage).

It left Rove’s colleagues struggling for words.

“That’s awkward,” said co-anchor Megyn Kelly. She then went backstage to interview on camera two men who were part of Fox’s team in charge of making election calls. They had concluded that based on the precincts where votes were left to be counted, Romney couldn’t beat Obama.

Later, Rove tried to make light of the encounter. “This is not a cage match,” he said. “This is a light intellectual discussion.”

As the evening had progressed for Fox and it became clear that Romney, the clear favorite of most of its audience, would find it hard to win, commentators like Sarah Palin and Peggy Noonan looked stricken.

“This was the referendum that Mitt Romney wanted on Barack Obama,” said Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman on MSNBC. “And guess what? Barack Obama won the referendum. And that’s pretty darned emphatic.”

Much of ABC’s New York election studio was left powerless for about 20 minutes at the height of Tuesday’s coverage. The network didn’t inform viewers, and tried to compensate by taking anchors Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos away from their desks, and cutting away to crowd shots at Times Square.

Sawyer’s relaxed, folksy delivery in her first presidential election night as anchor drew considerable social media attention. The rock group They Might Be Giants tweeted: “and Diane Sawyer declares tonight’s winner is … chardonnay!”

Sawyer and Stephanopoulos were a new election anchor team for ABC, and Scott Pelley led the CBS coverage. Of the three anchors for the biggest broadcast networks, only NBC’s Williams was a returnee from 2008.

But it was a far different media world anyway. 2012 was notable for the vast array of outlets that an interested consumer could command to create their own media experience on multiple screens. Web sites offered deep drill-downs in data and social media hosted raucous conversations.

“If you started a drinking game with the words ‘exit poll’ in it, please stop now. You will die!” tweeted TV critic Tim Goodman.

Obama’s Twitter account tweeted a picture of the president hugging First Lady Michelle Obama, and within 45 minutes it was retweeted more than 300,000 times.

Earlier in the evening, journalists took special care not to rely too heavily on exit polls. Perhaps they remembered how misleading exit polls in 2004 led TV networks astray then or perhaps, in CBS’ Bob Schieffer’s words, its results this year were too contradictory.

News outlets carefully parsed information and sometimes used the same facts for contradictory conclusions.

Fox News analyst Brit Hume noted an exit poll finding that 42 percent of voters said Superstorm Sandy was an important factor in their vote, suggesting that was a positive for Obama since he was widely considered to have been effective in his response. With the same information, the web site Politico headlined: “Exit Survey: Sandy Not a Factor.”

There was a certain amount of vamping time, too. Glenn Beck’s online network, The Blaze, had a blackboard straight out of the 1960s as a tote board. Beck killed time on the air by asking for cookie dough ice cream from the on-set food bar.

“Waffle cone, please,” Beck said.

When Sawyer asked David Muir for the latest news from the Romney campaign, he reported the family had pasta for dinner and the candidate indulged in his favorite peanut butter and honey sandwich.

The media personality with perhaps the most on the line was Nate Silver of The New York Times, whose FiveThirtyEight blog was sought out by 20 percent of the people who visited the newspaper’s website on Monday. He has used statistical data throughout the campaign to predict an Obama victory and by Tuesday, had forecast a 90.9 percent chance that Obama would win.

After Obama’s victory became clear, Gavin Purcell, producer of “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” tweeted that “Nate Silver is the only white male winning tonight.” CNN’s Piers Morgan tweeted Silver an invitation to appear on his show Wednesday.

___

Television Writers Frazier Moore in New York and Lynn Elber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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'We remain more than a collection of red states and blue states'

President Barack Obama handily defeated Gov. Mitt Romney and won himself a second term on Tuesday after a bitter and historically expensive race that was primarily fought in just a handful of battleground states. Obama beat Romney after nabbing almost every one of the 12 crucial battleground states.

The Romney campaign's last-ditch attempt to put blue-leaning Midwestern swing states in play failed as Obama's Midwestern firewall sent the president back to the White House for four more years. Obama picked up the swing states of New Hampshire, Michigan, New Mexico, Iowa, Virginia, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Ohio. Of the swing states, Romney picked up only North Carolina. Florida is still too close to call, but even if Romney wins the state, Obama still beat him in the Electoral College vote. The popular vote will most likely be narrower than the president's decisive Electoral College victory.

In a sweeping victory speech early Wednesday morning, Obama thanked every American who voted, and vowed to work with leaders from both parties to tackle the country's challenges.

"Our economy is recovering, a decade of war is ending, a long campaign is now over," he told a crowd of cheering supporters in Chicago. "And whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you and you have made me a better president." Obama added he has "never been more hopeful about America. ... We're not as divided as our politics suggest. We remain more than a collection of blue states and red states."

In his speech, he offered clues to the policy goals of his second term, which included a deficit reduction plan that combines tax increases with spending cuts, a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's federal immigration laws and tax reform. He called on Republicans to join him in achieving those goals.

The battle for the White House between Obama and Romney divided the nation, causing, at times, bitter disputes between the parties. Obama urged his supporters to look beyond the fight of the past several months and defended the process of choosing a president.

"I know that political campaigns can sometimes seem small, even  silly," Obama said. "And that provides plenty of fodder for the cynics who tell us  that politics is nothing more than a contest of evils or the domain of  special interests. If you ever get the chance to talk to folks who  turned out to our rallies and along the rope lines of high school gyms,  or saw folks working late at campaign office or some tiny county a long way from home, you'll discover something else."

Romney conceded in Boston in a speech around 1 a.m. ET. "Like so many of you, Paul [Ryan] and I have left everything on the field. We have given our all to this campaign," Romney said. "I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead your country in another direction. But the nation chose another leader." Romney congratulated the president and his campaign on their victory.

The Obama victory marks an end to a years-long campaign that saw historic advertisement spending levels, countless rallies and speeches, and three much-watched debates.

The Romney campaign cast the election as a referendum on Obama's economic policies, frequently comparing him to former President Jimmy Carter and asking voters the Reagan-esque question of whether they are better off than they were four years ago. But the Obama campaign pushed back, blanketing key states such as Ohio early on with ads painting him as a multimillionaire more concerned with profits than people. The Obama campaign also aggressively attacked Romney on reproductive rights issues, tying Romney to a handful of Republican candidates who made controversial comments about rape and abortion.

The ads were one reason Romney faced a steep likeability problem for most of the race, until his expert performance at the first presidential debate in Denver in October. After that debate, and a near universal panning of Obama's performance, Romney caught up with Obama in national polls, and almost closed his favorability gap with the president. In polls, voters consistently gave him an edge over Obama on who would handle the economy better and create more jobs, even as they rated Obama higher on caring about the middle class.

But the president's Midwestern firewall—and the campaign's impressive grassroots operation—carried him through. Ohio tends to vote a bit more Republican than the nation as a whole, but Obama was able to stave off that trend and hold an edge there over Romney, perhaps due to the president's support of the auto bailout three years ago. Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, all but moved to Ohio in the last weeks of the campaign, trying and ultimately failing to erase Obama's lead there.

A shrinking electoral battleground this year meant that only 12 states were really seen as in play, and both candidates spent most of their time and money there. Though national polls showed the two candidates in a dead heat, Obama consistently held a lead in the states that mattered. That, and his campaign's much-touted get-out-the-vote efforts and overall ground game, may be what pushed Obama over the finish line.

Now, Obama heads back to office facing what will most likely be bitterly partisan negotiations over whether the Bush tax cuts should expire. The House will still be majority Republican, with Democrats maintaining their majority in the Senate.

The loss may provoke some soul searching in the Republican Party. This election was seen as a prime opportunity to unseat Obama, as polls showed Americans were unhappy with a sluggish economy, sky-high unemployment and a health care reform bill that remained widely unpopular. Romney took hardline positions on immigration, federal spending and taxes during the long Republican primary when he faced multiple challenges from the right. He later shifted to the center in tone on many of those issues, but it's possible the primary painted him into a too-conservative corner to appeal to moderates during the general election. The candidate also at times seemed unable to effectively counter Democratic attacks on his business experience and personal wealth.

"In the coming weeks and months I am looking forward to reaching out to leaders of both parties," Obama said.

He won't have much time to fulfill that promise. With tax hikes looming and a sequestration deal that will make enormous , automatic cuts in government funding, Congress and the White House must move quickly to find a compromise and put Obama's high-minded rhetoric into action.

Chris Moody contributed reporting from Chicago.

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Cautious reformers tipped for new China leadership

BEIJING (Reuters) – China‘s ruling Communist Party will this month unveil its new top leadership team, expected to again be an all-male cast of politicians whose instincts are to move cautiously on reform.

Sources close to the leadership say 10 main candidates are vying for seven seats on the party’s next Politburo Standing Committee, the peak decision-making body which will steer the world’s second-largest economy for the next five years.

Only two candidates are considered certainties going into the party’s 18th congress, which starts on Thursday: leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping and his designated deputy, Li Keqiang, who are set to be installed as president and premier next March.

Of the remaining eight contenders, only one has the reputation as a political reformer and only one is a woman.

Following are short biographies of the candidates, including their reform credentials and possible portfolio responsibilities.

XI JINPING

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Considered a cautious reformer, having spent time in top positions in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, both at the forefront of China‘s economic reforms.

Xi Jinping, 59, is China‘s vice president and President Hu Jintao’s anointed successor. He will take over as Communist Party boss at the congress and then as head of state in March.

Xi belongs to the party’s “princeling” generation, the offspring of communist revolutionaries. His father, former vice premier Xi Zhongxun, fought alongside Mao Zedong in the Chinese civil war. Xi watched his father purged and later, during the Cultural Revolution, spent years in the hardscrabble countryside before making his way to university and then to power.

Married to a famous singer, Xi has crafted a low-key and sometimes blunt political style. He has complained that officials’ speeches and writings are clogged with party jargon and has demanded more plain speaking.

Xi went to work in the poor northwest Chinese countryside as a “sent-down youth” during the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and became a rural commune official. He went on to study chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing and later gained a doctorate in Marxist theory from Tsinghua.

A native of the poor, inland province of Shaanxi, Xi was promoted to governor of southeastern Fujian province in 1999 and became party boss in neighboring Zhejiang province in 2003.

In 2007, the tall, portly Xi secured the top job in China‘s commercial capital, Shanghai, when his predecessor was caught up in a huge corruption case. Later that year he was promoted to the party’s standing committee.

- – - -

LI KEQIANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen as another cautious reformer due to his relatively liberal university experiences.

Vice Premier Li Keqiang, 57, is the man tipped to be China‘s next premier, taking over from Wen Jiabao.

His ascent will mark an extraordinary rise for a man who as a youth was sent to toil in the countryside during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

He was born in Anhui province in 1955, son of a local rural official. Li worked on a commune that was one of the first places to quietly revive private bonuses in farming in the late 1970s. By the time he left Anhui, Li was a Communist Party member and secretary of his production brigade.

He studied law at the elite Peking University, which was among the first Chinese schools to resume teaching law after the Cultural Revolution. He worked to master English and co-translated “The Due Process of Law” by Lord Denning, the famed English jurist.

In 1980, Li, then in the official student union, endorsed controversial campus elections. Party conservatives were aghast, but Li, already a prudent political player, stayed out of the controversial vote.

He climbed the party ranks and in 1983 joined the Communist Youth League’s central secretariat, headed then by Hu Jintao.

Li later served in challenging party chief posts in Liaoning, a frigid northeastern rustbelt province, and rural Henan province. He was named to the powerful nine-member standing committee in 2007.

- – - -

WANG QISHAN

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer and problem solver with deep experience tackling tricky economic and political problems.

Wang Qishan, 64, is the most junior of four vice premiers and an ex-mayor of Beijing. But he has a keen grasp of complex economic issues and is the only likely member of the Standing Committee to have been chief executive of a corporation, leading the state-owned China Construction Bank from 1994 to 1997. As such, he may take a leading role in shaping economic policy, including trade and foreign investment.

Wang is an experienced negotiator who has led finance and trade negotiations as well as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue with the United States. He is a favorite of foreign investors and has long been seen as a problem solver, sorting out a debt crisis in Guangdong province where he was vice governor in the late 1990s and replacing the sacked Beijing mayor after a cover-up of the deadly SARS virus in 2003.

Wang is also a princeling, son-in-law of a former vice premier and ex-standing committee member, Yao Yilin. His possible portfolio could be chairman of the National People’s Congress (China’s rubber-stamp parliament), head of parliament’s advisory body, executive vice premier (responsible for economic issues) or the party’s top anti-corruption official.

- – - -

LIU YUNSHAN

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative who has kept domestic media on a tight leash.

Liu Yunshan, 65, may take over the propaganda and ideology portfolio for the Standing Committee.

He has a background in media, once working as a reporter for state-run news agency Xinhua in Inner Mongolia, where he later served in party and propaganda roles before shifting to Beijing.

As minister of the party’s Propaganda Department since 2002, Liu has also sought to control China‘s Internet, which has more than 500 million users. He has been a member of the wider Politburo for two five-year terms ending this year.

Liu has not worked directly for the Communist Youth League, but is aligned to it through his lengthy career in an inland, poor province, long ties to the party’s propaganda system and close relationship with Hu Jintao.

- – - -

LI YUANCHAO

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A reformer who has courted foreign investment and studied in the United States.

Li Yuanchao, 61, oversees the appointment of senior party, government, military and state-owned enterprise officials as head of the party’s powerful organization department. On the Standing Committee, he could head the fight against corruption.

Li, whose father was a vice-mayor of Shanghai, has risen far since his parents were persecuted and he was a humble farm hand during the Cultural Revolution.

Politically astute, Li can navigate between interest groups, from Hu’s Youth League power base to the princelings.

As party chief in his native province, Jiangsu, from 2002 to 2007, Li oversaw a rapid rise in personal incomes and economic development, attracting foreign investment from global industrial leaders such as Ford, Samsung and Caterpillar.

He earned mathematics and economics degrees from two of China‘s best universities and a doctorate in law. He also spent time at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the United States.

- – - -

ZHANG DEJIANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative trained in North Korea.

Zhang Dejiang, 65, saw his chances of promotion boosted this year when he was chosen to replace disgraced politician Bo Xilai as Chongqing party boss. He also serves as vice premier in charge of industry, though his record has been tarnished by the downfall of the railway minister last year for corruption.

Zhang is close to former president Jiang Zemin who still wields some influence. He studied economics at Kim Il-sung University in North Korea and is a native of northeast China.

On his watch as party chief of Guangdong, the southern province maintained its position as a powerhouse of China‘s economic growth, even as it struggled with energy shortages, corruption-fuelled unrest and the 2003 SARS epidemic.

- – - – -

ZHANG GAOLI

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer with experience in more developed parts of China.

Zhang Gaoli, 65, party chief of the northern port city of Tianjin and a Politburo member since 2007, is seen as a Jiang Zemin ally but also acceptable to President Hu, who has visited Tianjin three times since 2008. Zhang is an advocate of greater foreign investment and he introduced financial reforms in a bid to turn the city into a financial center in northern China.

He was sent to clean up Tianjin, which was hit by a string of corruption scandals implicating his predecessor and the former top adviser to the city’s lawmaking body. The adviser committed suicide shortly after Zhang’s arrival.

A native of southeastern Fujian province, Zhang trained as an economist. He also served as party chief and governor of eastern Shandong province and as Guangdong vice governor.

Zhang is low-key with a down-to-earth work style, and not much is known about his specific interests and aspirations. But with his leadership experience in more economically advanced cities and provinces, including party secretary of the showcase manufacturing and export-driven city of Shenzhen, he could be named executive vice premier.

- – - – -

WANG YANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen by many in the West as a beacon of political reform.

Wang Yang, 57, is party chief of the export dependent economic hub of Guangdong province. He was not included in a list of preferred Standing Committee candidates drawn up by Xi, Hu and Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, according to sources close to the leadership, but is firmly in the running.

Born into a poor rural family in eastern Anhui province, Wang dropped out of high school and went to work in a food factory at age 17 to help support his family after his father died. These experiences may have shaped his desire for more socially inclusive policies, including his “Happy Guangdong” model of development designed to improve quality of life.

Concerned about the social impact of three decades of blistering development, he lobbied for social and political reform. However, this approach has drawn criticism from party conservatives and Wang has more recently adopted the party’s more familiar method of control and punishment to keep order.

- – - – -

YU ZHENGSHENG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Relatively low-key but considered a cautious reformer.

Yu Zhengsheng, 67, is party boss in China‘s financial hub and most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai.

His impeccable Communist pedigree made him a rising star in the mid-1980s until his brother, an intelligence official, defected to the United States. His close ties with Deng Pufang, the eldest son of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, spared him the full political repercussions but he was taken off the fast track.

Yu bided his time in ministerial ranks until bouncing back, joining the Politburo in 2002. However, the princeling’s age would require him to retire in 2017 after one term.

- – - – -

LIU YANDONG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Uncertain.

Liu Yandong, who turns 67 this month, is the only woman given a serious chance to join the Standing Committee but is considered a dark horse. She is a princeling also tied to President Hu’s Youth League faction.

If promoted, she could head up parliament’s advisory body, but her age would also force her to retire after only one term.

Her bigger challenge is that no woman has made it into the Standing Committee since 1949. Not even Jiang Qing, the widow of late Chairman Mao Zedong, made it that far.

Liu, daughter of a former vice-minister of agriculture, is currently the only woman in the 25-member Politburo, a minority in China‘s male-dominated political culture. She has been on the wider Politburo since 2007 as one of five state councilors, a rank senior to a cabinet minister but junior to a vice-premier.

(Reporting by Terril Yue Jones, Ben Blanchard, Benjamin Kang Lim and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing. Additional reporting by Chris Ip, Grace Li, Jean Lin, Young Wang, Alice Woodhouse and Julie Zhu; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Mark Bendeich)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Apple sells three million iPads over first weekend

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Why “Skyfall” Will Be Biggest Bond Ever at the Box Office

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The sky isn’t falling! The sky isn’t falling!

In fact, releasing “Skyfall” to foreign audiences 10 days ahead of its domestic release is a ploy that will pay off nicely: It will help make the first Bond film in four years the biggest 007 ever at the box office, the first to score over $ 600 million worldwide.

Daniel Craig‘s Bond already has been extremely consistent as 2008′s “Quantum of Solace” grossed $ 586 million worldwide while “Casino Royale” topped out at $ 594 million in 2006. But with foreign grosses for “Skyfall” alone already closing in on $ 300 million, the sky does indeed seem the limit.

“The huge overseas numbers for “Skyfall” have trumped all box-office news in the U.S. the last two weekends, and that buzz can only help punch up the grosses Stateside,” Exhibitor Relations senior analysts Jeff Bock told TheWrap Monday.

As the only new film in wide release, “Skyfall” will also benefit from no direct competition. The current No. 1, Disney’s family film “Wreck-It Ralph,” targets an entirely different demographic than the PG-13-rated Bond. A similar setup helped “Quantum of Solace” debut with $ 67 million, the highest opening the franchise has ever seen.

Bock and other analysts see “Skyfall” taking in more than $ 70 million and finishing its North American run with around $ 230 million.

As for Sony, it’s confident that “Skyfall,” will bow big, based on very positive reviews for the film, strong pre-sale figures and broad social media awareness.

And it had better. The film’s first week in the U.S. will be crucial, as the following weekend will see the debut of “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2.” Summit’s finale of the “Twilight” series has topped the pre-sales charts since tickets became available online more than a month ago, and it is projected to open in the $ 150 million range.

While the foreign bows weren’t intentionally set up to boost the U.S. release, Sony knew they could help. “The idea was to build worldwide momentum out of the U.K. and Western Europe,” Sony spokesman Steve Elzer told TheWrap. “We employed a similar pattern on ‘Quantum of Solace.’”

That film opened in the U.S. after rolling up $ 147 million from 47 countries in the previous two weeks. It wound up making $ 168 million domestically.

“The dating strategy for ‘Skyfall’ – here and abroad – was designed to take advantage of the very best play periods no matter where the film opens,” Elzer said. So timing it to align with European holidays – and avoid Halloween here – was a dollars decision.

The U.K. rollout – where Bond is one of the foremost cultural icons – coincided with the Half Term holiday, when students are on break. The debut in Catholic countries like Spain and France was timed to the long All-Saints Day weekend.

As a result, “Skyfall” has taken in a record-breaking $ 85.8 million from the U.K. in just 10 days. During that same period, it has already out-grossed “Quantum of Solace” and “Casino Royale” in France with $ 30 million.

Of course foreign success doesn’t necessarily translate with American audiences. Consider “Battleship,” the pricey aliens-at-sea saga from Universal that built a $ 230 million foreign cushion before it opened in the U.S. Unfortunately, it ran aground here, bowing to $ 25 million and topping out at $ 65 million.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Long, bitter White House race finally in voters' hands

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney face the verdict of voters on Tuesday after a long and bitter White House campaign, with polls showing them deadlocked in a race that will be decided in a handful of states where it is extraordinarily close.

At least 120 million Americans are expected to vote on giving Obama a second term or replacing him with Romney. Their decision will set the country's course for four years on spending, taxes, healthcare and foreign policy challenges like the rise of China and Iran's nuclear ambitions.

National opinion polls show Obama and Romney in a virtual dead heat, although the Democratic incumbent has a slight advantage in several vital swing states - most notably Ohio - that could give him the 270 electoral votes he needs to win.

Romney, the multimillionaire former head of a private equity fund, would be the first Mormon president and one of the wealthiest Americans to occupy the White House. Obama, the first black president, is vying to be the first Democrat to win a second term since Bill Clinton in 1996.

Fueled by record spending on negative ads, the battle between the two men was focused primarily on the lagging economic recovery and persistent high unemployment, but at times it turned personal.

Polls will begin to close in Indiana and Kentucky at 6 p.m. ESTon Tuesday, with voting ending across the country over the next six hours.

The first results, by tradition, were tallied in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, New Hampshire, shortly after midnight . Obama and Romney each received five votes in Dixville Notch. In Hart's Location, Obama got 23 votes to 9 votes for Romney and two votes for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

The close presidential race raises fears of a disputed outcome similar to the 2000 election, which was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Both campaigns have assembled legal teams to deal with possible voting problems, challenges or recounts.

The balance of power in the U.S. Congress will also be at stake in Senate and House of Representatives races that could impact the outcome of "fiscal cliff" negotiations on spending cuts and tax increases, which kick in at the end of the year unless a deal is reached.

Obama's Democrats are now expected to narrowly hold their Senate majority, while Romney's Republicans are favored to retain House control.

Despite the weak economy, Obama appeared in September to be cruising to a relatively easy win after a strong party convention and a series of stumbles by Romney, including a secretly recorded video showing the Republican writing off 47 percent of the electorate as government-dependent victims.

But Romney rebounded in the first debate on October 3 in Denver, where his sure-footed criticism of the president and Obama's listless response started a slow rise for Romney in polls. Obama seemed to regain his footing in recent days at the head of federal relief efforts for victims of the storm Sandy.

The presidential contest is now likely to be determined by voter turnout - specifically, what combination of Republicans, Democrats, white, minority, young, old and independent voters shows up at polling stations.

Obama and Romney raced through seven battleground states on the final day of campaigning to hammer home their final themes, urge supporters to get to the polls and woo the last remaining undecided voters.

'WE KNOW WHAT CHANGE LOOKS LIKE'

Obama focused on Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa, the three Midwestern swing states that, barring surprises elsewhere, would give him 270 electoral votes. Romney visited the must-win states of Florida, Virginia and Ohio before finishing in New Hampshire, where he launched his presidential run in June 2011.

After two days of nearly round-the-clock travel, Obama wrapped up his final campaign tour in Des Moines, Iowa, with a speech that hearkened back to his 2008 campaign.

"I've come back to Iowa one more time to ask for your vote. I came back to ask you to help us finish what we've started, because this is where our movement for change began," he told a crowd of some 20,000 people.

Obama's voice broke and he wiped away tears from his eyes as he reflected on those who had helped his campaign.

Romney's final day included stops in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire. The former governor of Massachusetts ended the day at a raucous "Final Victory" rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, the city where he launched his campaign last year.

"We're one day away from a fresh start. We're one day away from a new beginning," the candidate, sounding hoarse at his fifth rally of the day, told the crowd of 12,000 at a sports arena in the center of the city.

Obama ridiculed Romney's claims to be the candidate of change and said the challenger would be a rubber stamp for a conservative Tea Party agenda. "We know what change looks like, and what he's selling ain't it," he said in Columbus, Ohio.

Romney argued he was the candidate who could break the partisan gridlock in Washington, and said four more years of Obama could mean another economic recession.

"His plan for the next four years is to take all the ideas from the first term - the stimulus, the borrowing, Obamacare, all the rest - and do them over again," he said in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The common denominator for both candidates was Ohio, the most critical of the battlegrounds, particularly for Romney. Without the state's 18 electoral votes, the path to victory becomes very narrow for the Republican.

Polls have shown Obama with a small but steady lead in the state for months, sparked in part by his support for a federal bailout of the auto industry, which accounts for one of every eight jobs in Ohio, and by a strong state economy with an unemployment rate lower than the 7.9 percent national rate.

That undercut the central argument of Romney's campaign - that his business experience made him uniquely qualified to create jobs and lead an economic recovery. Obama fought back through the summer with ads criticizing Romney's experience at the equity fund Bain Capital and portraying him as out of touch with ordinary Americans.

That was part of a steady barrage of advertising in the most heavily contested battleground states from both candidates and their party allies, who raised a combined $2 billion.

The rise of "Super PACs," unaffiliated outside groups that can spend unlimited sums on behalf of candidates, also helped fuel the record spending on political ads that swamped swing-state voters.

Romney planned to vote at home in Massachusetts on Tuesday morning before a final trip to Ohio and Pennsylvania, a Democratic-leaning state that he has tried to put in play in recent weeks.

Obama, who voted in October, will spend the day at his home in Chicago.

The two candidates took a break from campaign rallies to tape interviews that aired during halftime of Monday Night Football, a U.S. television institution.

Romney said the New England Patriots were his favorite football team and jokingly said that, as a former Massachusetts governor, he took credit for the team's Super Bowl victories.

Obama expressed faith that his hometown team, the Chicago Bears, can make it to the Super Bowl championship in January because they have the "best defense in the league."

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Iowa and Patricia Zengerle and Herb Swanson in New Hampshire; Editing by Alistair Bell, Christopher Wilson and Paul Simao)

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Congressional panels to hold hearings on meningitis outbreak

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two congressional oversight committees will hold hearings next week on the deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak linked to tainted steroid injections and one panel has invited an official from the compounding pharmacy involved, aides said on Monday.

The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee expects to hear testimony from Food and Drug Administration commissioner Margaret Hamburg on November 14.

The Republican-led panel has also invited Barry Cadden, co-owner of the New England Compounding Center, and James Coffey of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy, to appear.

A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Health did not say immediately whether Coffey would testify. A lawyer for Cadden was not immediately available for comment.

On November 15, the Democratic-controlled Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold its own hearing. It has invited a half-dozen witnesses including Hamburg, Cadden and health officials from Massachusetts and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Both committees have been investigating the outbreak that has sickened 419 people, killing 30, in 19 states, according to the CDC.

Lawmakers are trying to determine why NECC was allowed to continue operating after federal and state officials had identified problems at its facility including potential health risks posed by its production of injectable drugs.

The committees are also considering possible legislative action to enhance the FDA’s oversight powers over compounding pharmacies, which are regulated mainly by state pharmacy boards.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Toni Clarke; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bomb shakes Damascus, opposition holds unity talks

AMMAN (Reuters) – A bomb exploded near army and security compounds in Damascus, Syrian television reported, and fractured opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad began unity talks abroad to win international respect and arms supplies.

The 50-kilogram (110-pound) bomb, near a large hotel in a heavily guarded district, was described by state media as an attack by “terrorists” – the government’s term for insurgents in the 19-month-old uprising against Assad.

Opposition activists said Sunday’s blast appeared to be the work of the Ahfad al-Rasoul (Grandsons of the Prophet) Brigade, an Islamist militant unit that attacked military and intelligence targets several times in the last two months.

The mainly Sunni rebels have carried out a series of bombings targeting government and military buildings in Damascus this year, extending the war into the seat of Assad’s power.

The Syrian conflict has aggravated divisions in the Islamic world, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad — whose Alawite faith derives from Shi’ite Islam — and U.S.-allied Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar backing his foes.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an activist monitoring group, said government forces had killed 179 people on Sunday. It said most of the dead were civilians killed in shelling of Damascus suburbs and included 14 women and 20 children. The rest were rebels killed in battles in the capital and the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

Opposition campaigners said the Syrian army shelled rebel positions inside a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus on Sunday, killing at least 20 people. They said the Yarmouk camp had become the latest battleground in the war.

In northern Idlib, opposition sources said rebels were forced to halt an offensive to take a big air base because of a shortage of ammunition, a problem that has dogged their campaign to cement a hold on the north by eliminating Assad’s devastating edge in firepower.

Islamist insurgents had launched the attack on the Taftanaz military airport at dawn on Saturday, using rocket launchers and at least three tanks captured from the military.

The Syrian government restricts journalists’ access in Syria, making it difficult to verify reports from the ground.

The Jaafar bin Tayyar Division, a rebel unit in Deir al-Zor, said its fighters had taken control of the al-Ward oilfield near the Iraqi border on Sunday, after overrunning a loyalist outpost that had 40 militiamen defending it.

Rebel commanders, former Syrian officials and the Syrian head of an oil services company familiar with oil production in the area said the fields, mostly not operational, had been under de facto rebel control for months.

FEARS OF WIDER CONFLAGRATION

The conflict began with peaceful protest rallies that morphed into armed revolt when Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since 1971, tried to stamp them out with military might. About 32,000 people have been killed, wide swathes of the major Arab state have been wrecked and the civil war threatens to widen into a regional sectarian conflagration.

The opposition talks that began in Qatar marked the first concerted attempt to meld feuding, disparate groups based abroad and coordinate strategy with rebels fighting in Syria.

Divisions between Islamists and secularists as well as between those inside Syria and opposition figures based abroad have foiled prior attempts to forge a united opposition and deterred Western powers from intervening militarily.

Analysts were skeptical the planned four days of opposition talks in the Qatari capital Doha would bring immediate results.

They aim to broaden the Syrian National Council (SNC), the largest of the overseas-based opposition groups, from some 300 members to 400, to pave the way for talks in Doha on Thursday including other anti-Assad factions to crystallise a coalition.

“The main aim is to expand the council to include more of the social and political components. There will be new forces in the SNC,” Abdulbaset Sieda, current leader of the Syrian National Council, told reporters in Doha ahead of the meeting.

The meetings would also elect a new executive committee and leader for the SNC, he said.

A Qatar-based security analyst, who asked not to be named, said the meetings would bring a small step forward, at most. “The Syrian National Council is just too divided,” he said.

In Cairo, the international mediator on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, called on Sunday for world powers to issue a U.N. Security Council resolution based on a deal they reached in June to set up a transitional Syrian government.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the same news conference, dismissed the need for a resolution and said others were stoking violence by backing rebels. His comments highlighted the impasse over Syria’s civil war.

Russia and China, both permanent council members, have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad’s government for the violence. The other three permanent members are the United States, Britain and France.

(Additional reporting by Rania el Gamal and Regan Doherty in Qatar, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Stephen Powell)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The app's the thing as Shakespeare goes digital

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Katy Perry wears dress with Obama slogan at rally

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Pop star Katy Perry is sporting a skin-tight minidress with President Barack Obama‘s campaign slogan “Forward” emblazoned across it at the president’s rally in Milwaukee.

Perry came on stage at Saturday’s event initially wearing a red, white and blue dress and holding a microphone shaped like the Statue of Liberty’s torch.

But after her first song, a cover of Al Green’s soul hit “Let’s Stay Together,” she tossed aside the dress to reveal the bright blue minidress.

Obama’s slogan “Forward” is also Wisconsin’s state motto.

Perry paused midway through her set to make a pitch for donations to victims of Superstorm Sandy.

Obama’s rally with Perry comes before he’s set to be in Madison on Monday with rocker Bruce Springsteen.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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