6 August, 2009

Troubled state-backed mortgage firm Fannie Mae took a massive 14.8-billion-dollar loss in the second quarter, and asked the US Treasury for another 10.7 billion dollars in aid, the company said Thursday.Fannie Mae and its fellow state-backed lender Freddie Mac have already received hundreds of billions of dollars as part of ...

John Hughes, best known for directing a string of 1980s hit movies including "The Breakfast Club," and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", has died, his publicist said Thursday. He was 59.Hughes suffered a heart attack while visiting his family in Manhattan, his Los Angeles-based representatives said.A prolific screenwriter and director, Hughes ...

The Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud may be dead after a reported drone strike, a US official said on Thursday."There is some reason to believe Mehsud may be dead but it cannot be confirmed at this time for certain," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP. © ...

English Premier League Fulham reached the Europa League play-off round on Thursday where they were joined by free-scoring Roma and Galatasary.Andrew Johnson scored twice to add to Dickson Etuhu's opener as Fulham saw off Vetra of Lithuania 3-0 for a 6-0 aggregate win in their third qualifying round, second leg ...

Cyber attacks forced wildly popular micro-blogging site Twitter offline on Thursday and caused performance problems for hot social-networking service Facebook.Twitter was down for more than an hour before the California firm got it back online with a warning at the website that "we are continuing to defend against and recover ...

Sonia Sotomayor won historic Senate confirmation on Thursday as the first Hispanic justice on the US Supreme Court, in a big victory for President Barack Obama over stiff Republican objections.By an easy 68-31 margin, lawmakers lifted the 55-year-old appeals court judge to the bench that serves as the final arbiter ...

The United States plans to double the amount of arms and ammunition it is providing Somalia's transitional government, a US State Department official said Thursday, signalling deeper US involvement in the conflict there.The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the plan was to double supplies of arms and ...

Afghan violence left 17 people dead including wedding-goers and five US soldiers in new attacks ahead of elections as the NATO chief Thursday visited insurgent hotspots in the south.A wave of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan has raised fears that violence will mar presidential and provincial council elections on August 20 ...

Thousands of people paid their respects Thursday at the funeral of Harry Patch, the last soldier to fight in the trenches of Europe in World War I, who died at the age of 111.Path was laid to rest after a service in Wells Cathedral, in Somerset, southwest England, attended by ...

The European Central Bank kept its main interest rate steady at a record low of 1.0 percent on Thursday, a spokesman said, despite tight credit and concern the eurozone could be hit by deflation.In London, the Bank of England left its key lending rate unchanged at 0.50 percent but surprised ...