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The composition of a power-sharing cabinet remained unsettled, and Greek politicians expressed indignation Tuesday at pressure from European Union leaders to end the drawn-out negotiations. Under the deal that seemed to have collapsed, Papademos,burberry outlet cheap 64, a respected former vice president of the European Central Bank, would have led Greece until February elections. Papandreou has pledged to resign as soon as the new government is announced, and he bade farewell to his ministers at a cabinet meeting Tuesday. European leaders are asking Papandreou’s Socialist party and the conservative New Democracy party to provide written assurances that they support the Oct. 27 bailout plan and would implement it. The plan would give Greece an additional $180 billion in exchange for tough austerity reforms that were unpopular enough to topple the current government. Finland’s Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and financial affairs, said Greece would not receive an $11 billion bailout installment until the assurances were in hand. The demand brought an angry response from Antonis Samaras, the New Democracy leader, and it was holding up the conclusion of the deal, according to Greek news accounts. “There is national dignity,” Samaras said in a statement Tuesday. He called the bailout plan “inevitable” and said, “I do not allow anyone to cast doubt on these statements.” Samaras has tried to avoid naming any of his party’s members to cabinet posts, preferring to steer clear of association with the austerity measures. But a source close to the Greek cabinet said Papandreou was insisting that both parties be responsible for implementing the measures. Greece needs bailout money before Dec. 15 or it will go bankrupt, officials have said. Staff writer Steven Mufson in Washington contributed to this report.

BERLIN —Negotiations over a power-sharing, temporary Greek government were stuck in a third day of gridlock Wednesday, with no front-runner emerging to become the debt-ridden country’s next prime minister. On Wednesday evening, an announcement from the president’s office saying that talks would continue Thursday intensified fears in Europe that the continent’s quest for a stable partner in Greece had instead become mired in the same bitter politics that have slowed reforms there. Adding to the confusion, Prime Minister George Papandreou said in a nationally televised farewell address to the Greek people that an agreement had been reached, yet he named no names. “Today, despite our political and social differences, we are setting aside sterile conflicts,” Papandreou said.sacs louis vuitton “A government of political forces is taking over that goes beyond parties and personal biases..?.?. We will take the necessary steps together with national unity.”’ Former European Central Bank official Lucas Papademos had appeared poised to lead Greece until new elections were held next year, but disagreements over the length he would serve and how much say he would get in naming his cabinet appeared to have delayed, and possibly doomed, his candidacy, Greek news reports said. A government spokesman said Wednesday that a new government would be announced later in the day, but officials had made the same assurances both Monday and Tuesday, and no announcement came. Across Europe, hopes dimmed that the country’s two main political parties could work together to resolve the country’s debt crisis. Already, Greek politicians appeared to be jockeying for advantage in the upcoming elections by avoiding too close an association with the unpopular European bailout plan.

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - When artists break free from the bands that have always defined them to take up solo careers, some celebrate their emancipation with radical musical departures.louis vuitton tote Others adhere to the old group's sound as much as possible, either out of fear, habit, or a desire to prove once and for all that they were the brains of the band. Noel Gallagher goes the latter route on "Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds," which almost sounds more like Oasis than Oasis did -- the sole difference being that it's him singing,louis vuitton not embattled brother Liam. It's as if Noel wanted to establish that Oasis would've fared just fine with him as frontman. It's a point almost worth proving. Noel is close to a dead ringer, vocally, for his sibling, so Oasis fans may feel as if not much has changed,louis vuitton outlet at least in the studio. And it must feel as liberating for Noel to get to sing his own songs as it was for Pete Townshend when he started making solo records. But the seamless transition doesn't really speak well for the individuality his songs require. And Noel does have just a wee bit less personality. With Liam, you always sensed a slight sneer at work, even when he was singing his brother's most romantic songs. Now, Noel's slightly blander tone removes any such ironic distance, but points up how banal his lyrics can be, shorn of the attitude his bro brought to the table. Almost all of "High Flying Birds" (which shares its name with the group Gallagher assembled) persists in the anthemia, pretty, ploddingly mid-tempo mode that Oasis struck UK gold with and mined to the end. Less than midway through the opening track, "Everybody's on the Run," a choir and strings have kicked in, to nice but not particularly transformative effect. Other predictably Beatles-esque touches abound on this handsomely mounted but unexciting effort. You get trumpet squalls, calliope sounds, and Mellotron-ish keyboards in "The Death of You and Me," which, ominous title aside, turns out to be "Penny Lane"-level jaunty. The uncharacteristically speedy "AKA… What a Life," takes its inspiration from Paul McCartney's solo career -- specifically, "Nineteen Ninety Five," with its fast beat and nervously quick piano. The problem is, Macca always came up with a chorus, whereas Gallagher just repeats "What a life" four times as his refrain, which makes the initially promising tune drag. If you buy the deluxe edition, you'll get the most interesting hybrid of styles with the bonus track "The Good Rebel," which takes Ringo's drumbeat from "Rain" and weds it to an old-school R.E.M.-style chorus. (The fact that Gallagher keeps singing "Rain, like rain… don't care for the sunshine" is probably no coincidental homage.) Unfortunately, the record is rife with provocative titles that give no indication of the utterly ordinary songs within. For instance, you might hope that "If I Had a Gun" is about what Noel would do to Liam if England had more lax weapons laws. But no. "If I had a gun, I'd shoot a whole into the sun, and love would burn this city down for you," Gallagher sings. "Let me fly you to the moon," he adds, probably not thinking too hard about what would have happened to the rest of the solar system after he'd destroyed the sun and Earth to amuse his girl.

Carbon pricing will have only a third of the cost impact of the GST, while driving new jobs and innovation, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says. A day after the parliament passed her carbon pricing legislation, Ms Gillard was greeted with more than a minute of applause as she addressed the Carbon Expo business forum in Melbourne on Wednesday. She said carbon pricing, which will start on July 1 next year, will provide efficient carbon abatement at the lowest economic cost "An inbuilt incentive to innovate,burberry outlet cheap linking global markets and aimed at meeting evidence-based emissions targets," she said. "The carbon price has a small beginning, less than one-third of the price impact of the GST, yet the scale of the transformation it unleashes will be immense. "Within the space of just 38 years, 2012 to 2050, well within the lifetime of most people in this room, our nation will cut nine out of every 10 tonnes of the carbon pollution we would otherwise have released into our atmosphere." Ms Gillard said the change would touch every home and workplace. "A new industrial revolution that will change the way we live and change it for the better," she said. She said the opposition's talk of repealing the laws was "juvenile". Asked what businesses should do from today, Ms Gillard said she was confident companies would think about the many creative ways they could cut their carbon pollution. A number of companies have expressed concern about the high starting price of $23 a tonne, compared with the current European price of around $10 and falling. Ms Gillard said the carbon price drop in Europe was not unexpected given Europe's volatile economy. "We have worked on the long-term price," she said. "I think the important price point, in terms of the international price, is when we move three years in to the floating price and the international linking.

(Reuters) - Votes were being counted on Wednesday in the run-off of a Liberian presidential election that was meant to shore up peace in the war-scarred state but which instead appears to have deepened divisions. Presidential challenger Winston Tubman, who boycotted the election over allegations of fraud in the first round, said his supporters and other Liberians would reject any results giving incumbent Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf a new term in office. "We will not accept the result. We told them we were not voting and they went ahead and placed our photos on the ballot papers.burberry outlet cheap Not only (opposition) CDC people boycotted but many Liberians were listening to us," Tubman told Reuters. Turnout for the November 8 election may have been as low as 25-35 percent, according to observers, as some Liberians stayed away from polling stations fearing violence and others adhered to the opposition call for a boycott. The National Election Commission said late Tuesday it would begin releasing results from the poll, including turnout figures, Thursday evening. A spokesman for Johnson-Sirleaf's UP party said turnout may have been further crimped by voter apathy, as Tubman's withdrawal from the contest made the result a near-certain Johnson-Sirleaf victory. "I would have loved for them to take part, but unfortunately they did not take part," Alphonso Nimley, UP spokesman, said. BLOODSHED Tensions had been high ahead of voting after an opposition march that turned bloody earlier in the week. At least two people were killed when Liberian security forces, backed by U.N. peacekeepers, used live rounds, tear gas grenades, and truncheons to disperse the marchers. Liberian authorities said they were investigating the incident. Liberia is one of the world's poorest countries, with over half of its people surviving on under 50 U.S. cents a day. Fourteen years of intermittent fighting that ended in 2003 killed nearly a quarter of a million people and left its infrastructure in ruins. There had been hopes the election would reflect the country's progress since the fighting ended and pave the way for new investment in its oil and minerals, but fears are growing it could instead open the door to open-ended political turmoil. Johnson-Sirleaf took nearly 44 percent of the first round vote on October 11. Tubman took roughly 33 percent in the first round but said last week he would withdraw from the race and called for a boycott because of evidence of fraud. He said he would only be willing to participate in a second round if it were delayed by two to four weeks and counting procedures were amended. International election observers called the October 11 vote mostly free and fair, and the United States, the United Nations,

ATHENS, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Greek party leaders are struggling to agree on a new prime minister, despite EU demands that the political class commit itself fast to the nation's financial salvation and end the chaos threatening the entire euro project. Monday came and went without any accord on who will lead a new national unity coalition, despite plenty of talk that a former vice president of the European Central Bank, Lucas Papademos, would get the job. The cabinet was due to hold an emergency session on Tuesday and officials said negotiations were under way on the "100-day coalition" which must win parliamentary approval for a euro zone bailout and save the country from bankruptcy. But after an early burst of compromise as the EU turned the screws on both sides,burberry outlet cheapthe drive by the socialist and conservative parties to create a government which will rule only until February appeared to be losing momentum. Frustration was apparent in Brussels where officials said the new government had to show it was serious about implementing promises Athens has made to its EU and IMF lenders in return for the 130 billion-euro bailout. "It is essential that the entire political class is now restoring the confidence that had been lost in the Greek commitment to the EU/IMF programme," said EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn. Prime Minister George Papandreou provoked chaos last week by calling a referendum on the bailout, a vote which would probably have rejected the package due to its demands for austerity. Papandreou backed down, but was forced into agreeing to make way for the unity coalition. BROKEN PROMISES Weary of past broken promises from Athens, Rehn said the coalition must "express a clear commitment on paper, in writing, to the EU/IMF programme". The stakes could not be higher. Greece faces bankruptcy in December when big debt repayments are due, unless it can get hold of more emergency funding soon. For the euro zone, it is a question of credibility with international financial markets. For two years it has laboured to solve the problems of Greece, a very small part of the bloc's economy, leading to doubts about how it would manage if the debt crisis engulfed the far bigger Italian or Spanish economies.

It sounded like a sexual assault, and it will almost certainly bring the curtain down on Mr Cain's brief and bemusing appearance on America's national political stage. He and his supporters should be thankful Miss Bialek's intervention came at such an early stage in the contest.burberry outlet cheap The Republican Party can end its flirtation with the former head of the National Restaurants Association before it becomes too embarrassing. If the details of this particular case of a would-be politician behaving badly weren't so distasteful, there would almost be a nostalgic element to it. For with her heavy make-up and Charlie's Angels hair Miss Bialek recalled Gennifer Flowers' confident claims of a 12-year affair with Bill Clinton, or Paula Jones' assertion that the then governor of Arkansas had sexually harassed her. This was an old-fashioned, Twitter-free shaming that showed how America's political and moral landscape remains supremely well designed for a scandal. The Anglo-Saxon ethical standards that the country operates under combine with a hungry media to set a perfect trap for powerful men like Mr Cain who believe they can misbehave and get away with it. He was able to propel himself to stardom thanks to a presidential primary election system in which candidates operate under a party's banner but are not properly vetted. Voters indeed welcome political outsiders like Mr Cain as epitomes of the American dream that you can make it if you really want. The potentially high rewards of litigation or payouts from the papers or book publishers encourage the likes of Miss Bialek to come forward. Something about the slightly nervous yet sassy way she delivered her apparent death blow to Mr Cain's White House ambitions yesterday suggested we haven't seen the last of Sharon Bialek or others who will claim to have suffered similar treatment. The happiest politicians in America will be Mitt Romney, the front-runner and establishment favourite who was just beginning to become irked by Mr Cain's plucky underdog campaign, and Rick Perry, the Texas governor who was losing the right-wing Republican core to the charismatic pizza guy from Georgia.

Fubon Insurance Co (富邦產物保險), the non-life insurance arm of Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), said yesterday that one of its subsidiaries, Fubon Property & Casualty Insurance Co (富邦財產保險), has obtained the green light from the China Insurance Regulation Commission to set up a branch in Chongqing, China. The insurer said it would be the first time it has extended its presence in China’s Fujian Province to the Chinese hinterland. Fubon Insurance set up Fubon Property & Casualty Insurance in the Fujian city of Xiamen in October last year as a first step in targeting the growing Chinese market. The subsidiary also runs a branch office in Fuzhou, also in Fujian Province. Fubon Insurance chairman Shih Tsan-ming (石燦明) said that after one year of operations in Fujian,burberry outlet cheap the insurer has built up experience in serving customers in China, particularly Taiwanese investors who operate there. Fubon Financial chairman Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) said that as more Taiwanese investors are using Chongqing as a springboard into western China, the financial firm is determined to bring a wide range of services, in insurance and banking, to an increasing number of potential clients. Meanwhile, Fubon Life Insurance (富邦人壽), also an insurance arm of Fubon Financial, is waiting for approval from the Chinese regulator to set up a 50-50 joint life-insurance firm in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, with Nanjing Zijin Investment Co (南京紫金投資公司). Fubon Financial said Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行), its banking arm, is scheduled to set up a representative office in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, by the end of the year.

The Kitchener Rangers fell to the Niagara IceDogs 3-1 at the Gatorade Garden City Complex on Saturday night. Cody Sol scored the lone goal for the Rangers as the teams split their weekend home-and-home series. The first period was scoreless until Sol put the Rangers on the board with a minute and a half to play on a big shot from the blue line that beat Niagara goalie Christopher Festarini.burberry outlet cheap The power play goal was the veteran defenseman’s second tally of the season and was assisted by Radek Faska and Andrew Crescenzi. Faksa and Crescenzi are both riding six game point-scoring streaks, with ten and six points respectively during that stretch. The IceDogs responded 12 seconds later, when David Pacan caught a cross-crease pass from Alex Friesen and buried it past Kitchener starter John Gibson. Captain Andrew Agozzino also picked up a helper on the play. Pacan’s tenth goal makes him the second Niagara player to hit double digits this season. The IceDogs out shot the Rangers 13-9 in the opening frame. Niagara continued to lead shots-on-goal in a scoreless second period, with a 13-11 advantage. Dougie Hamilton put the IceDogs ahead at the 5:37 mark of the third with a screen shot to the top right corner of the net. The defenseman is second in team scoring with 25 points this season. Freddie Hamilton and Ryan Strome were credited with the assists. Niagara would extend their lead to 3-1 late in the third when Ryan Strome won a faceoff to the left of Gibson and got the puck to Freddie Hamilton in front. Hamilton’s team-leading eleventh of the season brings his points total to 27. Strome is currently riding an eleven game streak with at least one point in each contest played since being returned to Niagara by the New York Islanders. The IceDogs out shot the Rangers 10-8 in the final frame. Festarini stopped 27 of 28 pucks he faced, picking up his second win since joining Niagara via trade from Erie. Niagara honoured local veterans in a Remembrance Day ceremony before the game and named Military Veterans as the game’s first stars. Niagara’s 3-1 victory snapped a three game losing streak and improves the team’s record to 8-8-0-2. The Rangers fall to 9-6-1-0.

The entire Liberal caucus walked out on a House of Commons vote Thursday morning to protest an "abuse of process" in the appointment of Canada's new auditor general. By mid-afternoon, the Liberal Senate caucus had followed suit. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's pick of Michael Ferguson, the former auditor general of New Brunswick, has been controversial because Ferguson is not bilingual. Fluency in both official languages was one of the requirements of the position as posted by the government. Liberal interim leader Bob Rae,burberry outlet cheap seen during question period in the House of Commons Thursday, led a walkout of Liberal MPs during an earlier vote to approve the Conservatives' choice of auditor general.Liberal interim leader Bob Rae, seen during question period in the House of Commons Thursday, led a walkout of Liberal MPs during an earlier vote to approve the Conservatives' choice of auditor general. Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press MPs were called to the House to vote on a motion that "the House approve the appointment of Michael Ferguson as the auditor general of Canada for a term of ten years." The Liberals walked out approximately two minutes before the vote was scheduled to start. "The government unilaterally and in our view illegally changed the rules in the middle of the game," interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae told reporters after leaving the chamber. "Can you imagine what will happen to every other job posting in the public service of Canada if the government of the day in appointing an officer of Parliament says the rules don't apply to us?" Flanked by his caucus, Rae said the Liberals "will not sanction or legitimize this process by participating in a vote which we believe is fundamentally illegitimate. This process is that wrong and that bad." Rae said he spoke with three constitutional lawyers overnight who all agree there is a serious problem with the process followed in this appointment. "I can assure you the battle does not end here. The battle just begins here," Rae said.