PUBLIC MARKS from ravi with tag news

Pakistanis dealt a crushing defeat to President Pervez Musharraf in parliamentary elections on Monday, in what government and opposition politicians said was a firm rejection of his policies since 2001 and those of his close ally, the United States. Almost all the leading figures in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, the party that has governed for the last five years under Mr. Musharraf, lost their seats, including the leader of the party, the former speaker of Parliament and six ministers.

The German government is considering exiting the United States-led anti-terror operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan and has already sent out feelers in Washington about the issue.

Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA has announced it is suspending sales of crude to Exxon Mobil, in response to legal action brought by the US firm.

The "Panorama" section of this year's Berlin International Film Festival opened with the world premiere of "Lemon Tree," the story of a Palestinian widow's fight to save her family's lemon orchard.

Fortune.com reported Friday that Goldman added coverage of sex-reassignment surgery to its medical plan last year. Goldman employees can undergo the procedure, which normally costs anywhere from $5,000 to $150,000, and have it paid for entirely by their medical insurance.

Venezuela's state-run oil firm has denied that US oil giant Exxon Mobil had won a court order to freeze up to $12bn (£6bn) of its assets.

The company reported Friday that it beat its own record for the highest profits ever recorded by any company, with net income rising 3 percent to $40.6 billion, thanks to surging oil prices. The company’s sales, more than $404 billion, exceeded the gross domestic product of 120 countries.

William Galvin, the Massachusetts secretary of state, filed a civil fraud complaint against Merrill a day after the firm took the unusual step of agreeing to reimburse Springfield for losses on the investments.

The RIAA's habit of roping numerous unrelated defendants into a single "John Doe" lawsuit has drawn the attention of a federal magistrate—and not in a good way. In the case of Arista v. Does 1-27, a lawsuit targeting students at the University of Maine, Magistrate Judge Margaret J. Kravchuk suggests that the court look into imposing Rule 11 sanctions on the RIAA's legal team.

The FBI is investigating 14 companies embroiled in the sub-prime mortgage crisis as part of a crackdown on improper lending.

The increasingly tangled debate over federal surveillance powers reached a new milestone today when a Republican cloture motion failed to pass after receiving only 48 of the required 60 votes. If the cloture motion had passed, it would have blocked all further attempts to remove controversial telecom immunity provisions from a Senate intelligence committee surveillance bill by forcing an immediate vote on the bill itself.

For Isabelle Mercier, 44, queuing outside a Société Générale branch in Paris, the 'rich and the powerful' always find someone to blame: 'Anyone who is a threat to them is eliminated one way or another.' Mohammed Benali, a market trader at the nearby Marché d'Aligre, agreed. 'It is time the bosses and the rich were taken down a peg,' he said.

They say the banks will need extra money if bond insurers, who insure the products at the centre of the sub-prime crisis, lose their top credit ratings.

Analysts are trying to assess whether the trader's actions contributed to the stock market turmoil and the Fed decision to cut interest rates.

French bank Societe Generale has revealed that it has been hit by one of the biggest alleged cases of fraud in banking history. The bank discovered that fraud by one of its traders had led to losses of €4.9 billion.

Former US Senator Fred Thompson has withdrawn from the Republican presidential race, after a string of poor finishes in early voting rounds.

the furor over Barack Obama's praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown.

Last year, Macau's gambling revenues overtook those of the 40 casinos along Las Vegas Strip.

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

A US citizen held for more than three years without charge as an "enemy combatant" was today sentenced to 17 years and four months...

Monsanto, Syngenta and BASF resigned after a draft report from the project highlighted the risks of GM crops and said they could pose problems for the developing world.

Alan Greenspan - the man primarily responsible for the current crisis. Greenspan, always accommodating to the needs of Wall Street, worked on the principle that the best way to cope with the collapse of one bubble was to blow another one.

The United States has been listed as a country where prisoners are at risk of torture in a training document produced by the Canadian foreign ministry.

More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in the riots, although independent groups say the toll was nearly 2,000.

Time Warner's plan includes installing bandwidth meters on new high-speed accounts and giving users access to a Web page where they can track how much they have consumed and upgrade to more expensive plans if necessary. Users will pay on a per-gigabyte basis for bandwidth they use above and beyond their plan.