Politics Senate confirmation appeared assured for General David Petraeus, who became one of the U.S. military’s biggest stars after helping turn around the war in Iraq
Politics The decision is fraught with risk for Obama, who faces the difficult choice of shaking up command of an unpopular and costly war just six months after ordering 30,000 more troops into the fight against the Taliban. McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan and architect of Obama’s war strategy, was summoned back to Washington to explain his “enormous mistake” to the president, the White House said.
China Big Chinese state-owned banks kept the yuan in check, a day after its biggest rise since the currency was revalued in 2005, indicating Beijing will allow its currency to appreciate at a far slower pace than demanded by its critics in the West. The two-way movement in the yuan is not great by the standard of freely floated currencies but is unprecedented in China where until this week the central bank had squashed intraday volatility via intervention.
U.S. Faisal Shahzad, 30, admitted traveling to Pakistan to receive bomb-making training from the Pakistani Taliban, called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and receiving $12,000 from the group to carry out the failed plot on May 1. Shahzad, who has a wife and two children living in Pakistan, pleaded guilty to 10 charges, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted terrorism transcending national borders.
Politics With final negotiations on the reform bill bogged down amid partisan bickering, Democrats who control the process neared consensus on an element that has drawn furious opposition from the Wall Street banks that could lose billions in profits. The deal would require banks to isolate their swaps desks in separate affiliates, which would require the banks to raise new capital and deprive them of profits they get from dealing
