WASHINGTON (AP) — Jack Lew, President Barack Obama’s nominee for treasury secretary, is a premier federal budget expert who would take the helm of the government’s main agency for economic and fiscal policy just as the administration girds itself for a new confrontation with congressional Republicans over the nation’s debt and deficits. Obama will nominate […]

SEATTLE (AP) — A company that teamed up with Starbucks Corp. to bid for the Tully’s Coffee chain filed an objection Wednesday challenging the winning offer made by “Grey’s Anatomy” star Patrick Dempsey. AgriNurture Inc. said it’s still willing to proceed with its combined bid with Starbucks of about $10.6 million. The bid from Dempsey’s […]

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York City brokerage firm that lost 658 employees in the Sept. 11 terror attacks announced that it will “adopt” 19 schools in communities hit hard by Superstorm Sandy and will give each family in those schools $1,000 to spend as they see fit. Cantor Fitzgerald, its relief fund and […]

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Businesses and individuals who claim BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico cost them money have been paid more than $1 billion through the company’s class-action settlement with a team of private plaintiffs’ attorneys, court-supervised claims administrator Patrick Juneau said. Juneau said the payments reached the $1 billion mark before […]

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — Newtown, Conn.’s schools superintendent is urging an indefinite police presence at the district’s schools to allay fears among parents and children about gun violence. The News Times reports that Superintendent Janet Robinson says children have not ventured outside school for recess because of anxiety. The Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 […]

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s government has organized what seems an alternative inauguration outside the presidential palace today and is hosting regional leaders in an unusual show of support for ailing President Hugo Chavez, whose swearing in ceremony has been indefinitely postponed. Vice President Nicolas Maduro urged supporters to gather on a street outside Miraflores […]

NEW DELHI (AP) — Police badly beat the five suspects arrested in the brutal gang rape and killing of a young woman on a New Delhi bus, the lawyer for one of the men said today, accusing authorities of tampering with evidence in the case that has transfixed India. “They are innocent,” Manohar Lal Sharma […]