Free Republic

After a tense night of vote-counting yielded no clear result, Australia was heading for a hung parliament with independents Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter, who hail from regional areas, becoming the unlikely kingmakers. Independents (L-R) Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor While they all have links to the National Party, the minor party in Tony Abbott’s conservative coalition, the independents have said that past allegiances will not influence their negotiations. The most unpredictable member of the trio is Mr Katter, the MP for the vast seat of Kennedy in northern Queensland which covers more than 340,000sq miles. A...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Billionaire investor George Soros said on Monday that the length and depth of the U.S. recession will depend on who is the next U.S. president and the policies he puts in place to react to any slowdown. A series of grim economic reports in recent weeks have made clear that even if unprecedented government measures to stabilize banks succeed in restoring lending, the economy has been seriously damaged. Many analysts agree that the United State is in recession. "The range of possibilities is very wide," Soros said of how long a recession will last. He was...

MIAMI - Federal prosecutors rested their case Friday against Jose Padilla and two co-defendants charged with participating in an al-Qaida support cell. The jury has listened to nearly nine weeks of testimony from 22 witnesses and tapes of dozens of FBI wiretaps collected during an investigation that lasted years. Defense lawyers for Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi will begin their case next week, with the trial likely to continue into August. Padilla, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen, was originally accused of plotting with al-Qaida to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb." He was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago's...