Headlines News

LONDON (Reuters) - Chancellor Gordon Brown denied on Thursday he was being too optimistic on growth prospects for next year. Brown was forced to slash his estimates for economic growth for this year and 2006 when he presented his ninth annual pre-budget report on Monday. He now sees the economy expanding by 1.75 percent this year and by 2.0 to 2.5 percent next year compared with 3.0 to 3.5 percent and 2.5 to 3.0 he predicted in the March budget. Challenged by a parliamentary committee that he ...

MAITLAND, Florida (AP) -- Neighbors knew him as a simple man who worked in the paint department of a home-supply store and spent his leisure time tending to the yard of his ranch-style home in this Orlando suburb. Many could not reconcile that image with the one authorities painted Wednesday of Rigoberto Alpizar -- that of a desperate man who ran off a plane and claimed to have a bomb in his backpack. Alpizar was shot and killed by air marshals Wednesday at Miami International Airport on his  ...

STORRS, Connecticut (AP) -- Conservative columnist Ann Coulter cut short a speech at the University of Connecticut amid boos and jeers, and decided to hold a question-and-answer session instead. "I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am," Coulter told the crowd of 2,600 Wednesday. Before cutting off her speech after about 15 minutes, Coulter called Bill Clinton an "executive buffoon" who won the presidency only because Ross Perot took 19 percent of the vote. Coulter ...

LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England kept interest rates at 4.5 percent for the fourth month running on Thursday, still leaving analysts divided over when and what the next move in borrowing costs will be. All 45 analysts in a Reuters poll had predicted the Monetary Policy Committee would take no action at its final meeting this year, as policymakers were out in force last month to signal they were in no hurry to move interest rates in either direction. Governor Mervyn King and others have s ...

(CNN) -- Liverpool and New York -- two cities forever associated with John Lennon -- are the focal points for bittersweet celebrations of the life and death of the former Beatle. In the English city of his birth, tributes to the pop icon will be attached to balloons and released Thursday to mark the 25th anniversary of his death. Lennon's image will be projected at Liverpool's Albert Docks and flowers will be laid at his statue outside the Cavern nightclub, where the Beatles honed their craft ...

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Clemency is likely the only avenue available to spare Crips gang co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams' life for killing four people 26 years ago, his lawyers said. Williams' lawyers plan to present their case Thursday to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a private meeting in Sacramento. They hope to convince him to grant clemency to the gangster-turned peace activist. Williams is scheduled to die December 13, but with clemency he would spend life in prison without ...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was released from hospital Thursday after an overnight stay. Doctors at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital deemed her well enough to be sent home, Conservative Party spokesman Henry Macrory said. Thatcher fell ill Wednesday afternoon, prompting her hospitalization and a series of medical tests. Thatcher, now 80, retired from public life in 2002 after suffering a stroke. She has suffered a number of minor strokes sinc ...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU president Britain is by mistake proposing the European Union spend over 22 trillion euros (15 trillion pounds) -- almost 27 times its entire long-term budget -- on cooperation with countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific area. EU states are haggling over the 2007-13 budget and the British rebate from EU coffers. But an EU diplomat said on Thursday few had raised qu ...

LONDON (Reuters) - The government on Thursday ruled out a public inquiry into a fatal train crash at Potters Bar, north of London, three years ago. The decision follows a ruling from the state prosecution service in October that there was no evidence to bring criminal charges over the crash, which killed seven people and injured more than 70. The accident happened when a high-speed train from London came off the tracks at a suburban station. One carriage ploughed into a platform before smashin ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Michael Schiavo, whose effort to end life support for his brain-damaged wife divided a nation, is starting a political action committee that will challenge candidates based on where they stand on government's reach in private lives. Nine months after a fierce political and legal fight over Terri Schiavo, Michael Schiavo said his experience with political leaders "has opened my eyes to just how easily the private wishes of normal Americans like me and Terri can be cast aside i ...