Plane crash kills 15 in Nepal mountains; 6 survive

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) -- A plane crashed into a mountain in the Himalayas while trying to land at an airport in northern Nepal on Monday, killing 15 people and injuring six, some critically.

It was carrying two pilots and a flight attendant - all Nepalese - along with 16 Indians and two Danish citizens, both of whom survived, officials said.

Television footage showed the Danes being taken inside a hospital in the nearby city of Pokhara, the man being led on foot and the woman crying in pain as she was carried on a stretcher.

The plane was turning to land at Jomsom Airport when it crashed, said Laxmi Raj Sharma, chief government administrator in the area.

It broke into pieces but did not catch fire. Sharma said an initial investigation indicated the Dornier aircraft, which belonged to the local Agni Air company, might have had technical problems.

Rescue was swift because the plane crashed just few meters (yards) from an army camp at Jomsom.

The Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet said it spoke to the Danish passengers by phone at the hospital and identified them as Emilie Joergensen and Andreas Rasch.

"We were thrown around. The seats were unfastened and we were squeezed between seats and bodies," it quoted Joergensen as saying.

She said they had to climb over "hands and arms" to get out of the plane.

"I think it was easy for us to get out because we sat in the back and were closest to the exit," Joergensen said.

She said they were on their way to Jomsom where they planned to go trekking.

The Jomsom airport is a gateway to a popular destination for trekkers and for Hindu pilgrims on their way to the revered Muktinath temple. It is about 200 kilometers (125 miles) northwest of Katmandu.

Nepalese Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai expressed his condolences over the deaths.

AP.

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Greece to head to polls again after talks collapse

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Greece headed into a month of political uncertainty after power-sharing talks collapsed Tuesday, triggering new elections that could determine whether the country retains its tenuous position in Europe's currency.

Nine tortured days of fruitless talks to build a coalition government fueled increasing doubt that Greece can make enough reforms to prevent the world's largest currency union from fracturing.

"We expect the euro to remain under pressure as a result of this, and pressure on the borrowing costs, the bond yields, of countries like Spain and Italy to persist," said John Bowler, director of the Economist Intelligence Unit's Country Risk Service.

No date has been set for the elections, but they will have to be held by mid-June - the month in which Greece must make more spending cuts to ensure it meets the terms of its international bailout. A caretaker government will be appointed until then.

The uncertainty has created alarm across the continent, with key leaders fearing that Greece could be forced out of the euro, triggering shock waves throughout the 17-country eurozone.

What Greece now needs is reliability and the will to reform" German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement. "They are the only way back to growth and competitiveness. There is no alternative."

"We want Greece to remain part of the eurozone," he said. "The decisions that lie ahead in Athens are not just about the future government of Greece. This is about a commitment by the Greek people to Europe and the euro."

The protracted deadlock and the prospect of an anti-austerity party winning the new vote hammered Europe's markets on fears that Greece might have to leave the euro.

Main European markets lost earlier gains, with the FTSE 100 index of leading shares shedding 0.6 percent, Germany's DAX down 1 percent and the CAC-40 in France 0.7 percent. Greek shares were clobbered further after days of heavy losses, with the Athens stock market initially diving 4.86 percent before a slight rally to close 3.6 percent down. The euro also fell, trading 0.3 percent lower at $1.2794.

About (EURO)700 million ($898 million) in deposits have flown out of Greek banks since the May 6 elections, President Karolos Papoulias told party leaders after being briefed by the central bank governor, George Provopoulos.

"The situation in the banks is very difficult," Papoulias said according to a transcript of the meeting's minutes released by his office. "Mr. Provopoulos told me that of course there is no panic, but there is great fear which could turn into panic."

Socialist party leader and former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos on Tuesday said the country is "unfortunately" headed for another round of elections, "because certain people coldly put their short-term party interests above the national interest."

Papoulias convenes a new meeting of party leaders on Wednesday to appoint a caretaker government until the election.

On May 6, voters furious over the handling of the country's two-year vicious financial crisis took their anger out on the conservative New Democracy and socialist PASOK parties that dominated Greece's political scene for the past 40 years, deserting them for smaller parties on the right and left.

New Democracy came in first but with a massive loss of support. PASOK saw its popularity plunge to the lowest level since it was founded in 1974, after the end of Greece's seven-year dictatorship. Those who saw their numbers surge were parties that promised to pull Greece out of its bailout agreement, with forced spending cuts and tax hikes in return for billions of euros in international rescue loans.

Political leaders traded accusations as to who was to blame during the failed power-sharing talks.

The spotlight quickly fell on Alexis Tsipras, the young head of the Radical Left Coalition, or Syriza, whose party came a surprise second in the elections. Tsipras insisted he could neither join nor support any government that would continue to implement the bailout terms.

Venizelos and conservative New Democracy head Antonis Samaras accused him of being irresponsible, saying his policies would force Greece out of the eurozone.

But Tsipras remained adamant that the austerity measures meant Greece's recession-bound economy could never recover.

"They wanted to leave the country without hope and for us to add our signature to these measures of poverty and desperation," he said. "We will not do them that favor."

Venizelos and Samaras could have formed a government with the small Democratic Left party of Fotis Kouvelis, but all insisted Tsipras had to be on board or at least lend his backing if the government hoped to push through yet more austerity measures Greece must implement next month. A last-ditch proposal by the president for the creation of a technocrat government went nowhere.

"I did what I could . Let all Greeks draw their conclusions, and all parties assume their responsibilities," Kouvelis said.

Opinion polls show Syriza is likeliest to come first in the new vote, but without enough seats in parliament to govern alone. However, as first party, Syriza would enjoy an automatic 50-seat bonus and could hope to form a coalition with the help of other left and right-wing anti-austerity parties.

"These upcoming elections will be a struggle between the left-leaning forces of nihilism in league with opportunistic populists," New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras said. "On the other side will be a European front, strong and determined."

Many Greeks seem resigned to the need for new polls, even though that will hold back the country's commitments to detail new harsh cutbacks.

"The solution is provided by democracy and democratic procedures," said Athens resident Yannis Ekaterinaris.

But others saw no hope of any change, saying a new election won't solve their problems.

Dmitris Mardas, an associate professor of economics at Thessaloniki University, said the timing of the vote would be especially painful in June, key dates for Greece's tourism industry.

"As far as the economy is concerned, this is the worst thing that could have happened," said Mardas. "It's just what we didn't need."

AP.

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Obama campaign says Romney's record at Bain offers window into how he'd run the country

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama tried Monday to tarnish Mitt Romney as a corporate titan who got rich by cutting rather than creating jobs, opening a new effort to undercut the Republican's claims that his background of business success is just what America needs in a time of deep economic uncertainty.

At the center of the Obama campaign effort are a new website, TV ad and online video including interviews with onetime workers at a Kansas City, Mo., steel mill that Romney's former private equity firm failed to successfully restructure. Workers lost jobs and health care benefits. Pensions were reduced.

"It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us," says steelworker Jack Cobb. Add John Wiseman: "Bain Capital walked away with a lot of money that they made off this plant. We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer.

Countering the criticism, Romney's campaign said the former Massachusetts governor welcomes an election-season conversation with Obama about jobs. Romney's campaign has argued that he helped spur tens of thousands of jobs in the public and private sectors and pointed to a net job loss during Obama's presidency, most of which occurred during the first few months of his administration. Obama has touted the creation of 4.2 million new jobs over the last 26 months as his policies took hold.

Both candidates are seeking to pivot to voters' No. 1 issue, the economy, and away from the social issues that dominated after the president announced his support for gay marriage last week.

Obama steered clear of criticizing Romney during a commencement speech at Barnard College in New York though he included a passing reference to nearby Wall Street, saying: "Some folks in the financial world have not exactly been model corporate citizens." He left the more direct skewering to surrogates and dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to Ohio to castigate Romney over his record at Bain. That was one of several events planned to highlight the Republican's role in the company he founded.

Romney, meanwhile, prepared to deliver a speech Tuesday in Iowa on reducing the huge federal debt.

Monday's dreary global financial backdrop set the stage for a sharp debate in the coming weeks between the candidates over their competing economic philosophies, and it highlighted the public's unhappiness with big business and government institutions alike.

JPMorgan Chase's disclosure that it lost more than $2 billion on bad trading bets renewed calls for tighter oversight of the nation's biggest financial institutions, a position that Obama has supported and Romney has opposed. And world markets were tenuous as Greece weighed whether to renege on the terms of its painful austerity program and leave the Euro currency bloc. That could hurt Obama's attempts to accelerate the limping U.S. recovery.

Obama said in an interview with ABC's "The View" that JPMorgan Chase's loss underscored the need for Wall Street rules passed by Congress two years ago, many of which have not yet gone into effect. Obama said the bank loss also showed the sharp differences over how he and Romney view the role of government.

Romney and Obama alike contend that in a nation where unemployment is hovering around 8 percent, voters will choose a president based on economic arguments. Obama is trying to persuade voters to stick with him as he heralds an economic rebound, as sluggish as it is. Romney counters that only he - with his deep background in business - knows how to jumpstart the nation's job market.

The two men have little in common in their views of how to get the country moving.

Obama has pumped money into the economy to stimulate growth and has cut some taxes though he also advocates raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Romney argues that lower taxes across the board and fewer government restrictions are the answer. Both are trying to win over an electorate that is furious with Wall Street and distrustful of corporations, and Obama's new campaign effort was squarely aimed at working-class voters, a group that has been reluctant to support the president in the past.

Obama's TV ad was scheduled to run in five battleground states - Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado - and was part of a larger $25 million, month-long campaign. But it was limited in scope.

Republican officials tracking the ad buy said the Obama team was airing the 2-minute spot only on Wednesday in the five states. The ad was expected to run during the evening news, directing viewers to an Obama website about Romney's economic record and a longer, 6-minute version of the ad appearing online.

As Obama's campaign was raising Romney's record in private equity, the president himself was heading to two fundraisers, including a $35,800-per-person dinner at the home of Hamilton "Tony" James, the president of Blackstone Group, the nation's largest private equity firm.

Romney's campaign, meanwhile, aggressively worked behind the scenes to counter the Obama campaign's Bain message.

It released a Web video about a successful steel company that Bain invested in called Steel Dynamics. The video shows steelworkers describing the company as the embodiment of the American dream, noting that the company grew from a workforce of 1,400 to more than 6,000. That video was not immediately planned for television.

Romney also dispatched Ed Gillespie, a senior campaign strategist, to a conference call with conservative bloggers on Monday to respond to the Obama ad. The campaign planned to frame the attacks on Romney's record at Bain as an "attack on free enterprise," and to cast the auto bailout as an example of private equity at work.

Romney advisers predicted the attacks on the presumptive Republican nominee's record at Bain would backfire because most voters understand that some business ventures succeed while others fail.

"This is someone who understand how the economy works, and I think most Americans also understand that there's never guaranteed success," Gillespie said.

Earlier this year, Romney previewed his counterattack, saying of Obama: "He's now been a venture capitalist at Solyndra, Fisker, Tesla; and he's been a private equity guy at General Motors and Chrysler. So I'll be talking about his record when I'm facing him."

Romney, a multimillionaire, left Bain in 1999 to run the Salt Lake City Olympic Games but maintained a financial interest in the company after departing. He has said that his firm had a strong overall track record, creating jobs in prominent companies like Staples and Sports Authority, while acknowledging that some companies Bain invested in were unsuccessful.

The Obama ad, which reprises criticism leveled at Romney during the Republican primaries, focuses on one of those unsuccessful companies, GST Steel.

Bain was the majority shareholder in GST beginning in 1993. The company eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2001, a period in which the U.S. steel industry was roiled by a flood of cheap steel imports. About 750 workers lost their jobs, and were left without health benefits and with reduced pensions. The federal government was forced to put $44 million into the company's underfunded pension plan.

Bain received $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees, according to a January report by Reuters.

Bain Capital said Monday that it invested more than $100 million into the steel company at a time when the industry "came under enormous pressure and nearly half of all U.S. steel companies went into bankruptcy."

Criticism of Romney's time at Bain emerged during his 1994 Senate race against Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and flared this year during the GOP presidential primaries.

Republican Newt Gingrich called Romney's role in the private equity firm "exploitive" and "not defensible."

Democrats view the current period as an important time to define Romney's economic record for general election voters. The president's defenders say he can ill afford to allow Romney to present himself as a can-do Mr. Fix-It on the economy during the summer and into the fall.

"Romney is still a blank slate for this new audience. They haven't focused on the campaign the same way primary voters have," said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who produced the ads for Kennedy's campaign against Romney. "This information, as it's presented, I think is going to be pretty valid."

AP.

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JPMorgan exec expected to resign, AP source says

NEW YORK (AP) -- JPMorgan Chase is expected to accept the resignation of one of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street after the bank lost $2 billion in a trading blunder, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday.

The bank will accept the resignation of Ina Drew, its chief investment officer, the person told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly.

Drew, 55, one of the highest-paid officials at JPMorgan Chase, had offered to resign several times since CEO Jamie Dimon disclosed the trading loss on Thursday, the person said. Pressure built on the bank over the weekend to accept.

At least two other executives at the bank will be held accountable for the mistake, the person said.

The casualties come as JPMorgan, the largest bank in the United States, seeks to minimize the damage caused by the $2 billion loss. Investors shaved almost 10 percent off JPMorgan's stock price on Friday.

Dimon has said the mistake will complicate the efforts of banks to fight certain regulatory changes three years after the financial crisis.

JPMorgan's disclosure has led lawmakers and critics of the banking industry to call for stricter regulation of Wall Street. Many post-crisis rules governing risk-taking by banks are still being written.

Drew oversaw the division of the bank responsible for the loss. She was paid $15.5 million last year and almost $16 million in 2010, making her one of the highest-paid officials at JPMorgan, according to a regulatory filing.

Drew declined comment through a bank spokeswoman. Kristin Lemkau, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase, also declined comment. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Sunday that Drew and two other executives were expected to resign soon.

The Journal also reported that Bruno Iksil, the JPMorgan trader identified as the "London whale" because of the giant bets he placed, was also likely to leave, but the paper reported that it was not clear when that would happen.

The surprise loss has been a black eye for the bank and for Dimon, who is known in the industry both as a master of risk management and as an outspoken opponent of some proposed regulation since the crisis.

Dimon said in a TV interview aired Sunday that he was "dead wrong" when he dismissed concerns about the bank's trading last month.

"We made a terrible, egregious mistake," Dimon said in an interview that was taped Friday and aired on NBC's "Meet the Press." "There's almost no excuse for it."

Dimon said he did not know the extent of the problem when he said in April that the concerns were a "tempest in a teapot."

The loss came in the past six weeks. Dimon has said it came from trading in so-called credit derivatives and was designed to hedge against financial risk, not to make a profit for the bank.

A piece of financial regulation known as the Volcker rule would prevent banks from certain kinds of trading for their own profit. Dimon has said the trading involved in the $2 billion loss would not have fallen under the rule.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., told ABC's "This Week" that he hopes the final version of the Volcker rule will prevent the type of trading that led to the massive loss at JPMorgan.

Dimon conceded to NBC that the bank "hurt ourselves and our credibility" and expects to "pay the price for that." Asked what the price should be, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said that banks will lose their fight to weaken the rule.

"This was not a risk-reducing activity that they engaged in. This increased their risk," Levin told NBC.

"So we've got to be very, very careful that the regulators here are not undermined by this huge effort to weaken the rule by putting in a huge loophole" that includes the trading involved in the JPMorgan loss, he said.

Dimon said the bank is open to inquiries from regulators. He has also promised, in an email to the bank's employees and in a conference call with stock analysts, to get to the bottom of what happened and learn from the mistake.

Dimon told NBC that he supported giving the government the authority to dismantle a failing big bank and wipe out shareholder equity. But he stressed that JPMorgan, the largest bank in the United States, is "very strong."

Addressing public anger toward Wall Street, Dimon said he wants a more equitable society and does not mind paying higher taxes. But he said attacking all of business is "very counterproductive."

Ap.

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Facebook updates data use policy to give more info

NEW YORK (AP) -- Facebook is updating its data use policy in an attempt to give people more clarity on how the company uses information they share.

As part of the changes, Facebook is also signaling that it may start showing people ads on sites other than Facebook, targeting the pitches to interests and hobbies that users express on Facebook.

The move comes a week before Facebook Inc.'s expected initial public offering of stock. Facebook held events with potential investors this week, including one in Silicon Valley on Friday, and it has posted a version of its road show online. The offering could value Facebook at nearly $100 billion - more than Kraft, Ford and other major brands.

The policy changes are in response to an audit by Irish data-protection authorities last year, Facebook said Friday. The commission had asked Facebook to be more transparent about how it collects people's data and uses it for advertising, as well as how long it keeps such information.

Facebook plans to notify its more than 900 million users of the changes through advertisements around the site and on its mobile apps. Users who want to dig deeper can read a version of the policy that highlights the changes word by word. Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, will host an online chat Monday to answer any questions.

Egan said the company wasn't substantially changing its business practices, but wants to "err on the side of providing too much information."

Facebook's overseas headquarters are based in Dublin, Ireland, a member of the European Union. This means the company is required to comply with European data privacy laws. Facebook said the changes were also a response to feedback from its users.

As part of the changes to the policy, Facebook has created a section to explain how it uses technologies such as cookies to deliver ads, secure the site and offer various features. Cookies, which are small files containing data or alphanumeric IDs, are commonly used to track people's activities around the Web, for example. The information could then be used to target ads to their hobbies and interests.

The changes also incorporate updates that Facebook has made to its site since its previous policy revision announced in September. This includes reorganizing people's profile pages in a "timeline" format and adding an "activity log" that lets people see everything they've done on the site, as well as who can see it. The "cover photo" people put on their timeline is considered public information, along with their gender.

Facebook also has given itself more leeway on how long it keeps information it collects. Before, it has typically kept such data for 180 days. Facebook said it will now retain data for "as long as it is necessary to provide services." This could be longer or shorter than 180 days.

For example, if a company creates a "page" for its brand, Facebook said it wouldn't delete the information put there "simply because 180 days had passed."

"Instead, we would delete it when it was no longer needed - when the page owner deleted it or closed its account," Facebook said.

Some of the changes give a glimpse of what Facebook might do in the future. Though it doesn't currently show people ads outside of Facebook.com or its mobile apps, the updated policy gives it the option to do so. This is something other companies, such as Amazon.com Inc.'s Zappos.com, already do. For example, people who click on shoes while shopping on Zappos might see the same shoes pop up in ads elsewhere, even if they are not logged into Zappos. This is what cookies do.

Justin Brookman, director of consumer privacy at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, said Facebook hasn't been very explicit about this possibility before, "but now they seem to be calling it out."

While such ads may "creep people out," he added, it doesn't mean the company would be collecting more information about users than it already does. It's also a new revenue source.

Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an industry-backed think tank in Washington, said Facebook's overall data use policy is "a really interesting document" that teaches users how the service works - sort of like a user's guide.

Most privacy policies read like legal documents, though there are other exceptions, such as Google Inc.

Still, he added, it's a "very small audience that takes the time to read even the most delightful and entertaining privacy policy."

What's more useful, Polonetsky said, is to give users advice and options at the time that they need the information. Facebook already does this in many cases. For example, when users post a status update, they can decide whether that will be visible to their friends or to the broader public.

"That's how people are really going to learn," he said.

AP.

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