Tribunal: Opposition leader wins Panama presidential race

Opposition leader and supermarket mogul Ricardo Martinelli has won Panama’s presidential election, the head of the country’s electoral tribunal said Sunday. Martinelli, of the conservative Democratic Change party, edged out former Housing Minister Balbina Herrera of Panama’s governing Democratic Revolutionary Party, said Erasmo Pinilla of the electoral tribunal

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Japan’s jobless rate rises as output grows

Unemployment in Japan rose to 4.8 percent in March, its highest level in four years and a nearly half-point rise from February, the government reported Friday. Household spending in the world’s second largest economy fell 0.4 percent in March, as the government predicted unemployment could rise to 5.2 percent in the next fiscal year.

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For a ‘Hallmark holiday,’ White House going all-out

Behind closed doors in recent days, senior White House aides have been saying that measuring President Obama’s first 100 days is the journalistic equivalent of a Hallmark holiday. “They don’t mean anything,” quipped one aide, “but you have to observe them.” But literally in the next breath the very same aide got pretty bold — saying that anyone doing one of these anniversary stories would be “hard-pressed to find another administration that has done as much” as Obama so early in a presidency, including FDR

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Mortgage Fraud Crackdown Is Gathering Steam in Florida

Florida’s Gulf Coast was crawling with shady real estate investors like Neil Husani during this decade’s housing boom. According to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tampa, Husani and three co-conspirators working with his Sarasota-based Capital Force, Inc., bilked seven area banks out of $83 million in a mortgage fraud scheme.

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