Barack Obama, Republicans continue talks after White House meeting

Washington: Republicans offered a plan to President Barack Obama on Thursday that would postpone a possible U.S. default in a sign the two sides may be moving to end the standoff that has shuttered large parts of the government and thrown America's future creditworthiness into question.

No deal emerged from a 90-minute meeting at the White House, but the two sides said they would continue to talk. It was the first sign of a thaw in a political crisis that has weighed on financial markets and knocked hundreds of thousands of federal employees out of work.

"It was a very adult conversation," said Republican Representative Hal Rogers, who attended the meeting. "Both sides said they were there in good faith."

The Republican offer would extend the government's borrowing authority for several weeks, staving off a default that could come as soon as October 17. It would not necessarily reopen government operations that have been shuttered since October 1, but a Republican aide said that was part of the discussion as well.

Significantly, Republicans seemed to be steering clear of the restrictions on Obama's healthcare reforms and spending that prompted the crisis in the first place. The two sides instead are negotiating how far to extend the debt limit and how much funding they would provide the government when it opens, a Republican aide said.

Both sides were expected to continue talks into the night.

"The President looks forward to making continued progress with members on both sides of the aisle," the White House said in a statement.

Conflicting reports of the outcome of the meeting sent immediate ripples through financial markets. U.S. equity index futures tracking the S&P 500 index dropped after a report that Obama had rejected the Republican offer, but rose when details of the meeting trickled out. Major U.S. equity indexes closed 2 percent higher earlier on Thursday on hopes of a deal.

SHIFT BY REPUBLICANS

The proposal is a significant shift for Republicans, who had hoped to use the threat of a shutdown and a default to undermine Obama's healthcare law and win further spending cuts.

Those goals remain, but the Republican offer would at least push off the threat of default from October 17 until possibly the middle or end of November.

That would give Republicans more time to seek spending cuts, a repeal of a medical-device tax, or other measures they say are needed to keep the national debt at a manageable level.

The crisis began in late September when Republicans tied continued government funding to measures that would undercut the Affordable Care Act, Obama's signature legislative accomplishment. In recent days, Republican leaders have emphasized other goals, such as reining in the retirement and health benefit programs that pose a long-term threat to the country's fiscal health.

For the first time since the government shutdown began 10 days ago, senior lawmakers from both parties predicted they would be able to resolve their differences in a way that would allow both sides to claim victory.

"It's all going to work out," said Republican Representative John Mica of Florida.

Many hurdles remain. Obama has said he will not negotiate on anything until Republicans agree to reopen the government and remove the threat of immediate default.

Rank-and-file Republican conservatives who remain focused on defeating "Obamacare" also could reject the deal.

House Speaker John Boehner's grip over his troops has been tenuous this year and many of the chamber's most conservative lawmakers have defied him repeatedly on other crucial votes.

Boehner has taken pains to show his party's most rebellious members that he listens to their concerns. He took a different approach when he unveiled his proposal on Thursday.

"He put his best Coach Boehner voice and demeanor on and said, 'Guys, this is what we are going to do. The play has been called. I'm happy to answer questions,'" said Republican Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma.

The Obama administration says it will be unable to pay all of its bills if Congress does not raise the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling by October 17. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said he would be unable to prioritize some payments over others among the 30 million transactions his department handles each week.

"It would be chaos," Lew told the Senate Finance Committee.

Democrats have called for a debt-ceiling hike that would extend government borrowing authority for more than a year, rather than the weeks-long time frame Republicans have proposed. Still, they did not entirely dismiss the plan.

"Let's see what they have offered," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said.

House leaders canceled a recess planned for next week and said they would remain in Washington to keep working on the problem.

Opinion polls indicate that Republicans appear to be getting more of the blame for the standoff. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Thursday found approval of the Republican Party at 24 percent, a record low. Democrats won the approval of 39 percent of the U.S. public.

Business groups that have close ties to the Republican Party have pressed for an end to the brinkmanship and some are laying plans to mount primary challenges next year to lawmakers who refuse to raise the debt ceiling.

Hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been thrown out of work by the shutdown and individual businesses, from arms makers to motels, have begun to lay off workers as well.

The Labor Department said on Thursday that 15,000 private-sector workers have filed for unemployment benefits due to the shutdown. 

46 per cent global wealth owned by richest 1 per cent: Credit Suisse

Zurich: Global wealth has risen by 68 per cent over the past 10 years to reach a new all-time high of $241 trillion and the United States accounts for nearly three quarters of the increase, Credit Suisse said in its World Wealth Report.

Average global wealth has hit a peak of $51,600 per adult but this is spread very unevenly, with the richest 10 per cent owning 86 per cent of the wealth, analysts at the Credit Suisse Research Institute said.

The top 1 per cent alone owns 46 per cent of all global assets.

The report further said that global wealth may jump another 40 per cent by 2018 to reach $334 trillion.

The richest nations, with wealth per adult of more than $100,000, are concentrated in North America, Western Europe and among the rich Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern countries.

They are headed by Switzerland, where average adult wealth amounts to $513,000, followed by Australia, Norway and Luxembourg.

However, two thirds of adults in the world have assets worth less than $10,000 and together account for just 3 per cent of global wealth.

Since mid-2012, the number of millionaires worldwide has risen by nearly two million, the vast majority of them in the United States, the report said. By contrast, Japan lost 1.2 million millionaires during the same period.

The rise in US wealth has been driven by a recovery in house prices and a bull equity market.

In Japan, the central bank's aggressive monetary policy drove the yen/dollar exchange rate down by 22 per cent, leading to a drop in household wealth of $5.8 trillion this year alone, equivalent to 20 percent of Japanese net worth, the report said.

Despite its strong economic growth over the past decades, Chinese hold barely 9 per cent of global wealth while accounting for more than a fifth of the global adult population.

For Africa and India, the population share exceeds the wealth share by a factor of ten, the report showed.

Credit Suisse said there were 98,700 individuals with net worth exceeding $50 million, more than half of them in the United States. Europe ranked second, home to nearly 25,000.

The biggest emerging markets, the so-called BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - are each estimated to have around 5,830 such ultra-high net worth individuals.

Nevertheless, the number of billionaires in the BRICs has risen from 5 percent of the world's total in 2000 to 19 per cent in 2010. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of billionaires in China alone rose from 1 to 64, the study showed.

By contrast, the number of billionaires in older developed countries such as France and Japan fell in that period.

North Korea puts army on alert, warns US of 'horrible disaster'

North Korean soldiers stand on the North Korean side as South Korean soldiers face them on the border of the Demilitarized Zone 

Seoul: North Korea said on Tuesday its military would be put on high alert and be ready to launch operations, stepping up tension after weeks of rhetoric directed against the United States and South Korea, who it accuses of instigating hostility.

Reclusive North Korea has often issued threats to attack the South and the United States but has rarely turned them into action. Such hostile rhetoric is widely seen as a means to perpetuate its domestic and international political agenda.

In the latest outburst, a spokesman for the North's military warned the United States of "disastrous consequences" for moving a group of ships, including an aircraft carrier, into a South Korean port.

"In this connection, the units of all services and army corps level of the KPA received an emergency order from its supreme command to reexamine the operation plans already ratified by it and keep themselves fully ready to promptly launch operations any time," the spokesman said, referring to the Korean People's Army (KPA).

"The U.S. will be wholly accountable for the unexpected horrible disaster to be met by its imperialist aggression forces' nuclear strike means," the spokesman said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

In March, the North declared it was no longer bound by the armistice that ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War signed with the United States and China, threatening to use nuclear weapons to attack U.S. and South Korean territories.

The North has defied international warnings not to build nuclear and long-range missiles and is believed to have enough fissile material to build up to 10 nuclear bombs.

Most intelligence analysis says it has yet to master the technology to deploy such weapons.

The United States, which has 28,500 troops stationed in the South, regularly engages in drills with its ally, and has said the aircraft carrier USS George Washington was leading a group of ships to visit South Korea in a routine port call.

South Korea's Defence Ministry said on Monday the ships were taking part in a routine maritime search and rescue exercise and said any criticism by North Korea was "wrong".

The impoverished North's large but ageing conventional military is considered unfit to fight an extended modern battle but it staged surprise attacks against the South in 2010 that killed 50 people in aggression unprecedented since the war.

An attempt at dialogue in August led to the reopening of a jointly run factory park that was shut amid high tensions in April. However, talks have since hit a stalemate.