World News in brief for October 25, 2012

Oct 25 2012 By Cheryl Mullin

AMERICA: President Barack Obama and Bill Clinton will campaign together next week in three of the most competitive battleground states.

Mr Obama and the former president will hold rallies on Monday in Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

CARIBBEAN: Hurricane Sandy blasted across eastern Cuba today as a potent Category 2 storm and headed for the Bahamas after causing at least two deaths in the Caribbean.

The US National Hurricane Centre said Sandy had emerged off Cuba’s northeast coast around dawn and was moving north at 18 mph (30 kph), with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (165 kph).

AMERICA: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer cannot afford to be wrong about Windows 8, the dramatically upgraded operating system the firm is set to unveil today.

If it flops, the failure will reinforce perceptions that Microsoft is falling behind competitors such as Apple, Google and Amazon as its stranglehold on personal computers becomes less relevant in an era of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

AMERICA: The White House was told that a militant group had claimed responsibility for the violence in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the US ambassador and three other Americans, two hours after the US consulate came under attack, it has emerged.

A State Department email sent to intelligence officials and the White House situation room said the Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and also called for an attack on the US embassy in Tripoli.

PAKISTAN: The father of a 15-year-old Pakistani activist girl who was shot and wounded by a Taliban gunman says she will return home after medical treatment in the UK.

Ziauddin Yousufzai’s, who was speaking on Pakistani state television, is  expected to fly soon to the UK to see his daughter, Malala.

GREECE: The European Central Bank and lead lender Germany moved swiftly to shoot down a claim by Greece’s finance minister that the country had been granted a long-sought extension to meet the terms of its bailout programme.

Yannis Stournaras said the deal was struck as part of weeks-long negotiations with its international creditors over a 13.5 billion-euro (£11bn) package of new austerity measures for the next two years, required for continued emergency loan payments.

MIDDLE EAST: A flare-up in fighting between Israel and militants from Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement has subsided after intervention from the government in Egypt.

Israeli defence official Amos Gilad told Army Radio that Egyptian security forces have “a very impressive ability” to convey to the militants that it is in their “supreme interest not to attack”.