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Mr. Cain Thaler

Stock advice in actual English.

Gasoline Prices Headed Back Up?

Gasoline futures settled in New York at the highest price in nearly two months, surging over 20 cents in July alone.

August RBOB (New York Mercantile Exchange: RBCV1) gasoline futures gained nearly 1.5 percent and closed above $2.85 a gallon on Monday, mirroring the climb in oil prices as the U.S. dollar weakened and tensions rose in the Middle East.

Some analysts suggest the slide toward a $3.00 retail gasoline may have permanently stalled. Retail gasoline prices often follow the trend in the futures market within a week or so, analysts say.

The national average for regular self-serve gasoline is $3.40 a gallon, up 2 cents from a week ago, according to AAA.

While a few areas in the Southeast have sub-$3.00 gas, along the East and West Coasts prices are well over $3.50 a gallon.

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Treasury Department Worker Bought Prostitutes On Taxpayer Dime, Got Off Scot-Free

Add the Treasury Department to the list of federal agencies whose employees have allegedly solicited and seen prostitutes.

Newly disclosed documents show that a now-retired human resources specialist with Treasury was accused of meeting prostitutes on “three separate occasions” — and using his government-issued travel card to buy the hotel rooms for their rendezvous.

The documents, from the department’s internal investigations arm, were posted online by the site governmentattic.org. They were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The documents detail an array of alleged misconduct by department employees, ranging from sexual harassment to conflict-of-interest problems. The prostitution incident, in 2010, occurred well before the highly publicized prostitution scandal involving members of the U.S. military and Secret Service in Colombia earlier this year.

According to the official investigation report, the “human resources specialist” was accused in August 2010 of using department resources “to arrange sexual encounters with women advertising on Craigslist.”

The investigation found the specialist used government resources to view erotic sites every week and used his official email to communicate with women “offering a variety of adult/erotic services” — and later admitted to doing so.

According to the investigation, the ex-employee said he met them on three occasions, and had arranged to meet another prostitute in Atlanta, but ultimately broke off that encounter. He paid $100 as a “cancellation fee.”

Though the office found the employee, who worked in the federal government for 36 years, violated rules against “disgraceful conduct” — not to mention laws against prostitution — the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. declined to prosecute since the case didn’t involve “underage prostitutes or human trafficking.”

The name of the employee was redacted. He retired in October 2010.

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Persian Gulf To House Not 1, Or 2, But 3 US Naval Carriers

Supposedly just a small overlap until they can move one back out. Until they cancel, that is.

The Pentagon is sending an aircraft carrier to the Middle East several months early to make sure two will constantly be present in the troubled region.

There are two aircraft carriers in the area currently, but one was scheduled to leave before its replacement arrived.

Defense Department press secretary George Little says the USS John C. Stennis will be sent by late summer to fill the gap that would have occurred.

Questioned about whether the deployment is a response to problems with Iran or perhaps the violence in Syria, he declined to be specific.

Little said the need is “not about any one particular country or any one particular threat.”

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Sea Treaty Blocked In Senate, Dead

A treaty governing the high seas is all but dead in the Senate as two Republican senators announced their opposition Monday, giving conservative foes the necessary votes to scuttle the pact.

Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire — both mentioned as possible running mates for likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney — said they had serious concerns about the breadth and ambiguity of the Law of the Sea treaty and would oppose it if called up for a vote.

The Constitution requires two-thirds of the Senate — 67 votes — to ratify a treaty; Portman and Ayotte bring the number of opponents to 34 along with Sens. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., and Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.

The development was a blow to the Obama administration, military leaders and the business community led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who had argued that the treaty would improve national security and enhance U.S. standing in the world. They had pressed for ratification of the treaty, which was concluded in 1982 and has been in force since 1994. The United States is the only major nation that has refused to sign the pact.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and other conservatives have led the campaign against the treaty, contending that it would undermine U.S. sovereignty. DeMint heralded the latest development on Twitter, saying, “34 Senators now oppose LOST, sinking the misguided treaty.”

The treaty establishes a system for resolving disputes in international waters and recognizes sovereign rights over a country’s continental shelf out to 200 nautical miles and beyond if the country can provide evidence to substantiate its claims. The United States has abided by the rules of the treaty since President Ronald Reagan’s administration.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had told Congress in May that the treaty could be a boon to business as U.S. oil and natural gas companies now have the technology to explore the extended continental shelf, which could be more than 1 1/2 times the size of Texas and rich in resources.

But Portman and Ayotte were not swayed.

“Proponents of the Law of the Sea treaty aspire to admirable goals, including codifying the U.S. Navy’s navigational rights and defining American economic interests in valuable offshore resources,” the two said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “But the treaty’s terms reach well beyond those good intentions. This agreement is striking in both the breadth of activities it regulates and the ambiguity of obligations it creates. ”

The two also raised concerns about authorization of international and judicial entities. “The United States would be binding itself to yet-unknown requirements and liabilities. That uncertainty alone is reason for caution,” Portman and Ayotte wrote.

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The “Closed” JPM Trade Has Somehow Swelled To $5.8 Billion Loss Now

NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan Chase said Friday that a bad trade had cost the bank $5.8 billion this year, almost triple its original estimate, and raised the prospect that traders had improperly tried to conceal the blunder.

“This has shaken our company to the core,” CEO Jamie Dimon said.

The bank said managers tied to the bad trade had been dismissed without severance pay and that it planned to revoke two years’ worth of pay from each of those executives.

JPMorgan said it had lost $4.4 billion because of the trade from April through June, and its chief financial officer said the bank had lost an additional $1.4 billion in the first three months of the year.

Dimon’s original estimate of the loss from the bad trade, disclosed in a surprise conference call with Wall Street analysts on May 10, was $2 billion.

The bank said an internal investigation, including emails and voice messages, had called into question the values that traders placed on certain bets, and that the traders may have been seeking to mask losses.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Spain Imposes More Austerity

MADRID (AP) – Spain’s government imposed more austerity measures on the beleaguered country Wednesday as it unveiled sales tax hikes and spending cuts aimed at shaving €65 billion ($79.85 billion) off the state budget over the next two and a half years.

A day after winning European Union approval for a huge bank bailout and breathing space on its deficit program, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy warned Parliament that Spain’s future was at stake as it grapples with recession, a bloated deficit and investor wariness of its sovereign debt.

“We are living in a crucial moment which will determine our future and that of our families, that of our youths, of our welfare state,” Rajoy said to catcalls from the opposition socialists and other parties as he revealed the biggest single amount of projected deficit savings in modern Spanish history.

He spoke as thousands of miners stung by a huge cut in government subsidies marched through downtown Madrid and clashed with riot police outside the Industry Ministry.

The spending cuts, designed to cut €65 billion off state budgets by 2015, include a wage cut for civil servants and members of the national parliament and a new wave of closures at state-owned companies. Spain will also speed up a gradual increase in the retirement age from 65 to 67. They are to be approved officially Friday at a Cabinet meeting.

Spain has had to digest round after round of austerity measures since Rajoy’s conservative government took power in December. Until now, there have been €60 billion ($73.71 billion) in spending cuts and tax hikes by the central government or regional administrations. If you include measures taken by the previous, Socialist government, the number goes up to €75 billion. Now, albeit spread over two-and-a-half years, comes another €65 billion.

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FLASHBACK – 01/12/2011: Crying Wolf on Municipal Defaults

Since this is heating up, I anticipate an apology to Meredith Whitney is coming a-a-ny minute now….

Here we go again. Meredith Whitney, the Wall Street analyst who appeared on CBS’ 60 Minutes in December and predicted “50-100 sizeable municipal defaults” totaling “hundreds of billions of dollars,” appeared on CNBC this morning and claimed that there would be “indiscriminate selling” of municipal bonds because “local leaders want to default on debt investors and not on their constituents.”

NLC offered a rebuttal to Whitney’s 60 Minutes performance with Crying Wolf About Municipal Defaults. We were in good company, including PIMCO’s Bill Gross and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Whitney’s comments reveal a stunning lack of understanding of the municipal sector and, unfortunately, seem based more on conjecture than facts.

Defaults or Cuts?

Whitney contends that local and state leaders do not have the political will to take policy actions to pay their debts, whether that is cutting services or raising revenues.

But, local governments have been and will continue to cut services. NLC’s annual survey of City Fiscal Conditions found that 79% of cities cut personnel in 2010, 69% canceled or delayed infrastructure projects, 44% made cuts in services other than public safety, and 25% cut public safety or made across the board service cuts. The latest U.S. jobs report revealed that state and local government employment levels were at a 4-year low. In contrast, as of November 2010, there were 72 muni sector defaults, down from 204 in 2009 and 162 in 2008 (these numbers include technical defaults that do not result in losses to investors).

Furthermore, it is standard practice for many local governments to budget to pay their debt service before they fund other operational costs.

Just this week, state policy makers in Illinois, the poster child for state and local revenue shortfalls, moved to raise the state’s income tax rate in order to improve the state’s ability to pay its debts. All Whitney had to say about Illinois was that the state is now “less favorable to business.”

The “Daisy Chain” of State & Local Finance

Whitney’s claims appear to be based on research that her consulting group has conducted over the last couple of years, analyzing the budgets of 15 states. Yet, Whitney herself says it’s unlikely that states will default on their debt.

Instead, she says, her fears are for local governments – cities and counties. Whitney predicts that states will cut aid to local governments – the “daisy chain” of state and local finance. Whitney is right about the daisy chain. States do provide aid to local governments, although there is considerable variation across the 50 states, and states are likely to cut aid to local governments as they continue to struggle with revenue shortfalls.

But, cutting aid doesn’t necessarily translate to defaults. State cuts are common during economic downturns. Yet, of the 54 municipal defaults (excluding technical defaults) that have occurred since 1970, only 4 came from cities and counties. In other words, the overwhelming preponderance of local governments respond by cutting spending or raising other revenues, not by defaulting on debt.

When asked for details, such as naming the top three cities at risk of default, Whitney balked, saying “I don’t want to do that.”

Back Peddling

On 60 Minutes, Whitney remarked that defaults would total in the “hundreds of billions of dollars,” a claim that she back peddled from in her CNBC interview. When presented with a critique of the magnitude of her prediction, Whitney responded “It’s not a severity issue. It’s a frequency issue.” In other words, her prediction is that there will be an increase in the number of defaults, but the magnitude of the defaults may not be as significant as her earlier projection.

This is not a minor concession. It’s the crux of the matter for investors. It seems reasonable to suggest that we might see a few more defaults in the next couple of years. But, a few more defaults, on top of a historical default rate of less than 1/3 of 1% hardly suggest investors should exit the market. Bloomberg’s Joe Mysak recently cautioned that the defaults we might see in the next year would total between $5 billion and $10 billion – a small share of the total market of $2.7 trillion.

The Real Story

The bottom line is that sky-is-falling reports about the muni market are lacking in evidence, but are receiving a lot of airtime and print coverage because they make for attention-grabbing headlines.

The real story comes back to Whitney’s question about whether local leaders will default on investors or constituents. It’s a false choice. Defaulting on debt has dire ramifications for the shorter- and longer-term fiscal stability of local governments. The overwhelming majority of local leaders will protect debt obligations and will, if necessary, make cuts in services and personnel or raise revenues via taxes and fees. Those actions have ramifications for local economies and quality of life, issues which deserve considerably more attention.

We think Whitney finally got it right when she said “investors can still make money on munis, but need to be careful in how they proceed.”

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PFG Pulls An MFGlobal

Rumors indicate that PFG’s CEO tried to commit suicide after $225 million of private deposits were vaporized.

PFG and PAM are on lockdown.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/pfgbest-now-mf-global-part-2-220-million-segregated-client-money-has-just-vaporized

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Obama’s New Campaign Message: Obama’s Old Campaign Message

Because it worked so well for them in the mid term elections, Obama has decided to revisit all the same talking points he was pushing two years ago. The only thing better, from my perspective, would be if he won and tried to force any of these policies down the nation’s throat.

Washington (CNN) — Think of President Barack Obama’s pivot from last week’s anemic job growth numbers to Monday’s populist call to lower taxes for the middle class as the political equivalent of shifting an awkward dinner party conversation to a rousing comment about the home team’s last game.

The president spoke from the East Room on Monday surrounded by a group of middle-class families standing in rapt attention as Obama spoke of “rebuilding an economy where work pays off.”

Later in the day, the president was to echo his call to extend the Bush-era cuts to those making less than $250,000 a year during interviews with local and regional television stations and at a pair of campaign events.

“Right now our top priority has to be giving middle-class families … security they deserve,” Obama said Monday to applause.

It was a decidedly more upbeat tone than on Friday, when the president was hammered over a relatively stagnant job growth rate and an unemployment rate of 8.2%.

“Obama is saying consciously, ‘I’m going to change the direction of what I’m talking about. Really, here is my strongest argument — I want people to hear that,'” said Robert Lehrman, who was a speechwriter for dozens of Democratic political figures including Vice President Al Gore and is author of “The Political Speechwriter’s Companion.”

Obama has hit the message reset button before during this campaign cycle.

Attention was diverted from a month of dismal economic news in June when he announced a temporary halt to deportation of certain young undocumented immigrants. The move knocked GOP strategists back on their heels and they scrambled to respond.

But it’s a tactic with mixed results.

Republicans immediately pounced on the president’s call on Congress to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year, describing it as “desperate.” Congressional Republicans pointed out that the president’s call for the tax cuts extension is not new and accused the president of trying to steer the narrative away from last week’s dismal jobs news.

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DOJ Decides It’s Not Okay To Kill American Law Enforcement

2 Years Later

Now comes the part where Eric Holder crosses his fingers and prays to Christ this makes people forget what he did.

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment Monday charging five people in connection with Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s death — a move that drew praise as well as skepticism from lawmakers laser-focused on the case.

The department, in unsealing the document, also announced a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of four suspects who are still at large.

The developments come amid an intensifying debate over the department’s failed Fast and Furious anti-gunrunning operation. Weapons from that program were found at Terry’s murder scene — Republicans seeking documents pertaining to Fast and Furious last month escalated their probe by voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, praised the department Monday for its announcement but questioned the timing.

“I applaud what they’re doing, but I condemn the timing. It’s very clear that the timing has everything to do with the House of Representatives holding Eric Holder in contempt,” Issa told Fox News.

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Norway Production Fears Unwarranted As Government Crushes Strike

OSLO (Reuters) – Norway’s Statoil (STL.OL) plans the immediate restart all of its production on the Norwegian continental shelf, including output at its Oseberg field, after the government stopped a strike of offshore workers, the company said on Tuesday.

“It may take from 1 to 2 days to get production started and Statoil expects to have the fields back in full production within a week,” the company said in a statement.

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BREAKING: Vilifying Rich People Makes Them Upset, Want To Leave

A new report says wealthy Maryland residents may be moving out due to recent tax hikes – a finding that is sure to escalate the battle over taxing the American rich.

The study, by the anti-tax group Change Maryland, says that a net 31,000 residents left the state between 2007 and 2010, the tenure of a “millionaire’s tax” pushed through by Gov. Martin O’Malley. The tax, which expired in 2010, in imposed a rate of 6.25 percent on incomes of more than $1 million a year.

The Change Maryland study found that the tax cost Maryland $1.7 billion in lost tax revenues. A county-by-county analysis by Change Maryland also found that the state’s wealthiest counties also had some of the largest population outflows.

In total, Maryland has added 24 new taxes or fees in recent years, Change Maryland says. Florida, which has no income-tax, has been a large recipient of Maryland’s exiled wealthy.

“Maryland has reached the point of diminishing returns. We’re taxing people too much and people are voting with their feet,” said Change Maryland Chairman Larry Hogan. “Until we change our focus from tax increases to increasing the tax base, more people are simply going to leave, leading to a downward spiral of raising revenues on fewer citizens.”

The finding adds to the renewed debate over raising taxes on the wealthy. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie recently vetoed a millionaire’s tax passed by his legislature, while California and other state governments are also considering higher taxes on high earners to fix budget problems. President Obama on Monday asked Congress to extend tax cuts for those making $250,000 or less – effectively increasing taxes for the higher earners.

Many contend that higher taxes drive out the highly mobile rich, who can simply move to a lower-tax state or even lower-tax country. Recent data shows that a record 1,800 Americans renounces their citizenship last year.

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Iran Setting Up Prive Oil Export Group To Circumvent Sanctions

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – An official says Iran has set up a private oil export group in an attempt to bypass a European ban on buying Iranian oil.

The ban is part of Western sanctions aimed at pressuring Iran over its nuclear program.

Hasan Khosrowjerdi, head of the Iranian oil products exporters union, said Monday the first contract for exporting Iran’s crude through the private sector will be signed next week.

Formation of the private group is the latest sign that the sanctions are taking a toll on Iran. The West suspects Iran is aiming to build nuclear weapons. Iran denies that.

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Surprise: Export Nations Like China Are Tied To Their Importers

The magnitude of China’s slowing economy was put into some focus over the weekend after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned of “huge downward pressure” facing the nation. His comments are the most blatant and blunt to date about the state of China’s economy.

At the same time, Wen tried to ease fears that the economy was growing much slower than expected, saying the economy was “running at a generally stable pace,” reports The New York Times.

Many estimates put China’s GDP growth for this year somewhere between 7 to 8 percent, which is down considerably from the country’s 10 percent-plus growth in recent years. But Gordon Chang, Forbes columnist and author of “The Coming Collapse of China, believes China is on a zero-growth trajectory due in large part to waning electricity consumption.

In April, China’s electricity output increased just 0.7 percent year-over-year, which is the slowest pace in nearly three years. In May, output increased by 2.7%. In the first five months of 2012, China’s electrical output rose 4.7 percent — less than half of that during the same time period in 2011.

“Because the growth of electricity historically outpaces the growth of the economy, we’re talking an economy that has flatlined,” says Chang, who is a longtime skeptic of China’s mega-growth.

Recent Chinese data also suggest China’s growth is stalling, perhaps at a faster clip than most forecasts. Wen’s comments come on the heels of an unexpected interest rate cut by China’s central bank last week, which was the second in four weeks. And on Monday, China’s consumer price index fell to a 29-month low of 2.2 percent in June from 3 percent in May, easing inflation fears.

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Kim Jong Un Loves Himself Some Mickey Mouse

PYONGYANG, North Korea – Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh took the stage in North Korea during a concert for new leader Kim Jong Un, in an unusual performance featuring Disney characters.

Performers dressed as Minnie Mouse, Tigger and others danced and pranced as footage from “Snow White,” ”Dumbo,” ”Beauty and the Beast” and other Disney movies played on a massive backdrop, according to still photos shown on state TV.

The inclusion of characters popular in the West — particularly from the United States, North Korea’s wartime enemy — is a notable change in direction for performances in Pyongyang. Actors and actresses also showed off new wardrobes, including strapless gowns and little black dresses.

In recent years, performances such as the “Arirang” mass games featured performers dressed as panda bears in homage to North Korean ally China.

This appears to be the first time Disney characters have been included in a major performance, though Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse have been popular among children for several years. Backpacks, pencil cases and pajamas imported from China often feature Disney characters, and stories such as “Dumbo” have been translated into Korean for North Korean schoolchildren. However, it is unusual to make such images a central part of a North Korean performance and to publicize it on state TV.

It was unclear whether the Disney characters were officially licensed. U.S. sanctions prohibit the import of North Korean goods to the United States, but do not ban the sales of American consumer products in North Korea unless they involve officials or companies on the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions blacklist.

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EU Having Trouble Refilling Presidency After Juncker

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France (Reuters) – French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici poured cold water on a media report on Sunday that France and Germany could split between them the presidency of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers.

The mandate of the Eurogroup’s current chairman, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, expires at the end of the month, but officials signaled last month that his term could be extended.

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine reported on Sunday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande had agreed a compromise for a successor to Juncker as Eurogroup head involving a rotating chairmanship.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble would initially take over as Eurogroup chief, and Moscovici would then take over from him at mid-way point during his term, according to the report.

“I don’t know where this story is coming from. It’s not under consideration,” Moscovici told journalists on the sidelines of a conference in Aix-en-Provence, southern France.

Hollande, meanwhile, said there would be a “Franco-German” outcome to Juncker’s succession.

“We will all find a good solution once Mr. Juncker has finished his mandate – a Franco-German solution,” he told journalists on the sidelines of a meeting with Merkel in Reims, eastern France.

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Bombadier Aerospace Gets $1B Order

(Reuters) – Canada’s Bombardier Aerospace (BBD-B.TO) said Sunday a new customer, which has requested to remain unidentified, has placed a conditional order for five CS100 and 10 CS300 jetliners.

Based on the list prices of CS100 and CS300 aircraft, the contract is valued at about U.S. $1.02 billion.

Earlier Sunday, Bombardier said it was in talks with AirAsia (KLS:AIRASIA) about a more densely packed 160-seat version of its CSeries jet in a bid to loosen the stranglehold on Asia’s largest low-cost carrier held by European giant Airbus (EAD.PA).

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IBM: Companies Will Continue To Exploit ‘Big Data’

Companies are sitting on ever-expanding mountains of data that could potentially help them run their businesses better, David McQueeney, IBM’s head of software research, told CNBC.

Like oil or any other natural resource, companies need to exploit what has come to be called “Big Data,” he said.

“In most big enterprises, whether it’s a private enterprise or a government agency, there is typically a mountain of data, typically unstructured data, that contains potential insights about how to serve their clients better, how to engage with citizens better and make the processes run more efficiently,” McQueeney said.

Because it takes a certain amount of computing power to analyze the data and pull out and use those insights, the IBM (IBM) executive thinks of it “as a natural resource that can be extracted and refined and turned into something powerful.”

Indeed, the results can be powerful. McQueeney highlighted a hospital project where, instead of taking readings every few hours, they continuously recorded data from all the medical instruments in a ward that took care of premature infants.

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Congress Approved Transportation Funding/Student Loan Bill

Washington (CNN) — Congress gave final approval Friday to a giant transportation funding bill as part of a package that includes a measure holding down interest rates on federal student loans.

Both issues are priorities of President Barack Obama’s, and the legislation demonstrated rare bipartisan agreement in the deeply divided Congress.

The package won Senate approval with a 74-19 vote after passing the House 373-52.

Hours later, President Barack Obama signed into a law a bill that temporarily — from June 30 through July 6 — assures there will be continued funding for certain transportation projects and halts potential student loan interest rate hikes, according to a news release issued by the White House shortly after 8 p.m. Friday.

He could sign the larger legislation at a later date, presumably by the end of next week before the stopgap bill expires.

Compromises on the transportation bill and the student loan issue, as well as a third component reauthorizing national flood insurance, came in rare bipartisan agreement during the same week that House Republicans enraged Democrats by voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.

None of the rancor from Thursday’s contempt vote was evident Friday, as legislators involved in reaching the compromise praised the bipartisan effort.

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Mexican Elections Underway

Mexico City (CNN) — Mexicans headed to the polls to vote Sunday in what officials have called “the largest and most complex election day” in the country’s history.

Four candidates are vying for the presidency. Voters will also cast ballots in congressional contests and, in six states, gubernatorial races.

“Never in Mexican democracy have so many posts been at play in the same popular election,” Federal Election Institute President Leonardo Valdes said in a statement.

More than 2,100 federal, state and local offices will be decided by Sunday’s vote, the institute said.

For the first time, more than 79 million people were registered to vote, according to the institute. Among them are 3.5 million young people who will vote for the first time, the institute said.

Nationwide, authorities said there would be more than 143,000 polling stations and more than 13,000 accredited observers.

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