Hot battles in US to control congress

ALL eyes may be on the White House, but another electoral battle is also in the offing in the US on November 6, with the results likely to determine just how much the next president can accomplish.

In congress, the entire 435-member lower US House of Representatives and one-third of the 100-member Senate will also be chosen by voters.

But with most legislators safe in their seats, only a few races could determine control of the body, where the upper chamber now is controlled by Democrats and the lower House by Republicans.

Some 10 races in the Senate and 26 in the larger House are considered toss-ups by the website Real Clear Politics.

The presidential election pitting Barack Obama and Mitt Romney has dominated news coverage, but neither man can govern in a vacuum and will need the support of legislators on the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue to push through their agenda.

"If we don't win a Democratic senate for President Obama, the Republicans will spend the next four years tearing apart his agenda," the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee declares on its website, stressing the importance of the congressional races.

However, observers note that despite overall dissatisfaction with the legislative process, major changes in congress appear unlikely at this stage. On the House side, an extremely unlikely gain by Democrats of 25 seats would be needed - far more than has ever been picked up by either party in a presidential election year, analyst Charlie Cook notes.

If Obama wins a second term that would mean the deadlock that has marked the last several years would likely continue, with showdowns over spending, raising the US debt ceiling and other issues.

"If you like gridlock, you're going to see a lot more of it," said University of Virginia analyst Kyle Konkik, who studies the congress.

He notes such a scenario would make it difficult for Obama to pass any major policy initiatives, such as immigration reform or on climate change. Instead, Kondik notes Obama would have to defend what already has been accomplished, particularly given calls by Republicans to repeal his health care reforms.

Conversely, if Romney is elected president and Democrats keep their control of the Senate, the Republican leader would have a difficult time passing any major laws or repealing "Obamacare" as he has vowed to do.

Kondik predicts the Senate will remain under Democratic control, while the House will stay in Republican hands. He predicts slight gains for Democrats in the House, narrowing the Republican majority, and the Senate to keep roughly its current configuration.

Several months ago, it looked possible that Republicans could regain control of the Senate with the retirement of several longtime Democrats, but a gaffe by Missouri candidate Todd Akin may have changed that.

Akin, a Republican senate candidate, caused an uproar in August with remarks about "legitimate rape" and pregnancy. There were widespread calls from his own party for him to drop out of the race, but he stayed in. Until he made those remarks, he looked likely to defeat incumbent Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, who had been considered highly endangered. Now she is favoured to win.

Other Senate races of national interest include the contest in Massachusetts where Republican Scott Brown unexpectedly seized the seat once held by Democratic scion Ted Kennedy in a 2010 special election. Now Obama's consumer advocate pick, Elizabeth Warren, is mounting a challenge to take back the seat in the left-leaning state.

Still a narrow Republican majority in the Senate remains possible and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect the party's candidates, proclaims on its website that just four seats are needed for it win control.

Cook noted that a year ago he would have forecast Republicans to control the Senate, but now puts the odds at closer to 40 per cent.

"I think on the day after the election at lunch time, I don't think we will be sure who's going to be in a majority in the senate," he said at the Economic Club of Washington this month. "I would give Democrats a little bit of an edge."

He pointed to 10 races in which the candidates are within 3 percentage points of one another in polls, and suggested they may trend in one direction or the other. "It's like dominos," he noted.

Virginia, a key battleground in the presidential election, is also a major prize in the senate. The retirement of Democrat Jim Webb, who was swept into office in an anti-Republican wave in 2006, has left a hotly contested race between former senator George Allen, a Republican, and Tim Kaine, who led the Republican Party until last year.

A strong showing for Obama or Romney on election day could help fellow members of their parties as voters tend to support candidates across the party ticket.

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G20 meet with eurozone again in limelight

THE Group of 20 world powers meets on Sunday to tackle fears of a new global economic downturn and renew pressure on Europe to contain its stubbornly tenacious debt crisis.

G20 finance ministers and central bank governors will hold two days of talks in Mexico City as the troubles in Greece continue to vex the eurozone, while Spain keeps everyone guessing if it will ask for a bailout.

While the fiscal situation in the United States is also a major concern, officials do not expect any movement on that front until after the US presidential election, which takes place on Tuesday.

"What we need, and we hope to be able to do it during this meeting, is to stress how we can reduce these uncertainties, resolve issues so that the environment can be more conducive to growth," said Mexican Deputy Finance Minister Gerardo Rodriguez Regordosa.

"All this uncertainty discourages economic players from taking decisions," said Rodriguez, whose country will hand over the G20 rotating presidency to Russia on December 1.

The meeting is a follow-up to a June summit in the Pacific resort of Los Cabos, where G20 leaders declared that they stood ready to coordinate "fiscal actions" to boost domestic demand if economic conditions deteriorated.

Since Los Cabos, the International Monetary Fund slashed its 2012 global growth forecast to 3.3 per cent, eurozone unemployment rose to a record 11.6 per cent in September and growth decelerated in emerging nations.

"You won't be surprised. Europe will be one of the themes of the G20," a German official said.

"Europe must present a long-term crisis management."

The eurozone has taken steps to meet its Los Cabos pledges, moving closer to a banking union and activating a new crisis firewall, the 500 billion euro ($A627.7 billion) European Stability Mechanism (ESM), while the European Central Bank unveiled a bond-buying program.

The markets have been relatively calm since the summer.

"The G20 has been very emphatic, and will continue to be so, that we must show to the markets and (economic) actors that all this effort in building the famous firewalls has led to firewalls that are effective," Rodriguez said.

"And to prove that they are effective, they must be used," he said.

He refused to say whether Spain should ask for a bailout, but Madrid insists that it does not need outside help.

Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos is a guest at the G20 talks.

A senior Canadian finance ministry official said there was a need for greater clarity around Spain and the path forward for it and other struggling eurozone nations.

But the epicentre of concern in Europe has shifted back to Greece.

Athens is locked in negotiations with European Union and IMF auditors over austerity measures Greece must take in return for bailout funds it needs to avoid defaulting on its debt.

Greece has asked for fiscal targets to be pushed back another two years, to give it more room to rekindle economic growth after a crushing austerity program sent it into a deeper recession than the lenders had expected.

A French government source said eurozone officials will reassure G20 partners that "things are moving forward" ahead of a November 12 meeting of eurozone finance ministers.

While Europe will seek to reassure it is acting on its debt crisis, the United States is not expected to give more clarity about its looming "fiscal cliff" - a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes that take effect in January if the White House and Congress fails to strike a deal by the end of the year.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is not travelling to Mexico City, sending a deputy in his place while US President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are locked in a close race for the White House.

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Restructuring costs push Alcatel into loss

RESTRUCTURING costs and lower sales have pushed telecoms equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent into a third-quarter loss.

The company said on Friday it lost 146 million euros ($A181.55 million) in the July-September quarter.

That's down from 194 million euros profit in the same quarter a year earlier. Sales also slid 2.8 per cent to 3.6 billion euros.

Alcatel-Lucent supplies telecommunication carriers such as AT&T, Verizon and France Telecom.

It competes with European rivals such as LM Ericsson AB of Sweden and Nokia Siemens Networks of Finland.

But it has struggled to turn a profit since the 2006 merger of France's Alcatel and Lucent of the United States.

Rounds of cost-cutting helped it make 2011 its first full-year profit since the tie-up.

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Popular vote doesn't decide US election

IN the 2000 US presidential election, Democratic candidate Al Gore garnered 540,000 more votes nationwide than Republican George W. Bush.

Yet Bush was the ultimate winner because, in the end, he was awarded the most electoral votes.

Though the US is considered the world's preeminent democracy, the American "people" do not directly elect their president. Instead, the US constitution calls for states to choose "electors" who do the actual electing. It's known as the Electoral College.

Each state is allotted electors equal to their congressional delegations - meaning there are 538 electors in total (435 representatives and 100 senators, plus three for the District of Columbia). A candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes to win.

In 48 US states, the candidate with the most popular votes - by even the slimmest margin - wins all the state's electoral votes.

Maine and Nebraska allot electoral votes by who won particular congressional districts.

Harvard University political science Professor Alex Keyssar, a critic of the Electoral College system, says the framers of the US constitution did not have a model for how to choose a president. They also had a "traditional aristocratic fear of the people" and were hesitant to enfranchise them. They didn't think the citizenry was informed enough to make important political choices, so an "elite" would do it for them.

In the nation's 56 presidential elections to date, including in 2000, there have been four in which a candidate lost the popular vote, but still became president.

In 1824, John Quincy Adams became president even though Andrew Jackson won nearly 40,000 more popular votes. The House of Representatives made the decision after none of the four presidential contenders had enough electoral votes to win.

In 1876, Samuel Tilden won nearly two million more popular votes than Rutherford Hayes, but a congressional commission, deciding along party lines, gave the election to Hayes in the wake of an inquiry into voting irregularities.

In 1888, Benjamin Harrison garnered 93,000 more popular votes than Grover Cleveland, but the Electoral College nevertheless voted in favour in of Cleveland.

And, in 2000, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to end the Florida recount and give all of Florida's 25 electoral votes to George W. Bush, thus delivering him the presidency.

Many regard the Electoral College to be an anachronism and would replace it with a national popular vote.

Keyssar says that the Electoral College makes a mockery of the "one person, one vote" system the country extols. Furthermore, it causes candidates to concentrate primarily on swing states, turning the majority of states into bystanders. (The current swing states are Colorado, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and New Hampshire.)

Keyssar acknowledges that in the case of voter irregularities, a nationwide recount would be a much larger undertaking than in a single state.

But the professor says the current system arguably offers a much larger "inducement to fraud" because altering a few thousand votes in a certain state could change the entire outcome of the election.

For example, had John Kerry won Ohio in the 2004 election, which he nearly did, the Electoral College would have delivered him the presidency, even though incumbent George W. Bush had 3 million more popular votes nationwide.

The Electoral College also has its strong backers in the US, including Tara Ross, a conservative lawyer and author of Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College.

Ross says the Electoral College diminishes the potential impact of voter fraud or complications of razor-close outcomes by isolating the problem to smaller geographic units.

Anyone trying to manipulate an election has to "steal the right vote at the right place at the right time", she says, whereas with a national public vote, every stolen vote would count.

Ross also refutes the argument that the current system forces candidates to focus only on swing states.

"There is no such thing as a permanently safe district," Ross says, pointing to Virginia and New Hampshire, once Republican strongholds that are up for grabs in the 2012 presidential race between incumbent Barack Obama, a Democrat, and his Republican rival Mitt Romney.

What's more, she says, the current system forces candidates to appeal to a wider variety of voter because there is "not one kind of swing state". Candidates will tailor their campaigns to fit the rules of the game, Ross says, but it's unrealistic to think they would canvas every single corner of the country.

While the idea of "one person, one vote" may "feel good", Ross expects that in a national popular vote system, the candidates would go directly to the large population centres, bypassing even more of the electorate than they do now.

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Fake credit cards used in bank fraud

A WESTPAC employee is accused of creating fake credit cards to fleece the company of more than $110,000.

Police from The Rocks Local Area Command were contacted by the bank's internal investigators on Friday morning in relation to fraud involving one of their employees.

The same morning, officers arrested a 25-year-old man outside his workplace at the corner of Market Street and Clarence Street in Sydney's CBD.

It will be alleged the man created nine fake credit card accounts and used them to withdraw a total of $113,930 from several ATMs over the past year.

He has been charged with nine counts of fraud and one count of knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime.

The man is out on conditional bail and due to appear at Downing Centre Local Court on December 4.

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Hills to shed hundreds jobs in restructure

TROUBLED clothes line, electronics and building products maker Hills Holdings is expected to shed hundreds of jobs as part of a massive restructure.

Newly installed chief executive Ted Pretty said he did not want to put an exact figure on the number of job losses until shift workers were informed on Thursday night, but he didn't deny that hundreds of people would be affected.

"I've seen that number reported and I won't be drawn, but it is a number you would expect to flow from the closure of one of our sites," Mr Pretty told a media call on Thursday.

The changes will cost the company as much as $110 million, as underperforming parts of Hills' businesses are closed.

Some products will be scrapped and jobs cut from its 2,642-strong workforce.

Hills' roofing business, Fielders, is likely to bear the brunt of the changes, while the Orrcon Steel arm and the company's lifestyle and sustainability businesses, whose brands include the Hills Hoist, Bailey Ladders and Team Poly water tanks, will also undergo major overhauls.

Shares in Hills closed 8.5 cents, or 11.2 per cent, higher at 84.5 cents on the news.

Mr Pretty said the restructure was needed because of the effect that slower economic conditions and a steeper-than-expected drop in construction activity were having on Hills' manufacturing businesses.

"My strong view is that recent events are a call to action to fundamentally review the way we operate and perform," Mr Pretty told shareholders earlier at the company's annual general meeting.

The company would consolidate some manufacturing activities, oversee the exit of certain products and businesses and sites and reduce staffing levels.

"We must now cut our coat according to our cloth," he said.

He said that Hills had no choice but to close some of its underperforming Fielders roofing branches until demand recovered.

The company expects the changes will allow it to reap savings of between $10 million and $15 million in the second half of the financial year and another $30-$40 million in 2013/14, subject to market conditions.

Shareholders were told that no dividend would be paid for the first half of 2012/13 but that the payments should return at the end of the year.

Both Orrcon and Fielders posted operating losses last financial year because of weak construction markets in Australia and New Zealand.

Mr Pretty, a former group managing director at Telstra, said the restructure would also involve Hills no longer making solar-hot-water specific products.

He also lashed out at the federal government for not recognising that businesses like Orrcon and Fielders should have been included in its steel transformation plan, along with BluesSope and Arrium.

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Evacuation alert lifted in north Qld

AN evacuation alert has been cancelled for the residents of a north Queensland town threatened by a large bushfire.

Firefighters were called to the blaze southwest of Ravenshoe at about 3.45pm (AEST) on Thursday afternoon.

With 10 crews fighting the flames, residents of Millstream were warned to get ready to evacuate.

That alert was lifted on Thursday evening but the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service said 12 crews would keep working on backburning.

With an increased fire danger predicted for Friday the service said crews would work through the night to make sure the blaze is fully contained.

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Govt workers charged with $82,000 thefts

TWO West Australian government employees have been charged with fraud and stealing, with one alleged to have fraudulently used more than $66,000 worth of Cabcharge vouchers.

Major fraud squad detectives on Thursday revealed that two separate government agencies had been investigated.

A 55-year old Wembley man has been charged with seven counts of fraud, following a probe into the misuse of corporate credit cards.

Police will allege that between 2007 and 2011, the man, who was employed as a senior manager, used his corporate credit card for unauthorised purchases worth more than $16,000.

He is due to appear in Perth Magistrates Court on December 5.

Those charges came after an investigation into corporate credit card misuse at a separate government agency, which resulted in allegations that a 60-year old Parkwood woman unlawfully used Cabcharge vouchers while employed as a senior manager.

The purchases were in excess of $66,000, police said.

The woman is due to appear in Perth Magistrates Court on January 16 to answer five counts of stealing as a servant.

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Seven kidnapped sailors freed in Nigeria

KIDNAPPERS have freed six Russian sailors and an Estonian who had been abducted from a ship off Nigeria's southern delta, a French oil and gas services company says.

Paris-based Bourbon SA said in a statement that the sailors were in good health despite facing "difficult conditions while in captivity". The company said the men would leave Nigeria in several days after undergoing medical tests and psychological examinations.

The company statement said Bourbon would not take any questions regarding the sailors' release on Wednesday and did not say if a ransom had been paid to free them.

Typically, foreign companies operating in Nigeria's Niger Delta pay cash ransoms to free their employees after negotiating down kidnappers' demands. Foreign hostages can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Onyema Nwachukwu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The kidnapping happened during an attack October 15 on a Bourbon ship near the Niger Delta, where the company works closely with oil companies like Chinese-owned Addax Petroleum. Gunmen apparently attacked the Bourbon Liberty 249 and seized the sailors before escaping, the company said.

Another nine sailors onboard the vessel sailed safely away to the company's port in Onne in Nigeria's Rivers state, the company said.

The attack occurred near the Pennington River off Bayelsa state, military officials later said. That's close to the Pennington Export Terminal run by US-based Chevron Corp., which loads crude onto large oil tankers for export to the West.

Foreign oil companies have pumped oil out of the Niger Delta, a region of mangroves and swamps the size of Portugal, for more than 50 years. Despite the billions of dollars flowing into Nigeria's government, many in the delta remain desperately poor, living in polluted waters without access to proper medical care, education or work. The poor conditions sparked an uprising in 2006 by militants and opportunistic criminals who blew up oil pipelines and kidnapped foreign workers.

That violence ebbed in 2009 with a government-sponsored amnesty program that offered ex-fighters monthly payments and job training. However, few in the delta have seen the promised benefits and sporadic kidnappings and attacks continue. The last major kidnapping happened in August, when gunmen attacked a vessel operated by Sea Trucks Group, another oil and gas contractor, and abducted four workers. The workers were later released unharmed.

Bourbon operates support vessels for offshore oil rigs and provides repair, inspection and maintenance services for undersea oil fields, and has a smaller unit that ships commodities like coal, grain and timber worldwide. The company had revenues of 1 billion euros ($A1.26 billion) last year.

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China tightens security ahead of congress

DON'T roll down the taxi windows. Don't buy a remote-controlled plane without a police chief's permission. And don't release your pigeons.

Beijing is tightening security as its all-important Communist Party congress approaches, and some of the measures seem downright bizarre. Kitchen knives and pencil sharpeners reportedly have been pulled from store shelves, and there's even a rumour that authorities are on the lookout for seditious messages on pingpong balls.

The congress, which begins on November 8, will name new leaders to run the world's most populous country and second-largest economy for the next decade. Most of the security measures have been phased in in time for Thursday's opening of a meeting of the Central Committee, the roughly 370-member body that is finalising preparations for the congress.

China always tightens security for high-profile events, like much of the rest of the world. London, for instance, restricted aeroplanes from flying above it during the Olympics.

But many of Beijing's rules seem extraordinary, perhaps in an effort to smooth a once-a-decade transition that has already been bumpy.

Bo Xilai, once a candidate for the all-powerful Politburo's Standing Committee, suffered a spectacular fall from grace in which his wife was convicted of murder. One of President Hu Jintao's closest aides was also forced to step down after his son was killed alongside two partially dressed women in an accident in his Ferrari. Meanwhile, protests over pollution, land seizures and local corruption continue across the country.

Human rights groups report that activists and petitioners are being rounded up ahead of the congress. But the broader security measures may best illustrate how China is trying to leave absolutely no room for disruptions.

The government has blocked searches for the phrase "party congress" on websites including China's popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo. internet posters manage to get around that by using characters that sound like "party congress."

Taxi drivers have been told to remove window handles and require passengers to sign a "travelling agreement" promising to avoid sensitive parts of the city and not to open their windows or doors if they pass "important venues."

A man who answered the phone at Wan Quan Si taxi company in the south of the capital said the rule applies to all taxi companies in Beijing. He declined to give his name.

Beijing investment company worker Li Tianshu said she didn't believe colleagues' claims that door handles had been removed until she got into a taxi herself the other day.

"There were no handles for three of the four windows," she said. "The driver told me that their company asked them to do it to prevent passengers spreading leaflets. The driver complained that if they don't take the handles away or the passengers throw leaflets out of the taxis, they will be fired."

Citizens have taken to Weibo to post photos of doors with handles crudely ripped off. Liu Shi, a client manager in a mass communication company, wrote that the taxi driver had told him that power to electronic window buttons would also be cut.

A memo circulating on Weibo warned taxi drivers to be on guard against passengers who may want to cast balloons with slogans or throw "ping pong balls with reactionary words." It was unclear who issued the memo and its authenticity could not be confirmed.

A man who wouldn't give his name at Tong Hai taxi company in central Beijing said it had received orders "from higher authorities" to reinforce security measures and a memo, but he wouldn't elaborate.

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