National / International News

More than a tonne of concrete and ballast is removed from a car park to access an underground pipe and rescue a dog trapped inside.

The Egyptian army participated in torture and killings during the 2011 revolution, a report leaked to a British newspaper appears to show.

Researchers say they can measure how much pain someone is experiencing and even watch as prescription painkillers relieve it. The scanning technique could help doctors treat pain better, but the work is also fraught with questions about how the technology could interfere with the relationship between doctors and patients.

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Researchers say they can measure how much pain someone is experiencing and even watch as prescription painkillers relieve it. The scanning technique could help doctors treat pain better, but the work is also fraught with questions about how the technology could interfere with the relationship between doctors and patients.

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The online currency Bitcoin went nuts today. Actually, it’s been several months of volatile trading, rising from $13 per Bitcoin in January to a high of $268 this month. Today it lost about a third of its value.

But first a refresher: What the heck is a Bitcoin?

It’s not an actual coin.

“When you hold a Bitcoin, you don’t actually hold any Bitcoins,” explains Michael Toomim, an avid Bitcoin buyer. Instead, your currency is like a password. “You hold this private key that lets you prove to everyone on the Internet who’s running the Bitcoin software that you own that money; it’s allocated to you.”

In the same way that a dollar is a piece of paper that people have faith in, a Bitcoin is a highly encrypted agreement, that people have faith in.

To take part in the digital currency market, you download Bitcoin software and go to one of a number of “exchanges,”  websites such as MtGox.com, to buy and sell Bitcoins. In return for your dollars or euros – which are transferred anonymously through encrypted accounts -- you get a password that assigns those Bitcoins to you.  Everyone else running the Bitcoin software can see each transaction. But they don’t know your real identity. The transactions are also irreversible, and aren’t regulated by any government.

You can then buy things online like magazines, Internet services, or drugs. You can even rent an apartment. In many countries, you can use Bitcoins instead of PayPal or traditional money transfers.

In recent months Bitcoins have become very popular.  There are 11 million Bitcoins worth nearly $2 billion in circulation today. (The supple is scheduled automatically by the software to increase to 21 million Bitcoins within a few years).

As demand grew for the  limited supply, prices skyrocketed.  Aleks Lossenko paid 3,000 euros to buy 50 Bitcoins last month and “now they’re worth 10,000 euros,” he says.

Well, they were worth 10,000 euros this morning before the value fell by a third.

This volatility doesn’t surprise Simon Barber, a researcher at the Palo Alto Research Center.

“Bitcoin by its very nature is very prone to bubbles,” he says.  They’re a way to speculate. Buyers hoard, waiting for the right time to sell. Then, along comes something to spook everyone – as happened today when hackers disrupted some of the sites used to trade Bitcoins.

“The value of Bitcoin,” says Barber “is just based on the trust and confidence that people have in it, and as soon as something happens to shake that, people start to sell their Bitcoins.”

But Barber says this volatility will fade.

“In the long term, Bitcoin does have some fundamental value,” he says, noting that it’s anonymous, unregulated and almost impossible to counterfeit. So Bitcoin isn’t not going away.

We found our own Bitcoin investor right in the office -- a Marketplace audio engineer talks about his experiences in the Bitcoin market.

Police carry out a series of raids relating to the purchase of Rangers Football Club by Craig Whyte from Sir David Murray.

The change that may matter most for the proposal's chances of success, though, is purely bureaucratic. The White House wants foreign food aid to be funded through the U.S. Agency for International Development instead of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Revenues from gas taxes often fall short of what's needed for repairs and construction of the nation's roads, so states are starting to take action. Some are considering an increase in the state gas tax while others are getting creative.

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Hugo Chavez won't be on the ballot in Sunday's presidential election, but in many ways he's still the dominant figure. Chavez's hand-picked successor is favored over the opposition candidate, leading by double digits in some polls.

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US First Lady Michelle Obama has made an emotional appeal for action on gun control, in a speech to community leaders in Chicago.

Sen. Rand Paul went to one of the top historically black colleges in the nation and tried to make a case for his Republican Party as a continuing defender of the civil rights of African-Americans. The Kentucky Republican got credit for the effort, but not always his message.

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The Federal Reserve released the minutes from their most recent meeting today. The executive summary goes something like this -- no big policy changes coming, at least in the short term. And the Fed, more than any other institutions out there, is actually doing things to help the economy. Why? Because it can.   

Central banks -- of which the Federal Reserve is one -- have a lot of power without really having to answer to anyone.

"Fundamentally, central banks are anti-democratic" says Neil Irwin, author of a new book about the work of three of the largest central banks after the financial crisis. "In extreme situations, it's the central banks that have the power and the ability and the speed and the bottomless resources to be able to deal with panics when they happen.

The book is called "The Alchemists" and follows the Fed's Ben Bernanke, Mervyn King of the Bank of England and Jean Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank after the fallout of the financial crisis of 2008. "What we've had in the last five years is a global story that takes place in the United States, in Europe, in Britain and over and over again, it's been the central bankers, these guys at the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank and the Bank of England who've come together and dealt with this sprawling crisis that keeps zooming from continent to continent and market to market."

It's impossible to avoid criticisms about these institutions and the power they wield but Irwin says, it's very necessary. He notes Bernanke, King, and Trichet were able to respond quickly and with full force to the economic collapse "precisely because they're secretive guys who meet in private in these strange places." But the past five years were not without missteps. The biggest regret? Not acting soon enough. "There's a consistent reluctance to deal with the small problem early on and instead it becomes a very big problem."

So how does a president or a prime minister go about choosing the person to steer their country's economy? "No one's ready for this job. It's even harder now than it was in 2006 when Ben Bernanke took the job. And frankly, Ben Bernanke, in 2006 wouldn't be qualified for the job today." Irwin says the job requires that the candidate be an excellent economist, a superb manager, a politician, a regulator, and a great communicator.

"Very few people in the world ...are good at all of those things so what you find if you're a head of state trying to appoint a central banker, you have to find someone who's good enough at all of them and hope they learn on the job."

A 20-year-old boy from Widnes has graduated from the world famous Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow

Former world number four Tim Henman says the state of British men's tennis, bar Andy Murray, is "embarrassing".

Dutch authorities say some 50,000 tonnes of meat sold as beef across Europe since January 2011 may have contained horsemeat.

Network Rail and a signalman are fined for failing to ensure the safety of a woman who was killed at a level crossing.

Seventy objects sacred to Arizona's Hopi tribe are scheduled to hit the block Friday. Tribal members say the items were taken illegally and have asked U.S. officials to help stop the sale, which French auctioneers estimate the sale may bring in $1 million. A court hearing is set for Thursday in Paris.

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The phonebook-sized budget bills about to circulate through Washington, D.C., will eventually affect the actual economy. Small businesses included. Entrepreneurs and mom-and-pop shop owners are watching the negotiations.

Steve Presser is the owner of Big Fun Toy Store in Cleveland, Ohio.

"I follow it and of course I care about it. The big question for me and most of my peers and colleagues is how it will affect us," Presser says. "You know, health care, all the big buzz words affect the small business owners just like it affects the big one."

But Presser says small storefront business owners like him, who rely heavily on cash flow, are even more vulnerable than larger companies. Particularly when small factors like a rainy day, or bigger changes like layoffs in the local community can dramatically affect sales.

That makes budgeting a trying process, even though he doesn't confront the same political obstacles as members of Congress.

"We all have to try to get as creative as we can about budget making," says Presser. "My small business is like the government's large business: we have to do cuts, we have to decide what's important."

While Presser hopes that Congress will put concerns like his toward the top of its list of priorities, he remains skeptical.

"Do I believe that they're really listening to the small person on Main Street? I think they're not listening enough."

Business, however, is improving for the owner of two toy stores.

"I'm starting to see people spend a little bit more money in my store," Presser says. "I'm now smiling. I'm a little bit more optimistic than I was two years ago."

William Mastro says he altered the 1909 Honus Wagner card that sold for $2.8 million in 2007. He also admits he used shill buyers to drive up the price of other memorabilia.

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US President Barack Obama unveils a $3.77tn (£2.4tn) budget that proposes fresh taxes on the wealthy along with cuts to benefit programmes.