National / International News

Vicky Pryce, imprisoned for eight months along with her ex-husband and former Lib Dem minister Chris Huhne, is "very frail", her brother says.

Any attempt by the UK to arm Syrian rebels would be a breach of international law, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warns.

A man accused of starting a fire which killed six of his children tells jurors he is "ashamed" of a threesome he had hours before.

The European Parliament votes against radical reforms that would have tied farm subsidies more closely to protection of the environment.

Life in the Nigerian city gripped by a bloody insurgency

Brewery joke highlights Tory nerves, says Nick Robinson

A member of the European Union's delegation in Syria was killed in a rocket attack in the Damascus suburb of Darayya on Tuesday, the EU announces.

Three decades after giving the world The Number of the Beast, Iron Maiden is poised to release its latest work — and it's a beer. "As a fan of traditional English cask beer, I thought this could actually be something really exciting," singer Bruce Dickinson says.

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Looking for work in one of the poorest areas of the UK

Former basketball star Dennis Rodman has travelled to Vatican City to witness the election of the new Pope.

The share of the American public that identifies simply as Catholic, however, has risen slightly to 18 percent in 2012 from 14 percent in 1974.

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Discussions between the leaders of the three main political parties over the Leveson press reforms are continuing, the prime minister's official spokesman says.

A Gull raised a smile with reporters and commentators when it landed on the Sistine Chapel chimney where smoke emerges revealing the outcome of voting for a new Pope.

Catholic cardinals meeting at the Vatican have been holding another round of voting to choose a new Pope, but there is no sign of a positive result.

An SAS soldier who admitted possessing a pistol and over 300 rounds of live ammunition has his conviction overturned.

Explore St Peter's square while cardinals deliberate

Scientists in Tanzania turned an iPhone into an amateur microscope to check schoolchildren for intestinal worms.

The smartphone wars are fought on a lot of fronts. It starts with creating a great product. And Samsung’s Galaxy is getting real credit for being innovative, said Andrew Lih, an iPhone user and a professor of journalism at University of Southern California.

He’s considering making a switch to the Galaxy.

“So even the Retina display that they’re touting with Apple is going to look a little bit low-res with what Samsung is announcing this week,” Lih said. 

Along with a sharper screen, some analysts say that the new Galaxy will have “eye tracking” technology. A camera on the phone tracks your eyes when you’re reading and when you get to the bottom of the page, it scrolls down automatically.

To be sure, in terms of popularity, Samsung still has a lot of catching up to do in the U.S. where Apple’s got about 40 percent of the smartphone market to Samsung’s 20 percent. But the Galaxy is generating a lot of buzz. For the first time since Apple launched the iPhone, the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant might have a real competitor in the smartphone space.

But with so many smartphones out there, you need an identity.

“Branding has become an absolute must in this market,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner.

Milanesi added that Samsung has positioned Galaxy as a real alternative to the iPhone -- something no other cell phone maker has been able to do. And Samsung is spending plenty on advertising to do it.

“In 2012, Apple’s budget increased to $333 million, but in contrast, Samsung’s budget skyrocketed to $401 million,” said Prashant Malaviya, a marketing professor at Georgetown’s Business School.

Samsung has launched a series of clever ads, gently poking fun of the iPhone as a has-been. So the real question now, is whether it can deliver the “next new thing.”

Celixia Rodriguez used to spend more than 60 percent of her income on rent. She makes about $10 an hour cleaning houses in Boston and picks up any side work she can.

“Even if I had five part time jobs, at $10 an hour it’s hard to come up with $1,500 a month and still support your children and fill your gas tank,” she says.

For three years, Rodriguez and her two kids doubled up, sharing a three-bedroom apartment in Boston with her sister and her two kids. Now she’s moved to the suburbs and her rent is subsidized by the local nonprofit, Neighborhood Housing Services of the South Shore. Her rent is now a much more manageable 30 percent of her income.

Over a quarter of renter households paid over half their income to rent in 2010, says Eric Belsky, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. That’s up from 20 percent in 2000.

“And we know that that’s a risk for homelessness, because you just have so little left over for basic necessitie,s and you are unable to save for emergencies,” says Megan Bolton, the research director at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which released a report looking on rents and wages this week.

The study estimates that workers would need to make $18.79 an hour in order to keep rent from eating up more than 30 pecent of their income. Yet the average renter actually only makes an hourly wage of $14.32.

That often means sacrificing on money for food, health care, travel, and other expenses.

It also means the economic impact can spread from the renter to the communities they live in, says Harvard’s Belsky.

“They’re spending less on things in the local economy,” he says. “There’s no question, from nothing comes nothing.”

Moreover, some renters are forced out of pricey cities because they can’t afford the rents at all.

“Families are deliberately, and in many cases systematically, moving outside of some of the high-cost cities across the country,” says Brett Theodos, a senior research associate in the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center. “What we’re losing there is some of the fabric of social life in cities.”

See how many hours a week a minimum wage worker would have to clock just to keep rent around 30 percent of their income. Map from The National Low Income Housing Coalition. (Click to enlarge PDF)

President Obama isn't just sitting at conference tables with Republicans in Congress these days, he's sitting down at the dinner table. In fact, this week he dined with a group of senators for a business dinner to discuss the budget.

Now, a business dinner is an opportunity to get to know each other, to talk business in a social setting, to make an impression. But as anyone who's sat down for one of these meals knows, there's all that food on the table. How do you avoid botching lunch? Marketplace’s Adriene Hill met up with Jules Hirst of Etiquette Consulting, Inc. for a one-on-one lesson.

Listen to the story above, and check out some of the tidbits she picked up:

1. Always follow your host’s lead.  Put your napkin in your lap after they put their napkin in their lap.  Order food in the same price range as the food that they order.
2. The fold of your napkin should go toward you.
3. Order a food that is easy to eat.  Ribs are a bad choice.
4. Eat before you go out to lunch.  You don’t want to scarf your food during the interview or meeting.  You want the focus to be on the conversation, not the food.
5. If your host orders alcohol, you may order alcohol.  But know yourself well enough to know whether or not it’s a good idea to drink it.   
6. Wait until your host starts to eat before you start to eat.
7. If your host asks a question just as you take a bite of food, politely indicate with your fingers that you will talk as soon as you have swallowed. 
8. Don’t correct someone else’s manners at the table.
9. If you have called the meeting, you should pay.  Instead of waiting for the bill to come to the table, step away to the restroom, hand your credit card to the waitstaff and ask them to add a 20 percent tip.
10. Write a thank you note.