S&P’s David Blitzer called the home-price report “mixed,” noting, “The rebound in housing prices seen last fall is fading.”

Russia’s security services believe that the women who blew themselves up in two Moscow Metro stations yesterday were part of a group of up to 30 suicide bombers trained by a Chechen terrorist leader.

Agents from the Federal Security Service (FSB) are investigating the theory that the “Black Widows” were sent to avenge the death of Said Buryatsky, the leading ideologue of the Islamist rebels in Russia’s North Caucasus.

After corruption scandals involving engineering giant Siemens and truck manufacturer MAN, Daimler is now in the spotlight. The US is pressing charges against the carmaker over alleged bribery payments to foreign governments. The case will likely be settled out of court.

The German automaker produces busses in Turkey, which it sells in countries around the world, including North Korea, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania and Russia. The company apparently paid €3.3 million ($4.4 million) in bribes to secure business in these countries.

BY ELECTING me to the US Senate, the people of Massachusetts sent a clear message: Washington needs to get its priorities straight. Voters believed I would be the best candidate to fight for jobs and a stronger economy, keep our country safe, and serve as the 41st vote against the health care reform legislation debated in the Senate.

After my election, Washington politicians began an aggressive push to bend the rules and force their unpopular health care bill on an unwilling nation. They went into secret negotiations to make up their own rules, and eventually found a way to circumvent the will of the people by using the reconciliation process to ram through their health care bill. For the last year, the American people have been shaking their heads at the closed-door meetings, sweetheart deals, and special carve-outs. It has been a very ugly process, and caused many Americans to lose faith in their elected officials in Washington.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the health care overhaul signed into law last week costs too much and expands the government’s role in health care too far, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, underscoring an uphill selling job ahead for President Obama and congressional Democrats.

Those surveyed are inclined to fear that the massive legislation will increase their costs and hurt the quality of health care their families receive, although they are more positive about its impact on the nation’s health care system overall.

The European Union on Tuesday banned all airlines from the Philippines and Sudan from flying into the region’s airports, citing “serious safety deficiencies” found by the United Nations and U.S. aviation authorities.

The European Commission, which manages the airline “blacklist,” acknowledged recent efforts by Philippine regulators and by two carriers — Philippine Airlines and Cebu Airlines — to improve safety standards. But the commission said it would forbid those airlines and 45 others from flying into the 27-country bloc as a precaution until its remaining concerns could be addressed. It added that Brussels was prepared to send a delegation of safety experts to visit the country.

Ten children, youths and young adults between the ages of 8 and 21 were gunned down, presumably by drug traffickers, in the northern Mexican state of Durango, the state’s attorney general said Monday.
The incident happened Sunday on a road near the town of Pueblo Nuevo in southern Durango.

Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has produced record-breaking high-energy particle collisions.

Tuesday’s milestone marks the beginning of work that could lead to the discovery of fundamental new physics.
There was cheering and applause in the LHC control room as the first collisions were confirmed.

Video at the link.

The unannounced, whirlwind visit of the US president to Afghanistan this past weekend appeared designed to appeal to multiple audiences, and to deliver multiple messages.

Similarly, he wished to reassure deployed US troops of his support and his willingness to stay the course, which had come into question after his West Point speech in December 2009 when he distinctly downgraded his previously ambitious goals for Afghanistan and promised the beginning of a draw-down in just 18 months.

Not the way to start a day.

The bodies of 21 babies, believed to have been dumped by hospitals, have washed ashore on a riverbank in eastern China, state media has said.

Video footage showed that the bodies, stashed in yellow plastic bags and at least one marked “medical waste,” included some infants who were several months old.

A Chinese court slapped four employees of mining giant Rio Tinto with jail terms of seven to 14 years on bribery and commercial secrets charges, unexpectedly harsh sentences that include a decade of imprisonment for Australian Stern Hu.

China designated March 28 as an annual Serfs Emancipation Day last year to mark the date on which about one million serfs in the Tibet, or more than 90 percent of the Tibetan population, were freed in 1959. The decision was reached at the 2nd session of the Ninth Tibet Autonomous Regional People’s Congress held on January 19, 2009 so as to comply with the strong voices and demands of 2.8 million people of varied ethnicities in the Tibet Autonomous region.

A Dutch court has fined the owner of the Netherlands’ biggest cannabis-selling coffee shop 10m euros (£9m, $13.3m) for breaking drugs laws.

The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.

The party of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has decided not to contest the first election in military-ruled Myanmar in two decades.
After a meeting of 100 of the group’s senior members in Yangon on Monday, the National League for Democracy (NLD) said it could not participate in a process criticised by Suu Kyi as “unjust”.