Obama’s budget goes to Congress

February 13, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

washington

The new budget that President Barack Obama is sending to Congress aims to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade by restraining government spending and raising taxes on the wealthy. To help a weak economy, Obama’s proposal today requests increases in transportation, education and other areas.

While administration officials Sunday defended the plan as a balanced approach, Republicans belittled the effort as a repeat of failed policies that did too little to attack soaring costs in such programs as Medicare and threatened growth by raising taxes.

Obama’s spending blueprint for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 projects a deficit for this year of $1.33 trillion. That would mean four straight years of trillion-dollar-plus deficits.

The budget will project a decline in the deficit to $901 billion in 2013 and continued improvements shrinking the deficit to $575 billion in 2018.

Fuel being removed from cruise ship

rome

Underwater pumping operations began Sunday to remove some of the 500,000 gallons of fuel aboard the Costa Concordia, officials said, nearly a month after the cruise ship ran aground off Tuscany.

After nearly two weeks of delays because of rough seas and bad weather, the pumping got under way on the first of 15 tanks that are believed to hold around 84 percent of the fuel on board, Italy’s civil-protection department said.

Officials say it will take 28 consecutive days of pumping to empty the tanks.

5 bankers arrested in UK tax inquiry

london

British tax authorities said Sunday that four current and one former member of staff at the Royal Bank of Scotland had been arrested in an investigation into suspected tax fraud.

The revenue service said the five suspects were arrested at their homes in London and southern England on Wednesday. None of those arrested has been identified.

Authorities said the inquiry was in connection with the personal financial affairs of the suspects and unrelated to the bank’s work.

Vindicator wire reports

Selected local stocks

STOCK, DIVIDENDCLOSECHANGE

Aqua America, .66, 22.07 —.18

Avalon Holdings,4.00.02

Clear Channel, .77 68.04 —.69

Cortland Bancorp, 7.15.00

Farmers Nat., .125.45 —.05

First Energy, 2.20, 42.65—.02

FirstMerit Corp., .64,16.03 —.46

First Niles Financial, .32,7.30.00

First Place Fin., .71.06

FNB Corp., .48,11.82—.29

General Motors,25.50—.24

General Electric, .68,18.88—.25

Motors Liquidation, .04.00

Huntington Bank, .16, 5.91—.13

JP Morgan Chase, 1.00,37.61—.25

Key Corp, .12,7.94—.15

LaFarge, 10.47 —.51

Macy’s, .80, 35.68—.53

Parker Hannifin, 1.56, 87.51—.67

PNC, 1.40,59.67—.72

RTI Intl. Metals,22.57—.65

Simon Prop. Grp.,3.60,136.76—1.14

Stoneridge 10.30 —.14

United Community Fin. 1.29—.01

Selected prices at 4 p.m. Friday. Provided by Stifel Nicolaus. Not to be construed as an offer or recommendation to buy or sell any security.