Today's Top Stories 9-26-11

BLOOMBERG

President Obama holds a town-hall meeting at the headquarters of LinkedIn, the social and business networking website, to press Congress to adopt his $447 billion jobs plan.

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal emerged from 781 with Hollywood actor Sean Penn and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to thank for their release. Bauer and Fattal returned home after the Gulf sultanate of Oman paid a $1 million bail.

Central bankers from three Southeast Asian nations signaled that global financial-market turmoil will diminish inflation pressures in their economies, making interest-rate increases unlikely in coming months.

Denmark’s banking crisis is deepening as the new government’s plan to impose a tax on lenders threatens to deplete capital when most of the country’s banks have no access to funding markets.

Boeing hands over the first 787 Dreamliner to end more than three years of delays for a plane that the company says will become a benchmark for decades for technology and passenger amenities.

ECB policy makers are likely to next week debate restarting their covered-bond purchases along with further measures to ease monetary conditions.

Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world’s biggest bond fund, is forecasting that advanced economies will stall over the next year as Europe slides into a recession, underscoring mounting investor concern about the global economic outlook.

Saudi Arabia granted women the right to vote for the first time in its modern history as part of changes King Abdullah said will let them run in future municipal elections. Men and women are strictly segregated in public, including at schools, restaurants and lines at fast-food takeouts. That keeps women out of sales jobs in malls and stores, unless the outlet caters exclusively to a female clientele, and they are also barred from driving.

Cancer treatment costs are rising at such a rapid rate that they threaten to become “unsustainable” even for rich countries, according to The Lancet Oncology medical journal.

AP Top Stories

An Afghan employed by the U.S. government killed one American and wounded another in an attack on a CIA office in Kabul, officials said.

Tanks manned by fighters for Libya's interim government shelled loyalists holding out in Muammar Gaddafi's hometown as NATO jets circled overhead, ready to renew air strikes.

Businessman Herman Cain says his victory in the Florida Republican straw poll was authentic and wasn't a statement by voters against Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas repeated on Sunday his refusal to talk with Israel without a settlement freeze after international mediators, responding to his United Nations bid for statehood, urged negotiations within a month.

Do day laborers have a right to stand along the highway to offer themselves to would-be employers? Communities from California to Connecticut have been cracking down on these roadside gatherings. But a powerful federal appeals court this month overturned a ban in Redondo Beach, Calif., against soliciting work from passing cars.

More than a dozen kindergartens in Vietnam have closed to deal with an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease that has killed 109 children and sickening more than 52,000 this year.

Warren Buffett's conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway said it will launch a share buyback program, an extremely rare move from Buffett that comes after months of investor complaints that the stock was undervalued. Berkshire had $38.23 billion cash at June 30 but has spent at least $15 billion this quarter on acquisitions and investments.

A survey of 100 retailers with annual turnover of more than $1 billion, showed western European store groups more pessimistic about domestic consumer confidence than those in any other part of the world, except Australia.

Sales of new homes fell to a six-month low in August. The fourth straight monthly decline during the peak buying season suggests the housing market is years away from a recovery.

Three commissioners may grant some of the nation's largest refineries a tax refund of more than $135 million — money Texas' cash-strapped schools and other local governments have been counting on to help pay teachers and provide other public services.