House Democratic leaders on Wednesday banned budget earmarks to private industry, ending a practice that has steered billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to companies and set off corruption scandals. The ban is the most forceful step yet in a three-year effort in Congress to curb abuses in the use of earmarks, which allow individual lawmakers to award financing for pet projects to groups and businesses, basketball shoes many of them campaign donors. But House Republicans, in a quick round of political one-upmanship, tried to outmaneuver Democrats by calling for a ban on earmarks across the board, not just to for-profit companies. Republicans, who expect an intra-party vote on the issue Thursday, called earmarks “a symbol of a broken Washington.” Both parties are seeking to claim the ethical high ground on the issue by racing to rein in a budgeting practice that has become rife with political influence peddling. So far, though, the Senate is not joining in. House Democrats had tried to reach an agreement with their counterparts to ban for-profit earmarks, but the senators balked, Congressional officials said. Had the ban on for-profit earmarks been in place last year, it would have meant the elimination of about 1,000 awards worth a total of about $1.7 billion, leaders of the House Appropriations Committee said in announcing that, as a matter of policy, they will no longer approve requests for awards to for-profit groups. Many of those earmarks went to military contractors for projects in lawmakers’ home districts. Under the new restrictions, not-for-profit institutions like schools and colleges, state and local governments, research groups, social service centers and others are still free to receive earmarks. The new restrictions, for example, would still allow the type of award to local governmental agencies that became infamous in 2005 with Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere.” Representative David R. Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who leads the Appropriations Committee, said a series of criminal investigations, ethics inquiries and political embarrassments had prompted him to take stronger steps. “The political reality right now is that the public has lost some confidence in this institution, and one of the reasons is the past abuses of the earmark process,” Mr. Obey said. Earmarks for profit-making companies are “the most vulnerable place” for abuse in the system, he added. If the Senate does not follow the House’s lead, that would set up a confrontation between the two chambers, with the Senate including for-profit earmarks in its budget bills and the House excluding them. Negotiators from each body would ...

As the rapper Lil Wayne made his final public appearance as a free man for at least the next eight months, he was greeted by a chaotic scene in front of a Manhattan criminal courthouse on Monday afternoon. As his black, tinted-out sport utility vehicle pulled up to the curb, wholesale ed hardy more than 100 fans and photographers swarmed. When he stepped out, the mob followed him all the way to the door, some people tripping and tumbling, many screaming. It resembled a running of the bulls. Court officers pushed people to the side to clear a path. At the door, the crowd parted slightly, and out strode a sullen-faced Lil Wayne, his head hanging and covered with a hood. Court officers rushed him past everyone else standing in the security line. He stepped through the metal detector to the cheers of dozens more people in the courthouse lobby. Some people even lined a winding staircase between the first and second floors to catch a glimpse. The screams and applause echoed through the cavernous first floor. Inside the courtroom, the scene was much calmer. Last October, Lil Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Carter, ...

As both companies and countries in the West and Japan stumble under debt and fear, a new enthusiasm for deals has already emerged this year in India, China and other developing countries. Swollen with cash from fast-growing economies, many emerging-market companies are on the prowl for acquisitions. At the same time, their counterparts in the West — desperate for growth and often seeing few prospects at home — are opening their wallets to move into developing countries, trying to get at resources, new customers or both. On Monday, the British insurance company Prudential said it would buy ...

American International Group Inc agreed to a $35.5 billion sale of its Asian life insurance unit to Britain's Prudential Plc , in a deal that would allow the insurer to repay the U.S. government a substantial amount of its taxpayer bailout debt, sources familiar with the matter said on Sunday. The board of AIG approved the sale of American International Assurance nike max (AIA) to Prudential, Britain's largest insurer, and the two sides are working on announcing a deal, the sources said. An announcement could come as soon as Monday, said the sources, who declined to be named because the deal is not yet public. Prudential will pay about $25 billion in cash and the rest in equity, the sources said. Prudential is planning a $20 billion rights offering, backstopped by Credit Suisse Group AG , JPMorgan Chase & Co and HSBC Holdings PLC, to finance the deal, one of the sources said. The $10.5 billion equity component of the deal will include convertible and preferred stock, as well as about $5.5 billion in common stock, the source said. AIG, which is nearly 80 percent owned by the federal government after a $182.3 billion bailout, will pay the Federal Reserve Bank of New York about $16 billion from the deal proceeds for its preferred interest in a special purpose vehicle that holds AIA, the source said. AIG is expected to use the rest of the money to further pay down the Federal Reserve's credit facility, the source said. It would be one of the largest overseas deals to date for a British firm and make Prudential one of the biggest insurers in Asia. Prudential already operates in 13 Asian markets where it has more than 11 million life customers. Asia, which accounted for 44 percent of its profits in 2008, is also seen as the engine of the group's future growth. AIG was advised by Citigroup and Goldman Sachs , while ...

The Dubai police released the names of 15 more suspects on Wednesday in the killing of a senior Hamas operative in a Dubai hotel room last month, expanding the range of an investigation that has already fostered diplomatic tensions between several nba basketball jersey European countries and Israel, whose intelligence service is widely suspected of planning the assassination. The new suspects carried Irish, British, French and Australian passports, and they bring the size of the assassination team to 26, including six women, police officials in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, said in a written statement. The roles of the suspects included “preparations and helping to facilitate” the Jan. 19 killing of the Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the statement said. At least 7 of the 11 suspects the Dubai police identified earlier this month carried what appeared to be expertly copied European passports bearing the names of people living in Israel. Several of the new suspects were similarly identified by names belonging to people living in Israel and carrying foreign passports, according to a report Wednesday evening on Israel’s Channel Two News. One — Gabriella Barney — is believed to be the daughter of a man identified in the first group of suspects. The initial identifications drew sharp questions from British, Irish and German diplomats about how the fraudulent passports came to be, as well as statements of concern from the European Union. They also reinforced suspicions about the involvement of the Israeli secret service, Mossad. Dubai’s police chief, Dahi Khalfan al-Tamim, was quoted in the Emirati news media last week as saying that he was “99 percent, if not 100 percent” sure that Mossad was behind the killing. Israel has declined to comment on the accusations, as is its custom with claims related to the Mossad. The Dubai police statement issued Wednesday included a striking detail: two of the new suspects, identified as Nicole Sandra McCabe and Adam Marcus Korman and carrying Australian passports, left Dubai on a ship bound for Iran. ...