The convictions last week of two of Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s former campaign aides have scrambled local politics in the nation’s capital, dimming Gray’s influence and brightening the political prospects of some other city leaders. Read full article > >

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Mayoral ambitions surfacing early in D.C.

Calls out campaign rhetoric.

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Huntsman: Mitt’s China Talk Is ‘Typical’

The “yes” campaign for independence wants one million Scots to sign a declaration of support by the time of the referendum in the autumn of 2014.

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Yes campaign seeks million Scots

Unlike past presidents at this stage in the campaign, President Obama has not hesitated to engage his rival.

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Obama Leaps Into Direct Attacks

Over at FT Alphaville, Cardiff Garcia passes along this striking stat from Credit Suisse: Vehicle purchases by consumers alone accounted for 30% of all the GDP growth in the last two quarters. Cars are, ahem, driving the recovery. But will it continue? Auto analysts are expecting another record month of car sales in May: TrueCar.com announced today that it was predicting the highest monthly level of vehicle sales since 2007, up 32 percent since this time last year. Read full article > >

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Auto sales are propping up the U.S. economy

The Senate held two votes Thursday on measures to ensure that student loan rates for millions of college students do not double in July — and at the conclusion of the legislative action, the issue remained exactly where it began: stuck. Read full article > >

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Senate fails to agree on student-loan-rate freeze

A growing number of primary care trusts are placing restrictions on access to eye surgery, figures obtained by campaigners show.

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NHS trusts ‘ration eye surgery’

As the presidential campaign veers off onto the Bain Capital ramp, the predictable arguments ensue: Is the turn simply a political attack meant to distract from bad economic news? (So says Mitt Romney). Or is it an important, valid argument at the heart of the contest? (So says President Barack Obama.)

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Borger: Obama’s attacks backfiring?

Hundreds of campaigners demand protection for services at Prince Phillip Hospital in Llanelli in a protest on the steps of the Welsh assembly.

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Hospital shake-up Senedd protest

Three decades after private-equity firms transformed American business, American politics is finally catching up — breathless and bewildered. For the past week, the spotlight of the presidential campaign has fallen on Mitt Romney’s 15 years as an executive at the private-equity firm Bain Capital. President Obama has at times portrayed Romney, his likely GOP challenger, as a kind of pinstriped vampire who sucked profits out of hapless companies while factories closed and workers suffered. Read full article > >

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Both parties struggling with how to talk about private-equity industry

Novelist John Grisham could hardly spin a more provocative fiction: The president and his surrogates mount an aggressive campaign to intimidate the chief justice of the United States, implying ruin and ridicule should he fail to vote in a pivotal case according to the ruling political party’s wishes. Read full article > >

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The public trial of Justice Roberts

PRESIDENT OBAMA isn’t backing down from his campaign ad attacking Mitt Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital. Actually, “attack” may be too weak a description for a video that likens Bain to “ a vampire ” and depicts Mr. Romney as a plutocrat who callously destroyed hundreds of steel jobs for his own enrichment. Several prominent members of Mr. Obama’s own party thought the commercial was a bit over the top. (Not to mention highly derivative of previous ones financed by backers of Mr. Romney’s Republican primary rivals.) Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: President Obama wants it both ways on private equity

One of the most polarizing fights over money in politics has been unfolding this spring at annual corporate meetings, where shareholders are mounting an intensifying effort to push companies to disclose the money they spend on lobbying and political campaigns. Read full article > >

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More shareholders call on companies to disclose their political spending

Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who led the military campaign that ended two decades of civil war, then ran unsuccessfully for president, was freed after nearly two years in prison.

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General Fonseka Is Released From Prison in Sri Lanka

Thomas W. Gore, a former assistant treasurer to Vincent Gray’s 2010 mayoral campaign, has been charged in the long-running federal investigation of the campaign’s financing, court records show. Gore was charged Monday with violating a D.C. law prohibiting providing a campaign contribution in the name of another person and with violating a federal law that prohibits the destruction of records needed in an investigation. Read full article > >

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Thomas Gore, Vincent Gray campaign aide, charged in ongoing federal probe