SBI sets more room for lending rate cuts

India's largest lender the State Bank of India   (SBI) on Monday hinted at  lending rate cuts going forward. However, the lender ruled out any further reduction in the base rate, the benchmark rate below which, RBI does not allow to lend.

"There is a scope for cutting rates if large scale projects come to closure," SBI Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri told reporters while addressing a press conference on rate cuts here in Mumbai.

"We are leading the path of lower interest rate. Lower EMIs are immensely helpful to individual households. We are sitting on an excess liquidity of 70,000-80,000 crore. In fact, the net interest income for august was higher than in July. Our net interest margin is very robust at 3.89%. We thought that we can possibly sacrifice a bit of NIM," he said.

Last week, the lender slashed base rate by 25 basis points to 9.75% with effect from September 20. At the same time, it reduced benchmark prime lending rate (BPLR) by 25 bps to 4.50%. Borrowers who had taken loans before September, 2010 will be benefited after BPLR cut. The Reserve Bank of India had replaced BPLR system with the base rate regime.

Earlier, SBI had reduced the interest rates on home, auto and SME loans by over 50 basis points, effective from August 07. However, that was a decrease in spread or the difference between base rate and the mark-up.

"Given that the bank has already reduced the base rate, another round of (base) rate cut is difficult. However, SBI may go for reducing rates by decreasing spreads in select loan categories," the chairman pointed out.

The reduction in base rate, according to Choudhuri, was more secular and benefits everyone to equal extent. There was criticism that banks are not passing on interest rate cut uniformly. The latest rate cuts also answered the same.

2 Americans Killed By Afghan insider attack

 An Afghan soldier turned his gun on American troops at a checkpoint in the country's east, killing two Americans and at least two fellow members of Afghanistan's army in a shooting that marked both the continuance of a disturbing trend of insider attacks and the 2,000th U.S. troop death in the long-running war, officials said Sunday.
The string of insider attacks is one of the greatest threats to NATO's mission in the country, endangering a partnership key to training up Afghan security forces and withdrawing international troops.
Saturday's shooting took place at an Afghan army checkpoint just outside a joint U.S.-Afghan base in Wardak province, said Shahidullah Shahid, a provincial government spokesman.
"Initial reports indicate that a misunderstanding happened between Afghan army soldiers and American soldiers," Shahid said. He said investigators had been sent to the site to try to figure out what happened.
An Afghan official speaking on condition of anonymity said three Afghan soldiers were killed in the clash. It was not clear if the assailant was among the dead.
The attack happened about 5 p.m. in Sayd Abad district, Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said in an emailed statement. He did not provide further details, saying he would wait for a report from investigators.
NATO forces announced the assault early Sunday morning, saying only that it was "suspected insider attack" and that a NATO service member and civilian contractor were killed.
One U.S. official confirmed that the service member killed was American, while another confirmed that the civilian was also American. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the nationality of the dead had not yet been formally announced.
Afghan soldiers and policemen -- or militants in their uniforms -- have gunned down more than 50 foreign troops so far this year, eroding the trust between coalition forces and their Afghan partners. An equal number of Afghan policemen and soldiers also died in these attacks, giving them reason as well to be suspicious of possible infiltrators within their ranks.
The attacks are taking a toll on the partnership between international and Afghan forces, prompting the U.S. military to restrict operations with small-sized Afghan units earlier this month.
The close contact -- with coalition forces working side by side with Afghan troops as advisers, mentors and trainers -- is a key part of the U.S. strategy for preparing the Afghans to take the lead in security operations as the U.S. and other nations prepare to pull out their last combat troops at the end of 2014, just 27 months away.
The number of American military dead reflects an Associated Press count of those members of the armed services killed inside Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2001.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Romney's Path to the White House Narrows

Mitt Romney's path to victory narrows, AP analysis shows

 Five weeks to Election Day, President Barack Obama is within reach of the 270 electoral votes needed to win a second term. Republican Mitt Romney's path to victory is narrowing.

To overtake Obama, Romney would need to quickly gain the upper hand in nearly all of the nine states where he and Obama are competing the hardest.

Polls show the president with a steady lead in many of them as Romney looks to shift the dynamics of the race, starting with their first debate Wednesday in Denver.

"We'd rather be us than them," says Jennifer Psaki, an Obama spokeswoman.

But Romney's political director, Rich Beeson, insists, "You still have an incumbent who's going to have a hard time getting over 50 percent in a lot of these states."

If the election were held today, an Associated Press analysis shows Obama would win at least 271 electoral votes, with likely victories in crucial Ohio and Iowa along with 19 other states and the District of Columbia. Romney would win 23 states for a total of 206.

To oust the Democratic incumbent, Romney would need to take up-for-grabs Florida, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Virginia, which would put him at 267 votes, and upend Obama in either Ohio or Iowa.

The AP analysis isn't meant to be predictive. Rather, it is intended to provide a snapshot of a race that until recently has been stubbornly close in the small number of the most contested states.

It is based on a review of public and private polls, television advertising and numerous interviews with campaign and party officials as well as Republican and Democratic strategists in the competitive states and in Washington.

In the final weeks before the Nov. 6 vote, Obama is enjoying a burst of momentum and has benefited from growing optimism about the economy as well as a series of Romney stumbles. Most notably, a secret video surfaced recently showing the Republican nominee telling a group of donors that 47 percent of Americans consider themselves victims dependent on the government.

To be sure, much could change in the coming weeks, which will feature three presidential and one vice presidential debate. A host of unknowns, both foreign and domestic, could rock the campaign, knocking Obama off course and giving Romney a boost in the homestretch.

Barring that, Romney's challenge is formidable.

Obama started the campaign with a slew of electoral-rich coastal states already in his win column. From the outset, Romney faced fewer paths to cobbling together the state-by-state victories needed to reach the magic number.

It's grown even narrower in recent weeks, as Romney has seen his standing slip in polls in Ohio, with 18 electoral votes, and Iowa, with six. That forced him to abandon plans to try to challenge Obama on traditionally Democratic turf so he could redouble his efforts in Ohio and Iowa, as well as Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nevada and Virginia.

Romney is hoping that come Election Day, on-the-fence voters tip his way. But there are hurdles there, too.

Early voting is under way in dozens of states, and national and key states surveys show undecided voters feel more favorably toward Obama than Romney.

The Republican is in a tight battle with Obama in Florida, as well as Colorado, North Carolina and Nevada.

But Ohio's shifting landscape illustrates Romney's troubles over the past few weeks.

Republicans and Democrats agree that Obama's solid lead in public and private polling in the state is for real. Over the past month, the president has benefited from an improving economic situation in the state; its 7.2 percent unemployment rate is below the 8.1 percent national average. Obama's team also attributes his Ohio edge to the auto bailout and GM plant expansions in eastern Ohio.

Obama and his campaign have hammered Romney on his tax policies, arguing that the former Massachusetts governor favors the rich while the president as a defender of everyone else.

The president has seen the same good fortune in Iowa. A poll released Saturday by The Des Moines Register illustrates his advantage, showing Obama with 49 percent to 45 percent for Romney. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

"It's a direct result of the time and resources he's been forced to spend here," Iowa Republican strategist John Stineman said.

Indeed, Obama intently focused on the state ahead of an early voting period that began last week. He campaigned in Iowa aggressively this summer and dumped in a ton of TV advertising, much of it depicting Romney as wealthy and out-of-touch with working Americans.

Obama doesn't just have the wind at his back in those states.

The president also appears to be in stronger shape than Romney in Virginia, which has nine electoral votes, and in New Hampshire, with four votes, even though Romney vacations often in the state where he has a lakeside home. Romney and GOP allies are being outspent in that state considerably, a sign of trouble for the Republican challenger.

Underscoring his challenges, Romney also has been forced to spend millions of dollars a week defending himself in North Carolina, a GOP-leaning state that's more conservative than most of the states that will decide the election.

Polls now show a competitive race there. Democrats boast of having registered 250,000 new voters in the state since April 2011. It's an eye-popping total in a state that Obama won by just 14,000 votes four years ago. A flood of new voters, presumably a chunk of them Democrats, could help keep that state within Obama's reach this year.

Also, Romney's effort to challenge Obama in Democratic-leaning Wisconsin, home state of running mate Paul Ryan, appears to have fizzled. Despite millions of dollars spent on TV in the last few weeks by both sides, polls show Obama with a clear lead in Wisconsin.

Romney's goal of forcing Obama to defend Michigan — Romney's native state — and Pennsylvania never materialized.

"The big strategic moment coming out of the conventions in my view was whether or not Romney and his campaign could succeed in expanding the parameters of the battleground," said Tad Devine, a top adviser to 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore and 2004 nominee John Kerry. "They have not been able to do that."

All this has left Romney with an extraordinarily tight path and few options but to bear down in the states where he is competing aggressively. Time, though, is running out.

Reuters Says That A Child was killed In Kenya church grenade attack

A nine-year-old boy was killed and three other children wounded when a hand grenade was thrown into a Sunday school session in a church in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, police and medical staff said.

Kenya has suffered a series of grenade attacks since it sent troops across the border into Somalia last October in pursuit of Islamist al Shabaab militants who it blamed for kidnapping its security personnel and Western tourists.

The attack on the church came days after Kenyan troops launched a surprise offensive on the southern Somali port of Kismayu, the last stronghold of the al Shabaab, forcing the rebels to flee.

Police said attackers threw the grenade into the Sunday school service in St. Polycarp's church on Nairobi's Juja Road.

The grenade exploded, spraying the children with shrapnel and fatally injuring the boy.

"We suspect this blast might have been carried out by sympathisers of al Shabaab," said deputy police spokesman Charles Owino.

"These are the kicks of a dying horse since, of late, Kenyan police have arrested several suspects in connection with grenades," he added.

Masked assailants launched simultaneous gun and grenade raids on two churches in the northern town of Garissa in July, killing at least 17 people.

Hong Kong billionaire's daughter Gigi Chao bombarded with marriage offers and nude photos

Gigi Chao, the daughter of a Hong Kong billionaire says she had been bombarded with marriage proposals – and even nude photographs – from as far as Nigeria after her father offered £40 million to the man who could woo her.

Gigi Chao, daughter of property tycoon Cecil Chao, entered a civil partnership with her girlfriend of seven years in a ceremony in Paris five months ago.

But Mr Chao, 76, has told the South China Morning Post that reports of his daughter's civil ceremony were "false". He announced the HK$500 million dowry earlier this week.

It has sparked a deluge of offers. Speaking on Thursday Ms Chao, 33, said she had received about 200 proposals and that the number of people following her on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook had jumped by 1,500 since her father's announcement.

"People are contacting me on Facebook, by email, on Twitter. It's ridiculous. I can't sort out the serious proposals from the half-hearted ones. I can't make head or tail of it," she told The Daily Telegraph.

Ms Chao, an executive director of her father's company, Cheuk Nang, said that in addition to receiving enquiries from gentlemen who say they are looking for love and ask her out on a date, she has received some introductions that are less conventional.

Some hopefuls have attached nude photos of themselves or provided information about their financial situations. She has received proposals from all over the world, including Oklahoma, Nigeria, India, Turkey and Bulgaria. Numerous bankers have contacted her.

"Some of them had obviously done their research, you know, gone on my Facebook and looked at my background," she said. "Some of them are quite poetic."

But far from getting angry at her father, she said she was "touched".

"At first I was entertained by it, and then that entertainment turned into the realisation and conviction that I am a really lucky girl to have such a loving daddy, because it's really sweet of him to do something like this as an expression of his fatherly love," she said.

While Ms Chao knew that her father would go public denying the union, she did not know he would offer the reward. "I think the HK$500 million really came as an afterthought."

Even though Mr Chao has not accepted the union, Ms Chao said she loved her father and that they had a good relationship. "It's not that he can't accept me," she said. "It's that he can't accept how society would view me and the status that it would incur. Marriage is still a form of social status. I do understand him. I understand why he's doing this."

She added: "But I don't appreciate getting 1,500 emails."

Ms Chao, who also runs Haut Monde Talent, a model management and PR firm, met her partner, Sean Yeung, who also goes by Sean Eav, while they were working together.

Ms Chao she was drawn to Ms Yeung because she was straightforward, not manipulative, honest, had strong family values and cared about her friends deeply. "I'm very happy when I'm with her," she said.

Ms Chao, who has dated men and women, said she has always been open and honest about her relationships to her family.

However her mother has not accepted her sexuality. Ms Chao recalled that when she told her mother about a relationship with a girl when she was 16 years old, her mother "banged her head against the wall, literally".

Although they have become more visible in recent years, members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in Hong Kong are still largely not accepted by the vast majority of the population.

Ms Chao believes gay rights are picking up, but said work was still needed on the social mentality.

Mr Chao is not so conventional himself. He made headlines in 2003 when his Rolls-Royce caught fire while he and his girlfriend were inside.

The tycoon has never married and once claimed to have had "intimate relations" with about 10,000 women.

Application website will close in 5 days: GATE 2013

The GATE aspiring students will have just five days left to apply online for one of the prestigious examinations in the country.

The online registration for the GATE 2013, which was opened on September 1, will close on September 30.

The Receipt of printed version of ONLINE Application at  respective GATE Offices will be available from October 8.

The GATE 2013 results will be announced on March 15, 2013.

Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) is an all India examination that primarily tests the comprehensive understanding of various undergraduate subjects in Engineering and Technology.

The GATE 2013 is jointly conducted by IISc Bangalore, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Guwahati, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee.

Google to restrict access to a YouTube video that had attacked a mayoral candidate in Brazi

Google today bowed to demands from Brazil to restrict access to a YouTube video that had attacked a mayoral candidate.

"Late last night, we learned that our final legal appeal has been denied and so now we have no choice but to block the video in Brazil," Fabio Coelho, head of Google's Brazil operations, said in a post today. "We are deeply disappointed that we have never had the full opportunity to argue in court that these were legitimate free speech videos and should remain available in Brazil."

The move came a day after Brazilian police arrested Coelho, who was released after agreeing to appear in court at an undetermined date. He was detained after the company declined to remove two videos that a judge said violated laws that limit public criticism of political candidates.

Coelho's post (here's the Portuguese version) said the company had received many complaints and court orders "as usual during an election season," and had "pushed back" on the ones it believed to be invalid under Brazilian law. The arrest warrant was issued, he said, "while we were waiting for that appeal to be heard."

A search on YouTube shows several videos of Alcides Bernal, who is running for mayor of Campo Grande, a city with a population of about 800,000, including one alleging he's hiding documents and another accusing him of money laundering.

Jose Zagallo, head of the Brazilian bar association's commission focusing on information technology law, told the Associated Press that Brazil's laws unfairly hold services like Google liable for content they cannot control.

Coelho said: "Despite all this, we will continue to campaign for free expression globally--not just because it's a key tenet of free societies, but also because more information generally means more choice, more power, more economic opportunity and more freedom for people."

Meanwhile, another Brazilian court is asking Google to remove the controversial "Innocence of Muslims" trailer that has sparked demonstrations across the Middle East. In that case, Google has 10 days to remove the video or face a fine of $5,000 per day.

Google has blocked the poorly made anti-Islam video in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and India. Pakistan's government has banned YouTube altogether because of its refusal to block the clip.

The film's creator, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was arrested today on charges stemming from an earlier 2010 conviction for check fraud. Under the terms of his probation, Nakoula was prohibited from using computers or the Internet.

Islamic hacktivists disrupt PNC Bank

PNC Bank's website was disrupted on Thursday by a group of Islamic hactivists who have also claimed responsibility for downing the sites this week of Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank.

The latest attack is identical to the other two in that hundreds of thousands of computers are used to overwhelm the sites' bandwidth, said Atif Mushtaq, a security researcher for FireEye who has been monitoring the attacks.

The hactivists also claim to be behind the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks last week against Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, as well as U.S. bank yesterday.

PNC has confirmed the attack. Spokesman Fred Solomon told The Chicago Tribune  that the disruption affected some online customers. "We are working to restore full service to everyone," he said.

Based on the kind of traffic Mushtaq has seen, the banks' sites are being overwhelmed by requests from the computers of supporters of the hacktivists. The group, which calls itself "Mrt. Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters," has used social networks, including Goolge+; underground sites, and their own website to recruit sympathizers.

"I'm not surprised that there are thousands and thousands of people performing this type of DDoS," Mushtaq said.

The hactivists have said that the attacks are in retaliation for a video trailer denigrating the Prophet Muhammad. The amateurish YouTube video made in the U.S. has sparked violent protests in the Middle East and other regions.

To participate in the hactivists' campaign, a supporter goes to one of two file-sharing sites and downloads a program written in a scripting language that runs in a web browser.

Once the program is running, a person only has to click on a "start attack" button to send continuous requests to the target's website. All of the traffic seen by FireEye has come from Web browsers, an indication that the attackers are not using a network of compromised machines, called a botnet. Such networks are also a popular method for launching distributed denial of service attacks, which are said to be crude but still effectve.

"The bad part about this attack is it's so simple," Mushtaq said. "They're not using any botnet. They're using browsers."

Rob Rachwald, director of security for Imperva, said an all-volunteer army launching such an attack is in unusual. Hacktivists often use a combination of supporters and botnets, he said. In addition, rather than try to overwhelm the bandwidth of a large bank, attackers often find a vulnerable component in the site first and target traffic to just that area.

While he hasn't monitored the recent attacks, Rachwald said he believes the attackers are much more sophisticated. An indication of that is the fact that the hactivists posted warnings in advance, naming the targeted banks. Nevertheless, the banks were unable to prevent disruption.

"It tells you that more than likely the attackers were pretty sophisticated," he said. "They're using some new technique, or variation of older techniques to bring the sites down."

None of the banks have given details of the attacks.

Ideologically motivated hacktivism was the primary motivation behind DDoS attacks last year, according to Arbor Networks' annual survey of Internet Service Providers . The number of high-bandwidth DDoS attacks increased significantly, with 25% exceeding the total bandwidth into a data center.

At the same time, there are a variety of DDoS attack tools  and services available in the underground, Arbor said.


http://www.csoonline.com/article/717493/as-promised-islamic-hacktivists-disrupt-pnc-bank

Fox News Airs Live Suicide of Carjacker [Video]

                                  Warning: The video below is graphic and disturbing.

As the man puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger, you can hear someone in the control room yell “Oh! Whoa!” before the screen cuts back to Mr. Smith, screaming to the crew, “Get off it! Get off it! GET OFF IT!!” The segment then cut to commercial.

After coming back from break, Mr. Smith apologized to viewers, saying that even though there was a five-second delay, they weren’t able to cut away in time from the horrific scene. “We really messed up,” Mr. Smith said. “And we are all very sorry.”

Fox News Showed a Suicide

YouTube A screen shot of Fox News’s coverage of a car chase that ended in an apparent suicide, posted to YouTube by BuzzFeed.

6:16 p.m. | Updated The Fox News Channel, in the course of  following a car chase live in Arizona, on Friday broadcast the suicide of  the man who was being pursued by the authorities.
The network anchor at the time, Shepard Smith, apologized to viewers after returning from a sudden commercial break. “That won’t happen again on my watch, and I’m sorry,” Mr. Smith said, clearly shaken by the circumstances.
The broadcast immediately spurred scrutiny about the network’s tendency to take car chases live during its daytime newscasts. Mr. Smith, in particular, has developed a reputation for his colorful play-by-play coverage of such scenes.
Mr. Smith had been following the chase, then switched to other news, including the violence in Syria, before returning to Arizona as the man being pursued pulled his car over. “Looks like he’s a little disoriented or something,” Mr. Smith said as the man ran down a path.
The Associated Press reported that the chase may have been provoked by a carjacking, adding that the police said the man was found dead at the scene.
The man left the car, then stepped a few feet off the path into a grassy area and pulled a gun out of his right pocket. He pulled the trigger and fell face-first to the ground before Fox cut to Mr. Smith, who was leaning forward and saying to his producers, “Get off, get off, get off, get off it.” He raised his voice and said again: “Get off it. Get off it.”
A Fox spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the network would continue to show such chases.
Car chases, captured by local news helicopters in some major cities, are frequently shown on a 5- to 10-second delay because of the possibility of violence. Fox and, to a lesser extent, several other national cable news networks, like HLN and MSNBC, sometimes pick up the local feeds, especially on relatively slow news days.
Mr. Smith said on the air afterward: “When the guy pulled over and got out of the vehicle, we went on delay. So that’s why I didn’t talk for about 10 seconds. We created a five-second delay, as if you were to bleep back your DVR five seconds. That’s what we did with the picture we were showing you, so we would see in the studio what was happening five seconds before you did, so that if anything went horribly wrong, we’d be able to cut away from it without subjecting you to it.”
But the Fox control room did not cut away in time. Then, Mr. Smith realized, it was too late.
He leaned back in his chair, disgusted, and the network cut to a commercial break.
After the break, Mr. Smith apologized at length. “We really messed up,” he said. “And we’re all very sorry. That didn’t belong on TV.”
The case called to mind a televised suicide in Los Angeles in 1998, when a man unfurled a banner that read “HMO’s are in it for the money. Live free, love safe or die,” then set his truck on fire and shot himself with a shotgun. The scene was broadcast live by several Los Angeles television stations, including two that had been running children’s programming beforehand. One of the stations’ feeds was repeated by the cable news channel MSNBC.
After that incident, some local stations apologized, put time delays on future live coverage and instructed aerial cameramen during to send back wide shots rather than close-ups during chases.

Ann Romney worries about Mitt’s ‘mental well-being’ if he wins election

Ann Romney, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, told a Nevada television station her main concern if her husband wins the upcoming election would be over his state of mind.

“I think my biggest concern, obviously, would just be for his mental well-being,” she told KTVN-TV Thursday. “I have all the confidence in the world in his ability, in his decisiveness and his leadership skills, in his understanding of the economy, in his understanding of what’s missing right now in the economy – you know, pieces that are missing to get this jump-started. So for me I think it would just be the emotional part of it.”

Romney was in Reno Thursday campaigning on behalf of her husband, the former governor of Massachusetts, and addressing accusations that he has dismissed middle-class Americans.

“Mitt is a person who cares,” she said. “That’s why we are running, because we care … he does not fail. As president of the United States, he will not fail.”

She also told the stations all Americans should be concerned about the prospect of Obama being re-elected.

“This economy has been under his control for the last four years, and we have seen no jobs,” Romney said. “It’s been a jobless recovery.”

Revised data by the U.S. Labor Department released Thursday suggests that 125,000 additional non-farm payroll jobs have been created since Obama took office in January 2009.

Romney’s interview with KTVN begins around the 6:30 mark of the station’s report, aired Thursday evening, and can be seen below.

Raw Story (http://s.tt/1oFik)

Top 10 Dumbest Mitt Romney Quotes So Far

1. "Corporations are people, my friend… of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings, my friend." —Mitt Romney to a heckler at the Iowa State Fair who suggested that taxes should be raised on corporations as part of balancing the budget (August 2011)

2. "When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no -- and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem." –Mitt Romney, suggesting it would be a good idea to crack a window at 35,000 feet, Beverly Hills fundraiser, Sept. 22, 2012

3. "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." –Mitt Romney, using an unfortunate choice of words while advocating for consumer choice in health insurance plans (January 2012)

4. "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there." —Mitt Romney (January 2012)

5. "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. ... My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." -Mitt Romney, in leaked comments from a fundraiser in May 2012

6. "My dad, as you probably know, was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico... and had he been born of, uh, Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot at winning this. But he was unfortunately born to Americans living in Mexico. He lived there for a number of years. I mean, I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino." -Mitt Romney, in leaked comments from a Florida fundraiser, May 17 2012

7. "It's hard to know just how well [the 2012 London Olympics] will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting. The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging." –Mitt Romney, insulting Britain on the eve of the Olympics by suggesting the country is not ready, NBC News interview, July 25, 2012

8. "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised." —Mitt Romney, speaking about his Michigan roots during a rally in Commerce, Michigan, Aug. 24, 2012

9. "I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed." —Mitt Romney, speaking in 2011 to unemployed people in Florida. Romney's net worth is over $200 million.

10. "I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in. That's the America I love." –Mitt Romney (January 2012)

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