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President class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Barack Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan on Sunday to visit U.S. forces who are wrapping up a 13-year mission and signaled that he intends to keep a small number of troops in the country for training and counter-terrorism operations. Cheers erupted among the hundreds of U.S. troops gathered in a Bagram hangar when Obama said that at the end of this year, "America's war in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Afghanistan will come to a responsible end." With Afghanistan immersed in a runoff election to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai, Obama did not meet Afghan government officials nor travel to the capital Kabul. Karzai has long been out of favor with Washington over his refusal to sign a bilateral security agreement to allow U.S. troops to stay beyond 2014.   true       Obama's fourth visit to Afghanistan came as he faces criticism at home over a foreign policy often derided as too pass

A 22-year-old man who killed six people before taking his own life in a rampage through a California college town said in a chilling manifesto that police who knocked on his door last month to check on his welfare nearly foiled his plot. Elliot Rodger, the son of a Hollywood director, stabbed three people to death in his apartment before gunning down three more victims on Friday night in the town of Isla Vista near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). Rodger, who posted a threatening video railing against women online shortly before his rampage, stalked Isla Vista in his car and on foot, firing on bystanders in a killing spree that ended when he killed himself after a shootout with sheriff's deputies, police said.   true       But less than a month before his attacks, after he had planned the killings and obtained the guns he would use, the community college student opened his door to a knock to find about seven officers looking for him. "I

Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire chocolate manufacturer, claimed the Ukrainian presidency with an emphatic election victory on Sunday, taking on a fraught mission to quell pro-Russian rebels and steer his fragile nation closer to the West. A veteran survivor of Ukraine's feuding political class who threw his weight and money behind the revolt that brought down his Moscow-backed predecessor three months ago, the burly 48-year-old won 55 percent in exit polls on a first-round ballot marred by the reality that millions were unable to vote in the troubled eastern regions. Results will not be announced until Monday but runner-up Yulia Tymoshenko, on 13 percent, made clear she would concede, sparing the country a tense three weeks until a runoff round.   true       Poroshenko, known as the "Chocolate King", has no time to lose to make good on pledges to end "war" with separatists in the Russian-speaking east, negotiate a stable new relationship with Moscow and res

Hedge fund 400 Capital returned 3.26 percent during the first three months of 2014, beating its benchmarks as bets on residential mortgage backed securities paid off. _0"> The firm, founded five years ago and run by Chris Hentemann, told clients in its first quarter letter seen by Reuters, "The overweighting to RMBS (residential mortgage-backed securities) drove absolute returns for the fund in 1Q14." The fund's gains beat the HFRI fund weighted composite index' 1.1 percent return as well as the Barclay's U.S. Aggregate return of 1.84 percent. Last year the fund returned 15.23 percent and its average annual return is 20.43 percent. The fund still has the bulk of its assets, 68.13 percent, in residential loans, but the exposure has been reduced some since the end of last year when the fund had 72.82 percent of its assets in RMBS.   true       Improving fundamentals, including fewer first time defaults and fewer nonperforming loans, have kept the secto

Italian police have arrested a former university lecturer and ex-hedge fund manager who was fined 3 million pounds ($5.1 million) in 2012 for concealing massive losses to investors, Milan prosecutors said on Wednesday. _0"> In a statement, prosecutors said they had also issued arrest warrants for 14 associates of Alberto Micalizzi, who has been dubbed by the Italian press as the Italian equivalent to U.S. fraudster Bernie Madoff. In a 168-page arrest warrant seen by Reuters, prosecutors allege that Micalizzi was the head of two parallel criminal rings that carried out sophisticated fraud involving forgery of financial documents against a range of companies.   true       The companies targeted by Micalizzi and his network include gas operator Snam, Pirelli, JP Morgan, UBI Banca and UBS Monaco. Fraudulent acts continued well after Britain's Financial Services Authority banned Micalizzi in May 2012 saying he was not "fit and proper" to perform any role in regul

Silent Circle, a company that sells mobile phones and apps designed to thwart government surveillance, said on Wednesday it has raised $30 million in financing in a round led by Ross Perot Jr. and private investment fund Cain Capital LLC. _0"> The company sells apps for Apple Inc's iOS and devices using class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Google Inc's Android operating systems that encrypt phone calls and texts. It also offers secure video conferencing for machines running class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Microsoft Corp's Windows class="mandelbrot_refrag"> software . In February it launched "Blackphone," a mobile phone loaded with a customized version of the Android operating system known as PrivateOS and loaded with a suite of security and privacy apps.   true       The company also said on Wednesday that it added Perot and Sir Peter Bonfield, the former chief executive and chairman of British Telecom, to its advisory boa

An organization that certifies and develops standards for financial planners is conducting spot checks of advisers it lists on its websites to make sure they are not misidentifying themselves as "fee only." The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (CFP Board), in a notice sent to its 70,000 planners on Wednesday, said it would review sources of compensation for advisers who market themselves as "fee only." Advisers who are "fee only" charge customers for financial planning services and are able to market themselves as impartial in the recommendations they make to customers. Other advisers make money through commissions charged on sales and performance of financial products and investments.   true       The CFP Board will compare compensation that advisers enter on its websites to public sources such as regulatory filings and the firms' own web pages, it said. Not all advisers who use the "fee only" label will be subject to the