Obama regains his footing in feisty second debate
Romney’s best moments — Targeting the President’s promises

Washigton, October 17
President Barack Obama put his re-election bid back on firm footing on Tuesday night with a strong debate performance that is likely to thrill his Democratic supporters and earn him a second look from the few voters who remain undecided.

With the November 6 election three weeks away, Obama's second of three debates with Republican rival Mitt Romney represented one of the final chances to make an impression with voters. Obama made the most of it with a focused, aggressive effort.

It was a sharp departure from his listless first debate two weeks ago, when Romney's dominant performance ignited a resurgence by the Republican that left the race virtually even heading into Tuesday's matchup.

"Game on - he's back," Carleton College political science professor Steven Schier said of the President. Obama made sure to work in all of the attack lines he had neglected in the October 3 debate.

He hammered Romney for the wealthy Republican's low personal income tax rate and Romney's now-infamous dismissal of "47 per cent" of the electorate, as seen in a secretly recorded video of the former Massachusetts governor.

Obama also crisply outlined the accomplishments of his first term in office - from saving the auto industry to killing Osama bin Laden - and framed his answer on a question about women's rights in movingly personal terms.

Romney had his moments as well, especially when describing promises Obama had made and not kept. Romney avoided the type of rout that Obama suffered in the October 3 debate, but the night belonged to the President, analysts said.

"I'd say it's a clear win for Obama," said Boston University communications professor Tobe Berkovitz. "Certainly it would be difficult for anyone to say Romney won this debate." Flash polls taken after the debate pointed to an Obama win. Meanwhile, Obama's odds for re-election on the Intrade prediction market climbed 1.6 percentage points, to 63.6 per cent.

Debates have rarely affected the outcome of US presidential elections, but this year may prove an exception.

Romney silenced critics in his own party and reversed a month of missteps with a strong performance in the first debate. A week later he had wiped out Obama's lead in opinion polls.

That "bounce" for Romney has slipped in recent days, according to Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls. Obama led Romney by 3 percentage points in the daily Reuters/Ipsos poll on Tuesday.

"This will give the president a bit of a bounce and a little bit of an edge, but it's going to be quite close right down to the wire," said Notre Dame University political science professor Michael Desch. The final presidential debate, scheduled for Monday in Boca Raton, Florida, probably will matter less. — Reuters

UK’s Mantel scripts history with her second Booker 

London, October 17
Hilary Mantel wrote herself into history books on Tuesday, becoming the first woman and first Briton to win the coveted Man Booker prize for fiction twice with "Bring Up the Bodies", the sequel to her acclaimed "Wolf Hall".

Author Hilary Mantel poses with her book ‘Bring up the Bodies’ in London. — Reuters

Two men had previously "done the double" — J.M. Coetzee who was born in South Africa and Australia's Peter Carey. Chair of judges Peter Stothard described Mantel as the "greatest modern English prose writer" and told reporters she had rewritten the art of historical fiction.

Wolf Hall, her re-imagining of the rise of blacksmith's son Thomas Cromwell to the pinnacle of power in King Henry VIII's court, won the £50,000 pound prize in 2009.

Bring Up the Bodies, published by HarperCollins imprint Fourth Estate, picks up the action in 1535 with Anne Boleyn's spectacular fall from grace and execution the following year.

"Well, I don't know, you wait 20 years for a Booker prize and two come among at once," Mantel joked as she accepted her award in the medieval splendour of the Guildhall banqueting hall in central London.

There could yet be a third Booker prize for Mantel. The final part of her epic trilogy, called "The Mirror and the Light", is expected to hit shelves in 2015.

"I have to go away and write the third part of the trilogy. I assure you I have no expectation that I will be standing here (again)," she told an audience of fellow nominees, publishing executives and London's literati.

Stothard, who is editor of the Times Literary Supplement, likened the character of Cromwell to Don Corleone of the famous "Godfather" film series.

Asked in 2009 what she would spend her prize money on, Mantel replied: "Sex and drugs and rock and roll." Asked the same question in 2012, she joked: "Rehab," before adding: "I'm afraid the answer will be much duller this year. My pension, probably."

Mantel, now 60, came to literary and commercial fame relatively late in her career, but said she never felt in competition with the likes of Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. She also played down some of the acclaim she had won since her first Booker triumph.

Also on the shortlist this year, and joint favourite, was Will Self's "Umbrella", a modernist tale about Audrey Death, a woman who falls into a coma at the end of World War One only to be awoken decades later when Dr. Zack Busner discovers a cure.

Up against the literary "establishment" were two first-time novelists - Alison Moore for "The Lighthouse" and Indian writer and poet Jeet Thayil for "Narcopolis". Malaysia's Tan Twan Eng made it to the Booker longlist with his first novel "The Gift of Rain" in 2007 and was shortlisted in 2012 for "The Garden of Evening Mists". — Reuters

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Mao ordered 1962 war to regain CPC control: Chinese strategist
Beijing: China's late strongman Mao Zedong had launched the 1962 war with India to regain control of the ruling Communist Party after the debacle of his 'Great Leap Forward' movement in which millions had perished. This was stated by top Chinese strategist Wang Jisi, adding a new dimension to the conflict ahead of the 50th anniversary of the war on Saturday. "The war was a tragedy. It was not necessary," Wang, Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University and member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said. — PTI

Thousands of mourners gather at the gates of the Royal Palace minutes after the coffin of ex-king Norodom Sihanouk arrived in Phnom Penh. — Reuters

Scotland Yard bans tattoos on officers
London: In a sweeping reform of its public image, Scotland Yard has banned recruits from having visible tattoos after complaints from crime victims that some of the force's young officers appeared "thuggish". Scotland Yard Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe said body art that can be seen by the public "damages the professional image" of the service. He also ordered a "tattoo amnesty" in which anyone who already has marks on their hands, neck or face must declare them within weeks or be sacked, the Daily Mail reported. — PTI

CIA operative killed in Afghanistan
New York: Washington: A senior US defence official says an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency was among those killed in a suicide bombing at an Afghan intelligence office the latest so-called "insider attack" in the war. The attack on Saturday in Kandahar province killed four Afghan intelligence officials and two US intelligence officers. One of the Americans has been identified as a female solider 24-year-old Brittany B Gordon, assigned to a military intelligence company from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. — PTI

Moon rocks fetch $330,000 at auction
New York: A pair of lunar rocks, which originated on far side of the Moon, has sold for a whopping $330,000 at a meteorite auction in New York. The auction is estimated to have netted more than $1 million from the sale of meteorites. The Moon slabs, each weighing around 907 grams, were the most expensive items sold at the auction, which was conducted by Heritage Auctions and featured more than 125 other pieces from around the solar system, the 'New York Daily News' reported. — PTI