Exclusive: Schulze’s Best Buy bid seen in December, below $8 billion range

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An eventual bid for Best Buy Co Inc by founder Richard Schulze could come below his initial proposal of around $ 8 billion and is now not expected to be made before December, sources familiar with the matter said, in a new twist to the months-long saga at the struggling electronics retailer.

Schulze has done most of his due diligence on Best Buy and has formed a business plan to turn around the world’s largest consumer electronics chain, with his efforts now focused on securing financing commitments, the sources said.

At least three private equity firms – Apollo Global Management LLC, TPG Capital LP and Leonard Green & Partners LP – are considering joining Schulze in the bid, the sources said. Cerberus Capital Management LP, which was among the buyout firms that weighed joining the bidding group, is no longer working on the deal, one of the four sources said.

The sources declined to be identified because the information is not public.

Schulze said in August he could buy Best Buy for $ 24 to $ 26 per share, valuing the deal between $ 8.16 billion and $ 8.84 billion and if debt is included, as much as $ 10.9 billion.

But Best Buy’s shares have since fallen 24 percent to trade around $ 15.

While a final decision on the offer price has not been made, the drop in shares has raised the likelihood that Schulze’s bid could be below $ 24 per share, the sources said.

Schulze is expected to take a 30-day extension to mid-December for submitting a final proposal to Best Buy’s board, they said.

The consortium’s efforts to clinch equity and debt commitments for what could be one of the largest leveraged buyouts of the year were delayed by superstorm Sandy which disrupted operations at several major Wall Street banks.

An extension will also give Schulze and the buyout firms a chance to see how Best Buy is performing in the crucial Christmas holiday season, the sources said.

Best Buy and Apollo declined to comment. The other private equity firms could not be reached for comment.

Best Buy has seen its fortunes falter over the years, as consumers increasingly use its big box stores as showrooms for products they end up buying online at Amazon and other websites. To add to its troubles, the company forced out Schulze’s protegy Brian Dunn as CEO earlier this year amid allegations the executive was having an inappropriate relationship with a female employee.

That scandal also led to the ouster of Schulze, who founded the company in 1966, from the board, and to Best Buy hiring turnaround expert Hubert Joly as its CEO to come up with its own restructuring plan.

In October, the retailer, which has suspended its profit forecasts and share buybacks for the rest of the year, warned that earnings and same-store sales would fall in the third quarter. Joly plans to meet investors in New York on Tuesday to unveil his turnaround plan.

One analyst has said that Best Buy’s declining fortunes could make a buyout more attractive for some investors.

“We are starting to believe that current shareholders may be more receptive to Schulze’s previously disclosed offer of $ 24-$ 26 per share than we previously believed,” Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy said late last month.

There are no guarantees, however, that Schulze will ultimately be able to table an offer or that his eventual bid will be as attractive to shareholders.

Schulze has said he plans to fund any deal through a combination of private equity and debt financing, as well as the reinvestment of some of his own equity in the company.

(Reporting by Soyoung Kim, Olivia Oran and Dhanya Skariachan, Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Edwina Gibbs)

(This story was fixed to correct syntax in headline)

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Merkel says Germany, Britain must work together on EU

LONDON (Reuters) – Germany and Britain must cooperate to work round their differences on the European Union‘s long-term spending plans, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.

“Despite differences that we have it is very important for me that the UK and Germany work together,” Merkel said through a translator before a meeting in London with Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss the EU‘s 2014-2020 budget.

“We always have to do something that will stand up to public opinion back home. Not all of the expenditure that has been earmarked has been used with great efficiency … We need to address that,” she said.

EU leaders meet in Brussels on November 22-23 to try to secure a seven-year budget for the 27-nation bloc amid signs of differences of opinion over what action should be taken.

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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RIM’s BlackBerry 10 platform wins coveted U.S. security clearance

TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd said on Thursday it has won a much-coveted U.S. government security clearance for its yet-to-be launched platform for BlackBerry 10 devices that are expected to hit store shelves in the first quarter of 2013.

The company said its BlackBerry 10 platform has received the FIPS 140-2 certification, which would allow government agencies to deploy the devices, along with the new enterprise management platform to run the devices, as soon as the new smartphones are launched.

RIM, a one-time pioneer in the smartphone industry, has seen its fortunes fade in recent years as nimbler rivals such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co have taken the game away from RIM with faster and snazzier devices. RIM’s fate now depends almost entirely on the long-awaited line of so-called BB 10 devices.

Last month, RIM said it had begun carrier tests on the new line of devices, which the company hopes will help it regain some of the market share it has ceded to the likes of Apple’s iPhone and a slew of other devices that run on Google Inc’s Android operating system.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said this is the first time BlackBerry products have been FIPS certified ahead of launch.

“Achieving FIPS certification for an entirely new platform in a very short period of time, and before launch, is quite remarkable,” RIM’s head of security certifications, David MacFarlane, said in a statement.

FIPS certification, which is given by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is one of the minimum criteria that is required for products used by U.S. government agencies and regulated industries that collect, store, transfer, share and disseminate sensitive information.

The stamp of approval gives confidence to security-conscious organizations – including some of RIM’s top clients like U.S. and Canadian government agencies – that the data stored on smartphones running BlackBerry 10 can be properly secured and encrypted.

RIM promises that BlackBerry 10 will deliver a better user experience, along with the ability to separately manage both one’s corporate and personal data on the same device.

(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

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Mom of “Modern Family” actress denies abuse claims

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The mother of “Modern Family” star Ariel Winter on Wednesday denied that she abused her daughter after a judge temporarily placed the 14-year-old actress in her sister’s care.

“It’s all untrue, it’s all untrue,” Chris Workman, Winter’s mother, told People magazine. “I have my doctor’s letter that my daughter’s never been abused.”

According to court papers, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge last month put Winter, who plays the precocious teenager Alex Dunphy on the Emmy-winning TV comedy, under the temporary guardianship of her older sister, Shanelle Gray.

Celebrity website TMZ.com said Winter’s mother was alleged to have slapped and emotionally abused the teen, and had been ordered to stay away from her. Ariel has left her mother’s home, TMZ said.

Gray will retain guardianship of Winter at least until a November 20 hearing, a judge said.

Winter’s publicist did not return calls for comment on Wednesday.

“Modern Family” portrays the lives of three zany families and has won three consecutive Emmy award as American television’s best comedy series.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Nor’easter Threatens Sandy Victims

As those facing the devastation left in the wake of Sandy continue to seek shelter, meteorologists point to a new threat — a nor’easter heading for devastated areas.

The storm could pack 50-mile-per-hour gusts in coastal areas, 1 to 3 inches of rain from New York to Boston and a continuation of the frigid temperatures that followed last week’s superstorm.

It’s a situation that has some doctors worried that many of those affected by Sandy could face a life-threatening situation in the form of hypothermia.

“Many left without power and heat will be at risk of hypothermia as the Nor’easter is scheduled to hit the New York City and New Jersey area,” said Dr. Sharon Horesh Bergquist, assistant professor of medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

The strong wind and rain is expected to hit the New Jersey and New York coast early Wednesday morning. Worse, some models are predicting a 40-50 percent chance of snow in the metro New York area by Wednesday night, and winds up to 40 miles per hour are expected to continue into Thursday.

The Red Cross is increasing efforts in New York, offering shelter to roughly 9,000 people and handing out an additional 80,000 blankets Monday night — a clear indication of where the organization’s concerns lie when it comes to those without heat or shelter.

“Certainly one of our biggest concerns is the cold, because you have people without power,” said Red Cross spokeswoman Melanie Pipkin. “We’re ramping up our efforts so these people have even more blankets, more hand warmers. We really want to make sure everyone stays warm.”

Hypothermia occurs when the body’s temperature falls below 95 degrees Fahrenheit. This puts people at risk to develop serious lung, heart, or nervous system problems, sometimes leading to death.

Symptoms of hypothermia include appearing confused or intoxicated or shivering, although shivering actually stops at severely cold body temperatures.

“As people get colder, they actually stop shivering, losing their ability to retain any heat,” said Dr. Darria Gillespie, emergency physician at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “They may also almost appear intoxicated, with confusion, clumsiness, slurred speech, and fatigue.”

In the most serious of cases, the potential complications from hypothermia can be severe, even fatal.

“The complications can range from minor cold related illness to death from prolonged exposure or complications from prolonged exposure,” said Dr. Henderson McGinnis, emergency physician at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C.

The very young and very old may be at the highest risk.

“The elderly often have difficulty with thermoregulation and infants have a relatively larger body surface area thus are at increase heat loss risk,” said Dr. Christopher Russi, emergency physician at the Mayo Clinic.

As for preventative measures, seeking shelter and warm clothes is the overwhelmingly popular recommendation.

“Those without heat need to find a place with it as the temperatures fall these next few nights, dressing in layers and wearing a hat and avoiding alcohol are key factors to prevent it as well,” said Dr. Robert McNamara, chair of emergency medicine at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

The Red Cross’ Pipkin says it is “hard to speculate” as to what the worst case scenario would be in terms of the nor’easter’s impact on those affected by Sandy. But she says that it would be unwise to underestimate the approaching storm.

“We always try to prepare for the worst,” she said.

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China to deepen economic reforms

8 November 2012 Last updated at 01:18 ET

China’s President Hu Jintao has said the country will deepen its economic reforms and boost domestic demand to spur a new wave of growth.

Opening the Communist Party congress, Mr Hu added that China needed to work towards a more “market-based” exchange rate for the yuan.

China has been trying to boost domestic consumption to offset a decline in exports.

The congress comes as China’s economic growth rate has hit a three-year low.

“We should step up efforts to transform to a new growth model and work hard to improve the quality and efficiency of the economy,” Mr Hu said.

“We will continue to deepen our economic system reform and stick to the policy of expanding domestic demand.”

Financial reforms

China has been introducing reforms in its tightly controlled financial sector, which many analysts say is the key to unlocking future growth.

Continue reading the main story

One has to wait until the new leaders take charge and start to formulate their policies and communicate them to domestic and international marke”

End Quote Tony Nash IHS Global Insight

In June this year China’s central bank gave the country’s lenders flexibility to decide the interest rates they want to offer to consumers, within a stipulated range.

Beijing also widened the range in which the yuan is allowed to trade against the US dollar to 1.0% on either side of a daily rate set by the central bank. The previous limit was 0.5%.

Meanwhile, China’s securities regulator has eased entry rules for foreign investors under its Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) programme.

It allowed the QFII’s to hold more shares in the firms listed in China and also to invest in the country’s interbank bond market.

On Wednesday, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported that the regulator was considering speeding up QFII approvals to attract more long-term overseas investment.

It said the regulator had granted 57 new QFII licences this year.

Analysts said that it was not clear at this stage what further reforms Beijing may introduce in the sector.

“Lots has been talked about financial reforms in China over the past decade,” Tony Nash, managing director of IHS Global Insight told the BBC.

“But one has to wait until the new leaders take charge and start to formulate their policies and communicate them to domestic and international market.”

Inclusive growth

One of the areas of concern in China has been the gap between the rich and the poor.

In China’s richest places, such as Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing, average incomes are just over $ 10,000 (£6,250) a year, comparable with some European countries, whereas in relatively poor areas such as Guizhou the average income is just over $ 2,000, more in line with countries such as Sudan.

There have been calls for China to ensure that the gap is reduced and that its economic growth is more inclusive.

Mr Hu said that to make China’s development, “much more balanced, coordinated and sustainable, we should double its 2010 gross domestic product and per capita income for both urban and rural residents [by 2020]“.

He added that to achieve that target China needs to: “increase investment at a proper pace and expand the domestic market”.

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Officials: New mass graves found in Ivory Coast

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — Up to 10 new mass graves have been discovered near the site of a July attack on a camp for displaced people, officials said Tuesday, amid allegations that initial casualty totals were downplayed to mask killings carried out by the national army.

Rights groups claim summary executions were carried out by the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast, known by its French acronym of FRCI. Last month, officials found six bodies in a well close to the former campsite in the western town of Duekoue.

Government, army and U.N. officials toured 10 more graves in the same area on Saturday, said Paul Mondouho, vice-mayor of Duekoue. He said the graves had first been identified by civilians, and that officials did not know the number of bodies they contained because they had not yet been properly exhumed.

“People were suspecting the presence of bodies in these graves because of the smell coming out of them and because of the shoes we saw nearby,” Mondouho said.

Prosecutor Noel Dje Enrike Yahau, who is based in the commercial capital of Abidjan, confirmed that multiple new graves had been discovered but could not provide details. U.N. officials and the local prosecutor in charge of investigating the suspected killings could not be reached Tuesday.

U.N. spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg confirmed that U.N. forces helped Ivorian authorities secure a perimeter around 10 wells “similar to the one in which six bodies were found,” and that “some of those wells are suspected mass graves.”

She stressed that Ivorian authorities were leading the investigation but that the U.N. was able to provide assistance.

Army spokesmen could not be reached Tuesday. The Justice Ministry has previously vowed to investigate the discovery of the initial grave.

On the morning of July 20, a mob descended on the U.N.-guarded Nahibly camp, which housed 4,500 people displaced by violence in Ivory Coast, burning most of the camp to the ground. Officials said at the time that six people were killed.

The attack was prompted by the shooting deaths of four men and one woman on the night of July 19, according to local officials and residents. In response a mob of some 300 people overran the camp on the morning of July 20 after the perpetrators of the shootings reportedly fled there.

The victims in the July 19 attack lived in a district dominated by the Malinke ethnic group, which largely supported President Alassane Ouattara in the disputed November 2010 election. The camp primarily housed members of the Guere ethnic group, which largely supported former President Laurent Gbagbo.

Gbagbo’s refusal to cede office despite losing the election to Ouattara sparked months of violence that claimed at least 3,000 lives.

Albert Koenders, the top U.N. envoy to Ivory Coast, said one week after the attack that U.N. security forces had been inside and outside the camp at the time but that no Ivorian security forces were present. He said the U.N. forces decided not to fire at a large group of people that were attacking the camp in order to avoid “a massacre.”

Several witnesses have said soldiers and traditional hunters, known as dozos, participated in the attack on the camp. Both military and dozo leaders have denied the claims, saying they had tried to protect the camp.

In a statement released Friday, the International Federation for Human Rights, known by its French acronym of FIDH, said it had information — including the preliminary results of autopsies — confirming that the six bodies found in October were men who had been summarily executed by the army.

“The disappearance of dozens of displaced persons after the attack, as well as confirmation of cases of summary and extra-judicial executions, suggest a much higher victim rate than the official figures report,” said the organization, which counts Ivorian civil society groups among its members.

Duekoue was one of the hardest-hit towns during the post-election violence. The U.N. has established that at least 505 people were killed in and around the town, including during a notorious March 2011 massacre that claimed hundreds of lives and was allegedly carried out by fighters loyal to Ouattara.

Duekoue residents belonging to ethnic groups that supported Gbagbo have long complained about abuses carried out by the FRCI, with some pointing to the direct involvement of the local commander, Kone Daouda. FIDH said in its statement that Daouda had been transferred following the discovery of the grave in October, and called for him to be interrogated over the matter.

The group also said two FRCI members were being “actively sought” after failing to return to their barracks on Oct. 16, noting that they are believed to have fled to neighboring Burkina Faso.

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Amid catcalls, Silicon Valley gets its reality TV treatment

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – They have been panned by television critics and disavowed by their own industry. Even for the entrepreneurs-cum-co-stars of Bravo TV‘s “Start-ups: Silicon Valley,” it is getting hard to put on a brave face.

“It’s been a nightmare,” confessed Sarah Austin, one of the series’ six pretty twentysomethings who code, party and hustle their way to fame and riches – or at least try to – in San Francisco‘s bubbly tech fishbowl.

“I’ve had a lot of figures in Silicon Valley tell me that it was a mistake,” Austin said. “I think sometimes that it wasn’t worth it.”

That is a little surprising, coming from an Internet personality (and self-described angel investor) whose first burst of notoriety came from uploading videos of herself crashing tech parties in 2006.

But her apprehension speaks to the scorn that has piled up like rush-hour traffic on Highway 101 for the eight-episode series.

Since Bravo announced the show in April, it has been greeted with horrified tweets and Facebook updates by geeks who feared the show would portray the Valley about as faithfully as “Jersey Shore” rendered the people of New Jersey. Tech blogger Sarah Lacy seemed to sum up the Valley’s reaction with a plaintive post titled, “Randi Zuckerberg: How Could You Do This to Real Entrepreneurs?”

But with California’s youth-obsessed startup economy booming – and seeping into popular culture (think “The Social Network”) – a Valley reality show seemed like a no-brainer for Bravo. Once dedicated to arts programming, the NBCUniversal-owned cable channel is now known for series such as “Real Houswives of New Jersey” and “Top Chef” – and the “Bravo-lebrities” its shows have spawned.

Produced by Randi Zuckerberg, sister of the Facebook Inc founder, the show purports to follow six young entrepreneurs in their habitat as they write code, party and try to get venture capital funding.

‘BROGRAMMERS’ AND BLONDES

The plotline revolves around Ben and Hermione Way, a brother-and-sister duo from London who are short on original startup ideas but long on cheerfulness and good looks.

There’s also Dwight Crow, a bundle of testosterone and the quintessential “brogrammer”; Austin, who is slotted halfheartedly into the blond vixen role; and David Murray, who ostensibly has coding chops and once worked at Google but just plays the typecasted gay guy trying to peddle a weight-loss app.

In the first episode, it is clear that what little hammed-up tension there is turns on the Hermione Way-Sarah Austin axis. Austin once had a fling with Ben Way, an incident his sister describes several times as “unprofessional.”

The show’s producers tap liberally into the overgrown-child-as-entrepreneur motif that might ring a bit too familiar to Valley denizens.

Crow is seen coding for long hours in his disheveled man-cave and downing liquor shots when he is let loose at night. The cast is seen heading to a crowded toga party, a familiar sight for, say, Facebook employees, who celebrated with a similar event in 2008.

Then there is the pitch meeting with angel investor Dave McClure, who met Hermione Way when he found her hungover and asleep under his conference table.

McClure gamely listens to a pitch from the Ways and promptly rejects them – but not before dispensing a pearl of startup-pitching wisdom that he likely conceived long before the cameras arrived: “You don’t need to sweep me off my feet. You just need to be a good kisser.”

Critics say they fear the show will makes startup life seem easy and glamorous while overlooking the endless grind and frequent failures that come before the success.

“The media wants to sell this story that you can come here, spend three days coding in your basement and then succeed overnight, but we learned the hard way it’s not like that at all,” said Jonathan Chin, the founder of Gothamlist, an e-commerce site in San Francisco that has yet to take off.

Still, he acknowledged, the Bravo program is the talk of the town. “Everybody’s been talking about it, tweeting, sending Facebook messages.”

Zuckerberg, who is launching her own media company, Zuckerberg Media, this week, said the show accurately captures the experiences of her cast. She said she would continue to roll out “nonfiction” TV productions in the Bay Area.

Zuckerberg sidestepped a question about what her friends and family thought of the show, saying only that no one close to her, including her husband or her brother Mark, have seen it yet.

“It’s like doing a startup,” she said. “At some point you just have to open up the alpha and let people see it.”

‘IT’S TV’

At the show’s premiere party on Sunday night in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, there were few Valley luminaries to be seen but plenty of young men in slim-cut suits and designer stubble and women in gauzy gowns and stilettos. They noshed on pizzas served on vinyl records and crispy cones of kampachi tartare that came perched in the holes of DVD discs – along with slabs of sushi served on iPads, an idea conceived by Zuckerberg‘s production team, said caterer Joshua Charles.

“The party seemed reminiscent of 1999,” said Brooke Hammerling, a veteran tech industry public-relations executive who is based in New York. “None of those on the program, including Randi, were in the tech world in the first generation of the dot-com world, when we saw the lack of awareness of what was going on around us.”

Hammerling feared the women in the show would be portrayed as stereotypes, more concerned about fashion and socializing than the business of technology.

But Hermione Way made no apologies on Sunday night as she swept into the party clad in a glittery gold dress.

“It’s TV. People want to look at glamorous people, so it was a balance of finding the tech and being entertaining enough to look at,” Way told Reuters.

“I’m a 27-year-old single girl,” she added. “Do I like to party? Yeah. Do I like to look really f-ing hot? Yeah.”

Way said she was focused on bringing her fitness app and the hardware accessory to market.

And after that?

“World domination,” she replied without skipping a beat.

That, or 15 minutes of “Bravo-lebrity,” at least.

(Reporting By Gerry Shih. Editing by Jonathan Weber and Douglas Royalty)

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Study: Looking old may be a sign of heart risks

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Want a clue to your risk of heart disease? Look in the mirror. People who look old — with receding hairlines, bald heads, creases near their ear lobes or bumpy deposits on their eyelids — have a greater chance of developing of heart disease than younger-looking people the same age do, new research suggests.

Doctors say the study highlights the difference between biological and chronological age.

“Looking old for your age marks poor cardiovascular health,” said Dr. Anne Tybjaerg-Hansen of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

She led the study and gave results Tuesday at an American Heart Association conference in Los Angeles.

A small consolation: Wrinkles elsewhere on the face and gray hair seemed just ordinary consequences of aging and did not correlate with heart risks.

The research involved 11,000 Danish people and began in 1976. At the start, the participants were 40 and older. Researchers documented their appearance, tallying crow’s feet, wrinkles and other signs of age.

In the next 35 years, 3,400 participants developed heart disease (clogged arteries) and 1,700 suffered a heart attack.

The risk of these problems increased with each additional sign of aging present at the start of the study. This was true at all ages and among men and women, even after taking into account other factors such as family history of heart disease.

Those with three to four of these aging signs — receding hairline at the temples, baldness at the crown of the head, earlobe creases or yellowish fatty deposits around the eyelids — had a 57 percent greater risk for heart attack and a 39 percent greater risk for heart disease compared to people with none of these signs.

Having yellowish eyelid bumps, which could be signs of cholesterol buildup, conferred the most risk, researchers found. Baldness in men has been tied to heart risk before, possibly related to testosterone levels. They could only guess why earlobe creases might raise risk.

Dr. Kathy Magliato, a heart surgeon at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., said doctors need to pay more attention to signs literally staring them in the face.

“We’re so rushed to put on a blood pressure cuff or put a stethoscope on the chest” that obvious, visible signs of risk are missed, she said.

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Online:

Heart Association: http://www.heart.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Obama wins second term, Romney concedes defeat

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama won a second term in the White House on Tuesday, overcoming deep doubts among voters about his handling of the U.S. economy to score a clear victory over Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Americans chose to stick with a divided government in Washington, by keeping the Democratic incumbent in the White House and leaving the U.S. Congress as it is, with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans keeping the House of Representatives.

Obama told thousands of supporters in Chicago who cheered his every word that “we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back” and that for America, the best is yet to come.

He vowed to listen to both sides of the political divide in the weeks ahead and said he would return to the White House more determined than ever to confront America’s challenges.

“Whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you. And you have made me a better president,” Obama said.

The nationwide popular vote remained extremely close with Obama taking about 50 percent to 49 percent for Romney after a campaign in which the candidates and their party allies spent a combined $ 2 billion.

Romney, the multimillionaire former private equity executive, came back from a series of campaign stumbles to make it close after besting the president in the first of three presidential debates.

The 65-year-old former Massachusetts governor conceded in a gracious speech delivered to disappointed supporters at the Boston convention center. He had called Obama to concede defeat after a brief controversy over whether the president had really won Ohio.

“This is a time of great challenge for our nation,” Romney told the crowd. “I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.”

He warned against partisan bickering and urged politicians on both sides to “put the people before the politics.”

Obama told his crowd that he hoped to sit down with Romney in the weeks ahead and examine ways to meet the challenges ahead.

The president Obama scored impressive victories in the crucial state of Ohio and heavily contested swing states of Virginia, Nevada, Iowa and Colorado. They carried the Democrat past the 270 electoral votes needed for victory in America’s state-by-state system of choosing a president, and left Romney’s senior advisers shell-shocked at the loss.

Obama, America’s first black president, won by convincing voters to stick with him as he tries to reignite strong economic growth and recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. An uneven recovery has been showing some signs of strength but the country’s 7.9 percent jobless rate remains stubbornly high.

Obama’s victory in the hotly contested swing state of Ohio – as projected by TV networks – was a major step in the fight for the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the White House and ended Romney’s hopes of pulling off a string of swing-state upsets.

Obama scored narrow wins in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire – all states that Romney had contested – while the only swing state captured by Romney was North Carolina, according to television network projections.

Romney initially delayed his concession as some Republicans questioned whether Obama had in fact won Ohio despite the decisions by election experts at all the major TV networks to declare it for the president.

The later addition of Colorado and Virginia to Obama’s tally – according to network projections – meant that even if the final result from Ohio were to be reversed, Romney still could not reach the needed number of electoral votes.

While Obama supporters in Chicago were ecstatic, Romney’s Boston event was grim as the news was announced on television screens there. A steady stream of people left the ballroom at the Boston convention center.

THE SAME PROBLEMS

At least 120 million American voters had been expected to cast votes in the race between the Democratic incumbent and Romney after a campaign that was focused on how to repair the ailing U.S. economy.

The same problems that dogged Obama in his first term are still there to confront him again.

He faces a difficult task of tackling $ 1 trillion annual deficits, reducing a $ 16 trillion national debt, overhauling expensive social programs and dealing with a gridlocked U.S. Congress that kept the same partisan makeup.

Obama’s Democrats held their Senate majority – taking hotly contested Republican-held seats in Massachusetts and Indiana – while the Republicans kept House control.

Democrat Claire McCaskill retained her U.S. Senate seat from Missouri, beating Republican congressman Todd Akin, who stirred controversy with his comment in August that women’s bodies could ward off pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.

Democrats gained a Senate seat in Indiana that had been in Republican hands for decades after Republican candidate Richard Mourdock called pregnancy from rape something that God intended. Democratic congressman Joe Donnelly won the race.

In another high-profile Senate race, Democrat Elizabeth Warren, a law professor who headed the watchdog panel that oversaw the government’s financial sector bailout, defeated incumbent Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown.

Former Maine Governor Angus King won a three-way contest for the Senate seat of retiring Republican Olympia Snowe. King ran as an independent, but he is expected to caucus with Democrats in what would amount to a Democratic pick-up.

Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson easily beat back a challenge from Republican congressman Connie Mack to win a third term, while Democratic congressman Chris Murphy beat Republican Linda McMahon, a businesswoman who had served as chief executive of a professional wrestling company.

Democrats were also cheered by several state referendums. Maryland voters approved same-sex marriage, the governor said, and a similar measure in Maine appeared on track to pass as well – marking the first time marriage rights have been extended to same-sex couples by popular vote.

In addition, Wisconsin Democratic congresswoman Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay U.S. Senator, defeating Republican former governor Tommy Thompson.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Chicago, Patricia Zengerle in Boston, Edith Honan in New York, Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Dave Warner in Philadelphia, Philip Barbara in New Jersey, Matt Spetalnick, Lisa Lambert, Susan Heavey, Thomas Ferraro, Susan Cornwell, Anna Yukhananov and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Writing by Steve Holland and John Whitesides; Editing by Claudia Parsons and Will Dunham)

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