The president claims to have super trade powers

Will the Mueller investigation deliver?

Watch Gary Varvel's time lapse video of his process of drawing the Democrats' Christmas wish.

A reelection campaign song

Funding for Trump's border wall is met with resistance

I am leaving my dream job to pursue new dreams.

Family faces uncertainty about whether 4-year-old boy can join them in U.S.

On the Northwest side of Indianapolis, Eagle Creek serves as a break from the bustle of the city.

A long-stalled push to eliminate gerrymandering suddenly enjoys some momentum.

Sandy Rivera is one of roughly 800,000 DACA program participants whose futures hang in the balance of a congressional debate.

Indianapolis has a pothole problem that is both dangerous and embarrassing. Here's a way out of this infrastructure mess.

Former Police Chief Troy Riggs has left for Denver, but Indianapolis should remember his message.

Todd Young has a lot of smart things to say about a lot of issues. On one issue, though, he dodges when his leadership is needed.

U.S. Senate candidate Todd Rokita goes low yet again. This time he directs his empty rhetoric at an Indiana city he should be trying to help.

Todd Rokita is running for the Senate with a campaign that could hardly be less senatorial. And that's not a good thing.

Democrat Joe Donnelly is known for his bipartisan ways. But the state's junior senator, Republican Todd Young, also reaches out to the other side.

The Indiana congressional delegation introduced a House resolution expressing support for the goals and ideas of ''Stomach Cancer Awareness Month."

Jennifer Argumedo is this year's valedictorian at Broad Ripple High School. With the school closing after 90 years, she will be its last.

Matt Tully was dedicated to his craft and to this community. The Matthew L. Tully Memorial Fund is a meaningful way to keep his memory and work alive.

Brownsburg, Broad Ripple Haverford fighting for spots in Great Lakes Regional.

Located off U.S. 36, home decor store At Home will replace what used to be a Gander Mountain in Avon, Indiana.

Plainfield Correctional Facility inmates grow produce in a garden to give to needy.

Orioles, coming off a nine-win season and sectional title, return starting quarterback and several other key players

Bulldogs have not been able to go over the sectional hump since 2009.

Ordinary people in their ordinary cars take to the drag strip to get their need for speed.

Pat O'Neil, an Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, was declared cancer-free Tuesday.

The new offensive scheme allowing Tri-West graduate to become a difference maker for IU offense.

Plainfield's volleyball team won nine matches in 2015. This year, they've won 11 matches already. Here's what changed.

The 22-year-old rider from Brownsburg became the youngest time trial winner — with the biggest margin — in the history of road cycling's World Championships.

After five consecutive sectional losses to Avon dating to 2010, Brownsburg finally knocks off its rival in tournament

Allison Bosse scored 23 points to lift the Bulldogs over Mooresville, 51-42, in Tuesday's sectional opener.

An off-duty Plainfield police officer was arrested Friday night on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

Oinking Acres Pig Rescue and Sanctuary is making a difference in the Brownsburg community by saving more than 150 potbellied pigs.

Olivia Head discovered there was a high demand for fostering and adopting potbellied pigs. Thus, Oinking Acres Pig Rescue and Sanctuary was born.

Eric Bell, a funeral director in Pittsboro, Ind., says the longest he's waited to hold a memorial service is two months for a deceased person. He explains why.

"I love from afar, do the best I can from afar but nothing equals a hug," said Eric Ball, funeral director, owner of David A. Hall Mortuary.

Yes you read the headline correctly.

It turns out that Lord Browne isn't going to be chairman of Glencore after all

And, of course, if you think I look like a plonker, that's fair enough.

Here is what happened.

Glencore's announcement that it plans to list on the London and Hong Kong stock exchanges said this:

"Glencore has made its decision regarding the new chairman and is in the final stages of making the appointment, which will be communicated shortly".

I was told by impeccable sources that the chosen candidate was Lord Browne. And that is definitely the case.

However those "final stages of making the appointment" were not the formality that I and my sources believed.

When it came to the final talks between Lord Browne and Glencore, there was a disagreement about governance issues.

Anyway, Glencore came to the view that Browne wasn't quite right for it. My sense is that Lord Browne was more of a stickler for detail than this entrepreneurial company felt comfortable with.

So what on earth happens now?

Well Glencore can't float without a chairman.

Before Lord Browne became the preferred candidate, Simon Murray - the Hong Kong business leader - was the favourite to take the job.

Does he still want the job? Does Glencore want him?

I don't know, but I will endeavour to find out.

It's all a cracking corporate soap opera. But probably not the ideal curtain-raiser for the biggest flotation the London market has ever seen.

Update 15:15: Glencore has now appointed Simon Murray, former managing director of the Asian giant Hutchison Whampoa, as its chairman.

My colleague Tanya Beckett has conducted a rare and fascinating interview with Viktor Vekselberg, one of the billionaire oligarchs who co-own TNK-BP with BP - and who have fallen out with BP over BP's desire to form a business relationship with Rosneft, Russia's largest energy group, which would involve BP and Rosneft taking stakes in each other.

It implies, perhaps for the first time, that there may be a solution to a dispute that has damaged BP's reputation and jeopardised the value of its very substantial assets in Russia.

Because of the tensions that have arisen with AAR, the group that represents the oligarchs, BP in collaboration with Rosneft would dearly love to buy AAR's half share in TNK-BP. But their offer of $27bn for 50% of TNK-BP, which values the whole of TNK-BP at $54bn, was rejected earlier this month.

All may not be lost for BP, however. Mr Vekselberg suggests that a sale is possible. He tells Tanya Beckett:

"Of course it can be happen, for sure. If it will be [an] interesting proposal for us according to our understanding of (the) valuation of this company, of course we can accept. So far we have not received this."

So what would be an "interesting" valuation of TNK-BP? Well those close to the oligarchs say that they value TNK-BP at more than $70bn.

It's not clear BP and Rosneft are prepared to pay as much that. The difficulty for BP is that if it fails to reach an accommodation with Mr Vekselberg and his colleagues on price, then it will be stuck in a difficult place - because BP will have been publicly humiliated by the failure to consummate the Rosneft deal and will somehow have to rebuild relations with AAR in order to continue to extract billions of dollars in dividends from TNK-BP.

BP's partnership with AAR is in tatters, as Mr Vekselberg makes clear, in emotive terms, because of AAR's conviction, upheld in arbitration proceedings, that BP's proposed deal with Rosneft breached its contract with AAR:

"The picture is really simple. TNK-BP was created eight years ago, 2003. It was created like [a] joint venture between Russian shareholders and BP, huge global player... The company grew very active; it's now one of the best companies - not just Russian but internationally, because we have investment outside Russia...
 
And really I personally was surprised, I was surprised why BP decided to do something which [was] not according to our shareholders agreement. I am not surprised why BP would like to do this but I am surprised why they did it without any consulting or even just like, just inform us about that (sic). I was very upset, I am still upset even now".

Mr Vekselberg says he is "not so interested in money". The billionaire
adds: "I have enough money, for my life, for my family, for all that".
But "we are businessmen, we are not ideological or something", so of course a sale to BP and Rosneft "can happen".

So what would occur if BP and Rosneft were to make him several billion dollars richer? "I am already very upset" he says "but I will [be] double upset if I have to decide to sell. It's because I dedicated for this company almost like 15 years".

These remarks by Mr Vekselberg are a sign that the impasse over the purchase by BP and Rosneft of AAR's stake in TNK-BP can be overcome.
It offers hope to BP, perhaps for the first time, that it may be able to buy AAR out of the joint venture by the time of the May 16 extended deadline set by Rosneft.

But here's the question? Is the price that Mr Vekselberg and his fellow billionaires will accept one that BP's owners will see as acceptable?

Some of them are already dubious about the terms of the new partnership it wants to form with Rosneft. At a time when BP remains financially stretched by the costs of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP's shareholders won't want it to further enrich Mr Vekselberg more than is strictly necessary.

For more on the Vekselberg interview, see Russia Business Report.

A clutch of big company results today illustrate the big economic trends in the UK and the world - and also say something about what the UK economy needs if its insipid recovery is to become something a bit stronger.

First the good news.

ARM, the world-leading designer of electronic chips for smartphones, tablets and consumer devices, saw revenues rise 29% in the first three months of the year and profits increase 35% (to £51m).

If we had a few more ARMs in this country, we would be agonising less about the imperative of "rebalancing" the structure of our wealth-creation away from financial services and the City.

That said, we'd need an incredible number of ARMs to make a dent in the high unemployment figures, because ARM simply licences its technology to the likes of Apple and LG, which put the chips into their devices. Or to put it another way, ARM's success is in exploiting the grey matter of a few boffins: it manufactures nothing.

Now part of the drag on Britain's recovery is the burden of debt on households and the impact of rising commodity prices on consumers' spending power.

You can see some of that in the first half figures of Associated British Foods, which points out that world sugar prices are at a 30-year high and that there has been a sugar shortage in Europe. ABF's sugar, grocery and agriculture profits were up substantially (sugar by 27%).

ABF's Primark chain of shops, whose prices tend to be the lowest on the high street, seems to have benefited from shoppers desire to trade down and economise, since underlying or like-for-like sales rose 3%. But although that looks okay compared with competitors, it was half the rate of last year's increase.

A further manifestation of all that borrowing in the euphoric years, before the bubble burst in 2007-8, is another set of uninspiring financial results from Heathrow and Stansted airports, and their holding company, BAA (SP) limited.

The losses of the two London airports increased 8% to £211.5m and net debt in BAA (SP) was flat at a substantial £9.9bn. Net debt at the next corporate level up, BAA (SH) plc was a chunky £10.4bn, against a regulated asset base of £13bn (which moved in the right direction by 2.7%).

BAA was acquired by the Spanish group Ferrovial and partners at the height of the debt-fuelled buyout boom of 2006 - and although BAA would argue that operational performance has improved, there is a question about when if ever the owners will ever see a return on their enormous investment.

Meanwhile, in spite of the rising trend of commodities and energy, including oil, BP's profits in the first three months of the year actually fell a fraction to $5.5bn. You can see the impact of higher oil prices in a near trebling of profits to $2.1bn made in refining and marketing - but there was a significant fall in production, some of it related to the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

The fundamental BP story is that the risks and costs of extracting energy are on a secular rising trend - for which we all pay a price.

Last but never least is Barclays and its figures for the first quarter of 2011 - which show top line income lower than the first quarter of last year and below the last quarter of last year. As for profits, they were up a bit or down a bit, depending on what view you take of whether changes in the notional value of Barclays' own borrowings should be included.

The unambiguous trend is a sharp reduction in the charge of debts and investments going bad - which was 39% lower compared with a year ago and 33% down on a three-month comparison.

As for lending, loans to retail customers rose by just under £1bn to £229bn since the end of 2010 - which is neither here nor there for a bank of Barclays' size. And the overall value of Barclays' loans and investments, on a risk-weighted basis, fell 1.5% over 12 months to £392bn.

For Barclays and other big western banks, it's no longer about growing their balance sheets, about lending more and more. Their long term recovery requires deleveraging, shrinking, which is the corollary of the perceived need for western consumers and governments to pay down their respective debts.

Here's the painful part: we may need banks to become smaller, but we all suffer if in the process they starve job-creating businesses of vital finance.

Those who fear the worst won't be reassured by figures just released by the British Bankers Association (BBA), which show that net lending to non-financial businesses by banks fell £3.2bn in March.

The BBA blames weak demand from companies. And although Barclays and the other banks have promised the Treasury, in their Project Merlin agreement, that they will meet the credit needs of the economy, my electronic postbag indicates that there remains quite a gap between their perception of deserving borrowers and yours.

Update 11:15: As some of you have pointed out, ARM saw its profits increase to £51m not £51bn, as I originally said, whilst losses at the two London airports increased to £211.5m, not £211.5bn. Sorry for my brainstorm. I've probably been dealing in billions a little too often recently - due to the magnitude of our recent financial crisis.

The cost of Britain's controversial new aircraft carriers is set to rise by at least £1bn, and perhaps almost £2bn, as a result of the government's decision taken last October to make them compatible with different aircraft than those originally envisaged.

I have learned that the working assumption of the contractors on the project, which are BAE Systems, Thales UK and Babcock, is that the carriers will now cost taxpayers some £7bn in total, compared with the £5.2bn cost disclosed by the Ministry of Defence last autumn - and up from the £3.9bn budget announced when the contract was originally signed in July 2008.

One defence industry veteran said the final bill was bound to be nearer £10bn, though a government official insisted that was way over the top.

The Ministry of Defence and the Treasury believe that total final costs could be nearer £6bn, if only one of the carriers is reconfigured to take the preferred version of America's Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.

An MoD official said no final decision had been taken on whether the first carrier to be built, the Queen Elizabeth, or the second carrier, the Prince of Wales, or both would be reconfigured.

He said it would probably be the case that changing the design specification for the Prince of Wales would be the cheapest option. But if that happened, it is not clear when - if ever - the Queen Elizabeth, due to enter service in 2019, would actually be able to accommodate jets (as opposed to helicopters).

Whatever happens, the increase in the bill will be substantial - and is only regarded by the Treasury as affordable because the increment is likely to be incurred later than 2014/15, when the expenditure constraints put in place by the Chancellor's spending review come to an end.

The Treasury is adamant that the MoD will receive no leeway to increase spending before then.

An MoD spokesman sent me the following statement late last night:

"The conversion of the Queen Elizabeth Class...will allow us to operate the carrier variant of the Joint Strike Fighter that carries a greater payload, has a longer range and is cheaper to purchase. This will give our new carriers, which will be in service for 50 years, greater capability and interoperability with our allies. Final costs are yet to be agreed and detailed work is ongoing. We expect to take firm decisions in late 2012."

The disclosure of the rise in costs is bound to reopen the debate about whether the UK really needs new carriers, especially since the UK will be without any aircraft carrier till 2019, following the decision to decommission Ark Royal.

British Tornado jets are currently active in Libya, flying from a base in Italy, without the use of a British aircraft carrier.

The latest increase in likely expenditure on the enormous carriers - which are almost the size of three football pitches - stems from the decision of the Ministry of Defence in October to change the design one or both of them so that they can be used by the carrier version of America's Joint Strike Fighter.

This would mean they have to be fitted with catapults and traps - or "cats and traps" - rather than ramps.

The likely final cost will depend on whether the cats and traps are cheaper traditional steam devices, or newer-technology electromagnetic ones - and also whether the cats and traps are fitted to both carriers or just one.

Industry and government sources tell me that even if the MoD goes for the cheaper option, and even if the cats and traps are fitted to only one carrier, the additional bill will still be of the order of £1bn.

The hope however would be that in the longer term savings could be achieved because the maintenance costs of the more conventional Joint Strike Fighter should be lower.

One of the reasons the refit could be relatively more expensive is that for one of the carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, there would have to be a retrofit - because so much work has already been done on it.

"Retrofitting is always very pricey" said a senior defence executive.

The carrier project has been beset by controversy and cost increases.

In June 2009, I disclosed that the carrier costs had soared by more than £1bn as a result of a decision taken by the previous government to delay their entry into service.

Then last October the government, in its Strategic Defence and Security Review, came close to cancelling one or both carriers.

In the end, it committed to build both, but with the strange caveat that it might end up using only one of them. This was the reason given by the Prime Minister David Cameron in the Commons for building both:

"They [the previous government] signed contracts so we were left in a situation where even cancelling the second carrier would actually cost more than to build it; I have this in written confirmation from BAE Systems".

However in a memo to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Ministry of Defence estimated that cancelling both contracts would have saved £2bn and cancelling just one would have saved £1bn.

The MoD told MPs that "as the cancellation costs would have had immediate effect, the costs in the short term would have been significantly higher than proceeding with both carriers as planned; nearly £1bn more in financial year 2011/12 if both carriers had been cancelled".

The MoD was also concerned that cancelling the carriers would have undermined British capability and know-how in the manufacture of complex warships.

The carriers, called Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers, are being built by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, whose members are the UK defence giant BAE systems, the British engineering group Babcock, and Thales of France. The Ministry of Defence is also described as both a member of the Alliance and a customer.

Update 15:06:It has been pointed out to me, by what you might term a grizzled sea dog, that the UK does still possess two ships that can take aircraft. They are HMS Illustrious and HMS Ocean (which is a commando carrier with a flat top).

However they can't accommodate jet airplanes, only helicopters - so for veteran sailor it was a terrible error for the government to scrap the illustrious Harrier jumpjet.

He also takes the view, which I've heard from many other military personnel, that it would be bonkers to convert only one of the new carriers to take the carrier version of the Joint Strike Fighter - because if that were to happen, one of the carriers would be an enormous white elephant, and the other would not be able to provide a service for 100% of the time (it would need periodic servicing).

That said, the cost of retro-fitting the first carrier being built now and also redesigning the other one would certainly be nudging £2bn, maybe more.

He believes there is powerful strategic logic to building two new huge ships able to handle jets.

The problem for David Cameron is that he may find it hard to make the strategic case, since last autumn he justified building the two on the basis that it would not save any money to cancel one - which is not the most positive case for what turns out to be a very substantial public investment that anyone has ever advanced.

Lloyds has decided not to use the courts any further to contest the decision of the regulator, the Financial Service Authority, that it should pay restitution to customers who were mis-sold PPI loan insurance.

This will be welcomed by thousands of Lloyds customers, although it will be very expensive for Lloyds - which is making a provision of £3.2bn to cover the likely costs.

That £3.2bn charge means Lloyds is back in loss, to the tune of £3.5bn on a statutory or official basis.

My post from last night explains much of the background to this.

Ignoring one-offs, on what Lloyds calls a combined business basis, Lloyds remained in profit, to the tune of £284m, for the first three months of the year - although this was well down on the £1.1bn made in the equivalent period of last year.

There was also a charge of £1.1bn to cover the expected cost of Irish loans going bad. This was £500m more than expected.

The reason for the higher than anticipated Irish lending loss is that the new chief executive Antonio Horsa-Orsorio decided to factor in a further possible fall of 10% in Irish commercial property prices.

Other striking characteristics of these figures for the first quarter of the year is that net lending to small businesses rose, bucking the national trend, and overall income was down from £6bn to £5.2bn.

What stands out however is Lloyds' decision to settle with PPI claimants.

It was a unilateral decision, but will put pressure on the other banks to do the same.

The size of Lloyds charge implies that the big British banks will in total take a £9bn hit to settle PPI claims, with Royal Bank of Scotland, the second most exposed, perhaps taking a £2bn hit.

Update 09:21: For taxpayers, it is good news that Lloyds has been weaning itself off loans and loan guarantees provided by us.

So in the first three months of the year, there was a further reduction of £26bn of funding for Lloyds in effect provided by the state.

Which means that Lloyds' residual dependence on de facto loans from us is £70bn - with £26bn of this still owed to the Bank of England's Special Liquidity Scheme and £44bn of debt guaranteed by the Treasury (under the Credit Guarantee Scheme) still needing to be repaid.

Barring a meltdown in wholesale markets, Lloyds should be free of exceptional taxpayer funding support by the target of 2012.

By contrast, the timetable for privatising taxpayers' 41% stake in Lloyds is yet to be decided - although today's decision by the new chief executive to face up to the mistakes of the past (the PPI and Irish losses) should make privatisation easier.

The next milestone for Lloyds on the road away from state ownership and influence will be the announcement in June of Mr Horta-Orsorio's new strategy for the group.

Update 09:54: Royal Bank of Scotland will not make a decision till next week on whether to join Lloyds in agreeing to settle PPI cases.

It had the second biggest share of the PPI market, with around 20%, compared with 35% for Lloyds.

My banking sources are surprised by the magnitude of the PPI charge taken by Lloyds. It was significantly bigger than they had expected.

They would expect RBS to eventually take a PPI hit of around £1bn (as I mentioned in a post last month) rather than the £2bn implied by Lloyds' PPI provision.

That said, it is highly unlikely that RBS will quantify the potential PPI damage when it announces its first quarter results tomorrow.

On RBS's imminent results, I would expect it still to be in the red at the statutory level, including - for example - a debit from a market valuation of credit insurance provided to RBS by taxpayers under the Asset Protection Scheme.

But at the operating level it will be in profit. And RBS's general insurance operations should be back in the black (some would say 'at last') - which matters, because RBS is committed to dispose of these well-known insurance activities, probably by floating them on the stock market.

My blog is dead. Long live the new blog. Or to put it another way, my page - and those of other BBC bloggers - is having a makeover. So if you don't want to read on, and you simply want to read my latest post, click here.

The reason for the change is to bring together more of my output in one place. So on the new page, you'll find many of my TV and radio pieces, and (soon) my tweets.

If I go mad and decide to do other social media, that'll be there too.

Fingers crossed that you like what you see. I can't hope that all of you will love all the changes. And in particular, I am sure some of you will be frustrated that (for cost reasons) there is now a 400 character limit on the comments you can leave.

Please don't let that put you off expressing yourselves. I can't tell you how much I value your opinions and the debate we have.

As for the posts I've written since Picks was launched in January 2007, the best place to find them is here. For future posts, the best URL for me is still bbc.co.uk/robertpeston

Before the show, audience members take the stage to dance

IndyCar Series driver James Hinchcliffe has asked to sit for this "Dancing With the Stars" interview because his body is too tired – his feet too sore – to stand.

Don't blame Josef Newgarden for leaving Ed Carpenter's popular IndyCar Series team, and don't blame powerful Team Penske for signing Newgarden. It's the right thing to do for the employee and his new employer.

Coffee table picture book tells the 100-year history of the famous race

After a coronavirus update that a second student was showing symptoms, Avon schools decided to close all buildings ahead of spring break.

All Avon schools will close through March 20 as one student has tested positive and a second student is showing symptoms of the novel coronavirus.