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WORLD BRIEFING In boost for Obama, jobless rate falls CLEVELAND (AP) — Unemployment rates fell last month in nearly all of the battleground states that will determine the presidential winner, giving President Barack Obama fresh fodder to argue that voters should stick with him in an elec- tion focused squarely on the economy. Saturday, October 20, 2012 – Daily News 9A what we see in front of us is the absolute unraveling of the Obama administra- tion's foreign policy.'' As a security matter, The declines, however, were modest. It's unknown whether they will do much to sway undecided voters who are considering whether to back Republican Mitt Romney or give the Democratic president four more years. The statewide data released by the Labor Department on Friday provide one of the last comprehensive looks at the health of the U.S. economy ahead of Elec- tion Day, now a little more than two weeks away. Voters will get one more update on the national unemployment rate just days before the election. But the state reports matter greatly to the Obama and Romney campaigns, which believe the public's impressions of the economy are shaped mostly by local conditions rather than national ones. how the Obama adminis- tration immediately described the attack has little effect on broader counterterrorism strate- gies or on the hunt for those responsible for the incident, in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed. And Republi- cans have offered no explanation for why the president would want to conceal the nature of the attack. drugs a risk WASHINGTON (AP) — Medicare is coming under scrutiny in the meningitis outbreak that has rekindled doubts about the safety of the nation's drug supply. The giant health insur- ance program for seniors long ago flagged com- pounded drugs produced for the mass market with- out oversight from the Food and Drug Adminis- tration as safety risks. In 2007, Medicare revoked coverage of compounded inhaler drugs for lung dis- ease. Compounded tive developments since the shooting, which was a brazen bid by the Taliban to silence the girl, who has been an outspoken advocate for girls' right to education. some help and to write. Malala Yousufzai appeared with her eyes open and alert as she lay in a hospital bed, in the first photographs released by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham since she arrived from Pakistan on Monday. It was a series of posi- shows signs of infection and faces a long, difficult recovery with uncertain prospects. ''She is not out of the Still, doctors said she woods yet,'' hospital medical director Dr. Dave Rosser said. ''Having said that, she's doing very well. In fact, she was standing with some help for the first time this morning when I went in to see her.'' Roadside bomb in In Ohio, perhaps the most crucial battleground state for both Obama and Romney, the unemploy- ment rate ticked down last month to 7 percent from 7.2 percent, below the national average of 7.8 percent. ''I knew a lot of people who were laid off and now they're working,'' said firefighter Matt Spar- ling, an Obama supporter from Parma Heights, Ohio. ''So something good is happening here.'' bomb BEIRUT (AP) — A car bomb ripped through Beirut on Friday, killing a top security official and seven others, shearing the balconies off apartment buildings and sending bloodied residents stag- gering into the streets in the most serious blast the Lebanese capital has seen in four years. Top security official, 7 others killed by Beirut car wounded in the attack, which the state-run news agency said targeted the convoy of Brig. Gen. Wis- sam al-Hassan, the head of the intelligence divi- sion of Lebanon's domes- tic security forces. Many Lebanese quick- Dozens of people were ly raised the possibility the violence was connect- ed to the civil war in neighboring Syria, which has sent destabilizing rip- ples through Lebanon for the past 19 months. Al- Hassan led an investiga- tion over the summer that implicated a pro-Syrian Lebanese politician and one of the highest aides to Syrian President Bashar Assad in plots to carry out bombings in Lebanon. Friday's blast was also a reminder of Lebanon's grim history, when the 1975-1990 civil war made the country notorious for kidnappings, car bombs and political assassina- tions. Even since the war's end, Lebanon has been a proxy battleground for regional conflict, and the Mediterranean seaside capital has been prey to sudden, surprising and often unexplained vio- lence shattering periods of calm. ''Whenever there is a problem in Syria they want to bring it to us,'' said Karin Sabaha Gemayel, a secratary at a law firm a block from the bombing site, where the street was transformed into a swath of rubble, twisted metal and charred vehicles. Libya attack WASHINGTON (AP) — Sensing a moment of political vulnerability on national security, Repub- licans pounced Friday on disclosures that President Barack Obama's adminis- tration could have known early on that militants, not angry protesters, launched the attack on U.S. diplomats in Libya. Within 24 hours of the deadly attack, the CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington GOP pounces after news CIA linked militants to that there were eyewitness reports that the attack was carried out by militants, officials told The Associ- ated Press. But for days, the Obama administration blamed it on an out-of- control demonstration over an American-made video ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Paul Ryan, the Repub- lican vice presidential nominee, led Friday's charge. ''Look around the world, turn on your TV,'' Ryan said in an interview with WTAQ radio in the election battleground state of Wisconsin. ''And But Medicare doesn't seem to have consistently used its own legal power to deny payment, and crit- ics say that has enabled the compounding busi- ness to flourish. Now program officials are scrambling to find out how many Medicare ben- eficiaries are among the more than 270 people sickened in 16 states in a still-growing outbreak that has claimed 21 lives. The illnesses have been linked to an injectable steroid used to treat back pain, made by the New England Com- pounding Center, a Mass- achusetts specialty phar- macy. The medication was contaminated with a fungus. 15-year-old Pakistani shooting victim able to stand LONDON (AP) — The British hospital treat- ing a 15-year-old Pak- istani girl shot in the head by the Taliban raised hopes for her recovery Friday when doctors said she was able to stand with kills 19 KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A roadside bomb tore through a minibus carrying people to a wedding celebration in northern Afghanistan on Friday, killing at least 19 people and wounding 16, authori- ties said. Afghanistan the heavy toll the war has taken on civilians who are frequently caught up in the fighting between insurgents and Afghan and foreign security forces. The bus was taking guests to a wedding cel- ebration in the Dawlat Abad district of the northern Balkh province, about 450 kilometers (270 miles) northwest of the capital, Kabul, police spokesman Shir Jan Durani said. The blast underscored District police com- mander Bismullah Mus- limyar gave the death toll and said six children and seven women were among those killed in the 6 a.m. blast. He said a police patrol had passed through the area during the night. Muslimyar said the wedding had occurred Thursday, and the party was heading to the groom's home to con- gratulate the newlyweds according to tradition.