News Headlines - 29 October 2011

▽Poet Higgins elected Ireland's ninth president - AFP
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jmOLeO_MBnKGu1fN9g6sPPvXzjQQ?docId=CNG.8afe33535318c24070f41e6e1d325a2b.591
Irish poet and human rights activist Michael D. Higgins was officially confirmed as his country's ninth president on Saturday after winning nearly 57 percent of the vote in the final count.
The 70-year-old former culture minister for the Labour party, the junior partner in the coalition government in Dublin, staged a remarkable comeback to beat an ex-IRA commander and a reality TV star.

▽Bangkok braced for further flood devastation as water level rises - The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/29/bangkok-floods-redcross-warning?newsfeed=true
Wandee stands by the main road, now a knee-deep river, in the Sai Mai district of Bangkok, selling bottles of petrol to drivers as they inch their cars through the muddy water. Like the majority of the capital's residents, she is staying put despite evacuation orders following Thailand's worst floods in half a century and the waters continuing to rise. "We'll stay one more night," she said. "Well, unless it gets really high."

▽'Occupy' demonstrators battle wind and cold as storm moves in - CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/29/us/occupy-wall-street/
Demonstrators encamped in a Lower Manhattan park faced New York's first snow storm of the season Saturday without the benefit of propane tanks and generators that they had been using to cook food and keep warm.

▽Qantas strike disrupts 13,000 travel plans - Telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/8857822/Qantas-strike-disrupts-13000-travel-plans.html
Qantas has grounded its entire worldwide fleet because of industrial action by its employees – stranding an estimated 13,000 people over the next 24 hours.

▽Fresh fears of double dip as consumer confidence vanishes - Scotsman
http://www.scotsman.com/business/banking/fresh_fears_of_double_dip_as_consumer_confidence_vanishes_1_1936625
CONSUMER confidence in the UK has fallen to its lowest level for almost three years, adding further weight to fears that the economy is returning to recession, a new survey has revealed.
The two previous occasions that market research group GfK’s monthly index was as weak – in mid-2008 and early 1990 – recession followed a few months later.