WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says the uncertainty over whether lawmakers will raise the nation’s debt limit is keeping businesses from hiring.

Speaking in the Rose Garden, Obama says that once Congress reaches an agreement on the debt ceiling, businesses will have the confidence they need to add workers to their payrolls.

The report out Friday morning showed employers added the fewest jobs in nine months and the unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent. Congressional Republicans and GOP presidential hopefuls used the dismal report to slam Obama’s economic agenda.

The reports come as Democrats and Republicans near an urgent deadline to increase the nation’s borrowing power and prevent the U.S. from defaulting on its obligations.

WASHINGTON – Hiring slowed to a near-standstill last month, raising doubts that the economy will rebound in the second half of the year after a spring slump.

The economy generated only 18,000 net jobs in June, the fewest in nine months. The unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent, the highest rate of the year.

Stocks plunged after the report was released. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 132 points in the first hour of trading. Broader indexes also declined.

“June’s employment report doesn’t have a single redeeming feature,” said Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics. “It’s awful from start to finish.”

Two years after the recession officially ended, companies are adding fewer workers despite record cash stockpiles and healthy profit margins.

Businesses added just 57,000 jobs last month_ the fewest in more than a year. Governments cut 39,000 jobs. Over the past eight months, federal, state and local governments have cut a combined 238,000 positions.

It was the second straight month of feeble job growth. The number of jobs added in May was downwardly revised to 25,000.

Companies have pulled back on hiring after adding an average of 215,000 jobs per month from February through April. The economy typically needs to add 125,000 jobs per month just to keep up with population growth. And at least twice that many jobs are needed to bring down the unemployment rate.

Economists have said that temporary factors, in part, have forced some employers to scale back hiring plans. High gas prices have cut into consumer spending, which fuels 70 percent of economic activity. And supply-chain disruptions stemming from the Japan crisis have slowed U.S. manufacturing production.

In June, hiring was weak in most sectors: Manufacturers added only 6,000 jobs; Education and health care, which added jobs through the recession, was flat; and professional and business services, which include accounting, legal and engineering jobs, grew by only 12,000.

Construction and financial services cut jobs.

The sluggish economy and anemic hiring is causing more people to simply give up looking for work. More than a quarter-million people stopped their job searches in June. That kept the unemployment rate from rising even further. When laid-off workers stop looking for work, they are no longer counted as unemployed.

Including discouraged workers and those working part time, but who would prefer full-time work, the “under-employment” rate jumped from 15.8 percent to 16.2 percent.

Unemployment has topped 8 percent for 29 months, the longest streak since the 1930s. It has never been so high so long after a recession ended. At the same point after the previous three recessions, unemployment averaged just 6.8 percent.

And those who do have jobs are earning less. Average hourly wages declined last month. After-tax incomes, adjusted for inflation, have been flat this year.

The average work week declined to 34.3 hours, from 34.4, which means employers demanded less work from their existing staffs. Usually companies demand more hours from their existing staffs when they are preparing to hire more workers.

Temporary employment fell 12,000. Businesses generally hire more temporary workers before taking on permanent ones.

The number of unemployed workers rose almost 175,000 to 14.1 million, pushing up the unemployment rate.

There are signs that economy could improve in the second half of the year. Gas prices have come down since peaking in early May at a national average of nearly $4 per gallon. Prices averaged $3.59 a gallon nationwide on Friday, according to AAA.

And manufacturing activity expanded in June at a faster pace than the previous month, according to the Institute for Supply Management. That suggests the parts shortage caused by the March 11 earthquake in Japan is beginning to abate.

More jobs are needed to boost incomes and consumer spending, which fuels 70 percent of the economy. Without more hiring, the economy may not be able to accelerate from its current weak pace of growth.

The government said last month that the economy grew only 1.9 percent in the January-March quarter. Analysts are expecting similarly weak growth in April-June quarter.

The economy is expected to grow at a 3.2 percent pace in final six months of the year, according to an Associated Press survey of 38 economists. But the latest report could prompt some economists to revise their forecasts.

Growth must be stronger to significantly lower the unemployment rate. The economy would need to grow 5 percent for a whole year to significantly bring down the unemployment rate. Economic growth of just 3 percent a year would hold the unemployment steady and keep up with population growth.

8 July 2011
Last updated at 11:40 ET

Hundreds of thousands of people are attending an anti-government protest in the Syrian city of Hama, activists say.

Organisers have called on demonstrators to express their total rejection of the government’s decision to hold a national dialogue conference on Sunday.

Earlier, the US and French ambassadors visited Hama to show their solidarity.

Syria’s interior ministry said the US envoy had met several “saboteurs” and denounced the “direct and unacceptable interference” in its internal affairs.

Tanks were deployed on the outskirts of Hama last weekend after the central city witnessed the largest protest since anti-government demonstrations began in March.

At least 22 people in Hama have since been shot dead by security forces.

“No-one can predict what is going to happen in the next few days,” one resident told BBC Arabic. “Many families have left Hama for the neighbouring villages.”

‘Incitement’

Despite the crackdown, people once again took to the streets of Hama after noon prayers on Friday, demanding the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad and rejecting an offer of dialogue, activists and witnesses said.

Rami Abdul Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the AFP news agency as many as 450,000 people were taking part.

A witness told the Associated Press that many protesters were carrying olive branches and chanting: “We only kneel to God”.

“There was no violence. As long as we have no security forces, we have no violence,” another said.

One person told BBC Arabic that thousands of people from nearby villages had been prevented by security forces from entering Hama and joining the march.

The US and French ambassadors to Syria, Robert Ford and Eric Chevallier, travelled to the city on Thursday as acts of solidarity, but left before Friday’s protests began, according to officials in Washington and Paris.

But the Syrian interior ministry said Mr Ford’s visit, for which he did not seek the permission of the authorities in Damascus, was an act of incitement.

“The ministry wondered at the US ambassador’s arrival in Hama contrary to the diplomatic norms and despite the roadblocks set up by the saboteurs to prevent citizens from reaching their jobs,” state media quoted it as saying.

The ministry said Mr Ford had met “a number of the saboteurs and incited them to more violence and protest and to refuse dialogue”.

It added that the ambassador, “under the cover of visiting some hospitals”, had met other people in an attempt to encourage further violence and instability, to sabotage national dialogue, and to deepen discord and sedition among the Syrian people “who strongly reject and condemn such foreign instigation”.

On Thursday, a US state department spokeswoman said Mr Ford had “spent the day expressing our deep support for the right of the Syrian people to assembly peacefully and to express themselves”. He also visited a hospital where some people were taken for treatment this week during the security crackdown.

A French foreign ministry spokesman said: “France recalls its concern for the inhabitants of Hama and its condemnation of the violence in Syria perpetrated by authorities against protesters.”

Hama was the scene of a brutal crackdown in 1982 ordered by Hafez al-Assad, the president’s late father, which left at least 10,000 dead.

At least 60 people were shot dead in Hama during protests on 3 June.

‘Disgrace’

There were also mass demonstrations in other towns and cities across the country on Friday.

Activists said three protesters were killed in Maarat al-Numan, a town not far from the restive north-western town of Jisr al-Shughour.

At least one person was also killed in the central Damascus district of Midan, and another died in the nearby suburb of al-Dumair, they added. A policeman was reportedly killed in the city of Homs.

Overnight, three people were killed at a demonstration in Harasta, another of the capital’s suburbs, activists said.

The death toll could not be independently confirmed as international journalists have been denied access to Syria.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Local Co-ordination Committees, which represents many of the protesters, insisted that they would send no-one to the government’s national dialogue conference on Sunday.

“Dialogue with this regime is out of the question as we cannot talk to murderers,” Mohammed al-Abdullah told al-Jazeera. “This is being declared by the rebels in the street.”

“The city of Hama is being massacred and besieged, the Syrian people are being tortured, and therefore talk of any dialogue with the regime is a disgrace to the blood of the martyrs.”

He added: “We do not believe that there are any members of the regime who believe in dialogue.”

State media have said amendments to the constitution will be on the agenda at the meeting, including Article 8, which grants the Baath Party unique status as the “leader of state and society”.

Participants will also reportedly examine proposed new laws on political parties, elections, local administration and the press.

Human rights activists say more than 1,400 civilians and 350 security forces personnel have been killed across the country since March.

The government has blamed “armed criminal gangs” for the unrest.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Casey Anthony will be freed next week after spending nearly three years in jail on accusations she killed her 2-year-old daughter, punctuating a case that captured the nation’s attention and bitterly divided many over whether she got away with murder.

While cleared of charges of killing and abusing her daughter Caylee, Anthony was convicted of lying to investigators and sentenced Thursday to four years, the maximum punishment. But she was given credit for the time she has already served and her good behavior, and she was set to be released Wednesday. Judge Belvin Perry also fined her $1,000 on each of the four counts.

Before her sentence was announced, the 25-year-old Anthony was animated, smiling and occasionally played with her hair, which was let down for the first time since her trial began in late May. Perhaps she thought, like many, that she would be let go Thursday. Her demeanor turned stone-faced when she heard she would be spending more time in jail.

The scene outside the courthouse highlighted the divide that has had social networking sites abuzz since the not guilty verdict was announced Tuesday. Amid increased police presence, a throng of protesters gathered, holding signs that said “Arrest the Jury!!” and “Jurors 1-12 Guilty of Murder.” Nearby, a handful of supporters also turned out, including a man who held a sign asking Anthony to marry him.

Anthony’s release will come almost exactly three years since Caylee was reported missing July 15, 2008. She was interviewed by police the next day and told them several lies, for which she was convicted.

She lied about working at the Universal Studios theme park, going so far as to take detectives to the park, talk her way past security guards and take the detectives into a building before finally admitting that she wasn’t employed there. She also lied about leaving her daughter with a non-existent nanny named Zanny and later about leaving the girl with friends. She also told investigators she received a phone call from Caylee the day she was reported missing, another lie.

Her defense attorneys argued before sentencing that her convictions should be combined into one, but the judge disagreed, saying law enforcement spent a great deal of time, energy and manpower looking for Caylee. The girl’s remains were found in a swampy area near the Anthony home in December 2008.

At the time of the girl’s disappearance, Anthony, a single mother, and Caylee were living with Anthony’s parents, George and Cindy Anthony, in suburban Orlando, but she would often stay with her boyfriend.

Prosecutors contended Anthony, then 22, suffocated Caylee with duct tape because she was interfering with her desire to be with her boyfriend and party with her friends. When Anthony’s parents confronted their daughter about Caylee’s whereabouts, she told them the girl had been missing for a month and her mother reported the disappearance to police.

Defense attorneys countered that the toddler accidentally drowned in the family swimming pool. They said that when Anthony panicked, her father, a former police officer, decided to make the death look like a murder. They said he put duct tape on the girl’s mouth and then dumped the body in woods about a quarter-mile away.

The defense said Anthony’s apparent carefree life hid emotional distress caused by sexual abuse from her father. Her father firmly denied both the cover-up and abuse claims. The prosecution called those claims absurd, and said no one makes an accident look like a murder.

In mid-July 2008, Cindy and George Anthony were contacted by a towing yard that their daughter’s car had been impounded for being abandoned and would be junked if not claimed. When George Anthony picked it up, he and the tow yard manager said it had the overwhelming stench of human decomposition. The defense said the smell was caused by a bag of trash that was in the trunk.

In one of the biggest and most important fights of the six-week trial, a prosecution scientist said the trunk contained air molecules consistent with a human body having decomposed there — but the defense questioned his methods and said they were unproven.

After a massive search for Caylee, her remains were found near the Anthony’s home by a meter reader, some six months after she disappeared.

Jurors declined to talk with reporters immediately after Tuesday’s verdict and their names were not released by the court. The Associated Press and other news organizations argued during a hearing Thursday that the jurors’ identities should be released.

The judge seemed to be leaning toward releasing the names, but said he would hold off for a couple of days, in part because he was worried about the jurors.

“The best I think I can do, legally, is a cooling off period. … The non-legal side of me really fears for those individuals who simply want to do their civic duty.”

At least one juror, Jennifer Ford, has already talked with the media. She told ABC News in an interview that the case was troubling.

“I did not say she was innocent,” said Ford, a 32-year-old nursing student. “I just said there was not enough evidence. If you cannot prove what the crime was, you cannot determine what the punishment should be.”

The prosecution didn’t paint a clear enough picture of what happened to Caylee, Ford said.

“I have no idea what happened to that child,” Ford said.

As the sentencing was announced, Flora Reece, an Orlando real estate broker, stood outside the courthouse holding a sign that read “Arrest the Jury.”

“At least she won’t get to pop the champagne cork tonight,” Reece said of the judge’s decision to keep Anthony in jail a little longer.

The handful of Anthony supporters also included Tim Allen of Orlando. The 24-year-old cook at a pizza shop held a sign asking Anthony to marry him.

“Everyone deserves a second chance.” Allen said. “She’s beautiful. Put some makeup on her, she’s gorgeous.”

Authorities in Florida were being mostly quiet about what might take place when Anthony is released. There are obvious complications with her returning to her parents’ home, given the stinging accusations her attorneys leveled against them during the trial.

When the verdict was read, Anthony’s parents rose from their seats without emotion and left the courtroom. They were in the courtroom for sentencing but left without speaking to reporters.

Their attorney, Mark Lippman, has said they haven’t spoken with their daughter since the verdict, and he wouldn’t say whether they believed she was guilty.

Threats have also been made against Anthony, and online she is being vilified. Nearly 22,000 people “liked” the “I hate Casey Anthony” page on Facebook, which included comments wishing her the same fate that befell Caylee.

The Anthony neighborhood was quiet Thursday with a few people bringing flowers and toys to the memorial for Caylee in the swampy, mosquito-filled spot off where her remains were found.

“If Caylee could see all this, she would see how much people loved her,” said 11-year-old Isobel Bulanhagui, who visited the memorial with her grandfather. The child pulled a battery out of her purse and laid it gently beside a sign that read “pass on the angel in your arms to your creator.”

“I don’t have much in my purse but this will give her energy,” Isobel said.

The memorial, the fourth that has been erected since Caylee died, has quadrupled in size since Tuesday’s verdict.

Hundreds of teddy bears and stuffed animals were piled on the dirt, with hand-written notes, many that disparaged Anthony. More than two dozen flower bouquets sit wilting and 27 helium balloons are anchored to the ground.

George Anthony has asked the public to donate the items to charity rather than place them in the woods.

LONDON – The Murdoch media empire unexpectedly killed off the muckraking News of the World tabloid Thursday after a public backlash over the illegal guerrilla tactics it used to expose the rich, the famous and the royal and remain Britain’s best-selling weekly newspaper.

The abrupt decision stunned the paper’s staff of 200, shocked the world’s most competitive news town and ignited speculation that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. plans to rebrand the tabloid under a new name in a bid to prevent a phone-hacking scandal from wrecking its bid for a far more lucrative television deal.

“This Sunday will be the last issue of the News of the World,” James Murdoch, son of the media magnate, announced in a memo to staff.

Mushrooming allegations of criminal behavior at the paper — including bribing police officers for information and hacking into the voice mail messages of celebrities, politicians and the families of murder victims — cast a dark cloud over News Corp.’s multibillion-pound plan to take full ownership of British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC, an operation far more valuable than all of Murdoch’s British newspapers.

Faced with growing public outrage, political condemnation and fleeing advertisers, Murdoch stopped the presses on the 168-year-old newspaper, whose lurid scoops have ranged from Sarah Ferguson’s claims she could provide access to ex-husband Prince Andrew to motor racing chief Max Mosley’s penchant for sadomasochism.

James Murdoch said all revenue from the final issue, which will carry no ads, would go to “good causes.” The paper had been hemorrhaging advertisers since the phone hacking scandal escalated this week, with companies including automakers Ford and Vauxhall, grocery chain J. Sainsbury and pharmacy chain Boots pulling ads from the paper.

The News of the World, which sells about 2.7 million copies a week, has been engulfed by accusations that it hacked into the cell phone messages of victims ranging from missing schoolgirls to grieving families, celebrities, royals and politicians in a quest for attention-grabbing headlines. Police say they are examining 4,000 names of people who may have been targeted.

The paper has acknowledged that it hacked into the mobile phone voice mails of politicians, celebrities and royal aides, but maintained for years that the transgressions were confided to a few rouge staff. A reporter and a private investigator working for the paper were jailed for phone hacking in 2007.

But in recent days the allegations have expanded to take in the phones of missing children who were found slain, the relatives of terror victims of London’s 2005 transit bombings and the families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

James Murdoch said if the allegations were true, “it was inhuman and has no place in our company.”

“Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad,” he said, “and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued.”

“While we may never be able to make up for distress that has been caused, the right thing to do is for every penny of the circulation revenue we receive this weekend to go to organizations — many of whom are long-term friends and partners — that improve life in Britain and are devoted to treating others with dignity,” he said.

The announcement sent shockwaves across the British media establishment, and among News of the World staff. Features editor Jules Stenson said the news was met with gasps and some tears.

“There was no lynch mob mentality, there was just a very shocked acceptance of the decision,” he told reporters outside the company’s London headquarters. “No one had any inkling.”

David Wooding, the paper’s editor, said the newsroom felt “like a bomb’s hit the place. We didn’t see it coming.”

Some suspected shutting the paper was a ploy to salvage Murdoch’s British media empire as well as the job of Rebekah Brooks, the trusted chief executive of his British news operation.

“News Corp. has taken a bold decision to stop printing the News of the World and close the title. Mr. Murdoch was clearly not willing to jeopardize his bid for BSkyB,” said markets analyst Louise Cooper of BGC Partners in London. “Murdoch has shown what a brilliant operator he really is.”

Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son David was one of the 52 people killed in the 2005 London transit bombings — and who suspects his phone may have been hacked — said the paper’s closure was “a cynical decision” by Murdoch.

“The only language (Rupert) Murdoch speaks is the dollar and this must have hit him hard,” Foulkes said.

Brooks, editor of News of the World at the time of the eavesdropping allegations, has maintained she did not know about it. James Murdoch said he was “satisfied she neither had knowledge of nor directed” the phone hacking.

News International spokeswoman Daisy Dunlop denied rumors that The Sun, the News of The World’s sister paper that publishes Monday through Saturday, would become a seven-day operation to pick up the slack. Still, she seemed to leave room for further developments.

“It’s not true at the moment,” she said.

According to online records, an unnamed U.K. individual on Tuesday bought up the rights to the domain name “sunonsunday.co.uk.”

Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, one of the tabloid’s alleged hacking victims, said closing the paper would not resolve the problems at News International.

“Cutting off the arm doesn’t mean to say you’ve solved it,” he said. “There is still the body and the head and the same culture and that’s why there has be a public inquiry into it. I cannot accept for a moment that at the top of the company, Mr. Murdoch — certainly Rebekah Brooks — didn’t know what was going on.”

But Charlie Beckett, director of the POLIS media institute at the London School of Economics, said it was a bold move aimed at resolving a situation that had got out of control.

“This is a fantastically brave move to try and cleanse everything and put a stop to it,” Beckett said.

The long-running phone hacking saga exploded Monday with the revelation that the News of the World had hacked into the phone of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl abducted and murdered in 2002. Worse, the family’s lawyer said someone at the paper had deleted some voicemail messages, giving false hope that the girl was still alive.

Later, newspapers alleged the tabloid obtained private addresses and phone numbers of relatives of people killed in the July 7, 2005, terrorist attacks on London’s transit system, as well as those tied to two more slain schoolgirls and the families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

What was an acceptable, if illegal, tactic used to gather scoops on drug-using celebrities, philandering politicians or cheating star athletes suddenly became completely unacceptable when missing children and grieving families were targeted.

There is so far no evidence those families’ phones had been hacked or that the newspaper did anything illegal in obtaining their numbers. Nonetheless, a storm of outrage followed.

The scandal has come uncomfortably close to Prime Minister David Cameron, who, like predecessors Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, courted the powerful Murdoch press whose endorsement is considered capable of swinging elections.

Cameron is friendly with Brooks, and even appointed a former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, to be his communications chief. Coulson resigned from the paper after its former royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for hacking into voicemail messages in 2007, but has always insisted he had not known about the eavesdropping.

In January, as the hacking allegations widened, Coulson resigned from 10 Downing St.

This week Cameron spoke out against the culture of hacking at the paper, calling for public inquiries into the News of the World’s behavior as well as into the failure of the original London police inquiry to uncover the extent of the hacking.

“We are no longer talking here about politicians and celebrities, we are talking about murder victims, potentially terrorist victims, having their phones hacked into,” Cameron said Wednesday in the House of Commons.

The Metropolitan Police force is also facing an inquiry by the police watchdog over claims its officers took money from the News of the World in exchange for information. The original police investigation into phone hacking, shelved after Goodman and Mulcaire were jailed, was reopened earlier this year.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson said he was “determined” to see any officers who received bribes from journalists facing criminal conviction. Brian Paddick, a former senior police commander, told the BBC that one journalist said he had paid 30,000 pounds ($50,000) for police information, and others paid cash in envelopes handed over a a drive-thru fast food restaurant near the News International headquarters.

Some payoffs were “jeopardizing serious criminal investigations by giving out confidential information that could be useful to criminals,” Paddick said.

Rupert Murdoch — a global media titan with newspaper, television, movie and book publishing interests in the United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere — is seeking to buy full control of broadcaster BSkyB, in which he owns a 39 percent share. His British arm of News Corp. was within reach of gaining the British government’s approval to make a bid for BSkyB when the scandal exploded, emboldening rivals and critics, who called on the government to block the takeover.

As the week went on, BSkyB’s share price sank, reflecting market anxieties that there might be no takeover bid. On Thursday they were down 1.8 percent at 812 pence on the London Stock Exchange.

Shares in News Corp., however, were up 1.6 percent Thursday at $18.22 on the Nasdaq index in New York, although they have fallen from above $18.50 since Tuesday.

Cameron’s Conservative-led government had insisted that the News of the World scandal had nothing to do with the decision about BSkyB. News Corp. had offered to spin off Sky News as an independent company to allay concerns that it would have a too-dominant position in the British news market

Rupert Murdoch refused to discuss the situation Thursday.

“I’m not making any comments,” he said when ambushed by reporters at a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

____

Gregory Katz, Raphael G. Satter, Cassandra Vinograd and Danica Kirka and Jonathan Shenfield in London contributed to this report.