Nearly 126 million voters are eligible to cast ballots in Uttar Pradesh Polling is being held for the sixth phase of assembly elections in India's most populous and politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.More than 20 million people are eligible to vote on Tuesday in the seven-phase elections.
Votes are being polled for 68 seats in 13 districts amid tight security, election officials said.
These elections are expected to be a litmus test ahead of national elections, which are due in 2014.
Uttar Pradesh is ruled by Chief Minister Mayawati, a low-caste Dalit icon from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
If it were a separate country, Uttar Pradesh would be the fifth-largest in the world by population, with more than 200 million people.
Continue reading the main story Voting dates: Feb 8, 11, 15, 19, 23, 28, March 3Vote counting: 6 MarchEligible voters: 125.8mAssembly seats: 403Cost of election: 3bn rupees ($61m)Police and paramilitary troops deployed: 500,000Election officials: 500,000Polling booths: 135,000Polling began at 07:00 (01:30 GMT) on Tuesday.Voters in Ghaziabad, Indirapuram, Sahibabad and Noida, which are close to Indian capital, Delhi, will be casting their ballots in the sixth phase.
The average turnout in the 2007 state election was 46% and election officials have organised various events over recent months to bring more voters to the booth.
Litmus TestBoth Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty have campaigned hard in the state in an effort to revive the Congress party's presence.
Some polls have suggested that Congress could increase its vote and may hope to ally with the other strong regional force, the Samajwadi Party, to oppose Ms Mayawati.
The state, one of India's least-developed, sends the largest number of MPs to parliament and has provided the country with eight prime ministers since independence in 1947.
Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa are also voting in this round of state elections. Results for all the states will be announced on 6 March.
Some U.S. pawnbrokers are taking liquid assets - literally. Fine wines are among the items they will accept as collateral for loans, along with family jewels and fine art, as a practice common in Britain and France catches on across the Atlantic. Liquidity issues, or a cash shortage, can be found on most rungs of the economic ladder, the pawnbrokers said. "You'd be amazed by how many wealthy individuals have terrible credit ratings. And besides, if you go to a bank, it can take weeks or months to get a loan. When we make a loan, it's usually the same day," said Jordan Tabach-Bank, head of Beverly Loan Co. In an office above a Bank of America Corp [BAC Loading... () 
] branch in Beverly Hills, California, home to some of Hollywood's biggest stars, the pawnshop for the prosperous regularly lends to hedge-fund managers, bankers, lawyers, doctors - and occasionally to Oscar winners. "Most people have a vision of pawn shops as sad sites. But that's not the case here," Tabach-Bank said. "I have a lot of people who come in who have a business opportunity and they need an infusion of cash for business purposes," he said. USGoldBuyers.com, an online pawnbroker with an office in New York City's diamond district, will also accept fine wines as collateral, spokesman Jose Caba said. While the wealthy like their "expensive toys, unfortunately, sometimes they don't have the liquid assets so to speak, to keep up their toys. That's where we come in." "We don't really want to sell the wine, or any asset that we take in whether it be gold or fine art," Caba said. About 90 percent of the loans made have been repaid, he estimated. Interest rates and length of the loans vary widely. A British-based pawnbroker, borro.com, with an office in New York recently lent $120,000 in exchange for 128 bottles of Chateau d'Yquem. The golden Sauternes were actually worth an estimated at $250,000. Within the last three weeks, borro.com had taken a case of 1989 Chateau Petrus, valued at about $38,000, for a loan of $24,000, said Chief Executive Paul Aitken. He then listed several other loans that were secured with various vintages of the five First Growths Bordeaux: Chateau Haut-Brion, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, Chateau Haut-Brion, Chateau Margaux and Chateau Mouton Rothschild. These top wines are regularly sold at auctions where cases fetch tens of thousands of dollars. His clientele, whose net worth ranges from $1 million to $10 million, use the loan "for liquidity - no pun intended. They're mostly small business owners who basically are just waiting on payments and managing cash flows." Financial advisers and wealth managers recommend many of their clients to him, Aitken said. There are three publicly traded U.S. pawnbroking companies that operate in Canada, the United States and Mexico. None takes fine wines as collateral, "though it is an interesting business model," said Tom Welch, general counsel for EZCORP Inc, [EZPW Loading... () 
Thomas Lohnes | AFP | Getty Images“Our sense is that if you get at or above the consensus which seems to be 500 billion euros, that is going to be supportive for risk. At the moment that probably means U.S. dollar down, euro up,” Ray Attrill, Head of Forex Strategy, North America, BNP Paribas told CNBC on Tuesday.According to a Barclays Capital survey, which polled over 200 clients on their expectations for the upcoming LTRO, the majority said they expect the uptake to be 450-600 billion euros.The European Central Bank’s ![[cnbc explains]](/CNBCexplainsicon1.gif){kind=small}
second LTRO scheduled for Wednesday will offer the region’s banks another round of three-year loans at an interest rate of 1 percent, aimed at boosting liquidity and reducing the risk of a funding crisis in the euro zone. In addition to the ECB’s liquidity boost, Attrill believes another positive driver for the euro will be easing fears surrounding Greece’s debt situation.The significant event risk related to the Greek bailout has passed, he said, adding that this may compel asset managers to get their European bond holdings “something close to benchmark”.“That would mean some significant real money flows that drive the euro higher,” he said.Discussing his call for the euro-dollar [EUR= Loading... () 
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said publication of the emails was justified Whistleblowing website Wikileaks has begun publishing the first of more than five million confidential emails from US-based security think tank Stratfor.
But President Obama admitted in a speech in Miami last week that there’s not all that much he can do to blunt the impact of prices, which some analysts think could be heading toward $5 per gallon nationwide this summer. “The amount of oil that we drill at home doesn't set the price of gas by itself," Obama said. "The oil market is global. Oil is bought and sold in a world market. And just like last year, the single biggest thing that's causing the price of oil to spike right now is instability in the Middle East — this time, around Iran. When uncertainty increases, speculative trading on Wall Street increases, and that drives prices up even more.” There are two tactics readily available to presidents to blunt the impact of rising gas prices: release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and try to limit the ability of oil “speculators” to drive up the price of oil in futures markets. The problem for Obama is his administration has already done both of those things. In June, the Obama team released 30 million barrels from the reserve, citing ongoing unrest in Libya as a factor that was then driving up gas prices. At the time, gas was averaging $3.61 for a gallon of regular gasoline, according to AAA. Today, the price is $3.70. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner signaled the administration is open to using the strategic reserve again this year. “There's a case for the use of the reserve in some circumstances, and we'll continue to look at those and evaluate that carefully,” Geithner said. “But again, the right thing for the country is to make sure we are focused on long-term investments in energy, changes in energy policy that help solve these long-term problems.” Triple-A itself, however, is not pushing for use of the strategic reserve this year.“We don’t think it should be done in response to simply higher prices,” said Avery Ash, manager of regulatory affairs at AAA. “Despite the geopolitical uncertainty and disruptions in the Middle East, we are not seeing disruptions in supply at this point.” And the Obama team has also taken steps to minimize the impact of commodity speculation on oil markets. In October, the CFTC voted to curb trading in a host of commodities, including in oil, in an attempt to use position caps to mute wild price swings. The new rules blocked traders from purchasing too much of any commodity at any one time. Since then, the regulatory agency has been fighting in court to keep the position limits rule, beating back an effort by the financial industry to force a federal court to block the measure. What’s more, excessive oil speculation can be a tricky thing to prove. The last time oil speculation was blamed for driving up gas prices, in 2008, a federal inter-agency task force was unable to find evidence that the speculators were to blame at all.“The Task Force’s preliminary analysis to date does not support the proposition that speculative activity has systematically driven changes in oil prices,” the group’s 2008 report said. In Miami, President Obama acknowledged the tricky position he’s in — even as he pledged to do everything he can to solve the problem: “You know there are no quick fixes to this problem. You know we can't just drill our way to lower gas prices,” he said. “If we're going to take control of our energy future and can start avoiding these annual gas price spikes … we've got to have a sustained 'all of the above' strategy that develops every available source of American energy: yes, oil and gas, but also wind and solar and nuclear and biofuels and more.” 
John Stumpf, chief executive officer of Wells FargoJohn Stumpf, whose bank’s market capitalization 
Barely six hours after billionaire investor Warren Buffett said that if he could he’d like to buy “a couple of hundred thousand single family homes”, the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac put about 2500 of theirs up for sale.It is the next step in the government’s REO (bank-owned) to rent program; the plan, announced earlier this month, is designed to help Fannie and Freddie unload thousands of foreclosed properties weighing on their books. Fannie Mae alone owns more than 100,000 repossessed properties. “This is another important milestone in our initiative designed to reduce taxpayer losses, stabilize neighborhoods and home values, shift to more private management of properties, and reduce the supply of REO properties in the marketplace,” said FHFA acting director Edward DeMarco in a press release. While the prequalification phase began several weeks ago, investors can now move to the next phase, where, if accepted by proving financial capacity and experience, they can get access to the properties for sale. The bulk of the properties are in the most distressed markets, such as Florida, parts of California, Phoenix, AZ, and Las Vegas, NV. Atlanta, GA, however, has the highest number in the mix, 572 properties making up 23 percent of the total up for sale. Atlanta housing was hit hard by the recession and high job losses. Just 17 percent of the properties are vacant, so investors would largely be getting assets with existing cash flow. As these first properties hit the market, there is no shortage of investors ready to scoop them up. Rental demand is still surging, and rents continue to rise, despite record high affordability and record low mortgage rates. Nearly 47 percent of all closings in January were of distressed properties, according to a new survey from Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance, and investors now make up nearly a quarter of all buyers, according to the National Association of Realtors. As banks start to ramp up the foreclosure process again, after a year of delays following the “robo-signing” scandal, more properties will be repossessed and put up for sale; investors are flocking to the deals, largely using all cash, as they get into increasingly competitive situations. Even owner-occupants (non-investors) are turning more to cash, as credit is still tight. “Despite near record low mortgage rates, homebuyers are finding it very advantageous in the current housing market to shop with cash. And low returns on money deposited in banks as well as mortgage approval hassles also are pushing homebuyers to consider all cash transactions,” according to Campbell/IMF. “Between last October and January, the use of cash by current homeowners purchasing a new principal residence surged from 30.8 percent to 34.1 percent. Critics of the bulk REO to rent program say that giving large investors with hoards of cash bulk deals squeezes out smaller investors who might do more improvements to the properties and then turn around and sell them at higher prices, thereby increasing overall home values. Investors in the FHFA program are required to hold the properties and rent them for “a specified number of years,” according to the agency’s initial announcement. Questions? Comments? document.write("");document.write("RealtyCheck"+"@"+"cnbc.com");document.write('');And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes
Wong said the company was facing inflationary pressures on wages in Asia, but it had also been building out its investment banking division and that was delivering results.HSBC announced Monday that it had posted a pretax profit of almost $22 billion for 2011. Its Asian operations contribute more than 60 percent to the bank's annual profits."We have to pay those people to produce that revenue. So I think, you're right...we have to pay more for the staff because of the inflationary pressures but this is for a good cause," Wong said.According to Wong, the company had gone from being ranked in the mid-teens in Hong Kong's IPO league table two years ago, to number two because of its investments in the capital markets division. "We are number one in debt capital markets, so we've invested a lot and we've also invested a lot in FX margin trading system, so we are producing very good FX revenue," he added.HSBC [0005.HK Loading... () 
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The results of the second round of Europe’s answer to quantitative easing 
Unions want universal social security cover for workers in India's vast unorganised labour sector Indian workers have begun a strike against high inflation and to demand better working conditions and an end to selling off state firms.
S&P/Case Shiller home price data is reported at 9 a.m., and while prices may still be in decline, traders have been quick to jump on any improvement lately as housing seems to be turning a corner. November’s prices fell a disappointing 0.7 percent, when reported last month.But home builder stocks, like Toll Brothers [TOL Loading... ()