On Tuesday, in a bid to resolve its debt crisis, the Pennsylvania capital’s City Council vote 4-3 to file for Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy and hired a special lawyer to file documents with the court.The filing has stirred up a host of conflicting views and debate about the legality of the council’s move. Mayor Thompson has said she is “ashamed” of the council’s behavior.In Thursday’s court documents, the mayor asserted the bankruptcy petition was invalid and requested an immediate conference to address the matter and a hearing to dismiss the case.The mayor’s petition said pleadings to the court would be filed shortly.The Pennsylvania capital’s crisis has been a year in the making. The city of about 50,000 is hampered by $300 million in debt incurred from an expensive revamp of its incinerator and is struggling to fund key city services.Harrisburg is one of a handful of municipalities that has flirted with bankruptcy in the wake of the recession of 2008 that devastated budgets in state and local communities. Some say it could become a touchstone for whether other cities will follow this path to extract concessions from creditors and others.In an interview with Reuters Insider on Thursday, Mark Schwartz, an attorney for the city council, said the Chapter 9 filing was “absolutely” legal, rejecting charges from the mayor and the surrounding Dauphin County that the council did not have the authority to take such a step.City Controller Dan Miller concurred, telling Reuters Insider that the filing was the right move for the debt-strapped city.”What I really advocate for is to use the leverage of bankruptcy.” he said. “It would be great if we didn’t have to go into bankruptcy and as we know, Jefferson County, Alabama, never went into bankruptcy although they voted three times to enter bankruptcy and I would like us to do the same thing.”On Thursday, Charles Zwally, special council for Dauphin County, said the county was weighing its options.”We’re reviewing it now and we’re advising the county…We don’t believe that they are authorized to file,” he said.Bond insurer Assured Guaranty also questioned the legality of the filing.Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has said the city would be better off if it agreed to a rescue plan under the state’s Act 47 program for distressed cities which has seen Philadelphia and other cities through crises. His office opposes the bankruptcy.”The governor and the bond insurer and the creditors are all jostling for, they’re still pushing their lawsuits which basically should be stayed by this proceeding,” said Schwartz.At the root of Harrisburg’s troubles is a financing scheme used to fund a state-of-the-art renovation of its trash-burning plant that left the city deeply in debt.The incinerator is owned by the Harrisburg Authority, a separate municipal entity, but the city and Dauphin County guarantee much of that debt.In December 2010, with Harrisburg facing the prospect of bond defaults, deep service cuts, or worse, Pennsylvania officials put the city under its Act 47 law, which obliges faltering cities to implement plans to ward off Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy filings.In July, the City Council rejected a state-approved rescue plan, which called on the city to renegotiate labor deals, cut jobs, and sell or lease the city’s major assets — its parking garages and the incinerator. In August, the council again rejected a similar plan.

By Poornima Gupta and Jim FinkleSAN FRANCISCO, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Apple Inc rolled out its new iCloud service and latest mobile software to a chorus of user complaints this week, after glitches led to email access problems and long delays in installation.Some users reported losing their email access as Apple formally launched iCloud, an online communications, media storage and backup service, on Wednesday.Apple’s new operating system for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch — iOS 5 — also annoyed many users who encountered hours-long delays in downloading and installation.Investors have high hopes for iCloud, which replaces MobileMe, a collection of Web-based products that have failed to impress critics or generate substantial revenues for a company that has had success in most other ventures over the past decade.”It failed in a very nasty way in that mail sometimes vanished, sometimes appeared then vanished, and often there was a user and/or password-incorrect message plus some rather obscure additional error messages,” said David Farber, a professor of engineering and public policy with Carnegie Mellon University.”The behavior suggests program problems,” added Farber, a well-known computer scientist.But the iCloud problems are especially embarrassing for Apple, as the company introduced the new online service with much fanfare in June at its annual developer forum.Co-founder Steve Jobs, who died last Wednesday, said “it just works” when he introduced the service in June. The software is key to the new iPhone 4S, which will be launched on Friday in seven countries.The problems also come as rival Research in Motion deals with an international outage of its email and messaging services.”Some users were experiencing intermittent authentication errors when trying to use mail,” Apple said in a status update on its webpage for iCloud support. “Normal service has been restored. We apologize for any inconvenience.”Other problems Apple reported as having resolved included: intermittent slowness when signing in to iCloud, users unable to back up their data, and delays receiving verification emails from Apple.Apple spokespersons did not immediately return calls seeking comment.Users took to Twitter to complain about the problems during the roll-out.”iCloud would be great if the email would freaking recognize my password,” wrote Leanna Lofte, or “@llofte”, on Twitter.”Apple Mail’s still offline, everything’s out of sync here between my devices, and what a mess,” Matt Peckham, or “@mattpeckham”, wrote on Twitter.

Central banks in debt-strapped countries have a golden opportunity ahead of them, if you will excuse the pun, to help their countries’ finances by selling their yellow metal holdings. At least, that is the message that Royal Bank of Scotland’s commodities chief Nick Moore has been giving in recent presentations — and he thinks it might happen.   The gist is that gold is now at a record price but banks have not come close to  meeting their sales allowance for the year. Under the Central Bank Gold Agreement there is a quota of 400 tonnes that can be sold by central banks within a 12 month period and with only about three months to go in the latest period less than 39 tonnes has been sold.  At today’s price that remaining 361 tonnes is worth some $14 billion. Moore believes that euro zone central banks in particular may increase their sales because of the record price and the deteriorating fiscal positions.  Furthermore, he reckons the price of gold will come down over the next 12 months as its  safe-haven appeal eases and inflation expectations fade. Among the so-called PIGS — Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain — Italy is the major gold holder with qround 2450 tonnes. But Portugal has some 380 tonnes,  Spain 280 and  Greece 112. Might current prices not tempt them to selling a  few billion euros worth over the next few months  to help balance the budget a bit?