From NPR News in Washington, I’m Lakshmi Singh.

Oil giant BP will shell out 4.5 billion dollars to resolve charges related to the 2010 Gulf oil spill. The company has agreed to plead guilty to 14 charges, including obstruction of Congress. NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports individual executives will face prosecution as well.

At least two BP managers will face manslaughter charges for the disaster that killed 11 people onboard the Deepwater Horizon rig in April, 2010. The company has agreed to accept responsibility for 14 criminal charges, including misconduct for each of the deaths, violating environmental laws and obstructing an investigation by Congress. BP has also agreed to submit to independent monitoring and serve a kind of corporate probation. But there’s no sign the company will be barred from accepting lucrative US government contracts. Law enforcement sources say the criminal penalty is the largest in history. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.

President Obama has traveled to New York City to get a firsthand look at hurricane recovery efforts there. The president was to meet with first responders and families hit hardest when Sandy slammed to the East Coast last month, killing more than 100 people and leaving millions of people without electricity.

Reports of more violence between Israel and the Palestinians. A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in Israel, killing at least three people, as the death toll among Palestinians rises to at least 13. For a second day, Israeli warplanes bombed targets in and around Gaza City. Many Palestinians have turned out for the funeral of a Hamas military leader who was assassinated yesterday by Israel. It is uncertain if other senior Hamas figures were in attendance after they were warned by Israel that they were also targets.

In the US, there was a sharp rise in new claims for unemployment benefits last week. NPR’s Dave Mattingly reports much of the spike is blamed on Superstorm Sandy.

Weekly jobless claims went up 78,000. The Labor Department says many were filed in the Northeast, where Hurricane Sandy destroyed homes and businesses. Economist Hugh Johnson says the seasonally-adjusted total of 439,000, the highest in a year and a half, will be temporary.

“This is probably a one, maybe a two-week event. You’re likely to see these numbers smooth out over the course of the remaining month.”

Sandy is also blamed for a drop in retail sales in October as many stores were without power in the final days of the month. Dave Mattingly, NPR News, Washington.

At last check on Wall Street, Dow was down 53 points at 12,517, NASDAQ off 16, more than 0.5%, at 2,831, S&P 500 down five points at 1,350.

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The International Monetary Fund says it’s done all it can to help Greece reach a sustainable level of debt. And now it’s up to Greece's European lenders to do more. But IMF spokesman William Murray declined to elaborate on what further actions should be taken. The IMF has been in a dispute with Greece's other lenders over the best ways to address Greece's debt which held up the release of Greece's next bailout installment.

Diplomats from North Korea and Japan are holding talks in Mongolia today. Matthew Algeo reports the two sides are discussing the repatriation of Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korea.

Nobody outside North Korea knows exactly how many people the North Koreans kidnapped from Japan in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s believed the victims were taken back to North Korea and forced to teach North Korean spies Japanese language and culture. North Korea claims that all the Japanese it kidnapped have either been repatriated already or died in captivity. But the Japanese government believes some of its citizens are still being held against their will in North Korea. North Korea and Japan have no formal diplomatic relations. The bilateral talks in the Mongolian capital could determine once and for all the fate of those Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea. For NPR News, I’m Matthew Algeo in Ulan Bator, Mongolia.

There’s been a contraction in factory activity in the US mid-Atlantic region in the past month, according to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank. Today, it said its business activity index fell from 5.7 in October to a much-steeper-than-expected minus 10.7 in November. The survey covers factories in Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware.

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