Touchscreen machines fail in 100% of one SC precinct in GOP primary; Clinton wins Nevada narrowly over Obama, Romney with clear GOP win...

20 January :: Electronic voting machines in Horry County, South Carolina, have reportedly failed in 100% of its precincts, creating the real possibility that South Carolina's Republican primary vote cannot be confirmed by any official means; with the machines used already known to be vulnerable to hacking and malfunction, "Late in the week poll workers picked up the iVotronic machines that they are using today. They took them home on voting machine "sleepovers" and then set up the poll sites for today's primary", reports Brad Friedman for the investigative blog BRADBLOG... John McCain declared winner of South Carolina Republican party primary, outpacing close challenger Mike Huckabee 33% to 30%, despite reports of serious problems in touchscreen voting machines, unknown numbers of voters "turned away" at polls... Hillary Clinton has been declared winner of the Nevada caucuses, with Barack Obama finishing second (50% and 45% support among caucus-goers, respectively), in the run for the Democratic nomination; Mitt Romney has reportedly taken 40% more than his nearest rivals, finishing with 55% to Paul and McCain's 13% support... The annual Davos Economic Forum has been overshadowed by concerns of growing international economic instability, and fallout from the subprime mortgage lending crisis that hit US banks in the summer of 2007; The Financial Times reports "Even Klaus Schwab, the founder of the Davos meetings, sounds downbeat: 'The discussions in Davos will certainly be very dominated by the economic challenges we have at the moment — the aftermath of the subprime crisis, the transfer of capital from energy-consuming to energy-producing countries, inflationary tendencies'"... A team of economists in Britain has suggested the EU should implement a broad-based carbon tax in order to spur market adaptation to renewable fuels, instead of setting specific targets for the use of biofuels and renewable energy; the report suggests that specific funding for a transition to the widespread use of biofuels would be "a form of state support for an environmentally and economically harmful activity designed to consolidate existing price support mechanisms for vested interest groups, most notably farmers"... MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews has apologized for "callous" remarks about Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), in which he suggested she was elected in New York because her husband, fmr. pres. Bill Clinton, "messed around"; Matthews explained that his intention was to highlight that she performed well under pressure and gained respect in the public eye and among elected officials...