Bargainers near agreement on spending, tax cut deal ADVERTISING Bargainers near agreement on spending, tax cut deal WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional leaders were poised Tuesday to unveil a year-end tax and spending package that would fund the government through 2016,
Bargainers near agreement on spending, tax cut deal
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional leaders were poised Tuesday to unveil a year-end tax and spending package that would fund the government through 2016, raise domestic and defense spending, and increase the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars by extending numerous popular tax credits without paying for them.
“The package has been completed. The agreements, we believe, have been properly struck,” House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, told reporters after meeting with other members of House GOP leadership Tuesday evening. He said the tentative agreement was being reviewed by congressional scorekeepers and would be presented to lawmakers later Tuesday evening to review, though other aides said details were still being finalized.
Eleventh-hour negotiations twisted and turned on the mammoth deal pairing the $1.1 trillion spending legislation with a giant tax bill catering to any number of special interests. The deal, Congress’ last major piece of unfinished business for the year, became the vehicle for countless long-sought priorities and odds and ends, including bankruptcy protection for Puerto Rico, reform of visa-free travel to the U.S., renewable energy tax credits and health benefits for 9/11 first responders.
Republican leaders predicted the legislation would be unveiled by day’s end and come to a vote Thursday, allowing lawmakers to head home for the holidays having completed their needed tasks, if not distinguished themselves much beyond that. First they would have to pass yet another short-term government funding extension, since the current one runs out Wednesday at midnight.
“In negotiations like this you win some, you lose some. Democrats won some, they lost some. We won some, we lost some,” new House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said at an event hosted by Politico. “At the end of the day we’re going to get this done.”
Assad can stay, for now: Kerry accepts Russian stance
MOSCOW (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia’s long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad’s future be determined by his own people, as Washington and Moscow edged toward putting aside years of disagreement over how to end Syria’s civil war.
“The United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change,” Kerry told reporters in the Russian capital after meeting President Vladimir Putin. A major international conference on Syria would take place later this week in New York, Kerry announced.
Kerry reiterated the U.S. position that Assad, accused by the West of massive human rights violations and chemical weapons attacks, won’t be able to steer Syria out of 4 ½ years of conflict.
But after a day of discussions with Assad’s key international backer, Kerry said the focus now is “not on our differences about what can or cannot be done immediately about Assad.” Rather, it is on facilitating a peace process in which “Syrians will be making decisions for the future of Syria.”
Kerry’s declarations crystallized the evolution in U.S. policy on Assad over the last several months, as the Islamic State group’s growing influence in the Middle East has taken priority.
Yemen peace talks underway as fighters ignore cease-fire
GENEVA (AP) — U.N.-brokered peace talks between Yemen’s internationally recognized government and Shiite rebels opened Tuesday in Switzerland with expectations for a deal low as fighters on both sides failed to honor a weeklong cease-fire in some parts of the country.
The truce, scheduled to start at noon on Tuesday, was meant to give the warring factions a chance to find a solution to the conflict that has engulfed the Arab world’s poorest country. Security officials said rebel shelling and ground clashes continued in southwestern Taiz province and a Saudi-led coalition struck back with airstrikes several times throughout the day.
Yemen has been torn by fighting pitting the rebels, known as Houthis, and army units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh against forces of the internationally recognized government, which is backed by the Saudi-led coalition and supported by the United States, as well as southern separatists, religious extremists and other militants.
According to U.N. figures, the war in Yemen has killed at least 5,884 people since March, when the fighting escalated after the Saudi-led coalition began launching airstrikes targeting the rebels.
In a statement, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, emphasized the urgency of the talks in Switzerland — the latest in a series of negotiations and cease-fires that have so far failed to end the fighting.
UN closes the books on decade-long nuclear probe of Iran
VIENNA (AP) — The U.N. nuclear agency closed the books Tuesday on its decade-long probe of allegations that Iran worked on atomic arms, and Tehran proclaimed that within weeks, it would finish cutbacks on present nuclear programs that the U.S. fears could be turned into making such weapons.
The probe had to be formally ended as part of a July 14 deal between Iran and six nations that involves the removal of economic sanctions on Tehran in exchange for its commitment to crimp its nuclear program. A resolution was approved by consensus of the 35-nation board of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
The move means that some questions about the alleged weapons work may never be resolved. Before the resolution’s adoption, agency head Yukiya Amano told the board that his investigation couldn’t “reconstruct all the details of activities conducted by Iran in the past.”
At the same time, he repeated an assessment he made last month that Iran worked on “a range of activities relevant” to making nuclear weapons, with coordinated efforts up to 2003 tapering off into scattered activities up to 2009.
Chief Iranian delegate Reza Najafi denied such work, in keeping with his country’s constant line during the protracted probe. In his statement to the board, and then to reporters outside the meeting, he said Tehran’s nuclear activities “have always been for peaceful civilian or conventional military uses.”
Activists: Nigeria military killed hundreds of Shiites
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Police opened fire Tuesday on unarmed Shiite Muslim protesters in the northern city of Kaduna, leaving three dead, the spokesman for Shiites in Nigeria said, as activists accused soldiers of having killed hundreds of Shiites in “a massacre” in a nearby town in recent days.
But police spokesman Zubairu Abdullahi denied any killings and said Shiites tried to attack a police station.
“We only repel the sect who attempted to attack our station,” he said. “We only used tear gas to disperse them. Maybe in the process of dispersing them, they sustained injury, I don’t know.”
Spokesman Ibrahim Musa of the Shiite Islamic Movement in Nigeria said three people were killed and 10 wounded when police shot “peaceful protesters.” They were condemning the mass killings over the weekend and early Monday in the ancient Muslim university town of Zaria, and demanding the military release their leader, Ibraheem Zakzaky.
The bloodshed in Zaria was yet another blow to Africa’s most populous nation, already beset by a 6-year-old insurgency waged by Boko Haram, a violent Islamic group which is at odds with the Shiites and others who oppose its extremist views.
