Lawmakers, Obama in last chance talks on “fiscal cliff”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama and lawmakers are launching a last-chance round of budget talks days before a New Year’s deadline to reach a deal or watch the economy go off a “fiscal cliff.”

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will meet congressional leaders from both parties at the White House on Friday at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) to try to revive negotiations to avoid tax hikes and spending cuts – together worth $ 600 billion – that will begin to take effect on January 1.

Members were divided on the odds of success, with a few expressing hope, some talking as if they had abandoned it and a small but growing number suggesting Congress might try to stretch the deadline into the first two days of January.

In order to be ready to legislate if an agreement takes shape, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives convened a session for Sunday.

And House Majority Leader Eric Cantor advised members to be prepared to meet through January 2, the final day before the swearing-in of the new Congress elected on November 6.

It “doesn’t feel like anything that’s very constructive is going to happen” as a result of the meeting with Obama, said Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker. “It feels more like optics than anything that’s real.

The two political parties remained far apart, particularly over plans to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans to help close the U.S. budget deficit. But one veteran Republican, Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, held out the prospect that if Obama came through with significant spending cuts, Republicans in the House might compromise on taxes.

The coming days are likely to see either intense bargaining over numbers, or political theater as each side attempts to avoid blame if a deal looks unlikely.

“Hopefully, there is still time for an agreement of some kind that saves the taxpayers from a wholly, wholly preventable economic crisis,” Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Democratic-controlled Senate, said on the Senate floor.

But the rhetoric was still harsh on Thursday after months of wrangling – much of it along ideological lines – over whether to raise taxes and by how much, as well as how to cut back on government spending.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the top Democrat in Congress, accused Republican House Speaker John Boehner of running a “dictatorship” by refusing to allow bills he did not like onto the floor of the chamber.

Reid urged Republicans in the House to prevent the worst of the fiscal shock by getting behind a Senate bill to extend existing tax cuts for all except those households earning more than $ 250,000 a year.

Both Reid and Boehner, as well as McConnell and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, are to meet Obama on Friday.

MARKETS EASE

U.S. stocks sharply cut losses after news of the House reconvening as investors clung to hopes of an 11th-hour deal. Even a partial agreement on taxes that would leave tougher issues like entitlement reform and the debt ceiling until later could be enough to keep markets calm.

“I’m not convinced it will result in a deal, but you could get enough concessions by both parties to at least avoid the immediacy of going over the cliff,” said Randy Bateman, chief investment officer of Huntington Asset Management, in Columbus, Ohio.

Obama arrived back at the White House on Thursday from a brief vacation in Hawaii that he cut short to restart stalled negotiations with Congress.

He is likely to meet the toughest resistance from Republicans in the House, where a group of several dozen fiscal conservatives have opposed any tax hikes at all.

But Flake of Arizona said his fellow Republicans in the House and Senate are resigned to seeing some sort of increase in top income tax rates. But they will push back if Obama does not offer spending cuts.

“There will be resistance from a lot of House conservatives to a deal that does that,” Flake said.

Strictly speaking, the fiscal cliff measures begin on January 1 when tax rates go up but the House might stay in session until the following day if an agreement is being worked out.

“This January 1 deadline is a little artificial. We can do everything retroactively. We have to get it right, not get it quickly,” said Republican Representative Andy Harris.

Another component of the “fiscal cliff” – $ 109 billion in automatic spending cuts to military and domestic programs – is set to kick in on January 2.

The House and Senate passed bills months ago reflecting their own sharply divergent positions on the expiring low tax rates, which went into effect during the administration of former Republican President George W. Bush.

Democrats want to allow the tax cuts to expire on the wealthiest Americans and leave them in place for everyone else. Republicans want to extend the tax cuts for everyone.

In another sign that Americans are increasingly worrying about their finances as Washington fails to address the budget crisis, consumer confidence fell to a four-month low in December.

Americans blame Republicans in Congress more than congressional Democrats or Obama for the fiscal crisis, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

When asked who they held more responsible for the “fiscal cliff” situation, 27 percent blamed Republicans in Congress, 16 percent blamed Obama and 6 percent pointed to Democrats in Congress. The largest percentage – 31 percent – blamed “all of the above.”

(Additional reporting by David Lawder, Fred Barbash and Mark Felsenthal in Washington and David Gaffen in New York; writing by Alistair Bell; editing by Todd Eastham)

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Lawmakers, Obama in last chance talks on “fiscal cliff”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama and lawmakers are launching a last-chance round of budget talks days before a New Year’s deadline to reach a deal or watch the economy go off a “fiscal cliff.”

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will meet congressional leaders from both parties at the White House on Friday at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) to try to revive negotiations to avoid tax hikes and spending cuts – together worth $ 600 billion – that will begin to take effect on January 1.

Members were divided on the odds of success, with a few expressing hope, some talking as if they had abandoned it and a small but growing number suggesting Congress might try to stretch the deadline into the first two days of January.

In order to be ready to legislate if an agreement takes shape, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives convened a session for Sunday.

And House Majority Leader Eric Cantor advised members to be prepared to meet through January 2, the final day before the swearing-in of the new Congress elected on November 6.

It “doesn’t feel like anything that’s very constructive is going to happen” as a result of the meeting with Obama, said Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker. “It feels more like optics than anything that’s real.

The two political parties remained far apart, particularly over plans to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans to help close the U.S. budget deficit. But one veteran Republican, Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, held out the prospect that if Obama came through with significant spending cuts, Republicans in the House might compromise on taxes.

The coming days are likely to see either intense bargaining over numbers, or political theater as each side attempts to avoid blame if a deal looks unlikely.

“Hopefully, there is still time for an agreement of some kind that saves the taxpayers from a wholly, wholly preventable economic crisis,” Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Democratic-controlled Senate, said on the Senate floor.

But the rhetoric was still harsh on Thursday after months of wrangling – much of it along ideological lines – over whether to raise taxes and by how much, as well as how to cut back on government spending.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the top Democrat in Congress, accused Republican House Speaker John Boehner of running a “dictatorship” by refusing to allow bills he did not like onto the floor of the chamber.

Reid urged Republicans in the House to prevent the worst of the fiscal shock by getting behind a Senate bill to extend existing tax cuts for all except those households earning more than $ 250,000 a year.

Both Reid and Boehner, as well as McConnell and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, are to meet Obama on Friday.

MARKETS EASE

U.S. stocks sharply cut losses after news of the House reconvening as investors clung to hopes of an 11th-hour deal. Even a partial agreement on taxes that would leave tougher issues like entitlement reform and the debt ceiling until later could be enough to keep markets calm.

“I’m not convinced it will result in a deal, but you could get enough concessions by both parties to at least avoid the immediacy of going over the cliff,” said Randy Bateman, chief investment officer of Huntington Asset Management, in Columbus, Ohio.

Obama arrived back at the White House on Thursday from a brief vacation in Hawaii that he cut short to restart stalled negotiations with Congress.

He is likely to meet the toughest resistance from Republicans in the House, where a group of several dozen fiscal conservatives have opposed any tax hikes at all.

But Flake of Arizona said his fellow Republicans in the House and Senate are resigned to seeing some sort of increase in top income tax rates. But they will push back if Obama does not offer spending cuts.

“There will be resistance from a lot of House conservatives to a deal that does that,” Flake said.

Strictly speaking, the fiscal cliff measures begin on January 1 when tax rates go up but the House might stay in session until the following day if an agreement is being worked out.

“This January 1 deadline is a little artificial. We can do everything retroactively. We have to get it right, not get it quickly,” said Republican Representative Andy Harris.

Another component of the “fiscal cliff” – $ 109 billion in automatic spending cuts to military and domestic programs – is set to kick in on January 2.

The House and Senate passed bills months ago reflecting their own sharply divergent positions on the expiring low tax rates, which went into effect during the administration of former Republican President George W. Bush.

Democrats want to allow the tax cuts to expire on the wealthiest Americans and leave them in place for everyone else. Republicans want to extend the tax cuts for everyone.

In another sign that Americans are increasingly worrying about their finances as Washington fails to address the budget crisis, consumer confidence fell to a four-month low in December.

Americans blame Republicans in Congress more than congressional Democrats or Obama for the fiscal crisis, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

When asked who they held more responsible for the “fiscal cliff” situation, 27 percent blamed Republicans in Congress, 16 percent blamed Obama and 6 percent pointed to Democrats in Congress. The largest percentage – 31 percent – blamed “all of the above.”

(Additional reporting by David Lawder, Fred Barbash and Mark Felsenthal in Washington and David Gaffen in New York; writing by Alistair Bell; editing by Todd Eastham)

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Consumer sentiment weakens as fiscal crisis looms

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer confidence fell more than expected in December, hitting a four-month low as a looming fiscal crisis sapped what had been a growing sense of optimism about the economy.

The report heightened concerns that a failure by Washington to avert planned tax hikes and spending cuts could lead households to close their wallets, threatening an economic recovery that has been steady albeit lackluster.

Other data on Thursday highlighted the positive momentum building in the economy, with the number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits falling to a nearly 4-1/2 year low and new home sales hitting their highest level since April 2010.

But gauges of business sentiment have weakened recently on worries Washington will go forward with plans to slash the federal deficit by about $ 600 billion in 2013.

Now consumers also appear apprehensive, a sign worries about the so-called “fiscal cliff” could bite into household spending.

The Conference Board, an industry group, said its index of consumer attitudes fell to 65.1 from 71.5 in November.

A sub-index measuring how consumers feel about their present situation rose to its highest level in more than four years, but a gauge of sentiment about the future plunged to its lowest point in more than a year.

“Consumers are increasingly preoccupied with the potential damage the fiscal cliff will cause to the economy and to their wallets if a deal is not reached soon,” economists at RBS in Stamford, Connecticut, wrote in a research note.

Separately, the Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 12,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 350,000, the Labor Department said.

“This recent improvement in the claims data is potentially a favorable signal for the labor market,” said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.

After spiking in the wake of a mammoth storm that ravaged the East Coast in late October, new claims have dropped to their lowest levels since the early days of the 2007-09 recession. The four-week moving average fell 11,250 last week to 356,750, the lowest since March 2008.

The claims data has no direct relation to the government’s monthly employment report, but it suggests the surge in layoffs since the recession has at least run its course.

Still, many economists think hiring may remain sluggish even as the pace of layoffs ease.

Companies in recent months have been adding to their payrolls at a lackluster pace, and analysts expect the employment report due on January 4 will show 143,000 jobs were created in December, down from 146,000 in November.

“A significant improvement in labor market conditions ahead of any resolution to the fiscal cliff is unlikely,” said Michael Gapen, an economist at Barclays in New York.

U.S. stocks opened flat but turned lower as the Senate Democratic leader derided Republicans for the lack of progress in budget talks and warned that a fall off the “cliff” appeared inevitable. Investors sought safety by buying U.S. Treasury debt and the dollar, which rose against the euro.

Following a truncated holiday break in Hawaii, U.S. President Barack Obama returned to Washington to restart talks to avoid the brunt of the fiscal cliff’s impact, which would likely put the U.S. economy back into recession if not lessened.

HOLIDAY CAVEAT

The signs of progress in the claims data also included a caveat, at least for the latest week.

Obama declared Monday a holiday for federal workers and many state offices followed suit and were unable to provide complete data for last week’s jobless claims. Data for 19 states was estimated, although 14 of those states submitted their own estimates, which tend to be fairly accurate.

The holiday season can make it more difficult to adjust the claims data for normal seasonal fluctuations, another reason to be cautious about the report for last week.

Separately, the Commerce Department said new U.S. single-family home sales rose in November to a 377,000-unit annual rate, while the median sales price jumped 14.9 percent from the same month in 2011, the latest signs the U.S. housing recovery is gaining some steam.

In a fourth report, the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank said its index of factory activity in the U.S. Midwest increased in November to 93.7 from a revised 92.2 in October.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Additional reporting by Richard Leong and Ryan Vlastelica in New York; Editing by Neil Stempleman)

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China tightening controls on Internet

BEIJING (AP) — China‘s new communist leaders are increasing already tight controls on Internet use and electronic publishing following a spate of embarrassing online reports about official abuses.

The measures suggest China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, and others who took power in November share their predecessors’ anxiety about the Internet’s potential to spread opposition to one-party rule and their insistence on controlling information despite promises of more economic reforms.

“They are still very paranoid about the potentially destabilizing effect of the Internet,” said Willy Lam, a politics specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “They are on the point of losing a monopoly on information, but they still are very eager to control the dissemination of views.”

This week, China’s legislature took up a measure to require Internet users to register their real names, a move that would curtail the Web’s status as a freewheeling forum to complain, often anonymously, about corruption and official abuses. The legislature scheduled a news conference Friday to discuss the measure, suggesting it was expected to be approved.

That comes amid reports Beijing might be disrupting use of software that allows Web surfers to see sites abroad that are blocked by its extensive Internet filters. At the same time, regulators have proposed rules that would bar foreign companies from distributing books, news, music and other material online in China.

Beijing promotes Internet use for business and education but bans material deemed subversive or obscene and blocks access to foreign websites run by human rights and Tibet activists and some news outlets. Controls were tightened after social media played a role in protests that brought down governments in Egypt and Tunisia.

In a reminder of the Web’s role as a political forum, a group of 70 prominent Chinese scholars and lawyers circulated an online petition this week appealing for free speech, independent courts and for the ruling party to encourage private enterprise.

Xi and others on the party’s ruling seven-member Standing Committee have tried to promote an image of themselves as men of the people who care about China’s poor majority. They have promised to press ahead with market-oriented reforms and to support entrepreneurs but have given no sign of support for political reform.

Communist leaders who see the Internet as a source of economic growth and better-paid jobs were slow to enforce the same level of control they impose on movies, books and other media, apparently for fear of hurting fledgling entertainment, shopping and other online businesses.

Until recently, Web surfers could post comments online or on microblog services without leaving their names.

That gave ordinary Chinese a unique opportunity to express themselves to a public audience in a society where newspapers, television and other media are state-controlled. The most popular microblog services say they have more than 300 million users and some users have millions of followers reading their comments.

The Internet also has given the public an unusual opportunity to publicize accusations of official misconduct.

A local party official in China’s southwest was fired in November after scenes from a videotape of him having sex with a young woman spread quickly on the Internet. Screenshots were uploaded by a former journalist in Beijing, Zhu Ruifeng, to his Hong Kong website, an online clearing house for corruption allegations.

Some industry analysts suggest allowing Web surfers in a controlled setting to vent helps communist leaders stay abreast of public sentiment in their fast-changing society. Still, microblog services and online bulletin boards are required to employ censors to enforce content restrictions. Researchers say they delete millions of postings a day.

The government says the latest Internet regulation before the National People’s Congress is aimed at protecting Web surfers’ personal information and cracking down on abuses such as junk e-mail. It would require users to report their real names to Internet service and telecom providers.

The main ruling party newspaper, People’s Daily, has called in recent weeks for tighter Internet controls, saying rumors spread online have harmed the public. In one case, it said stories about a chemical plant explosion resulted in the deaths of four people in a car accident as they fled the area.

Proposed rules released this month by the General Administration of Press and Publications would bar Chinese-foreign joint ventures from publishing books, music, movies and other material online in China. Publishers would be required to locate their servers in China and have a Chinese citizen as their local legal representative.

That is in line with rules that already bar most foreign access to China’s media market, but the decision to group the restrictions together and publicize them might indicate official attitudes are hardening.

That comes after the party was rattled by foreign news reports about official wealth and misconduct.

In June, Bloomberg News reported that Xi’s extended family has amassed assets totaling $ 376 million, though it said none was traced to Xi. The government has blocked access to Bloomberg’s website since then.

In October, The New York Times reported that Premier Wen Jiabao’s relatives had amassed $ 2.7 billion since he rose to national office in 2002. Access to the Times’ Chinese-language site has been blocked since then.

Previous efforts to tighten controls have struggled with technical challenges in a country with more than 500 million Internet users.

Microblog operators such as Sina Corp. and Tencent Ltd. were ordered in late 2011 to confirm users’ names but have yet to finish the daunting task.

Web surfers can circumvent government filters by using virtual private networks — software that encrypts Web traffic and is used by companies to transfer financial data and other sensitive information. But VPN users say disruptions that began in 2011 are increasing, suggesting Chinese regulators are trying to block encrypted traffic.

Curbs on access to foreign sites have prompted complaints by companies and Chinese scientists and other researchers.

In July, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said 74 percent of companies that responded to a survey said unstable Internet access “impedes their ability to do business.”

Chinese leaders “realize there are detrimental impacts on business, especially foreign business, but they have counted the cost and think it is still worthwhile,” said Lam. “There is no compromise about the political imperative of controlling the Internet.”

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Police offer ‘virtual ridealongs’ via Twitter

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Riding side by side as a police officer answers a call for help or investigates a brutal crime during a ridealong gives citizens an up close look at the gritty and sometimes dangerous situations officers can experience on the job.

But a new social media approach to informing the public about what officers do is taking hold at police departments across the United States and Canada — one that is far less dangerous for citizens but, police say, just as informative.

With virtual ridealongs on Twitter, or tweetalongs, curious citizens just need a computer or smartphone for a glimpse into law enforcement officers‘ daily routines.

Tweetalongs typically are scheduled for a set number of hours, with an officer — or a designated tweeter like the department’s public information officer — posting regular updates to Twitter about what they see and do while on duty. The tweets, which also include photos and links to videos of the officers, can encompass an array of activities — everything from an officer responding to a homicide to a noise complaint.

Police departments say virtual ridealongs reach more people at once and add transparency to the job.

“People spend hard-earned money on taxes to allow the government to provide services. That’s police, fire, water, streets, the whole works, and there should be a way for those government agencies to let the public know what they’re getting for their money,” said Chief Steve Allender of the Rapid City Police Department in South Dakota, which started offering tweetalongs several months ago — https://twitter.com/rcpdtweetalong — after watching departments in Seattle, Kansas City, Mo., and Las Vegas do so.

On the day before Thanksgiving, Tarah Heupel, the Rapid City Police Department’s public information officer, rode alongside Street Crimes Officer Ron Terviel. Heupel posted regular updates every few minutes about what Terviel was doing, including the officer citing a woman for public intoxication, responding to a call of three teenagers attempting to steal cough syrup and body spray from a store and locating a man who ran from the scene of an accident. Photos were included in some of the tweets.

Michael Taddesse, a 34-year-old university career specialist in Arlington, Texas, has done several ridealongs with police and regularly follows multiple departments that conduct tweetalongs.

“I think the only way to effectively combat crime is to have a community that is engaged and understands what’s going on,” he said.

Ridealongs where “you’re out in the elements” are very different than sitting behind a computer during a tweetalong and the level of danger is “dramatically decreased,” he said. But in both instances, the passenger gains new information about the call, what laws may or may not have been broken and what transpires, he added.

For police departments, tweetalongs are just one more way to connect directly with a community through social media.

More than 92 percent of police departments use social media, according to a survey of 600 agencies in 48 states conducted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Center for Social Media. And Nancy Kolb, senior program manager for IACP, called tweetalongs a “growing trend” among departments of all sizes.

There is no set protocol and departments are free to conduct the tweetalong how they see fit, she said.

In Ontario, Canada, the Niagara Regional Police Service conducted their first virtual ridealong in August over a busy eight-hour Friday night shift. The police department’s followers were able to see a tweet whenever the police unit was dispatched to one of the more than 140,000 calls received that night.

Richard Gadreau, the social media officer for the police department, said officers routinely take people out on real ridealongs, but there is a waiting list and preference is given to people interested in becoming an officer.

With tweetalongs, many calls also mean many tweets. Kolb said departments are cognizant of cluttering peoples’ Twitter feeds.

That’s why the Rapid City Police Department decided to create a separate account for the tweetalong, Allender said.

Kolb also said officers are careful not to tweet personal or sensitive information. Officers typically do not tweet child abuse or domestic abuse cases, and they usually only tweet about a call after they leave the scene to protect officers and callers.

But Allender, the chief of police in Rapid City, said tweetalongs also show some of the more outrageous calls police deal with on a regular basis — like the kid who breaks out the window of a police car while the officer is standing on the sidewalk.

“Real life is funnier than any comedy show out there and not to make fun of people, embarrass them or humiliate them, but people do funny things,” Allender said. “… I mean, that guy deserves a little bit of ridicule, and everyone who would be watching would agree. That’s just good clean fun to me.”

___

Rapid City Police Department’s “Tweetalong” account: https://twitter.com/rcpdtweetalong

___

Follow Kristi Eaton on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kristieaton

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DC police investigating ‘Meet the Press’ incident

WASHINGTON (AP) — District of Columbia police say they are investigating an incident in which NBC News journalist David Gregory displayed what he described as a high-capacity ammunition magazine on “Meet the Press.”

Gun laws in the nation’s capital generally restrict the possession of high-capacity magazines, regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm. Gregory held up the magazine as a prop for Sunday’s segment, apparently to make a point during an interview, even though D.C. police say NBC had already been advised not to use it in the show.

“NBC contacted (the Metropolitan Police Department) inquiring if they could utilize a high capacity magazine for their segment. NBC was informed that possession of a high capacity magazine is not permissible and their request was denied. This matter is currently being investigated,” police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said in a written statement. She declined to comment further.

While interviewing National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre for Sunday’s program, Gregory held up an object that he said was a magazine that could hold 30 rounds.

“Here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets. Now, isn’t it possible that if we got rid of these, if we replaced them and said, ‘Well, you can only have a magazine that carries five bullets or ten bullets,’ isn’t it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?’” Gregory asked, referring to the December 14 shooting in which a gunman massacred 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

LaPierre replied: “I don’t believe that’s going to make one difference. There are so many different ways to evade that even if you had that” ban.

It was not clear how or where Gregory obtained the magazine, and an NBC News spokeswoman declined to comment Wednesday.

“Meet the Press” is generally taped in Washington.

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British Frozen Dinners Beat TV Chefs’ Recipes For Nutrition

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British Frozen Dinners Beat TV Chefs’ Recipes For Nutrition

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Washington stirs for “fiscal cliff” talks as Obama heads home

WASHINGTON/HONOLULU (Reuters) – Efforts to prevent the U.S. economy from going over a “fiscal cliff” stirred back to life on Wednesday with less than a week to go before potentially disastrous tax hikes and spending cuts kick in at the New Year.

In a sign that there may be a way through deadlock in Congress, Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner urged the Democrat-controlled Senate to act to pull back from the cliff and offered to at least consider any bill the upper chamber produced.

President Barack Obama will try to revive budget crisis talks – which stalled last week – when he returns to Washington on Thursday after cutting short his Christmas holiday in Hawaii.

But the White House and Republicans are still far apart, as hopes for legislation to prevent the economy from tumbling off the fiscal cliff switch to the Senate.

Democrats control a majority in that chamber but still need some support from Republicans across the aisle for a likely attempt to raise taxes on the wealthy.

A senior administration official told reporters traveling with Obama in Hawaii that senior Republican leaders in Congress, Senator Mitch McConnell and Boehner, should step up to head off the looming tax and spending hit.

“It’s up to the Senate Minority Leader not to block a vote, and it’s up the House Republican leader, the Speaker of the House … to allow a vote,” the official said.

Months of congressional gridlock on how reduce the deficit and rein in the nation’s $ 16 trillion federal debt have begun to affect ordinary Americans.

Shoppers might have spent less this holiday season for fear of looming income tax increases and reports of lackluster retail holiday sales added to the urgency for a deal. U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday, dragged lower by shares of retail companies.

TREASURY BUYING TIME

To avoid defaulting on the national debt if the budget crisis spins out of control, the Treasury Department announced measures essentially designed to buy time to allow Congress to resolve its differences and raise the debt borrowing limit.

Obama flies back from Hawaii overnight and is due in the White House on Thursday morning.

Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz is urging workers in the company’s roughly 120 Washington-area coffee shops to write “come together” on customers’ cups on Thursday and Friday to tell politicians to end the crisis.

“We’re paying attention, we’re greatly disappointed in what’s going on and we deserve better,” Schultz told Reuters.

Boehner and his House Republican leadership team said in a statement that “the Senate must act first.”

That puts the ball in the court of the Democrats in the Senate, which is likely to base any legislation on a bill it passed earlier this year to continue tax breaks for households with incomes below $ 250,000.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a strongly worded statement calling on Republicans to “drop their knee-jerk obstruction.”

“The Senate bill could pass tomorrow if House Republicans would simply let it come to the floor,” the spokesman said.

A Senate bill would likely contain an extension of expiring unemployment benefits for those who have been out of work for extended periods.

With the 435 members scattered throughout the country because the House is in recess, House Republican leaders scheduled a conference call for Thursday with members to possibly discuss bringing the chamber back into session to deal with the fiscal cliff.

The budget fight is not just about taxes, however.

The country faces $ 109 billion in across-the-board spending cuts starting in January unless a deal is reached to either replace or delay them. Democrats want to switch the spending cuts to tax increases for the most part.

House Republicans have passed a bill to stop the military portion of the spending cuts and place the entire burden on domestic activities, including some social safety net programs.

But the main focus is on how to stop tax hikes on January 1.

“This is the (emergency) scenario that we have long believed would rise in probability the closer we go to December 31, which essentially calls for extending all the rates for those individuals making under $ 200K and households under $ 250K and does not address the debt ceiling or the deficit,” analyst Chris Krueger of Guggenheim Securities wrote in a research note.

Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who is retiring at year’s end, told MSNBC that $ 250,000 “is too low of a threshold” for raising income taxes.

RAISING TAX THRESHOLD

She said that in conversations she has had with some Senate Democrats, “they are saying maybe more in the $ 400,000 to $ 500,000 category.”

Obama himself recently offered to raise the threshold to $ 400,000, before negotiations with Boehner broke off.

Boehner and other Republican leaders said in a statement that if the Senate sends the House new fiscal cliff legislation, “The House will then consider whether to accept the bills … or to send them back to the Senate with additional amendments.

“The House will take this action on whatever the Senate can pass, but the Senate first must act.”

But even if a handful of Senate Republicans support Democrats on a measure to avoid the worst of the fiscal cliff, time is short. When the Senate returns on Thursday it is due to work on a disaster aid bill to help New York and New Jersey recover from Superstorm Sandy and other measures.

All 191 House Democrats might have to team up with at least 26 Republicans to get a majority if the bill included tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans, as Obama is demanding.

Some of those votes could conceivably come from among the 34 Republican members who are either retiring or were defeated in the November elections and no longer have to worry about the political fallout.

An alternative is for Congress to let income taxes go up on everyone as scheduled. Then, during the first week of January, lawmakers would strike a quick deal to reduce them except on people in the highest brackets.

They could also pass a measure putting off the $ 109 billion in automatic spending cuts that most lawmakers want to avoid.

Once the clock ticks past midnight on December 31, no member of Congress would have to vote for a tax increase on anyone – taxes would have risen automatically – and the only votes would be to decrease tax rates for most Americans back to their 2012 levels.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro in Washington and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Writing by Alistair Bell)

Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Washington stirs for “fiscal cliff” talks as Obama heads home
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Afghan bomber attacks near major US base

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A vehicle driven by a suicide bomber exploded at the gate of a major U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing the attacker and three Afghans, Afghan police said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Police Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizai said a local guard who questioned the vehicle driver at the gate of Camp Chapman was killed along with two civilians and the assailant. The camp is located adjacent to the airport of the capital of Khost province, which borders Pakistan. Chapman and nearby Camp Salerno had been frequently targeted by militants in the past, but violent incidents have decreased considerably in recent months.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in an email that the bomber targeted Afghan police manning the gate and Afghans working for the Americans entering the base. He claimed high casualties were inflicted.

NATO operates with more than 100,000 troops in the country, including some 66,000 American forces. It is handing most combat operations over to the Afghans in preparation for a pullout from Afghanistan in 2014. Militant groups, including the Taliban, rarely face NATO troops head-on and rely mainly on roadside bombs and suicide attacks.

NATO forces and foreign civilians have also been increasingly attacked by rogue Afghan military and police, eroding trust between the allies.

On Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said a policewoman who killed an American contractor in Kabul a day earlier was a native Iranian who came to Afghanistan and displayed “unstable behavior” but had no known links to militants.

The policewoman, identified as Sgt. Nargas, shot 49-year-old Joseph Griffin, of Mansfield, Georgia, on Monday, in the first such shooting by a woman in the spate of insider attacks. Nargas walked into a heavily-guarded compound in the heart of Kabul, confronted Griffin and shot him once with her pistol.

The U.S-based security firm DynCorp International said on its website that Griffin was a U.S. military veteran who earlier worked with law enforcement agencies in the United States. In Kabul, he was under contract to the NATO military command to advise the Afghan police force.

The ministry spokesman, Sediq Sediqi, told a news conference that Nargas, who uses one name like many in the country, was born in Tehran, where she married an Afghan. She moved to the country 10 years ago, after her husband obtained fake documents enabling her to live and work there.

A mother of four in her early 30s, she joined the police five years ago, held various positions and had a clean record, he said. Sediqi produced an Iranian passport that he said was found at her home.

No militant group has claimed responsibility for the killing.

The chief investigator of the case, Police Gen. Mohammad Zahir, said that during interrogation, the policewoman said she had plans to kill either the Kabul governor, city police chief or Zahir himself, but when she realized that penetrating the last security cordons to reach them would be too difficult, she saw “a foreigner” and turned her weapon on him.

There have been 60 insider attacks this year against foreign military and civilian personnel, compared to 21 in 2011. This surge presents another looming security issue as NATO prepares to pull out almost all of its forces by 2014, putting the war against the Taliban and other militant groups largely in the hands of the Afghans.

More than 50 Afghan members of the government’s security forces also have died this year in attacks by their own colleagues. The Taliban claims such incidents reflect a growing popular opposition to the foreign military presence and the Kabul government.

Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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