At least 61 crushed to death in Ivory Coast stampede


ABIDJAN (Reuters) - At least 61 people were crushed to death in a stampede after a New Year's Eve fireworks display at a stadium in Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan early on Tuesday, officials said.


Witnesses said police had tried to control crowds around the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Stadium following the celebrations, triggering a panic in which scores were trampled.


"The estimate we can give right now is 49 people hospitalized ... and 61 people dead," said the chief of staff of Abidjan's fire department Issa Sacko.


Crying women searched for missing family members outside the stadium on Tuesday morning. The area was covered in patches of dried blood and abandoned shoes.


"My two children came here yesterday. I told them not to come but they didn't listen. They came when I was sleeping. What will I do?" said Assetou Toure, a cleaner.


Sanata Zoure, a market vendor injured in the incident, said New Year's revelers going home after watching the fireworks had been stopped by police near the stadium.


"We were walking with our children and we came upon barricades, and people started falling into each other. We were trampled with our children," she said.


Another witness said police arrived to control the crowd after a mob began chasing a pickpocket.


President Alassane Ouattara called the deaths a national tragedy and said an investigation was under way to find out what happened.


"I hope that we can determine what caused this drama so that we can ensure it never happens again," he said after visiting the injured in hospital.


The country, once a stable economic hub for West Africa, is struggling to recover from a 2011 civil war in which more than 3,000 people were killed.


Ivory Coast's security forces once were among the best trained in the region, but a decade of political turmoil and the 2011 war has left them in disarray.


At least 18 people were killed in another stampede during a football match in an Abidjan stadium in 2009.


(Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly and Alain Amontchi; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Michael Roddy)



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Motorcycle bomb kills four in Pakistan's Karachi






KARACHI: A motorcycle bomb exploded Tuesday near the venue of a major political rally in Pakistan's largest city Karachi, killing four people and injuring 42 others, officials said.

The bombing appeared to be targeted at buses carrying supporters of the city's dominant political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which organised the rally attended by thousands of people.

"The latest report we have collected from hospitals said that four people have been killed and 42 are injured," provincial health minister Saghir Ahmad told AFP, updating the earlier toll of two dead and 25 injured.

Another health official at Karachi's Abbasi Shaheed hospital confirmed the new toll.

"The bomb was planted in a motorcycle," said Asif Ijaz, a senior police official.

Imran Shokat, a police spokesman in the southern Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital, said the motorcycle was parked in a congested neighbourhood near the venue of the rally.

"Bomb disposal experts are investigating but preliminary reports said it was a remote-controlled bomb," Shokat told AFP.

Karachi, the commercial capital of Pakistan with an estimated population of 18 million, is in the grip of a long-running wave of political and sectarian violence.

Its Arabian Sea port is used by the United States and NATO to ship supplies to the war in neighbouring, landlocked Afghanistan.

- AFP/jc



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New cops' team to handle sexual assaults in Punjab

CHANDIGARH: Rattled by a rush of rapes in the state, the Punjab Police have now scrambled to form a batch of specialized investigation teams to deal with sexual assaults on women.

A first-of-its-kind team in the country, sexual assault response teams (SART) will comprise women in combat wing and men in the administrative roles.

The job of the team will be to coordinate the response of executive magistrates, prosecutors, doctors, victims and the accused.

The team will also hold sessions with past rape victims and chronicle, compare and analyse the embarrassment and stigma they face as different to those of victims of robbery, theft and so on.

The decision to start SART was taken at a meeting on December 28 on law and order between state director general of police Sumedh Saini and additional director general of police (law and security) Dinkar Gupta, just two days after the Patiala gang rape.

Harassed by policemen and constantly threatened by her rapists, a 17-year-old had ended her life on December 26 in a village near Patiala, over one-and-a-half months after she was abducted and gang raped on Diwali last year.

Following that, a shocking 21 cases of rape were reported from various quarters of Punjab in the last week alone.

Widespread anger and furious protests were seen on the streets of Punjab.

The government had come under a scathing attack, forcing a defensive Saini to hold a conference and announce sacking of two personnel, including an ASI-rank officer, who was later booked for abetment to suicide.

There were confirmed reports that deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal, who also holds the home portfolio, rushed back to Chandigarh, cutting short his vacation abroad.

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Clinton's blood clot an uncommon complication


The kind of blood clot in the skull that doctors say Hillary Rodham Clinton has is relatively uncommon but can occur after an injury like the fall and concussion the secretary of state was diagnosed with earlier this month.


Doctors said Monday that an MRI scan revealed a clot in a vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind Clinton's right ear.


The clot did not lead to a stroke or neurological damage and is being treated with blood thinners, and she will be released once the proper dose is worked out, her doctors said in a statement.


Clinton has been at New York-Presbyterian Hospital since Sunday, when the clot was diagnosed during what the doctors called a routine follow-up exam. At the time, her spokesman would not say where the clot was located, leading to speculation it was another leg clot like the one she suffered behind her right knee in 1998.


Clinton had been diagnosed with a concussion Dec. 13 after a fall in her home that was blamed on a stomach virus that left her weak and dehydrated.


The type of clot she developed, a sinus venous thrombosis, "certainly isn't the most common thing to happen after a concussion" and is one of the few types of blood clots in the skull or head that are treated with blood thinners, said neurologist Dr. Larry Goldstein. He is director of Duke University's stroke center and has no role in Clinton's care or personal knowledge of it.


The area where Clinton's clot developed is "a drainage channel, the equivalent of a big vein inside the skull — it's how the blood gets back to the heart," Goldstein explained.


It should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, he said.


Dr. Joseph Broderick, chairman of neurology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, also called Clinton's problem "relatively uncommon" after a concussion.


He and Goldstein said the problem often is overdiagnosed. They said scans often show these large "draining pipes" on either side of the head are different sizes, which can mean blood has pooled or can be merely an anatomical difference.


"I'm sure she's got the best doctors in the world looking at her," and if they are saying she has no neurological damage, "I would think it would be a pretty optimistic long-term outcome," Broderick said.


A review article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 describes the condition, which more often occurs in newborns or young people but can occur after a head injury. With modern treatment, more than 80 percent have a good neurologic outcome, the report says.


In the statement, Clinton's doctors said she "is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff."


___


Online:


Medical journal: http://dura.stanford.edu/Articles/Stam_NEJM05.pdf


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Clinton's Blood Clot Could've Been Life Threatening













Hillary Clinton's latest health update -- cerebral venous thrombosis -- is a rare and potentially "life-threatening" condition, according to medical experts, but one from which the globe-trotting secretary of state is likely to recover from.


In an update from her doctors, Clinton's brain scans revealed a clot had formed in the right transverse venous sinus, and she was being successfully treated with anticoagulants.


"She is lucky being Hillary Clinton and had a follow-up MRI -- lucky that her team thought to do it," said Dr. Brian D. Greenwald, medical director at JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Center for Head Injuries. "It could have potentially serious complications."


The backup of blood flow could have caused a stroke or hemorrhage, according to Greenwald.


"Imagine this vein, where all the cerebral spinal fluid inside the head and spine no longer flows through this area," he said. "You get a big back up and that itself could cause a stroke. In the long-term … the venous system can't get the blood out of the brain. It's like a Lincoln Tunnel back up."


A transverse sinus thrombosis is a clot arising in one of the major veins that drains the brain. It is an uncommon but serious disorder.






Morne de Klerk/Getty Images











Hillary Clinton Has Blood Clot From Concussion Watch Video









Members of Hillary Clinton's State Department Team Resign Watch Video









Hillary Clinton's Concussion: Doctor Orders Rest Watch Video





According to Greenwald, the clot was most likely caused by dehydration brought on by the flu, perhaps exacerbated by a concussion she recently suffered.


"The only time I have seen it happen is when people are severely dehydrated and it causes the blood to be so thick that it causes a clot in the area," said Greenwald. "It's one of the long-term effects of a viral illness."


Drs. Lisa Bardack of the Mt. Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University discovered the clot during a routine follow-up MRI on Sunday.


"This is a clot in the vein that is situated in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear," they said in a statement today. "It did not result in a stroke, or neurological damage. To help dissolve this clot, her medical team began treating the secretary with blood thinners. She will be released once the medication dose has been established."


Clinton is "making excellent progress," according to her doctors. "She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff."


Clinton, 65, was hospitalized at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Sunday. She suffered a concussion earlier this month after she hit her head when she fainted because of dehydration from a stomach virus, according to an aide.


Dehydration can also precipitate fainting, according to Dr. Neil Martin, head of neurovascular surgery at University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center.


He agreed that the condition could potentially have caused a brain hemorrhage or stroke and been fatal.


"In patients with no symptoms after many days, full recovery is the norm," said Martin. "However, some cases show extension of the thrombus or clot into other regions of the cerebral venous sinuses, and this can worsen the situation considerably -- thus the use of anticoagulants to prevent extension of the thrombus."


But, he said, anticoagulants can be a "double-edged sword." With even a tiny injury within the brain from the concussion, these medications can cause "symptomatic bleed," such as a subdural or intracerebral hemorrhage.


The clot location is not related to the nasal sinuses, but are rather large venous structures in the dura or protective membrane covering the brain, which drains blood from the brain.






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Bombs kill 23 across Iraq as sectarian strife grows


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 23 people were killed and 87 wounded in attacks across Iraq on Monday, police said, underlining sectarian and ethnic divisions that threaten to further destabilize the country a year after U.S. troops left.


Tensions between Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq's power-sharing government have been on the rise this year. Militants strike almost daily and have staged at least one big attack a month.


The latest violence followed more than a week of protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by thousands of people from the minority Sunni community.


No group claimed responsibility for any of Monday's attacks, which targeted government officials, police patrols and members of both the Sunni and Shi'ite communities.


Seven people from the same Sunni family were killed by a bomb planted near their home in the town of Mussayab, south of Baghdad.


In the Shi'ite majority city of Hilla, also in the south, a parked car bomb went off near the convoy of the governor of Babil province, missing him but killing two other people, police said.


"We heard the sound of a big explosion and the windows of our office shattered. We immediately lay on the ground," said 28-year-old Mohammed Ahmed, who works at a hospital near the site of the explosion.


"After a few minutes I stood up and went to the windows to see what happened. I saw flames and people lying on the ground."


In the capital Baghdad, five people were killed by a parked car bomb targeting pilgrims before a Shi'ite religious rite this week, police and hospital sources said.


Although violence is far lower than during the sectarian slaughter of 2006-2007, about 2,000 people have been killed in Iraq this year following the withdrawal last December of U.S. troops, who led an invasion in 2003 to overthrow Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.


SUNNIS PROTEST


Violence also hit Iraq's disputed territories, over which both the central government and the autonomous Kurdish region claim jurisdiction.


Three militants and one Kurdish guard were killed in the oil-producing, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, where militants driving a car packed with explosives tried to break into a Kurdish security office.


Earlier on Monday, two policemen were killed in Kirkuk when a bomb they were trying to detonate exploded prematurely. An army official and his bodyguard were also killed in a drive-by shooting in the south of the city.


Kirkuk lies at the heart of a feud between Baghdad and Kurdistan over land and oil rights, which escalated last month when both sides deployed their respective armies to the swath of territory along their contested internal boundary.


Efforts to ease the standoff stalled when President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd seen as a steadying influence, suffered a stroke and was flown abroad for medical care in December.


Maliki then detained the bodyguards of his Sunni finance minister, which ignited anti-government protests in the western province of Anbar, a Sunni stronghold on the border with Syria.


A lecturer in law at Baghdad University said the protests could help create the conditions for militant Islamist groups like al Qaeda to thrive.


"Raising tension in Anbar and other provinces with mainly Sunni populations is definitely playing into the hands of al Qaeda and other insurgent groups," Ahmed Younis said.


More than 1,000 people protested in the city of Samarra on Monday and rallies continued in Ramadi, center of the protests, and in Mosul, where about 500 people took to the streets.


In the city of Falluja, where protesters have also staged large rallies and blocked a major highway over the past week, gunmen attacked an army checkpoint, killing one soldier.


Protesters are demanding an end to what they see as the marginalization of Sunnis, who dominated the country until the U.S.-led invasion. They want Maliki to abolish anti-terrorism laws they say are used to persecute them.


On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, himself a Sunni, was forced to flee a protest in Ramadi when demonstrators pelted him with stones and bottles.


The civil war in neighboring Syria, where majority Sunnis are fighting to topple a ruler backed by Shi'ite Iran, is also whipping up sectarian sentiment in Iraq.


"The toppling of President Bashar al-Assad and empowerment of Sunnis (in Syria) will definitely encourage al Qaeda to regain ground," Younis said.


(Reporting by Ali al-Rubaie in Hilla, Mustafa Mahmoud and Omar Mohammed in Kirkuk, Ali Mohammed in Baquba and Ahmed Rasheed and Aseel Kami in Baghdad; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Alison Williams)



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US hits debt ceiling with 'fiscal cliff' still unresolved






WASHINGTON: The US Treasury said the country would hit its debt ceiling on Monday as expected, forcing it to take measures to keep funding the government while political leaders battle over the deficit.

The Treasury said it would adjust its handling of civil service pension fund assets to be able to keep operating under the $16.394 trillion borrowing limit without slashing federal spending, suggesting it could do this for at least two months.

"We will reach the statutory debt limit today," a Treasury official told reporters.

In an official letter to Congress, the Treasury detailed the extraordinary measures it would undertake to keep the government afloat, which would last to February 28, 2013.

The statement came as Democrats and Republicans continued to joust over measures to correct the country's deep deficit, with a last-minute deal in the works late Monday to avert the steep tax increases of the fiscal cliff.

But the deal appeared not to include any increase in the congressionally-mandated official debt ceiling, as President Barack Obama had demanded.

That left open the possibility of another showdown like that of July 2011 over how to bridge the fiscal deficit and reduce the debt load.

The brinksmanship over the ceiling last year led to Standard & Poor's cutting the US's top-level AAA credit rating for the first time in history, putting it at AA+ with a "negative" outlook.

On Friday S&P said that any deal to fix the fiscal cliff package of economy-crunching tax hikes and spending cuts would not help the country's credit rating.

In 2011, S&P said, its downgrade was rooted in "the political brinkmanship of recent months (that) highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable".

"We believe that this characterisation still holds," it said Friday.

- AFP/de



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More cases of alleged sexual assault reported from Punjab, Haryana

CHANDIGARH: Amid outrage and condemnation against the brutal Delhi gang-rape, more cases of alleged sexual assault were reported from Punjab and Haryana on Monday. However, the demand for immediate action against the perpetrators seems to have ensured swift action and police arrested the accused in most cases.

Jhajjar police have booked two persons for allegedly abducting and raping a 19-year-old girl from Bahadurgarh. In her complaint, the victim said that she had gone for a walk in a park on Sunday when two persons -- Anil Kumar, 20, of Barahi village and Subhash Kumar, 30, of Sonipat district -- bundled her into a car and sped away. They raped her before dumping her near her residence the next morning.

Jhajjar SP Anil Dhawan said the accused were booked under sections 365 (kidnapping or abducting) and 376 (rape) of IPC and arrested within hours of the complaint being lodged.

In another case, a doctor allegedly raped a girl after inviting her to Ludhiana with the promise of getting her admission in a post-graduate course. He has been arrested and sent to police remand till January 1. According to the police, Kanwar Samrat was arrested after a complaint by a 29-year-old divorcee woman, who had got in touch with the accused from Samana through the internet. They had got engaged on May 22. Samrat called her to Ludhiana city on October 10 and violated her . When he neither got her an admission nor married her, she went to the police.

"We have registered a case of cheating and rape against the accused on the basis of complaint. He was produced before the court which sent him to two days police remand. We are interrogating him," a police officer said.

Two more cases were reported in Amritsar. While police arrested a migrant worker for allegedly raping a minor girl for over four months, they have registered a case against a local, Milan Kapoor, for raping a woman on the pretext of marrying her and is now absconding. Police said Dhoti Yadav, a resident of Bihar, allegedly raped the 13-year-old girl repeatedly for months.

In a similar case in Mansa, an Armyman has been booked for raping a 24-year-old woman for about two years on the pretext of marriage. When the girl came to know that her perpetrator, Sukhpal Singh, was already married, she approached the police on Saturday and was registered. Sukhpal is a resident of Chak Bhai Ka village and at present posted in Rajasthan.

Similarly in Ferozepur's Jhirka town, three youths were arrested for allegedly raping and blackmailing an 18-year-old girl for six months, said SP Sukhbir Singh. The victim, in her complaint, had alleged that the accused had raped her and made an MMS of the same for the purpose of blackmailing, he said.

In Gurdaspur district, a labourer Radhey Shyam was arrested on Saturday for allegedly raping and killing a minor girl, police said. The 13-year-old's body was found in a sugarcane field at Hassanpur village. In Jalandhar, four persons were arrested for allegedly raping a minor girl in Bhogpur area and making her pregnant, local SHO B S Bajwa said.

A youth Abhimanyu was arrested by the Mohali police for allegedly molesting a girl and making an MMS of the act after taking the victim to Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh on the pretext of attending a marriage, SSP (Ludhiana) G P S Bhullar said.

Meanwhile, a 19-year-old student of a private engineering college, arrested for allegedly abducting and raping his dalit classmate in Kurukshetra, was produced in a court on Monday and remanded in judicial custody. Both the victim and the accused, Gugandeep Virk, are BTech students of a private engineering college

in Karnal.In Sirsa, students blocked the Sirsa-Hisar-Delhi highway for more than an hour on Monday, demanding death penalty for the Delhi gang rape and murder accused and a new legislation to curb crime against women. The entire traffic on NH-10 had to be diverted from Sirsa bypass as students refused to lift the blockade and raised slogans demanding death penalty to the rapists and murderers.

Roshan Suchan, a student, said, "The rapists must be hanged and the government must bring fast track courts to dispose of all rape case." Heavy police force was rushed to the spot and students were finally persuaded to lift the blockade.

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money


NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.


Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.


Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.


"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."


"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."


The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.


Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.


"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.


She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.


A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.


"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.


Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.


One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.


Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.


___


Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.


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Fiscal Cliff-Hanger: No Vote Tonight, Reid Says













With less than two days remaining for Congress to reach a budget agreement that would avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff," a senior White House official tells ABC News that President Obama is still "modestly optimistic" that a deal can be struck to prevent middle class taxes from increasing on New Year's Day.


But a resolution to the ordeal won't come tonight.


Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid adjourned his chamber just before 6 p.m., ensuring a potential deal could not be voted on before senators return to business Monday morning.


The Nevada lawmaker vowed despite the recess, the parties' leadership would continue negotiations throughout the night.


Vice President Biden has now re-emerged as a key player, back in Washington and playing "a direct role" in trying to make a deal with Senate Republicans. Biden has been tapped because of his long-standing relationship with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.


A Democratic source says that McConnell seems to be genuinely interested in getting an agreement. The news dovetails with reports that the GOP has backed off a key Social Security measure that had stalled negotiations.


According to sources, the row was sparked when the GOP offered a proposal that included a new method of calculating entitlement benefits with inflation. Called the "chained consumer price index," or Chained CPI, the strategy has been criticized by some Democrats because it would lower cost of living increases for Social Security recipients.


"We thought it was mutually understood that it was off the table for a scaled-back deal," a Democratic aide said. "It's basically a poison pill."


Obama has floated chained CPI in the past as part of a grand bargain, despite opposition from the AARP and within his own party.


Also in the Republican plan brought today: An extension of the current estate tax and no increase in the debt ceiling. Higher income earners would see their taxes increase, but at levels "well above $250,000," the sources said.


That "major setback" in the talks was evident on the floor of the Senate this afternoon.


"I'm concerned about the lack of urgency here, I think we all know we are running out of time," McConnell said, "I want everyone to know I am willing to get this done, but I need a dance partner."


McConnell, R-Ky., said he submitted the Republican's latest offer to Reid, D-Nev., at 7:10 p.m. Saturday and was willing to work through the night. Reid promised to get back to him at 10 this morning, but has yet to do so.


Why have the Democrats not come up with a counteroffer? Reid admitted it himself moments later.


"At this stage we're not able to make a counteroffer," Reid said noting that he's had numerous conversations with Obama, but the two parties are still far apart on some big issues, "I don't have a counteroffer to make. Perhaps as the day wears on I will be able to."


McConnell said he believes there is no major issue that is the sticking point but rather, "the sticking point appears to be a willingness, an interest, or frankly the courage to close the deal."






J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo











Sens. Charles Schumer and Jon Kyl on 'This Week' Watch Video











Fiscal Cliff Negotiations: Could Economy Slip Back into Recession? Watch Video





Reid said late this afternoon that the fiscal cliff negotiations were getting "real close" to falling apart completely.


"At some point in the negotiating process, it appears that there are things that stop us from moving forward," he said. "I hope we're not there but we're getting real close and that's why I still hold out hope that we can get something done. But I'm not overly optimistic but I am cautiously optimistic that we can get something done."


Reid said there were serious difference between the two sides, starting with Social Security. He said Democrats are not willing to cut Social Security benefits as part of a smaller, short-term agreement, as was proposed in the latest Republican proposal.


"We're not going to have any Social Security cuts. At this stage it just doesn't seem appropriate," he said. "We're open to discussion about entitlement reforms, but we're going to have to take a different direction. The present status will not work."


Reid said that even 36 hours before the country could go over the cliff, he remains "hopeful" but "realistic," about the prospects of reaching an agreement.


"The other side is intentionally demanding concessions they know we are not willing to make," he said.


The two parties were met separately at 3 p.m., and before going in Reid said he hoped there would be an announcement to make on a way forward afterwards. But as of this evening there was no agreement and no counterproposal.


McConnell said earlier today he placed a call to Vice President Biden to see if he could "jump start the negotiations on his side."


In an interview aired this morning -- well before the breakdown -- Obama suggested that a smaller deal remained the best hope to avoid the perilous package of spending cuts and tax increases.


On NBC's "Meet the Press" the president said if Republicans agreed to raising taxes on top income earners it should be enough to avoid the triggers that would execute the $607 billion measure. Economists agree that going over the cliff would likely put the country back in recession.


"If we have raised some revenue by the wealthy paying a little bit more, that would be sufficient to turn off what's called the sequester, these automatic spending cuts, and that also would have a better outcome for our economy long-term," he said.


Saying the "pressure is on Congress to produce," the president did not specify what income level his party would deem acceptable as the cutoff for those who would see their tax rates remain at current levels.


The president has called for expiration of the "Bush-era" tax cuts to affect household earnings over $250,000 since the campaign, but has reportedly floated a $400,000 figure in past negotiations.


House Speaker John Boehner once offered a $1 million cut-off in his failed "Plan B" proposal, which failed to garner enough support among the House Republicans.


"It's been very hard for Speaker Boehner and Republican Leader McConnell to accept the fact that taxes on the wealthiest Americans should go up a little bit as part of an overall deficit reduction package," the president said.


Domestic programs would lose $55 billion in funding should sequestration pass, including $2 billion to Medicare and unemployment benefits. The Pentagon would take a $55 billion loss as well, or 9 percent of its budget.


Repeating remarks he made Friday after a meeting with congressional leaders,
Obama said that should negotiations fail he has asked Reid to introduce a stripped-down proposal to Congress for a straight up-or-down vote -- if it isn't blocked.


"If all else fails, if Republicans do in fact decide to block so that taxes on the middle class do in fact go up on Jan. 1, then we'll come back with a new Congress on Jan. 4, and the first bill that will be introduced on the floor will be to cut taxes on middle-class families," he said of the worst-case scenario. "I don't think the average person is going to say, 'Gosh, you know, that's a really partisan agenda.'"


The interview with the president was taped Saturday while Reid and McConnell scrambled to their offices for a solution behind closed doors. Press staking out Capitol Hill reported little public activity from the leaders or their surrogates. If negotiations are successful, the lawmakers could introduce a bill for vote this afternoon.


The Republican leaders immediately bit back at the president's remarks. In a written statement Boehner said casting blame was "ironic, as a recurring theme of our negotiations was his unwillingness to agree to anything that would require him to stand up to his own party. "






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