WASHINGTON: House Speaker John Boehner told Republican colleagues yesterday that he is shifting to a “Plan B,” allowing tax breaks to expire for millionaires as a way to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, his office said. Boehner will introduce legislation in coming days that keeps tax rates from rising on the vast majority of Americans, what his office called a “second track” of action amid negotiations between Boehner and President Barack Obama. “Time is running short,” Boehner’s office quoted him as telling his caucus in a Tuesday morning meeting, referring to the year-end deadline to work out a deal or have $500bn in taxes hikes and crippling spending cuts kick in. “Taxes are going up on everyone on January 1. They’re baked into current law,” Boehner said. “And we have to stop whatever tax rate increases we can. In the absence of an alternative, as of this morning, a “modified Plan B” is the plan.” The latest plan would raise the threshold at which higher rates would come into force to households earning $400,000 a year and above, up from the $250,000 level on which Obama had earlier insisted. Boehner has accepted higher taxes on people making more than $1m.
Deadly year for journalists worldwide
NEW YORK: The year 2012 is likely to be one of the deadliest for journalists around the world, with at least 67 killed while doing their jobs, a US-based media rights group said yesterday. The Committee to Protect Journalists said the number of deaths is up 42 percent from last year, due in large part to the Syria conflict, shootings in Somalia, violence in Pakistan and killings of reporters in Brazil. CPJ also said it was investigating the deaths of 30 additional journalists in 2012 to establish whether they were work-related. Syria was by far the deadliest country in 2012, with 28 journalists killed in combat or targeted for murder by government or opposition forces, CPJ said. In addition, one journalist covering the Syrian conflict was killed just over the border in Lebanon. Four international journalists were killed in 2012, all of them in Syria: Marie Colvin, an American who wrote for the Sunday Times of London; French freelance photographer Remi Ochlik; France 2 reporter Gilles Jacquier; and Japan Press journalist Mika Yamamoto.
War crimes court acquits Congolese warlord
THE HAGUE: Congolese warlord Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui was acquitted of all charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) yesterday, a blow for victims of Congo wars a decade ago. The verdict - only the second in the war crimes court’s 10-year history, and its first acquittal - is a setback for the ICC’s prosecutors who judges said had failed to link Ngudjolo to atrocities in northeastern Congo in 2003. The acquittal also raises doubts about the case against Ngudjolo’s better-known co-accused, warlord Germain Katanga who is charged with similar crimes. Judges prolonged Katanga’s trial last month, a move that some academics say could make it easier to get a conviction. The violence in northeastern Ituri district was a localised ethnic clash over land and resources, one of the myriad of conflicts which spun out of Congo’s wider 1998-2003 war that sucked in multiple neighbouring states. Agencies
