Kingfisher shares rise on new licence application






NEW DELHI: Shares in India's grounded Kingfisher Airlines climbed nearly three per cent on Friday on news that the stricken carrier has applied to renew its operating licence.

The move came days after Kingfisher, whose liquor baron owner Vijay Mallya has been desperately seeking investment from foreign carriers, said it aims to resume operations in a "phased manner".

Kingfisher's shares rose to 15.88 rupees in morning trade after regulatory authorities confirmed it had applied Thursday for the licence renewal.

An official said, however, that the application had not included the revival plan that has been demanded by regulators.

"This application needs to be made as their licence is expiring but there can be no (licence) renewal without a revival plan," the official at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation told AFP, asking not to be named.

Kingfisher, once India's second-largest airline by market share, could not be immediately reached for comment but it said on Monday it has come up with a full recapitalisation plan.

The firm has not flown since its planes were grounded in October by an employees' strike over unpaid wages, leading the regulator to suspend its operating licence until it comes up with a "viable" revival formula.

The airline, whose current licence expires on December 31, said last week it was in talks with investors including Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways.

But aviation analysts have expressed doubt whether Etihad would be interested in Bangalore-based Kingfisher given its debt load, which is estimated at $2.5 billion by the consultancy firm Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.

Kingfisher's shares have climbed from an all-time low of 7.05 rupees in August on investor hopes a stake sale will avert a shutdown but they are still trading at a fraction of their record 2007 peak of 334 rupees.

- AFP/il



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Web media: The 5 biggest stories of 2012



Kim DotCom's arrest and subsequent legal fight was one of the biggest stories in digital media during the past year. Check out the rest of them.



(Credit:
Kim DotCom; Greg Sandoval/CNET)


Fun, fun, fun!


That's what digital movies, music, and books are supposed to be about. But for the people who create and sell the stuff, it's been all crumbs, crumbs, crumbs.


The past year was another tough one for the sale of entertainment media on the Web. The irony is that as more entertainment fare is sold online, the less profitable the businesses become.


Few, if any, online music services are profitable. In Web movie distribution, download sales are dismal. Even Netflix, the Web's top video rental service, saw a slow down in the rate it added subscribers. But the sector also saw some triumphs. Here's our list of the most important stories of 2012.


1. The MegaUpload bust

The biggest story in online entertainment this year began with the thumping sound of helicopter blades beating the air. In January, choppers carried New Zealand police, armed with semi-automatic weapons, to the grounds of the mansion leased by MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom. He and other members of the company's management were arrested.


In an indictment, the United States Attorney accused the group of encouraging people across the globe to store pirated media in MegaUpload's digital lockers. This allowed managers to generate more than $175 million from the sale of ads and subscriptions. The defendants were charged with criminal copyright infringement.


The amount of force used in the police raid stunned the tech world. Typically copyright disputes are settled in civil court -- not at the point of a gun. The bust quickly prompted some of MegaUpload's competitors to shut their doors. DotCom and the other defendants say they're innocent and are fighting U.S. attempts to extradite them.


2. Netflix struggles to win back customers' faith

For most of this year, Netflix trudged down the same rocky path it ended 2011 on. CEO Reed Hastings was once a Silicon Valley star, but last year investors and customers lost confidence in his leadership when he botched a price increase and then stoked the anger of already bitter customers by trying to spin off the company's DVD operations. This year, Netflix fell short of projections for adding new customers and was again criticized for offering a stale streaming library. Customers asked where all the newer titles were.


In addition, some of what were likely embarrassing details about Hastings' past goofs, such as how he alienated some top lieutenants and his fib about where the idea for Netflix came from, were revealed in a CNET story as well as in "Netflixed," a book by author Gina Keating. But Hastings and company may finally be ready to break out of their slump.


Earlier this month, Netflix stunned the digital entertainment world by signing an exclusive deal with Disney to distribute the studio's new movie releases right after they're made available for sale on DVD and by download. This distribution window is typically reserved for pay-TV channels. Netflix climbed into that window and became the first Web subscription service ever to deliver films during the period.


3. Apple, book publishers accused of fixing e-book prices

Apple and five of the country's largest book publishers conspired to fix e-book prices and in the process betrayed consumers, according to a complaint filed in April by the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ accused Apple of convincing Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins to swap the industry's decades-old business model for one that would enable them, instead of retailers, to control e-book prices. The DOJ contends that the plot was hatched to hobble Amazon, which had discounted prices heavily and owned about 90 percent market share.


The accused publishers raised prices nearly in unison and that was just one of the reasons the government's case appeared strong from the beginning. Then, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS, parent company of CNET) quickly settled. Those three publishers agreed to give back control of pricing to retailers and pledged not to share information with each other. They also stopped guaranteeing that Apple would offer the lowest prices available online. Apple, Penguin, and Macmillan deny wrongdoing and are fighting the DOJ in court.



Alexis Ohanian, an activist and co-founder of Reddit, the social-news Web site, is photographed during a protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act in January 2012.



(Credit:
Greg Sandoval/CNET)



4. Entertainment sector's antipiracy effort suffers blow when SOPA gets crushed

In 2011, the entertainment sector labored to win support in Congress for legislation known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Backers said the bill would give law enforcement officials a freer hand in shutting down accused pirate sites. In January 2012, the tech sector rose up and easily snuffed out any chance of the bill passing.


Some of the most trafficked Internet sites, such as Google and Wikipedia, helped generate opposition to SOPA by urging users to request that their representatives on Capitol Hill vote no. Not only did many former Congressional supporters reverse course but President Barack Obama also distanced himself from SOPA.


At one time, the trade groups of the big music labels and film studios cast big shadows in Washington. The SOPA defeat, however, was a sign that the tech sector has begun to eclipse them. The talk coming from the big media companies now is about building consensus with tech companies on piracy issues. SOPA is dead.


5. Aereo challenges big TV

Tick off the different major media categories -- newspapers, video games, music, movies, books, radio, and TV -- and they're all online save one.


Live television is the last holdout, and the companies with huge investments in live TV are trying to keep it that way. In a story that's been under-reported, New York-based Aereo is being sued for distributing live, over-the-air broadcast signals to subscribers via the Internet. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and Fox have filed lawsuits and accuse Aereo of violating their copyrights and owing them retransmission fees.


Aereo, backed by former television executive Barry Diller, says it doesn't owe a cent because it doesn't retransmit. The signals that Aereo provides come from dime-size antennas that the company's customers control with help from the Web. It is they who are capturing the signals and Aereo argues that they have every right to access the freely available broadcasts. Aereo prevailed in district court against an attempt to shut the service down earlier this year, but the broadcasters have appealed. Stay tuned.


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Bank robber from daring Chicago jail escape caught after manhunt

CHICAGO One of two bank robbers was arrested late Thursday after a manhunt following the pair's daring escape from a high-rise federal jail in Chicago, the FBI said.

FBI spokeswoman Joan Hyde said Joseph "Jose" Banks was captured without incident in Chicago. Agents and officers from the Chicago FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force, along with officers from the Chicago Police Department, arrested Banks about 11:30 p.m. Thursday, Hyde said in a news release.

The search continued early Friday for Kenneth Conley, who fled the jail with Banks early Tuesday.

Banks, 37, and Conley, 38, somehow broke a large hole into the bottom of a 6-inch wide window of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, dropped a makeshift rope made of bed sheets out and climbed down about 20 stories to the ground.

The escape went unnoticed for hours, with surveillance video from a nearby street showing the two hopping into a cab shortly before 3 a.m. Tuesday. They were no longer wearing their orange jail-issued jumpsuits.

When the facility did discover the two men were gone, around 7 a.m., what was found revealed a meticulously planned escape, including clothing and sheets shaped to resemble a body under blankets on beds, bars inside a mattress and even fake bars in the cells.

A massive manhunt involving state, federal and local law enforcement agencies was launched, as SWAT teams stormed into the home of a relative of Conley, only to learn the two had been there but had left, and searched other area homes and businesses -- including a strip club where Conley once worked.

Law enforcement officials did not answer a host of questions, including how the men could collect about 200 feet of bed sheets, and what they might have used to break through the wall of the federal facility.

Banks, known as the Second-Hand Bandit because he wore used clothes during his heists, was convicted last week of robbing two banks and attempting to rob two others. Authorities say he stole almost $600,000, and most of that still is missing.

During trial, he had to be restrained because he threatened to walk out of the courtroom. He acted as his own attorney and verbally sparred with the prosecutor, at times arguing that U.S. law didn't apply to him because he was a sovereign citizen of a group that was above state and federal law.

Conley pleaded guilty last October to robbing a Homewood Bank last year of nearly $4,000. Conley, who worked at the time at a suburban strip club, wore a coat and tie when he robbed the bank and had a gun stuffed in his waistband.

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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B' Is Dead: Now What?


Dec 20, 2012 11:00pm







The defeat of his Plan B — Republicans pulled it when it became clear it would be voted down — is a big defeat for Speaker of the House John Boehner.  It demonstrates definitively that there is no fiscal cliff deal that can pass the House on Republican votes alone.


Boehner could not even muster the votes to pass something that would only allow tax rates on those making more than $1 million to go up.


Boehner’s Plan B ran into opposition from conservative and tea party groups -including Heritage Action, Freedom Works and the Club for Growth – but it became impossible to pass it after Senate Democrats vowed not to take up the bill and the president threatened to veto it.  Conservative Republicans saw no reason to vote for a bill conservative activists opposed – especially if it had no hopes of going anywhere anyway.


Plan B is dead.


Now what?


House Republicans say it is now up to the Senate to act.  Senate Democrats say it is now up to Boehner to reach an agreement with President Obama.


Each side is saying the other must move.


The bottom line:  The only plausible solution is for President Obama and Speaker Boehner to do what they have failed repeatedly to do:  come up with a truly bi-partisan deal.


The prospects look grimmer than ever. It will be interesting to see if the markets react.



SHOWS: This Week







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State Department security chief leaves post over Benghazi


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday its security chief had resigned from his post and three other officials had been relieved of their duties following a scathing official inquiry into the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.


Eric Boswell has resigned effective immediately as assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a terse statement. A second official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Boswell had not left the department entirely and remained a career official.


Nuland said that Boswell, and the three other officials, had all been put on administrative leave "pending further action."


An official panel that investigated the incident concluded that the Benghazi mission was completely unprepared to deal with the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.


The unclassified version of the report, which was released on Tuesday, cited "leadership and management" deficiencies, poor coordination among officials and "real confusion" in Washington and in the field over who had the authority to make decisions on policy and security concerns.


"The ARB identified the performance of four officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau of (Near Eastern) Affairs," Nuland said in her statement, referring to the panel known as an Accountability Review Board.


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted Boswell's decision to resign effective immediately, the spokeswoman said.


Earlier, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Boswell, one of his deputies, Charlene Lamb, and a third unnamed official has been asked to resign. The Associated Press first reported that three officials had resigned.


PANEL STOPS SHORT OF BLAMING CLINTON


The Benghazi incident appeared likely to tarnish Clinton's four-year tenure as secretary of state but the report did not fault her specifically and the officials who led the review stopped short of blaming her.


"We did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks," retired Admiral Michael Mullen, one of the leaders of the inquiry, told reporters on Wednesday.


The panel's chair, retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, said it had determined that responsibility for security shortcomings in Benghazi belonged at levels lower than Clinton's office.


"We fixed (responsibility) at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look for where the decision-making in fact takes place, where - if you like - the rubber hits the road," Pickering said after closed-door meetings with congressional committees.


The panel's report and the comments by its two lead authors suggested that Clinton, who accepted responsibility for the incident in a television interview about a month after the Benghazi attack, would not be held personally culpable.


Pickering and Mullen spoke to the media after briefing members of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed doors on classified elements of their report.


Clinton had been expected to appear at an open hearing on Benghazi on Thursday, but is recuperating after suffering a concussion, dehydration and a stomach bug last week. She will instead be represented by her two top deputies.


Clinton, who intends to step down in January, said in a letter accompanying the review that she would adopt all of its recommendations, which include stepping up security staffing and requesting more money to fortify U.S. facilities.


The National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which is expected to go to Congress for final approval this week, includes a measure directing the Pentagon to increase the Marine Corps presence at diplomatic facilities by up to 1,000 Marines.


Some Capitol Hill Republicans who had criticized the Obama administration's handling of the Benghazi attacks said they were impressed by the report.


"It was very thorough," said Senator Johnny Isakson. Senator John Barrasso said: "It was very, very critical of major failures at the State Department at very high levels." Both spoke after the closed-door briefing.


Others, however, took a harsher line and called for Clinton to testify as soon as she is able.


"The report makes clear the massive failure of the State Department at all levels, including senior leadership, to take action to protect our government employees abroad," Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.


Senator Bob Corker, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the new Congress is seated early next year, said Clinton should testify about Benghazi before her replacement is confirmed by the Senate.


Republicans have focused much of their firepower on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who appeared on TV talk shows after the attack and suggested it was the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated attack.


The report concluded that there was no such protest.


Rice, widely seen as President Barack Obama's top pick to succeed Clinton, withdrew her name from consideration last week.


(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Christopher Wilson)



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Train service disrupted on NEL due to train fault






SINGAPORE: Train services on the Northeast Line have been delayed due to a train fault on Thursday.

A caller to the MediaCorp hotline said a train has apparently broken down.

She said commuters have been told to take the bus to Serangoon station to continue their journey.

Delays of up to 20 minutes can be expected in train services in both directions.

One commuter said she had been stuck in the train for about 30 minutes.

- CNA/xq



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Facebook in 2012: 5 ways its IPO changed the social giant




Now that was a year Mark Zuckerberg will never forget -- even if he didn't celebrate each moment on Facebook, as he wants the rest of the world to do. Sure, he turned 28 and married longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, in a backyard ceremony at the couple's home in Palo Alto, Calif. But that's the stuff of ordinary men. Make no mistake: 2012 will go down as the year in which Zuckerberg came out from under his hoodie and tried to prove himself as leader of one of the titans of consumer tech.


Is he succeeding? So far, sure, and more so as the year went on. While plenty of people like to complain about Facebook -- it's a time soak, a privacy nightmare -- plenty of others, as in hundreds of millions, clearly love it. Which is why Wall Street was in a tizzy when Facebook finally went public, an event that forever changed Facebook, making it far and away the most important development at Facebook this year.



1. Facebook's faceplant

Not since the Internet mania of the 1990s had we seen such hype and expectation over an IPO. And why not? This was Facebook, after all, a new kind of media company that had amassed hundreds of millions of passionate users and was already turning a profit on $4 billion in revenue by the time it filed to go public. This one was going to make armchair investors everywhere rich, and fast.


We all know what happened: The hype -- and the $100 billion-plus valuation Wall Street bankers awarded Facebook -- was all too much. Way too much. Sure, Facebook pulled off the biggest Internet IPO in history, which was great for Facebook, but then its shares began their speedy descent. Lawsuits were filed around the handling the IPO. Some even called for Zuckerberg's head, although Zuckerberg structured the company in way that makes firing him impossible. And the whole mess quashed hopes of a return to 1999-style Internet mania.



The upshot: Facebook's botched IPO sent fears across startup land and even now venture capitalists are cutting fewer checks to Zuckerberg wannabes since the possibility of a big IPO exit -- at least for consumer Internet companies -- is grim for now. (To be fair, IPO duds Groupon and Zynga also played a big role on this front). Despite all this, Facebook's stock, while still far from its IPO price of $38 a share, ended the year on a tear as Zuckerberg and team began to show they were serious about making money, especially from mobile.



2. Zuckerberg buys Instagram
Almost everything we hear about from Facebook these days has to do with mobile, and how the company has been restructured to emphasis "mobile first." And nothing shows just how concerned Zuckerberg was about the great mobile migration then when he singlehandedly struck a deal with Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom to buy his two-year-old startup in a stock-and-cash deal worth $1 billion. Istagram had amassed 33 million users, and Zuckerberg knew that it was both a threat and the future. So he pounced -- just a month before Facebook's May IPO.


The critics pounced. Why spend $1 billion for a money losing startup without a business model? But Zuckerberg didn't care. And when Facebook amended its IPO filing with the SEC -- just over a week before the IPO -- to emphasize how the shift of its users to mobile devices was threatening its long-term ad revenue, it all all started to make sense. Zuckerberg needed more mobile juice, at any cost. By the time the Instagram deal finally closed in October, the price came in at $715 million due to Facebook's sagging stock. Instagram is still on fire. It reached 100 million users in September, and, by one account, people are spending more time on it than on Twitter.


Then -- and this arguably deserves its own entry among top stories for 2012 -- management blundered badly in mid-December when it unveiled Instagram's new terms of service, which said that the company could sell your photos or use them in advertisements. You have to wonder who signed off on this one. Unsurprisingly, the backlash was swift. Instagram co-founder and chief executive Kevin Systrom apologized, backpedaled and said the company is "working on updated language."



3. Speaking of a billion...
This was the year when, with great fanfare, Facebook crossed the billion member mark. No consumer Internet company -- heck, no company, period -- has ever done that. Not bad for what began as a side project in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room eight years earlier. It's worth pointing out that these are "monthly active users," measured as people who log on to Facebook at least once a month. Still, that's one seventh of the entire world population. And Facebook's daily active user number is hardly shabby. That metric averaged 584 million in September, a 28 percent jump from the period year. As for mobile? Monthly active mobile users soared 61 percent to 604 million.


Zuckerberg and his team aren't satisfied with one billion, of course. Around five billion people are expected to be online by the end of the decade -- largely via phones -- and Facebook wants all of them conducting their Internet lives through Facebook. Growth has slowed in the U.S, but the company has its sights on all pockets of the globe, as evidenced by its reworked instant messenger app released in early December.

4. I'm talking to you, Wall Street
The rap against Zuckerberg, at least from Wall Street, had been that he didn't care about the money side of the business. In September, he sat for his first live interview (at the TechCrunch Distrupt conference) since the IPO and worked hard to disabuse the world that notion, arguing that Facebook can be a great place for users and can make a ton of money. This will go down as the day Zuckberg took control of the narrative and his messaging to Wall Street. This was also when he began preaching that mobile wasn't a problem for Facebook, but an opportunity -- a talking point that clearly went out to all Facebook execs, who now love talking about mobile, mobile and more mobile.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at yesterday's TechCrunch Disrupt event.

In September, Zuckerberg started talking about the huge mobile opportunity



(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)


Soon after that, Zuckerberg showed it was more than talk. Facebook started inserting ads -- called "Sponsored Stories" -- on its mobile apps in March, its first effort to make money from mobile. And the results started to show up this fall. When Facebook reported its third-quarter earnings, it said that mobile ads made up 14 percent of its total ad revenue -- largely putting to an end to the biggest worry among Wall Street since Facebook went public.



5. Buy your friend a drink
It's hard to pinpoint one money-making tactic that Facebook launched in 2012 as most important. The company did go all out in this regard. A few examples: It launched Facebook Exchange, an ad-bidding system that lets advertisers better target users on Facebook by tracking what else they do across the Web; it started letting users pay $7 to promote a post to ensure it'll land in a lot of News Feeds; it began charging business for Facebook Offers, a way for merchants to send Groupon-like deals to your News Feed.


But here's one that's unlike the others: The launch of Facebook Gifts, which lets you easily buy a Facebook friend a gift -- from an
iTunes gift card, to an item from Baby Gap or even a bottle of wine that gets shipped to your home. This is a huge move. It helps Facebook get credit card numbers on files -- important for future products -- and marks Facebook's march into commerce. Arguably, Facebook Gifts isn't yet about the money -- it's more about keeping people using Facebook -- but that'll change quickly.


And when that happens, that will certainly give Zuckerberg and his team something they can all drink to.


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Senate GOP proposes much smaller Sandy aid package

WASHINGTONSenate Republicans on Wednesday proposed a $24 billion emergency aid package for Superstorm Sandy victims, less than half of what Democrats hope to pass by Christmas.

The GOP alternative bill would provide more than enough money to pay for immediate recovery efforts through the spring.

Republicans complain that the $60.4 billion Democratic bill being debated in the Senate is larded with money for projects unrelated to damage from the late October storm, which battered the Atlantic coastline from North Carolina to Maine.

The Republican version does not include $13 billion Democrats want for projects to protect against future storms, including fortification of mass transit systems in the Northeast and protecting vulnerable seaside areas by building jetties against storm surges.



49 Photos


Sandy's devastation on Staten Island



Republicans said however worthy such projects may be, they are not urgently needed and should be considered by Congress in the usual appropriations process next year, not through emergency spending.

"We want to take care of urgent needs now," said Indiana Sen. Dan Coats, ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, who put forward the bill. "We can look at other needs down the road when we have more time to look at them."

The GOP bill also scraps spending from the Democratic bill that is not directly related to Sandy damages, such as the $150 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for declared fisheries disasters in 2012 that could go to New England states, Alaska, New York and Mississippi.

The aid will help states rebuild public infrastructure like roads and tunnels and help thousands of people displaced from their homes. Sandy was the most costly natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and one of the worst storms ever in the Northeast.

More than $2 billion in federal funds has been spent on relief efforts so far for 11 states and the District of Columbia. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund still has about $4.8 billion, and officials have said that is enough to pay for recovery efforts into early spring.

Earlier this month, Govs. Chris Christie, R-N.J., Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., and Dannel Malloy, D-Conn., argued in an op-ed that "in times of crisis no region, state or single American should have to stand alone or be left to fend for themselves," pointing to the "hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses damaged or destroyed, thousands still left homeless or displaced, tens of billions of dollars in economic loss" as evidence that "It's time for Congress to stand with us."

The governors, while recognizing that "our nation faces significant fiscal challenges," strive to separate the disaster-relief needs of their region from the ongoing "fiscal cliff" negotiations consuming Capitol Hill, arguing that Congress must "not allow this much-needed aid to fall in to the ideological divide."

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Obama Invokes Newtown on 'Cliff' Deal













Invoking the somber aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today appealed to congressional Republicans to embrace a standing "fair deal" on taxes and spending that would avert the fiscal cliff in 13 days.


"If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important," Obama said at a midday news conference.


"I would like to think that members of that [Republican] caucus would say to themselves, 'You know what? We disagree with the president on a whole bunch of things,'" he said. "'But right now what the country needs is for us to compromise.'"


House Speaker John Boehner's response: "Get serious."


Boehner announced at a 52-second news conference that the House will vote Thursday to approve a "plan B" to a broad White House deal -- and authorize simply extending current tax rates for people earning less than $1 million a year and little more.


"Then, the president will have a decision to make," the Ohio Republican said. "He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he could be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history."








Fiscal Cliff Negotiations: Trying to Make a Deal Watch Video









House Speaker John Boehner Proposes 'Plan B' on Taxes Watch Video









'Fiscal Cliff' Negotiations: Deal Might Be Within Reach Watch Video





Unless Congress acts by Dec. 31, every American will face higher income tax rates and government programs will get hit with deep automatic cuts starting in 2013.


Obama and Boehner have been inching closer to a deal on tax hikes and spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. But they have not yet had a breakthrough on a deal.


Obama's latest plan would raise $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years, largely through higher tax rates on incomes above $400,000. He also proposes roughly $930 billion in spending cuts, including new limits on entitlement spending, such as slower annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.


Boehner has agreed to $1 trillion in new tax revenue, with a tax rate hike for households earning over $1 million. He is seeking more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, with significant changes to Medicare and Social Security.


The president said today that he remains "optimistic" about reaching a broad compromise by Christmas because both sides are "pretty close," a sentiment that has been publicly shared by Boehner.


But the speaker's backup plan has, at least temporarily, stymied talks, with no reported contact between the sides since Monday.


"The speaker should return to the negotiating table with the president because if he does I firmly believe we can have an agreement before Christmas," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a White House ally.


Schumer said Obama and Boehner are "not that far apart" in the negotiations.


"If they were to come to an agreement by Friday, they could write this stuff over the Christmas break and then we'd have to come back before the New Year and pass it," Schumer said.


Obama said he is "open to conversations" and planned to reach out to congressional leaders over the next few days to try to nudge Republicans to accept a "fair deal."


"At some point, there's got to be, I think, a recognition on the part of my Republican friends that -- you know, take the deal," he told reporters.


"They keep on finding ways to say no, as opposed to finding ways to say yes," Obama added. "At some point, you know, they've got take me out of it and think about their voters and think about what's best for the country."



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Insight: Once a symbol of new Afghanistan, can policewomen survive?


KABUL (Reuters) - Shortly after Friba joined the Afghan National Police, she gave herself the nickname "dragon" and vowed to bring law and order to her tormented homeland.


Five years later, she is tired of rebuffing the sexual advances of male colleagues, worries the budget for the female force will shrink and fears the government will abandon them.


Women in the police force were held up as a showcase for Afghan-Western efforts to promote rights in the new Afghanistan, born from the optimism that swept the country after the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.


Images of gun-wielding Afghan policewomen have been broadcast across the globe, even inspiring a television program popular with young Afghan women.


But going from the burqa to the olive green uniform has not been easy.


In Reuters interviews with 12 policewomen in districts across the Afghan capital, complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination and bitter frustration were prevalent.


President Hamid Karzai's goal is for 5,000 women to join the Afghan National Police (ANP) by the end of 2014, when most foreign troops will leave the country.


But government neglect, poor recruitment and a lack of interest on the part of authorities and the male-dominated society mean there are only 1,850 female police officers on the beat, or about 1.25 percent of the entire force.


And it looks to get worse.


Friba, who asked that her second name not be used, says it all when she runs a manicured finger across her throat: "Once foreigners leave we won't even be able to go to the market. We'll be back in burqas. The Taliban are coming back and we all know it."


Conditions for women in Afghanistan have improved significantly since the Taliban were ousted. Women have won back basic rights in voting, education and work since Taliban rule, when they were not allowed out of their homes without a male escort and could be publicly stoned to death for adultery.


But problems persist in the deeply conservative Muslim society scarred by decades of conflict. The United Nations said this month that despite progress, there was a dramatic under reporting of cases of violence against women.


Some female lawmakers and rights groups blame Karzai's government for a waning interest in women's rights as it seeks peace talks with the Taliban, accusations his administration deny.


"We have largely failed in our campaign to create a female police force," said a senior Afghan security official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.


"Mullahs are against it, and the women are seen as not up to the job," he added, referring to Muslim preachers.


Almost a third of the members of the female force work in Kabul, performing duties such as conducting security checks on women at the airport and checking biometric data.


"CONSTANTLY HARASSED"


Friba sat in a city police station room decorated with posters of policemen clutching weapons to talk to Reuters.


"I am the dragon and I can defend myself, but most of the girls are constantly harassed," she said.


"Just yesterday my colleague put his hands on one of the girl's breasts. She was embarrassed and giggled while he squeezed them. Then she turned to us and burst into tears."


On the other side of Kabul, detective Lailoma, who also asked that her family name not be used, said several policewomen under her command had been raped by their male colleagues.


Dyed russet hair poking out from her black hijab, part of the female ANP uniform, Lailoma wrung her hands as she complained about male colleagues: "They want it to be like the time of the Taliban. They tell us every day we are bad women and should not be allowed to work here."


Male colleagues also taunt the women, she added, often preventing them from entering the kitchen, meaning they miss out on lunch.


On several occasions, male colleagues interrupted Reuters interviews in what the policewomen said were attempts to intimidate them into silence.


One male officer entered the room without knocking three times to retrieve pencils; another spent 20 minutes dusting off his hat, only to put it back on a shelf. The women switched subjects when the men came in.


Rana, a 31-year-old, heavy-set policewoman with curly hair, said policewomen were expected to perform sexual favors: "We're expected to do them to just stay in the force."


The raping of policewomen by their male counterparts "definitely takes place", said Colonel Sayed Omar Saboor, deputy director for gender and human rights at the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police.


"These men are largely illiterate and see the women as immoral."


Insecurity, opposition to women working out of the home and sexism deter many women from signing up, said Saboor.


But impoverished widows sometimes have no choice. A starting salary is about 10,500 afghanis a month ($210).


DIFFICULT


The Interior Ministry and foreign organizations responsible for training the women police - NATO, the European Union and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) - say recruitment poses the main challenge to the force.


"It is just difficult. There is no real history of women in the police force, there is no precedent, even having an open space for women in employment is a challenge," UNDP Associate Administrator Rebeca Grynspan told Reuters.


A recruitment campaign of television adverts and posters has not produced the desired effect in a country where there are huge social and religious divides between the rural and urban populations. Even fewer join the national army, where some 350 women serve amongst 190,000.


"Much of the male leadership don't want to have anything to do with women in the ANP. Commanders want them out of their units," Saboor said, adding that having 2,500 female police officers could be realistic by end-2014.


Of those who join, few have prospects for promotion. They often find themselves in police stations without proper facilities for women, such as toilets or changing rooms which are vital for the many who hide the fact that they work from their families.


The sprawling Interior Ministry has only recently started work on installing toilets for women. "Ten years of this war have passed, and we're only now building them a toilet," Saboor said with a wry laugh.


For First Lieutenant Naderah Keshmiri, whose humble yet stern approach helps her pursue cases of violence against women, life as a policewoman means being undervalued.


"My male subordinates quickly became generals. But not me. Where's my promotion?" she asked in a UNDP-backed Family Response Unit, which she heads.


The UNDP has set up 33 of the units countrywide, which help increase female visibility in the ANP, with plans to more than double them by 2015.


A Western female police trainer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said policewomen are almost always passed over for promotion by their male commanders.


U.S. lawmakers are hoping to amend a defense bill by year-end to protect the rights of Afghan women during the security transition. They want to reduce physical and cultural barriers to women joining the security forces.


Ethnicity also plays a role: 55 percent of women in the ANP are ethnic Tajik, Afghanistan's second-largest ethnic group. Recruiting from the largest and most conservative ethnic group, the Pashtuns, is difficult.


The Taliban draw most of their support from the Pashtuns, who dominate the south of the country. Pashtun women make up only 15 percent of the force.


Hazaras, a largely Shi'ite minority who suffered enormous losses at the hands of the Taliban, are overrepresented amongst the women, making up 24 percent, according to figures from NATO's training mission in Afghanistan.


But many of the policewomen are wondering whether their force can survive.


Lowering her voice, Friba whispered: "As soon as the foreigners leave, they'll reduce our salaries. This will not happen to the men. Or perhaps they'll kick us out entirely."


(Editing by Michael Georgy and Robert Birsel)



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