Murder accused MLA makes Cong insecure in HP

SHIMLA: The disqualification of murder accused Congress MLA Ram Kumar Chaudhary has jeopardized the party's position in 68-member House of Himachal Pradesh. The Doon MLA's ouster has left the party with 34 MLAs only. For clear majority, the government should have the support of 35 members. If Chaudhary is disqualified, the party will be left with no option but to seek the outside support.

The MLA's suspension has prompted a fresh debate -- whether the tainted MLA arrested by Haryana police in the murder case of a dalit woman would able to take oath within 60 days of his election to avoid disqualification.

Assembly election results were declared on December 20 and the newly elected MLAs had taken oath of office on January 8, barring Chaudhary, who remained underground to evade arrest. Now that the court has remanded him to police custody till January 18, his family members will have to apply for his bail on Friday. If court rejects the bail, then Chaudhary would become a disqualified member after the expiry of 60 days.

Congress in Himachal came to power with 36 members. Of them, one of its MLAs from Palampur, Brij Behari Butail, has become the assembly speaker, leaving the party's MLA strength to 35 in the House. If Chaudhary is disqualified, then Congress would be left with 34 members only -- one less than the required majority. Under such circumstances, the party will have to take outside support to keep majority in the House.

Although out of six independent MLAs, four have extended support to Congress, sources said the party does not want to lose Chaudhary's membership to keep its majority position. Chaudhary has been placed under suspension but the party is treading cautiously on the issue of his disqualification despite Haryana police claims that evidences indicating towards his involvement in the crime.

Speaker Brij Behari Butail told TOI that Chaudhary cannot be called a member of the legislative assembly as he has yet to take the oath. "He has 60 days time to take oath and would be disqualified after that," he said. If court allows it, then Chaudhary could be administered the oath as member, Butail added.

Chaudhary is one of the four suspects in the murder of a 24-year-old dalit woman Jyoti from Hoshiarpur, whose body was found in Sector 21 of Panchkula on November 22. He had surrendered to police on January 8.

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Opinion: Lance One of Many Tour de France Cheaters


Editor's note: England-based writer and photographer Roff Smith rides around 10,000 miles a year through the lanes of Sussex and Kent and writes a cycling blog at: www.my-bicycle-and-I.co.uk

And so, the television correspondent said to the former Tour de France champion, a man who had been lionised for years, feted as the greatest cyclist of his day, did you ever use drugs in the course of your career?

"Yes," came the reply. "Whenever it was necessary."

"And how often was that?" came the follow-up question.

"Almost all the time!"

This is not a leak of a transcript from Oprah Winfrey's much anticipated tell-all with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, but instead was lifted from a decades-old interview with Fausto Coppi, the great Italian road cycling champion of the 1940s and 1950s.

To this day, though, Coppi is lauded as one of the gods of cycling, an icon of a distant and mythical golden age in the sport.

So is five-time Tour winner Jacques Anquetil (1957, 1961-64) who famously remarked that it was impossible "to ride the Tour on mineral water."

"You would have to be an imbecile or a crook to imagine that a professional cyclist who races for 235 days a year can hold the pace without stimulants," Anquetil said.

And then there's British cycling champion Tommy Simpson, who died of heart failure while trying to race up Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour de France, a victim of heat, stress, and a heady cocktail of amphetamines.

All are heroes today. If their performance-enhancing peccadillos are not forgotten, they have at least been glossed over in the popular imagination.

As the latest chapter of the sorry Lance Armstrong saga unfolds, it is worth looking at the history of cheating in the Tour de France to get a sense of perspective. This is not an attempt at rationalisation or justification for what Lance did. Far from it.

But the simple, unpalatable fact is that cheating, drugs, and dirty tricks have been part and parcel of the Tour de France nearly from its inception in 1903.

Cheating was so rife in the 1904 event that Henri Desgrange, the founder and organiser of the Tour, declared he would never run the race again. Not only was the overall winner, Maurice Garin, disqualified for taking the train over significant stretches of the course, but so were next three cyclists who placed, along with the winner of every single stage of the course.

Of the 27 cyclists who actually finished the 1904 race, 12 were disqualified and given bans ranging from one year to life. The race's eventual official winner, 19-year-old Henri Cornet, was not determined until four months after the event.

And so it went. Desgrange relented on his threat to scrub the Tour de France and the great race survived and prospered-as did the antics. Trains were hopped, taxis taken, nails scattered along the roads, partisan supporters enlisted to beat up rivals on late-night lonely stretches of the course, signposts tampered with, bicycles sabotaged, itching powder sprinkled in competitors' jerseys and shorts, food doctored, and inkwells smashed so riders yet to arrive couldn't sign the control documents to prove they'd taken the correct route.

And then of course there were the stimulants-brandy, strychnine, ether, whatever-anything to get a rider through the nightmarishly tough days and nights of racing along stages that were often over 200 miles long. In a way the race was tailor-made to encourage this sort of thing. Desgrange once famously said that his idea of a perfect Tour de France would be one that was so tough that only one rider finished.

Add to this the big prizes at a time when money was hard to come by, a Tour largely comprising young riders from impoverished backgrounds for whom bicycle racing was their one big chance to get ahead, and the passionate following cycling enjoyed, and you had the perfect recipe for a desperate, high stakes, win-at-all-costs mentality, especially given the generally tolerant views on alcohol and drugs in those days.

After World War II came the amphetamines. Devised to keep soldiers awake and aggressive through long hours of battle they were equally handy for bicycle racers competing in the world's longest and toughest race.

So what makes the Lance Armstrong story any different, his road to redemption any rougher? For one thing, none of the aforementioned riders were ever the point man for what the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has described in a thousand-page report as the most sophisticated, cynical, and far-reaching doping program the world of sport has ever seen-one whose secrecy and efficiency was maintained by ruthlessness, bullying, fear, and intimidation.

Somewhere along the line, the casualness of cheating in the past evolved into an almost Frankenstein sort of science in which cyclists, aided by creepy doctors and trainers, were receiving blood transfusions in hotel rooms and tinkering around with their bodies at the molecular level many months before they ever lined up for a race.

To be sure, Armstrong didn't invent all of this, any more than he invented original sin-nor was he acting alone. But with his success, money, intelligence, influence, and cohort of thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers-and the way he used all this to prop up the Lance brand and the Lance machine at any cost-he became the poster boy and lightning rod for all that went wrong with cycling, his high profile eclipsing even the heads of the Union Cycliste Internationale, the global cycling union, who richly deserve their share of the blame.

It is not his PED popping that is the hard-to-forgive part of the Lance story. Armstrong cheated better than his peers, that's all.

What I find troubling is the bullying and calculated destruction of anyone who got in his way, raised a question, or cast a doubt. By all accounts Armstrong was absolutely vicious, vindictive as hell. Former U.S. Postal team masseuse Emma O'Reilly found herself being described publicly as a "prostitute" and an "alcoholic," and had her life put through a legal grinder when she spoke out about Armstrong's use of PEDs.

Journalists were sued, intimidated, and blacklisted from events, press conferences, and interviews if they so much as questioned the Lance miracle or well-greased machine that kept winning Le Tour.

Armstrong left a lot of wreckage behind him.

If he is genuinely sorry, if he truly repents for his past "indiscretions," one would think his first act would be to try to find some way of not only seeking forgiveness from those whom he brutally put down, but to do something meaningful to repair the damage he did to their lives and livelihoods.


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'Catfish' Star Reaches Out to Manti Te'o













Nev Schulman, the star and creator of the MTV show "Catfish" that follows Internet dating hoaxes, has reached out to Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o and offered to help solve his girlfriend hoax.


Te'o and Notre Dame claim he was a "catfish" victim when it was revealed that the woman he said was his girlfriend and died of leukemia never existed.


The "Catfish" television show was spawned by a movie of the same name in which Schulman tracked down a person who pretended to be a young woman he had met online.


".@MTeo_5 I know how you feel. It happened 2 me. I want 2 help tell ur story & prevent this from happening to others in the future. Lets talk," Schulman tweeted to Te'o.


Schulman says in his tweets that he has information about the baffling hoax. "I am working on finding out more about this @MTeo_5 #Catfish story. I have been in contact with the woman involved and will get the truth," Schulman tweeted on Wednesday night. It is unclear which woman Schulman has been in contact with.


However, in a statement released to ABC News, Schulman said "I have been in touch with Donna Tei. She reached out to me back in December asking for help regarding the person who had been using her photos to create a fake profile."






ABC News; David J. Phillip/AP Photo











Manti Te'o Hoax: Notre Dame Star Allegedly Scammed Watch Video









'Catfish' Star Nev Schulman's Red Flags for Spotting Online Fakers Watch Video









Tale of Notre Dame Football Star's Girlfriend and Her Death an Alleged Hoax Watch Video





It's not clear whether Donna Tei was the woman whose photo was used as "girlfriend" Lennay Kekua or another person in the complicated hoax.


He also tweeted, "However his #Manti story ends, it doesn't change that we are all the victims of a #Catfish."


In an interview with ABC News, Schulman defended the possibility that Te'o had been duped.


"From what I gather, and from some contact that has been made with me with people who have been involved in this story directly, I get the impression that this is a much larger scheme than he would have thought," Schulman said.


"It doesn't seem to me that he is in on it, although, of course, that is yet to be seen. Even though it seems hard to believe because he is a high-profile football player, he is just as vulnerable and susceptible to being Catfished as anyone else."


"I think there is a lot more we are going to find out about this story," he said.


Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick cited the documentary "Catfish" in trying to explain how the star linebacker became a hoax victim.


"I would refer all of you, if you're not already familiar with it, with both the documentary called 'Catfish,' the MTV show which is a derivative of that documentary, and the sort of associated things you'll find online and otherwise about catfish, or catfishing," Swarbrick told reporters Wednesday.


The 2010 film stars Schulman, who was the real-life victim of a "catfish" scam. Schulman wanted to make the documentary to show how he was sucked in by an Internet pretender -- or a "catfish" -- who built an elaborate fake life.


Schulman made the documentary as he was falling for someone named "Megan," a gorgeous 20-something from Michigan. Their online relationship blossomed until Schulman confronted "Megan."


"Megan" turned out to be a middle-aged mom of two named Angela Wesselman, who later said she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.


Inside 'Catfish': A Tale of Twisted Cyber-Romance


"It was different. It was something new. It was a little mysterious," Schulman told ABC News in an earlier interview, describing his reaction before he discovered Megan's true identity.






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Chavez to troops: thanks for the 'loyalty and love'






CARACAS: Lying in a Havana hospital bed as he recovers from cancer surgery, President Hugo Chavez thanked Venezuela's military for their loyalty and love, the vice president said Wednesday.

Nicolas Maduro told a military audience the president expressed this message to Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, who is also Chavez's son-in-law and with him in Cuba.

"He told us to pass on to the armed forces, from the bottom of his heart, all of his gratitude for so much loyalty from you toward the commander, a humble soldier of this country," said Maduro, who saw Chavez over the weekend in Havana.

"Thanks to everyone for so much loyalty and so much love," Maduro said, quoting Arreaza as quoting Chavez, a former paratrooper who is now 58.

Chavez underwent a fourth cancer operation on December 11 in Havana and remains there recovering. His latest complication is a pulmonary infection.

He has not been seen in public since before he left Caracas.

But before he left, he warned the armed forces to be on the lookout for any attempt, "from outside or from within," to destabilise the country, which has the world's largest proven oil reserves.

At Wednesday's ceremony at a military academy, Defence Minister Diego Molero said the armed forces remain faithful "now more than ever" to Chavez.

And they will respect a Supreme Court ruling upholding a parliamentary vote last week that indefinitely postponed Chavez's inauguration to a new six-year term following his re-election win back in October.

Chavez's absence and silence -- he is a garrulous, larger-than-life character -- has unsettled many Venezuelans. Some in the opposition complain that the country is in effect, and illegally, being ruled from Cuba and with Cuban influence.

No gesture goes unnoticed as a nation so thoroughly dominated by the populist and champion-of-the-poor comandante goes without him and ponders an uncertain future.

For instance, the opposition seized on just a few words -- Chavez's stamped signature on a decree -- Wednesday to demand he clarify how sick he is and what he can and cannot do.

The official government gazette published a decree in which Elias Jaua was named as Venezuela's new foreign minister.

The decree is dated Caracas and carries the stamped signature of Chavez.

Henrique Capriles, a state governor whom Chavez beat in Venezuela's October presidential election, said it was puzzling that the decree on the new foreign minister carried the president's name.

"If the president of the republic can sign decrees, I call on him to appear, speak to Venezuela and tell us what is happening in this government, because what Venezuela has is 'dis-government'," Capriles said.

The government has been releasing only minimal information on the condition of Chavez, who first came to power in 1999.

Many in Venezuela find it hard to believe the flamboyant Chavez, a near fixture on television and radio for more than a decade -- would not address the nation in some way if he were able to do so.

Chavez's absence, combined with his decision to be treated in secrecy in strictly-controlled communist Cuba, has fuelled questions about his health and the future of his leftist "Bolivarian Revolution."

- AFP/jc



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HC seeks status report on Khurshid trust probe

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Wednesday ordered the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of UP police to present the status report on the inquiry done so far into allegations of anomalies in the trust run by external affairs minister SalmanKhurshid. The court has sought the report on February 1.

The order was passed by a division bench of Justice Uma Nath Singh and Justice Satish Chandra on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by social activist Nutan Thakur.

In her PIL filed on October 15 last year, Thakur had demanded registration of a case on the basis of the charges levelled against the Zakir Hussain Trust run by Salman Khurshid and his wife Louise. Thakur had also expressed doubt over free and fair inquiry into the allegations under present political circumstances, hence she had asked the court to supervise the probe.

Six parties -- state government, EOW, central government through ministry of social justice, principal secretary social welfare UP, Aaj Tak through editor India Today group and Dr Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust -- were made respondents in the PIL.

After hearing the PIL, the court had on October 18 directed the Aaj Tak channel to present relevant documents and CD of its sting operation which exposed the alleged anomalies. The channel submitted the documents and the CD in a sealed cover before the court on Wednesday.

The state government had ordered the EOW to probe the allegations. Social activist Arvind Kejriwal had also raised questions over the fairness of the EOW probe and had accused Akhilesh Yadav government of trying to shield Khurshid, following which the PIL was filed.

Appearing on behalf of the Union government, senior counsel Vivek Tankha had then claimed that it was a proxy PIL, filed in a casual manner to malign and scandalise a person. On behalf of the state government, additional advocate general Bulbul Godiyal had also raised objections regarding the maintainability of the PIL. However, the petitioner's counsel Ashok Pandey had then argued that investigation should be done after lodging an FIR.

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How Far Off Is a Better Flu Shot?


As you waited in line for your flu shot last weekend, you may have been wondering: Why must I go through this every year?

The answer is that the influenza virus is a slippery character. Some viruses barely change at all over time. The measles virus, for example, is "as stable as stone," said William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University.

Chicken pox, too, is consistent from year to year. But influenza is "genetically plastic," said Schaffner. It mutates all the time, and it can combine with other flu strains to regularly make new variants.

Those kinds of changes happen so frequently that the body's immune system won't necessarily recognize this year's iteration of the flu as a dangerous threat—even if you suffered from or were vaccinated against last year's version.

"It's like putting on a new sport coat every winter," said Schaffner, the past president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

The vaccine has to be updated every year to account for the flu's changes. But forecasting what those changes will be is tough.

Every year, public health officials try to predict the three flu strains—two of influenza A and one of influenza B—that will be common in the coming winter. They do this months in advance, giving manufacturers time to produce, distribute, and administer the vaccine.

"Here you are in March, trying to figure out what will be circulating next February," said Schaffner.

In the intervening months, circulating strains of the flu virus can change enough to reduce the vaccine's effectiveness.

Even when the seasonal vaccine is a good match, it doesn't offer complete protection. People may be infected by a less common strain not included in the vaccine.

Some, especially the elderly, very young, or those with certain health conditions, don't develop a strong immune response to the flu even after vaccination. Others get exposed to the flu before the vaccine can take effect.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week estimated the effectiveness of this year's vaccine to be 62 percent, based on a one-month survey of more than a thousand adults and kids.

That's in line with the historical average. A 2011 review of previous research published in Lancet Infectious Diseases found that vaccines had a combined efficacy of 59 percent against flu in healthy adults aged 65 and younger.

Trying to Change the Game

That less than stellar record has scientists working to develop better tools to fight flu.

"Is [the current vaccine] the answer for tomorrow? Yes, it's the best we have. Use it," said Michael Osterholm, lead author of the 2011 review and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

"Is this the answer for the next few tomorrows?" he continues. "No. We need better flu vaccines."

And that need is acute. The World Health Organization puts the global death toll from seasonal flu at 250,000 to 500,000 per year, out of 3 million to 5 million severe cases. In the United States, an estimated 3,000 to 49,000 people die each year from the flu, according to the CDC.

Osterholm was the lead author of an October Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy report that called for "game-changing" influenza vaccines.

The traditional flu vaccine includes pieces of the "head" of the hemagglutinin protein, which is found on the surface of the flu virus. When immune cells called B cells run into those bits of protein after vaccination, the cells learn to make antibodies against them. Later, if the actual flu virus comes along, these prepared B cells can mount a speedy response and prevent infection.

The problem is that this part of hemagglutinin mutates rapidly, and the older antibodies are of no use against the newer version of the virus.

Researchers and some biotech companies are now trying to target proteins in the influenza virus that don't vary from strain to strain and from year to year.

"If this piece of the virus is the same among all influenza viruses and doesn't change over time, maybe we can make a vaccine against it," said Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group.

The hope is that the approach yields a universal vaccine that protects against seasonal flu without annual shots. Such a vaccine could also keep the body poised to fend off a major new flu virus, like the 1918 strain that killed tens of millions of people and the 2009 pandemic of a strain of H1N1, aka swine flu.

As they seek that silver bullet, researchers are taking a variety of approaches.

Sarah Gilbert, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford, is working with colleagues on a vaccine that interacts with the body's T cells, which kill other cells that have been infected by a virus.

"T cells can recognize human cells infected with the virus because very small regions of the [infected cells'] contents are displayed on the outside," said Gilbert. "It's like putting little flags on the outside to say there is something nonhuman inside."

The advantage is that those little flags on the outside of infected cells don't vary much from flu strain to flu strain.

The Wait Continues

The Oxford group has published the results from some small, early studies in humans but will need many more studies to prove T cell approach is effective, Gilbert said.

Even if that or other new vaccines make it to market, the likelihood of a flu shot for life is low. Immunity declines over time, so people would probably need boosters.

"I think we'll probably move to a shot every five years," said Gilbert. Such a shot could be offered year-round, cutting down on lines at drugstores and doctors' offices between September and March.

For now, the wait continues. "Candidate vaccines are in early trials," said the Mayo Clinic's Poland. "It could be four to ten years before we see one."

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy report from October noted that it can take as long as 15 years and as much as $1 billion to bring a new vaccine to market.

It also predicted that flu vaccines taking an entirely new approach will face a longer approval process and "substantially higher" financial risk than more traditional vaccines. More studies will be needed, and regulators will need to figure out, for example, how to estimate the biological effectiveness of a vaccine that doesn't rely on the same mechanism as today's vaccines.

The October report urged changes to the U.S. government's regulatory process for approving new flu vaccines and "coordinated partnerships involving national governments, the pharmaceutical industry, the investment community, and academia." And it called on the U.S. government to "assume a primary leadership role" in spurring the development of new vaccines.

Can't wait for all that? There is an incremental improvement to the current flu vaccine coming soon.

Starting in the 2013-14 flu season, there will be a "quadrivalent" vaccine available that will protect against two influenza A and two influenza B strains. In a couple of years, all vaccine manufacturers will be making them, said Poland.


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Obama Unveils Sweeping Plan to Curb Gun Violence













Flanked by four children from across the country, President Obama today unveiled a sweeping plan to curb gun violence in America through an extensive package of legislation and executive actions not seen since the 1960s.


Obama is asking Congress to implement mandatory background checks for all gun purchases, including private sales; reinstate a ban on some assault-style weapons; ban high-capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds; and crackdown on illicit weapons trafficking.


The president's proposal also includes new initiatives for school safety, including a call for more federal aid to states for hiring so-called school resource officers (police), counselors and psychologists, and improved access to mental health care.


Obama also initiated 23 executive actions on gun violence, policy directives not needing congressional approval. Among them is a directive to federal agencies to beef up the national criminal background-check system and a memorandum lifting a freeze on gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


"I intend to use whatever weight this office holds to make them a reality," Obama said at a midday news conference. "If there's even one thing that we can do to reduce this violence, if there's even one life that can be saved, then we have an obligation to try.


"And I'm going to do my part."


The announcement comes one month after a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., left 26 dead, including 20 children. Obama called it the worst moment of his presidency and promised "meaningful action" in response.






Maqndel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images













Andrew Cuomo Signs New York Gun Control Law, Obama Readies Federal Plan Watch Video









'The View' on NRA Shooting App: Think It Out Watch Video





The proposals were the work of an Obama-appointed task force, led by Vice President Joe Biden, that held 22 meetings on gun violence in the past three weeks. The group received input from more than 220 organizations and dozens of elected officials, a senior administration official said.


As part of the push, Obama nominated a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which leads enforcement of federal gun laws and has been without a confirmed director for six years. The president appointed acting director Todd Jones, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, to the post, if the Senate confirms him.


The administration's plan calls for aid to states for the hiring of more school resource officers, counselors and psychologists. Obama also directed the Department of Education to ensure all schools have improved emergency-response plans.


He also called on Congress to make it illegal to possess or transfer armor-piercing bullets; it's now only illegal to produce them.


"To make a real and lasting difference, Congress must act," Obama said. "And Congress must act soon."


Officials said some of the legislative measures Obama outlined could be introduced on Capitol Hill next week. The pricetag for Obama's entire package is $500 million, the White House said.


"House committees of jurisdiction will review these recommendations," a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said in response to Obama's announcement. "And if the Senate passes a bill, we will also take a look at that."


The proposals are already being met with stiff opposition from gun rights advocates, led by the National Rifle Association, which overnight released a scathing ad attacking the president as an "elitist hypocrite."


"Are the president's kids more important than yours?" the narrator of the NRA ad says. "Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools, when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?"


Obama has questioned the value of placing more armed guards at schools around the country, although his proposal does call for placement of more police officers at public schools. The NRA opposes most of the other gun restrictions Obama has proposed.


"Keeping our children and society safe remains our top priority," the NRA said in a statement after Obama's announcement.


"Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation," the group said. "Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy."






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House set to vote on Hurricane Sandy relief package



The package is likely to be approved on the strength of votes from Democrats and Republicans who hail from communities hit hard by the Oct. 29, 2012, storm, as well as others who come from communities that have faced recent natural disasters.


However, it faces a tough challenge from fiscal conservatives who believe the emergency spending should be offset with spending cuts to other parts of the federal budget to avoid adding to the federal debt.

After delaying a vote on the aid package earlier this month — earning an embarrassing rebuke from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) — House leaders have now designed a complicated legislative pathway for the aid.

Tuesday afternoon, the House agreed to an underlying bill that includes $17 billion intended to cover immediate relief needs, including $5.4 billion for the FEMA fund that funnels aid directly to individuals and local communities to rebuild. The measure passed on a 327 to 91 vote.

Later, the House will take action on an amendment that would provide $33.6 billion in additional money to cover a longer-term effort to rebuild.

Splitting the bill into two pieces allows those Republicans who want to vote to provide immediate help to withhold their votes from the long-term effort.

Supporters believe all of the money is desperately needed — Christie and New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) have requested nearly $80 billion in federal aid.

Together, the $50.6 billion, along with $9.7 billion for flood relief approved by the House earlier this month, would equal a package passed in December on a bipartisan basis in the Senate.

Backers fear changes to the package could derail the bill in the Senate.

“We don’t want to find ourselves with a bill the Senate can’t take, and we’ll have to ping-pong around here for a few months,” said Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.). “It’s important that we get this done and get it done quickly.”

But to appease conservatives, House leaders are allowing votes on 12 additional amendments — chosen from among more than 90 proposed by members — many of which would slice out spending projects that some conservatives consider not directly related to storm relief.

Other amendments seek to offset the relief dollars with spending cuts to other parts of the budget. Traditionally, storm relief is considered emergency spending, much like money to fund wars and appropriated quickly by Congress on top of other spending priorities.

But some fiscal conservatives have expressed exasperation with that notion. The total $60 billion relief package is larger than the budgets of many states. It also would swallow up more than half of the spending cuts set to take effect next month as part of the hard-fought sequester process, which was designed to begin denting the federal deficit.

“We’re spending money we don’t have. We just have to control our spending,” said Rep. Paul C. Broun (R-Ga.).

The House defeated a key amendment proposed by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) and backed by the conservative Club for Growth that would have offset the $17 billion underlying measure by cutting 1.63 percent from every federal agency, including the military.

The measure fell on a 162 to 258 vote after House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) appealed to colleagues that the across-the-board offsetting cut would cause indiscriminate damage to federal programs. He noted that the cut would total more than the size of the entire Agriculture department.

“At times, the spending of federal dollars is indeed necessary,” he said. “Natural disasters hit unexpectedly, and sometimes require a response that we cannot foresee.”

But 157 Republicans — including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R) and a majority of the GOP caucus — supported the amendment, even as it fell to opposition from other Republicans and Democrats.

The House is scheduled to take final action on the full bill Tuesday evening.

Republican supporters of the legislation believe that with their votes and those of Democrats, who broadly support the package, they will approve the $50 billion.

That outcome would mimic an initial vote earlier this month on $9.7 billion to pay federal flood insurance claims. It passed by a comfortable 354 to 67 margin, but its supporters included more Democrats than Republicans.

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Oil prices fall on weak German, US data






NEW YORK: Oil prices retreated Tuesday after unimpressive economic data out of Germany and the US raised questions about the strength of petroleum demand.

Prices of US benchmark West Texas Intermediate futures settled at US$93.28 a barrel, down 86 cents. European benchmark Brent crude futures settled at US$110.30 a barrel, down US$1.58.

German gross domestic product shrank by about 0.5 pe rcent in the fourth quarter of last year, bringing full-year GDP growth to just 0.7 per cent, the federal statistics office Destatis calculated in preliminary data.

In 2010 and 2011, the German economy had expanded by 4.2 per cent and 3.0 per cent, respectively.

The results are a troubling indicator for Europe because "Germany is really the strong man of Europe in terms of economy," said James Williams of WTRG Economics.

Meanwhile, economic indicators out of the US were also middling.

On the more positive side, US retail sales grew in the month of December by 0.5 per cent from November, above the analyst projection of 0.2 per cent.

However, IHS Global Insight economist Chris Christopher noted that the data showed that holiday retail sales increased by 2.7 per cent in 2012, well below the 5.5 per cent notched in 2011 and the 5.6 per cent in 2010.

In addition, the New York Empire State Manufacturing Survey said the business-conditions index fell to -7.78, well below the average estimate of -2.0. A reading below zero suggests contraction.

"The data was mostly poor this morning," said John Kilduff, an oil trader with Again Capital.

Concerns about the US also centre on the fact that talks between the White House and congressional Republicans remained tense on raising the debt ceiling. President Barack Obama Monday warned Republicans against using the debt ceiling as a "bargaining chip" in budget negotiations.

Republicans reacted swiftly, essentially ignoring Obama's demand to decouple the spending debate from the debt ceiling and giving every indication that the face-off will continue.

- AFP/jc



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Speaker should have expunged abusive proceedings right away: Somnath

CHANDIGARH: Former LokSabha Speaker SomnathChatterjee, who set an example by refusing to follow the party line to vote against the Congress-led government in a crucial July 2008 confidence vote, on Tuesday strongly differed with the handling of the abusive CD row involving Punjab minister BikramMajithia, saying that the expunging of assembly proceedings should not have come as an "afterthought".

The outspoken former CPM MP from West Bengal was replying to a query on the allegation of bias by the state Congress against Punjab speaker Charanjit Atwal, who was Chatterjee's deputy during the UPA government for a period of four years between 2004 and 2009.

"If I were the Speaker, I would have expunged the proceedings with such unruly people and unparliamentary language being used there and then. I wouldn't have waited for 24 hours, thinking that it would embarrass someone later," Chatterjee told TOI over phone from West Bengal.

Atwal had ordered expunging of the abusive words from the assembly records on December 21 last year, 24 hours after they were telecast live on two TV channels, including the one owned by the ruling SAD family and social media like YouTube.

The opposition Congress had last Sunday thrice screened the 60-second TV grab on two separate 42-inch screens at a rally in Muktsar, forcing Atwal to rush to Delhi and mull legal action against those showing the expunged proceedings.

Chatterjee, however, did not agree with the Congress protesting against the Speaker for taking assistance from legal experts in Delhi or elsewhere.

"Irrespective of the charges of bias, the Speaker is well within his rights to issue gag orders against public screening of the CD. If the entire proceedings or a part of it is expunged, it cannot be disseminated in the media," he said.

He said the supreme authority lies with the speaker on what action to be taken in case his orders are defied. He refused to comment on Atwal's personal conduct.

"I have mentioned about his (Atwal's) impartial behaviour in my book. It's not fair to comment on his credentials now that he's not working with me anymore," he said.

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