Suspect in NYC subway death arrested before

Suspect in NYC subway death arrested before 

In this image provided by the New York City Police Department, a composite sketch showing the woman believed to have pushed a man to his death in front of a subway train on Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012 is shown. Police arrested Erika Menendez on Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012, after a passer-by on a street noticed she resembled the woman seen in a surveillance video. The attack was the second time this month that a man was pushed to his death in a city subway station.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The family of a woman accused of shoving a man to his death in front of a subway train called police several times in the past five years because she had not been taking prescribed medication and was difficult to deal with, authorities said Monday.

Erika Menendez, 31, was being held without bail on a murder charge in the death of Sunando Sen. She told police she pushed the 46-year-old India native because she thought he was Muslim, and she hates them, according to prosecutors.

They had never met before she suddenly shoved him off the subway platform because she "thought it would be cool," prosecutors said. The victim was Hindu, not Muslim.

It wasn't clear whether Menendez had a diagnosed mental condition. But her previous arrests and legal troubles paint a portrait of a troubled woman.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly would not say what medication she was taking or whether she had a psychiatric history. Authorities were called to her home five times since 2005 on reports of an emotionally disturbed person.

In one instance, police said, she threw a radio at the responding officers.

Menendez had been arrested several times, starting when she was young. In 2003, she was arrested on charges she punched a 28-year-old man in the face inside her Queens home, but the case was later dropped. She pleaded guilty later that year to assaulting a stranger on the street near her home. The victim, retired Fire 

Department official Daniel Conlisk, said the attack was violent and relentless.

He said he was sorting recyclables outside his home one night when Menendez approached him and punched him in the face, screaming that he was having sex with her mother.

"It was such a shot," Conlisk said. "And I was surprised she hit so hard, because she was just a girl."

He said he tried to fend her off as she clawed at his skin. He eventually broke free and went inside his home, where he called police. When they arrived, he said, she was still outside screaming about him having sex with her mother, and saying he had stolen jewelry from her in high school.

"That's when everyone realized there's really something wrong with her," he said. Conlisk, 65, said he took out two restraining orders against her but never saw her after he was attacked.

He said that he felt bad that he pressed charges, but that she seemed dangerous.

"I really believe if she had a knife, she would have killed me," he said.

In December 2003, Menendez was arrested for cocaine possession. She was given a conditional discharge after pleading guilty.

Last Thursday, witnesses said a woman pacing and mumbling to herself suddenly shoved Sen off the elevated platform of a No. 7 train that travels between Manhattan and Queens. She fled.

Menendez was spotted by a passer-by who called 911 and said she resembled the wanted suspect. When she was arrested, she told police she shoved Sen because she blamed Muslims and Hindus for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and had been "beating them up" ever since, according to authorities. She said she thought Sen was Muslim.

Sen, a Kolkata native, owned a print shop and had lived in Queens for decades.

She laughed and snickered so much during her court hearing last weekend that the judge admonished her. 

The attorney who represented her only for her arraignment said she acted the same way with him when he tried to speak with her. He had no further comment.

Calls to Menendez's home on Monday were unanswered. Angel Luis Santiago, who used to work at the Queens building where Menendez's mother and stepfather live, said he was shocked by her arrest on the murder charge.

"It surprised me what she did," he said. "She never acted that way."

Doctors: Blood clot located in Clinton's head

Doctors: Blood clot located in Clinton's head 

FILE - In this June 10, 2011 file photo, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton waves as the arrives at Lusaka International Airport in Lusaka, Zambia. Clinton has been admitted to a New York hospital after the discovery of a blood clot stemming from the concussion she sustained earlier this month. Spokesman Philippe Reines says her doctors discovered the clot during a follow-up exam Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton developed a blood clot in her head but did not suffer a stroke or neurological damage, her doctors said Monday. They say they are confident that she will make a full recovery.

In a statement that revealed the location of the clot, Clinton's doctors said it is in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She is being treated with blood thinners to help dissolve the clot, the doctors said, and she will be released once the medication dose has been established.

Clinton, 65, is making excellent progress and is in good spirits, Dr. Lisa Bardack of the Mount Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University said in a statement.

Clinton, who was spending a second day at a New York hospital, developed the clot after suffering a concussion earlier in December. She had fainted, fallen and struck her head at home while battling a stomach virus, her spokesman said. She has not been seen publicly since Dec. 7.

Phillipe Reines, her spokesman, said her doctors discovered the clot Sunday while performing a follow-up exam on the concussion. She was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Clinton's complication "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 Dr. Larry Goldstein, a neurologist who is director of Duke University's stroke center. He is not involved in Clinton's care.

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 said.

Blood thinners usually are enough to treat the clot and it should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, Goldstein said.

Clinton had planned to step down as secretary of state at the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term. Whether she will return to work before she resigns remained a question.

Democrats are privately if not publicly speculating: How might her illness affect a decision about running for president in 2016?

After decades in politics, Clinton says she plans to spend the next year resting. She has long insisted she had no intention of mounting a second campaign for the White House four years from now. But the door is not entirely closed, and she would almost certainly emerge as the Democrat to beat if she decided to give in to calls by Democratic fans and run again.

Her age - and thereby health - would likely be a factor under consideration, given that Clinton would be 69 when sworn in, if she were elected in 2016. That might become even more of an issue in the early jockeying for 2016 if what started as a bad stomach bug becomes a prolonged, public bout with more serious infirmity.

Not that Democrats are willing to talk openly about the political implications of a long illness, choosing to keep any discussions about her condition behind closed doors. Publicly, Democrats reject the notion that a blood clot could hinder her political prospects.

"Some of those concerns could be borderline sexist," said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist who worked for Clinton when she was a senator. "Dick Cheney had significant heart problems when he was vice president, and people joked about it. He took the time he needed to get better, and it wasn't a problem."

It isn't uncommon for presidential candidates' health - and age - to be an issue. Both in 2000 and 2008, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had to rebut concerns he was too old to be commander in chief or that his skin cancer could resurface.

Two decades after Clinton became the first lady, signs of her popularity - and her political strength - are ubiquitous.

Obama had barely declared victory in November when Democrats started zealously plugging Clinton as their strongest White House contender four years from now, should she choose to take that leap.

"Wouldn't that be exciting," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi declared in December. "I hope she goes - why wouldn't she?"

Even Republicans concede that were she to run, Clinton would be a force to be reckoned with.

"Trying to win that will be truly the Super Bowl," former House Speaker and 2012 GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said in December. "The Republican Party today is incapable of competing at that level."

Americans admire Clinton more than any other woman in the world, according to a Gallup poll released Monday - the 17th time in 20 years that Clinton has claimed that title. And a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 57 percent of Americans would support Clinton as a candidate for president in 2016, with just 37 percent opposed. Meanwhile, websites have already cropped up hawking "Clinton 2016" mugs and tote bags.

Clinton returned to the U.S. from a trip to Europe, then fell ill with a stomach virus in early December that left her severely dehydrated and forced her to cancel a trip to North Africa and the Middle East. Until then, she had cancelled only two scheduled overseas trips, one to Europe after breaking her elbow in June 2009 and one to Asia after the February 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Her condition worsened when she fainted, fell and suffered a concussion while at home alone in mid-December as she recovered from the virus. It was announced on Dec. 13.

This isn't the first time Clinton has suffered a blood clot. In 1998, midway through her husband's second term as president, Clinton was in New York fundraising for the midterm elections when a swollen right foot led her doctor to diagnose a clot in her knee requiring immediate treatment.

Beyond talk of future politics, Clinton's three-week absence from the State Department has raised eyebrows among some conservative commentators who questioned the seriousness of Clinton's ailment after she cancelled planned Dec. 20 testimony before Congress on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton had been due to discuss with lawmakers a scathing report on the attack she had commissioned that found serious failures of leadership and management in two State Department bureaus were to blame for insufficient security at the facility. Clinton took responsibility for the incident before the report was released, but she was not blamed. Four officials cited in the report have either resigned or been reassigned.

GOP governors walk balance beam on health law

GOP governors walk balance beam on health law 

FILE - In this May 16, 2012 file photo, Florida Gov. Rick Scott speaks in Fort Lauderdale. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, long opposed President Barack Obama's remake of the health insurance market. After President Obama won re-election, the Republican governor softened his tone. He said he wanted to "have a conversation" with the administration about implementing the 2010 law.

ATLANTA (AP) -- Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who made a fortune as a health care executive, long opposed President Barack Obama's remake of the health insurance market. After the Democratic president won re-election, the Republican governor softened his tone. He said he wanted to "have a conversation" with the administration about implementing the 2010 law. With a federal deadline approaching, he also said while

Florida won't set up the exchange for individuals to buy private insurance policies, the feds can do it.

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie held his cards before saying he won't set up his own exchange, but he's avoided absolute language and says he could change his mind. He's also leaving his options open to accept federal money to expand Medicaid insurance for people who aren't covered. The caveat, Christie says, is whether Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius can "answer my questions" about its operations and expense.

Both Republican governors face re-election in states that Obama won twice, Christie in 2013 and Scott in 2014. And both will encounter well-financed Democrats.

Their apparent struggles on the issue, along with other postures by their GOP colleagues elsewhere, suggest political uncertainty for Republicans as the Affordable Care Act starts to go into effect two years after clearing Congress without a single Republican vote. The risks also are acute for governors in Democratic-leaning or swing-voting states or who know their records will be parsed should they seek the presidency in 2016 or beyond.

"It's a tough call for many Republican governors who want to do the best thing for their state but don't want to be seen as advancing an overhaul that many Republicans continue to detest," said Whit Ayers, a consultant in Virginia whose clients include Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee, a Republican who didn't announce his rejection of a state exchange until days before Sebelius's Dec. 14 deadline.

Indeed, cracks keep growing in the near-unanimous Republican rejection of Obama's health care law that characterized the GOP's political messaging for the last two years. Five GOP-led states - Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah - are pressing ahead with state insurance exchanges. Ongoing monitoring by The Associated Press shows that another five Republican-led states are pursuing or seriously a partnership with Washington to help run the new markets.

Democrats, meanwhile, hope to use the law and Republican inflexibility to their advantage, betting that more Americans will embrace the law once it expands coverage. The calculus for voters, Democrats assume, will become more about the policy and less about a polarizing president.

"It shouldn't be complicated at all," said John Anzalone, an Obama pollster who assists Democrats in federal races across the country. Anzalone said Republicans could use their own states-rights argument to justify running exchanges. Instead, he said, "They are blinded by Obama-hatred rather than seeing what's good for their citizens."

Governors can set up their own exchanges, partner with Sebelius' agency or let the federal government do it. The exchanges are set to open Jan. 1, 2014, allowing individuals and businesses to shop online for individual policies from private insurers. Low- and middle-income individuals will get federal premium subsidies calculated on a sliding income scale. Eighteen states plus Washington, DC, most led by Democrats, have committed to opening their own exchanges.

The law also calls for raising the income threshold for Medicaid eligibility to cover people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line, or about $15,400 a year for an individual. That could add more than 10 million people, most of them childless adults, to the joint state-federal insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans. Together, the exchanges and the Medicaid expansion are expected to reduce the number of uninsured by about 30 million people within the next decade.

A Supreme Court ruling last summer made the Medicaid expansion voluntary, rather than mandatory for states. At least eight governors, all of them Republicans, have already said they have no plans to expand Medicaid.

The complexity is obvious.

National exit polls from last month's election showed that 49 percent of voters wanted some or all of Obama's signature legislative achievement rolled back. Among self-identified independents, that number was 58 percent. Among Republicans, it spiked to 81 percent. When asked about the role of government, half of respondents said the notion that government is doing too much fits their views more closely than the idea that government should do more.

Before the election, a national AP-GfK poll suggested that 63 percent of respondents preferred their states to run insurance exchanges, almost double the 32 percent who wanted the federal government to take that role. And the same electorate that tilts toward repealing some or all of the new law clearly re-elected its champion.

That's not the most important consideration for governors who face re-election in Republican states. Georgia's Nathan Deal and Alabama's Robert Bentley, who also face 2014 campaigns, initially set up advisory commissions to consider how to carry out the health care law, but they've since jumped ship. But, unlike others, Deal and Bentley aren't eyeing national office.

Three Republicans who are viewed as potential national candidates - Rick Perry of Texas, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana - were full-throated opponents. Jindal, the only one of the three who is term-limited, is the incoming chairman of the Republican Governors Association. In that role, he has co-signed more conciliatory letters to Sebelius asking questions to flesh out how the designs might work.

Republican governors also are feeling quiet pressure from hospitals and other providers.

Deal, the Georgia governor, offers the typical argument for saying no: "We can't afford it." But the law envisions the new Medicaid coverage more or less as a replacement of an existing financing situation that pays hospitals to treat the uninsured. The law contemplates cuts in that program, which already requires state seed money. The idea was that expanding Medicaid coverage would reduce "uncompensated care" costs.

"Some of those cuts were made with the expectation that Medicaid would be expanded and that hospitals would be paid for portions of business that we are not being paid for now," said Don Dalton of the North Carolina Hospital Association.

Dalton's Governor-elect, Republican Pat McCrory, said as a candidate that he opposed Medicaid expansion. Dalton said his industry is leaning on McCrory and legislative leaders, though he commended "their deliberate approach." Similar efforts are underway in South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri and elsewhere.

For Democrats, Anzalone said the framing will be simpler: "You don't want to take a 9-to-1 match? That's a pretty easy investment. These governors who aren't expanding Medicaid, they're basically giving taxpayer money to the states that do."

Senate leaders offer dour take on 'cliff' talks

Senate leaders offer dour take on 'cliff' talks 

Clouds roil over the White House in Washington on the morning of Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012, as Washington has less than 48 hours to avert the “fiscal cliff,” a series of tax increases and spending cuts set to take hold on Jan. 1. Republican and Democratic negotiators in the Senate were hoping to reach a deal to avoid going over the cliff on Sunday.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The top Senate negotiators on the effort to prevent the government from going over the "fiscal cliff" offered a pessimistic assessment Sunday barely 24 hours before a deadline to avert tax hikes on virtually every worker.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he's yet to receive a response to an offer he made on Saturday evening to Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the top Democratic negotiator. The Kentucky Republican said he's reached out to Vice President Joe Biden in hopes of breaking the impasse and a McConnell spokesman confirmed the two have spoken.

Despite indications of progress in the negotiations, Democrats said Republicans were proposing to slow future cost of living increases for Social Security recipients as part of a compromise to avoid the cliff. Democrats rejected the idea.

"I'm concerned with the lack of urgency here. There's far too much at stake," McConnell said. "There is no single issue that remains an impossible sticking point - the sticking point appears to be a willingness, an interest or courage to close the deal."

Reid said he has been trying to come up with a counteroffer but has been unable to do so. He said he's been in frequent contact with President Barack Obama, who in a televised interview blamed Republicans for putting the nation's shaky economy at risk.

"We have been talking to the Republicans ever since the election was over," Obama said in the interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" that aired Sunday. "They have had trouble saying yes to a number of repeated offers."

The pessimistic turn came as the House and Senate returned to the Capitol for a rare Sunday session. The fate of the negotiations remained in doubt, two days before the beginning of a new year that would trigger across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that leaders in both parties have said they want to avoid.

Reid said he is not "overly optimistic but I am cautiously optimistic" but reiterated that any agreement would not include the less generous inflation adjustment for Social Security.

"We're willing to make difficult concessions as part of a balanced, comprehensive agreement, but we'll not agree to cut Social Security benefits as part of a small or short-term agreement," Reid said.

McConnell and Reid were hoping for a deal that would prevent higher taxes for most Americans while letting rates rise at higher income levels, although the precise point at which that would occur was a major sticking point.

Also at issue were the estate tax, taxes on investment income and dividends, continued benefits for the long-term unemployed and a pending 27.5 percent cut in payment levels for doctors who treat Medicare patients.

As the Senate opened a rare Sunday session, Chaplain Barry Black offered a timely prayer for lawmakers.

"Lord, show them the right thing to do and give them the courage to do it," Black said. "Look with favor on our nation and save us from self-inflicted wounds."

Senate negotiators were haggling over what threshold of income to set as the demarcation between current tax rates and higher tax rates. They were negotiating over estate limits and tax levels, how to extend unemployment benefits, how to prevent cuts in Medicare payments to doctors and how to keep a minimum income tax payment designed for the rich from hitting about 28 million middle class taxpayers.

Hopes for blocking across-the-board spending cuts were fading and Obama's proposal to renew the two percentage point payroll tax cut wasn't even part of the discussion.

Obama pressed lawmakers to start where both sides say they agree - sparing middle-class families from looming tax hikes.

"If we can get that done, that takes a big bite out of the fiscal cliff. It avoids the worst outcomes. And we're then going to have some tough negotiations in terms of how we continue to reduce the deficit, grow the economy, create jobs," Obama said in the NBC interview.

Gone, however, is the talk of a grand deal that would tackle broad spending and revenue demands and set the nation on a course to lower deficits. Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner were once a couple hundred billion dollars apart of a deal that would have reduced the deficit by more than $2 trillion over ten years.

Republicans have complained that Obama has demanded too much in tax revenue and hasn't proposed sufficient cuts or savings in the nation's massive health care programs.

Obama upped the pressure on Republicans to negotiate a fiscal deal, arguing that GOP leaders have rejected his past attempts to strike a bigger and more comprehensive bargain.

"The offers that I've made to them have been so fair that a lot of Democrats get mad at me," Obama said.

Boehner disagreed, saying Sunday that the president had been unwilling to agree to anything "that would require him to stand up to his own party."

Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said Sunday: "While the president was taping those discordant remarks yesterday, Sen. McConnell was in the office working to bring Republicans and Democrats together on a solution."

The trimmed ambitions of today are a far cry from the upbeat bipartisan rhetoric of just six weeks ago, when the leadership of Congress went to the White House to set the stage for negotiations to come.

"I outlined a framework that deals with reforming our tax code and reforming our spending," Boehner said as the leaders gathered on the White House driveway on Nov. 16.

"We understand that it has to be about cuts, it has to be about revenue, it has to be about growth, it has to be about the future," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said at the time. "I feel confident that a solution may be in sight."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the 2.1 million Americans whose extended unemployment benefits ran out on Saturday are already feeling the pain of Congress' inaction.

"From this point on, it's lose-lose. My big worry is a contraction of the economy, the loss of jobs, which could be well over 2 million in addition to the people already on unemployment. I think contraction of the economy would be just terrible for this nation. I think we need a deal, we should do a deal," Feinstein said on "Fox News Sunday."

But the deal was not meant to settle other outstanding issues, including more than $1 trillion in cuts over 10 years, divided equally between the Pentagon and other government spending. The deal also would not address an extension of the nation's borrowing limit, which the government is on track to reach any day but which the Treasury can put off through accounting measures for about two months.

That means Obama and the Congress are already on a new collision path. Republicans say they intend to use the debt ceiling as leverage to extract more spending cuts from the president. Obama has been adamant that unlike 2011, when the country came close to defaulting on its debts, he will not yield to those Republican demands.

Lawmakers have until the new Congress convenes to pass any compromise, and even the calendar mattered. Democrats said they had been told House Republicans might reject a deal until after Jan. 1, to avoid a vote to raise taxes before they had technically gone up, and then vote to cut taxes after they had risen.

Indian gang-rape victim dies in Singapore hospital

Indian gang-rape victim dies in Singapore hospital 

FILE - In this Dec. 26, 2012 file photo, Indians participate in a candle light vigil to seek a quick recovery of the young victim of the recent brutal gang-rape in a bus in New Delhi, India. A statement by Singapore’s Mount Elizabeth hospital, where the 23-year-old victim was being treated, said she died Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012.

SINGAPORE (AP) -- A young Indian woman who was gang-raped and severely beaten on a bus died Saturday at a Singapore hospital, after her horrific ordeal galvanized Indians to demand greater protection for women from sexual violence that impacts thousands of them every day.

She "passed away peacefully" with her family and officials of the Indian Embassy by her side, Dr. Kevin Loh, the chief executive of Mount Elizabeth hospital, said in a statement.

After 10 days at a hospital in the Indian capital of New Delhi, where the attack occurred, the victim was brought Thursday to Mount Elizabeth hospital, which specializes in multi-organ transplant. Loh said the woman had remained in extremely critical condition since Thursday, and by late Friday her condition had taken a turn for the worse and her vital signs had deteriorated.

"Despite all efforts by a team of eight specialists in Mount Elizabeth Hospital to keep her stable, her condition continued to deteriorate over these two days," Loh said. "She had suffered from severe organ failure following serious injuries to her body and brain. She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome."

The woman and a male friend, who have not been identified, were traveling on a bus in New Delhi after watching a film on the evening of Dec. 16 when they were attacked by six men who raped her. The men also beat the couple and inserted an iron rod into the woman's body, resulting in severe organ damage. Both were then stripped and thrown off the bus, according to police.

Indian police have arrested six people in connection with the attack, which left the victim with severe internal injuries, a lung infection and brain damage. She also suffered from a heart attack while in the hospital in India.

Indian High Commissioner, or ambassador, T.C.A. Raghavan told reporters that the scale of the injuries she suffered was "very grave" and in the end "proved too much."

He said arrangements were being made to take her body back to India.

The frightening nature of the crime shocked Indians, who have come out in the thousands for almost daily demonstrations. Indian television channels said security had been tightened in New Delhi on Sunday in anticipation of more protests following the woman's death.

The protesters are demanding stronger protection for women and the death penalty for rape, which is now punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment. Women face daily harassment across India, ranging from catcalls on the streets, groping and touching in public transport to rape.

The tragedy has forced India to confront the reality that sexually assaulted women are often blamed for the crime, which forces them to keep quiet and not report it to authorities for fear of exposing their families to ridicule. Also, police often refuse to accept complaints from those who are courageous enough to report the rapes, and the rare prosecutions that reach courts drag on for years.

Indian attitudes toward rape are so entrenched that even politicians and opinion makers have often suggested that women should not go out at night or wear clothes that might be seen provocative.

On Friday, Abhijit Mukherjee, a national lawmaker and the son of India's president, apologized for calling the protesters "highly dented and painted" women who go from discos to demonstrations.

"I tender my unconditional apology to all the people whose sentiments got hurt," he told NDTV news.

Separately, authorities in Punjab state took action Thursday when an 18-year-old woman killed herself by drinking poison a month after she told police she was gang-raped.

State authorities suspended one police officer and fired two others on accusations they delayed investigating and taking action in the case. The three accused in the rape were only arrested Thursday night, a month after the crime was reported.

"This is a very sensitive crime, I have taken it very seriously," said Paramjit Singh Gill, a top police officer in the city of Patiala.

The Press Trust of India reported that the woman was raped Nov. 13 and reported the attack to police Nov. 27. But police harassed the girl, asked her embarrassing questions and took no action against the accused, PTI reported, citing police sources.

Authorities in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh also suspended a police officer on accusations he refused to register a rape complaint from a woman who said she had been attacked by a driver.

Last ditch effort to avoid fiscal cliff under way

Last ditch effort to avoid fiscal cliff under way 
 

President Barack Obama pauses while he speaks to reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington after meeting with Congressional leaders regarding the fiscal cliff, Friday, Dec. 28, 2012.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The end game at hand, the White House and Senate leaders took a final stab at compromise Friday night to prevent middle-class tax increases from taking effect at the turn of the new year and possibly prevent sweeping spending cuts as well.

"I'm optimistic we may still be able to reach an agreement that can pass both houses in time," President Barack Obama said at the White House after meeting for more than an hour with congressional leaders.

Surprisingly, after weeks of postelection gridlock, Senate leaders sounded even more bullish.

The Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said he was "hopeful and optimistic" of a deal, adding he hoped a compromise could be presented to rank-and-file lawmakers as early as Sunday, a little more than 24 hours before the year-end deadline.

Said Majority Leader Harry Reid: "I'm going to do everything I can" to prevent the tax increases and spending cuts that threaten to send the economy into recession. He cautioned, "Whatever we come up with is going to be imperfect."

Officials said there was a general understanding that any agreement would block scheduled income tax increases for middle class earners while letting rates rise at upper income levels.

Democrats said Obama was sticking to his campaign call for increases above $250,000 in annual income, even though in recent negotiations he said he could accept $400,000.

The two sides also confronted a divide over estate taxes.

Obama favors a higher tax than is currently in effect, but one senior Republican, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, said he's "totally dead set" against it. Speaking of fellow GOP lawmakers, he said they harbor more opposition to an increase in the estate tax than to letting taxes on income and investments rise at upper levels.

Also likely to be included in the negotiations are taxes on dividends and capital gains, both of which are scheduled to rise with the new year. Also the alternative minimum tax, which, if left unchanged, could hit millions of middle- and upper-income taxpayers for the first time.

In addition, Obama and Democrats want to prevent the expiration of unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, and there is widespread sentiment in both parties to shelter doctors from a cut in Medicare fees.

The White House has shown increased concern about a possible spike in milk prices if a farm bill is not passed in the next few days, although it is not clear whether that issue, too, might be included in the talks.

One Republican who was briefed on the White House meeting said Boehner made it clear he would leave in place spending cuts scheduled to take effect unless alternative savings were found to offset them. If he prevails, that would defer politically difficult decisions on government benefit programs like Medicare until 

2013.

Success was far from guaranteed in an atmosphere of political mistrust - even on a slimmed-down deal that postponed hard decisions about spending cuts into 2013 - in a Capitol where lawmakers grumbled about the likelihood of spending the new year holiday working.

In a brief appearance in the White House briefing room, Obama referred to "dysfunction in Washington," and said the American public is "not going to have any patience for a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy. Not right now."

If there is no compromise, he said he expects Reid to put legislation on the floor to prevent tax increases on the middle class and extend unemployment benefits - an implicit challenge to Republicans to dare to vote against what polls show is popular.

The guest list for the White House meeting included Reid, McConnell, Boehner and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The same group last met more than a month ago and emerged expressing optimism they could strike a deal that avoided the fiscal cliff. At that point, Boehner had already said he was willing to let tax revenues rise as part of an agreement, and the president and his Democratic allies said they were ready to accept spending cuts.

Since then, though, talks between Obama and Boehner faltered, the speaker struggled to control his rebellious rank and file, and Reid and McConnell sparred almost daily in speeches on the Senate floor. Through it all, Wall Street has paid close attention, and in the moments before the meeting, stocks were trading lower for the fifth day in a row.

The core issue is the same as it has been for more than a year, Obama's demand for tax rates to rise on upper incomes while remaining at current levels for most Americans. He made the proposal central to his successful campaign for re-election, when he said incomes above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples should rise to 39.6 percent from the current 35 percent.

Boehner refused for weeks to accept any rate increases, and simultaneously accused Obama of skimping on the spending cuts he would support as part of a balanced deal to reduce deficits, remove the threat of spending cuts and prevent the across-the-board tax cuts.

Last week, the Ohio Republican pivoted and presented a Plan B measure that would have let rates rise on million-dollar earners. That was well above Obama's latest offer, which called for a $400,000 threshold, but more than the speaker's rank and file were willing to accept.

Facing defeat, Boehner scrapped plans for a vote, leaving the economy on track for the cliff that political leaders in both parties had said they could avoid. In the aftermath, Democrats said they doubted any compromise was possible until Boehner has been elected to a second term as speaker when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3.

Further compounding the year-end maneuvering, there are warnings that the price of milk could virtually double beginning next year.

Congressional officials said that under current law, the federal government is obligated to maintain prices so that fluid milk sells for about $20 per hundredweight. If the law lapses, the Department of Agriculture would be required to maintain a price closer to $36 of $38 per hundredweight, they said. It is unclear when price increases might be felt by consumers.

College student's turtle project takes dark twist

College student's turtle project takes dark twist 

In this Dec. 12, 2012 photo, Clemson University student Nathan Weaver holds a fake turtle he is using in his research to try and save the animals in Clemson, S.C. Weaver is placing the fake turtle in roads near campus and seeing how many drivers intentionally run over it.

CLEMSON, S.C. (AP) -- Clemson University student Nathan Weaver set out to determine how to help turtles cross the road. He ended up getting a glimpse into the dark souls of some humans.

Weaver put a realistic rubber turtle in the middle of a lane on a busy road near campus. Then he got out of the way and watched over the next hour as seven drivers swerved and deliberately ran over the animal. 

Several more apparently tried to hit it but missed.

"I've heard of people and from friends who knew people that ran over turtles. But to see it out here like this was a bit shocking," said Weaver, a 22-year-old senior in Clemson's School of Agricultural, Forest and Environmental Sciences.

To seasoned researchers, the practice wasn't surprising.

The number of box turtles is in slow decline, and one big reason is that many wind up as roadkill while crossing the asphalt, a slow-and-steady trip that can take several minutes.

Sometimes humans feel a need to prove they are the dominant species on this planet by taking a two-ton metal vehicle and squishing a defenseless creature under the tires, said Hal Herzog, a Western Carolina University psychology professor.

"They aren't thinking, really. It is not something people think about. It just seems fun at the time," Herzog said. 

"It is the dark side of human nature."

Herzog asked a class of about 110 students getting ready to take a final whether they had intentionally run over a turtle, or been in a car with someone who did. Thirty-four students raised their hands, about two-thirds of them male, said Herzog, author of a book about humans' relationships with animals, called "Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat."

Weaver, who became interested in animals and conservation through the Boy Scouts and TV's "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, wants to figure out the best way to get turtles safely across the road and keep the population from dwindling further.

Among the possible solutions: turtle underpasses or an education campaign aimed at teenagers on why drivers shouldn't mow turtles down.

The first time Weaver went out to collect data on turtles, he chose a spot down the road from a big apartment complex that caters to students. He counted 267 vehicles that passed by, seven of them intentionally hitting his rubber reptile.

He went back out about a week later, choosing a road in a more residential area. He followed the same procedure, putting the fake turtle in the middle of the lane, facing the far side of the road, as if it was early in its journey across. The second of the 50 cars to pass by that day swerved over the center line, its right tires pulverizing the plastic shell.

"Wow! That didn't take long," Weaver said.

Other cars during the hour missed the turtle. But right after his observation period was up, before Weaver could retrieve the model, another car moved to the right to hit the animal as he stood less than 20 feet away.

"One hit in 50 cars is pretty significant when you consider it might take a turtle 10 minutes to cross the road," Weaver said.

Running over turtles even has a place in Southern lore.

In South Carolina author Pat Conroy's semi-autobiographical novel "The Great Santini," a fighter-pilot father squishes turtles during a late-night drive when he thinks his wife and kids are asleep. His wife confronts him, saying: "It takes a mighty brave man to run over turtles."

The father denies it at first, then claims he hits them because they are a road hazard. "It's my only sport when I'm traveling," he says. "My only hobby."

That hobby has been costly to turtles.

It takes a turtle seven or eight years to become mature enough to reproduce, and in that time, it might make several trips across the road to get from one pond to another, looking for food or a place to lay eggs. A female turtle that lives 50 years might lay over 100 eggs, but just two or three are likely to survive to reproduce, said Weaver's professor, Rob Baldwin.

Snakes also get run over deliberately. Baldwin wishes that weren't the case, but he understands, considering the widespread fear and loathing of snakes. But why anyone would want to run over turtles is a mystery to the professor.

"They seem so helpless and cute," he said. "I want to stop and help them. My kids want to stop and help them. My wife will stop and help turtles no matter how much traffic there is on the road. I can't understand the idea why you would swerve to hit something so helpless as a turtle."

Obama back from Hawaii, Congress bickers on cliff

Obama back from Hawaii, Congress bickers on cliff 

President Barack Obama waves to reporters as he steps off the Marine One helicopter and walks on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012, as he returns early from his Hawaii vacation for meetings on the fiscal cliff.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama returned to the White House on Thursday from a vacation shortened by government gridlock while congressional Democrats and Republicans snarled across a partisan divide without evidence of compromise on a year-end "fiscal cliff" that threatened across-the-board tax increases and cuts to government programs.

Adding to the woes confronting the middle class was a pending spike of $2-per-gallon or more in milk prices if lawmakers failed to pass farm legislation by year's end.

White House aides disputed reports that Obama was sending lawmakers a scaled-down plan to avoid the "fiscal cliff," and gave no indication whether he would invite congressional leaders to a White House meeting either later Thursday or possibly on Friday.

A little more than four days from the deadline, there was no legislation pending in either the House or the Senate to stave off tax increases and spending cuts that economists say could send the economy into a 

recession. Far from conciliatory, the rhetoric was confrontational and at times unusually personal.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused House Speaker John Boehner of running a 

dictatorship, citing his refusal to call a vote on legislation to keep taxes steady for most while letting them rise at upper incomes. The bill "would pass overwhelmingly," Reid predicted, and said the Ohio Republican won't change his mind because he fears it might cost him re-election as speaker when the new Congress convenes next week.

Boehner seems "to care more about keeping his speakership than keeping the nation on a firm financial footing," he said in remarks on the Senate floor.

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Boehner, responded in a similar vein. "Harry Reid should talk less and legislate more if he wants to avert the fiscal cliff. The House has already passed legislation to do so," he said, referring to a measure that extends existing cuts at all income levels.

Addressing the GOP rank and file by conference call, Boehner said the next move is up to the Senate, which has yet to act on House-passed bills to retain expiring tax cuts at all income levels as well as replace across-the-board spending cuts with targeted savings aimed largely at social programs.

"The House will take this action on whatever the Senate can pass - but the Senate must act," he said, according to a participant in the call.

At the same time, Boehner told Republican lawmakers the House would convene on Sunday evening.

The risk of higher milk prices stems from the possibility that existing farm programs will expire at year's end, and neither chamber of Congress has scheduled a vote on even a temporary extension to prevent a spike. 

There have been unverified estimates that the cost to consumers of a gallon of milk could double without action by Congress.

The president flew home from Hawaii overnight after speaking with top congressional leaders.

Before leaving the White House last Friday, the president had called on lawmakers to pass scaled-down legislation that prevents tax increases for the middle class, raises rates at upper incomes and renews expiring unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless. He said he still supports a more sweeping measure to include spending cuts to reduce deficits, but said they could wait until the new year.

That capped an unpredictable week in which Boehner pivoted away from comprehensive deficit reduction talks with Obama to an aborted attempt to push legislation through the House that retained existing tax levels except above $1 million. Anti-tax Republicans rebelled at raising rates on million-dollar earners, and Boehner backpedaled and canceled the planned vote.

Without congressional action, current tax rates will expire on Dec. 31, resulting in a $536 billion tax increase over a decade that would touch nearly all Americans. In addition, the military and other federal departments would have to begin absorbing about $110 billion in spending cuts.

Failure to avoid the "fiscal cliff" doesn't necessarily mean tax increases and spending cuts would become permanent, since the new Congress could pass legislation cancelling them retroactively after it begins its work next year.

But gridlock through the end of the year would mark a sour beginning to a two-year extension of divided government that resulted from last month's elections in which Obama won a new term and Republicans retained their majority in the House.

The tax issue in particular has been Obama's first test of muscle after his re-election in November. He ran for a new term calling for higher taxes on the wealthy, and postelection public polls show continued support for his position.

Boehner's decision to support higher rates on million-dollar earners marked a significant break with long-standing GOP orthodoxy, but the resistance among his rank and file so far has trumped him as well as any mandate the president claims.

Cliff looms: Kicking the Can, Washington-style

Cliff looms: Kicking the Can, Washington-style 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When it comes to the nation's budget challenges, congressional leaders are fond of saying dismissively they don't want to kick the can down the road.

But now, a deadline hard ahead, even derided half-measures are uncertain as President Barack Obama and lawmakers struggle to avert across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that comprise an economy-threatening fiscal cliff.

Congressional officials said Wednesday they knew of no significant strides toward a compromise over a long Christmas weekend, and no negotiations have been set.

After conferring on a conference call, the House Republican leadership said they remain ready for talks, but gave no hint they intend to call lawmakers back into session unless the Senate first passes legislation.

"The lines of communication remain open, and we will continue to work with our colleagues to avert the largest tax hike in American history, and to address the underlying problem, which is spending," the leadership said in a statement.

The Senate is due in session Thursday, although the immediate agenda includes legislation setting the rules for government surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists abroad, including Americans, as well as a measure providing $60 billion for victims of Superstorm Sandy.

Obama decided to cut short his Hawaii vacation for an overnight flight expected to get him back to the White House on Thursday.

Apart from the cliff, other financial challenges loom for divided government, where political brinkmanship has become the norm. The Treasury disclosed during the day it would take accounting measures to avoid reaching the government's borrowing limit of $16.4 trillion by year's end. The changes will provide about two months of additional leeway.

Separately, spending authority for much of the government will expire on March 27, 2013.

After weeks of negotiations, the president urged lawmakers late last week to scale back their ambitions for avoiding the fiscal cliff and send him legislation preventing tax cuts on all but the highest-earning Americans and extending unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless. Longer, term, he said he still supports deficit cuts that were key to the earlier talks.

"Everybody's got to give a little bit in a sensible way," he said at the White House.

The House has no plans to convene, following last week's rebellion in which conservatives torpedoed Speaker John Boehner's legislation to prevent scheduled tax increases on most, while letting them take effect on million-dollar wage earners.

"How we get there, God only knows," the Ohio Republican said of efforts to protect the economy - and taxpayers - from the tax increases and spending cuts.

"Now is the time to show leadership, not kick the can down the road," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said a little over a week ago after Boehner announced he would shift his own focus from bipartisan talks to the approach that eventually was torpedoed by his own rank and file.

It's a phrase that political leaders use when they want to suggest others want to avoid tackling major problems, and one that Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and even Obama as well as Reid have used.

"We have a spending problem. We have to address it, And we're not going to address it by kicking the can down the road," the speaker said at a news conference late last week when he was asked about setting a vote on a plan that Democrats find acceptable.

Cantor recently used the same approach in challenging Obama to agree to savings from Medicare and other benefit programs. "This has to be a part of this agreement or else we just continue to dig the hole deeper, asking folks to allow us to kick the can down the road further and that we don't want to do," he said on Nov. 28.

In fact, it's a phrase that has been in use for over a year as Obama and Republicans jockey for position on pocketbook issues.

In July 2011, when he was struggling with Republicans over the threat of a first-ever government default, Obama said he had "heard reports that there may be some in Congress who want to do just enough to make sure that America avoids defaulting on our debt in the short term. But then wants to kick the can down the road when it comes to solving the larger problem, our deficit."

A few months later, an extension of a payroll tax cut was the issue, and Boehner was insisting on a year-long renewal rather than the temporary plan that passed the Senate with votes from lawmakers in both parties.

"How can you do tax policy for two months?" he asked on Dec. 18, 2011. "I believe that two months is just kicking the can down the road.

"The American people are tired of that."

At issue now is series of tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to kick in with the new year that economists caution could send the economy into a recession.

South Africa: Mandela released from the hospital

South Africa: Mandela released from the hospital 

FILE - In this June 17, 2010 file photo, former South African President, Nelson Mandela leaves the chapel after attending the funeral of his great-granddaughter Zenani Mandela in Johannesburg, South Africa. Mandela was released Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012 from the hospital after being treated for a lung infection and having gallstones removed, a government spokesman said.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- Former South African President Nelson Mandela was released Wednesday from the hospital after being treated for a lung infection and having gallstones removed, a government spokesman said.

The 94-year-old anti-apartheid icon will continue to receive medical care at home.

Mandela had been in the hospital since Dec. 8. In recent days, officials have said he was improving and in good spirits, but doctors have taken extraordinary care with his health because of his age.

Mandela was released Wednesday evening and will receive "home-based high care" at his residence in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Houghton until he fully recovers, said presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj.

"We thank the public and the media for the good wishes and for according Madiba and the family the necessary privacy," said Maharaj in a statement, using Mandela's clan name, a term of affection. The statement requested that Mandela's privacy continue to be respected "in order to allow for the best possible conditions for full recovery."

David Phetoe, a resident of the Johannesburg township of Soweto, reacted with joy when he heard that Mandela was no longer in a hospital.

"It's not always the case, when people offer great expectations, that those expectations are fulfilled," he said. "In this case, we say in the same tone, in the Christmas mood and in the Christmas season, let him stick around for a while!"

Mandela is revered around the world as a symbol of sacrifice and reconciliation, his legacy forged in the fight against apartheid, the system of white minority rule that imprisoned him for 27 years.

The Nobel laureate served one five-year term as president after South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994. Although the country today struggles with poverty and inequality, Mandela is widely credited with helping to avert race-driven chaos as South Africa emerged from apartheid.

South African President Jacob Zuma was among those who joined Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, and other family members in wishing a Merry Christmas to Mandela at his hospital bedside in Pretoria, the South African capital.

"I think he is an icon of hope and we are very excited" that Mandela is out of the hospital, said Sipho Sibiko, a Soweto resident. "I personally know that he is one of the people that inspired me. He inspires a lot of people and we are excited that he has been released. We wish him many more joyous years and good health."

Police: NY gunman set 'trap' for firefighters

Police: NY gunman set 'trap' for firefighters 

This image taken from video provided by WHAM13-TV, shows a wide view of homes on fire in an area where a gunman ambushed four volunteer firefighters responding to an intense pre-dawn house fire early Monday, Dec. 24, 2012, in Webster, N.Y., killing two before ending up dead himself, authorities said. Police used an armored vehicle to evacuate more than 30 nearby residents.

WEBSTER, N.Y. (AP) -- An ex-con gunned down two firefighters after luring them to his neighborhood by setting a car and a house ablaze early Monday, then took shots at police and committed suicide while several homes burned.

Authorities used an armored vehicle to help residents flee dozens of homes on the shore of Lake Ontario a day before Christmas. Police restricted access to the neighborhood, and officials said it was unclear whether there were other bodies in the seven houses left to burn.

The gunman's sister, who lived with him, was unaccounted for. The gunman's motive was unknown.

William Spengler fired at the four firefighters when they arrived shortly after 5:30 a.m. at the blaze in Webster, a suburb of Rochester, town police Chief Gerald Pickering said. The first police officer who arrived chased the gunman and exchanged shots.

Spengler lay in wait outdoors for the firefighters' arrival, then opened fire probably with a rifle and from atop an earthen berm, Pickering said.

"It does appear it was a trap," he said.

Spengler had served more than 17 years in prison for beating his 92-year-old paternal grandmother to death with a hammer in 1980 at the house next to where Monday's attack happened, Pickering said. Spengler, 62, was paroled in 1998 and had led a quiet life since, authorities said. Convicted felons are not allowed to possess weapons.

Two firefighters, one of whom also was a town police lieutenant, died at the scene, and two others were hospitalized. An off-duty officer who was passing by also was injured.

Another police officer, the one who exchanged gunfire with Spengler, "in all likelihood saved many lives," Pickering said.

Emergency radio communications capture someone saying he "could see the muzzle flash coming at me" as Spengler carried out his ambush. The audio posted on the website RadioReference.com has someone reporting "firefighters are down" and saying "got to be rifle or shotgun - high powered ... semi or fully auto."

Spengler lived in the house with his sister, Cheryl Spengler, and his mother, Arline Spengler, who died in October. He had originally been charged with murder in connection with grandmother Rose Spengler's death but pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter.

A friend said William Spengler didn't seem violent but hated his sister. Roger Vercruysse lived next door to Spengler and recalled a man who doted on his mother, whose obituary suggested contributions to the West Webster Fire Department.

"He loved his mama to death," said Vercruysse, who last saw his friend about six months ago. "I think after his mama passed, he went crazy."

Vercruysse also said Spengler "couldn't stand his sister" and "stayed on one side of the house and she stayed on the other."

The West Webster Fire District learned of the fire early Monday after a report of a car and house on fire on Lake Road, on a narrow peninsula where Irondequoit Bay meets Lake Ontario, Monroe County Sheriff Patrick O'Flynn said.

The fire appeared from a distance as a pulsating ball of flame glowing against the early morning sky, flames licking into treetops and reflecting on the water, with huge bursts of smoke billowing away in a brisk wind.

Two of the firefighters arrived on a fire engine and two in their own vehicles, Pickering said. After Spengler fired, one of the wounded men fled, but the other three couldn't because of flying gunfire.

A police armored vehicle was used to recover two men, and eventually it removed 33 people from nearby homes, the police chief said. The gunfire initially kept firefighters from battling the blazes.

The dead men were identified as police Lt. Michael Chiapperini, 43, the Webster Police Department's public information officer; and 19-year-old Tomasz Kaczowka, also a 911 dispatcher.

Pickering described Chiapperini as a "lifetime firefighter" with nearly 20 years in the department, and he called Kaczowka a "tremendous young man."

Kaczowka's brother, reached at the family home Monday night, said he didn't want to talk.

The two wounded firefighters, Joseph Hofstetter and Theodore Scardino, were in guarded condition in the intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital, authorities said. Both were awake and alert and are expected to recover.

Hofstetter, also a full-timer with the Rochester Fire Department, was hit once in the pelvis, and the bullet lodged in his spine, authorities said. Scardino was hit in the chest and knee.

At West Webster Fire Station 1, there were at least 20 bouquets on a bench in front and a bouquet of roses with three gold-and-white ribbons saying, "May they rest in peace," "In the line of duty" and "In memory of our fallen brothers."

A handwritten sign says, "Thanks for protecting us, RIP." Two candles were lit to honor the dead.

Grieving firefighters declined to talk to reporters. At an impromptu memorial vigil Monday evening, about 100 people stood in the cold night air, some holding candles. A fire department spokesman made a brief appearance, thanked them all and told them to go home and appreciate their families.

Cathy Bartlett was there with her teenage son, who was good friends with Kaczowka. Bartlett's husband, Mark Bartlett, has been a firefighter there for 25 years but missed the call this morning.

"Thank God my husband slept through the first alarm and didn't get up until the second one went off," she said.

The shooting and fires were in a neighborhood of seasonal and year-round homes set close together across the road from the lakeshore. The area is popular with recreational boaters but is normally quiet this time of year.

"We have very few calls for service in that location," Pickering said. "Webster is a tremendous community. 

We are a safe community, and to have a tragedy befall us like this is just horrendous."

O'Flynn lamented the violence, which comes on the heels of other shootings including the massacre of 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

"It's sad to see that this is becoming more commonplace in communities across the nation," O'Flynn said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the State Police and Office of Emergency Management were working with local authorities.

"Volunteer firefighters and police officers were injured and two were taken from us as they once again answered the call of duty," Cuomo said in a statement. "We as the community of New York mourn their loss as now two more families must spend the holidays without their loved ones."

Webster, a middle-class suburb, now is the scene of violence linked to house fires for two Decembers in a row.

Last Dec. 7, authorities say, a 15-year-old boy doused his home with gasoline and set it ablaze, killing his father and two brothers, 16 and 12. His mother and 13-year-old sister escaped with injuries. He is being prosecuted as an adult.

Jack Klugman dies in Los Angeles

Jack Klugman dies in Los Angeles 

FILE - In this June 15, 2008 file photo, Jack Klugman speaks at the 62nd Annual Tony Awards in New York. Klugman, who made an art of gruffness in TV's "The Odd Couple" and "Quincy, M.E.," has died at the age of 90.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Jack Klugman, the prolific, craggy-faced character actor and regular guy who was loved by millions as the messy one in TV's "The Odd Couple" and the crime-fighting coroner in "Quincy, M.E.," died Monday, a son said. He was 90.

Klugman, who lost his voice to throat cancer in the 1980s and trained himself to speak again, died with his wife at his side.

"He had a great life and he enjoyed every moment of it and he would encourage others to do the same," son Adam Klugman said.

Adam Klugman said he was spending Christmas with his brother, David, and their families. Their father had been convalescing for some time but had apparently died suddenly and they were not sure of the exact cause.

"His sons loved him very much," David Klugman said. "We'll carry on in his spirit."

Never anyone's idea of a matinee idol, Klugman remained a popular star for decades simply by playing the type of man you could imagine running into at a bar or riding on a subway with - gruff, but down to earth, his tie stained and a little loose, a racing form under his arm, a cigar in hand during the days when smoking was permitted.

He brought a city actor ideal for "The Odd Couple," which ran from 1970 to 1975 and was based on Neil Simon's play about mismatched roommates, divorced New Yorkers who end up living together. The show teamed Klugman - the sloppy sports writer Oscar Madison - and Tony Randall - the fussy photographer Felix Unger - in the roles played by Walter Matthau and Art Carney on Broadway and Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 1968 film. Klugman had already had a taste of the show when he replaced Matthau on Broadway and he learned to roll with the quick-thinking Randall, with whom he had worked in 1955 on the CBS series "Appointment with Adventure."

"There's nobody better to improvise with than Tony," Klugman said. "A script might say, `Oscar teaches Felix football.' There would be four blank pages. He would provoke me into reacting to what he did. Mine was the easy part."

They were battlers on screen, and the best of friends in real life. When Randall died in 2004 at age 84, Klugman told CNN: "A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize."

In "Quincy, M.E.," which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.

"We had some wonderful writers," he said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. "Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about injustices. He was my ideal as a youngster, my author, my hero.

"Everybody said, `Quincy'll never be a hit.' I said, `You guys are wrong. He's two heroes in one, a cop and a doctor.' A coroner has power. He can tell the police commissioner to investigate a murder. I saw the opportunity to do what I'd gotten into the theater to do - give a message.

"They were going to do cops and robbers with `Quincy.' I said, `You promised me I could do causes.' They said, `Nobody wants to see that.' I said, `Look at the success of "60 Minutes." They want to see it if you present it as entertainment.'"

For his 1987 role as 81-year-old Nat in the Broadway production of "I'm Not Rappaport," Klugman wore leg weights to learn to shuffle like an elderly man. He said he would wear them for an hour before each performance, "to remember to keep that shuffle."

"The guy is so vital emotionally, but physically he can't be," Klugman said.

"We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80."

The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in Philadelphia and began his acting career in college drama (Carnegie Institute of Technology). After serving in the Army during World War II, he went on to summer stock and off-Broadway, rooming with fellow actor Charles Bronson as both looked for paying jobs.

He made his Broadway debut in 1952 in a revival of "Golden Boy." His film credits included Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men" and Blake Edwards' "Days of Wine and Roses" and an early television highlight was appearing with Humphrey Bogart and Henry Fonda in a production of "The Petrified Forest."

His performance in the classic 1959 musical "Gypsy" brought him a Tony nomination for best featured (supporting) actor in a musical.

He also appeared in several episodes of "The Twilight Zone," including a memorable 1963 one in which he played a negligent father whose son is seriously wounded in Vietnam. His other TV shows included "The Defenders" and the soap opera "The Greatest Gift."

In a 1987 interview in the New York Daily News, he said, "once I did three hourlong shows in 2 1/2 weeks. Think we'd do that now? Huh! But then it was great. I did summer stock, played the classics. Me!"

Throat cancer took away his raspy voice for several years in the 1980s. When he was back on the stage for a 1993 revival of "Three Men on a Horse," The Associated Press review said, "His voice may be a little scratchy but his timing is as impeccable as ever."

"The only really stupid thing I ever did in my life was to start smoking," he said in 1996. Seeing people smoking in television and films, he added, "disgusts me, it makes me so angry - kids are watching."

In his later years, he guest-starred on TV series including "Third Watch" and "Crossing Jordan" and appeared in a 2010 theatrical film, "Camera Obscura."

Klugman's hobby was horse racing and he eventually took up raising them, too.

A horse Klugman co-owned, Jacklin Klugman, finished third in 1980's Kentucy Derby and fourth in that year's Preakness Stakes.

"I always loved to gamble," he said. "I never got close to a horse. Fate dealt me a terrible blow when it gave me a good horse the first time out. I thought how easy this is.

"Now I love being around them."

Klugman's wife, actress-comedian Brett Somers, played his ex-wife, Blanche, in the "Odd Couple" series. 

The couple, who married in 1953 and had two sons, Adam and David, had been estranged for years at the time of her death in 2007.

In February 2008, at age 85, Klugman married longtime girlfriend Peggy Crosby. His attorney Larry Larson wrote in an email that Klugman is also survived by two grandchildren and that memorial services have not been set.

In 1997, Klugman was sued by an ex-girlfriend, Barbara Neugass, who claimed he had promised to support her for the rest of her life. But a jury rejected her claim.

Urban advocates say new gun control talk overdue

Urban advocates say new gun control talk overdue 

FILE - In this Jan. 23, 2009 file photo, pallbearers carry the casket of 4-year-old Roberto Lopez Jr., outside Our Lady of Angels Church in Los Angeles. The boy was shot in the chest a week earlier as he walked with his 5-year-old sister in a gang-plagued Echo Park neighborhood. In the wake of the Dec. 14, 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the small town of Newtown, Conn., there is now much political discussion about gun control. For urban advocates, this new emphasis on gun control is long overdue.

For years, voices have cried in the urban wilderness: We need to talk about gun control.

Yet the guns blazed on.

It took a small-town slaughter for gun control to become a political priority. Now, decades' worth of big-city arguments against easy access to guns are finally being heard, because an unstable young man invaded an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., with a military-style assault rifle and 30-bullet magazines. Twenty young children and six adults were slain.

President Barack Obama called the tragedy a "wake-up call." Vice President Joe Biden met Thursday with Obama's cabinet and law-enforcement officers from around the country to launch a task force on reducing gun violence. Lawmakers who have long resisted gun control are saying something must be done.

Such action is energizing those who have sought to reduce urban gun violence. Donations are up in some places; other leaders have been working overtime due to this unprecedented moment.

The moment also is causing some to reflect on the sudden change of heart. Why now? Why weren't we moved to act by the killing of so many other children, albeit one by one, in urban areas?

Certainly, Newtown is a special case, 6- and 7-year-olds riddled with bullets inside the sanctuary of a classroom. Even in a nation rife with violence, where there have been three other mass slayings since July and millions enjoy virtual killing via video games, the nature of this tragedy is shocking.

But still: "There's a lot of talk now about we have to protect our children. We have to protect all of our children, not just the ones living in the suburbs," said Tammerlin Drummond, a columnist for the Oakland Tribune.

In her column Monday, Drummond wrote about 7-year-old Heaven Sutton of Chicago, who was standing next to her mother selling candy when she was killed in the crossfire of a gang shootout. Also in Chicago, which has been plagued by a recent spike in gun violence: 6-year-old Aaliyah Shell was caught in a drive-by while standing on her front porch; and 13-year-old Tyquan Tyler was killed when a someone in a car shot into a group of youths outside a party.

Wrote Drummond: "It has taken the murders of 20 babies and six adults in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Connecticut to achieve what thousands of gun fatalities in urban communities all over this country could not."

So again: What took so long? The answers are complicated by many factors: resignation to urban violence, even among some of those who live there; the assumption that cities are dangerous and small towns safe; the idea that some urban victims place themselves in harm's way.

In March, the Children's Defense Fund issued a report titled "Protect Children, Not Guns 2012." It analyzed the latest federal data and counted 299 children under age 10 killed by guns in 2008 and 2009. That figure included 173 preschool-age children.

Black children and teens accounted for 45 percent of all child and teen gun deaths, even though they were only 15 percent of the child/teen population.

"Every child's life is sacred and it is long past time that we protect it," said CDF president Marian Wright Edelman in the report.

It got almost no press coverage - until nine months later, when Newtown happened.

Tim Stevens, founder and chairman of the Black Political Empowerment Project in Pittsburgh, has been focusing on urban gun violence since 2007, when he said Pennsylvania was declared the worst state for black-on-black violence.

In the days since the Newtown killings, Stevens has felt sadness, emotional turmoil - and a bit of vindication at the new movement on gun control.

Stevens said America still would have been spurred to action if the Newtown victims had been black. He recalled the way that the Birmingham, Ala., church bombing during the civil rights movement, which killed four black girls, galvanized the nation in 1963.

"But in all honestly, because (Newtown) was a suburban, very small quiet town where normally people feel nothing happens, that does make some degree of difference," Stevens said. "It made a statement to the nation that if such profound tragedy can happen there, it obviously can happen anywhere."

Drummond, the columnist, said in an interview that even many people who live in violent urban areas, which are predominantly black and Hispanic, have almost come to accept gun deaths.

At community meetings in her own East Oakland neighborhood, where a half-dozen people have been fatally shot in the past six months, Drummond has heard residents pose more questions about weed removal or gutter cleaning than stopping the violence.

"If a white cop kills a black man, there's this huge outcry. But when you have the vast majority of young black men being killed by other young black men, you don't get that kind of response," said Drummond, who is black.

"In order to look at that you have to look at yourself," she said. "You have to say there are issues in this community."

Big cities have long dealt with the perception that gun violence is an urban problem. John Feinblatt, who works for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and is chief policy advisor for the Mayors Against Illegal Guns organization, said that Newtown has spurred action because of the age and number of victims, and that they were killed in school.

"There is no doubt that something has changed," Feinblatt said. "America's heart has been broken."

At the Violence Policy Center, a national organization that combats gun violence, an unprecedented surge of donations has arrived since the Newtown killings, as well as many emails from people asking how they could help, said executive director Josh Sugarmann.

Why hasn't this happened before, during decades of urban violence?

"There's an element of race to it," said Sugarmann, who has been working against gun violence since 1983. 

"There's a belief among all too many people about young black males, if you're shot you're in a gang or someplace you shouldn't be, or a bad kid doing things you shouldn't be doing. But in Chicago, there are reports of kids walking to school getting gunned down."

"The fact that these killings can't shape people's view that something needs to be done," he said, "is incredibly disturbing."