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Fiscal cliff negotiations ongoing: Boehner aide - Reuters

Posted: 10 Dec 2012 09:01 AM PST

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, November 28, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas

WASHINGTON | Mon Dec 10, 2012 12:10pm EST

(Reuters) - Negotiations between the White House and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on averting the December 31 "fiscal cliff" are continuing but Republicans are awaiting a counter-offer from President Barack Obama, an aide to Boehner said on Monday.

"The Republican offer made last week remains the Republican offer," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said.

He said Boehner continues to "wait for the president to identify the spending cuts he's willing to make" in deficit-reduction negotiations.

Last week, Boehner and his House leadership team sent Obama a proposal they said would produce $2.2 trillion in new savings over 10 years. It included $800 billion in new revenues that would be achieved through comprehensive tax reform.

None of those new revenues would come from raising income tax rates on the 2 percent of families with the highest net incomes - a central Obama demand.

Democrats have rejected Boehner's proposal, insisting that tax rates on the rich must be nailed down before negotiating further on how to proceed with tax reform efforts next year, along with new spending cuts for "entitlement" programs, such as the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly.

The White House has proposed its own set of spending cuts that Republicans have rejected, arguing that they do not effectively deal with long-term rising costs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs.

On Sunday, Boehner met with Obama at the White House. Steel, on Monday, said "discussions with the White House are taking place." He did not say whether more face-to-face meetings are scheduled between the two key principles in the conflict.

A Democratic aide, who asked not to be identified, said there was no indication that Sunday's talks between Obama and Boehner advanced efforts to avoid $600 billion in across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts that are due to begin in January if Congress and the White House cannot find a more suitable replacement.

(Reporting By Richard Cowan; Editing by Bill Trott)

Jenni Rivera, 43, Mexican-American Singer and TV Star, Is Dead - New York Times

Posted: 10 Dec 2012 09:10 AM PST

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: December 10, 2012

Jenni Rivera, the Mexican-American singer and reality television star known as "the Diva of Banda," died early Sunday in a plane crash outside Monterrey, Mexico, after a performance there. She was 43.

Ms. Rivera was one of the biggest stars of the genre known as banda, a brassy, percussive form of Spanish-language pop music invented in northern Mexico and perfected in the American Southwest. She sold more than 15 million records, was nominated three times for a Latin Grammy Award, and developed a reputation for hard-hitting lyrics that addressed relationships between the sexes with a frankness similar to that of American country music: one of her albums, released in 2007, was entitled "My Crazy Life."

Banda is a style popular primarily among Mexican-Americans, Mexicans and Central Americans. But in recent years Ms. Rivera's popularity expanded to other Hispanic groups in the United States, thanks to three reality television programs broadcast on the Mun2 channel that starred Ms. Rivera or her five children.

In the best known of the shows, "I Love Jenni," Ms. Rivera cultivated a tough-talking persona, prone to making hilarious, outrageous statements and unafraid of offending family or friends. "Have a great day, don't get pregnant," she would warn a daughter. Promotional material for the show, which went on the air in 2011 and began production of its third season last month, described her as "the mama with lots of drama."

"It doesn't bother me at all that some people think I am too outspoken," Ms. Rivera said in 2011. "Actually, if they are thinking about me, it bothers them. But, oh well, they'll get over it."

Ms. Rivera's tough-mother approach stemmed from her own experience. By the time she was 16, she was married and had given birth to her first daughter, Janney, known as Chiquis and featured in two reality shows on Mun2, a cable channel owned by NBC Universal. She was married three times, most recently to the former major league pitcher Esteban Loaiza, but the couple divorced this fall.

When her plane crashed, Ms. Rivera was on her way to the Mexico City area, where she was scheduled to tape an episode of the Mexican version of the singing competition show "The Voice," on which she was a judge. She was also developing an English-language family comedy for ABC with the producers of the hit show "Designing Women."

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Isnin, 10 Disember 2012