WASHINGTON, June 8 (Reuters) - A U.S. intelligence agency formally requested a criminal probe on Saturday into the leak of highly classified information about secret surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency, a spokesman for the intelligence czar's office said.

A "crimes report has been filed," said Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The report, which goes to the U.S. Justice Department, was filed by the super-secret NSA, he said.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Writing by Warren Strobel; Editing by Peter Cooney)

David Rhode, Reuters

LAS VEGAS, June 3 (Reuters) - The Nevada state legislature on Monday approved a bill establishing a system of state-regulated medical marijuana dispensaries.

The measure, SB374, will now go to the desk of Governor Brian Sandoval for final approval.

Sandoval has not yet said if he would sign it into law, although he has indicated that he would be open to allowing medical marijuana dispensaries to operate in the state.

The use of medical marijuana is permitted under Nevada law, though without dispensaries patients prescribed it must grow the drug themselves or obtain it from a physician-approved caregiver.

The bill could allow for up to 66 dispensaries to operate in the state based on population by county, with 40 of those slots available in Las Vegas.

If Sandoval signs the bill, Nevada will become the 14th state to allow medical marijuana dispensaries to operate legally.

The use of medical marijuana is legal in 19 states and the District of Columbia. (Reporting by Alexia Shurmur; Editing by Pravin Char)

By Sharon Bernstein

May 14 (Reuters) - California will spend an extra $2.9 billion on public education over the next two years thanks to higher-than-expected revenue, money that could help Governor Jerry Brown win support for his plan to funnel funds to the state's poorest districts.

Brown announced the boost in spending on Tuesday as part of the annual mid-year revision of the state's budget projections, a ritual in California that marks the beginning of the legislative season for fighting over the next year's spending plan.

The extra money - mostly the result of higher property tax revenue from an improving housing market and a better general economy - could help Brown win support for his quest to dramatically reform the way California pays for education. It would send more money to the poorest school districts and allow local officials to spend the funds as they see fit.

The plan has drawn criticism from suburban school districts and legislators on both sides of the aisle, who say it would leave communities with pockets of middle and upper-income residents with less money than they would have had under the state's old funding system.

Brown's plan calls for a base grant to all school districts for each registered student, but it would also give extra money to students who are poor, don't speak English well, or live in areas with high concentrations of people considered disadvantaged.

"Everybody is going to do better," Brown, a Democrat, said in presenting the plan on Tuesday. "But some are going to do considerably better."

The idea that some districts would wind up with less money under Brown's plan than they would have had under the state's old system led to a backlash among Democrats and Republicans alike.

In addition, school districts complained they would have little money for adult education under the plan, and that some items like teacher training would have to be paid for out of the new base grants, possibly reducing the amount of funding available for teaching students.


MORE FUNDING

But Brown's new proposal offers concessions to address some of the concerns.

Among them are delays in any changes to funding for adult education and $1 billion for teacher training, instructional materials and other costs of implementing new standards.

The additional funds leave Brown better situated to negotiate with legislators who want more money allocated to the base grants, so that no school district would be left with less money than it would have otherwise received.

Moments after Brown presented his May budget revision, Assembly Speaker John Perez, a Democrat, said lawmakers would be likely to reach a deal with Brown despite the differences in their plans, and that there would be a way to lift spending for all schools over time.

Skeptics, including many in the legislature, had also complained that the plan did not require enough oversight of how the school districts would spend the money.

The new plan addresses that issue as well, Brown said, requiring greater transparency on spending by local districts.

(Refiles to clarify seven of 13 people infected with cororavirus have died)

May 8 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia has had 13 cases in a recent outbreak of a new strain of coronavirus that has emerged from the Gulf and spread as far as Britain and France, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, and seven of those have died.

Saudi Arabia has reported 23 confirmed cases in total, Qatar two, Jordan two, Britain two and the United Arab Emirates one, the WHO said. Although there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human spread, there are concerns about clusters of cases.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/08/saudi-coronavirus-idUSL6N0DP1V720130508

BOSTON, April 23 (Reuters) - Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect, bought two large packages of fireworks in February from a store in Seabrook, New Hampshire, the company that runs the store said on Tuesday.

The amount of explosive powder in the purchased fireworks would not have been "anywhere near enough" to build the bombs used in the marathon attack as they have been described publicly, William Weimer, vice president at Phantom Fireworks, said. (Reporting by Aaron Pressman; Editing by Gary Hill)

WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of U.S. senators on Tuesday unveiled long-awaited landmark legislation to remove the threat of deportation for millions of illegal immigrants, giving them an opportunity to apply for permanent legal status within 10 years and eventually for U.S. citizenship.

Under the proposal, undocumented immigrants who came to America before Dec. 31, 2011 and stayed continuously could apply for "provisional" legal status as soon as six months after the bill is signed by the president.

But beyond that, they would have to wait, perhaps for a decade or more without receiving federal benefits, while the government meets a host of tough conditions for securing U.S. borders and enforcing current immigration law.

The bill's sponsors - four Democrats and four Republicans -felt such conditions and enforcement "triggers" to be necessary in order to help it succeed where similar measures have failed, mostly because of opposition to what opponents see as "amnesty" for law-breakers.

Even with the many caveats, the proposal faces months of debate, scores of amendments and potentially significant opposition, particularly in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.

Indeed, much of the legislation was designed to make the bill palatable to Republicans.

Billions of dollars in new money would be funneled into additional border security to discourage people from avoiding detection as they crossed Mexico's border with the United States.

Jackie Spinner, American Journalism Review
Jane Arraf missed the Persian Gulf War in 1990, sidelined in Jordan by Reuters because she was a woman. She got to Iraq only after Operation Desert Storm had ended but quickly was enraptured by the country. "It was the most fascinating place I'd ever been and incredibly difficult to work in as a journalist," she recalls. CNN picked Arraf to open its Baghdad bureau in 1998, and she has reported there off and on (mostly on) ever since — through the U.S. invasion in 2003 and a period of unprecedented danger and risk that followed in which journalists often became the...

Jay Yarow, Business Insider
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WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Friday signed an order that starts putting into effect across-the-board budget cuts known as the "sequester" after he and congressional leaders failed to find an alternative budget plan.

The White House released a copy of Obama's directive entitled "Sequestration Order for Fiscal Year 2013." Government agencies will now begin to hack a total of $85 billion from their budgets between Saturday and Oct. 1.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German teenager looking for a job was told to report for duty in a brothel by the local labor office, the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The 19-year-old woman said she was horrified when she opened a job placement letter from the German Labor Office in Augsburg on Saturday informing her that it had lined up a waitressing job for her at the Augsburg Colosseum brothel.

"I was looking for a decent housekeeping job - not working at a brothel bar," the young woman told the newspaper. "I was totally shocked when I read the letter. My mother even started screaming out loud when she read the letter."

Prostitution is legal in Germany.

The head of the Augsburg labor office, Roland Fuerst, was quoted by the newspaper saying that the agency had made a mistake even though it knew the Colosseum is a brothel. He said that the agency should have first called the woman to check to see if she might be interested in the brothel job rather than simply sending her a letter.

(Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum, editing by Paul Casciato)

* Heathcare costs may provide Medicare debate common ground

* Experts see scope for new competition in Medicare, tax changes

* White House mum on specifics

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama could seek common ground with Republicans in the looming battle over Medicare spending by broadening the debate over entitlement reform to encompass the spiraling healthcare costs that confront a wide range of Americans.

In recent public remarks the president has identified the U.S. healthcare system's sky-high price tag - by far the highest in the world - as a driving force for Medicare reform.

The administration is expected to release a report on 2011 national healthcare expenditures on Monday that should further underline well-known trends. In 2010, health spending hovered at almost 18 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.

Healthcare experts, including former Obama advisers, say the White House appears to be considering ideas for Medicare, the popular health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, that could become models for the overall health landscape.

And in some good news for Obama, whose 2010 Affordable Care Act has been a lightning rod for Republican opposition, experts also see the political climate brightening for efforts to control the rise in healthcare costs generally.

"My expectation is that the president will offer a mix of ideas on the Medicare program that will not be about middle-income beneficiary cuts," said Neera Tanden, a former Obama healthcare adviser who heads the Center for American Progress, a think tank with strong Democratic Party ties.

"My hope is that he'll look at a variety of ideas to use this negotiation, just like we used (healthcare reform), to push forward on healthcare cost reductions," she said.

The White House declined to comment and it was not clear whether Obama plans to offer new initiatives or simply repackage existing proposals as broader cost-cutting initiatives.

Bold new steps geared to lessen the healthcare burden on all Americans could alter the tenor of the Medicare debate and help the president appeal for popular support in staving off Republican calls for deeper structural changes.

Obama's remarks have been vague so far. On Dec. 31 he told reporters: "I'm willing to reduce our government's Medicare bills by finding new ways to reduce the cost of healthcare in this country. That's something that we all should agree on."

Analysts guess that Obama could press for more price competition among drug makers, insurers and healthcare providers within Medicare, or for an acceleration of measures adopted as part of the 2010 Act that aim to move the national care delivery system away from its current fee-for-service cost structure.

Experts also see a potential role for tax reform - specifically, a reduction of the longstanding exclusion that protects individual workers from having their employer-sponsored health coverage taxed as a benefit.

The $2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare system costs nearly $9,000 a year for every man, woman and child. Growth has long outpaced inflation by wide margins, and following the U.S. recession of 2008 and 2009 has contributed to tepid job creation, low wage expansion and a stubbornly high level of personal bankruptcies.

Medicare, long considered a program that U.S. politicians would touch at their peril, is acknowledged, along with the national Medicaid program for the poor, to be a major driver of the deficit. The aging population puts Medicare on a collision course with major financial difficulties; the so-called Medicare trust fund is on pace to run out of money in 2024.

Government forecasters say Medicare spending alone will top $1 trillion in 2021, against $590 billion today, while total U.S. healthcare spending will balloon to $4.8 trillion.


MEDICARE AS AN INCUBATOR FOR BROAD CHANGE

Obama was attacked repeatedly during the 2012 presidential campaign about the $716 billion in reductions to Medicare spending growth contained within his signature healthcare reform, which itself remains under attack from many Republicans.

New initiatives would probably not end discussion of existing proposals to shave Medicare spending, including potential higher costs for wealthier beneficiaries and a possible increase in the enrollment age to 67 from 65.

A project by the Bipartisan Policy Center, led by former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle, a Democrat, and Bill Frist, a Republican, is expected to make new proposals for reining in healthcare costs in the next few weeks.

Others, including Mike Leavitt, a former aide to Mitt Romney and healthcare adviser to George W. Bush, have launched efforts to address costs among states, while the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund plans to announce its own strategy shortly.

Medicare serves about 50 million people and accounts for more than 20 percent of U.S. healthcare spending. As such, reforms in treatment practices fostered by Medicare could very well work their way through the entire healthcare system.

Analysts say Obama could embrace the policies proposed in 2012 by Tanden's group, which contends that billions of dollars can be saved by expanding competitive bidding within Medicare, making costs and services more transparent, slimming down administrative costs and reforming medical education.

Those initiatives, they say, could be combined with current White House proposals that seek to realign Medicare's drug payment policies with Medicaid for poorer beneficiaries, adjust payment increases to acute-care providers, increase means testing for outpatient care and drug benefits and change the way Medicare compensates providers for bad patient debts.

Any changes that look like the imposition of government price controls would not pass muster with Republicans, warned Alison Fraser of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Ideas that boost market competition within Medicare might get a better response, she added. (Editing by Ros Krasny and Maureen Bavdek)

By Alex Dobuzinskis

Jan 5 (Reuters) - Retired Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy is taking aim at what he sees as knee-jerk support for marijuana legalization among his fellow liberals, in a project that carries special meaning for the self-confessed former Oxycontin addict.

Kennedy, 45, a Democrat and younger son of the late "Lion of the Senate" Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, is leading a group called Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) that opposes legalization and seeks to rise above America's culture war over pot with its images of long-haired hippies battling law-and-order conservatives.

Project proposals include increased funding for mental health courts and treatment of drug dependency, so those caught using marijuana might avoid incarceration, get help and potentially have their criminal records cleared.

Kennedy wants cancer patients and others with serious illnesses to be able to obtain drugs with cannabinoids, but in a more regulated way that could involve the U.S. Food and Drug Administration playing a larger role.

The eight-term former congressman from Rhode Island and the group he chairs will put forth their plan on Wednesday with a media appearance in Denver.

Their efforts follow the November election that saw voters in Washington state and Colorado become the first in the nation to approve measures to tax and regulate pot sales for recreational use. Kennedy's group is seeking to shift the debate and reclaim momentum for the anti-legalization movement, in part by proposing new solutions with appeal to liberals, such as taking a public health approach to combat marijuana use.

Legalization backers have argued that the so-called War on Drugs launched in 1971 by former President Richard Nixon has failed to stem marijuana use, and has instead saddled otherwise law-abiding pot smokers with criminal records that may block their avenues to landing a successful job.

Kennedy faults the U.S. government for allocating too much of its $25 billion drug control budget to law enforcement rather than to treatment and prevention.

"Yes, the drug war has been a failure, but let's look at the science and let's look at what works. And let's not just throw out the baby with the bathwater," Kennedy, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2011, said in a telephone interview.

The U.S. Department of Justice is still developing a policy in regard to the new state legalization measures.

President Barack Obama said in an interview with ABC News last month that it did not make sense for the federal government to "focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that, under state law, that's legal."


BIPARTISAN APPROACH

Conservative political commentator David Frum, a speech writer for former President George W. Bush, is also a board member on Project SAM, which lends it a bipartisan flavor.

For his part, Kennedy is aiming many of his arguments toward liberals like himself. Polls show Democrats largely favoring legalizing marijuana, and among the 18 states that allow medical marijuana, several are in the West and Northeast and are heavily Democratic.

"The fact is people are afraid on the (political) left to look like they're not for an alternative to incarceration and criminalization, and they're afraid they're not going to look sympathetic to a cancer patient" who might use marijuana, Kennedy said. As a result, he said the legalization position mistakenly comes to be seen as "glamorous."

Kennedy admits to having smoked pot but also said that, as an asthma sufferer, he "found other ways to get high."

In 2006, he crashed his car into a security barrier in Washington, D.C., and soon after sought treatment for drug dependency. He said he was addicted to the pain reliever Oxycontin at that time and suffered from alcoholism. He added that he has been continuously sober for nearly two years.

Kennedy, who was married for the first time in 2011, said he worries his 8-month-old son might be predisposed to drug abuse - due to a kind of genetic "trigger" - and that is part of his fight against legalization.

He also said he wants to "reduce the environmental factors that pull that trigger," such as marijuana use being commonly accepted.

Meanwhile, another prominent figure from Rhode Island, the newly crowned Miss Universe Olivia Culpo, is making waves by also objecting to legalization. She told Fox News this week there are "too many bad habits that go with the drug."

In Washington state, Alison Holcomb was campaign director for the legalization measure, which billed itself as having a public health element to help people dependent on marijuana.

The measure, which is not set to go into full effect until after state regulators spend most of 2013 setting guidelines, would allow adults 21 and older to buy marijuana at special stores.

Holcomb argued that drug dependency courts are more geared toward users of hardcore drugs, and that the approach her group put forward is the sensible one.

"I don't know what a public health approach without legalization looks like, if you're still arresting people," she said.

Taxes on marijuana sales would generate, at the high end of estimates, over $500 million a year with $67 million of that going to a state agency that provides drug treatment, said Mark Cooke, policy adviser for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state, which supported the campaign.

Also included in the tax revenue would be $44 million for education and public health campaigns - including a phone line for people wanting to quit using marijuana, Cooke said. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Gunna Dickson)

* "Fiscal cliff" fight proved wrenching for Republicans

* Next fight ahead - the debt limit

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON, Jan 2 (Reuters) - In the wake of bruising fights in their own ranks over the "fiscal cliff" and aid for victims of superstorm Sandy - Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives open a new Congress on Thursday more divided than ever.

While their leader, Speaker John Boehner, seems in no danger of losing his position because of the divisions, his ability to speak for his membership in the House appears greatly diminished.

That could not come at a worse time for Republicans as they prepare for their next attempt to get more spending cuts out of President Barack Obama. They will try to use the debt ceiling - and Obama's request to raise it - as leverage, as they did in 2011.

But if the final days of this Congress were indicative of things to come, Republicans will have a rough time effectively using their majority in the House against Obama, who even Republicans acknowledge is at the top of his game following the Democrat's re-election in November.

The fiscal cliff battle to avert steep tax hikes and spending cuts that were due to kick in at the start of this year proved gut-wrenching for Republicans.

Obama's demand for a tax hike on the rich challenged a core principle that has guided Republicans for decades: No new taxes. Ever.

Yet, late on New Year's night, 85 Republicans in the House did just that, voting to raise income taxes on household income of more than $450,000 a year.

Some of the Republican Party's biggest stars were among the 85 - including Boehner and Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate, who is seen as a conservative anchor.

But 151 House Republicans stood in defiance, leaving Boehner in the unenviable position of having to rely on opposition Democrats to pass major legislation.

Earlier in the fiscal cliff fight, Boehner suffered a humiliating defeat when his "Plan B" solution - which would have limited the tax hikes to income of $1 million a year or more, got so little support he had to cancel the vote.

No sooner had the fiscal cliff battle ended than Boehner found himself in trouble with other Republicans over aid for victims of Sandy, the second costliest storm in U.S. history, which smashed New York and New Jersey coastal communities in late October.

Legislation providing disaster relief to New York, New Jersey and other East Coast states was delayed. A House Republican aide said that given Republicans' frustration with the fiscal cliff bill and its lack of significant spending cuts, "it was not a good time to immediately vote on $60 billion in new spending."

"I don't enjoy saying this. I consider myself a personal friend of John Boehner's," said Republican Representative Peter King of New York. "It pains me to say this, but the fact is that the dismissive attitude that was shown ... toward New York, New Jersey and Connecticut typifies, I believe, a strain in the Republican Party."

Earlier, King had condemned House inaction on Sandy as a "knife in the back."

Republican Representative Michael Grimm, also of New York, said of Boehner's refusal to bring the disaster bill to a vote: "There was a betrayal. There was an arrogant judgment that is going to cost I think the trust of the American people."

Ironically, Grimm first won his seat in Congress in 2010 with the help of conservative Tea Party activists who sometimes show displeasure with disaster aid spending.

By midday on Wednesday, Boehner had changed course, promising a House vote by week's end on a $9 billion down payment in storm assistance, with a second bill providing $51 billion to be voted on Jan. 15.


TEA PARTY EFFECT

Paul Light, a New York University professor and a specialist on Congress, said the vote on the fiscal cliff bill could mark the start of a "major realignment" in the run-up to the 2014 congressional elections and the 2016 presidential race.

Republicans who voted for the legislation "are going to have to find a home. They're not going to find it with the Tea Party," Light said.

He said that Republicans who were uncomfortable with the Tea Party could begin aligning themselves more closely with a dwindling band of centrist Democrats.

Congressional Republicans, especially in the House, have been buffeted for two years by the Tea Party, which helped them win control of the House in 2010.

Boehner had to navigate Tea Party demands throughout the 2011 fight over raising U.S. borrowing authority or risking a historic government default.

In rapid succession, Tea Party-fueled battles were waged over infrastructure investments, farm subsidies, payroll tax cuts and the fiscal cliff.

At the core of the disputes was whether the government should be made smaller, forcing Boehner to balance that demand with the need to govern and keep the federal government operating in an orderly way.

For all the heartache over the past several weeks as Republicans fought with one another over whether to let taxes on the rich go up, many see better days ahead.

"By and large, people are probably happy to have it behind them. This was obviously the worst part of the fiscal debate," said one House Republican staffer, referring to the tax hikes.

The staffer added, "Republicans get to point out that we still have a $1 trillion deficit and ask Democrats what kind of spending cuts, entitlement reforms they are willing to do to fix it."

Republicans feel that will be an easier lift for them - one that they can sell to the American public as they move on to the fight over the debt ceiling. (Editing by Fred Barbash and Peter Cooney)

WASHINGTON, Jan 1 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama departed the White House on Tuesday to resume his Hawaii vacation shortly after Congress approved legislation that raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans and avoids the "fiscal cliff" of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts.

The president left the White House shortly before midnight. He had cut his vacation short on Wednesday to oversee negotiation of a deal before a year-end deadline.

WASHINGTON, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Speaking after winning a "fiscal cliff" victory, President Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to avoid a repeat of last year's divisive fight with Congress over an extension of the nation's borrowing authority.

"While I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress about whether or not they should pay the bills they have already racked up," Obama said in remarks in the White House.

He urged "a little less drama" in coming budget talks about cutting government spending.

By David Ingram

WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (Reuters) - An effort led by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to find ways to reduce gun violence after the Connecticut school massacre so far has not included talking to the National Rifle Association, the president of the gun rights group said on Friday.

NRA President David Keene said neither Biden nor his staff has contacted the organization since President Barack Obama unveiled the effort on Dec. 19.

Keene said he was not surprised, given Biden's past support for new gun control laws. "He's not even a friendly antagonist," Keene told Reuters in an interview.

The lack of communication between the White House and the largest U.S. lobbying group for gun owners is a sign that the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, has so far failed to change long-held stances on gun politics. In that tragedy, a young man shot his mother with her own gun before killing 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Biden and up to four Cabinet officers are holding a series of meetings with outside groups to discuss possible gun legislation. The first was with law enforcement officials, another with mayors.

The White House has said other meetings will take place with gun safety groups and gun owners, among others, but it has not said whether the NRA will be invited. The White House had no comment on Friday.

Asked about the organization's influence, Obama struck an optimistic note on Dec 19. "The NRA is an organization that has members who are mothers and fathers," he said. "I would expect that they've been impacted by this as well, and hopefully, they'll do some self-reflection."

Two days later, NRA executive Wayne LaPierre said at a press conference that new gun laws were not the answer, calling instead for some form of armed guards in every school.

Keene told Reuters: "I'm willing to talk to anybody. I'm willing to sit down with anybody up there." He added, though, that he would not agree to "gut" gun rights.

"I'm going to want to have a conversation about how we protect our children," he said. "That's a serious conversation. Offering sort of feel-good bills doesn't strike me as serious."

Biden's group is due to offer its recommendations in January.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Thursday found that support remains high for preserving specific gun ownership privileges, such as concealed-weapon permits, as well as for some restrictions, such as background checks for every purchase.

* Fears that an absence of spending cuts could doom deal

* House Republicans decide to return, but little else

By Richard Cowan and David Lawder

WASHINGTON, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are resigned to seeing some sort of income tax increase in legislation to avoid a "fiscal cliff," but such efforts could be doomed in the absence of spending cuts, some Republican lawmakers say.

Congress and President Barack Obama are gearing up for a last-ditch attempt to avoid $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that could halt progress in the U.S. economy, which lately has been showing signs of gaining ground.

The White House said Obama will host a meeting on Friday with the four top congressional leaders - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The Republicans have a majority in the House, while Obama's Democrats control the Senate.

House Speaker John Boehner informed his 241 Republican members on Thursday that the House would come back into session late on Sunday in anticipation of possible fiscal-cliff votes.

This Sunday's session "was about the only thing decided" during a half-hour conference call among House Republicans, said Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona, who will leave the House at the year-end to join the Senate.

In an interview shortly after the phone call, Flake said Republicans in the House and Senate were resigned to seeing some sort of increase in top income-tax rates, although he did not specify a dollar threshold.

While he said he did not want to see any income tax rates go up, Flake said: "I've felt we should've moved a week or two ago to accept the top rate going up and tell the president 'congratulations.'"

The bigger problem in avoiding the fiscal cliff, Flake said, would be if Obama demanded cancellation of the $109 billion in automatic spending cuts set to begin on Jan. 2 without alternative spending cuts to replace them.

"There will be resistance from a lot of House conservatives to a deal that does that," Flake said.

Asked if the days leading up to next Monday, Dec. 31 could thus be fruitless, Flake said, "That is what I am afraid of."

A Senate Democratic aide did not discount the possibility of some spending cuts being included in a limited bill to avert the fiscal cliff - even if they fell far short of the $1 trillion or so in cuts over 10 years that at one point was being discussed in talks between Boehner and Obama.


'TIRED OF WAITING'

Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who also participated in Thursday's House Republican conference call, said its overarching theme was that the Senate should take the bill passed by the House earlier this year to extend all expiring income tax rates and amend it in a way senators see fit.

The House could then either accept that measure, or amend it, and bounce it back to the Senate.

"People are tired of waiting on the Senate to do things," Cole said.

Senate Democrats counter that last July they passed a bill extending the Bush-era tax cuts - except on net household income above $250,000 a year.

Nevertheless, the Senate must still couple its tax-cut bill with Obama's request for extending jobless benefits and possibly some other budget or tax measures.

"I assume the House would want to come back on Sunday knowing that we (the Senate) were going to do something on Friday or Saturday," said Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the Senate's Republican leadership.

House Republican leaders informed their members that the chamber could stay in session dealing with the fiscal cliff through Wednesday, Jan. 2 - the last day of the current Congress and a day before the new Congress is sworn in.

Cole said Boehner "made very apparent he is not interested in passing a bill that didn't have a majority of Republicans" supporting it.

But Cole said this was "not quite as elusive to achieve" as many people thought. He said Boehner had "over 200 votes" out of 241 Republicans for his failed "Plan B" - a bill extending lower tax rates except for millionaires - which everyone knew would not become law.

Thus, a bill with prospects of being enacted could attract more support, Cole suggested.

If a new bill came to the House floor to raise taxes on upper incomes, Boehner could force passage with a combination of Democratic and Republican votes.

With public opinion polls showing that Republicans would get most of the blame if the country were to go over the fiscal cliff, some House Republicans have become nervous about their political fortunes.

Both Flake and Cole told Reuters that during Thursday's conference call, some Republicans urged Boehner to bring the House back to Washington sooner than Sunday - a request Flake described as being aimed at improving the "optics" of House Republicans being absent from Washington so close to the Dec. 31 deadline.

But Boehner stuck with his promise to give members at least 48 hours notice of a return.

Cole remained upbeat about a positive end to the fiscal-cliff mess that has gripped Washington for two months now.

"I'm a hopeless optimist. I still think there's a chance we'll get things done. All major deals get done at the end," said Cole, who was one of the first House Republicans to say that he could go along with raising some income-tax rates.

By Dhanya Skariachan and Phil Wahba

NEW YORK, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Fears about imminent tax hikes and cuts to government spending are taking a toll on U.S. shoppers and could deprive retailers of a strong finish to the 2012 holiday shopping season.

The acrimonious debate in Washington over how to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff has cast a pall over shopper sentiment, retail experts say, as consumers head to the malls on the last Saturday before Christmas - typically one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

Talks to avoid the fiscal cliff stalled on Thursday when Republican lawmakers rejected House Speaker John Boehner's proposal aimed at winning concessions from President Barack Obama.

"The longer Congress delays making a decision on the fiscal cliff and the more uncertainty people feel, as we go toward Christmas, they would start pulling back on their spending," said Ron Friedman, retail practice leader at consulting firm Marcum LLP. "I don't think we're going to get a great pickup in the last few days here."

About 17 percent of the 1,514 Americans who participated in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Dec. 17-20 said the impending "fiscal cliff" was making them spend less this season.

U.S. consumer sentiment also plummeted in December as Americans were unnerved by ongoing negotiations, data showed.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's final reading on the overall index on consumer sentiment tumbled to 72.9 from 82.7 in November, worse than forecasts for 74.7. It was the lowest level since July.

"What could have been a merry Christmas is going to turn to a ho-hum Christmas, and we can thank our, you know, politicians for getting in the middle of it all," NPD analyst Marshal Cohen said. "It is like this great unknown puts a big damper on the consumer feeling confident to go out and spend more."

More than 60 percent of U.S. consumers have already finished more than three-quarters of their holiday shopping, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday. This means retailers will have to offer deeper discounts to force Americans to open their wallets in the last lap of the holiday season.

The holiday quarter can account for about 30 percent of annual sales and half of profit for many chains, and experts including Cohen and Friedman see retailers pulling out all the stops this weekend and the week ahead to woo last-minute shoppers.

"The only way retailers now are going to be able to get a boost is by creating their own stimulus package, and that stimulus package is going to be markdowns," Cohen said.

Earlier this week, research firm ShopperTrak lowered its sales forecast for November and December and now expects sales to be up 2.5 percent, rather than up 3.3 percent.

Many retailers reported record traffic at the beginning of the season, but several, including Macy's Inc and Saks Inc , lost a lot of business because of Hurricane Sandy.

Earlier this week, Redbook Research said chain-store same-store sales rose 2.2 percent so far in December, suggesting shoppers are indeed cooling their heels. Sales for the November-December holiday season look set to rise 4.1 percent to $586.1 billion this year after a 5.6 percent increase in 2011, according to a National Retail Federation forecast.

"Retailers are going to be pretty challenged this year in trying to get beyond all this," Cohen said, referring to a string of events this holiday season that have weighed on U.S. shoppers including the hurricane, gridlock in Washington and a recent shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut.

NRF sees 2013 retail sales rising about 2 to 2.5 percent if the fiscal cliff is averted. If not, sales would be essentially flat for the year, the trade group estimated in a study with Macroeconomic Advisers. (Editing by Matthew Lewis)

WASHINGTON, Dec 19 (Reuters) - The Obama administration will consider executive actions and specific proposals for legislation as part of its gun policy response to the school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Wednesday.

Holder, who has been a vocal proponent of a new ban on certain semiautomatic rifles, told reporters that a range of options need to be considered in the coming weeks.

Those options will have to include a "strong and robust" Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the chronically under-funded agency that enforces federal gun laws, he said.

"It's clear that we need to do more," Holder said. He did not specifically call on Wednesday for a return of the assault weapon ban.

(Updates with details throughout)

NEW YORK, Dec 15 (Reuters) - A barge with a leaking cargo tank spilled fuel oil into a New York City waterway on Saturday, officials said.

The barge was carrying 112,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil, but it was unclear how much oil spilled into the water, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement.

The spill came from a Boston Marine Transport Inc barge due to a leak from its cargo tank, it said.

The leak occurred at Mays Ship Repair near Mariner's Harbor in the city's Staten Island borough, the Coast Guard said. It was first reported shortly after 11 p.m. local time (0400 GMT) on Friday, the Coast Guard said.

Boston Marine Transport said fuel was being transferred from one barge to another when oil could be seen seeping into the water between them, the Coast Guard said. The first barge had the leak, it said.

Boston Marine Transport workers put a containment boom around the two barges, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard said the fuel was leaking into Kill Van Kull, a waterway between Staten Island and New Jersey that connects to New York Bay and the Hudson River.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection were responding to help contain the spill, the Coast Guard said. (Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by David Brunnstrom and Will Dunham)

Dec 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has signed orders to send Patriot missiles and 400 military personnel to Turkey to defend against rocket attacks from Syria, news media reported early Friday.

A total of six Patriot missile batteries will be sent to Turkey -- two from the United States, two from Germany and two from the Netherlands, the New York Times reported. All six batteries will be under NATO's command, the newspaper said, and all six are scheduled to be operational by the end of January.

The 20-month-old uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has turned increasingly bloody and heavy fighting has often erupted along Syria's northern border with Turkey, which is supporting the Syrian opposition.

The Patriot system is designed to intercept aircraft or missiles. Turkey has asked NATO to deploy Patriot missiles to shore up its 900-km (560-mile) border, where it fears security may crumble as the Syrian army fights harder to contain the rebels - who have enjoyed sanctuary in Turkey. (Reporting by Lisa Shumaker; editing by Todd Eastham)

CAIRO, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Egyptian authorities are holding a man whose militant group is suspected of links to an attack in Libya in which the American ambassador was killed, U.S. officials in Washington and a security source in Cairo said on Saturday.

"They arrested Mohamed Gamal," said one U.S. official.

The security source in Cairo, giving the man's full name as Mohamed Gamal Abu Ahmed, said the suspect was being questioned about an alleged role in the attacks in Benghazi in September in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador, died along with three other American officials.

U.S. officials said Abu Ahmed's group was suspected of a role in the violence but they were not sure whether he personally was involved.

Abu Ahmed, released from an Egyptian prison in 2011 after the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, was originally arrested three weeks ago on charges of leading a militant cell that comprised members from Egypt and Libya.

Egyptian security sources had earlier said the Abu Ahmed group, which they said had al Qaeda backing, was planning attacks in Egypt and abroad. Others linked to the group were arrested in October, including a Tunisian and a Libyan.

(Reporting by Tamim Elyan; Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Edmund Blair and Stephen Powell)

By Alina Selyukh and Alexander Cohen

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Mitt Romney's presidential campaign had $25.7 million left in the bank days after the Nov. 6 election that ended months of relentless fundraising in the most expensive race in U.S. history, new campaign finance disclosures showed on Thursday.

President Barack Obama, a Democrat, defeated the Republican candidate following a campaign that cost more than $2 billion overall.

Obama's re-election effort had $14.2 million left as of Nov. 26, according to the Federal Election Commission disclosures.

Leftover campaign cash is common and often goes to the national party or other candidates.

The Romney campaign on Thursday said every raised dollar had gone toward Romney's run and that it "continues to process invoices for pre-election expenses." It expected to have less than $1 million by the end of the year.

"It is not uncommon. It is of course a great risk," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics that tracks campaign finance. "As a loser you want to make sure you've given it your all."

Obama and Romney both spent much of their campaign cash on voter outreach and especially advertising. But the Democrat and his "Super PAC" backers at Priorities USA Action, an unlimited-spending group, held an early advertising game advantage.

Obama's campaign dominated the airwaves, booking the increasingly expensive spots earlier and at the lowest price.

The "super" political action committee, which was legally barred from coordinating with the campaign, ran a series of aggressive ads about Romney's private equity past that portrayed him as a corporate raider.

The damaging ads, as well as negative press surrounding Romney's disparaging "47 percent" comment about Americans relying on government funds, contributed to the candidate's defeat.

The pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future - boosted once again by this year's Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson - plowed $45.5 million into a last-ditch effort to sway voters, according to Thursday's filings.

But according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, nearly three-quarters of Americans had made up their minds in the presidential race before Obama and Romney faced off in the first debate on Oct. 3.

The pro-Obama group spent $20.9 million from Oct. 18 and had $4.3 million in cash on hand as of Nov. 26, according to the FEC filings. Romney's Restore Our Future reported having $842,062 left.

Adelson, billionaire chief executive of Las Vegas Sands , and his wife Miriam contributed another $10 million to Restore Our Future, accounting for nearly half of all the group's last-minute fundraising and bringing the couple's total gift to the Super PAC to $30 million.

Adelson's total donations to Republican candidates and organizations, although not all of them are disclosed, are said to have topped $100 million this election cycle. He planned to spend "that much and more" in the next campaign, he told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.

The pro-Obama Super PAC received 11th-hour $1 million infusions from two of its own top donors, media mogul Fred Eychaner and Houston lawyer Steve Mostyn. They brought Eychaner's total to $4.5 million, and Mostyn's to $3 million, according to FEC filings. (Editing by Xavier Briand)