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US President Barack Obama rallied House Democrats on Saturday for a final push on healthcare reform as party leaders appeared confident they had overcome a flare-up over abortion funding restrictions in the legislation.
Building on Democrats’ momentum, House leaders decided on a straight up-or-down vote on the legislation - a top priority for Obama and the defining issue of his first year in office - backing off a much-challenged plan to vote on the bill indirectly.
With the vote scheduled for Sunday, Obama decided to make a final personal appeal with a Saturday afternoon visit to the Capitol.
The president spoke after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reassured House rank and file that the Senate will complete the legislation.
More than 50 Democratic senators have signed a pledge to do, Reid’s spokesman said.
“Is this the single most important step that we have taken on health care since Medicare?” Obama asked lawmakers. “Absolutely.”The legislation, affecting virtually every American and more than a year in the making, would extend coverage to an estimated 32 (m) million uninsured, bar insurers from denying coverage on the basis of existing medical conditions and cut federal deficits by an estimated 138 (b) billion US dollars over a decade.
Congressional analysts estimate the cost of the two bills combined would be 940 (b) billion US dollars over a decade.
Republicans, unanimous in opposition to the bill, complained anew about its cost and reach.
One option on abortion emerged on Saturday - an executive order from Obama - that would reflect long-standing law barring federal aid for abortions except for cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger.Party leaders saw that approach as crucial to winning the support of anti-abortion Democrats for the healthcare bill.
It was unclear whether the strategy would win support from conservatives who are opposing the health bill unless tight restrictions are included.
Scrambling to gather the 216 votes needed for passage in the House, Democratic leaders and Obama focused last-minute lobbying efforts on two groups of Democrats: 37 who voted against an earlier bill in the House and 40 who voted for it only after first making sure it would include strict abortion limits that now have been modified.
Leaders worked late into Friday night attempting to resolve the dispute over abortion, and on Saturday morning they were increasingly confident it would not scuttle the bill.
The House Rules Committee worked through the day Saturday to set the terms for the vote.
Democratic leaders dropped plans to employ a controversial procedure known as “deem and pass.”Under that procedure, a single vote would have been held in the House to endorse the health reform bill approved by the Senate last year as well as a package of fixes to it.
That procedure has been used in the past by both parties but its use has been widely criticized for legislation as massive as a health care overhaul.
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The Danish cartoonist against whom David Headley plotted an attack in retaliation for his sketches of Prophet Mohammed has said a long prison sentence would give time to the Pakistani-American LeT operative to “convert to more kind Islam”.
Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s 74-year-old cartoonist Kurt Westergaard says he does not believe in the death penalty and he would be satisfied with a
long prison sentence for Headley, who has also pleaded guilty to involvement in the Mumbai attacks.Westergaard has had three attempts on his life since sketching the cartoons in 2005.
“He (Headley) has to, of course, be put away for many years, but perhaps he can sit in jail, and he may think it all over and perhaps convert to, well, more kind Islam,” Westergaard told the ‘Chicago Sun-Times’.
In January, Westergaard was attacked by an axe-wielding “madman” who broke into his home and tried to kill him in retaliation for the cartoons. With his five-year-old granddaughter in a separate room, Westergaard locked himself into a steel-enforced “panic room”, put in place since he drew the cartoon.
“I could have tried to fight the intruder and I would have been slaughtered before the eyes of my 5-year-old grandchild,” he said.
Instead, he locked himself in the panic room and called for police. While he waited, he could hear the axe as the intruder tried to break through the door. The police came and shot the man, who is now in prison.
On March 18, Headley pleaded guilty to his role in the 26/11 attacks that killed 166 people, including six Americans. (Read & Watch: No death sentence, extradition for Headley)
He also admitted to a plot to attack the Danish newspaper. (Read: Reports say Denmark got to quiz Headley)
The case is considered as one of the most significant terror investigations in the US, with Chicago’s top federal prosecutor US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald personally appearing in the court for the proceedings.
This is only the second case that Fitzgerald’s has personally prosecuted since he arrived in Chicago in 2001.
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Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a Persian New Year message that Iran will “cut the hands” of anyone who tries to harm the Islamic republic.
“The Iranian nation will guard its national security with full strength and will decisively cut any unclean hand from any part of the globe which tries to harm it,” Ahmadinejad said in a message broadcast on state television.
The hardliner reiterated that his re-election in June last year was a “true” example of democracy for the world.
“The decisive vote by the nation for the president clearly outlined what path the government should take,” said Ahmadinejad, whose win has sparked one of Iran’s worst political crises with the opposition charging it was rigged.
“The enemy tried to hide the success of the Iranian people with dust, but in reality they were rubbing their own faces with dust … They should know that the Iranian nation is more determined than last year to pursue its high goals.”
Meanwhile, miffed at the rigid attitude of Ahmedinejad, US President Obama has said Iran always turned down or ignored a hand of friendship by America.
He accused Iran’s leaders of turning their backs “on a pathway that would bring more opportunity to all Iranians and allow a great civilisation to take its rightful place in the community of nations. Faced with an extended hand, Iran’s leaders have shown only a clenched fist”.
In his annual navroze message, Obama reached out more to the Iranian people themselves rather than their leaders in Tehran.
“Even as we continue to have differences with the Iranian government, we will sustain our commitment to a more hopeful future for the Iranian people,” Obama said in his message released by the White House.
Iran begins its New Year on Sunday
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Hundreds of tribesmen from Pakistan’s semiautonomous regions near the Afghan border ended a rare tribal council meeting on Saturday with a declaration calling for the army to crush the Taliban.
The meeting, held in the northwestern city of Peshawar, was called by an umbrella group of aid organisations and political parties in an effort to bring together people from the violence-battered region.
Participants called for the army to escalate its attack against the network of Islamist militants across the tribal regions, dismissing Pakistan’s earlier offensives as “military dramas.”
“It should be a genuine military operation like the Sri Lankans did against the Tamil Tigers,” said Sayd Alam Mehsud, a powerful tribal leader, referring to the military campaign that destroyed the separatist Tamil army in Sri Lanka.
They also called for more power for traditional councils.
Tribal councils - or “jirgas” - play a central role in the Pashtun culture that dominates the region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
These regions have been the scene of bloody fighting and regular attacks by American drone aircraft as the Pakistani and US governments try to defeat the militants.
Smaller council meetings are used in tribal areas to decide matters ranging from local administration to criminal cases.
While Saturday’s meeting was not a formal jirga, it is rare to have so many tribal leaders gather together.
A declaration at the end of the meeting called democracy vital to rooting out terrorism, arguing that Pakistan’s powerful military - which many see as the true power behind the country’s elected government - should keep out of politics.
“A sapling of terrorism cannot grow in democracy. Any attempt to derail democracy is like letting the terrorists walk all over us,” the declaration said.
Participants said they had little faith in the US-Pakistan alliance, and that Washington and Islamabad were more worried about internal political issues than dealing with the deep-set social issues at the root of much of the violence.
“If we do not address the mindset of the terrorists, we will not be able to eliminate terrorists,” said Mehsud.
The tribal leaders urged the government in Pakistan to reach out to the militants - but also to crush those unwilling to negotiate.
But Haji Attaullah Mehsud, a Jirga participant from North Waziristan insisted that the army was not the solution.
“Talibans are our brothers, they did not came from other countries,” he said.
“Dialogue is the only solution. It can’t be solved through power, that destroyed all of our area, they destroyed the whole of Waziristan.”
A government offensive that began last fall in Waziristan is thought to have killed hundreds of people, militants and civilians, in the area.
Meanwhile, in the southern city of Karachi, police arrested three Taliban militants on Saturday and seized a bomb-making factory, a counter-terrorism official said.
Violence has surged in Pakistan in recent days as militants - thought to be part of a loose network of Islamist insurgents fighting the US-allied Islamabad government - launched a wave of suicide bombings.
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British Airways (BA) cabin crew on Saturday began a three-day strike over pay and conditions which will ground hundreds of flights, but the airline said many of its passengers were able to fly.
Some 12,000 members of Britain’s biggest trade union, Unite, walked out at midnight (0000 GMT) Friday, hours after talks between unions and BA chief executive Willie Walsh broke down in acrimony.
More than 1,000 flights are set to be cancelled in the first phase of the action, with a second walkout to follow for four days from March 27, targeted at the busy Easter holiday period.
Unite said early indications were that all its members were solidly supporting the strike.
Reports said the expected chaos at BA’s hubs at London’s Heathrow airport and Gatwick airport outside the capital had failed to materialise because the airline had made contingency plans for about 60 percent of passengers.
A total of 1,100 BA flights out of the approximately 1,950 scheduled to operate during the first strike will be cancelled.
But BA said it was confident of keeping two-thirds of its passengers flying, using staff who are not striking and by offering travellers seats on 22 planes leased from other European airlines.
A BA spokeswoman said the airline had “got off to a good start” at Heathrow and Gatwick.
She said: “We aim to fly as many customers as we can this weekend. At Heathrow and Gatwick we have got off to a good start.
“Cabin crew are reporting as normal at Gatwick and the numbers reporting at Heathrow are above the levels we need to operate our published schedule.
“This is the biggest contingency plan we have ever launched.”
In December, BA won a legal battle to prevent a 12-day strike by cabin crew over Christmas and New Year after a judge ruled that a ballot of staff by Unite was invalid.
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