Viral rapper PSY apologizes for anti-US protests

South Korean rapper and Internet sensation PSY is apologizing to Americans for participating in anti-U.S. protests several years ago.

Park Jae-sang, who performs as PSY, issued a statement Friday after reports surfaced that he had participated in concerts protesting the U.S. military presence in South Korea during the early stages of the Iraq war.

At a 2004 concert, the “Gangnam Style” rapper performs a song with lyrics about killing “Yankees” who have been torturing Iraqi captives and their families “slowly and painfully.” In another protest, he smashed a model of a U.S. tank on stage.

“While I’m grateful for the freedom to express one’s self, I’ve learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I’m deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted,” he wrote in the statement. “I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused by those words.”

The 34-year-old rapper says the protests were part of a “deeply emotional” reaction to the war and the death of two Korean school girls, who were killed when a U.S. military vehicle hit them as they walked alongside the road. He noted antiwar sentiment was high around the world at the time.

PSY attended college in the U.S. and says he understands the sacrifices U.S. military members have made to protect South Korea and other nations. He has recently performed in front of servicemen and women.

“And I hope they and all Americans can accept my apology,” he wrote. “While it’s important that we express our opinions, I deeply regret the inflammatory and inappropriate language I used to do so. In my music, I try to give people a release, a reason to smile. I have learned that thru music, our universal language we can all come together as a culture of humanity and I hope that you will accept my apology.”

His participation in the protests was no secret in South Korea, where the U.S. has had a large military presence since the Korean War, but was not generally known in America until recent news reports.

PSY did not write “Dear American,” a song by The N.E.X.T., but he does perform it. The song exhorts the listener to kill the Yankees who are torturing Iraqi captives, their superiors who ordered the torture and their families. At one point he raps: “Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers/Kill them all slowly and painfully.”

PSY launched to international acclaim based on the viral nature of his “Gangnam Style” video. It became YouTube’s most watched video, making him a millionaire who freely crossed cultural boundaries around the world. Much of that success has happened in the U.S., where the rapper has managed to weave himself into pop culture.

He recently appeared on the American Music Awards, dancing alongside MC Hammer in a melding of memorable dance moves that book-end the last two decades. And the Internet is awash with copycat versions of the song. Even former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, the 81-year-old co-chairman of President Barack Obama‘s deficit commission, got in on the fun, recently using the song in a video to urge young Americans to avoid credit card debt.

It remains to be seen how PSY’s American fans will react. Obama, the father of two pop music fans, wasn’t letting the news change his plans, though.

Earlier Friday, the White House confirmed Obama and his family will attend a Dec. 21 charity concert where PSY is among the performers. A spokesman says it’s customary for the president to attend the “Christmas in Washington” concert, which will be broadcast on TNT. The White House has no role in choosing performers for the event, which benefits the National Children’s Medical Center.

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Boehner says Obama pushing U.S. toward “fiscal cliff”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican House Speaker John Boehner accused President Barack Obama of pushing the country toward the “fiscal cliff” on Friday and of wasting another week without making progress in talks.

With three weeks left before a combination of steep tax hikes and deep spending cuts kicks in unless Congress intervenes, Boehner said the administration had adopted a “my way or the highway” approach and was engaging in reckless talk about going over the cliff.

“This isn’t a progress report because there is no progress to report,” Boehner told reporters at the Capitol. “The president has adopted a deliberate strategy to slow-walk our economy right to the edge of the fiscal cliff.”

The day’s rhetoric did point the way to a possible compromise that has been discussed for weeks on the main sticking point, tax hikes for the wealthy.

While Obama wants tax rates raised to 39.6 percent from 35 percent, he has not ruled out a smaller increase, perhaps to 37 percent. On Friday, Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Joe Biden indicated flexibility on the “37 percent solution.”

Biden was most explicit, saying that raising the rate was “not a negotiable issue; theoretically we can negotiate how far up.”

“There are a lot of things that are possible to put the revenue that the president seeks on the table,” Boehner said when asked about the same thing.

Pelosi, questioned later about Boehner’s remark, said, “It’s not about the rate, it’s about the money.”

But the bleak report from Boehner prolonged the economic uncertainty surrounding the fiscal cliff, which has already riled markets, slowed down business decisions and disrupted the budgeting processes for government at all levels across the country.

Economists say going over the cliff could throw the economy back into a recession.

Obama has called for extending the tax cuts set to expire on December 31 for middle-class taxpayers, but letting them rise for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. Boehner and Republicans oppose his plan, preferring to find new revenues by closing loopholes and reducing deductions.

Boehner characterized as “reckless talk” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s comment this week that the administration was prepared to go over the cliff if tax rates for the wealthiest were not increased.

The downbeat assessment was in line with what Boehner has offered for weeks as the two sides hold their ground on Obama’s call for raising tax rates and Republican calls for cuts in entitlements like the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs for seniors and the poor.

Congressional aides said there were no plans for meetings on the issue this weekend. Future talks will be limited to Boehner and Obama and their staffs as the deadline approached, aides said.

Boehner said his telephone conversation with Obama on Wednesday and renewed staff talks on Thursday had not made any progress.

‘MORE OF THE SAME’

“The phone call was pleasant, but it was just more of the same. Even the conversations the staff had yesterday were just more of the same. It’s time for the president, if he’s serious, to come back to us with a counteroffer,” Boehner said.

Boehner and the House of Representatives leadership submitted their terms for a deal to the White House on Monday, after Obama offered his opening proposal last week.

The plans from both sides would cut deficits by more than $ 4 trillion over the next 10 years but differ on how to get there. Republicans want more drastic spending cuts in entitlement programs, while Obama wants to raise more revenue with tax increases and to boost some spending to spur the sluggish economy.

With polling showing most Americans would blame Republicans if the country goes off the cliff, more House Republicans have been urging Boehner to get an agreement quickly, even if it means tax hikes for the wealthiest.

But Boehner could have a challenge selling an eventual agreement to conservative Tea Party sympathizers in the House, some of whom are openly critical of the concessions the speaker has already made.

Boehner has been under fire from the right for proposing $ 800 billion in new revenue and for removing from House committees four conservative Republican lawmakers who were seen as bucking the leadership.

“When he couples this conservative purging with a negotiated tax increase of $ 800 billion, we are starting to see more and more signs that he’s not dedicated to fiscally conservative beliefs,” Andrew Roth of the influential anti-tax group Club for Growth told Fox News.

If the question of whether to raise tax rates is resolved, the two sides will then try to figure out a way to deal with the spending cuts, perhaps postponing or trimming them. They will also work toward a longer-term deficit-reduction package to be taken up after the new Congress is sworn in next month.

At a news conference on Friday, Pelosi threw her support behind a White House proposal to give Obama power to raise U.S. borrowing authority without legislation from Congress.

The debt ceiling issue, which provoked a 2011 showdown that led to a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, has become entwined in the fiscal cliff debate. The debt limit will need to be raised in the next few months.

“The White House and House Democrats are on the same page on the debt ceiling,” Pelosi said.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Rachelle Younglai, David Lawder and Richard Cowan; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Eric Beech and Peter Cooney)

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‘Fiscal cliff’ woes could extend into 2014-BofA

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – If the United States goes off the “fiscal cliff” and stays there for too long, the economy could suffer into 2014, Bank of America Corp’s head of commercial banking says.

Concern about the so-called fiscal cliff is already causing mid-sized businesses to pause activity and to issue special dividends ahead of possible tax increases, Laura Whitley said in an interview this week.

“It will push you into planning season when people are thinking about not 2013 but 2014,” Whitley said.

The “fiscal cliff” is a $ 600 billion combination of steep tax hikes and deep spending cuts that will kick in next year unless Congress intervenes.

Whitley remains confident that her business will continue to increase total loans, a bright spot for a bank still struggling to recover from the financial crisis.

“We will finish the year strong,” she said.

In some cases, the “fiscal cliff” is actually providing a boon to the bank because customers are using debt to finance their dividend payments. Whitley’s group works with public and private companies.

Bank of America‘s total loans in the third quarter fell 4 percent from a year ago to $ 893 billion as the No. 2 U.S. bank by assets continued to shed unwanted consumer mortgages. But commercial loans, including ones made to large corporations, climbed 7 percent to $ 330.8 billion.

After a year of building capital to meet new international requirements, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said at an investor conference this week that he is pushing his team to make more loans.

Whitley, 51, has led Bank of America’s commercial banking business since the fall of 2011, when the previous head, David Darnell, became co-chief operating officer, overseeing consumer banking and wealth management.

Over a nearly 30-year career at the bank and predecessor companies, she has held posts in middle-market banking, investment banking and wealth management. In 2011, she was also one of the leaders steering a company-wide cost-cutting program called Project New BAC.

Whitley’s unit provides mid-sized businesses with loans, cash management services and other products. In a presentation this week, the bank said lending and treasury management services for commercial customers with revenues between $ 50 million and $ 2 billion brought in $ 6.1 billion in revenue in the first nine months of the year, nearly one-tenth of the company’s total.

The growth comes in a year in which the bank eliminated an undisclosed number of jobs in the commercial lending unit as part of New BAC. The unit, which has just under 5,000 employees, is not planning any more cuts and is now adding 50 lenders in key markets such as Colorado, Georgia and Florida, she said. The bank is also adding staff in sectors such as new media and energy.

Commercial lending has been a growth area for many banks, so Bank of America has faced competition for loans and for employees. Earlier this year, JPMorgan Chase & Co hired some of its bankers as part of an expansion into Bank of America’s hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina.

“At that time I think we were more vulnerable because it was the middle of New BAC and people were concerned about what would that mean for our business,” Whitley said. “The business was very sound.”

(Reporting by Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Protesters surge around Egypt’s presidential palace

CAIRO (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Egyptian protesters surged around the presidential palace on Friday and the opposition rejected President Mohamed Mursi‘s call for dialogue to end a crisis that has polarized the nation and sparked deadly clashes.

The Islamist leader’s deputy said he could delay a December 15 referendum on a constitution that liberals opposed, although the concession only partly meets a list of opposition demands that include scrapping a decree that expanded Mursi‘s powers.

“The people want the downfall of the regime” and “Leave, leave,” crowds chanted after bursting through barbed wire barricades and climbing on tanks guarding the palace of Egypt‘s first freely elected president.

Their slogans echoed those used in a popular revolt that toppled Mursi’s predecessor Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

Vice President Mahmoud Mekky said in a statement sent to local media that the president was prepared to postpone the referendum if that could be done without legal challenge.

The dialogue meeting was expected to go ahead on Saturday in the absence of most opposition factions. “Tomorrow everything will be on the table,” a presidential source said of the talks.

The opposition has demanded that Mursi rescind a November 22 decree giving himself wide powers and delay the vote set for December 15 on a constitution drafted by an Islamist-led assembly which they say fails to meet the aspirations of all Egyptians.

The state news agency reported that the election committee had postponed the start of voting for Egyptians abroad until Wednesday, instead of Saturday as planned. It did not say whether this would affect the timing of voting in Egypt.

Ahmed Said, leader of the liberal Free Egyptians Party, told Reuters that delaying expatriate voting was made to seem like a concession but would not change the opposition’s stance.

He said the core opposition demand was to freeze Mursi’s decree and “to reconsider the formation and structure of the constituent assembly”, not simply to postpone the referendum.

The opposition organized marches converging on the palace which elite Republican Guard units had ringed with tanks and barbed wire on Thursday after violence between supporters and opponents of Mursi killed seven people and wounded 350.

Islamists, who had obeyed a military order for demonstrators to leave the palace environs, held funerals on Friday at Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque for six Mursi partisans who were among the dead. “With our blood and souls, we sacrifice to Islam,” they chanted.

“ARM-TWISTING”

In a speech late on Thursday, Mursi had refused to retract his November 22 decree or cancel the referendum on the constitution, but offered talks on the way forward after the referendum.

The National Salvation Front, the main opposition coalition, said it would not join the dialogue. The Front’s coordinator, Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace laureate, dismissed the offer as “arm-twisting and imposition of a fait accompli”.

Murad Ali, spokesman of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), said opposition reactions were sad: “What exit to this crisis do they have other than dialogue?” he asked.

Mursi’s decree giving himself extra powers sparked the worst political crisis since he took office in June and set off renewed unrest that is dimming Egypt’s hopes of stability and economic recovery after nearly two years of turmoil following the overthrow of Mubarak, a military-backed strongman.

The turmoil has exposed contrasting visions for Egypt, one held by Islamists, who were suppressed for decades by the army, and another by their rivals, who fear religious conservatives want to squeeze out other voices and restrict social freedoms.

Caught in the middle are many of Egypt’s 83 million people who are desperate for an end to political turbulence threatening their precarious livelihoods in an economy under severe strain.

“We are so tired, by God,” said Mohamed Ali, a laborer. “I did not vote for Mursi nor anyone else. I only care about bringing food to my family, but I haven’t had work for a week.”

ECONOMIC PAIN

A long political standoff will make it harder for Mursi’s government to tackle the crushing budget deficit and stave off a balance of payments crisis. Austerity measures, especially cuts in costly fuel subsidies, seem inevitable to meet the terms of a $ 4.8-billion IMF loan that Egypt hopes to clinch this month.

U.S. President Barack Obama told Mursi on Thursday of his “deep concern” about casualties in this week’s clashes and said “dialogue should occur without preconditions”.

The upheaval in the most populous Arab nation worries the United States, which has given billions of dollars in military and other aid since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.

The conflict between Islamists and opponents who each believe the other is twisting the democratic rules to thwart them has poisoned the political atmosphere in Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman, Mahmoud Ghozlan, told Reuters that if the opposition shunned the dialogue “it shows that their intention is to remove Mursi from the presidency and not to cancel the decree or the constitution as they claim”.

Ayman Mohamed, 29, a protester at the palace, said Mursi should scrap the draft constitution and heed popular demands.

“He is the president of the republic. He can’t just work for the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mohamed said of the eight-decade-old Islamist movement that propelled Mursi from obscurity to power.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy; Writing by Edmund Blair and Alistair Lyon; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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No Grammy love for Justin Bieber, One Direction

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Irate fans of Justin Bieber and boy band One Direction took to social media on Thursday to voice their outrage after being snubbed by the Grammys for a chance to win the biggest honors in the music industry.

Indie-pop band fun and rapper Frank Ocean led the 2013 nominations, tying with The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z and Kanye West for six nods. But The Recording Academy overlooked some of the year’s biggest and most commercially successful artists in Wednesday’s nominations.

While Bieber, 18, who won three American Music Awards in November, stayed quiet on his omission, his manager Scooter Braun took to Twitter.

“Grammy board u blew it on this one. the hardest thing to do is transition, keep the train moving. The kid delivered. Huge successful album, sold out tour, and won people over. … This time he deserved to be recognized,” Braun posted in a series of tweets.

Many of Bieber’s 31 million Twitter fans quickly followed suit, with hashtags such as #BieberForGrammys trending on the micro-blogging service.

The Canadian singer, who has never won a Grammy, in June released album “Believe,” showcasing a more grown-up image. The album, which produced top 10 hits “Boyfriend” and “As Long As You Love Me,” has sold more than 1.1 million copies.

British boy band One Direction was also left empty-handed despite their debut album “Up All Night” having topped the Billboard 200 album chart.

The quintet has performed sold-out shows across the world and won three MTV video music awards earlier this year.

The Grammy Awards are voted on by members of The Recording Academy and recognize achievement in 81 categories.

Lady Gaga, rapper Nicki Minaj and Korea’s Psy also failed to snag any nominations.

While Gaga hasn’t released new music this year, focusing on her global tour, Minaj released “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded,” which topped the Billboard 200 chart and spawned singles such as “Starships.”

Psy may have YouTube’s most watched video ever with “Gangnam Style,” – over 897 million views – but he missed out on becoming the first Korean artist to receive a Grammy nod.

The Grammy Awards will be handed out at a live performance show and ceremony on February 10 in Los Angeles.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Jill Serjeant and Todd Eastham)

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Actor Stephen Baldwin charged in NY tax case

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Actor Stephen Baldwin was charged Thursday with failing to pay New York state taxes for three years, amassing a $ 350,000 debt.

Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said Baldwin, of Upper Grandview, skipped his taxes in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

The youngest of the four acting Baldwin brothers pleaded not guilty at an arraignment and was freed without bail. His lawyer, Russell Yankwitt, said Baldwin should not have been charged.

“Mr. Baldwin did not commit any crimes, and he’s working with the district attorney‘s office and the New York State Tax Department to resolve any differences,” Yankwitt said.

The district attorney said Baldwin could face up to four years in prison if convicted. The actor is due back in court on Feb. 5.

Zugibe said Baldwin owes more than $ 350,000 in tax and penalties.

“We cannot afford to allow wealthy residents to break the law by cheating on their taxes,” the district attorney said. “The defendant’s repetitive failure to file returns and pay taxes over a period of several years contributes to the sweeping cutbacks and closures in local government and in our schools.”

Thomas Mattox, the state tax commissioner, said, “It is rare and unfortunate for a personal income tax case to require such strong enforcement measures.”

Baldwin, 46, starred in 1995′s “The Usual Suspects” and appeared in 1989′s “Born on the Fourth of July.” He is scheduled to appear in March on NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

His brothers Alec, William and Daniel are also actors.

A bankruptcy filing in 2009 said Stephen Baldwin owed $ 1.2 million on two mortgages, $ 1 million in taxes and $ 70,000 on credit cards.

In October, Baldwin pleaded guilty in Manhattan to unlicensed driving and was ordered to pay a $ 75 fine. Earlier this year, he lost a $ 17 million civil case in New Orleans after claiming that actor Kevin Costner and a business partner duped him in a deal related to the cleanup of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The actors and others had formed a company that marketed devices that separate oil from water.

Baldwin co-hosts a radio show with conservative talk figure Kevin McCullough.

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Could Medicaid Benefits Get Pushed Off the Fiscal Cliff?

Medicaid provides benefits to more than 60 million Americans, including millions of children, who might not otherwise be able to afford medical care. This sizable government program has been sheltered from large federal cuts but is now vulnerable because of the ongoing talks in Washington to close the budget gap and avoid the fiscal cliff.Sharp cuts to Medicaid would hobble health care reform and hamper efforts to reduce overall health care spending, argues Sara Rosenbuam, a professor of health law and policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services in Washington, DC, in an essay published online December 5 in the New England Journal of Medicine.Medicaid is relatively protected from automatic budget cuts by the Budget Control Act. The program is insulated from the across-the-board spending reduction known as sequestration which is set to take effect if Congress and the president fail to reach a compromise by the end of the year.However, there are still many ways Medicaid–and with it, some of the Affordable Care Act’s promised health care reform changes–could lose ground during the budgetary negotiations. Medicaid is a tempting target: a massive federal program that is only set to grow. Initially, the Affordable Care Act extended its coverage to some 20 million people as states expand eligibility to those who had not previously qualified but who have trouble obtaining private insurance. But in June, the U.S. Supreme Court undercut this provision, ruling that states were not required to extend additional eligibility.Rosenbaum argues that reducing coverage would mean that many millions will continue to go without medical coverage, continuing the shift of expenses on to insurers and other patients. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that insuring people through Medicaid costs 50 percent less per person than subsidizing private insurance from a state-run health insurance exchange. “The problem is that Medicaid’s cost is driven by high enrollment, not excessive per capita spending,” Rosenbaum notes. “As a result, there’s very little money to wring out of Medicaid without shaking its structure in ways that reduce basic coverage.”Medicaid is an effective and efficient investment in health care for large numbers of people, she writes. For example, “much of the health care that Medicaid beneficiaries receive is furnished through safety-net providers such as community health centers, which are highly efficient and accustomed to operating on tight budgets.”One proposal to help trim the federal budget, as outlined by the House Budget Committee, run by Paul Ryan, would remove all of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansions in states and instead give out set grants for states to provide coverage for some qualifying residents. This option is estimated to save some $ 2 trillion in the next 10 years, but, Rosenbaum argues, it is based on “an arbitrary limit” rather than actual, changing needs. “Recent and ongoing demographic shifts…and recent tragedies, such as Hurricane Sandy, underscore the way in which uncontrollable events can cause unexpected surges in the need for government assistance,” she writes.”Such blunt force strategies would leave many poor and disabled Americans without the basic services they need to stay healthy,” Rosenbaum said in a prepared statement. Instead, she suggests redoubling efforts to increase the program’s efficiency, looking to reduce costs of caring for the most expensive patients, such as those that require long-term institutional care and use both Medicaid and Medicare.Other proposals limit states’ abilities to generate funds for Medicaid by levying taxes on hospitals or pharmacies. They also seek to reduce states’ abilities to use Medicaid funds to invest in public hospitals and other centers that care for beneficiaries. “Changing the rules would destabilize these institutions at the very time when expanded insurance coverage is creating greater demand for care,” Rosenbaum writes.But Medicaid is a plump and tempting budgetary target. And unlike Medicare, which provides coverage for seniors, Medicaid does not enjoy the same level of vocal (and financial) support. As Rosenbaum notes, often “Medicaid beneficiaries lack political clout.”

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Negotiators see glimmers of progress on farm bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With a week left to act, agricultural leaders in Congress are still deadlocked on two major issues for a new U.S. farm bill, cuts in crop subsidies and reductions in food stamps, said two of the four key negotiators on Thursday.

But the leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees suggested that recent talks had yielded at least some progress.

Without reauthorization, U.S. farm policy would revert to the provisions of the Agricultural Act of 1949, the last “permanent” farm bill and one crafted for an entirely different U.S. economy.

Among other things, if lawmakers do not agree on a new bill, milk prices in U.S. grocery stores could double next month under terms of the fall-back statute which would also limit plantings while pushing up farm subsidies by billions of dollars.

A new farm bill would now likely be absorbed into an overall budget-cutting bill that could avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts. Farm spending cuts of $ 23 billion to $ 35 billion have been floated.

In speeches at a farm policy conference in Washington on Thursday, the leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees were adamant the final version of the five-year, $ 500 billion bill must include elements that are lightning rods for controversy.

Congress is scheduled to adjourn for the year on December 14, although top Republicans have said it will not adjourn until a solution to the fiscal cliff has been announced.

“I would rather have nothing” than a farm bill that does not give farmers the option of price supports, said House Agriculture chairman Frank Lucas. “You need to give our producers a choice.”

The Senate version of the farm bill, passed in June with proposed spending cuts totaling $ 23 billion, would replace traditional farm subsidies with an insurance-like program that compensates grain and oilseed growers when revenue from a crop is more than 11 percent below average.

Senate Agriculture chairwoman Debbie Stabenow said on Thursday that there were strong differences between the House and Senate versions.

“I would never accept what the House did” in slashing $ 16 billion in funding for food stamps, the steepest cuts in a generation for a program that helps millions of lower-income Americans keep food on the table.

The Senate bill would cut food stamps by $ 4 billion.

Nonetheless, Lucas and Stabenow said a compromise may be agreed upon in time to become part of a must-pass deficit bill.

An Oklahoma Republican, Lucas said “a lot of progress” has been made in closed-door discussions among the four leaders of the committees. Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, echoed that sentiment.

“I am very encouraged by the negotiations … If people of good will sit around the table, you can work it out,” she said.

There are some areas of agreement. Both sides would cut conservation spending by $ 6 billion and crop subsidies by more than $ 13 billion, partly by ending direct-payment subsidies now issued regardless of need.

They also would expand the federally subsidized crop insurance system, now the largest strand in the farm safety net, and convert cotton subsidies to an insurance program, which would resolve a World Trade Organization ruling against the U.S. cotton program.

Still, farm subsidies and food stamps are the chief disputes. And Lucas said a transition period may be needed to allow time to put the new law into effect.

He left open the possibility of another round of the $ 5 billion-a-year direct payment program, depending on the savings demanded by congressional leaders.

The precise target for farm spending cuts may be determined as part of high-level deal-making between the White House and Congress. The White House has suggested cuts of $ 32 billion, for example, including reduction in crop insurance.

(Reporting by Charles Abbott; editing by Ros Krasny and Jim Marshall)

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Toronto mayor to stay in power pending appeal of ouster

TORONTO (Reuters) – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford can stay in power pending an appeal of a conflict of interest ruling that ordered him out of his job as leader of Canada’s biggest city, a court ruled on Wednesday.

Madam Justice Gladys Pardu of the Ontario Divisional Court suspended a previous court ruling that said Ford should be ousted. Ford’s appeal of that ruling is set to be heard on January 7, but a decision on the appeal could take months.

Justice Pardu stressed that if she had not suspended the ruling, Ford would have been out of office by next week. “Significant uncertainty would result and needless expenses may be incurred if a by-election is called,” she said.

If Ford wins his appeal, he will get to keep his job until his term ends at the end of 2014. If he loses, the city council will either appoint a successor or call a special election, in which Ford is likely to run again.

“I can’t wait for the appeal, and I’m going to carry on doing what the people elected me to do,” Ford told reporters at City Hall following the decision.

Ford, a larger-than-life character who took power on a promise to “stop the gravy train” at City Hall, has argued that he did nothing wrong when he voted to overturn an order that he repay money that lobbyists had given to a charity he runs.

Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland disagreed, ruling last week that Ford acted with “willful blindness” in the case, and must leave office by December 10.

Ford was elected mayor in a landslide in 2010, but slashing costs without cutting services proved harder than he expected, and his popularity has fallen steeply.

He grabbed unwelcome headlines for reading while driving on a city expressway, for calling the police when a comedian tried to film part of a popular TV show outside his home, and after reports that city resources were used to help administer the high-school football team he coaches.

The conflict-of-interest drama began in 2010 when Ford, then a city councillor, used government letterhead to solicit donations for the football charity created in his name for underprivileged children.

Toronto’s integrity commissioner ordered Ford to repay the C$ 3,150 ($ 3,173) the charity received from lobbyists and companies that do business with the city.

Ford refused to repay the money, and in February 2012 he took part in a city council debate on the matter and then voted to remove the sanctions against him – despite being warned by the council speaker that voting would break the rules.

He pleaded not guilty in September, stating that he believed there was no conflict of interest as there was no financial benefit for the city. The judge dismissed that argument.

In a rare apology after last week’s court ruling, he said the matter began “because I love to help kids play football”.

Ford faces separate charges in a C$ 6 million libel case about remarks he made about corruption at City Hall, and is being audited for his campaign finances. The penalty in the audit case could also include removal from office.

(Reporting by Claire Sibonney; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Russ Blinch, Nick Zieminski; and Peter Galloway)

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U.S. agency backs Apple in essential patent battle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google unit Motorola Mobility is not entitled to ask a court to stop the sale of Apple iPhones and iPads that it says infringe on a patent that is essential to wireless technology, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday.

In June, Judge Richard Posner in Chicago threw out cases that Motorola, now owned by Google, and Apple had filed against each other claiming patent infringement. Both companies appealed.

In rejecting the Google case, Posner barred the company from seeking to stop iPhone sales because the patent in question was a standard essential patent.

This means that Motorola Mobility had pledged to license it on fair and reasonable terms to other companies in exchange for having the technology adopted as a wireless industry standard.

Standard essential patents, or SEPs, are treated differently because they are critical to ensuring that devices made by different companies work together.

Google appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The FTC said in its court filing that Posner had ruled correctly.

The commission, which has previously argued against courts banning products because they infringe essential patents, reiterated that position on Wednesday.

“Patent hold-up risks harming competition, innovation, and consumers because it allows a patentee to be rewarded not based on the competitive value of its technology, but based on the infringer’s costs to switch to a non-infringing alternative when an injunction is issued,” the commission wrote in its brief.

The case is Apple Inc. and NeXT Software Inc. V. Motorola Inc. and Motorola Mobility Inc., in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, no. 2012-1548, 2012-1549.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz)

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