Internet down nationwide in Syria

Lawmakers threaten cutoff of Palestinian aid

Republicans scoff at White House’s ‘fiscal cliff’ opening bid

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 5 hrs ago

Republican House Speaker John Boehner speaks at a Capitol Hill press conference on Thursday. (J. Scott Applewh …Bolstered by his reelection, President Barack Obama on Thursday made a detailed opening bid to Congressional Republicans for averting the so-called fiscal cliff -- the mix of tax hikes and deep spending cuts that risk plunging the economy into a new recession come 2013. Republicans flatly rejected the offer, which mostly repackaged Obama's previous budget and jobs-creation plans while looking to avoid future fights over raising the country's debt limit.

Obama's proposal, delivered by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Republican House Speaker John Boehner, called for $1.6 trillion in new tax revenues over 10 years plus some $400 billion in savings in popular entitlement programs including Medicare, the government health care plan for seniors. It also included some relief for Americans hit by the home foreclosure crisis and an extension of both the payroll tax holiday and unemployment assistance.

The package also includes a roughly $50 billion jobs plan, mostly infrastructure spending.

The White House is using the blueprint to address the thorny issue of hiking the federal debt limit.

Right now, Congressional approval is required before the federal debt ceiling can be raised. Opposition to boosting the debt limit by many Republican lawmakers in 2011 brought the U.S. government close to default. Still smarting from that debacle, the White House wants to give lawmakers the right to block a debt increase rather than vote to approve it.

The offer landed with a thud on Capitol Hill, where Republicans bluntly rejected it and expressed shock that the president would essentially stick to the plan he trumpeted starting in September 2011 and all through the campaign. It includes tax increases on the richest Americans, something Republicans have publicly refused to approve.

"I remain hopeful that productive conversations can be had in the days ahead, but the White House has to get serious," Boehner told reporters. "This is not a game. Jobs are on the line. The American economy is on the line. And this is a moment for adult leadership."

"No substantive progress has been made in the talks between the White House and the House over the last two weeks," Boehner charged.

In response, the White House redoubled its assault on Republicans for refusing to raise taxes on income above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families.

"Right now, the only thing preventing us from reaching a deal that averts the fiscal cliff and avoids a tax hike on 98 percent of Americans is the refusal of Congressional Republicans to ask the very wealthiest individuals to pay higher tax rates," spokesman Josh Earnest said. "It's time for Republicans in Washington to join the chorus of other voices - from the business community to middle class Americans across the country - who support a balanced approach that asks more from the wealthiest Americans."

In a sign of the political gamesmanship at work, Republican aides — not the White House -- disclosed the offer even as they panned it. And the early response from White House aides was to point to Obama's victory over Mitt Romney to suggest that Americans will side with the president over his political foes.

Despite Boehner's blunt words, there have been signs on both sides that a compromise could be worked out. Some Republicans have publicly said they will support raising tax revenues, a party taboo, while the White House signaled that Obama would not insist that the wealthiest Americans pay the same tax rates they faced under Bill Clinton.

Chris Moody contributed to this report.

U.S. soldier in WikiLeaks case says he was held in a "cage"

Army Private First Class Bradley Manning is escorted in handcuffs as he leaves the courthouse in Fort Meade, Maryland June 6, 2012. REUTERS/Jose Luis Magana

FORT MEADE, Maryland (Reuters) - A U.S. Army private facing court-martial on suspicion of leaking secret documents to theWikiLeaks website testified on Thursday he was confined to a "cage" in the early days after his arrest in 2010, and thought he would die there.

Bradley Manning, in his first public comments since his arrest inIraq, said his isolation quickly led to a breakdown, and his military captors eventually put him on suicide watch.

"My nights were my days and my days were my nights," Manningsaid. "It all blended together after a couple of days."

The low-ranking soldier Manning faces up to life in prison if convicted of charges he played a role in the massive leaking of secrets by WikiLeaks, which stunned governments around the world by publishing intelligence documents and diplomatic cables, mostly in 2010.

Manning's lawyers were working on a plea deal involving less serious charges that would result in a prison term of at least 16 years, one of his attorneys said.

His captors initially gave Manning little or no information about the charges against him as he was taken from Iraq to a U.S. detention facility in Kuwait, he said.

Manning said he was confined to a structure he called a "cage" of eight feet square inside a tent. He suffered a breakdown about a month after his May 2010 arrest, and guards later found a noose in the cage. Manning had made the noose but failed to recall he had done so because he was so disoriented, he said.

"I remember thinking I'm going to die stuck here in this cage," Manning said. "I thought I was going to die in that cage. That's what I saw - an animal cage."

Upon being transferred to Quantico, Virginia, in July of 2010, Manning was placed in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day, on suicide watch with a guard checking on him every few minutes. He was often noticed playing peek-a-boo in the mirror.

"The most entertaining thing in there was the mirror. I spent quite a lot of time with the mirror," Manning said. When asked why, he said, "Just sheer, complete, out-of-my-mind boredom."

The private's testimony, which was set to continue into Friday when he would be cross-examined, came on the third day of a hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, to determine whether his case should proceed to a full court-martial.

In the absence of a plea deal, Manning's case could go to trial, where he faces possible life imprisonment if he is convicted of all the security breach charges against him.

LINKS TO WIKILEAKS

Charges include stealing records belonging to the United States and wrongfully causing them to be published on the Internet and aiding enemies of the United States, identified by prosecutors as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an affiliate of the militant network founded by the late Osama bin Laden.

Prosecutors have alleged that Manning, without authorization while on intelligence duty, disclosed hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, military reports and video of a military helicopter attack in Iraq in which two Reuters journalists were killed.

WikiLeaks has never confirmed Manning was the source of any documents it released.

In pre-trial litigation, prosecutors have presented testimony legal experts say could be used to build a case Manning had been in email contact with Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' Australian-born founder.

Assange has spent nearly six months in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he sought refuge to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning in a sexual molestation case.

Assange and his supporters have said the Swedish case against him could be part of a secret plot to have him shipped for trial to the United States and either executed or imprisoned at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. officials have denied those assertions. But they have acknowledged a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, has been collecting evidence about WikiLeaks. U.S. officials have not ruled out criminal charges against Assange.

Earlier on Thursday, Assange played down reports that his health was declining after Ecuadorean officials said he was suffering from a chronic lung ailment.

(Writing by Dan Burns; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Eric Walsh)

US finds Guantanamo prisoner death was overdose

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — An autopsy has found that a Guantanamo Bay prisoner who died in September took an overdose of medication in an apparent suicide, a U.S. official said Thursday.

Adnan Latif, who was found unconscious in his cell in a disciplinary wing of the prison at the U.S. base in Cuba, took an overdose of psychiatric medication, according to a senior Defense Department official.

The official said it had not yet been determined how Latif, who was from Yemen and had a history of mental illness and clashes with guards, managed to collect enough medication for a fatal dose. Investigators are looking into whether he hoarded pills to take all at once.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the autopsy results have not yet been released and the case remains the subject of an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

The U.S. military does not intend to disclose the results of the autopsy or discuss the case in further detail until after Latif's remains are returned to his country, said Army Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for the U.S. military's Miami-based Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over Guantanamo. The remains are at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

His death was the seventh suicide at the prison, where the U.S. now holds 166 men. The deaths of two other prisoners were determined to be from natural causes.

The finding of suicide in the Latif case was first reported by the website Truthout, followed by The New York Times.

David Remes, a lawyer for Latif, said he is skeptical of the military's conclusion and said it would be difficult for the prisoner to accumulate enough medication to commit suicide because he was frequently searched and monitored inside the prison.

Remes said he thinks it's possible that Latif was given excessive or incorrect medication. "Given a choice between blaming themselves and blaming Adnan, the choice they made was all but preordained," he said.

Latif, who was in his 30s, was held at Guantanamo for more than a decade. The U.S. government accused him of training with the Taliban to fight the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. He was never charged and was apparently among about 30 prisoners from Yemen who could not be sent back because their country is considered too unstable to prevent former prisoners from engaging in militant activities.

At Guantanamo, he was among dozens of prisoners who waged hunger strikes to protest their captivity. At the time of his death he was in a disciplinary unit for allegedly hurling bodily fluids at a guard.

He had challenged his confinement with a civil petition known as a writ of habeas corpus. In July 2010, a judge ruled a classified report was insufficient evidence that he had trained at the militant camp and ordered his release.

The government appealed to a higher court, which ruled that courts should assume the government documents were accurate and reliable. In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, which lawyers said has caused increased despair among Guantanamo prisoners.

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