NEWS,19.12.2012

Obama wants gun policy recommendations by JanUARY

US President Barack Obama has directed a Cabinet group to give him recommendations by next month on ways to tighten the regulation of guns in the wake of the Connecticut massacre of schoolchildren.Responding to national outrage over Friday's killing of 20 children, aged six and seven-years-old, Obama held a White House news conference to announce that Vice President Joe Biden will lead an effort to craft policies to crack down on gun violence.Obama said he believed Americans would support the reinstatement of a ban on the sale of military-style assault weapons, a ban on the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips, and a law requiring background checks on buyers before all gun purchases, which would close a loophole that allows sales at open-air gun shows without such background checks.Saying gun control cannot be the only solution to the problem, Obama expressed support for making it easier for Americans to get access to mental health care "at least as easy as access to a gun," he said.Under pressure from fellow Democrats to act, Obama insisted the guns issue would not be ignored this time. Previous appeals for more gun regulation have died even as mass shootings have continued.With Biden at his side, Obama said the group would give him proposals that he could outline in his State of the Union speech in late January. Cabinet members involved include Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Education Secretary Arne Duncan."This is not some Washington commission," Obama said. "This is not something where folks are going to be studying the issue for six months and publishing a report that gets read and then pushed aside."This is a team that has a very specific task to pull together real reforms right now."The Newtown, Connecticut, shooting of so many schoolchildren by a 20-year-old gunman has shocked Americans in ways that previous mass shootings have not. The gunman's mother and six adults at the school were also killed before he shot himself.Some previously adamant opponents of increased gun control have expressed a willingness to consider more regulation. Even the powerful National Rifle Association, the lobby group that has sought time and again to stymie gun legislation, said this week that it would be prepared to offer meaningful contributions to ensure there is no repeat of Newtown.Obama himself has done little to rein in America's gun culture in his four years in office. His administration has to a certain extent expanded gun rights by permitting the carrying of firearms in national parks.Asked why he has been a no-show on the subject until now, Obama defended himself, saying he has been dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."I don't think I've been on vacation," he said, adding the Newtown massacre "should be a wake-up call for all of us"."We may never know all the reasons why this tragedy happened," Obama told reporters. "We do know that every day since, more Americans have died of gun violence."If there is even one thing that we can do to prevent any of these events, we have a deep obligation, all of us, to try."We know this is a complex issue that stirs deeply held passions and political divides and, as I said on Sunday night, there's no law or set of laws that can prevent every senseless act of violence in our society."The fact that we can't prevent every act of violence doesn't mean we can't steadily reduce the violence and prevent the very worst violence."Obama added he would push such a proposal "without delay", citing as a model a previous ten-year ban on assault weapons military-style semi-automatics that Congress allowed to expire in 2004.Whatever steps Obama's task force comes up with are likely to face some criticism because many Republicans see the US Constitution's Second Amendment right to bear arms as sacrosanct."What we're looking for here is a thoughtful approach that says we can preserve our Second Amendment, we can make sure that responsible gun owners are able to carry out their activities, but that we're gonna actually be serious about the safety side of this," Obama said.Obama has tapped Biden to lead other high-profile initiatives, including efforts on a deficit-reduction compromise with congressional Republicans in 2011.US Representative Ron Barber, who was wounded in a 2011 Arizona shooting that targeted his predecessor, Gabrielle Giffords, welcomed the effort and echoed other Democratic lawmakers' calls to ban military-grade guns."We cannot go on blithely believing that we can solve this problem in other ways," Barber said at a news conference earlier at the Capitol."We have to look at the weaponry used and we have to look at the people who use it and we have to do something about both,"Friday's massacre was the fourth shooting rampage to claim multiple lives in the United States this year.

Obama vows to veto fiscal cliff plan

President Barack Obama on Wednesday warned Republicans he would veto their "Plan B" plan to avert the looming fiscal cliff crisis, saying it would dump pain disproportionately on the middle class. The move came as hopes faded for an imminent deal to avert a year-end combination of tax hikes and huge spending cuts which analysts fear could spark a new US recession and damage the fragile global economic recovery.Republican House Speaker John Boehner framed the legislation, which would raise taxes on those earning more than $1m, in case his talks with Obama on a broader plan to trim the US deficit do not bear fruit by the deadline.His gambit was the latest move in a tense game of brinkmanship between the Democratic White House and Republican House, which has deep political ramifications for the balance of power in Washington during Obama's second term.White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said the Boehner plan meant that the wealthiest Americans would still benefit while students and families would lose critical tax cuts and health and unemployment benefits they need.Pfeiffer said the plan would also "perversely" not include spending cuts that Republicans have demanded in talks with Obama."This approach does not meet the test of balance, and the president would veto the legislation in the unlikely event of its passage."If Boehner and Obama do not reach a deal before the end of the year, George W Bush-era tax cuts on all Americans will expire and taxes will go up.Obama campaigned on renewing tax cuts for people earning less than $250 000 but has since moved the threshold in negotiations with Boehner up to $400 000.Boehner spokesperson Brendan Buck called what he said was the White House's opposition to a back-up plan "bizarre and irrational”."In the absence of a 'balanced' solution from the president ... we must act to stop taxes from rising across the board in 12 days," he said.Earlier this week, hopes were rising for a deal but Boehner's decision to put a Plan B on the House floor has some observers wondering whether he can sell a deal with Obama to his own restive caucus.White House officials privately say that they believe Obama has made significant compromises in search of a deal with Boehner, including agreeing to a Republican plan to calculate the impact of inflation on the Social Security retirement plan, which could slow the growth of benefits.

Global disasters cost $140bn

Natural and man-made disasters around the world this year, including Superstorm Sandy, will cost at least $140bn (€106bn), according to a study published by Swiss insurance group Swiss Re on Wednesday.The insurance industry will cover about $65bn of all losses from such catastrophes, the study showed, ticking in above the average for the past 10 years.It nevertheless marked a significant drop from 2011, when massive earthquakes and flooding forced insurers to dish out more than $120bn to cover disaster-related losses.Natural catastrophes alone this year will lead to more than 11 000 deaths and $60bn in insured claims, Swiss Re said in a statement.But after two years when natural disasters such as the devastating Haiti earthquake and Pakistan floods were largely concentrated in Asia Pacific and South America, "2012 is dominated by large, weather-related losses in the US", it added. The "top-five insured loss events" had all happened in the US, it pointed out. They included Hurricane Sandy which wreaked havoc across the east coast of the country, as well as in the Caribbean and the Bahamas at the end of October."Estimates for the insured cost of the devastation are between $20 and $25bn," it said, though "it is still too soon to gauge the final overall damage".In addition, extremely dry weather conditions in the US had led to "one of the worst droughts in recent decades, affecting more than half of the country", the study showed. Drought-related agricultural losses there were expected to swell to $11bn, it added.

Claims from superstorm Sandy in check

The Lloyd's of London insurance market said it can cope comfortably with claims from Superstorm Sandy that could cost it up to $2.5bn, the third-biggest loss in its 324-year history.There will be no impact on the market's central fund, a cash reserve used to meet claims, if any of the insurance syndicates operating at Lloyd's finds itself unable to pay."The Lloyd's insurance market remains financially strong and, while claims from this storm could still evolve over time, the market's total exposure is well within worst-case scenarios," Chief Executive Richard Ward said on Wednesday. Sandy, which killed 132 people as it swept through the northeastern United States on October 29, is expected to cost the insurance industry up to $25bn, making it the second-costliest storm after hurricane Katrina in 2005. At the top of the Lloyd's estimated range, Sandy would displace last year's Thai floods as the market's third-biggest loss, surpassed only by Katrina and the September 11 terrorist attacks. Those disasters cost Lloyd's $4.3bn and $3bn respectively, without adjusting for inflation.Sandy came towards the end of a relatively uneventful year for natural catastrophes, in contrast with 2011, which was the industry's second-costliest year on record after Japan's Tohoku earthquake and Thailand's worst floods in half a century. Analysts say that insurers' claims bill for 2012, as a whole, will be relatively subdued and most should turn a profit for the year."My overriding view is that all Sandy will do is turn what would have been an exceptionally profitable year back into an average to slightly below average year," Espirito Santo analyst Joy Ferneyhough said. Insurers look set to absorb about $65bn in catastrophe claims this year, slightly more than half the $120bn they picked up in 2011, reinsurer Swiss Re said on Wednesday. Lloyd's, a group of about 80 competing insurance syndicates that traces its origins back to a 17th century London coffee house where merchants insured ships, has historically borne 10% of the claims from big natural disasters.Insurers and analysts have said that accurately assessing the final bill from Sandy is difficult because of the size of the affected region, which includes New York and other densely populated and industrialised areas.