Jan. 2 Photo Brief: A fiscal cliff deal is made, Ray Lewis to retire, over-harvesting of fins, Hugh Hefner gets hitched
New fights emerge from “fiscal cliff” deal, Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis to retire, advocates worried about over-harvesting of fins in China, Hugh Hefner gets hitched and more in today’s daily brief.
-
- U.S. Vice President Joseph R. Biden (L) looks on as U.S. President Barack Obama makes a statement in the White House Briefing Room following passage by the House of Representatives of tax legislation on January 1, 2013. (Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)
-
- Members of the House of Representatives, including Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) (L), after voting for legislation to avoid the “fiscal cliff” during a rare New Year’s Day session January 1, 2013 in Washington, DC. Voting 257-167, the House passed a bill that the Senate passed the night before, clearing the way for President Barack Obama to sign the legislation to avoid the “fiscal cliff.” (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
-
- Rest In Peace is scrawled on a wall in the alley near the spot where 20-year-old Octavius Dontrell Lamb was shot yesterday and killed, on January 2, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. Lamb was the first murder victim of 2013 in Chicago, a city which saw at least 506 murders in 2012. Fifteen people were shot in Chicago on the first day of the year, three fatally. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
-
- An Afghan woman stands to receive winter supplies at a UNHCR distribution center for needy refugees at the Women’s Garden in Kabul on January 2, 2013. Hundreds of families living in makeshift shelters around the Afghan capital Kabul collected blankets, charcoal and other supplies on January 2 as authorities struggle to avoid last year’s deadly winter toll. (Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- Soldiers from the Chadian contingent of the Central African Multinational Force (FOMAC) hold up their weapons in Damara, about 46 miles north of Bangui January 2, 2013. Rebels in Central African Republic said they had halted their advance on the capital on Wednesday and agreed to start peace talks, averting a clash with regionally backed troops in the mineral-rich nation. (Luc Gnago/Reuters)
-
- Chadian soldiers, part of a convoy of the FOMAC multinational force of central African states, man a position near Damara on January 2, 2013. The commander of the multinational African force FOMAC warned rebels in the Central African Republic against trying to take the key town of Damara, saying it would “amount to a declaration of war”. Damara is the last strategic town between the Seleka rebel coalition and the capital Bangui, after the rebels seized much of the country in a three-week advance that began in the north and has brought them to within 100 miles of the capital, in the south. (Soa Kambou/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- Israeli security forces talk with Jewish settlers from the Esh Kodesh settlement as they stage a sit-in in an attempt to prevent Palestinians from working in their fields in the northern West Bank village of Jalod on January 2, 2013. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men take part in a yoga class at a studio in Ramat Beit Shemesh, about 12 miles from Jerusalem January 1, 2013. Almost a dozen devout Jewish men meet weekly at the studio, the only one of its kind in a neighbourhood where tensions have flared in the past between religious and secular Jews. The studio offers gender separated classes in accordance with the religious beliefs against mixing of the sexes in public. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
-
- A devotee wears a big turban made from colorful sheets of cloth as he sits outside the shrine of Muslim Sufi Saint Data Ganj Bakhsh on his death anniversary in Lahore January 2, 2013. Devotees started a three-day celebration of the 969th festival of Hazrat Ali Bin Usman popularly known as Data Gunj Bakhsh. (Mohsin Raza/Reuters)
-
- Shi’ite pilgrims pray at the Imam Hussein shrine during the Shi’ite religious ceremony of Arbain in the holy city of Kerbala, 50 miles southwest of Baghdad, January 2, 2013. (Mohammed Ameen/Reuters)
-
- Shark fins drying in the sun cover the roof of a factory building in Hong Kong on January 2, 2013. Environmentalists and other concerned groups have raised concerns that the over-harvesting of fins is causing an enviormental calamity. Hong Kong is one of the world’s biggest markets for shark fins, which are used to make soup that is an expensive staple at Chinese banquets. (Antony Dickson/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- After more than a month of eruption, lava continues to flow from Tolbachik, one of many active volcanoes on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula as seen in this NASA image released on January 2, 2013. Response Team (KVERT) the eruption continued through December 30, 2012. (NASA Earth Observatory/HO via AFP/Getty Images)
-
- Shoes hang on a power line at Letna park overlooking Prague early January 2, 2013. Czech teenagers, who skateboard at the park, throw their damaged and unwanted shoes over the wire at the city’s main skating hangout. (Petr Josek/Reuters)
-
- Baltimore Ravens’ Ray Lewis speaks at a press conference where he announces that this will be his last season playing NFL football and he will retire after the season. (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
-
- Parents (R and 2nd R) of a newly married groom wear costumes and make-up, in accordance to a local custom, as they sit next to the parents of the bride in Liquan county of Xianyang city, Shaanxi province, January 1, 2013. The custom, called “Nao Gong Po” in Chinese, teases the groom’s parents by having them wear ugly costumes and make-up in the belief it helps them improve their affinity with others. The Chinese characters on the placards read, “I want to have a grandson” (L) and “I want to wash diapers” (R). The bride is seen at the back. Picture taken January 1, 2013. (Rooney Chen/Reuters)
-
- Octogenarian Playboy founder Hugh Hefner poses with his bride Crystal Harris and dog Charlie at their New Year Eve wedding at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills, California in this handout photo taken on December 31, 2012. (Elayne Lodge/PEI/Handout via Reuters)
Bigger fights loom after “fiscal cliff” deal
Thomas Ferraro and John Whitesides
Reuters | 3:59 p.m. EST, January 2, 2013
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans face even bigger budget battles in the next two months after a hard-fought “fiscal cliff” deal narrowly averted devastating tax hikes and spending cuts.
The agreement, approved late on Tuesday by the Republican-led House of Representatives, was a victory for Obama, who had won re-election on a promise to address budget woes in part by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
But it set up potentially bruising showdowns over the next two months on spending cuts and an increase in the nation’s limit on borrowing. Republicans, angry that the “fiscal cliff” deal did little to curb the federal deficit, promised to use the debt-ceiling debate to win deep spending cuts next time.
Republicans believe they will have greater leverage over Democrat Obama when they must consider raising the borrowing limit, likely in February.
The stakes are perhaps even higher in the debt issue than in the fiscal cliff because failure to close a deal could mean a default on U.S. debt or another downgrade in the U.S. credit rating. A similar showdown in 2011 ultimately led to a credit downgrade.
In fact, bond rating agency Moody’s Investors Service warned Washington on Wednesday it must do more to cut the deficit than it did in the “fiscal cliff” measure if the country is to turn around its negative sovereign debt rating.
Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said his party had to be ready to do whatever it takes to get spending cuts.
“Our opportunity here is on the debt ceiling,” Toomey said on MSNBC. “We Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown, which is what that could mean.”
Yet Obama may be emboldened by winning the first round of fiscal fights when dozens of House Republicans buckled and voted for major tax hikes for the first time in two decades.
Deteriorating relations between leaders in the two parties during the fiscal cliff episode do not bode well for the more difficult fights ahead.
Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell had to step in to work out the final deal amid frayed relations between House Speaker John Boehner and Obama.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid also drew the ire of Boehner, who told Reid in the White House to “Go fuck yourself” after a tense meeting last week, aides said. His retort came after the Democrat accused Boehner of running “dictatorship” in the House.
Bemoaning the intensity of the fiscal cliff fight, Obama urged “a little less drama” when the Congress and White House next address budget issues like the government’s rapidly mounting $16 trillion debt load. He vowed to avoid another divisive debt-ceiling fight ahead of the late-February deadline for raising the limit.
“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 before he headed to Hawaii to resume an interrupted vacation.
Baltimore neighborhoods
Baltimore street photographers
Year in review
Freddie Gray: protests, aftermath
24 hours with...
A. Aubrey Bodine
Viewing Baltimore from above