Estate-tax opponents bend on rewriting of quirky law
Washington – Some of the staunchest advocates of eliminating estate taxes said Wednesday that they could accept, with some reservations, a compromise that stops short of complete repeal.
“It’s hard to get excited about it,” said Pat Toomey, president of the conservative Club for Growth. “I suppose, on balance, it’s better to have this than not to have it.”
The reduction under consideration, scheduled for House debate today, rewrites estate-tax rates in 2010 and beyond. It responds to a quirky and temporary law, part of President Bush’s first tax cut, that erases estate taxes in 2010 and revives them a year later.
The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee recommended rewriting that law by exempting $5 million of an individual’s estate, and $10 million of a couple’s, from taxation beginning in 2010. Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., would let a surviving spouse use any unused portion of an exemption left by a deceased spouse.
Under that plan, an estate worth up to $25 million would be taxed at capital-gains rates, currently 15 percent and scheduled to increase to 20 percent in 2011. Estates worth $25 million or more would be taxed at twice capital gains, currently 30 percent and increasing to 40 percent.
KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka
Tamil Tigers scoff at truce, but will talk
Sri Lanka should expect more suicide bombings if the island returns to full-scale war, the Tamil Tiger rebels’ political chief warned Wednesday.
S.P. Tamilselvan said recent bloodshed has rendered the country’s 4-year-old truce “a piece of paper that has no meaning at all.”
Still, he said the Tigers were willing to sit down with the government again for peace talks. But he insisted government forces stop a surge of bombings and shootings that have killed nearly 700 people since April.
“If a war is to be averted,” he warned, “the key element is in the hands of the government to make a decision to stop this violence and then go into peace talks.”
The government said that is nonsense, and blames the Tigers for the violence that many fear is pushing Sri Lanka back into an ethnic conflict notable largely for its viciousness.
The rebels’ suicide squad, known as the Black Tigers, launched its first attack in July 1987, and since then 240 other rebels have blown themselves up in attacks that have killed President Ranasinghe Premadasa, former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and dozens more.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan
Coalition expects “significant fighting”
Attacks on two military convoys Wednesday in southern Afghanistan left one dead and 13 wounded – including six Canadian soldiers – and the U.S.-led coalition warned that “significant fighting” lies ahead.
A suicide attacker detonated his explosives-filled car near troops on their way back from a patrol in a light armored around 7:30 p.m. in the city of Kandahar, killing one person – an Afghan bystander – and wounding nine, among them two Canadians, Afghan and coalition officials said.
Earlier in the day, a roadside bomb hit a Canadian convoy in the Shahwali Kot district of Kandahar province, leaving four troops wounded, officials said.
JAKARTA, Indonesia
WHO: Bird flu spread among seven relatives
World Health Organization has concluded that human-to-human transmission likely occurred among seven relatives who developed bird flu in Indonesia.
WHO experts said the cluster’s index case was probably infected by sick birds and spread the disease to six family members, one of whom, a boy, then passed it on to his father.
The U.N. agency stressed the virus has not mutated and that no cases were detected beyond the family.
Seven of the eight relatives died last month, but one was buried before samples could be taken to confirm bird flu infection.
STATESBORO, Ga.
Man uses bartender’s checks to pay at bar
A 21-year-old man was arrested after trying to buy drinks with a checkbook he found at a bar. But the checkbook’s owner was one of the bartenders serving him.
Jody Brian Minor was arrested on theft and forgery charges early Saturday morning, Statesboro Police Detective Terry Briley said. He was “extraordinarily intoxicated,” Briley said.
Minor was at Dingus Magee’s bar when he found a checkbook and began paying his tab with it, Briley said. One of the bar’s employees realized the checks belonged to fellow bartender Hubble Beasley, who called police.
Briley said Minor’s father has paid the delinquent $129 bar tab.
CHICAGO
Gang members face drug-ring changes
Federal prosecutors Wednesday charged more than three dozen members of a Chicago street gang with running a drug ring that sold crack cocaine, marijuana, heroin and the potentially lethal prescription painkiller fentanyl.
Fentanyl-laced heroin has been blamed for more than 200 overdose-related deaths across the eastern half of the country in recent months, at least 70 in the Chicago area.
