Eleven dead in Damascus gas station blast

AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - At least 11 people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded at a crowded petrol station in the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, opposition activists said.

The station was packed with people queuing for fuel that has become increasingly scarce during the country's 21-month-long insurgency aimed at overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad.

The semi-official al-Ikhbariya television station showed footage of 10 burnt bodies and Red Crescent workers searching for victims at the site.

The opposition Revolution Leadership Council in Damascus said the explosion was caused by a booby-trapped car.

There was no immediate indication of who was responsible for the bombing in the Barzeh al-Balad district, whose residents include members of the Sunni Muslim majority and other religious and ethnic minorities.

"The station is usually packed even when it has no fuel," said an opposition activist who did not want to be named. "There are lots of people who sleep there overnight, waiting for early morning fuel consignments."

It was the second time that a petrol station has been hit in Damascus this week. Dozens of people were incinerated in an air strike as they waited for fuel on Wednesday, according to opposition sources.

In northern Syria, rebels were battling to seize an air base in their campaign against the air power that Assad has used to bomb rebel-held towns.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the uprising and civil war, the United Nations said this week, a much higher death toll than previously thought.

DRAMATIC ADVANCES

After dramatic advances over the second half of 2012, the rebels now hold wide swathes of territory in the north and east, but they cannot protect towns and villages from Assad's helicopters and jets.

Hundreds of rebel fighters were attempting to storm the Taftanaz air base, near the highway that links Syria's two main cities, Aleppo and Damascus.

A rebel fighter speaking from near the Taftanaz base overnight said much of the base was still in loyalist hands but insurgents had managed to destroy a helicopter and a fighter jet on the ground.

The northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the base.

The government's SANA news agency said the base had not fallen and that the military had "strongly confronted an attempt by the terrorists to attack the airport from several axes, inflicting heavy losses among them and destroying their weapons and munitions".

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain, said as many as 800 fighters were involved in the assault, including Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, a powerful group that Washington considers terrorists.

Taftanaz is mainly a helicopter base, used for missions to resupply army positions cut off by the rebels, as well as for dropping crude "barrel bombs" on rebel-controlled areas.

Near Minakh, another northern air base that rebels have surrounded, government forces have retaliated by shelling and bombing nearby towns.

NIGHTLY BOMBARDMENTS

In the town of Azaz, where the bombardment has become a near nightly occurrence, shells hit a family house overnight. Zeinab Hammadi said her two wounded daughters, aged 10 and 12, had been rushed across the border to Turkey, one with her brain exposed.

"We were sleeping and it just landed on us in the blink of an eye," she said, weeping as she surveyed the damage.

Family members tried to salvage possessions from the wreckage, men lifting out furniture and children carrying out their belongings in tubs.

"He (Assad) wants revenge against the people," said Abu Hassan, 33, working at a garage near the destroyed house. "What is the fault of the children? Are they the ones fighting?"

Opposition activists said warplanes struck a residential building in another rebel-held northern town, Hayyan, killing at least eight civilians.

Video footage showed men carrying dismembered bodies of children and dozens of people searching for victims in the rubble. The provenance of the video could not be independently confirmed.

In addition to their tenuous grip on the north, the rebels also hold a crescent of suburbs on the edge of Damascus, which have come under bombardment by government forces that control the center of the capital.

On Wednesday, according to opposition activists, dozens of people died in an inferno caused by an air strike on a petrol station in a Damascus suburb where residents were lining up for fuel.

The civil war in Syria has become the longest and bloodiest of the conflicts that rose out of uprisings across the Arab world in the past two years.

Assad's family has ruled for 42 years since his father seized power in a coup. The war pits rebels, mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, against a government supported by members of Assad's Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect and some members of other minorities who fear revenge if he falls.

The West, most Sunni-ruled Arab states and Turkey have called for Assad to step down. He is supported by Russia and Shi'ite Iran.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman and Dominic Evans in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Ruth Pitchford and Giles Elgood)

Read More..

Football: Lampard braced for season-end Chelsea exit, says agent

LONDON: Frank Lampard will definitely leave Chelsea at the end of the season, the England international's agent confirmed Thursday, but he will not be tempted to see out his career in China.

The 34-year-old Lampard is into the final months of his contract with the European champions and a new deal has yet to be agreed.

"At the moment, Frank is only thinking of the present. As far as the future is concerned, the only thing that is certain is that his team will change at the end of the season," agent Steve Kutner told www.Cittaceleste.it.

"Frank wants to play for a great team, fight for important goals and win other trophies.

"A player of his calibre should continue playing at the highest level. Serie A could be more than just a possibility," added Kutner, who insisted that a move to China or Russia was not on the agenda.

Los Angeles Galaxy, Chinese Super League side Guizhou Renhe and Premier League strugglers QPR have all been recently linked with a move for Lampard.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

1 pilot, 3 airhostesses found drunk since Christmas

NEW DELHI: The fear of losing their flying licence led to pilots celebrating Yuletide and ushering in the New Year on a sober note this year. Authorities caught only one pilot — but three airhostesses — reporting to work in an inebriated state during breathalyser (BA) tests done at airports from Christmas to Wednesday.

All four flight personnel were from Jet Airways. "We have a zero tolerance policy for this issue and carry out strict BA tests. Whoever fails the tests is, as per DGCA guidelines, suspended for three months," said aJet spokesperson.

A DGCA official said two flight crew members failed the BA test in Chennai and one each in Delhi and Kochi. "The punishment is very severe now for pilots failing BA tests as their licence is suspended for three months when caught first time and for five years for the second time. This means end of flying career as a five-year suspension will lead to all eligibilities lapsing," he added.

Read More..

Tax Deal Done - but How Can Obama Sign It?

Jan 2, 2013 6:29pm

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Congress officially delivered the bill to avert the fiscal cliff to the White House this afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner’s office told ABC News.

Now the question is when will the President sign it?

The bill, passed late on New Year’s Day, expires tomorrow at 11:59 a.m. when the current session of Congress concludes. If President Obama doesn’t sign it by then, constitutionally the bill is dead.

But this evening, eighteen hours before the deadline, the President is on a golf course in Hawaii.  And the bill is in Washington at the White House.

Administration officials won’t say what they will do despite repeated inquiries from ABC News.

There seem to be two options:  1) An Air Force jet can deliver the bill to Hawaii (better leave quickly!) in time for the President to sign it before 11:59 Eastern Standard Time; or, 2) The White House can use a presidential “auto-pen.”

The simple mechanical device uses a template of the presidential signature to scrawl it on paper if activated by the White House at Obama’s direction.

But would an auto-pen – usually used to sign insignificant correspondence and photographs – pass constitutional muster?  We don’t know.  The question has never been tested by the courts.

A 2005 legal study commissioned by former President George W. Bush determined that use of the autopen is constitutional but acknowledged the possibility that its use could be challenged.  Bush never used the autopen, officials from his administration told ABC.

President Obama is only believed to have used the autopen once to sign a piece of major legislation — the 2011 extension of the Patriot Act — which reached his desk while he was on a diplomatic trip to Europe. Officials invoked national security concerns to justify the move.

Use of the autopen has been controversial.  Conservative groups alleged last summer that Obama used an autopen to sign condolence letters to the families of Navy SEALs killed in a Chinook crash in Afghanistan — a charge the White House disputed flatly as false.

In 2004, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was criticized for using an autopen to sign condolence letters to the families of fallen troops.

And in 1992 then-Vice President Dan Quayle even got into some hot water over his use of the autopen on official correspondence during an appearance on “This Week with David Brinkley.” More HERE.

ABC News’ Ann Compton and Devin Dwyer contributed reporting.

SHOWS: World News

Read More..

Central African Republic rebels halt advance, agree to peace talks

DAMARA, Central African Republic (Reuters) - 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.

The Seleka rebels had pushed to within striking distance of Bangui after a three-week onslaught and threatened to oust President Francois Bozize, accusing him of reneging on a previous peace deal and cracking down on dissidents.

Their announcement on Wednesday gave the leader only a limited reprieve as the fighters told Reuters they might insist on his removal in the negotiations.

"I have asked our forces not to move their positions starting today because we want to enter talks in (Gabon's capital) Libreville for a political solution," said Seleka spokesman Eric Massi, speaking by telephone from Paris.

"I am in discussion with our partners to come up with proposals to end the crisis, but one solution could be a political transition that excludes Bozize," he said.

Bozize on Wednesday sacked his Army Chief of Staff and took over the defense minister's role from his son, Jean Francis Bozize, according to a decree read on national radio, a day after publicly criticizing the military for failing to repel the rebels.

The advance by Seleka, an alliance of mostly northeastern rebel groups, was the latest in a series of revolts in a country at the heart of one of Africa's most turbulent regions - and the most serious since the Chad-backed insurgency that swept Bozize to power in 2003.

Diplomatic sources have said talks organized by central African regional bloc ECCAS could start on January 10. The United States, the European Union and France have called on both sides to negotiate and spare civilians.

Central African Republic is one of the least developed countries in the world despite its deposits of gold, diamonds and other minerals. French nuclear energy group Areva mines the country's Bakouma uranium deposit - France's biggest commercial interest in its former colony.

RELIEF IN BANGUI

News of the rebel halt eased tension in Bangui, where residents had been stockpiling food and water and staying indoors after dark.

"They say they are no longer going to attack Bangui, and that's great news for us," said Jaqueline Loza in the crumbling riverside city.

ECCAS members Chad, Congo Republic, Gabon and Cameroon have sent hundreds of soldiers to reinforce CAR's army after a string of rebel victories since early December.

Gabonese General Jean Felix Akaga, commander of the regional force, said his troops were defending the town of Damara, 75 km (45 miles) north of Bangui and close to the rebel front.

"Damara is a red line not to be crossed ... Damara is in our control and Bangui is secure," he told Reuters. "If the rebellion decides to approach Damara, they know they will encounter a force that will react."

Soldiers armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket propelled grenade launchers and truck-mounted machineguns had taken up positions across the town, which was otherwise nearly-abandoned.

Some of the fighters wore turbans that covered their faces and had charms strung around their necks and arms meant to protect them against enemy bullets.

Chad's President Idriss Deby, one of Bozize's closest allies, had warned the rebels the regional force would confront them if they approached the town.

Chad provided training and equipment to the rebellion that brought Bozize to power by ousting then-president Ange Felix Patasse, who Chad accused of supporting Chadian dissidents.

Chad is also keen to keep a lid on instability in the territory close to its main oil export pipeline and has stepped in to defend Bozize against insurgents in the past.

A CAR government minister told Reuters the foreign troop presence strengthened Bozize's bargaining position ahead of the Libreville peace talks.

"The rebels are now in a position of weakness," the minister said, asking not to be named. "They should therefore stop imposing conditions like the departure of the president."

Central African Republic is one of a number of countries in the region where U.S. Special Forces are helping local soldiers track down the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group which has killed thousands of civilians across four nations.

France has a 600-strong force in CAR to defend about 1,200 of its citizens who live there.

Paris used air strikes to defend Bozize against a rebellion in 2006. But French President Francois Hollande turned down a request for more help, saying the days of intervening in other countries' affairs were over.

(Additional reporting by Paul-Marin Ngoupana in Bangui and Jon Herskovitz in Johannesburg; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Janet Lawrence)

Read More..

Al-Jazeera acquires Gore-founded TV group: report

SAN FRANCISCO: Al-Jazeera has acquired Current TV, a struggling cable channel that will give the Qatar-based broadcaster the access to millions of US homes it has long sought, it was confirmed Wednesday.

Terms of the deal for Current, which was founded by US former vice president Al Gore, were not immediately disclosed, but Forbes reported that a possible value of $400 million could net the former politician a tidy $100 million.

The acquisition should also give Al-Jazeera vastly broader visibility in US homes because although Current has been struggling of late it nonetheless is available in 60 million American households, according to its own figures.

"We are proud and pleased that Al-Jazeera, the award-winning international news organization, has bought Current TV," said Gore, the San Francisco-based channel's chairman, and Joel Hyatt, co-founder and CEO, in a statement.

Gore also said Current had proudly offered "thought-provoking commentary" and Emmy and Peabody award-winning programming "to give voice to those who are not typically heard" and "to speak truth to power."

The New York Times reported that Al-Jazeera was expected to create a new channel, "Al-Jazeera America," instead of using its existing English-language vehicle Al-Jazeera English, to capitalize on Current's audience reach.

Hyatt told staff in an email that "Al-Jazeera is planning to invest significantly in building 'Al-Jazeera America,' a network focused on international news for the American audience," the Times report said.

"Al (Gore) and I will both serve on the advisory board of Al-Jazeera America, and we look forward to helping build an important news network," he added, according to the report.

The plan could put the broadcaster financed by the Qatari government into closer competition with CNN and other US news channels, as Al-Jazeera is offered only by a handful of American cable and satellite distributors.

Current Media, founded in 2005, operates Current TV, and reaches households in Britain and the United States. It also operates a youth-focused website Current.com, where users can submit their own content.

The channel has won two Emmy Awards and other honors. It reaches 71 million households worldwide.

But The Times said a sale was considered because of low ratings, with an average of just 42,000 people watching the channel last year.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

___

Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

Read More..

House Plans Up-or-Down Vote on 'Cliff' Deal

House Republicans have agreed to have an up-or-down vote on the bipartisan Senate deal to avert the "fiscal cliff," rather than trying to amend the Senate bill with more spending cuts before voting, according to a senior GOP leadership aide.

The vote will likely come tonight despite top House Republicans' earlier opposition to the deal, which the Senate passed in the wee hours of New Year's Day, because of concerns about the cost of the deal's spending provisions.

If House Republicans had tweaked the legislation, there would have been no clear path for its return to the Senate before a new Congress is sworn in Thursday.

The Republican-controlled House was expected to launch into procedural steps leading up to a vote, which was possible late this evening.

Before deciding on the up-or-down vote, GOP leaders had emerged from a morning conference meeting disenchanted by the legislative package devised by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Mo., and Vice President Biden early this morning, with several insisting they could not vote on it as it stood.

"I do not support the bill," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said as he left the meeting. "We're looking for the best path forward. No decisions have been made yet."

Bill Clark/Roll Call/Getty Images

'Fiscal Cliff' Negotiations: Congress Reaches Agreement Watch Video

Fiscal Cliff Countdown: Missing the Deadline Watch Video

House Speaker John Boehner refused to comment on the meeting, but his spokesman said, "the lack of spending cuts in the Senate bill was a universal concern amongst members in today's meeting."

"Conversations with members will continue throughout the afternoon on the path forward," Brendan Buck said in a statement.

As lawmakers wrestled with the legislation, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill's added spending combined with the cost of extending tax cuts for those making under $400,000 would actually add $3.9 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years. The Joint Committee on Taxation reached a similar conclusion.

The impasse once again raised the specter of sweeping tax hikes on all Americans and deep spending cuts' taking effect later this week.

"This is all about time, and it's about time that we brought this to the floor," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said after emerging from a meeting with Democrats.

"It was a bill that was passed in the U.S. Senate 89-8. Tell me when you've had that on a measure as controversial as this?" she said of the overwhelming vote.

Pelosi could not say, however, whether the measure had the backing of most House Democrats.

"Our members are making their decisions now," she said.

Biden, who brokered the deal with McConnell, joined Democrats for a midday meeting on Capitol Hill seeking to shore up support for the plan.

While Congress technically missed the midnight Dec. 31 deadline to avert the so-called cliff, both sides have expressed eagerness to enact a post-facto fix before Americans go back to work and the stock market opens Wednesday.

"This may take a little while but, honestly, I would argue we should vote on it today," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who sits on the Budget Committee. "We know the essential details and I think putting this thing to bed before the markets is important.

"We ought to take this deal right now and we'll live to fight another day, and it is coming very soon on the spending front."

Read More..

At least 61 crushed to death in Ivory Coast stampede

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - At least 61 people were crushed to death in a stampede after a New Year's Eve fireworks display at a stadium in Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan early on Tuesday, officials said.

Witnesses said police had tried to control crowds around the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Stadium following the celebrations, triggering a panic in which scores were trampled.

"The estimate we can give right now is 49 people hospitalized ... and 61 people dead," said the chief of staff of Abidjan's fire department Issa Sacko.

Crying women searched for missing family members outside the stadium on Tuesday morning. The area was covered in patches of dried blood and abandoned shoes.

"My two children came here yesterday. I told them not to come but they didn't listen. They came when I was sleeping. What will I do?" said Assetou Toure, a cleaner.

Sanata Zoure, a market vendor injured in the incident, said New Year's revelers going home after watching the fireworks had been stopped by police near the stadium.

"We were walking with our children and we came upon barricades, and people started falling into each other. We were trampled with our children," she said.

Another witness said police arrived to control the crowd after a mob began chasing a pickpocket.

President Alassane Ouattara called the deaths a national tragedy and said an investigation was under way to find out what happened.

"I hope that we can determine what caused this drama so that we can ensure it never happens again," he said after visiting the injured in hospital.

The country, once a stable economic hub for West Africa, is struggling to recover from a 2011 civil war in which more than 3,000 people were killed.

Ivory Coast's security forces once were among the best trained in the region, but a decade of political turmoil and the 2011 war has left them in disarray.

At least 18 people were killed in another stampede during a football match in an Abidjan stadium in 2009.

(Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly and Alain Amontchi; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Michael Roddy)

Read More..

US House to vote to avert fiscal cliff

WASHINGTON: After a day of twisting political drama, the US Congress was Tuesday expected to finally endorse a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" budget crisis that had threatened to unleash a new recession.

Hours before many major global financial markets make their 2013 debut, the House of Representatives was to vote on a bid to raise taxes on the rich and put off a $109 billion dollar program of spending cuts for two months.

The deal passed the Senate early on Tuesday, but its fate hung in the balance for hours as House conservatives sought to amend it to include big spending cuts, which would likely have killed its chance of passage.

Had the deal splintered, all Americans would have been hit by tax increases and the spending cuts would have kicked in across the government, in a combined $500 billion shock that could have rocked the fragile recovery.

The House was due to vote within hours on an up or down vote on the deal agreed between Senate Republicans and President Barack Obama's White House.

A majority of 217 votes was seen as a certainty given that Obama's Democrats were certain to back the pact along with some of the Republican majority.

The vote will take place after a conservative rebellion fizzled when it became clear there were not sufficient votes in the restive Republican caucus to send an amended version of the bill with spending cuts back to the Senate.

Republican party leaders ultimately feared they would carry the can if the deal collapsed, leaving Americans enraged by higher taxes and the prospect of that an economy still slowly bouncing back from the worst crisis in decades could be plunged back into recession.

"There's a growing sense that, you know... you do have to know when to hold them and when to fold them. We've been beaten in this fight," retiring Ohio Republican Congressman Steve LaTourette told CNN.

Earlier, Boehner's coalition vented fury that the deal negotiated by the White House and top Senate Republicans had not contained significant spending cuts to eat into national debt that is worth more than $16 trillion.

"We have to in some way address spending," Republican congressman Spencer Bachus said.

Another House Republican, Tim Huelskamp, said that the powerful number two Republican in the chamber Eric Cantor told a high-stakes meeting of the party caucus that he was opposed to the bill.

"The principal reason is there are no spending cuts," said Huelskamp.

At the turn of the year, every American became liable to a tax hike with the expiry of rate cuts first passed under former president George W. Bush.

The deal to avert the fiscal cliff agreed on Monday raised income taxes only on households earning $450,000 a year and exempted anyone else.

It put off the spending cuts -- known as the sequester -- for two months, setting up another bitter political cliffhanger at the end of February.

If the legislation does pass the House unamended, it will represent a win for Obama as it raises taxes on the richest Americans in line with a re-election campaign promise -- albeit above an income threshold higher than he and other Democrats had wanted.

Obama issued a statement shortly after the 2:00 am (0700 GMT) Senate vote, urging House lawmakers to pass the bill "without delay."

The White House said the tax agreement was "a victory for middle-class families and the economy," and laid out the raft of measures contained in the legislation.

"For the first time in 20 years, Congress will have acted on a bipartisan basis to vote for significant new revenue," it said.

The deal also includes an end to a temporary two percent cut to payroll taxes for Social Security retirement savings -- meaning all Americans will pay a little more -- and changes to inheritance and investment taxes.

-AFP/ac

Read More..