Tax package would lower top tax rate for wealthy Americans
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Republicans on Tuesday rushed toward a deal on a massive tax package that would reduce the top tax rate for wealthy Americans to 37 percent and slash the corporate rate to a level slightly higher than what businesses and conservatives wanted.
In a flurry of last-minute changes that could profoundly affect the pocketbooks of millions of Americans, House and Senate negotiators agreed to expand a deduction for state and local taxes to allow individuals to deduct income taxes as well as property taxes. The deduction is valuable to residents in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California.
Negotiators also agreed to set the corporate income tax rate at 21 percent, said two congressional aides who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss private negotiations. Both the House bill and the Senate bill would have lowered the corporate rate from 35 percent to 20 percent.
Business and conservative groups lobbied hard for the 20 percent corporate rate. Negotiators agreed to bump it up to 21 percent to help offset revenue losses from other tax breaks, the aides said.
As the final parameters of the bill took shape, negotiators agreed to cut the top tax rate for individuals from 39.6 percent to 37 percent in a windfall for the richest Americans. The reduction is certain to provide ammunition for Democrats who complain that the tax package is a massive giveaway to corporations and the rich.
Paris hosts major climate summit — and it’s all about Trump
PARIS (AP) — The global climate summit in Paris was designed to bypass Donald Trump, but the U.S. president ended up playing a starring role.
Trump became the unwitting villain as world leaders, investors and other Americans assailed him Tuesday for rejecting the Paris climate accord.
To emphasize their point — and prevent others from following his lead — they announced more than $1 billion in investments to make it easier for countries and industries to give up oil and coal.
French President Emmanuel Macron used the summit to seize the global spotlight, capitalizing on Trump’s isolationist policies and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s domestic weakness to position himself as the world’s moral compass on climate change.
“We’re not moving fast enough,” Macron said, warning that the 2015 Paris climate accord is “fragile.”
Freed prisoner witnessed radicalization in Egyptian jails
DUBLIN (AP) — An Irish citizen recently acquitted after four years of being imprisoned in Egypt says he saw dozens of cellmates become radicalized and adopt views of the Islamic State group during his brutal captivity in overcrowded jails.
Ibrahim Halawa, 21, was arrested after security forces broke up a 2013 sit-in protesting the army’s overthrow of an elected Islamist president, and was released in October after being held in a half-dozen detention centers. His experience provides a unique perspective on how conditions inside Egypt’s notorious prisons have degenerated during an unprecedented crackdown on dissent.
Born in the Dublin suburb of Crumlin to parents of Egyptian descent, Halawa had faced death by hanging on charges that ranged from inciting violence to murder, and says regular beatings with bars and metal chains during captivity led him and others to the brink of despair.
“In the beginning, no one had even heard of Daesh, but by the time I left, maybe 20 percent were openly supporting their ideas,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for IS. “It could have been just talk — many of them were engineers, students and doctors who just wanted to get home to their families — but after all those years of being in jail with no explanation, many wanted revenge.”
The extremist group boasts a powerful affiliate in Egypt’s northern Sinai that has stepped up attacks in recent years, killing hundreds of security forces and civilians and expanding its reach to the mainland. Last month gunmen waving the group’s black flag killed 300 people at a Sinai mosque in the deadliest terror attack ever carried out in the country.
NTSB cites weak safety culture by owner of sunken El Faro
WASHINGTON (A) — The owner of the sunken cargo ship El Faro had a weak corporate safety culture that contributed to the vessel’s demise and the deaths of 33 mariners, federal accident investigators said on Tuesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board said that as a company, TOTE Maritime, Inc. suffered from a lack of “critical” aspects of safety management and training, one of the many problems the board hopes to mitigate through the adoption of 53 draft safety measures it’s recommending as a result of its probe.
The board noted that the captain was relying on outdated weather information, using a system he hadn’t been formally trained on; that a hatch left open in the storm allowed flooding in a cargo hold, destabilizing the vessel; and that the crew had not been adequately trained to deal with flooding and other effects of harsh weather.
The El Faro lost engine power in a Category 3 hurricane while sailing from Jacksonville to San Juan, Puerto Rico and eventually sank in 15,000 feet (4,570 meters) of water near the Bahamas.
NTSB investigators said Capt. Michael Davidson was using outdated weather data as he dismissed multiple requests by his mates to take a slower, safer route. Davidson relied on an emailed weather product called the Bon Voyage System, which by design runs six hours behind online National Hurricane Center updates. Investigators believe, based on the captain’s decisions and comments recorded on the ship’s voyage data recorder, or “black box,” he wasn’t aware of the delay.