By Jeff Mason WASHINGTON | Sun Dec 9, 2012 6:02pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's inauguration committee is accepting corporate donations to help fund the parade and other events associated with his January 21 inauguration after tapped-out Democratic donors spent huge sums helping him get elected. The move is a shift for Obama...

Costa Rica's female judicial functionaries may not wear miniskirts, low necklines, tight blouses or strapless wear. So decided a majority of judges this week. But, lest feminists think this is discriminatory, men may not wear earrings and visible tattoos. (Fortunately, facial tattooing is rare here.) The dress code was approved by vote Nov. 5. The 11,000 judicial branch workers were notified...

Foreign drug cartels lost tons of narcotics in a week to police here and in Panamanian waters. Local police captured three truck shipments and Panamanian authorities along with U.S. patrols cooperated in another blow. After a chase that began in Costa Rican waters, a U.S. Coast Guard frigate and Panamanian patrol boat trapped a semi-submersible craft after an unarmed U.S. Orion P-3 patrol aircr...

By Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON | Sat Dec 8, 2012 6:07am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, accused by Republican House Speaker John Boehner of pushing the country toward the "fiscal cliff," said on Saturday he was ready to work with congressional Republicans on a comprehensive plan to cut budget deficits as long it included higher ...

Sat Dec 8, 2012 12:10am EST (Reuters) - Former Florida Republican Governor Charlie Crist, who campaigned for President Barack Obama in this past election, announced on Twitter Friday that he is now a Democrat. Crist attended a holiday party at the White House Friday night, according to the Miami Herald, and tweeted from the event: "Proud and honored to join the D...

By David Alexander WASHINGTON | Fri Dec 7, 2012 6:24pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon's top military officers have decided to review the kind of staff support provided to senior generals and admirals after several high-profile scandals raised concerns about the inappropriate use of personnel and equipment for personal gain. The decision,...

Fri Dec 7, 2012 5:37pm EST (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's administration will ask U.S. lawmakers to approve more than $60 billion in funding for East Coast states to rebuild after Superstorm Sandy. Officials from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which were hit hard by the storm, had asked for much more, saying they needed at least $82 billion altogethe...

By Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan WASHINGTON | Fri Dec 7, 2012 5:28pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican House Speaker John Boehner accused U.S. President Barack Obama of pushing the country toward the "fiscal cliff" on Friday and of wasting another week without making progress in talks. With three weeks left before a combination of steep ta...

By Deepa Seetharaman DETROIT | Fri Dec 7, 2012 5:15pm EST DETROIT (Reuters) - Under pressure by Michigan officials to turn around Detroit's sagging finances, city officials said on Friday they will lay off hundreds of workers in addition to putting some on unpaid leave to stave off increased state oversight. Mayor Dave Bing and top officials outl...

Costa Rica ranks 48th in Transparency International’s 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) which measures perceived public sector corruption in 176 countries. Costa Rica’s score in the 2012 survey is 54 on a scale of 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean). The 2012 CPI was calculated using an improved methodology which does not allow to compare the data with p...

Most (100) of the 234 known Costa Ricans in prison abroad got there because of narcotics, according to a recent study by Immigration in Costa Rica. The others (23) were nabbed for robberies. And most of them ran afoul of U.S. police (95), 31 in Panama, 29 in Mexico and 22 in Nicaragua, the count shows. But Immigration sub-director Freddy Montero says some data from the U.S. is still pending. ...

By Peter Rudegeair Thu Dec 6, 2012 7:16pm EST (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said on Thursday he vetoed a bill that would have created a health insurance exchange for his state under President Barack Obama's signature healthcare program. Christie, whose announcement came on a day when he was visiting the White House to discuss tens of bill...

WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 7:07pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a development that could complicate Republican efforts to limit funding for a key provision of President Barack Obama's healthcare law, a top congressional researcher said the issue of restricting subsidies never arose in producing the legislation. Congressional staff involved in the creat...

By Patrick Temple-West WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 5:38pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. tax collector warned on Thursday of a delayed start to 2013's tax season if Congress fails to reset the alternative minimum tax (AMT) on high-income taxpayers so that it does not sweep in millions of middle-income people. Without another adjustment ...

LANSING, Michigan | Thu Dec 6, 2012 5:34pm EST LANSING, Michigan (Reuters) - The Michigan House on Thursday voted to approve a "right-to-work" bill that would weaken labor union powers after Democratic representatives left the chambers in protest at the decision earlier to lock the state Capitol doors. The House voted 58 to 52 to approve a bill that woul...

By Kim Dixon and Thomas Ferraro WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 4:57pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator Jim DeMint, a leading voice in the modern American conservative movement who has riled fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, surprised both parties on Thursday by declaring he was retiring from the chamber to head a conservative think tank. D...

By Edith Honan and Hilary Russ NEW YORK | Thu Dec 6, 2012 3:51pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on Thursday sharply criticized President Barack Obama, a fellow Democrat, for failing to make global warming a priority issue, saying action was more urgent than ever after the devastation in the Northeast from Superstorm S...

By Mark Hosenball Thu Dec 6, 2012 2:25pm EST (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate intelligence committee plans to vote next week on whether to approve findings of a nearly 6,000-page summary of its long-running investigation into contentious counter-terrorism practices, including "enhanced interrogation techniques," used by the CIA during the George W. Bush admini...

WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 1:24pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday prevented a simple majority vote on a proposal to give Democratic President Barack Obama unilateral power to raise the debt limit. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid brought the measure to the floor for consideration at the request of McConn...

WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 12:20pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Billions of dollars are needed to strengthen and repair rail and other transportation networks in the U.S. Northeast in the aftermath of savage Superstorm Sandy, lawmakers and transportation officials said on Thursday. "Estimates of the damage have reached more than $7 billion. Across the re...

Thud! That's the sound of the other shoe dropping in the case of the corruption riddled construction of the northern border road, Route 1856. And it was dropped by the Comptroller General's Office filing charges against 21 officials and ex-officials. An investigation by lawmakers in the Legislative Assembly was the first shoe, but it had no power of punishment -- that is up to the courts. But t...

By Fred Barbash WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 9:54am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama takes his "fiscal-cliff" campaign to the home of a family in Northern Virginia on Thursday to illustrate the impact of letting taxes go up on the middle class, as signs emerge that Republicans are contemplating a change in strategy in their battl...

By Thomas Ferraro and Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 3:57am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in Congress and President Barack Obama consumed much of Wednesday talking up their positions on the "fiscal cliff" and though Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner spoke by phone, neither side offered any new compromises in p...

By Doug Palmer WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 12:01am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate was poised on Thursday to approve legislation to punish Russian human rights violators as part of a broader bill to expand U.S. trade with the former Cold War enemy. The vote would send the package to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it into l...

By Rachelle Younglai WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 8:23pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican lawmakers took a firm stand on Wednesday against an Obama administration proposal that would make it easier for the president to increase the nation's debt limit, worried it would undercut their leverage to cut government spending. Republicans introduce...

By David Lawder WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 7:57pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner's purge of some dissident Republican congressmen from key committees may continue as he seeks to tighten control over his unruly caucus ahead of difficult votes on "fiscal cliff" issues. House Republican lawmakers said...

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 7:16pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leaders of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday blasted the Air Force for wasting $1 billion on a logistics support system that has now been canceled, calling it "one of the most egregious examples of mismanagement in recent memory." Committee Chairman Carl Levin, and the top...

By David Alexander WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:17pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Wednesday the White House budget office has directed it to begin planning how to implement billions of dollars in across-the-board spending reductions if Congress and the president fail to agree to avert the cuts before January 2. The decision r...

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 5:38pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner, locked in a stalemate over the "fiscal cliff," spoke by telephone this afternoon, a Boehner spokesman said. The spokesman offered no additional information, but the conversation marked the first time in a week th...

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:36pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday that the country would go over a year-end fiscal cliff of tax hikes and spending cuts, unless Republicans agreed to Democrat's demand to raise tax rates on the richest U.S. households. "There is no prospect (for) an agreement that doe...

By Chris Michaud NEW YORK | Wed Dec 5, 2012 2:00pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - When it comes to power, politics trumps business, according to a new Forbes ranking on Wednesday that found heads of state occupying six of the top 10 spots among the world's most powerful people, led by President Barack Obama. The annual list selected what Forbes said we...

By Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:24am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will renew his case for tax hikes on wealthy Americans to avert a year-end fiscal crunch and call for a smooth increase in the nation's borrowing limit in a speech to a business group on Wednesday, a White House official said. The president is...

By Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 1:07am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After a car bomb struck the U.S. ambassador's residence in Lima in 1992, the State Department convened a special panel to answer the same questions now hovering over a review of the September attacks in Benghazi, Libya: How much security is enoug...

WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 4, 2012 10:03pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate voted 98-0 on Tuesday to approve a wide-ranging defense bill that authorizes $631.4 billion in funding for the military, the war in Afghanistan and nuclear weapons. The bill, passed after five days of debate and consideration of hundreds of amendments, must be reconciled with the ...

By Mark Felsenthal and Jeff Mason WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 4, 2012 9:23pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama warned on Tuesday that Republican tax proposals could threaten the collapse of hospitals and universities benefiting from charitable deductions. "There's been a lot of talk that somehow we can raise $800 billion or $1 trillion w...

By David Lawder and Thomas Ferraro WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 4, 2012 9:20pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama held his ground on the "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, insisting on higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, while Republicans showed increasing disarray over how far they should go to compromise with Obama's demands. With les...

By David Lawder and Thomas Ferraro WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 4, 2012 7:43pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Republicans had wanted to show a united front against President Barack Obama's demand for tax hikes, but their tenuous coalition showed signs of strain on Tuesday. Just a day after House Speaker John Boehner unveiled a "fiscal cliff" co...

By Marice Richter DALLAS | Tue Dec 4, 2012 7:02pm EST DALLAS (Reuters) - Former President George W. Bush on Tuesday called on lawmakers to debate immigration reform "with a benevolent spirit" and bear in mind the contribution of immigrants in building the country. Bush's comments came at the opening of a daylong conference on immigration and econ...

WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 4, 2012 5:32pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - California Democrat Maxine Waters was elected to serve as ranking member of the House Financial Service Committee, according to an announcement from Waters' office on Tuesday. In a statement, Waters said she looks forward to defending the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul and plan...

WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 4, 2012 5:28pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren is expected to secure a seat on the Senate Banking Committee, two congressional aides said on Tuesday, a move that would give the Wall Street critic a powerful platform from which to oversee financial firms. "We see her as an effective advocate for consumer...