US Senate passes Indo-US Nuclear Deal
WASHINGTON: The United States Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a legislation on the landmark Indo-US nuclear deal, paving the way for its operationalisation, four days after the House of Representatives gave its nod for it.
The Berman Bill H R 7081, named after Howard Berman, a Democrat strongly opposed to the deal on non-proliferation grounds and who converted only a couple of days back, was adopted with 86 voting for and 13 against. The Senate also rejected the killer amendments introduced by Democratic Senators Byron Dorgan and Jeff Bingaman to ensure that the US nuclear exports to India do not help boost New Delhi's nuclear weapons programme.
With the 100-member Senate approving the Bill, the Indo-US civil nuclear deal is now ready for signing between the two countries. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was slated to arrive in New Delhi on October 2, has reportedly rescheduled her visit and is expected on Saturday. Rice may ink the agreement with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, a feat that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W Bush could not achieve when they met at the White House on Friday last.
INDIA JOINS THE NUCLEAR FAMILY
US Senate Passes Indo-US nuclear deal
New Delhi: The much-touted and widely debated Indo-US nuclear deal cleared its last legislative hurdle early Thursday morning (India time), as US Senate passed it after a two-and-a-half-hour debate, with members from across the political divide supporting the landmark accord.
An overwhelming 86 Senators voted for the deal, while 13 opposed it. Presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain and Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden also participated in the voting.
The Senate rejected the killer amendments introduced by Democratic Senators Byron Dorgan and Jeff Bingaman to ensure that the US nuclear exports to India do not help boost New Delhi's nuclear weapons programme.
With the 100-member Senate approving the Bill, the Indo-US civil nuclear deal is now ready for signing between the two countries.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was slated to arrive in New Delhi on October 2, has reportedly rescheduled her visit and is expected on Saturday.
Congress OKs Indo-US nuclear deal
WASHINGTON: The US Congress on Wednesday approved a landmark deal ending a three-decade ban on US nuclear trade with India, handing a victory to President George W. Bush on one of his top foreign policy priorities.
Final approval came as the Senate voted to ratify the deal, 86-13, sending the legislation to Bush to sign into law. The Senate's move came just ahead of an expected trip to India this weekend by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The Bush administration says the pact will secure a strategic partnership with the world's largest democracy, help India meet its rising energy demand and open up a market worth billions.
But critics say the deal does grave damage to global efforts to contain the spread of nuclear weapons, by letting India import nuclear fuel and technology even though it has tested nuclear weapons and never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
India has a yawning energy deficit, and the accord opens up this market worth billions to American companies such as General Electric and Westinghouse Electric, a unit of Japan's Toshiba Corp.
Rice spent much of the past month in an all-out effort to persuade Congress to approve the pact, which the Bush administration says will transform the U.S.-India relationship. Bush wanted the deal approved before leaving office in January; Congress is expected to adjourn soon for elections.
The accord enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, where many lawmakers favored it as a way to create jobs in the U.S. civil nuclear industry while cultivating the small but affluent Indian-American community.
Critics said the deal was deeply unwise, overturning decades of U.S. policy of refusing to sell nuclear technology to nations lacking full safeguards against that technology's diversion into nuclear weapons programs.
Iran concerns
"Why are we rushing to pass this gravely flawed agreement?" demanded Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, before the vote. There was nothing in it, he said, to prevent India from resuming nuclear testing. India, which first detonated a nuclear device in 1974, last tested in 1998.
The deal would also weaken U.S. efforts to deny Iran a nuclear weapon, Harkin said. He said Indian entities already had sold sensitive missile technologies to Iran, which the Bush administration suspects is pursuing a nuclear bomb.
But supporters said they expected India to move quickly to negotiate a new safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"The benefits of this pact are designed to be a lasting incentive for India to abstain from further nuclear weapons tests and to cooperate closely with the United States in stopping proliferation," Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar said.
Before approving the pact, the Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, both Democrats, making clear that another Indian nuclear test would lead to termination of the deal.
Lugar argued the amendment was unnecessary, saying India had been warned repeatedly that the consequences of another test would be "dire": U.S. nuclear trade would be cut off.
The deal could open up around $27 billion in investments in 18-20 nuclear plants in India over the next 15 years, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry.
But there is global competition. France announced on Tuesday that it had signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with India, and Russia is already building two 1,000 megawatt reactors in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Local media say India's monopoly Nuclear Power Corp has tentatively picked four suppliers, including Westinghouse Electric and France's Areva, for planned new projects.
India is also reported to be negotiating with General Electric, Japan's Hitachi Ltd and Russia's atomic energy agency Rosatom.
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Senate Passes $700B 'Sweetened' Rescue Package
WASHINGTON (AP) -- After one spectacular failure, the $700 billion financial industry bailout found a second life Wednesday, winning lopsided passage in the Senate and gaining ground in the House, where Republicans opposition softened.
Senators loaded the economic rescue bill with tax breaks and other sweeteners before passing it by a wide margin, 74-25, a month before the presidential and congressional elections.
In the House, leaders were working feverishly to convert enough opponents of the bill to push it through by Friday, just days after lawmakers there stunningly rejected an earlier version and sent markets plunging around the globe.
The measure didn't cause the same uproar in the Senate, where both parties' presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, made rare appearances to cast "aye" votes.
In the final vote, 40 Democrats, 33 Republicans and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut voted "yes." Nine Democrats, 15 Republicans and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont voted "no."
The rescue package lets the government spend billions of dollars to buy bad mortgage-related securities and other devalued assets held by troubled financial institutions. If successful, advocates say, that would allow frozen credit to begin flowing again and prevent a deep recession.
Even as the Senate voted, House leaders were hunting for the 12 votes they would need to turn around Monday's 228-205 defeat. They were especially targeting the 133 Republicans who voted "no."
Their opposition appeared to be easing after the Senate added $110 billion in tax breaks for businesses and the middle class, plus a provision to raise, from $100,000 to $250,000, the cap on federal deposit insurance.
They were also cheering a decision Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission to ease rules that force companies to devalue assets on their balance sheets to reflect the price they can get on the market.
There were worries, though, that the tax breaks would cause some conservative-leaning Democrats who voted for the rescue Monday to abandon it because it would swell the federal deficit.
"I'm concerned about that," said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the majority leader.
As revised by the Senate, the package extends several tax breaks popular with businesses. It would keep the alternative minimum tax from hitting 20 million middle-income Americans and provide $8 billion in tax relief for those hit by natural disasters in the Midwest, Texas and Louisiana.
It doesn't designate a way to pay for many of the tax cuts, though, angering the House's band of conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats. Leaders in both parties, as well as private economic chiefs everywhere, said Congress must quickly approve some version of the bailout measure to start loans flowing and stave off a potential national economic disaster.
"This is what we need to do right now to prevent the possibility of a crisis turning into a catastrophe," Obama said on the Senate floor. In Missouri, before flying to Washington to vote, McCain said, "If we fail to act, the gears of our economy will grind to a halt."
Critics on the right and left assailed the rescue plan, which has been panned by their constituents as a giveaway for Wall Street, and has little obvious direct benefit for ordinary Americans.
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., a leading conservative, said the step was "leading us into the pit of socialism." Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who's a self-described socialist, said the rescue was fundamentally unfair.
"The masters of the universe, those brilliant Wall Street insiders who have made more money than the average American can even dream of, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse," Sanders said, and are demanding that the middle class "pick up the pieces that they broke."
Still, proponents argued that the financial sector's woes were already being felt by ordinary people in the form of unaffordable credit and underperforming retirement savings and without the bailout would soon translate into even more economic pain for working Americans, including more job losses.
"There will be no balloons or bunting or parades," when the rescue becomes law, said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee chairman. But lawmakers will have "the knowledge that at one of our nation's moments of maximum economic peril, we acted -- not for the benefit of a particular few, but for all Americans."
The Senate specializes in high-stakes legislating by enticement, and the long list of sweeteners it added was designed to attract votes from various constituencies.
Tax cuts new and old are favorites for most House Republicans, the main target of intense lobbying to gain support for the measure. Help for rural schools was aimed mainly at lawmakers in the West, while disaster aid was a top priority for lawmakers from across the Midwest and South.
Another addition, to extend the deductibility of state and local taxes for people in states without income taxes, helps Florida and Texas, among others.
Increasing the deposit insurance cap was a bid to reassure individuals and small businesses that their money would be safe in the event their banks collapsed. It was particularly geared toward small banks that fear customers will pull their money and park it in larger institutions seen as less likely to fold.
The FDIC would be allowed to borrow unlimited money from the Treasury Department through the end of next year as a way to cover the increased insurance limit. If used, it would be the first time the agency has tapped Treasury for a loan since the early 1990s.
Raising the limit -- along with the SEC's decision to ease accounting rules on valuing assets -- helped House Republicans claim credit for some substantive changes.
And with constituent feedback changing dramatically since Monday's shocking House defeat and the corresponding market plunge, lawmakers' comfort level with the package increased markedly.
Senate passes bailout /Senate approves $700 bln financial bailout
By Daniel Trotta and Richard Cowan
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate approved a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry on Wednesday that political and financial leaders called crucial to averting economic catastrophe.
The bill is aimed at reinvigorating worldwide credit markets and interbank lending that had frozen up while overleveraged financial institutions staggered under the weight of failed mortgages.
Amid warnings that failure to act could plunge the country into a depression, more than 60 Senators voted in favor, exceeding the majority needed to send the measure to the House of Representatives, probably for a vote on Friday.
The House had rejected a similar measure on Monday, sending global markets into a tailspin, so congressional leaders added two sweeteners to the bill -- a tax cut and extended federal protection for bank deposits -- that could turn "no" voters into supporters.
Central bankers and pensioners worldwide were counting on the rescue plan to empower the U.S. Treasury to buy distressed assets from financial firms, clean up their balance sheets and jump-start lending.
The vote came amid early trade in Asian markets and the dollar climbed near a one-year peak against a basket of currencies while Japanese stocks extended losses.
The credit crisis also reverberated among European banks while recessionary signals mounted in the United States.
U.S. factory activity shrank in September to its lowest since the 2001 recession and major automakers reported plunging U.S. sales for September, led by a 34 percent slide at Ford Motor Co. Continued...
Stocks end relatively calm day with modest loss- AP
Buffett's company to buy $3B of GE preferred stock- AP
Manufacturing shrinks to lowest level since 2001
Buffett dives into GE amid "economic Pearl Harbor"
SEC extends short sale ban to give Congress time
Congress OKs Indian nuclear deal, sends to Bush
Senate approves $700 bln financial bailout
Senate weighs bailout; Europeans split
Source: ET,Reuters,Yahoo Finance, UTV etc
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