underestimate
d the ability of American leaders to come together and address the fiscal challenges facing the country. From Washington, Paul Adams sent this report.
In revising its outlook, Standard & Poor's has
waded into
a highly charged political debate about how to cut America’s vast and growing budget deficit. Despite the country’s economic strength, the agency says America’s fiscal profile has deteriorated steadily over the past decade. And in a statement of the obvious, it says that the gap between the Republican and Democratic parties over how to address the problem remains wide. There’s a significant risk, it says, that congressional negotiations will not
result in
agreement on a fiscal strategy until after the 2012 presidential elections.
Opposition activists in Syria say thousands of anti-government protesters have occupied the centre of the country’s third largest city Homs. There were funerals on Monday in Homs for some of the eight people killed in violence there on Sunday. Owen Bennett-Jones reports.
Video footage put on the Internet by opposition activists shows thousands of people sitting on the ground in the main square of Homs. The activists say that the people will stay there until their political demands are met, and they include the immediate lifting of Syria’s long-standing emergency laws and the release of political prisoners. Syria’s official news agency has also been reporting on events in Homs. It says three army officers, including a brigadier-general, were ambushed and killed on Sunday by armed criminal gangs who then mutilated the bodies with sharp tools.