Tax Changes for Overseas Firms

American President Barack Obama proposed changing provisions in the tax code that he says encourage U.S. companies to move jobs overseas, as part of a broader package aimed at saving $210 billion over 10 years.

Obama will seek to follow through on a campaign promise to change the tax treatment of American firms with overseas operations. That portion of his plan — opposed by such firms as Pfizer Inc and Oracle Corp — would raise more than $100 billion in revenue over the next decade.

In an echo of a line he used often on the campaign trail last year, Obama vowed in a February address to the U.S. Congress to make the tax code more fair by “finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.”

Currently, U.S. firms are allowed to defer paying taxes on profits earned overseas if they plow those profits back into their foreign subsidiaries. An array of firms signed onto a letter to congressional leaders in March opposing changes to the so-called deferral provision, saying they would make U.S. businesses less competitive.

Obama to abolish limits on Cuba?

Barack Obama, the reputed president of the United States of America, has decided to fulfill a campaign promise and allow Cuban Americans and Cuban emigres to freely visit and send money to their families.A White House official confirmed the administration’s intentions to lift the restrictions, but said the measure was not a new policy statement and was not imminent.

The administration has conveyed that our policy towards Cuba is being reviewed and the president has stated that there’s a sense that restrictions on family visits and cash remittances should be lifted and the focus remains on the need for democratic reforms and human rights in Cuba.

The removal of limits on family travel and cash remittances would allow Cubans living in the United States to travel freely to the island, instead of once a year as at present. It would also remove the ceiling of $1,200 per person in cash remittances to needy family members in Cuba.

This is a good humanitarian move that honors Cuban Americans’ right to visit and aid their relatives as they see fit but it creates one class of Americans who can travel to Cuba at will, so it will add to the momentum in Congress to lift restrictions on all other Americans, who have a right to travel too. The move was probably meant to signal a new attitude toward both Cuba and other Latin American countries that have pressed Washington to end a trade embargo that has sought to isolate Havana for more than four decades.

US to send forces to Afghan

US president Obama is expected to send an additional 4,000 troops to train Afghan forces as part of review of policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The new strategy includes recommendations to counter a persistent Taliban and al-Qaeda campaign that spans the two countries’ border.

US officials have said success in Afghanistan is impossible without tackling Taliban enclaves in Pakistan, whose government is beset by political turmoil.Nabi Misdaq, an Afghanistan analyst in Washington, told Al Jazeera he hoped Obama would not go for a military solution to the conflict, citing a series of US air raids that have caused a number of civilian casualties.

Obama has said previously that the US is losing the war in Afghanistan and the new policy is central top his administration’s efforts to turn the conflict around, giving more responsibility to the Afghan government itself. Obama is to define the objectives of the plan as eliminating the threat from al-Qaeda to undermine or topple US-backed elected governments or to launch attacks on the US, its interests and allies.

The strategy is to take a regional approach focusing on counter-terrorism, economic development and offer economic aid to help stabilise Pakistan, where the Taliban has a number of strongholds, officials told the Reuters news agency.The problems were highlighted by Afghanistan’s intelligence chief, who accused Pakistan’s spy agency ISI of helping Taliban fighters carry out attacks in his country.