Senate OKs tax bill, nominees

Senate OKs tax bill, nominees

WASHINGTON

The Democratic-controlled Senate worked to confirm a final batch of President Barack Obama’s judicial appointees and sent the White House legislation extending tax breaks for working-class millions and special interests alike late Tuesday as lawmakers neared the end of a two-year Congress marked more by gridlock than accomplishment.

An 11th-hour attempt to renew a program obliging the government to cover part of the cost of terrorism-caused losses was sidetracked by retiring Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who said it was a giveaway to private industry.

But dozens of Obama’s nominees to agency positions won approval on what shaped up as the final night of the Congress.

Ruble’s plunge sparks Russian fears

BERLIN

A free-falling Russian ruble Tuesday prompted fears that the nuclear-armed nation could be entering a deep economic recession with the potential for unrest, as citizens and investors try to get their hands on cash amid crippling international sanctions and sinking oil prices.

The Russian central bank tried to right the ship with a surprisingly large interest rate hike, to 17 percent, before the nation’s financial markets opened Tuesday. But it was for naught as the already limping ruble fell another 20 percent against the U.S. dollar.

Executed inmate’s kin sue expert

COLUMBUS

The state’s former expert witness on lethal injection should have known that a condemned inmate would suffer because of a two-drug combo that never had been used before, the inmate’s family said in a lawsuit.

The lawsuit, expanded from an earlier filing, alleges that Dr. Mark Dershwitz knew inmate Dennis McGuire would suffer during the January execution but helped create the state’s new lethal-injection policy anyway. The new complaint filed in federal court this month says Dershwitz also provided medical and scientific advice to the state prisons agency.

Dershwitz, a University of Massachusetts anesthesiologist and pharmacologist, announced in June he no longer would act as an expert witness for states defending their lethal injection methods.

Bush to ‘explore’ presidential run

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.

Jeb Bush answered the biggest question looming over the Republican Party’s next campaign for the White House on Tuesday, all but declaring his candidacy for president more than a year before the first primaries.

Bush, the son and brother of Republican presidents, is the first potential candidate to step this far into the 2016 contest, and his early announcement could deeply affect the race for the GOP nomination.

The 61-year old former two-term governor of Florida declared on Facebook he would “actively explore the possibility of running for president of the United States.”

LA mayor plans police body cameras

LOS ANGELES

Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a plan Tuesday to equip 7,000 Los Angeles police officers with on-body cameras by next summer, making LA’s police department the nation’s largest law-enforcement agency to move forward with such an ambitious expansion of the technology.

The plan was unveiled at a news conference where Garcetti said he was planning to put forward millions of dollars in next year’s budget for the cameras, and that the first wave of more than 800 cameras would roll out as early as January.

Combined dispatches