U.S. Lawmakers Consider Ways of Arming U.S. Agents in Mexico After Killing of ICE Agent

U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are weighing actions to allow U.S. agents working in Mexico to pack heat after a drug gang killed an unarmed U.S. immigration agent and wounded another.

U.S. agents have not been allowed to carry weapons in Mexico since a 1990 agreement. But their safety has been increasingly in jeopardy ever since Mexican President Felipe Calederon declared war on the drug cartels when he took office in December 2006.

"It is essential that the U.S. government conduct a comprehensive threat assessment to protect U.S. government personnel working in Mexico," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "We must also talk to the Mexicans about their prohibition against U.S. personnel carrying weapons and determine the extent to which security details must be expanded."

A Homeland subcommittee led by Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, is planning a hearing next month to probe the U.S. role in Mexico's war on its drug cartels.

"The Mexican government doesn't allow our law enforcement to carry weapons in Mexico. It seems to me we're assisting them in this war against the drug cartels. Our law enforcement should be armed," McCaul told Fox News. "These two agents were sitting ducks and sitting targets in what was an intentional ambush.

Immigrations and Customs Agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were shot on a federal highway while traveling in the northern state of San Luis Potosi en route to Mexico City on Feb. 15. The area is at the center of a power struggle between two rival drug gangs, the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. Zapata was killed, the first murder of a U.S. agent in the line of duty of Mexico's drug war.

The Mexican Defense Department said Wednesday that a suspect was detained but provided little additional information.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder attended Zapata's funeral Tuesday in his hometown of Brownsville, Texas. Both vowed to continue helping Mexico in its war against drug cartels battling for lucrative trafficking routes into the United States.

The Homeland Security and Justice Departments formed a joint task force led by the FBI to help Mexico find the killers.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, told FoxNews.com that she introduced bipartisan legislation in the last session of Congress and on the first day of the current session to give additional tools to DEA, ATF, CPB agents on the U.S. border so that they are prepared with the weapons to confront the violence.

"Officers cannot enforce laws without good equipment," she said.

McCaul said the attack was a "game changer" because the operating assumption for more than 25 years was that drug cartels would not target or kill a U.S. agent.

"I see this assault as a direct assault on the United States and I think the United States needs to respond accordingly," he said.

World says 'tax evasion' not fraud: India

New Delhi:India's attempt to crack down on taxes evaders/black money is being scuppered by the world over mere nomenclature!

With the Opposition parties in India corenring the Congress-led UPA government on black money, a new urgency is being shown by authorities to ensure the guilty do not manage to escape the law.

India has decided to press for removal of distinction between tax evasion and tax fraud which has helped Indians conceal their income in tax havens abroad.

This is part of India's drive to get back the monies abroad.

Sources said that a number of countries have refused to give information on the ground that tax evasion was not an offence under their law but if tax fraud was included they will cooperate.

The point was forcefully made at G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Paris last week end.

Pointing out that different definitions of expressions like "tax evasion" and "tax frauds" leads to problems, Mukherjee said there was a need to harmonize them that countries can exchange information without any hindrance.

"Some countries/jurisdictions differentiate between tax fraud and tax evasion. This difference in perception assists deliberate concealment of wealth for the purpose of evading tax, something regarded as crime all over the world, and impedes effective exchange of information.

"We should encourage countries to remove this distinction in order to help efforts of government authorities in pursuing tax cheats who have parked funds outside the country", he said in his address at the ministerial meeting at the G-20.

The Minister further said that India was in the process of revising its Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) with all the 78 countries which whom it had signed such agreements.

"Revision of DTAA with 10 countries have been completed and many more are in the offing", he said. Revised DTAA will help in seeking banking information about the offenders.

He also raised the issue of ill-gotten money being stashed abroad during his bilateral meetings with French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde and his German counterpart Wolfgang Scheuble.

Mukherjee, who is spearheading the fight against tax evasion at G-20 grouping, said that about 500 tax information exchange agreements have been signed between different countries across the world, a development that would help in the fighting the menace tax evasion and track ill-gotten money.

The Minister also underlined the case for collective action against those countries which refuse to part with tax and banking information essential for tracking slush funds.

Federal Government Charges Up Electric Car Market

The federal government is hitting the gas on incentive programs meant to prop up the Electric car market, raising questions about whether it's appropriate for Washington to continue subsidizing an industry it's already invested in heavily.

As part of that interplay, nine cities across the country are set to receive thousands of free charging stations this year as part of a special program. In Austin, one of the lucky cities, the City Council could vote as early as this week to set the rates for those stations.

If the local utility company has its way, drivers will get a deal -- a $25 flat fee for six months of unlimited charging. The idea is to serve electric car owners, while making prospective buyers comfortable with the technology, potentially inspiring them to buy an electric vehicle of their own.

But the experiment is coming at a cost to taxpayers, who whether they realize it or not are subsidizing several initiatives designed to boost the electric vehicle market -- raising concerns among free enterprisers.

If electric cars are the wave of the future, they say, the industry should be able to attract private investment. If it's not, then the government is throwing away money. And if it's a viable idea but not quite ready for prime time, they worry the government is pushing it out too early, fating the sector to live off a perpetual federal lifeline the way ethanol, sugar and other commodities have done.

"I have never seen an industry that receives subsidies for any period of time like this that didn't fail and then cost taxpayers even more," said David Littmann, senior economist at the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

The auto industry, government officials and environmentalists are hopeful that electric car technology can take off. The benefits are apparent -- a nationwide electric- or hybrid-car craze would reduce pollution and help wean the United States off foreign oil.

But several barriers remain. A report released last fall from J.D. Power and Associates found that consumers are worried about the relatively short driving range of the vehicles, the amount of time it takes to charge them and the higher retail cost. The first two concerns are more applicable to all-electric cars than hybrid ones. The Nissan LEAF, for instance, takes six to eight hours to charge and has a range of about 100 miles.

"It certainly would not be a car you would be very comfortable driving through West Virginia," the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels said of the all-battery vehicles. He said the industry is understandably jittery about the new investment.

"If they could easily make money from it without a federal subsidy, they would be there. Obviously, they don't think there's a big demand," he said.

But that's exactly why the government is getting involved -- to incentivize the industry, and consumers, on the front end with the hope of building the groundwork for a bona-fide market that would be good for America's economic and energy security.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has described the Obama administration's support as "critical." The administration has set a goal of getting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. To advance that goal, the administration also reportedly has included a $7,500 rebate in its 2012 budget proposal for drivers who buy electric vehicles.

"It's a slow process for a few years, but eventually people are predicting that this will really take off," said Carlos Cordova, spokesman with Austin Energy, the local utility company that will operate charging stations in Austin.

Karl Rabago, Austin Energy's vice president for distributed energy services, said the federal aid is critical for getting the market off the ground. He said the subsidies won't be indefinite and expressed confidence that the industry can eventually survive on its own. He said the private sector is eager to step in with investment as soon as it has the confidence it will pay off.

"Customers are just not going to buy these cars until they can look around and say, 'I'm comfortable. I won't feel stranded.' This is the chicken that has to come before the egg," Rabago told FoxNews.com. "This is just government doing what government does best."

The plug-in station program is a $37 million subsidized initiative run by Coulomb Technologies. Fifteen million dollars came from the 2009 federal stimulus, another few million came from the California Energy Commission and the rest came from Coulomb and other sources. Coulomb already sells charging units on its own, outside the program. But through what's known as the ChargePoint America initiative, it plans to deliver nearly 5,000 of them to Austin, Detroit, Los Angeles, Orlando and other cities.

In Austin, the city is getting more than 100 stations -- worth about $700 apiece -- free of charge from Coulomb. Austin Energy and other private companies will front the cost, estimated at about $3,000 apiece, for installing the stations.

Rabago said that if the program were not subsidized, his company could probably afford to get on board, considering the cost of the units. But, he said, "It just makes it a lot easier."

"Utilities are, I think the word is, conservative," Rabago said.

But some worry the government is taking a risk, on behalf of taxpayers, better reserved for venture capitalists, banks and the companies themselves. Littmann said that if and when the technology is at a marketable level, "there's plenty of capital here, and worldwide, and plenty of entrepreneurs to take care of that for expanding demand."

Nick Loris, a research associate at the Heritage Foundation, said he assumes America's vehicle fleet will look a lot different 50 years from now, but that it's not the government's role to promote electric vehicles before they're "economically viable."

Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, said his organization takes a "dim view" of the charging station program in his state.

"Electric cars -- by definition -- shouldn't require a jump start, and neither should their market," he said in an e-mail. "If the people benefiting from the sale of the cars won't invest in the infrastructure to make core-consumers confident about the product, it is troubling taxpayers would be asked to do so. Taxpayer subsidies become a narcotic, and once begun it's hard to wean off."

Obama: Egyptians Won't Permit a Repressive Government to Fill Mubarak Void

The United States can't force out Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, but the Egyptian people will no longer allow unresponsive government without representation or free and fair elections, President Obama said in an interview Sunday with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.

With that in mind, an orderly but meaningful transition to a new government will reduce the possibility of a radical, anti-American government, the president argued in a pre-Super Bowl XLV interview.

"What I want is a representative government in Egypt and I have confidence that if Egypt moves in an orderly transition process, they will have a government in Egypt that will work together with us" as partners, Obama said from the White House, where he was preparing to entertain about 100 guests for the Super Bowl game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers.

Mubarak has ruled Egypt with an autocratic fist for decades even as the country has been an ally to the United States. While the embattled Egyptian president has been a reliable partner in upholding the peace accords with Israel and in counterterror efforts, in the past two weeks hundreds of thousands have stormed a central square in Egypt's capital Cairo to protest Mubarak's oppressive rule.

Though the strength and breadth of the demonstrations were unexpected, the United States has quickly moved to convincing Mubarak that it's time for him to step down after the presidential elections scheduled for September, if not sooner.

But any sudden toppling of the Mubarak regime could create major headaches for the United States, particularly if the void permits a group like the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which is negotiating with the current government about leadership changes, to emerge victorious.

Obama suggested he's less concerned about that.

"The Muslim Brotherhood is one faction in Egypt. They don't have majority support in Egypt, but they are well organized and there are strains of their ideology that are against the U.S., there's no doubt about it," Obama said. "But here's the thing that we have to understand, there are a whole bunch of secular folks in Egypt, there are a whole bunch of educators and civil society in Egypt that wants to come to the fore as well. So it's important for us not to say that our own only two options are either the Muslim Brotherhood or a suppressed people."

To avoid such scenarios, Obama said that the U.S. must make sure "that we get all the groups together in Egypt for an orderly transition and the one that is a meaningful transition."

Foreign relations aren't the only matters on the president's mind. In his wide-ranging interview, the president appeared nonplussed about the possibility that the Supreme Court would rule his new health care law unconstitutional.

Repeating remarks he made in his State of the Union address last month -- that he doesn't want to re-fight the battles of the past two years -- Obama nonetheless said he thinks a Florida district judge was wrong to rule against his signature domestic achievement.

"Keep in mind, we've had 12 judges that just threw this case out, this notion that the health care law was unconstitutional," Obama said.

Obama would not speculate on what would happen to the program if the Supreme Court throws out the case, but said he is not prepared to go back to the days when Americans with preconditions couldn't get coverage.

Adding that people want cost controls and security in health care, the president also took issue with suggestions that he has moved to the center after the drubbing Democrats took in the November midterm election. And he rejected claims that the health care law is a far-reach to the wishes of the political left.

Arguing that he hears people who say that they don't want to pay for other people's health care -- which many uninsured don't get until they are in the emergency room -- Obama said, "If you get sick you have a responsibility to make sure you get coverage. There's nothing socialist about that. That's saying to Americans we're going to, each of us, be responsible for our own health care," Obama said.

"In this country there is no reason why when you get sick you should go bankrupt," he added. "The notion that that's a radical principle, I don't think the majority of people would agree with me on."

Answering an unexpected question about what he thinks Fox News could do better, the president said, "The most important thing that the news (can do), whether it's Fox News or MSNBC or whoever, is give people the facts."

"I would say that the news guys try to do a good job, though look let's face it, Fox News has a point of view. There's nothing wrong with that," the president said, arguing that America has "a strong history" of opinion journalism.

In a series of short response questions and answers, the president joked that the worst part of the job is that he has to wear a jacket on Super Bowl Sunday. In reality, however, "the biggest problem for me is being in the bubble, you can't go to the corner, everyone watching every move you make and over time you feel like you're not able to have a spontaneous conversation with folks and that's a big loss."

He added that the biggest challenge he learned being president is that it's tougher than anyone can intellectually grasp.

"You don't understand in your gut until you're in the job ... that everything that gets sent to my desk is what nobody else was able to solve," he said, adding that by the time a problem reaches him, the solution comes really from using his best judgment.

Obama said he doesn't worry whether people hate him because he learned to get a tough skin long before he got to the job.

"The folks who hate you don't know you. What they hate is whatever funhouse mirror image of you is out there," he said.

Asked if he's changed, Obama said he thinks he's the same guy as when he came in, but he didn't argue with assertions from friends and confidants that he's not as light or spontaneous as he was.

"There's no doubt that the weight of the office has an impact, but I will tell you that the longer I'm in this job the more I enjoy it, the more optimistic I am about the American people, the more optimistic I am about the country. There's something about this position that gives you a pretty good vantage point about the country as a whole, and for all the arguing we get into and all the debates between Democrats and Republicans, there's just a sense, a common sense and a decency to the American people that makes me optimistic even on the worst of days."

The president said he was also optimistic for a good Super Bowl.

"Once my (Chicago) Bears lost, I don't pick sides," he said. "I want a great game. These are two pretty evenly matched teams. I think Green Bay is probably a little faster, Steelers got a little more experience. I think the Steelers not having their starting center is something they gotta be a little worried about."

Administration Officials Discussing Various Scenarios for Mubarak Exit

U.S. officials are discussing a number of possible scenarios for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, with one of them being Mubarak stepping down very soon and an interim government being formed, headed by Vice President Omar Suleiman working with the military to steer Egypt toward elections, officials told ABC News.

"The president has said that now is the time to begin a peaceful, orderly and meaningful transition with credible, inclusive negotiations," said National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor. "We have discussed with the Egyptians a variety of different ways to move that process forward, but all of those decisions must be made by the Egyptian people.”

The comment came after the New York Times published a story reporting that the Obama administration "is discussing with Egyptian officials a proposal for President Hosni Mubarak to resign immediately, turning over power to a transitional government headed by Vice President Omar Suleiman with the support of the Egyptian military."

Mubarak rebuffed the plan, the Times reported, but "officials from both governments are continuing talks about a plan in which, Mr. Suleiman, backed by Sami Enan, chief of the Egyptian armed forces, and Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, the defense minister, would immediately begin a process of constitutional reform."

Officials told the Times that the proposal is "one of several options under discussion with high-level Egyptian officials around Mr. Mubarak, though not him directly, in an effort to convince him to step down now."

Bur in response to the Times story, a senior administration official called it "simply wrong to report that there’s a single U.S. plan that’s being negotiated with the Egyptians."

Thousands converge in Cairo to demand Mubarak

Tens of thousands of people flooded into the heart of Cairo Tuesday, filling the city's main square as a call for a million protesters was answered by the largest demonstration in a week of unceasing demands for President Hosni Mubarak to leave after nearly 30 years in power.

Rivers of protesters arrived in Tahrir, or Liberation, Square at checkpoints guarded by protesters and the army, which promised Monday night that it would not fire on protesters.

The announcement was a sign that army support for Mubarak may be unraveling as momentum builds for an extraordinary eruption of discontent and demands for democracy in the United States' most important Arab ally.

"We are not going anywhere until Mubarak leaves," said Mohammed Abdullah, a 27-year-old aviation engineer.

Mubarak, 82, would be the second Arab leader pushed from office by a popular uprising in the history of the modern Middle East.

The loosely organized and disparate movement to drive him out is fueled by deep frustration with an autocratic regime blamed for ignoring the needs of the poor and allowing corruption and official abuse to run rampant. After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the overthrow of Tunisia's president last month took to the streets on Jan. 25 and mounted a relentless and once unimaginable series of protests across this nation of 80 million people — the region's most populous country and the center of Arabic-language film-making, music and literature.

Soviet-era and newer U.S.-made Abrams tanks stood at the roads leading into Tahrir Square, a plaza overlooked by the headquarters of the Arab League, the campus of the American University in Cairo, the famed Egyptian Museum and the Mugammma, an enormous winged building housing dozens of departments of the country's notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.

Working-class men in scuffed shoes and worn cloth pants stood alongside women in full-face veils who chanted, "The people want to bring down the regime!"

For days, army tanks and troops have surrounded the square, keeping the protests confined but doing nothing to stop people from joining. The guns of many of the tanks pointed out from the square.

Military spokesman Ismail Etman said the military "has not and will not use force against the public" and underlined that "the freedom of peaceful expression is guaranteed for everyone."

He added the caveats that protesters should not commit "any act that destabilizes security of the country" or damage property.

The protests appeared to be better organized on Tuesday. Volunteers wearing tags reading "Security of the People" said they were watching for government infiltrators who might try to instigate violence.