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NBC News grabs a key detail from the dinner President Obama held with 12 Senate Republicans last night:     It was serious. It was respectful. And it was informative. (In fact, one senator told us that he learned, for the first time, the actual cuts that the president has put on the table. Leadership hadn’t shared that list with them before). The number of Republicans who don’t know what the White House is actually offering is stunning. Last week I wrote about a Republican legislator who didn’t know Obama had publicly said he’d be willing to move to chained-CPI.     Would it matter, one reporter asked the veteran legislator, if the president were to put chained-CPI — a policy that reconfigures the way the government measures inflation and thus slows the growth of Social Security benefits — on the table?     “Absolutely,” the legislator said. “That’s serious.”     Another reporter jumped in. “But it is on the table! They tell us three times a day that they want to do chained-CPI.”    

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have been queuing to pay their last respects to President Hugo Chavez, who died on Tuesday after 14 years in power. His body is lying in state at the military academy in the capital Caracas before his state funeral on Friday. His supporters want him interred alongside Simon Bolivar, the 19th Century independence leader he claimed as his "revolutionary" inspiration. Mr Chavez died at the age of 58 after a two-year battle with cancer. Thousands queued through the night to file silently past the open coffin, where Mr Chavez is lying in an olive-green military uniform and his signature red beret. His family and close advisers, as well as the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, paid their respects on Wednesday. Other world leaders - including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - are flying into Caracas for his funeral. Several Latin American nations are holding periods of national mourning for the left-wing leader, who was a strong a

The United Nations Security Council approved a new regimen of sanctions on Thursday against North Korea for its underground nuclear test last month, imposing penalties on North Korean banking, travel and trade in a unanimous vote that reflected the country’s increased international isolation. The resolution, which was drafted by the United States and China, was passed in a speedy vote hours after North Korea threatened for the first time to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States and South Korea. “The strength, breadth and severity of these sanctions will raise the cost to North Korea of its illicit nuclear program,” the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, told reporters after the vote. “Taken together, these sanctions will bite and bite hard.” Li Baodong, the ambassador from China, which lent its support to the new sanctions to the anger of the North Korean government, told reporters the resolution was aimed at the long-term goal

World powers began talks with Iran on its nuclear programme inside the Kazakh city of Almaty on Tuesday, in a fresh make an effort to resolve a decade-old standoff that threatens the very center East with a new war. It is "not clear the length of time the session go, (we) will advise even as we go," said the Western official, confirming the beginning of the talks at the Rixos hotel inside the city The six - United states of america, Russia, China, Britain, Germany and France - are expected to provide Tehran some sanctions relief when it curbs work that they suspect is to produce material for nuclear weapons, although Iran denies this. No breakthrough is expected at the talks, the 1st such meeting in eight months, but diplomats an answer to a legal contract to carry further talks soon on how to implement steps to ease the tension.

Hot air balloon crashed No less than 19 foreign tourists have been killed Tuesday as their hot air balloon crashed close to the ancient Egyptian capital of - Luxor, a security alarm official in Egypt told the Associated Press. The casualties included French, British, Chinese and Japanese nationals. No Americans are thought to be involved. CNN reported that passengers inside the balloon included 19 foreign tourists: nine from Hong Kong; four from Japan; two from Belgium; two from Britain and two from France. CNN cited Luxor province Gov. Izzat Saad, who had previously been speaking on Nile TV. "There were 20 passengers aboard. A surge happened and 19 passengers died. One tourist as well as the pilot survived," Ahmed Aboud, a spokesman for firms that operate balloon flights in your neighborhood, told Reuters news agency. The Egyptian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while he had not been authorized to go to the media, said there was a hearth and an exp

Top Bay State Democrats continued to try and pin the sequestration chaos in D.C. on congressional Republicans yesterday, with Gov. Deval Patrick again accusing the GOP of trying to ruin the economy and saying he’s “scared,” while U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined straight into slam “just plain dumb” budget cuts. Patrick framed sequestration being a “partisan failure,” blaming GOP House Speaker John Boehner for refusing to strike an agreement with President barack obama. “When the Republicans in the home say, ‘This is what we’re happy to do,’ and the president says, ‘OK, I believe that’s a good idea,’ it is said, ‘Well do you know what? Don't worry then.’ I think that’s as frustrating towards the American public since it is if you ask me,” Patrick said in a State House press conference yesterday. Patrick Administration & Finance Secretary Glen Shor admitted there would be no immediate action on the state level if the sequestration blade falls on March 1, but Patrick warned it c

Raul Castro C uba President Raul Castro said Sunday while he accepted a whole new five-year term that it's going to he be his last as Cuba's president, for the first time placing a date on the end of the Castro era. He tapped rising star Miguel Diaz-Canel as his top lieutenant and first in the type of succession. The 81-year-old Castro also said he hopes to create two-term limits and age caps for political offices like the presidency - a huge prospect for a nation led by Castro or his older brother Fidel since 1959 revolution. Some constitutional changes are to be so dramatic that they'll have to be ratified with the Cuban people a public referendum, he was quoted saying, though he added he has not been named president in order to destroy Cuba's socialist system. Cuba is a an instant of "historic transcendence," Castro told lawmakers in speaking of his decision to name Diaz-Canel for the No. 2 job. "It represents a definitive step up the configurat