U.S. evolves on same-sex marriage

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The president and the nation have shifted perspectives on same-sex marriage


• Supreme Court ruling on California's same-sex marriage ban a critical test


• Growing public support for gay marriage give proponents hope for change

Washington (CNN) -- The nation's growing acceptance of same-sex marriage has happened in slow and painstaking moves, eventually building into a momentum that is sweeping even the most unlikely of converts.

Even though he said in 2008 that he could only support civil unions for same-sex couples, President Barack Obama nonetheless enjoyed strong support among the gay community. He disappointed many with his conspicuously subdued first-term response to the same-sex marriage debate.

Last year, after Vice President Joe Biden announced his support, the president then said his position had evolved and he, too, supported same-sex marriage.

So it was no small matter when on Thursday the Obama administration formally expressed its support of same-sex marriage in a court brief weighing in on California's Proposition 8, which bans same-sex weddings. The administration's effort was matched by at least 100 high-profile Republicans — some of whom in elections past depended on gay marriage as a wedge issue guaranteed to rally the base — who signed onto a brief supporting gay couples to legally wed.

Obama on same-sex marriage: Everyone is equal

Then there are the polls that show that an increasing number of Americans now support same-sex marriage. These polls show that nearly half of the nation's Catholics and white, mainstream Protestants and more than half of the nation's women, liberals and political moderates all support same-sex marriage.

According to Pew Research Center polling, 48% of Americans support same-sex marriage with 43% opposed. Back in 2001, 57% opposed same-sex marriage while 35% supported it.

In last year's presidential election, same-sex marriage scarcely raised a ripple. That sea change is not lost on the president.

"The same evolution I've gone through is the same evolution the country as a whole has gone through," Obama told reporters on Friday.

Craig Rimmerman, professor of public policy and political science at Hobart and William Smith colleges says there is history at work here and the administration is wise to get on the right side.

"There is no doubt that President Obama's shifting position on Proposition 8 and same-sex marriage more broadly is due to his desire to situate himself on the right side of history with respect to the fight over same-sex marriage," said Rimmerman, author of "From Identity to Politics: The Lesbian and Gay Movements in the United States."

"I also think that broader changes in public opinion showing greater support for same-sex marriage, especially among young people, but in the country at large as well, has created a cultural context for Obama to alter his views."

For years, Obama had frustrated many in the gay community by not offering full-throated support of same-sex marriage. However, the president's revelation last year that conversations with his daughters and friends led him to change his mind gave many in that community hope.

Last year, the Obama administration criticized a measure in North Carolina that banned same-sex marriage and made civil unions illegal. The president took the same position on a similar Minnesota proposal.

Obama administration officials point to what they see as the administration's biggest accomplishment in the gay rights cause: repealing "don't ask, don't tell," the military's ban on openly gay and lesbian members serving in the forces.

Then there was the president's inaugural address which placed the gay community's struggle for equality alongside similar civil rights fights by women and African-Americans.

"Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well," Obama said in his address after being sworn in.

In offering its support and asserting in the brief that "prejudice may not be the basis for differential treatment under the law," the Obama administration is setting up a high stakes political and constitutional showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court over a fast-evolving and contentious issue.

The justices will hear California's Proposition 8 case in March. That case and another appeal over the federal Defense of Marriage Act will produce blockbuster rulings from the justices in coming months.

Beyond the legal wranglings there is a strong social and historic component, one that has helped open the way for the administration to push what could prove to be a social issue that defines Obama's second term legacy, Rimmerman said.

The nation is redefining itself on this issue, as well.

Pew survey: Changing attitudes on gay marriage

The changes are due, in part, to generational shifts. Younger people show a higher level of support than their older peers, according to Pew polling "Millennials are almost twice as likely as the Silent Generation to support same-sex marriage."

"As people have grown up with people having the right to marry the generational momentum has been very, very strong," said Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, a gay rights organization.

That is not to say that there isn't still opposition.

Pew polling found that most Republicans and conservatives remain opposed to same-sex marriage. In 2001, 21% of Republicans were supportive; in 2012 that number nudged slightly to 25%.

Conservative groups expressed dismay at the administration's same-sex marriage support.

"President Obama, who was against same-sex 'marriage' before he was for it, and his administration, which said the Defense of Marriage Act was constitutional before they said it was unconstitutional, has now flip-flopped again on the issue of same-sex 'marriage,' putting allegiance to extreme liberal social policies ahead of constitutional principle," Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said in a statement.

But there are signs of movement even among some high profile Republican leaders

Top Republicans sign brief supporting same-sex marriage

The Republican-penned friend of the court brief, which is designed to influence conservative justices on the high court, includes a number of top officials from the George W. Bush administration, Mitt Romney's former campaign manager and former GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman.

It is also at odds with the Republican Party's platform, which opposes same-sex marriage and defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Still, with White House and high-profile Republican support, legal and legislative victories in a number of states and polls that show an increasing number of Americans support same sex-marriage, proponents feel that the winds of history are with them.

"What we've seen is accelerating and irrefutable momentum as Americans have come to understand who gay people are and why marriage matters," Wolfson said. "We now have a solid national majority and growing support across every demographic. We have leaders across the spectrum, including Republicans, all saying it's time to end marriage discrimination."

CNN's Peter Hamby, Ashley Killough and Bill Mears contributed to this report.

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Efforts under way to confirm Qaeda boss death in Mali

BAMAKO: Algeria was seeking Saturday to confirm the reported killing of Al-Qaeda's top commander in northern Mali, where French and African troops attempted to flush out Islamist fighters from desert and mountain hideouts.

Chad's president announced on Friday that his troops had killed Abou Zeid days earlier, in what would be one of the worst blows to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in the seven-week-old French-led intervention.

Idriss Deby Itno claimed the AQIM commander in Mali was killed during a major battle that also left 26 Chadian soldiers dead on February 22. "Our soldiers killed two jihadist chiefs including Abou Zeid," he said.

Adding to the confusion over the jihadist supremo's fate, Mauritania's private news agency Sahara Medias on Saturday confirmed that Abou Zeid had been killed but had a different story.

It said Abou Zeid was killed "four days ago" in a French air strike during a clash between a jihadist unit he was leading and the group of Chadian soldiers that had suffered the 26 losses days earlier.

Sahara Medias said the strike occurred in the mountainous region of Tigharghar near the border with Algeria and added without naming them that "extremely well informed sources" had confirmed Abou Zeid's death.

However the Islamist organisation itself has not yet confirmed the jihadist leader's death and officials in his native Algeria were carrying out DNA tests in an effort to confirm the demise of one of Africa's most wanted men.

Analysts have suggested Abou Zeid's death could spell AQIM's doom with other jihadist groups now thriving in the region but while Washington described the report as "very credible" France has so far treated it with caution.

Algeria's El Khabar newspaper said Saturday that Algerian security services, who were the first to report Abou Zeid's death, had examined a body believed to be his.

"Algerian officers have examined a body said to be that of Abou Zeid in a military site in northern Mali and identified his personal weapon... but were unable to formally identify" the body as his, it said.

"Confirmation of Abou Zeid's death remains linked to the results of DNA tests done on Thursday by Algeria on two members of his family," said El Khabar.

Mauritanian expert Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Aboulmaali pointed out that Algeria had announced his death several times in the past and that Chad needed morale boosting news after suffering such heavy losses.

Matthieu Guidere, a French university professor and Al-Qaeda specialist, also voiced caution in the absence of any confirmation of Abou Zeid's death on jihadist forums.

"Experience shows that jihadists never try to hide their dead and immediately broadcast their martyrdom," he said.

Guidere explained that announcing the death of a wanted jihadist was a tactic that had been used in the past to force the operative to deny his death and reveal his location.

Abou Zeid, 46, whose real name is Mohamed Ghedir, was often seen in the cities of Timbuktu and Gao after the Islamists took control of northern Mali last year and sparked fears the region could become a haven for extremists.

An Algerian born near the border with Libya, Abou Zeid was a former smuggler who embraced radical Islam in the 1990s and became one of AQIM's key leaders.

He was suspected of being behind a series of kidnappings in the Sahel region, including of British national Edwin Dyer, who was abducted in Niger and killed in 2009, and of 78-year-old French aid worker Michel Germaneau, who was killed in 2010.

Abou Zeid was believed to be holding a number of Western hostages, including four French citizens kidnapped in Niger in 2010.

Guidere said Abou Zeid had adopted such a hard line since reaching the top of AQIM's operational command that many of his lieutenants left the group to join other organisations or launch their own.

One of the main splinters is the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), which first emerged last year and was battling African forces near the main northern city of Gao as recently as Friday.

"We waged a tough battle against Malian troops and their French accomplices around 60 kilometres east of Gao on Friday," MUJAO spokesman Abou Walid Sahraoui told AFP.

"We'll see later about the death toll," he said.

A Malian soldier who claimed he took part in the fighting said the operation had left a MUJAO base destroyed and "many dead" among the Islamists.

- AFP/jc

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U.S. to 'rain mice' on tree snakes

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Recovery attempt weighed for man's body in sinkhole

SEFFNER, Fla. Engineers worked gingerly Saturday to find out more about a slowly growing sinkhole that swallowed a Florida man in his bedroom, believing the entire house could eventually succumb to the unstable ground.

It could be days before officials decide whether they will attempt to recover Jeff Bush's body, and they were still trying Saturday to determine the extent of the sinkhole network and what kind of work might be safe. As the sinkhole grows, it may pose further risk to the subdivision and its homes.

Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night in Seffner — a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa — when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five others in the house escaped unharmed.

Play Video

Man feared dead in sinkhole freak accident

On "CBS This Morning: Saturday," reporter Grayson Kamm of CBS affiliate WTSP-TV in Tampa, Fla., reported that Bush was not planning to stay in the house for long, just a few months. He was planning to move out Saturday, Kamm reports.

Because of Florida's unique geography, experts say sinkholes are common across the state, with thousands erupting each year. Most are small, though, and deaths rarely occur.

"There's hardly a place in Florida that's immune to sinkholes," said Sandy Nettles, a geologist. "There's no way of ever predicting where a sinkhole is going to occur."

Florida is prone because it sits on limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water. A layer of clay is on top of the limestone. The clay is thicker in some locations — including the area where Bush became a victim — making them even more prone to sinkholes.

Most are small, like one that was found Saturday morning in Largo, some 35 miles away from where the Seffner sinkhole. The Largo sinkhole, about 10 feet long and several feet wide, was discovered in a mall parking lot. Such discoveries are common throughout the year in Florida, though some factors — such as drought and development — can exacerbate the development, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

28 Photos

Sinkholes

Still, it's unclear what, if anything, caused the Seffner sinkhole.

"The condition that caused that sinkhole could have started a million years ago," Nettles said.

On Saturday, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokesman Ronnie Rivera said one of the homes next door to the Bush house also was compromised by the sinkhole, as determined through testing. The family, which had evacuated Friday, was allowed to go inside for about a half-hour to gathering belongings, Rivera said. The family was outside, crying and organizing boxes.

Engineers had been testing since 7 a.m. Saturday. By 10 a.m., officials moved media crews farther away from the Bush house so experts could perform tests on the home across the street.

Experts spent the previous day on the property, taking soil samples and running tests — while acknowledging that the entire lot where Bush lay entombed was dangerous. On Saturday, officials were still not allowing anyone in the Bush home.

Jeremy Bush, who tried to rescue his brother when the earth opened, lay flowers and a stuffed lamb near the house Saturday morning and wept.

He said someone came to his home in the Tampa suburb of about 8,000 people a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other issues, apparently for insurance purposes, but found nothing wrong. State law requires home insurers to provide coverage against sinkholes.

"And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole," Bush said Friday.

The sinkhole, estimated at 20 feet across and 20 feet deep, caused the home's concrete floor to cave in around 11 p.m. Thursday as everyone in the Tampa-area house was turning in for the night. It gave way with a loud crash that sounded like a car hitting the house and brought Jeremy Bush running.

Engineers said they may have to demolish the small house, even though from the outside there appeared to be nothing wrong with the four-bedroom, concrete-wall structure, built in 1974.

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Tennis: Federer beaten by Berdych again

DUBAI: Roger Federer's defence of the Dubai Open title came to a dramatic end in the semi-finals after he failed to convert three match points against Tomas Berdych, the man who also upset him in the US Open.

The world number six from the Czech Republic thrillingly turned the match around after a neck-and-neck second set tie-break, going on to win 3-6, 7-6 (10-8), 6-4 against the five-time champion and set up a final against Novak Djokovic.

The Serbian world number one extended his unbeaten run to 17 matches and reached the 55th final of his career with a 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) win over Juan Martin Del Potro, the former US Open champion from Argentina.

Federer was on the verge of success at 6-4 and 8-7 in the tie break, with the second of the three points coming on his serve, only for Berdych to somehow get into a rally and win it with some fierce ground strokes.

One break of serve halfway through the final set then proved decisive, as Federer gambled more and more on rushing the net instead of continuing the bruising baseline exchanges which characterised the first two sets.

"It's obviously unfortunate, you know," said Federer, for whom this is a tournament in his second home. "Pity to lose that one, but Tomas did well to hang in there.

"Obviously I leave this match with a lot of regrets I'm feeling: serving for the match, with the serve, having chances in the beginning of the second, you know, when he wasn't quite in the match yet, to go break up, you know, set and a break, you know, a few points where things just didn't happen for me."

Of his best chance, the second match point, Federer said: "That's just disappointing right there, because the match was in my racket.

"You do all the right things for so long, and then at the end you've got to explain why you didn't hit two shots decent, you know. So it's disappointing."

Berdych was pleased that he avoided the perils of tension in the later stages, as he closed the match out.

"Staying calm is definitely the big thing I have been working on," he said. "And I am still working on it, especially with the serve. When I serve well I can do a lot of damage."

Earlier, Djokovic was again in fine fettle for a man who had not played a tournament since the successful defence of the Australian title nearly five weeks ago, and, after three solid wins already, he raised his level once more.

Djokovic was made to.

Del Potro hit fierce first serves and heavy ground strokes mixed in with thunderbolt accelerations with his forehand, advancing to a 3-0 lead in the second set.

Djokovic responded superbly when behind, containing brilliantly, moving superbly, and counter-attacking with excellent timing and accuracy.

However, his break back to 2-3 came amidst controversy. Umpire Magdi Somat imposed a time violation on Del Potro when he took a longer to prepare at a vital moment, at 30-40, break point down.

The Argentine walked up to the umpire to protest, gesticulating as he did so, and accompanied by a spate of boos from spectators. By the time the situation had calmed, the delay was at least twice the permitted 25 seconds.

There followed a forehand-to-forehand exchange ending with a mis-hit under pressure by Del Potro costing him the game. When they sat down at the change of ends there was another exchange between the umpire and Del Potro, with further jeering from spectators.

Djokovic was critical. "I don't know exactly if the chair umpire gave him unofficial verbal warning before that. If he didn't, then I don't agree with that decision," he said.

It muddied the waters and proved to be a turning point. It also landed the Argentine with extra pressure in his next service game and although he diligently saved two break points amidst a sequence of excellent rallies, Djokovic eventually broke serve.

"It was very important point for the game, for the match," Del Potro said of the timing of the umpire's decision. "Maybe he doesn't know about that, you know.

"I mean, in that moment, if you call warning or if you do something different, you can lose the focus and that's what happened with me."

-AFP/ac

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No agreement coming on cuts

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: "We will get through this," President Obama says of the forced spending cuts


• Obama, congressional leaders fail to bridge gaps on cuts, which take effect Friday


• Speaker Boehner says the House will take up a government funding measure


• Forced cuts would hit the military hard as well as other agencies

Washington (CNN) -- Politics trumped progress on Friday as President Barack Obama and Republican leaders traded blame for $85 billion in forced spending cuts after they failed to come up with a compromise to avert the harshest impacts.

The mandatory, across-the-board cuts were set to begin taking effect once Obama signed an order required by law before midnight.

Obama and congressional leaders from both parties met for about 45 minutes at the White House, but no agreement emerged to avert the cuts that both sides oppose.

After weeks of campaign-style events intended to inspire public outrage over the cuts, Obama sought to temper his description of their impact while making clear he thinks Republican intransigence prevented a deal to avoid the economic harm they'll cause.

"We will get through this," he told reporters. "This is not going to be an apocalypse as some people have said. It's just dumb and it's going to hurt."

In a sign of the potential impact, the Department of Justice sent furlough notices to employees that warned they may be forced to take days off without pay in coming months.

Similar furloughs, as well as reduced services, were expected at other agencies if the cuts don't get replaced or eliminated. Military leaders have warned of impaired readiness of U.S. forces.

Shame and blame: Why Washington needs couples therapy

However, the full impact of the cuts weren't expected until April at the earliest.

The cuts amount to roughly 9% for a broad range of non-defense programs and 13% for the Pentagon over the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30.

They were included in a 2011 deal to raise the federal borrowing limit as an unacceptable outcome if Congress failed to agree on a comprehensive deficit reduction plan.

Obama's press conference on spending cuts

However, election-year politics stymied progress on such a deal, leading to the situation Friday in which both sides acknowledged being unable to prevent something neither wanted.

"There are smarter ways to cut spending," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, after the meeting with Obama.

Boehner repeated his past assertion that the GOP-led House has offered proposals to replace the forced spending cuts while the Democratic-led Senate has not, as well as his party's opposition to any increased tax revenue to offset the forced spending cuts.

Others who also took part in the White House gathering were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

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In the White House briefing room, Obama told reporters that Republicans in Congress "allowed these cuts to happen because they refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful (tax) loophole to help reduce the deficit."

"As recently as yesterday, they decided to protect special interest tax breaks for the well off and the well connected and they think that that's apparently more important than protecting our military or middle class families from the pain of these cuts," Obama said.

He was referring to a procedural vote on Thursday in which Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal that called for eliminating some tax loopholes as part of a package with spending cuts.

Boehner and Republicans say the president and Democrats have yet to propose a serious plan to reduce spending, including costly entitlement programs, on a scale necessary to bring chronic federal deficits and debt under control.

Both Obama and Boehner foreshadowed the next major spending showdown - a March 27 deadline for Congress to authorize funding to keep the government running for the rest of the fiscal year.

4 myths about the spending cuts

Boehner told reporters that the House will take up a measure next week to authorize federal funding beyond the deadline.

"The president and leaders agreed legislation should be enacted this month to prevent a government shutdown while we continue to work on a solution to replace the" forced spending cuts, said a statement by Boehner's office.

Although the funding measure is unconnected to the spending cuts, Obama indicated he was open to a broader agreement that would resolve both issues.

"I do know that there are Republicans in Congress who privately, at least, say that they would rather close tax loopholes then let these cuts go through," said Obama in response to questions from reporters.

"... In the coming days and the coming weeks, I'm going to keeping on reaching out to them -- both individually and as groups of senators or members of the House -- and say to them, 'Let's fix this, not just for a month or two, but for years to come,' because the greatest nation on Earth does not conduct its business in month-to-month increments or by careening from crisis to crisis," Obama said.

Spending cuts: When they'll really bite

CNN's Dana Bash, Deirdre Walsh, Ted Barrett and Terry Frieden contributed to this report.

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Man feared dead in 100-foot sinkhole near Tampa

Last Updated 1:15 p.m. ET

SEFFNER, Fla. A man was missing and feared dead early Friday after a large sinkhole opened under the bedroom of a house near Tampa.

His brother says the man screamed for help before he disappeared.

The 36-year-old man's brother, Jeremy Bush, told rescue crews he heard a loud crash around 11 p.m. Thursday, then heard his brother screaming for help.

"When he got there, there was no bedroom left," Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said. "There was no furniture. All he saw was a piece of the mattress sticking up."

The brother called 911 and frantically tried to help his brother. He said he jumped into the hole and dirt was quickly up to his neck.

"The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother," Jeremy said. "But I just couldn't do nothing."

An arriving deputy pulled the brother from the still-collapsing house.

"I reached down and was able to actually able to get him by his hand and pull him out of the hole," Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy Douglas Duvall said. "The hole was collapsing. At that time, we left the house."

Engineers worked to determine the size of the sinkhole. At the surface, officials estimated it was about 30 feet across. Below the surface, officials believed it was 100 feet wide.

"The entire house is on the sinkhole," Damico said.

Hillsborough County Fire Chief Ron Rogers told a news briefing that extra-sensitive listening devices and cameras were inserted into the sinkhole. "They did not detect any signs of life," he said.

By early Friday, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue officials determined the home had become too unstable to continue rescue efforts.

Neighbors on both sides of the home have been evacuated.

Sinkholes are common in seaside Florida, whose underlying limestone and dolomite can be worn away by water and chemicals, then collapse.

Engineers condemned the house, reports CBS Tampa affiliate WTSP.

From the outside of the small, sky blue house, nothing appeared wrong. There wear no cracks and the only sign something was amiss was the yellow caution tape circling the house.

Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokesman Larry McKinnon said authorities asked sinkhole and engineering experts, and they were using equipment to see if the ground can support the weight of heavy machinery needed for the recovery effort.

Jeremy Bush stood in a neighbor's yard across the street from the house Friday and recounted the harrowing collapse.

"He was screaming my name. I could swear I heard him hollering my name to help him," he said of his brother.

Jeremy Bush's wife and his 2-year-old daughter were also inside the house. "She keeps asking where her Uncle Jeff is," he said. "I lost everything. I work so hard to support my wife and kid and I lost everything."

Janell Wheeler told the Tampa Bay Times newspaper she was inside the house with four other adults and a child when the sinkhole opened.

"It sounded like a car hit my house," she said.

The rest of the family went to a hotel but she stayed behind, sleeping in her car.

"I just want my nephew," she said through tears.

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Obama, Congress Fail to Avert Sequester Cuts

President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.

Obama met for just over an hour at the White House today with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.

But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold at midnight.

"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."

READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester

Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.

Federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year.

Sequestration Deadline: Obama Meets With Leaders Watch Video

Sequester Countdown: The Reality of Budget Cuts Watch Video

The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.

"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."

The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.

The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.

"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."

Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester

Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.

Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like."

But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.

"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."

Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?

The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.

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Syria war is everybody's problem

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: France considers sending Syrian rebels night-vision gear and body armor, a source says


• Britain's foreign secretary says the UK will announce new aid soon


• The statements after European Union loosens restrictions to allow nonlethal aid to rebels


• The U.S. will also send non-lethal aid to rebels for first time, plus $60 million in administrative aid

Rome (CNN) -- The United States stepped further into Syria's civil war Thursday, promising rebel fighters food and medical supplies -- but not weapons -- for the first time in the two-year conflict that has claimed more than 60,000 lives and laid waste to large portions of the country.

Meanwhile, European nations began to explore ways to strengthen rebel fighters that stop short of arming them after a European Council decision allowing such aid to flow to Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the aid would help fighters in the high-stakes effort to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a conflict that has already spawned an enormous humanitarian crisis as refugees flee the fighting.

The ongoing fighting also poses the persistent threat of widening into a destabilizing regional crisis, including concerns that Hezbollah, Iran or others could gain control in Damascus after al-Assad's government falls.

"The United States' decision to take further steps now is the result of the continued brutality of a superior armed force propped up by foreign fighters from Iran and Hezbollah, all of which threatens to destroy Syria," Kerry said after meeting opposition leaders in Rome.

Kerry didn't say how much that aid would be worth, but did announce that the United States would separately give $60 million to local groups working with the Syrian National Council to provide political administration and basic services in rebel-controlled areas of Syria.

READ: U.S. weighing nonlethal aid to Syrian opposition

That's on top of $50 million in similar aid the United States has previously pledged to the council, as well as $385 million in humanitarian assistance, Kerry said.

"This funding will allow the opposition to reach out and help the local councils to be able to rebuild in their liberated areas of Syria so that they can provide basic services to people who so often lack access today to medical care, to food, to sanitation," he said.

Islamist Influence

That aid is partly an effort to hem in radical Islamist groups vying for influence in Syria after the fall of al-Assad, a senior State Department official told CNN.

"If the Syrian opposition coalition can't touch, improve and heal the lives of Syrians in those places that have been freed, then extremists will step in and do it," the official said.

Sheikh Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, president of the Syrian National Council, said concerns about Islamist influence had been overstated.

"We stand against every radical belief that aims to target Syria's diverse social and religious fabric," he said.

READ: Inside Syria: Exclusive look at pro-Assad Christian militia

U.S. officials hope the aid will help the coalition show what it can do and encourage al-Assad supporters to "peel away from him" and help end the fighting, the official said.

The opposition council will decide where the money goes, Kerry said.

But the United States will send technical advisers through its partners to the group's Cairo headquarters to make sure the aid is being used properly, the senior State Department official said.

Additional aid possible

The European Council carved out an exception in its sanctions against Syria on Thursday to allow for the transfer of nonlethal equipment and technical assistance for civilian protection only.

The council didn't specify what kind of equipment could be involved.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Friday on Twitter that his country would be pledging new aid because "we cannot stand still while the crisis worsens and thousands of lives are at stake."

A diplomatic official at the French Foreign Ministry told CNN that France is studying the possibility of supplying night-vision equipment or body armor.

"It is in the scope of the amendment," the official said.

In the United States, President Barack Obama is thinking about training rebels and equipping them with defensive gear such as night-vision goggles, body armor and military vehicles, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

The training would help rebels decide how to use their resources, strategize and maybe train a police force to take over after al-Assad's fall, one of the sources said.

READ: Syrian army in Homs is showing strains of war

Kerry did not announce that sort of aid Thursday, but said the United States and other countries backing the rebels would "continue to consult with each other on an urgent basis."

An official who briefed reporters said the opposition has raised a lot of needs in the Rome meetings and the administration will continue to "keep those under review."

"We will do this with vetted individuals, vetted units, so it has to be done carefully and appropriately," the official said.

Humanitarian crisis

The conflict began with demands for political reform after the Arab Spring movement that swept the Middle East and Africa, but descended into a brutal civil war when the al-Assad regime began a brutal crackdown on demonstrators.

At least 60,000 people have died since the fighting began in March 2011, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in early January.

Another 940,000 had fled the country as of Tuesday, while more than one in 10 of Syria's 20 million residents have been forced to move elsewhere inside the country because of the fighting, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said.

The situation is nearing crisis proportions, with the dramatic influx of refugees threatening to break the ability of host nations to provide for their needs, Assistant High Commissioner Erika Feller told the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday

"The host states, including Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and the North African countries, have been exemplary in their different ways, but we fear the pressure will start to overwhelm their capacities," she told the council, according to a text of her remarks posted on the United Nations website.

Al-Khatib said it's time for the fighting to stop.

"I ask Bashar al-Assad for once, just once, to behave as a human being," he said. "Enough massacres, enough killings. Enough of your bloodshed and enough torture. I urge you to make a rational decision once in your life and end the killings."

READ: Syrian war is everybody's problem

Jill Dougherty reported from Rome, and Michael Pearson reported and wrote from Atlanta. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh and Elise Labott also contributed to this report.

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Amid US budget battle, another likely missed deadline

WASHINGTON: Leaders of a divided Congress acknowledged their failure to avert across-the-board spending cuts set to begin Friday, with lawmakers and the White House trading blame for the doomsday scenario that may lie ahead.

The only related actions of substance Thursday appeared to be votes on competing Senate bills, one sponsored by Democrats and the other by Republicans, to replace the indiscriminate budget austerity, which both sides wanted to avoid when it was baked into law in 2011, with targeted spending cuts and revenues.

President Barack Obama will make a final plea to bickering congressional leaders at a White House meeting on Friday, the last day before the severe cuts known as the sequester begin to kick in.

But many lawmakers from both sides have already resigned themselves to the realization that a deadline-beating budget deal to head off the damaging package of indiscriminate cuts totaling $85 billion this year is just not happening, and that a solution could arise from March negotiations over funding government operations for fiscal year 2013.

"We've laid our cards on the table," House Speaker John Boehner said in explaining why his chamber, which passed two sequester-replacement bills last year, would take no further action until the Senate passed a bill.

Some Republicans have begun to tone down the histrionics over the effects of the sequester, saying the cuts should be manageable -- even as the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday that the sequester will slow growth in the United States and have "an impact on global growth" as well.

But John Cornyn, the number two Republican in the Senate, said Thursday that Obama and his Democrats have been overstating their "apocalyptic predictions" of hundreds of thousands of job losses, a slash in economic growth, and harsh cuts to social services and national security.

"I would suggest... put down the Beltway Kool-Aid, because they are predicting a disaster that will not occur."

Some Republicans in the House agreed. "It is going to happen. It is 2.4 percent of the budget, and it is not the end of the world," Republican Representative Jim Jordan said in US News & World Report.

"We want the savings. We want to bank those savings, and we want to move on."

Democrats have put forward what they are touting as a "balanced plan" that raises new tax revenue to help replace the $85 billion in cuts.

It also cuts several billion dollars in what Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid called "wasteful subsidies to farmers," longstanding and controversial payments that some lawmakers first sought to scrap in the 1980s.

Republicans laid out a competing version that maintains the full financial effect of sequester, without raising new revenue, but gives the president broader "flexibility" to map out where the cuts would hit.

White House spokesman Jay Carney called the Republican proposal "the worst of all worlds."

"It explicitly protects pork-barrel projects and every single tax loophole that benefits the wealthy, but puts on the table cuts to things like Medicare and education, forcing middle-class families to bear the burden while asking nothing from the wealthiest Americans."

And Reid complained that such a plan would force Obama into deciding which programs stay and which get the axe.

But Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said that is precisely the leadership Obama needs to show in a time of crisis.

"It's your job to make the tough decisions," McConnell said of the president.

Democrats are trying to force Republicans into accepting more revenues through closing what Reid calls "wasteful tax loopholes" that favor millionaires.

But conservatives appeared to be standing firm, saying Obama got his $600 billion in tax revenues for the coming decade in the last fiscal negotiations in late December.

"Given those facts, the revenue issue is now closed," Boehner insisted.

Neither plan is likely to receive the necessary votes Thursday to move the legislation forward.

House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi called the delay "mindless," slamming the "anti-government ideologues" of the far right who were cheering for sequester.

Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer blamed Boehner for running out the clock until sequester hits, and he sounded resigned to the sequester sliding into effect after Friday.

"These votes (in the Senate) will not be the last word on the issue. The debate's only beginning," he said.

"In the coming weeks... we'll consider a budget that will keep these issues front and center."

Republicans in the House had similar intentions. They were coalescing around a plan that would see the sequester absorbed into negotiations on legislation that funds the government.

House Appropriations committee chairman Harold Rogers said there was broad support for the plan, which would pare down the $1.043 trillion discretionary spending budget for 2013 down to $974 billion, the difference being the amount of sequester cuts set to affect such spending.

-AFP/ac

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