WASHINGTON—You're a 51-year-old single mother raising two kids and juggling a mortgage and a car loan. Because you're self-employed, getting health insurance has always been a problem. Under the new Senate plan, you still might have to stretch your budget to pay premiums even if the coverage is more secure.

The health care plan unveiled Wednesday by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., strives to contain costs for taxpayers, reducing the risk that covering the uninsured will blow the federal deficit wide open. But that means benefits are not as generous as in competing plans from Senate and House Democrats.

"We've done everything imaginable to get the most generous, most affordable coverage we can within President Obama's target of $900 billion," Baucus said, referring to the president's 10-year estimate of what the legislation should cost.

A free lunch it's not.

For consumers, the Baucus plan comes with costs and benefits, rights and responsibilities. Though people with employer-provided health care would not see dramatic changes, the plan is broad enough that it would touch every American family in some way. Here's a look at how consumers in different circumstances would be affected:

-- Self-employed head of household.

If anyone is meant to benefit from the plan, it's people who have to scramble to find and keep coverage because they work for themselves, not a large employer.

Baucus would eliminate onerous insurance practices, such as denial of coverage due to a pre-existing health problem. But subsidies in the plan may not be enough to make coverage affordable for all middle-class families, who would be required under the bill to carry insurance.

The Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income people, compared the Baucus plan to two other major proposals -- the House Democratic plan and the Senate health committee bill.

A family of three earning about $55,000 -- three times the federal poverty level -- would have to pay 13 percent of its income. That's roughly $7,100 a year. It compares with costs of about $5,500 under the House bill, and $4,300 in the Senate health committee bill.

A three-person family earning about $27,500 would have to pay 5.5 percent of its income, a premium of about $1,570. That compares with $824 a year in the House legislation, and $275 under the Senate health committee proposal.

"They're getting subsidies, but the question is, do those subsidies go far enough both for the premiums they have to pay, as well as the cost-sharing charged under the plan," said Edwin Park, a health care analyst with the center.

The numbers used in the examples are based on 2009 incomes. The dollar figures would likely be higher -- to account for inflation -- when subsidies take affect under the plan in 2013.Continued...

Fearful of a Madrid-style subway train bombing, authorities are poised to make more raids to seize bomb-making materials at locations in Queens, sources said Wednesday.

The FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team arrived in New York in anticipation of the offensive to thwart a Denver-based terror cell with ties to Al Qaeda, police sources told the Daily News.

Another source said an earlier raid uncovered nine backpacks and cell phones, raising memories of the March 2004 bombings in Madrid.

A series of terrorist bombs detonated aboard commuter trains killed 191 people. The source said authorities feared a potential attack on the city subway, with its 5.2 million daily riders.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, speaking at a Senate hearing Wednesday, said the plot posed "no imminent danger."

"New Yorkers are well benefited from the work of the NYPD and (Commissioner) Ray Kelly," said Mueller, offering no other details on the HRT deployment.

Najibullah Zazi, the Colorado man who triggered a rash of Queens raids Monday, was identified through e-mail, wire taps and a confidential informant as part of the plot, the source said.

Zazi, 25, told The News he had nothing to do with any terrorist activity.

"No. Of course, I'm not a terrorist," the 25-year-old Afghan national said Tuesday.

A source said Zazi, tipped while visiting Manhattan last weekend that he was under surveillance, fled back to suburban Denver.

Even as Zazi, of Aurora, Colo., professed his innocence, counterterrorism agents eyed him as part of the first suspected Al Qaeda cell they've uncovered in the U.S. since 9/11.

A bearded and barefoot Zazi, standing in the doorway of his apartment, said he's a hard-working airport shuttle driver who is married and lives with his elderly parents in the Denver suburb.

"I didn't know anything about who was following me," Zazi said of reports he is under surveillance by the FBI.

He confirmed driving to New York last week to visit friends, but denied involvement in any Al Qaeda bomb plot or terror cell.

Zazi was stopped at the George Washington Bridge on his way into the city, sources told The News. Authorities later seized his rental car from a Queens street, sources said.

In the car, sources said the feds found documents and papers about bomb-making and bombs. The massive federal response was "an indication of just how serious a threat they see this as," said Frances
Townsend, a former counterterrorism adviser to ex-President George W. Bush.

Zazi remained under constant surveillance Tuesday, the sources said.

Reporting from Jerusalem - Israel today rejected a United Nations panel's call to open an independent inquiry into its wartime conduct in the Gaza Strip and launched a diplomatic campaign to thwart any prosecution of its soldiers in an international criminal tribunal.

Officials said President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior ministers were telephoning counterparts abroad in an effort to discredit a harshly critical report by the fact-finding panel. The report concluded that both sides committed war crimes during an Israeli offensive last winter that took aim at rocket-firing militants in the Palestinian enclave but also left hundreds of civilians dead.

Peres declared at a news conference that the report, issued Tuesday by former South African judge Richard Goldstone, is one-sided and "makes a mockery of history."

"It draws no distinction between the attacker and the attacked," Peres said. "The report essentially grants legitimacy to acts of terrorism, shooting and killing, and ignores the right and duty of any country to self defense, as outlined in the U.N. charter."

Israel's assertive response reflected official concern that the 22-day winter assault on Gaza was a diplomatic and strategic defeat for the Jewish state, even though it has led to a sharp reduction in rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled territory.

Although the panel said rocket fire by Gaza militants into civilian areas of Israel also constituted war crimes, the 455-page report reserved its harshest language for the Israeli military, saying that soldiers targeted and shot civilians in 11 well-documented cases.

The four-member panel called on Israel and Hamas to appoint independent investigators for separate inquiries into their own conduct. If that is not done, it said, the U.N. Security Council should refer the report to Hague-based prosecutors of the International Criminal Court.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel rejected the idea of a special inquiry. He said the army's own ongoing investigation of its actions is open to review by "a professional, independent and forceful judiciary."

He and other officials said Israel was lobbying democratic countries abroad in an effort to head off any action by the 15-nation Security Council that could lead to criminal action against Israelis.

"The battle is political and diplomatic," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. "We are speaking to members of the Security Council and countries that are conducting operations in Afghanistan. Our message is this: If this U.N. report is allowed to set a precedent, no country can feel safe in defending itself against terrorism or any other kind of threat."

Human rights activists have tried in the past to put Israeli military officials on trial, in countries such as Britain, Spain, Belgium and New Zealand, on charges related to operations in Palestinian territories.

Because Israel is not a member of the International Criminal Court, its citizens can be prosecuted there only if the Security Council orders an inquiry. That could happen if the matter goes to a vote in the council and the United States, which is usually reluctant to side against Israel in U.N. forums, chooses not to exercise its veto.

"Mr. Goldstone makes serious allegations, and we want to take time to review them," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday.

Israeli officials said they hoped to head off international action on the report by arguing that the 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council, which created the fact-finding panel, is dominated by Arab and developing countries that are biased against Israel.

The council's original mandate was for the panel to investigate wrongdoing only by Israel. But Goldstone, a veteran war crimes investigator who is Jewish and has had close ties to Israel, undertook the mission only after persuading council members to change his marching orders to conduct a balanced inquiry. He has rejected Israel's accusation of bias.

Today his daughter, Nicole Goldstone, told Israel's Army Radio in a telephone interview from Toronto that her father's presence had softened the report's observations on Israel.

"He thought that . . . he did the best thing possible for everyone, including Israel," she said. "I have no doubt that whatever emerged would have been much worse if he had not been there."

As the controversy filled Israel's airwaves and news columns today, many analysts said the U.N. report had done lasting damage to the nation's international image and strategic position, even if no prosecutions come of it.

Aluf Benn, editor-at-large of the newspaper Haaretz, noted in a front-page analysis that Israeli leaders are contemplating military action against Iran to halt its suspected development of nuclear weapons and is weighing the cost of retaliation by Iran and its allies, Hamas and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.

"The Goldstone report reinforces the most strategic threat Israel brought upon itself with the Gaza offensive, in that it saps international legitimacy for a similar operation in the future," he wrote.

"A country considering attacking the nuclear reactor in Iran, and then endangering itself to rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza in response, will have to take into account whether the world will give Israel another opportunity for a severe, crushing response."

Former opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama has been elected prime minister of Japan, ending more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by conservatives.

Hatoyama's victory on Wednesday marks a major turning point for Japan, which is facing its worst economic slowdown since the Second World War, with unemployment at record highs and deflation intensifying. But concerns ran deep over whether the largely untested government would be able to deliver.

Hatoyama has vowed to cut government waste, rein in the national bureaucracy and restart the economy by putting a freeze on planned tax hikes, removing tolls on highways and focusing policies on consumers, not big business.

He has also pledged to improve Tokyo's often bumpy ties with its Asian neighbours and forge a foreign policy that is more independent from Washington.

"I am excited by the prospect of changing history," Hatoyama said early Wednesday. "The battle starts now."

Parliament convened in a special session to formally select Hatoyama, whose Democratic Party of Japan won a landslide in parliamentary elections last month to take control of the body's lower house, which chooses the prime minister.

Hatoyama's party won 308 of the 480 seats in the lower chamber to oust Prime Minister Taro Aso's Liberal Democratic Party, which is conservative and staunchly pro-U.S.

In Wednesday's parliamentary vote to choose the prime minister, Hatoyama won 327 of the 480 votes in the lower house. He needed a simple majority of 241 votes.
Cabinet named

Quickly after his election, Hatoyama named Katsuya Okada as his foreign minister and Hirohisa Fujii as his finance minister. Though Okada has never held a cabinet post, Fujii was finance minister under a coalition government in 1993-94, the only time in its 55-year history that the Liberal Democrats had previously been ousted from power.

Hatoyama, who has a PhD from Stanford University and is the grandson of a conservative prime minister, had a limited pool of seasoned politicians to choose from. His party, created a decade ago, has never held power, and nearly half of the Democrats' members of the lower house will be serving in their first terms in parliament.

But Hatoyama and his party, a mix of defectors from the conservative party and social progressives, face huge tasks that they must deal with quickly.

Although it has recently shown some signs of improvement, Japan's economy remains deeply shaken by the global financial crisis and unemployment is at a record high of 5.7 per cent. The rapid aging of its population also threatens to be a drag on public coffers as the number of taxpayers decreases and pension responsibilities swell.

"The economy is in very difficult shape, so we must work hard to improve it," said Mieko Tanaka, one of the Democratic Party's new legislators.

Hatoyama will also be tested quickly on the diplomatic front. He has said he wants to attend the General Assembly in the United Nations in New York next week and possibly meet with President Barack Obama.

Hatoyama has said he wants to build a foreign policy that will put Tokyo on a more equal footing with Washington, while keeping the U.S. as the "cornerstone" of Japan's diplomacy. He is also seeking closer ties with Japan's Asian neighbours, particularly China.

In the off-the-record exchange ahead of a television interview the US president also described the rapper's interruption of teenage singer Taylor Swift as "really inappropriate".

Rumours about Mr Obama's uncommonly strong remarks emerged shortly after his interview with the CNBC on Monday night, but were not confirmed by the network or the White House. Now Los Angeles-based entertainment blog TMZ has cemented its reputation for beating mainstream media rivals to media scoops by posting the clip.

In the recording, the president is asked by a reporter whether his daughters Malia and Sasha were annoyed by West's antics at the New York award ceremony on Sunday night.

"I thought that was really inappropriate," Mr Obama says. " It's like... she's getting an award... what are you butting in?"

He adds: "The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person. She's getting her award. What's he doing up there?"

When another person interrupts to ask why West would do it, the president mutters: "He's a jackass".

His remark provokes laughter in the room and Mr Obama appears to realise me may have overstepped the mark, chummily appealing to the reporters to "cut the president some slack... I've got a lot of other stuff on my plate."

CNBC did not broadcast his words but they were tweeted by Terry Moran, a presenter with rival network ABC.

The message has since been deleted, but not before it was re-tweeted by many of Mr Moran's more than one million followers, ensuring that it was read across the web.

ABC has since issued an apology to the White House for reporting words that were never intended to be made public.

TMZ's decision has provoked debate in the US about the sanctity of off-the-record remarks in an era where every journalist and member of the public can publish "news" themselves on sites like Twitter.

Three US servicemen have been killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, a Nato spokesman has said.

The spokesman said that the deaths occurred on Tuesday. He did not release any other details.

The latest deaths come as the Taliban intensifies its attacks against coalition forces in the south through roadside bombs and ambushes.

The number of deaths among American troops in Afghanistan this month has now risen to 22.

The month of August was the deadliest for US forces since the war with the Taliban began in 2001.

Thousands of US troops have deployed in the south to bolster the Canadian and British-led operations in the Taliban's heartland.