Putin grants Depardieu Russian citizenship


MOSCOW (AP) — Gerard Depardieu, the French actor who has been sparring with his native country over taxes, has been granted Russian citizenship.


A brief announcement on the Kremlin website said President Vladimir Putin signed the citizenship grant on Thursday.


Depardieu is angered by French President Francois Hollande's attempt to raise taxes on the mega-rich to 75 percent. Russia has a flat income tax of 13 percent.


A representative for Depardieu declined to say whether he had accepted the offer and refused all comment.


Depardieu has made more than 150 films, among them the 1991 comedy "Green Card" about a man who enters into a marriage of convenience in order to get U.S. residency.


Depardieu said in an open letter published in mid-December that he would turn over his passport and French social security card.


Hollande wants to tax incomes of the ultra-rich at 75 percent to reduce the debt and deficit, and Depardieu's subsequent decision to move to tax-friendly Belgium was slammed by Hollande's government.


"I'm a true European, a citizen of the world," Depardieu wrote in the letter.


The tax on millionaires was struck down by France's highest court Dec. 29, but the government has promised to resubmit the law in a slightly different form soon.


Depardieu was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1990 film by the same name.


He's well known in Russia, where he appears in an ad for Sovietsky Bank's credit card and is prominently featured on the bank's home page.


France's Civil Code says one must have another nationality in order to give up French citizenship because it is forbidden to be stateless. Thursday's decision by the Kremlin appears to fulfill that requirement.


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Flu? Malaria? Disease forecasters look to the sky


NEW YORK (AP) — Only a 10 percent chance of showers today, but a 70 percent chance of flu next month.


That's the kind of forecasting health scientists are trying to move toward, as they increasingly include weather data in their attempts to predict disease outbreaks.


In one recent study, two scientists reported they could predict — more than seven weeks in advance — when flu season was going to peak in New York City. Theirs was just the latest in a growing wave of computer models that factor in rainfall, temperature or other weather conditions to forecast disease.


Health officials are excited by this kind of work and the idea that it could be used to fine-tune vaccination campaigns or other disease prevention efforts.


At the same time, experts note that outbreaks are influenced as much, or more, by human behavior and other factors as by the weather. Some argue weather-based outbreak predictions still have a long way to go. And when government health officials warned in early December that flu season seemed to be off to an early start, they said there was no evidence it was driven by the weather.


This disease-forecasting concept is not new: Scientists have been working on mathematical models to predict outbreaks for decades and have long factored in the weather. They have known, for example, that temperature and rainfall affect the breeding of mosquitoes that carry malaria, West Nile virus and other dangerous diseases.


Recent improvements in weather-tracking have helped, including satellite technology and more sophisticated computer data processing.


As a result, "in the last five years or so, there's been quite an improvement and acceleration" in weather-focused disease modeling, said Ira Longini, a University of Florida biostatistician who's worked on outbreak prediction projects.


Some models have been labeled successes.


In the United States, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of New Mexico tried to predict outbreaks of hantavirus in the late 1990s. They used rain and snow data and other information to study patterns of plant growth that attract rodents. People catch the disease from the droppings of infected rodents.


"We predicted what would happen later that year," said Gregory Glass, a Johns Hopkins researcher who worked on the project.


More recently, in east Africa, satellites have been used to predict rainfall by measuring sea-surface temperatures and cloud density. That's been used to generate "risk maps" for Rift Valley fever — a virus that spreads from animals to people and in severe cases can cause blindness or death. Researchers have said the system in some cases has given two to six weeks advance warning.


Last year, other researchers using satellite data in east Africa said they found that a small change in average temperature was a warning sign cholera cases would double within four months.


"We are getting very close to developing a viable forecasting system" against cholera that can help health officials in African countries ramp up emergency vaccinations and other efforts, said a statement by one of the authors, Rita Reyburn of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea.


Some diseases are hard to forecast, such as West Nile virus. Last year, the U.S. suffered one of its worst years since the virus arrived in 1999. There were more than 2,600 serious illnesses and nearly 240 deaths.


Officials said the mild winter, early spring and very hot summer helped spur mosquito breeding and the spread of the virus. But the danger wasn't spread uniformly. In Texas, the Dallas area was particularly hard-hit, while other places, including some with similar weather patterns and the same type of mosquitoes, were not as affected.


"Why Dallas, and not areas with similar ecological conditions? We don't really know," said Roger Nasci of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is chief of the CDC branch that tracks insect-borne viruses.


Some think flu lends itself to outbreak forecasting — there's already a predictability to the annual winter flu season. But that's been tricky, too.


Seasonal flu reports come from doctors' offices, but those show the disease when it's already spreading. Some researchers have studied tweets on Twitter and searches on Google, but their work has offered a jump of only a week or two on traditional methods.


In the study of New York City flu cases published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors said they could foredcast, by up to seven weeks, the peak of flu season.


They designed a model based on weather and flu data from past years, 2003-09. In part, their design was based on earlier studies that found flu virus spreads better when the air is dry and turns colder. They made calculations based on humidity readings and on Google Flu Trends, which tracks how many people are searching each day for information on flu-related topics (often because they're beginning to feel ill).


Using that model, they hope to try real-time predictions as early as next year, said Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University, who led the work.


"It's certainly exciting," said Lyn Finelli, the CDC's flu surveillance chief. She said the CDC supports Shaman's work, but agency officials are eager to see follow-up studies showing the model can predict flu trends in places different from New York, like Miami.


Despite the optimism by some, Dr. Edward Ryan, a Harvard University professor of immunology and infectious diseases, is cautious about weather-based prediction models. "I'm not sure any of them are ready for prime time," he said.


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Sandy Hook kids return to school for first time since attack


NEWTOWN, Connecticut (Reuters) - Hundreds of the children who escaped the harrowing attack on their elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, last month head back to classes on Thursday for the first time since a gunman killed 20 of their schoolmates and six staff members.


School officials are preparing for droves of anxious parents to join the fleet of buses carting children to a disused middle school in the neighboring town of Monroe. Chalk Hill Middle School, closed about a year and half ago, has been hastily refurbished in the three weeks since the December 14 attack and renamed Sandy Hook Elementary School.


With their children's safety foremost on parents' and officials' minds in the wake of the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, the school has been outfitted with a new security system. Monroe Police Department officers will patrol the grounds, and all outside doorways and sidewalks will be under surveillance.


"I think right now we have to make this the safest school in America," Monroe Police Lieutenant Keith White said at a press conference on Wednesday.


Parents wishing to remain with their kids, ages 5 to 10 in kindergarten through grade 4, will be allowed to accompany them to their classrooms and afterwards may stay in the school's "lecture room" for as long as they like, according to a memo to parents on the school's website. Counseling will be available for students and parents at the new school, about 7 miles south of the scene of the shooting.


"I'm not sure I'm ready yet to totally let them go," Sandy Hook parent Sarah Swansiger said on CNN about her trepidation over the return to school.


When the students return around 9 a.m. Thursday, they will find all of the belongings they left behind when teachers and police evacuated them from Sandy Hook nearly three weeks ago after Adam Lanza burst through the school doors and opened fire.


They will be welcomed to a building that has been decked out as a "Winter Wonderland" with the help of thousands of kids from around the world.


"This does not look like the other elementary school," Newtown School Superintendent Janet Robinson said emphatically.


In the meantime, no new details have emerged to explain why the 20-year-old Lanza, armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle, two other firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, targeted the school.


Described by family friends as having Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, Lanza shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their home about 5 miles from the school before driving to Sandy Hook and embarking on the massacre, police said. He then took his own life as police were arriving at the school, which had an enrollment of 456.


Police have offered no firm motive for the attack, and state police investigators have said it could be months before they finish their report.


The massacre in Newtown, a rural New England town of 27,000 residents about 70 miles northeast of New York City, stunned the nation, prompting President Barack Obama to call it the worst day of his presidency and reigniting an extensive debate on gun control. Obama has tasked Vice President Joe Biden with assembling a package of gun-control proposals to submit to Congress in the next several weeks.


The National Rifle Association, the most powerful gun-rights lobby in the United States, has rebuffed calls for more stringent firearms restrictions and instead called for armed guards to patrol every public school in the country.


(Writing by Dan Burns; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)



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Indian court may suspend lawmakers facing crimes


NEW DELHI (AP) — India's top court said Wednesday it will decide whether to suspend lawmakers facing sexual assault charges as thousands of women gathered at the memorial to independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi to demand stronger protection for their safety.


The march came as police prepared to formally charge six suspects in the gang-rape and killing of a student in the capital two weeks ago.


The Dec. 16 rape triggered outrage across the country and sparked demands for stronger laws, tougher police action against those accused of sexual assault and a sustained campaign to change society's views on women.


As part of that campaign, Chief Justice Altamas Kabir agreed to hear a petition on Thursday from retired government administrator Promilla Shanker asking the Supreme Court to suspend all lawmakers from the national and state legislatures who are facing prosecution for crimes against women.


She also asked the court to force the national government to fast-track thousands of rape cases that have languished in India's notoriously sluggish court system for years.


Six state lawmakers are facing rape prosecutions and two national parliamentarians are facing charges of crimes against women that fall short of rape, said Jagdeep S. Chhokar, an official with the Association for Democratic Reforms, which tracks political candidate's criminal records.


In the past five years, political parties across India nominated 260 candidates awaiting trial on charges of crimes against women, he said. Parties ran six candidates for the national parliamentary elections facing such charges, Chokkar said.


"We need to decriminalize politics and surely a serious effort has to be made to stop people who have serious charges of sexual assault against them from contesting elections," said Zoya Hasan, a political analyst.


On Wednesday morning, several thousand women held a silent march to Gandhi's memorial in the capital in memory of the victim, holding placards demanding "Respect" and "Justice." Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit joined the women for a prayer session for the victim. The Gandhi memorial is a common protest site.


On Tuesday, the government set up a task force to monitor women's safety in New Delhi and to review whether police were properly protecting women. The government had set up two earlier bodies to look into the handling of the rape case and to suggest changes in the nation's rape laws.


The rape of the 23-year-old university student on a bus has horrified many in the country and brought unprecedented attention to the daily suffering of women here, who face everything from catcalls and groping to rapes.


Six men arrested in the case were to be formally charged Thursday with kidnapping, rape and murder, said Rajan Bhagat, the New Delhi police spokesman. Police have said they would push for the death penalty in the case.


Police were awaiting findings on a bone test conducted on one of the suspects to confirm whether he is a juvenile or an adult, which could affect the charges against him.


Media reports say 30 witnesses have been gathered, and the charges have been detailed in a document running more than 1,000 pages. Police also have detained the owner of the bus used in the crime on accusation he used false documents to obtain permits to run the private bus service.


The family of the victim — who died Saturday at a hospital in Singapore — is struggling to come to grips with the tragedy.


"She was a very, very, very cheerful little girl and she was peace loving and she was never embroiled in any controversies like this. I don't know why this happened to her," her uncle, Suresh Singh, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.


The family of the victim, whose name was not revealed, called for stronger rape laws to prevent such attacks from happening again and demanded swift — and harsh — justice for woman's assailants, Singh said.


"If the government can't punish them, give the rapists to the people. The people will settle the scores with them," he said.


___


Associated Press reporter Biswajeet Banerjee contributed to this report from Lucknow.


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All of 2012 in One 4-Minute Video






We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:  


RELATED: ‘Roseanne’ Predicted Internet Addiction; A Weather Alert from Hell






Filmmaker Ryan James Yezak boiled down the biggest stories of 2012 into four minutes. And, yes, Honey Boo Boo made it in there:


RELATED: Even Batman Gets Tripped up by Apple Maps


RELATED: The Videos You Shouldn’t (and Probably Couldn’t) Try at Home


So, raise your hand if you knew Patrick Stewart and company were having this much fun behind the scenes at Star Trek: The Next Generation. 


RELATED: Here’s a Video of George Takei Reading ’50 Shades of Grey’


RELATED: Cookie Monster Batman and the Dog You Wish You Had


Marvel’s Stan Lee — the guy who created characters like the Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and the X-Men — turned 90 the other day. In honor of him and his heroes, here are all his cameos from all of the Marvel movies he helped create: 


And, finally, it’s 2013 somewhere… right? Please take caution when announcing that news to this very excitable baby. Happy New Year!


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his 'runaway bride'


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner's celebrating the new year as a married man once again.


The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his "runaway bride," Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year's Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old "Playmate of the Month" in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.


Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year's Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.


The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner's been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.


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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating


This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.


After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.


It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.


All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.


For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.


Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."


What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.


"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.


Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.


What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.


A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.


The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.


Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.


Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.


"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.


The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.


A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.


Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.


"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."


___


Online:


Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html


___


Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe


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House passes fiscal cliff deal


House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., left, with Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, head into a closed-door …Updated 11:38 pm ET


The House of Representatives late Tuesday easily approved emergency bipartisan legislation sparing all but a sliver of America’s richest from sharp income tax hikes -- while setting up another “fiscal cliff” confrontation in a matter of weeks.


Lawmakers voted 257-167 to send the compromise to President Barack Obama to sign into law. Eighty-five Republicans and 172 Democrats backed the bill, which had sailed through the Senate by a lopsided 89-8 margin shortly after 2 a.m. Opposition comprised 151 Republicans and 16 Democrats.


Republican House Speaker John Boehner voted in favor of the deal, as did House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, his party's failed vice presidential candidate. But Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy voted against it.


Obama, speaking from the White House briefing room shortly after the vote, praised lawmakers for coming together to avert a tax increase that “could have sent the economy back into a recession.”


“A central premise of my campaign for president was the change the tax code that was too skewed toward the wealthy at the expense of working, middle-class Americans. Tonight, we’ve done that,” the president said.


But he signaled that the legislation was “just one step in the broader effort” of getting the nation’s finances in order while boosting growth and job creation.


“The deficit is still too high,” he said, warning Republicans that he would stick with his demands for a “balanced” approach blending spending cuts with revenue increases, notably from the rich and wealthy corporations.


Republicans vowed a renewed focus on cutting government outlays.


“Now the focus turns to spending,” Boehner said, vowing his party would “hold the president accountable for the balanced approach he promised, meaning significant spending cuts and reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving our country deeper and deeper into debt.”



As debate began, Republican House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp heralded “a legacy vote” that amounted to a victory for his party because Democrats agreed to make permanent the tax cuts his party enacted in 2001 and 2003. Camp called the bill a step towards reforming the country’s “nightmare” tax code and described it as the largest tax cut in history.


Representative Sander Levin, the top Democrat on Camp’s committee, claimed victory because the vote shattered “the iron barrier” Republicans maintained for 20 years against raising taxes.


It fell to Democratic Representative Charlie Rangel to admit “this is no profile in courage for me to be voting for this bill” because “we created this monster.”


The polarized House approved the measure, unchanged, after House Republican leaders beat back a day-long insurrection within their ranks fueled by conservative anger at the bill’s lack of spending cuts. A final vote was expected late Tuesday evening.


“They’re crazy, but they’re not that batshit crazy,” Democratic Representative Alcee Hastings told reporters as the Republican plan came into focus.


Hastings’s blunt assessment came after a day in which Republican leaders at times seemed to be as much political arsonists as firefighters in the face of rank-and-file GOP anger at the bill.


The House seemed on track to torch the legislation, a hard-fought bipartisan bill crafted by Vice President Joe Biden and  McConnell that sailed through the Senate by a lopsided 89-8 margin in a vote shortly after 2 a.m.


The compromise bill averts the sharpest tax increase in American history. But it hikes rates on income above $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for households, while exemptions and deductions the wealthiest Americans use to reduce their tax bill face new limits. The accord also raises the taxes paid on large inheritances from 35% to 40% for estates over $5 million. And it extends by one year unemployment benefits for some two million Americans. It also prevents cuts in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients and spares tens of millions of Americans who otherwise would have been hit with the Alternative Minimum Tax. And it extends some stimulus-era tax breaks championed by progressives.


The middle class will still see its taxes go up: The final deal did not include an extension of the payroll tax holiday. A report released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office Tuesday complicated matters further. It said that the Senate-passed compromise would add nearly $4 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years.


Despite the overwhelming Senate vote, the accord landed with a thud in the House, where Cantor surprised lawmakers by coming out flatly against the deal during a morning closed-door meeting of House Republicans. Cantor’s announcement fueled conservative anger at the absence of spending cuts in a measure that had originally been considered a likely vehicle for at least some deficit-reduction. The results fed fears that the legislation was doomed.


Republican leadership aides played down the drama by insisting that “the lack of spending cuts in the Senate bill was a universal concern amongst members in today’s meeting.”


After grappling with the insurrection all day, Republican leaders gave their fractious caucus a choice during an emergency 5:15 p.m. meeting: Try to amend it or go for a straight up-or-down vote on the original deal.


Cantor and  Boehner “cautioned members about the risk in such a strategy,” according to a GOP leadership aide.


House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, emerging from the gathering, bluntly told reporters “it’s pretty obvious” that amending the legislation and sending it back to the Senate would kill it. Democrats and Republicans in the upper chamber had signaled that lawmakers there would not take up a modified version of what was already a difficult deal.


The resulting pressure on GOP leaders was immense: Absent action to avert the fiscal cliff, Americans would face hefty across-the-board income-tax hikes, while indiscriminate spending cuts risked devastating domestic and defense programs. Skittish financial markets were watching the dysfunction in Washington carefully amid warnings that going off the so-called cliff could plunge the fragile economy into a new recession.


Defeat would have handed Boehner a fresh embarrassment by blocking a measure he explicitly asked the Senate and White House to negotiate without him but vowed to act on if Republicans and Democrats could reach a deal. Public opinion polls had shown that Republicans would have borne the brunt of the blame for fiscal cliff-related economic pain.


Republicans had also fretted about the message if final passage came on the back of a majority of Democratic votes, a tricky thing for Boehner two days before he faces reelection as speaker. (In the hours before the vote, conservative lawmakers played down the risks of a rebellion against the Ohio lawmaker).


Time ran short for another reason: A new Congress will take office at noon on Thursday, forcing efforts to craft a compromise by the current Congress back to the drawing board.


Efforts to modify the first installment of $1.2 trillion in cuts to domestic and defense programs over 10 years -- the other portion of the “fiscal cliff,” known as sequestration -- had proved a sticking point late in the game. Democrats had sought a year-long freeze but ultimately caved to Republican pressure and signed on to just a two-month delay while broader deficit-reduction talks continue.


That would put the next major battle over spending cuts right around the time that the White House and its Republican foes are battling it out over whether to raise the country's debt limit.


Republicans have vowed to push for more spending cuts, equivalent to the amount of new borrowing. Obama has vowed not to negotiate as he did in 2011, when a bruising fight threatened the first-ever default on America's obligations and resulted in the first-ever downgrade of the country's credit rating.


“I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they have already racked up through the laws that they passed,” he warned Tuesday. “The consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic.”


The president then left for Hawaii to rejoin his family on vacation.


As House Republicans raged at the bill, key House Democrats emerging from a closed-door meeting with Biden expressed support for the compromise and pressed Boehner for a vote on the legislation as written.


“Our Speaker has said when the Senate acts, we will have a vote in the House. That is what he said, that is what we expect, that is what the American people deserve…a straight up-or-down vote,” Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters.


Conservative activist organizations like the anti-tax Club for Growth warned lawmakers to oppose the compromise. The Club charged in a message to Congress that “this bill raises taxes immediately with the promise of cutting spending later.”


President Barack Obama had previously declared that “this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay.”


There were signs that the 2016 presidential race shaped the outcome in the Senate. Republican Senator Marco Rubio, widely thought to have his eye on his party’s nomination, voted no. Republican Senator Rand Paul, who could take up the libertarian mantle of his father Ron Paul, did as well.


In a sign of deep GOP unease over the legislation, Republican leaders Boehner, Cantor, and McCarthy did not speak during the debate. Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and James Clyburn all did.


Biden's visit -- his second to Congressional Democrats in two days -- aimed to soothe concerns about the bill and about the coming battles on deficit reduction.


“This is a simple case of trying to Make sure that the perfect does not become the enemy of the good,” said Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings, one of the chamber’s most steadfast liberals. “Nobody’s going to like everything about it.”


Asked whether House progressives, who had hoped for a lower income threshold, would back the bill, Cummings said he could not predict but stressed: “I am one of the most progressive members, and I will vote for it.”



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NKorea's Kim wants better living standards, arms


SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday called for improving the economy and living standards of his impoverished nation with the same urgency that scientists showed in successfully testing a long-range rocket recently.


Kim's first New Year's speech, delivered on state TV, was peppered with rhetoric, with calls for boosting the military's capabilities and making the science and technology sector world class. But other passages in the speech were also an acknowledgement of the poor state of the country's economy that has long lagged behind the rest of the region.


North Korea has little arable land, is prone to natural disasters and struggles to grow enough food for its 24 million people.


The annual New Year's Day message lays out North Korea's policy goals for the year. But Kim gave no indication whether he plans to introduce economic reforms or allow free enterprise, except to say the economy should be underpinned by science and technology.


"The industrial revolution in the new century is, in essence, a scientific and technological revolution, and breaking through the cutting edge is a shortcut to the building of an economic giant," he said.


He then pointed at the success of a long-range rocket that North Korea fired on Dec. 12, ostensibly carrying a satellite into space.


"Let us bring about a radical turn in the building of an economic giant with the same spirit and mettle as were displayed in conquering space," he said.


North Korea has hailed the rocket as a big step in peaceful space exploration. Washington and others called the launch a banned test of ballistic missile technology and a step in Pyongyang's pursuit of a nuclear tipped long-range missile.


North Korea has tested two atomic devices since 2006, both times weeks after U.N. condemnation of a long-range launch. A recent analysis of North Korea's main nuclear test site indicates readiness for a possible third atomic explosion.


Kim made no mention of nuclear weapons, but indicated that military will continue to be boosted.


"The sector of defense industry should develop in larger numbers sophisticated military hardware of our own style that can contribute to implementing the Party's military strategy," he said.


"Only when it builds up its military might in every way can it develop into a thriving country and defend the security and happiness of its people," Kim said.


The speech itself was a signal that Kim will continue with a leadership style more in line with his gregarious grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung who routinely addressed his people on New Year's Day, than with his father, Kim Jong Il, who avoided making public speeches. He never gave a TV address during his 17-year-rule, and his New Year's messages were published as joint editorials in the nation's three major newspapers.


With the speech — the first televised New Year's Day message by a North Korean leader in 19 years — Kim Jong Un has tried to tap into North Koreans' fond memories of his grandfather, said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in South Korea.


The rocket launch boosted public morale, Koh said. "Now people are expecting him to improve the economy and help them live better economically," Koh said. "Kim Jong Un knows that and feels the pressure of meeting that demand."


Kim, who took power after his father's death on Dec. 17, 2011, has asserted control over the government and the military by dismissing its powerful chief Ri Yong Ho. Some other officials who were viewed as more moderate, including Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, were elevated.


South Korean president-elect Park Geun-hye has said she will make efforts in her five-year term to boost aid and engage North Korea.


"If Kim Jong Un is going to engineer a shift from 'military-first' to 'It's the economy, stupid,' he is going to need Seoul's encouragement, and he doesn't have five years to wait," John Delury, an analyst at Seoul's Yonsei University, wrote recently.


He said it's up to South Korea "to unclench its fist first, so that the leader of the weaker state can outstretch his hand."


Kim's speech avoided harsh criticism of the United States, its wartime enemy. North Korea has used past New Year's editorials to accuse the U.S. of plotting war.


In other signs of changes in the country — at least at a superficial level — North Korea also had its first grand New Year's Eve celebration, with residents of the capital treated to the boom of cannons and fireworks at midnight.


In Pyongyang, residents danced in the snow at midnight Monday to celebrate the end of a big year for North Korea, including the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung and the first year of Kim Jong Un's leadership. Fireworks lit up the cold night sky, and people stood in fur-lined parkas, taking photos and laughing and dancing with each other in plazas.


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Associated Press writer Kim Kwang Hyon contributed to this story from Pyongyang, North Korea.


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20 WTF New Year’s Resolutions






Ringing in 2013 properly requires a few things: bottom-shelf champagne, “I survived the apocalypse” t-shirts, excessive sequins and — most importantly — New Year’s resolutions that may or may not last beyond February.


[More from Mashable: These Are the Worst Case Scenarios for New Year’s Eve]






You promise to lose weight or quit smoking or stop stalking your ex on Facebook, but what about those people that shoot for a slightly different goal in the new year? Sometimes these resolution-makers come up with brilliant challenges and other times — well, ummm — they share goals that are more “WTF?” than an adult dressed like the New Year’s baby.


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BONUS: 14 Solutions to Your New Year’s Midnight Kiss


Find a Baby


There’s got to be one crawling around somewhere. What’s cuter than kissing a baby’s fat cheek? Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images


Click here to view this gallery.


Image Credit: Mashable composite. Photos via iStockphoto, Adventure_photo and Seanicer


This story originally published on Mashable here.


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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