“Fiscal cliff” crisis heads to resolution in Congress

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A months-long battle over the U.S. “fiscal cliff” headed to a close on Tuesday as the House of Representatives moved toward final approval of a bipartisan deal meant to prevent Washington from pushing the world’s biggest economy into recession.

The Republican-controlled House was expected to back a tax hike on the top U.S. earners shortly before midnight on Tuesday, ending weeks of high-stakes budget brinkmanship that threatened to spook consumers and throw financial markets into turmoil.

Approval of the bill would be a victory for President Barack Obama, who campaigned for re-election last November on a promise to raise taxes on the wealthiest but faced stiff opposition from congressional Republicans.

Republicans had earlier considered adding hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts after the bill had already passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support. That would have triggered further partisan warfare and pushed the crisis well past a self-imposed January 1 deadline.

But party leaders abandoned the effort after determining they lacked the votes.

“We’ve gone as far as we can go and I think people are ready to bring it to a conclusion,” Republican Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia said. “We fought the fight.”

Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, a Republican, predicted the House would back the Senate bill, which also postpones for two months $ 109 billion in spending cuts on military and domestic programs set for 2013.

The bill easily cleared a procedural hurdle by a bipartisan vote of 408 to 10.

Lawmakers have struggled to find a way to head off across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts that began to take effect at midnight, a legacy of earlier failed budget deals that is known as the fiscal cliff.

Strictly speaking, the United States went over the cliff in the first minutes of the New Year because Congress failed to produce legislation to halt $ 600 billion of tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled for this year.

TAX HIKES FOR WEALTHIEST

While many Republicans were uneasy with the tax hikes and wanted more spending cuts in the bill, they seemed to realize that the fiscal cliff would begin to damage the economy once financial markets and federal government offices returned to work on Wednesday. Opinion polls show the public would blame Republicans if a deal were to fall apart.

House Republicans had earlier considered adding $ 330 billion in spending cuts over 10 years to the Senate bill, which raises taxes on the wealthiest U.S. households by $ 620 billion over the same period.

But Senate Democrats refused to consider any changes to their bill, which passed 89 to 8 in a rare display of unity early Tuesday.

That measure, which passed the Senate at around 2 a.m., would raise income taxes on families earning more than $ 450,000 per year and limit the amount of deductions they can take to lower their tax bill.

Low temporary rates that have been in place for the past decade would be made permanent for less-affluent taxpayers, along with a range of targeted tax breaks put in place to fight the 2009 economic downturn.

However, workers would see up to $ 2,000 more taken out of their paychecks annually with the expiration of a temporary payroll tax cut.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the Senate bill would increase budget deficits by nearly $ 4 trillion over the coming 10 years, compared to the budget savings that would occur if the extreme measures of the cliff were to kick in.

But the bill would actually save $ 650 billion during that time period when measured against the tax and spending policies that were in effect on Monday, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an independent group that has pushed for more aggressive deficit savings.

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai, Thomas Ferraro and David Lawder; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Beech)

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Hollywood tops Chinese film market in 2012, first time in four years

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China‘s 2012 box office was dominated by foreign films for the first time in four years as a deal cemented earlier this year saw more Hollywood film screened on the mainland, squeezing out domestic competition.

China’s box office receipts are expected to reach 16.8 billion yuan ($ 2.7 billion) in 2012 and about 8 billion yuan ($ 1.28 billion), or slightly less than half the receipts, are from domestic films, the official People’s Daily reported on Monday, quoting estimates from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

It is the first time in four years that domestic film receipts totaled less than 50 percent of the market and signals that the February trade agreement to allow more Hollywood movies to be screened in China is having a significant impact on the country’s movie industry.

Last year, domestic films made up 54 percent of box office receipts, down slightly from 56 percent in 2010, local media reported. China agreed in February to open its market to more American movies, permitting 14 premium format films such as IMAX or 3D to be exempt from the annual 20 foreign film quota.

Last month, Tian Jin, China’s vice minister of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, said the U.S. film industry was reaping massive profits due to the February concession while domestic producers were under pressure.

However, the best-selling film this year is a low-budget, domestically-produced comedy called “Lost in Thailand” about two rival businessmen. The movie drew a bigger audience in China than James Cameron’s “Avatar”, the People’s Daily said.

($ 1 = 6.2335 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Matt Driskill)

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Senate approves fiscal cliff legislation 89-8

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hours past a self-imposed deadline for action, the Senate passed legislation early New Year's Day to neutralize a fiscal cliff combination of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that kicked in at midnight. The pre-dawn vote was a lopsided 89-8.

Senate passage set the stage for a final showdown in the House, where a vote was expected later Tuesday or perhaps Wednesday on the measure, which also raises tax rates on wealthy Americans.

Even by the recent dysfunctional standards of government-by-gridlock, the activity at both ends of historic Pennsylvania Avenue was remarkable as the administration and lawmakers spent the final hours of 2012 haggling over long-festering differences.

"It shouldn't have taken this long to come to an agreement, and this shouldn't be the model for how we do things around here," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who negotiated the agreement with Vice President Joe Biden.

Shortly after the Senate vote, President Barack Obama said, "While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay."

Under the deal, taxes would remain steady for the middle class and rise at incomes over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples — levels higher than Obama had campaigned for in his successful drive for a second term in office.

Spending cuts totaling $24 billion over two months aimed at the Pentagon and domestic programs would be deferred. That would allow the White House and lawmakers time to regroup before plunging very quickly into a new round of budget brinkmanship certain to revolve around Republican calls to rein in the cost of Medicare and other government benefit programs.

Officials also decided at the last minute to use the measure to prevent a $900 pay raise for lawmakers due to take effect this spring.

"One thing we can count on with respect to this Congress is that if there's even one second left before you have to do what you're supposed to do, they will use that last second," the president said in a mid-afternoon status update on the talks. Yet when the roll was called nearly 12 hours later, only six Republicans and two Democrats opposed the measure.

As darkness fell on the last day of the year, Obama, Biden and their aides were at work in the White House, and lights burned in the House and Senate. Democrats complained that Obama had given away too much in agreeing to limit tax increases to incomes over $450,000, far above the $250,000 level he campaigned on. Yet some Republicans recoiled at the prospect of raising taxes at all.

Democratic senators said they expected a post-midnight vote on the measure. They spoke after a closed-door session with Vice President Joseph Biden, who brokered the deal with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

"The argument is that this is the best that can be done on a bipartisan basis," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., when asked about the case the vice president had delivered behind closed doors.

Passage would send the measure to the House, where Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, refrained from endorsing a package as yet unseen by his famously rebellious rank-and-file. He said the House would not vote on any Senate-passed measure "until House members — and the American people — have been able to review" it.

Numerous GOP officials said McConnell and his aides had kept the speaker's office informed about the progress of the talks.

The House Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, issued a statement saying that when legislation clears the Senate, "I will present it to the House Democratic caucus."

Without legislation, economists in and out of government warned of a possible recession if the economy were allowed to fall over a fiscal cliff of tax increases and spending cuts.

And while the nominal deadline for action passed at midnight, Obama's signature on legislation by the time a new Congress takes office at noon on Jan. 3, 2013 — the likely timetable — would eliminate or minimize any inconvenience for taxpayers.

A late dispute over the estate tax produced allegations of bad faith from all sides.

After hours of haggling, Biden headed for the Capitol to brief the Democratic rank and file.

Earlier, McConnell had agreed with Obama that an overall deal was near. In remarks on the Senate floor, he suggested Congress move quickly to pass tax legislation and "continue to work on finding smarter ways to cut spending" next year.

The White House and Democrats initially declined the offer, preferring to prevent the cuts from kicking in at the Pentagon and domestic agencies alike. A two-month compromise resulted.

Officials in both parties said the agreement would prevent tax increases at incomes below $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples.

At higher levels, the rate would rise to a maximum of 39.6 percent from the current 35 percent. Capital gains and dividends in excess of those amounts would be taxed at 20 percent, up from 15 percent.

The deal also would also raise taxes on the portion of estates exceeding $5 million to 40 percent. At the insistence of Republicans, the $5 million threshold would rise each year with inflation.

Much or all of the revenue to be raised through higher taxes on the wealthy would help hold down the amount paid to the Internal Revenue Service by the middle class.

In addition to preventing higher rates for most, the agreement would retain existing breaks for families with children, for low-earning taxpayers and for those with a child in college. Also, the two sides agreed to prevent the alternative minimum tax from expanding to affect an estimated 28 million households for the first time in 2013, with an average increase of more than $3,000. The law originally was designed to make sure millionaires did not escape taxes, but inflation has gradually exposed more and more households with lower earnings to its impact.

The legislation leaves untouched a scheduled 2 percentage point increase in the payroll tax, ending a temporary reduction enacted two years ago to help revive the economy.

Officials said the White House had succeeded in gaining a one-year extension of long-term unemployment benefits about to expire on an estimated two million jobless.

The legislation would delay for one year a 27 percent cut in fees for doctors who treat Medicare patients.

Also included is a provision to prevent a threatened spike in milk prices after the first of the year.

Even as time was running out, partisan agendas were evident.

Obama used his appearance not only to chastise Congress, but also to lay down a marker for the next round of negotiations early in 2013, when Republicans intend to seek spending cuts in exchange for letting the Treasury to borrow above the current debt limit of $16.4 trillion.

"Now, if Republicans think that I will finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts alone — and you hear that sometimes coming from them ... then they've got another think coming. ... That's not how it's going to work at least as long as I'm president," he said.

"And I'm going to be president for the next four years, I think," he added.

Obama's remarks irritated some Republicans.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona they would "clearly antagonize members of the House."

___

Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Andrew Taylor, Alan Fram and Ben Feller contributed to this report.

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Pope marks end of difficult year, notes God’s good

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI marked the end of a difficult year Monday by saying that despite all the death and injustice in the world, goodness prevails.

Benedict celebrated New Year’s Eve with a vespers service in St. Peter’s Basilica to give thanks for 2012 and look ahead to 2013. He appeared tired during the service and used a cane afterward — an indication that the busy Christmas season may be taking a toll on the 85-year-old Benedict.

In his homily, Benedict said it’s tough to remember that goodness prevails when bad news — death, violence and injustice — “makes more noise than good.” He said taking time to meditate in prolonged reflection and prayer can help “find healing from the inevitable wounds of daily life.”

This past year was full of highs and lows for the pope, including a successful trip to Mexico and Cuba but also the betrayal of his butler, convicted in October of stealing Benedict’s personal papers and leaking them to a journalist.

After the service, Benedict was brought out in a covered car to pray before the Vatican’s main nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square. Walking with a cane in the chilly piazza, Benedict chatted animatedly with the artist who crafted the scene, which recreated an entire village from the poor, southern Italian region of Basilicata which donated this year’s crèche.

The Vatican gladly accepted Basilicata’s donation after the €550,000 price tag the Vatican paid for the 2009 nativity scene was revealed in the documentation leaked by Benedict’s ex-butler Paolo Gabriele.

Gabriele was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He received a pre-Christmas papal pardon and is expected to soon leave his Vatican City apartment for a new home and job elsewhere.

On Tuesday morning, Benedict celebrates a New Year’s Day Mass, which the Catholic Church celebrates as its world day of peace.

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BlackBerry Z10 with AT&T-compatible LTE uncovered ahead of January unveiling

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Obama calls on House to pass fiscal deal “without delay”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama called on Tuesday for the House of Representatives to follow the Senate‘s lead and pass a “fiscal cliff” deal to extend tax cuts for middle-class Americans and raise tax rates on top earners.

“While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay,” Obama said in a statement after the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the legislation.

“There’s more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I’m willing to do it. But tonight’s agreement ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest Americans,” Obama said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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UK “X Factor” winner regains top chart spot

LONDON (Reuters) – James Arthur, winner of this year’s British version of the “X Factor” TV talent show, saw his debut single climb back to number one in the British pop charts on Sunday.

Arthur’s “Impossible” shot straight to the top earlier this month but was overtaken last week by a tribute song to the victims of the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”, a version of the ballad that was a worldwide hit for The Hollies.

That song has now slipped to fifth position, according to the Official Charts Company listings.

“Scream and Shout” by will.i.am, featuring Britney Spears, stayed at two while Psy’s monster video hit “Gangnam Style” was up three places to third.

In the album charts, British singer Emeli Sande stayed top with “Our Version Of Events”, with Olly Murs‘ “Right Place, Right Time” unchanged at two.

Rihanna was up three places to third with “Unapologetic”.

(Reporting by Stephen Addison; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Clinton admitted to hospital with blood clot

(REUTERS/Gary Cameron) U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers remarks at the State Department in Washington …Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been admitted to a New York hospital for treatment of a blood clot, her spokesman said Sunday.

State Department Spokesman Philippe Reines said Clinton had entered the hospital following a medical examination for a concussion she sustained earlier this month.
"In the course of a follow-up exam today, Secretary Clinton's doctors discovered a blood clot had formed, stemming from the concussion she sustained several weeks ago," Reines said in a statement.  "She is being treated with anti-coagulants and is at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours."

Reines added, "Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion. They will determine if any further action is required."

Clinton was scheduled to return to work this week after treatment for the concussion. She is set to step down from her post shortly after President Barack Obama's inauguration on January 21. Last week, Obama announced he had chosen Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry to replace Clinton as the nation's top diplomat.

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Pakistan militants kill 41 in mass execution, attack on Shi’ites

PESHWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani militants, who have escalated attacks in recent weeks, killed at least 41 people in two separate incidents, officials said on Sunday, challenging assertions that military offensives have broken the back of hardline Islamist groups.

The United States has long pressured nuclear-armed ally Pakistan to crack down harder on both homegrown militants groups such as the Taliban and others which are based on its soil and attack Western forces in Afghanistan.

In the north, 21 men working for a government-backed paramilitary force were executed overnight after they were kidnapped last week, a provincial official said.

Twenty Shi’ite pilgrims died and 24 were wounded, meanwhile, when a car bomb targeted their bus convoy as it headed toward the Iranian border in the southwest, a doctor said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has noted more than 320 Shias killed this year in Pakistan and said attacks were on the rise. It said the government’s failure to catch or prosecute attackers suggested it was “indifferent” to the killings.

Pakistan, seen as critical to U.S. efforts to stabilize the region before NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, denies allegations that it supports militant groups like the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network.

Afghan officials say Pakistan seems more genuine than ever about promoting peace in Afghanistan.

At home, it faces a variety of highly lethal militant groups that carry out suicide bombings, attack police and military facilities and launch sectarian attacks like the one on the bus in the southwest.

Witnesses said a blast targeted their three buses as they were overtaking a car about 60 km (35 miles) west of Quetta, capital of sparsely populated Baluchistan province.

“The bus next to us caught on fire immediately,” said pilgrim Hussein Ali, 60. “We tried to save our companions, but were driven back by the intensity of the heat.”

Twenty people had been killed and 24 wounded, said an official at Mastung district hospital.

CONCERN OVER EXTREMIST SUNNI GROUPS

International attention has focused on al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.

But Pakistani intelligence officials say extremist Sunni groups, lead by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) are emerging as a major destabilizing force in a campaign designed to topple the government.

Their strategy now, the officials say, is to carry out attacks on Shi’ites to create the kind of sectarian tensions that pushed countries like Iraq to the brink of civil war.

As elections scheduled for next year approach, Pakistanis will be asking what sort of progress their leaders have made in the fight against militancy and a host of other issues, such as poverty, official corruption and chronic power cuts.

Pakistan’s Taliban have carried out a series of recent bold attacks, as military officials point to what they say is a power struggle in the group’s leadership revolving around whether it should ease attacks on the Pakistani state and join groups fighting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

The Taliban denies a rift exists among its leaders.

In the attack in the northwest, officials said they had found the bodies of 21 men kidnapped from their checkpoints outside the provincial capital of Peshawar on Thursday. The men were executed one by one.

“They were tied up and blindfolded,” Naveed Anwar, a senior administration official, said by telephone.

“They were lined up and shot in the head,” said Habibullah Arif, another local official, also by telephone.

One man was shot and seriously wounded but survived, the officials said. He was in critical condition and being treated at a local hospital. Another had escaped before the shootings.

Taliban spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan claimed responsibility for the attacks.

“We killed all the kidnapped men after a council of senior clerics gave a verdict for their execution. We didn’t make any demand for their release because we don’t spare any prisoners who are caught during fighting,” he said.

The powerful military has clawed back territory from the Taliban, but the kidnap and executions underline the insurgents’ ability to mount high-profile, deadly attacks in major cities.

This month, suicide bombers attacked Peshawar’s airport on December 15 and a bomb killed a senior Pashtun nationalist politician and eight other people at a rally on December 22.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN and Gul Yousufzai in QUETTA; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Michael Georgy and Ron Popeski)

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Ms. Mac: ‘Cute, Awkwardly Dressed’

Designer: PabloDeLaRocha.com, BlueStacks

She has freckles, a normal-sized head, wears t-shirts and jeans. She is also “awkwardly dressed” and “pretty cute.” She is the average female Mac user, according to an infographic complied and released by software start-up BlueStacks.

The company, which makes software that allows Android apps to run on computers, just released a new version of its Mac app. Install the program and you can access Android apps right from Apple’s OS X operating system – Angry Birds, Instagram, all your favorites.

But the company didn’t want to just release the software. In honor of the announcement, it created an infographic based on data from its Facebook users about what Ms. Mac looks like.

According to the graphic, which you can view below, 27 percent of female Mac users have long hair, 48 percent wear glasses and 52 percent are under 20. Forty percent use Mac OS X Lion, 14 percent OS X Mountain Lion, 20 percent OS X Leopard, and 8 percent Snow Leopard.

However, you should take these findings with a grain of salt; they are based primarily on responses from BlueStacks’ 1.1 million Facebook fans. Some of it is based on data from Nielsen, but BlueStacks confirmed that the majority of the information was pulled from its own users and its social media fans.

“We have a lot of early adopter fans who were into helping,” BlueStacks VP of marketing, John Gargiulo, told ABC News. “We also hired a data scientist who has been parsing through the data and talking with people who use BlueStacks. We like to do things that are a bit fun and different.”

BlueStacks created a similar infographic about Android users last year. Not surprisingly, 70 percent of male Android users wear t-shits and 62 percent wear jeans. (It’s like that line from that ’90s movie “Can’t Hardly Wait”: “He is sort of tall, with hair and wears t-shirts sometimes.”)

Regardless, if you’re looking for a fun infographic / full body image of the alleged Ms. Mac 2012, you can click the image below.

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