Afghan violence falls in 2012, insider attacks up

Internally displaced Afghans wait in line to receive firewood donated by Welt Hunger Hilfe 'German Agro Action' in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012. Around 240 internally displaced families received firewood. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

Internally displaced Afghans wait in line to receive firewood donated by Welt Hunger Hilfe 'German Agro Action' in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012. Around 240 internally displaced families received firewood. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

Afghan men carry a sick elderly man from Afghanistan to Pakistan for treatment at the main border crossing of Torkham, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. Today is the second day that Torkham the main border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is closed by Pakistani authorities, hundreds of trucks, cars plus several hundred people including, women, children, elders and especially sick people who are going from Afghanistan to Pakistan for treatment are waiting for the border to open, there are reports of at least three civilians being killed in Afghanistan side and more than five others being killed in Pakistan side since the border is closed because of the cold weather and heavy rain (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Afghan people stand in the main border crossing of Torkham, between Afghanistan and Pakistan east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. Today is the second day that Torkham the main border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is closed by Pakistani authorities, hundreds of trucks, cars plus several hundred people including, women, children, elders and especially sick people who are going from Afghanistan to Pakistan for treatment are waiting for the border to open, there are reports of at least three civilians being killed in Afghanistan side and more than five others being killed in Pakistan side since the border is closed because of the cold weather and heavy rain (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Afghan people stand in the main border crossing Torkham, between Afghanistan and Pakistan east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. Today is the second day that Torkham the main border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is closed by Pakistani authorities, hundreds of trucks, cars plus several hundred people including, women, children, elders and especially sick people who are going from Afghanistan to Pakistan for treatment are waiting for the border to open, there are reports of at least three civilians being killed in Afghanistan side and more than five others being killed in Pakistan side since the border is closed because of the cold weather and heavy rain (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

In this undated photo provided by Maj. Gen. John Cantwell, front, the general walks along with other soldiers in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan. The troops Cantwell was fighting alongside in the Gulf War had used bulldozing tanks to bury the man alive. This hand - so jarringly human amid the cold mechanics of bombs and anonymous enemies - was about to wedge itself, the Australian man would write decades later, "like a splinter under the skin of my soul." It would lead, along with other battlefield horrors, to the splintering of his mind and to a locked psychiatric ward. (AP Photo/Maj. Gen. John Cantwell, Sergeant Neil Ruskin) EDITORIAL USE ONLY

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Violence in Afghanistan fell in 2012, but more Afghan troops and police who now shoulder most of the combat were killed, according to statistics compiled by The Associated Press.

At the same time, insider killings by uniformed Afghans against their foreign allies rose dramatically, eroding confidence between the two sides at a crucial turning point in the war and when NATO troops and Afghan counterparts are in more intimate contact.

"The overall situation is improving," said a NATO spokesman, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Lester T. Carroll. He singled out Afghan special forces as "surgically removing insurgent leaders from the battle space."

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said Afghan forces were now charged with 80 percent of security missions and were less equipped to face the most lethal weapon of the militants ? roadside bombs.

"Our forces are out there in the battlefields and combat areas more than at any other time in the past," he said, citing reasons for the spike in casualties.

U.S. troop deaths, overall NATO fatalities and Afghan civilian deaths all dropped as insurgent attacks fell off in their traditional strongholds in the country's south and east. However, insurgent activity was up in the north and west, where the Taliban and other groups have been less active in the past, and overall levels of violence were higher than before a U.S. troop surge more than two years ago.

U.S. troop deaths declined overall from 404 last year to 295 as of Saturday. The Defense Department says 1,701 U.S. troops have been killed in action in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion in 2001 until Dec. 26. Of those, 338 died from non-hostile causes. Some 18,154 were wounded.

A total of 394 foreign troops, including the Americans, were killed in 2012, down from 543 in 2011. The British, with the second-largest military presence, had 43 killed ? the second-highest toll among countries with forces in Afghanistan, by AP's count.

The AP keeps daily tallies of casualties and violent incidents across Afghanistan based on reports from NATO and Afghan officials. Most cannot be independently verified, and other incidents may never come to light. The statistics sometimes vary from official counts because of time lags, different criteria and other reasons.

Deaths from so-called insider attacks ? Afghan police and troops killing foreign allies ? surged to 61 in 45 attacks last year compared with 2011, when 35 coalition troops were killed in 21 attacks.

The number, provided by the NATO command, does not include the Dec. 24 killing of an American civilian adviser by a female member of the Afghan police because the investigation is ongoing.

The focus of NATO's mission has largely veered from the battlefield to training the Afghans ahead of a pullout of most troops by 2014. The U.S plans to maintain a residual force, the size of which is now being determined.

A NATO report that tracks violence in the country showed a rise this year compared with the period before the surge of U.S. troops into the country. But the levels were down from last year and a peak in the summer of 2010. Kabul and the country's second-largest city, Kandahar, saw a considerable drop in lethal attacks, but districts in Kandahar province remain among the most restive in Afghanistan.

Militant attacks, the report said, decreased countrywide by 7 percent through November compared with the same 11-month period last year. But they were up in the northern and western parts of the country, which previously had been among the most peaceful regions.

Although NATO officials frequently credit Afghan troops with successful unilateral operations, a recent U.S. congressional report noted that higher-level Afghan units still need vital air, logistics and other support from foreign forces.

More Afghan police and soldiers are dying in the conflict, according to numbers provided by the interior and defense ministries.

More than 1,050 Afghan troops died this year, substantially higher than last year, although the ministry could not provide the exact 2011 death toll.

Nearly 1,400 police died in the 10 months from March 21 to the end of the year, compared with about the same number for the 12 months beginning March 21, 2011. The Afghan government follows a calendar year starting March 21.

NATO says Afghan security forces have grown from 132,000 in March 2011 to 333,000 this month.

The AP tally showed that at least 822 Afghan civilians had been killed by the Taliban and other militants this year while another 119 died in NATO airstrikes and other operations. That was a decrease from last year, when 1,151 were killed by insurgents and 283 by NATO. Substantially smaller numbers perish when caught in crossfires.

The United Nations reported different casualty figures but also noted that civilian deaths had decreased, reversing a five-year trend of mounting civilian deaths. Its latest report says that during the first six months of the year, 1,145 civilians died in conflict-related violence, compared with 1,510 in the same period of 2011. The U.N. considers insurgent land mines and roadside bombs to be particularly deadly for civilians.

Close to 3,000 militants were reported to have been killed by coalition and Afghan forces this year, compared with more than 3,500 last year. The NATO command does not issue reports on the number of insurgents its troops have killed, and Afghan military figures, from which the AP compiles its data, cannot be independently verified.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-12-30-Afghanistan-Year%20of%20Violence/id-c8076459a3bd4ba3a3c6811fc62d69fe

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Report: Environment and Food Needs Can be Met (Voice Of America)

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Alleged militants detained in Djibouti charged by US court

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sign of evolving U.S. legal tactics in counter-terrorism operations, two Swedish citizens and a former British citizen detained in Africa in August have been charged in a U.S. court with supporting Somali-based Islamist militants.

The charges were filed in Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, even though court papers and a press release from the U.S. Attorney's office make no specific allegation that the three - all of whom are of Somali extraction - posed threats to Americans or U.S.-related targets.

The three suspects - two Swedish citizens and a former London resident whose British citizenship recently was revoked - were charged with supporting the militant group al-Shabaab, illegal use of high-powered firearms, and participating in what prosecutors called "an elite al-Shabaab suicide-bomber program."

Ephraim Savitt, a former federal prosecutor who represents one of the Swedish defendants, said he was unaware of any secret evidence that the men threatened U.S. interests, and he saw "no prosecutorial hook whatever to the United States."

Savitt said he was unaware of any previous case in which U.S. authorities had taken custody of foreign militants who had no obvious connection, and posed no known threat, to U.S. interests.

However, a U.S. law enforcement source said there had been cases in the past where suspected foreign militants arrested overseas who had not directly threatened the United States had been brought before U.S. courts on terrorism-related charges.

The latest suspects - Swedes Ali Yasin Ahmed and Mohamed Yusuf, and former British resident Madhi Hashi - were detained by local authorities in Africa in early August while on their way to Yemen, the statement from prosecutors said.

The suspects were subsequently indicted in October by a Brooklyn-based federal grand jury, and in mid-November the FBI "took custody" of them and brought them to Brooklyn, where a revised indictment was filed against them, prosecutors said.

No information about the case was made public until just before Christmas, however.

U.S. officials said they were unable to provide further details about where the suspects were originally arrested, who arrested them, what was the legal basis for their initial arrest, and what happened to them between early August and their first known public court appearance in late December.

ARRESTED IN DJIBOUTI

However, Savitt, who represents Yusuf, said the men were arrested in Djibouti on their way to Yemen.

He said that at one point the men had been "fighters" with al-Shabaab, a group the United States has linked to al Qaeda. But at the time of their arrest, Savitt said, the men were trying to get away from the group after an apparent falling out.

Savitt said he did not know why they were heading to Yemen.

Saghir Hussain, a British lawyer who represents the family of Hashi, told the BBC this month the case had the "hallmarks of rendition," a reference to a secret procedure adopted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency during the administration of former President George W. Bush.

Such renditions involved teams of agency operatives taking custody of suspected militants overseas and handing them over, without legal process, to third countries, where they were sometimes mistreated.

Neither Hussain nor Harry Batchelder, Hashi's American lawyer, responded to messages requesting comment. Susan Kellman, a U.S. lawyer for Ahmed, also could not be reached.

Savitt said Hashi and the other suspects were detained and held in Djibouti by local authorities, who sometimes treated them roughly, but U.S. officials who at one point were allowed to interrogate them were "civil."

U.S. government sources familiar with the case said it could not be considered a "rendition," as in such cases suspects were not brought into the U.S. criminal justice system.

President Barack Obama's administration has declared it has stopped counter-terrorism practices such as "enhanced interrogations" and the use of secret CIA prisons, but it has not completely renounced the use of "rendition."

Hashi's family told the BBC that earlier last summer they received a letter from Britain's internal security department, the Home Office, declaring that his British citizenship had been revoked as he was deemed a threat to the U.K. security.

Under British law, Hashi had a right to appeal the revocation of his citizenship to an immigration court. A spokesperson for the British Embassy in Washington said that, for legal reasons, the government could not comment on whether or not such an appeal had been filed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/alleged-militants-detained-djibouti-charged-us-court-082452125.html

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Venezuela VP: Chavez suffers 'new complications'

FILE - In this Dec. 8, 2012, file photo released by Miraflores Press Office, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, left, holds up a copy of the Venezuelan national constitution as his Vice President Nicolas Maduro looks on during a televised speech at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela. Chavez has suffered "new complications" following his cancer surgery in Cuba, Maduro said Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012, describing the Venezuelan leader's condition as delicate. (AP Photo/Miraflores Press Office, Marcelo Garcia, file)

FILE - In this Dec. 8, 2012, file photo released by Miraflores Press Office, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, left, holds up a copy of the Venezuelan national constitution as his Vice President Nicolas Maduro looks on during a televised speech at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela. Chavez has suffered "new complications" following his cancer surgery in Cuba, Maduro said Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012, describing the Venezuelan leader's condition as delicate. (AP Photo/Miraflores Press Office, Marcelo Garcia, file)

Iconic T-shirts styled with images of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez are displayed for sale next to a T-shirt of Venezuelan musician Ali Primera, in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, Dec. 28, 2012. The obsessive, circular conversations about Chavez's health dominate family dinners, plaza chit-chats and social media sites in this country on edge since its larger-than-life leader went to Cuba for emergency cancer surgery more than two weeks ago. The man whose booming voice once dominated the airwaves for hours at a time has not been seen or heard from since.(AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

In this photo provided by Cuba's state newspaper Granma, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez , left, talks with Venezuela's Vice President Nicolas Maduro, center, as Venezuelan Attorney General Cilia Flores watches at the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana on Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. Maduro arrived in Cuba to visit Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is recovering from a surgery_ his fourth operation related to his pelvic cancer since June 2011. (AP Photo/Granma, Juvenal Balan Neyra )

Portraits of Venezuela's independence hero Simon Bolivar, left, and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez are exhibited for sale on folding easels in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, Dec. 28, 2012. The obsessive, circular conversations about Chavez's health dominate family dinners, plaza chit-chats and social media sites in this country on edge since its larger-than-life leader went to Cuba for emergency cancer surgery more than two weeks ago. The man whose booming voice once dominated the airwaves for hours at a time has not been seen or heard from since.(AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) ? Hugo Chavez has suffered "new complications" following his cancer surgery in Cuba, his vice president said Sunday, describing the Venezuelan leader's condition as delicate.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro spoke with a solemn expression in a televised address from Havana, saying he had spoken with Chavez and that the president sent greetings to his homeland. Maduro did not give details about the complications, which he said came amid a respiratory infection.

"Several minutes ago we were with President Chavez. We greeted each other and he himself referred to these complications," Maduro said, reading from a prepared statement. Maduro was seated alongside Chavez's eldest daughter, Rosa, and son-in-law Jorge Arreaza, as well as Attorney General Cilia Flores.

The vice president's comments suggest an increasingly difficult fight for the ailing president. The Venezuelan leader has not been seen or heard from since undergoing his fourth cancer-related surgery Dec. 11, and government officials have said he might not return in time for his scheduled Jan. 10 inauguration for a new six-year term.

"The president gave us precise instructions so that, after finishing the visit, we would tell the (Venezuelan) people about his current health condition," Maduro said. "President Chavez's state of health continues to be delicate, with complications that are being attended to, in a process not without risks."

Maduro held up a copy of a newspaper confirming that his message was recorded on Sunday.

"Thanks to his physical and spiritual strength, Comandante Chavez is facing this difficult situation," Maduro said.

Maduro said he had met various times with Chavez's medical team and relatives. He said he would remain in Havana "for the coming hours" but didn't specify how long.

Maduro, who arrived in Havana on Saturday for a sudden and unexpected trip, is the highest ranking Venezuelan official to visit Chavez since the surgery.

Before Chavez left for Cuba, he acknowledged risks in the operation and designated Maduro as his successor, telling supporters they should vote for the vice president if a new presidential election was necessary.

Chavez said his cancer had come back despite previous surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He has been fighting an undisclosed type of pelvic cancer since June 2011.

Medical experts say that it's common for patients who have undergone major surgeries to suffer respiratory infections and that how a patient fares can vary widely from a quick recovery in a couple of days to a fight for life on a respirator.

Maduro's latest update differed markedly from last Monday, when he had said he received a phone call from the president and that Chavez was up and walking.

The vice president spoke on Sunday below a picture of 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar, the inspiration of Chavez's leftist Bolivarian Revolution movement.

Maduro expressed faith that Chavez's "immense will to live and the care of the best medical specialists will help our president successfully fight this new battle." He concluded his message saying: "Long live Chavez."

___

Ian James on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ianjamesap

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-12-30-Venezuela-Chavez/id-cc32ed4e40714e28bbe039f47d23523d

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Couple loses adoptive daughter after Russia signs ban

After a roller coaster week, Kendra Skaggs sat down to vent on her blog. She had used that space to document her 13 month journey of adopting a young girl named Polina from Russia. But now, with that dream just weeks away from fulfillment, she described her frustration, fear and anger as she watched it being snatched away.

"I have no control. I'm on the other side of the world and I can't hold and comfort my daughter as I wait to hear if we will forever be separated," she wrote in a passionate entry

Her writing seemed to speak for hundreds of American parents whose hopes of adopting a Russian orphan were dashed today when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a controversial ban on adoptions to the United States. The move is part of Russia's retaliation for a set of human rights sanctions passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Obama earlier this month. Critics, including the U.S. State Department, say the adoption ban is playing politics with the lives of children.

Russia is the third most popular country for Americans to adopt from, but in recent years the issue has become a political football in Russia. Americans have adopted over 60,000 Russian children since the fall of the Soviet Union, but Russian officials have seized on the cases of 19 children who died after being adopted by Americans.

In 2010, a 7-year-old adopted boy named Artyom was put on a plane back to Russia alone by his adoptive mother from Tennessee with little more than a note saying she did not want him anymore. The case touched off a wave of fury in Russia and adoptions to the United States were nearly halted.

The Many Adventures of Vladimir Putin

Just a week ago Kendra and her husband visited Polina at her orphanage outside Moscow. The bubbly 5-year-old suffers from spina bifida, a condition that has left her numb from the waist down and unable to walk. They showed Polina photos of her new bedroom and told her about her new family. They played together, hugged each other, and promised to see each other soon when they returned in January to bring her home to Arkansas.

The adoption ban legislation, meanwhile, had just been introduced by Russian lawmakers. Kendra had hoped their case, which was nearly completed, would sneak in under the wire. She held out hope again after a Moscow court approved her adoption on Monday. All that was needed was a 30 day waiting period before they could bring Polina home.

It appears even that was too late. The law goes into effect on Jan. 1, but Russian officials have said even cases of 52 children who are within weeks of traveling to the United States are now frozen. Authorities have pledged to find new homes for them in Russia.

For the Skaggs family, it is agonizing to be so close to bringing her home, yet so far. Kendra fears Polina will think she was abandoned again.

"It's the fear of what she is going to think, that we forgot her," she said in an interview with ABC News.

"She's out there and I can't take care of her," she said, crying softly. "I can't help her. I can't tell her I love her. So it's really hard."

She also worries what will happen to Polina in Russia, a country with scarce accommodations for the handicapped.

"Russia really isn't set up for people with disabilities. You can't get into the metro even to get around because it's just levels and levels of stairs that you have to go up and down and there's no handicapped access to the buildings," Kendra said.

Putin's Adoption Ban Breaks Kendra Skaggs' Heart

Hundreds of thousands of children languish in what are often described as Russia's under-resourced orphanages. Many of them, like Polina, have special needs, which is one of the reasons they may have been given up at birth. Often those children face an uncertain future once they leave the orphanage system when they turn 18.

Kendra described Polina as a fiercely independent, intelligent, and determined young girl.

"She's very loving, very kind. She loves to sing and dance to music and listen to the music," she said.

In a home video that Kendra and her husband took with their cell phones, a beaming Polina proudly counts to 10 in English. In another she waves hello to her new grandparents. An overjoyed look envelops her face as she realizes that she will soon have grandparents. In another she tells Kendra she loves her.

With no way of contacting Polina, Kendra said she wishes she could send her a simple message.

"I would tell her we love her and to be strong and that were going to do everything we can to come back and get her. Everything that's in our power. We want to bring her home with us and have her to be our daughter," she said.

"I'd give anything to go see her and just wrap her in my arms and tell her I love her and to bring her home," she said.

At the end of their last visit, Kendra, mindful of the pending legislation, broke down in tears as she said goodbye. This time it was Polina who comforted her.

"Don't cry mommy, be strong,'" she said.

Also Read

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mom-loses-russian-girl-weeks-adoption-150709061--abc-news-topstories.html

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Deal reached to avert East coast port strike ... for now

(Reuters) - The union representing nearly 15,000 dockworkers at U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coast seaports stretching from Boston to Corpus Christi, Texas, reached a tentative contract deal with shipping companies on Friday, averting a strike that threatened to wreak havoc on the U.S. economy.

The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance clinched a deal in federally-mediated talks less than two days before a strike deadline set by the union to coincide with expiration of the contract on Sunday.

The threatened walkout would have brought container cargo operations to a halt at 15 ports along the Eastern seaboard and Gulf Coast, marking the first such work stoppage in 35 years. Friday's announcement came hours after the White House urged the parties to settle their dispute.

Under Friday's deal, the two sides agreed to extend the terms of their expiring labor pact for 30 more days while negotiators finalize details of their settlement, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service said in a statement.

The breakthrough came as the parties agreed "in principle" on the contentious issue of "container royalties," or bonus payments earned by ILA dockworkers based on the tonnage of cargo moved through their respective ports.

The new contract does not eliminate the royalty payments, as the shippers had demanded, according to Benny Holland, an executive vice president for the ILA.

"The royalty will stay intact. We have worked out a formula for it," he said in an interview. He did not elaborate and the shippers declined to comment. No further details were disclosed in the government's statement.

LONG-TERM AGREEMENT AWAITED

Established in 1960, the royalty payments to ILA workers are based on the tons of container cargo that move through a port. That tonnage has risen from 50 million tons in 1996 to 110 million tons last year, according to the alliance.

Total payments last year were $211 million, according to the USMX, or an average of $15,500 per worker.

The original idea of the royalty payments was to protect longshoremen from wage losses expected as a result of "containerization," in which more and more goods are packed in the now-familiar 20- and 40-foot long boxes. Those take less manpower to offload than the less-standardized containers they replaced.

The two sides also fought over the guaranteed eight-hour workday in the current contract as well as the seven-man "lashing gang." Lashing crews, or gangs, secure the cargo containers to the vessel using metal lashing rods to keep them from moving while the vessel is at sea. The maritime alliance wanted to eliminate each.

A new long-term agreement has an 80 percent chance of happening by January 28, Capital Alpha Partners analyst Loren Smith said in a research note.

The temporary agreement comes as labor forces felt emboldened by recent victories by other unions across the United States. At the same time, shipping companies and port operators have been using more automation, but have seen profits shrink.

The Baltic Dry index, which tracks the cost to ship materials overseas, is down 55 percent in the past year and currently trading at levels it has not seen in a decade.

(Additional reporting by Kevin Gray in Miami and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles, editing by Mary Milliken; desking by G Crosse)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mediator-says-deal-reached-avert-port-strike-now-171126727.html

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The Goebellesque/McTernin trick for 2013 - Menzies House

Considering modern technology, McTernin seeks to control ALP propaganda via Google and Wikipedia. When the ordinary person does a web search for "facts" about Australian political affairs, page after page will be propaganda from the Goebellesque McTernin. Step 6 of the 10 steps decreed in the Communist Manifesto as carried out in the US.?GC. Ed.

6.??????????????????Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands on the State.?Part of the [New Deal] by?Franklin Delano Roosevelt?theCommunications Act of 1934?established the [Federal Communications Commission (FCC)], it is charged with regulating all non-federal government use of the radio spectrum (including radio and television broadcasting), and all interstate telecommunications (wire, satellite, and cable) as well as all international communications that originate or terminate in the United States.

McTernin says:

''Adopting an open-data framework to increase transparency, accountability and collaboration would allow the digitally literate public to design innovative ways to use government data,'' he said in his thinker's report, which has been made public.

''Everybody in Australia has got two personal researchers - Google and Wikipedia,'' he said. ''So, in the end you need to be clear: this is the problem, these are the facts, this is the way we're going to analyse it, and this is what we're going to do.''

Read more:?http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/pms-adviser-encourages-a-more-cooperative-approach-20121227-2bxut.html#ixzz2GHlDMdMq

Source: http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2012/12/the-goebellesquemcternin-trick-for-2013.html

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Modern-Day Typhoid Marys

Patients put on face masks as they leave a SARS clinic in Toronto in 2003

Photo by J.P. Moczulski/AFP/Getty Images.

If germs hung a recruiting sign for their hosts, it would probably be a version of the World War I poster of Uncle Sam pointing: We want YOU to help us reproduce. All hosts were equally eligible for service, infectious-disease researchers thought. Assuming the recruits weren?t immune due to a prior infection or vaccination, anyone should have roughly the same potential to spread a disease?s pathogens. But then came severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

This pandemic started as just another strange pneumonia from southern China, but in 2003 it turned into a global outbreak that infected 8,098 people and killed 774. Key to the disease?s spread, researchers found, was a small but crucial portion of the population that became known as ?superspreaders,? people who transmitted the infection to a much greater than expected number of new hosts. The more scientists learn about superspreaders, the more they are beginning to realize that this tiny segment of the population is the driving force behind the emergence and spread of infectious diseases.

Perhaps the most infamous superspreader in history was Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary. An Irish cook in New York City in the 1900s, she was chronically infected with Salmonella typhi. Although the infection didn?t cause any symptoms for Mallon, she did excrete large numbers of typhoid bacteria in her feces. Her career as a cook made it easy to transmit fecal bacteria to customers through the food she prepared. She infected about 50 people and killed several (official counts vary) before she was arrested and jailed for refusing to give up her career as a cook.

To epidemiologists, people like Typhoid Mary were seen as an anomaly and not the main drivers of infectious disease spread. Instead, epidemiologists focused on a number they called R₀, the average number of people a single person could infect. The value of R₀ depends on three main factors: the number of susceptible individuals in the population, the number currently infected, and those resistant to infection. If the value of R₀ is less than one, it means that each individual infects less than one other person, and the outbreak will ultimately die out. However, if the value of R₀ is greater than one, the disease has the potential to spread.

When you look across a large population, R₀ is a good estimate of whether and how a particular infection might spread. At an individual level, it turns out, R₀ is less accurate. Most people won?t spread the disease at all, but a very few people will spread the infection to tens or even hundreds of others.

As computer models of infectious disease grew more powerful and precise, scientists began to realize that a lot of infectious disease spread is due to superspreaders. Researchers call it the 80/20 rule: Twenty percent of the population is responsible for 80 percent of disease spread. The key to understanding and stopping outbreaks of infectious disease means homing in on this small portion of the population that drives the majority of transmission.

Accounting for the presence of superspreaders also means accounting for their much more common counterparts: people who don?t spread the disease to anyone. Their R₀ is zero. Taken together, that means a disease is much more likely to be introduced into new areas by superspreaders, but it is also more likely to fizzle out in those places due to nonspreaders. Only occasionally, as with SARS, can the pathogen be introduced to somewhere new and then, like a spark on dry kindling, ignite a massive blaze of infection.

On Feb. 21, 2003, a 64-year-old doctor checked into Room 911 at the Hotel Metropole in Hong Kong. He was already sick with SARS but felt well enough to travel. Public health officials documented a total of seven people directly infected by the doctor, making him a superspreader. Several of the people he infected were also superspreaders. One young man infected every doctor, nurse, and medical student who examined him in a Hong Kong hospital?more than 100 health care workers in total. A flight attendant from Singapore went on to infect at least 160 others. These travelers then brought the SARS virus home with them as a very unwelcome souvenir. One of these infected individuals arrived in Toronto. Several days after she returned home, she developed symptoms consistent with SARS and ultimately died. Nine other SARS cases and three deaths were directly linked to her, and the outbreak ultimately spread to 257 others. This chain of contagion accounted for more than 70 percent of Toronto?s total SARS cases. Although Toronto was besieged by SARS in 2003, Vancouver (with a similar population) saw only a handful of cases. The reason? No superspreaders were infected in Vancouver, said infectious disease expert James Lloyd-Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles. ?SARS made the superspreader phenomenon so obvious we could no longer ignore it,? he said. But ?SARS is just one point along a continuum?all infectious show this [pattern] to some degree.?

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=19d4c8c776196a0f0bd9d5f0ecd7ee39

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Audiogalaxy music app will shut down entirely January 31st, as its team joins Dropbox

When music streaming app Audiogalaxy announced its acquisition by Dropbox earlier this month and closed signups we feared the worst, and now it's been confirmed: the service is shutting down entirely on January 31st, 2013. It had previously announced subscribers would have access to their mixes until the end of this month, but after another month they'll have to move to a service like Google Play Music, or possibly self hosting with Subsonic or something similar. The original blog post mentioned a desire to bring "great new experiences" to Dropbox's 100 million plus users so we may see some of those features again, soon. As for the service itself, Founder Michael Merhej relaunched it just over two years ago after version 1.0 -- a web-based music file sharing service that eclipsed its competitors during its run from 1998 to 2002 -- was squeezed out by RIAA pressure, so we figure anything is possible in the future.

Filed under: Software

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Source: Audiogalaxy (Facebook)

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/z6gaUedrCPk/

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Samsung Galaxy S4 Projected Keyboard - Business Insider

The video below from Rozetked purports to show a "rendering" of Samsung's forthcoming Galaxy S4 smartphone, which is poised to leapfrog the iPhone 5 when it comes out next year.

(Translation: The phone and features in the video are not actually the S4).

There are two cool features in the video:

First, the phone is thin and the screen is big. Many of those who own iPhones secretly covet the larger screens on Samsung phones, and this screen is big. And the rendered phone is thinner than the iPhone 5.

Second, the phone includes a "projected keyboard" feature in which the phone projects an image of a keyboard on a flat surface and then allows the user to type on the projected keys. If that is real and it works, that will be cool. Much cooler than carrying around an external keyboard.

The real Galaxy S4 is expected to come out early next year. The fear of many Apple fans is that, now that Samsung has basically caught up with Apple on the smartphone front--the Galaxy S3 is an excellent phone that some people prefer to the iPhone--this new phone will vault past the iPhone 5 and leave Apple scrambling to catch up.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-galaxy-s4-projected-keyboard-2012-12

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The First Gaming Console Made Christmas So Much Better

The greatest development in the history of Christmas presents was the Magnavox Odyssey. It's incontrovertible. Not for its success or awesomeness—it sorta flopped—but for beginning the worldwide institution of Video Games for Christmas. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/0e7LtVURb6Y/the-first-gaming-console-made-christmas-so-much-better

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Study hints that stem cells prepare for maturity much earlier than anticipated

Dec. 27, 2012 ? Unlike less versatile muscle or nerve cells, embryonic stem cells are by definition equipped to assume any cellular role. Scientists call this flexibility "pluripotency," meaning that as an organism develops, stem cells must be ready at a moment's notice to activate highly diverse gene expression programs used to turn them into blood, brain, or kidney cells.

Scientists from the lab of Stowers Investigator Ali Shilatifard, Ph.D., report in the December 27, 2012 online issue of Cell that one way cells stay so plastic is by stationing a protein called Ell3 at stretches of DNA known as "enhancers" required to activate a neighboring gene. Their findings suggest that Ell3 parked at the enhancer of a developmentally regulated gene, even one that is silent, primes it for future expression. This finding is significant as many of these same genes are abnormally switched on in cancer.

"We now know that some enhancer misregulation is involved in the pathogenesis of solid and hematological malignances," says Shilatifard. "But a problem in the field has been how to identify inactive or poised enhancer elements. Our discovery that Ell3 interacts with enhancers in ES cells gives us a hand-hold to identify and to study them."

In 2000, Shilatifard identified Ell3 as the third member of the Ell (for "Eleven-nineteen lysine-rich leukemia gene") family of elongation factors, proteins that increase the rate at which genes are expressed. "At the time, we didn't think much of Ell3 because it was highly expressed in testes," says Shilatifard, noting that then people thought that sperm were merely vessels used to carry paternal DNA to an egg and that associated factors would have little relevance to the regulation of future gene expression in the resulting embryo.

But a few years back, a curious Open University graduate student working in the Shilatifard lab, Chengqi Lin, started exploring a potential function for the neglected gene by initiating a global search for regions occupied by Ell3 in the genome of mouse embryonic stem cells. His search in collaboration with a bioinformatician in the Shilatifard lab, Alexander S. Garruss, revealed that Ell3 sits on more than 5,000 enhancers, including many that regulate genes governing stem cell maturation into spinal cord, kidney, and blood cells.

"What was interesting was that Ell3 marked enhancers that are active and inactive, as well as enhancers that are known as "poised," says Lin, referring to a transition state from inactive to active. "That indicated that Ell3's major function might be to prime activation of genes that are just about to be expressed during development."

The fact that silent genes can be "primed" for expression was no surprise: researchers knew that the enzymatic machine that copies DNA into the RNA blueprint for proteins -- a protein called Pol II -- often pauses at the start of a gene, presumably revving its engine in preparation to jump across the genetic start gate in response to a developmental signal. However, Shilatifard and colleagues showed several years ago that paused Pol II is not a prerequisite for rapid transcriptional induction.

The surprise came when researchers used a molecular trick to deplete mouse ES cells of Ell3 and then did a "genomic" survey. They found that paused Pol II vanished from the start sites of many genes in Ell3-deficient cells. This means that not only does Ell3 preferentially mark stem enhancers, but also that its presence there is necessary to keep an idling Pol II ready for action.

Most of the current study defines how, when the developmental time is right, enhancer-bound Ell3 cooperates with components of a big-boss elongation factor called the Super Elongation Complex to release Pol II from the start gate, allowing the expression of genes required for stem cell differentiation. Critical among those findings is their observation that mouse stem cells depleted of Ell3 failed to activate genes expressed in mature cell types.

These results alone are cause for any lab to start chilling the champagne, yet a surprising coda to the study, leaves readers with yet another revelation. Collaborating with Fengli Guo, Ph.D., head of the Stowers electron microscopy core, the team prepared highly magnified images of mouse sperm and observed that both Ell3 and Pol II were present, in sperm nuclei.

In mammals, gene expression regulated by Pol II, a process known as transcription, does not begin until the formation of a single-celled zygote, that is, well after the union of sperm and egg germ cells. "It is very significant that Ell3 and other factors that regulate transcription are found in sperm," says Lin, the study's first author. Lin is cautious in interpreting this finding, "but it would be very exciting to further investigate whether transcription factors found in sperm could contribute to the decondensation of sperm chromatin or even further gene activation after fertilization by serving as epigenetic markers."

Shilatifard is also cautious as questions remain to be explored, among them whether Ell3 and Pol II actually contact DNA inside sperm or whether similar processes occur in unfertilized eggs and function in this process. Nonetheless, he feels this finding has fundamental implications, not only for development, but also for where he's going next.

"This work has opened up a whole new area of research in my lab," says Shilatifard, who has in the last decade focused on aberrant gene expression associated with leukemia. "If we find that transcription factors bind to specific regions of chromatin in germ cells, I may focus on germ cells in the next few decades. This would open a huge door enabling us to determine the role of these factors in early development."

Zhuojuan Luo, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Shilatifard lab, also contributed to the study.

Funding for the study came from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, the National Institutes of Health (Shilatifard R01CA89455 and R01CA150265), and Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stowers Institute for Medical Research, via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Chengqi Lin, Alexander?S. Garruss, Zhuojuan Luo, Fengli Guo, Ali Shilatifard. The RNA Pol II Elongation Factor Ell3 Marks Enhancers in ES Cells and Primes Future Gene Activation. Cell, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.12.015

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/genes/~3/zG_FVBuF9b4/121227130202.htm

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Tips To Becoming An Excellent Bed And Breakfast Host ... - Travel

By Faye Hunter|Travel|Be the first to comment!

It is surely a common thing for a place offering a lot of amusements to gain lots of visitors. Indeed, i t will be unnatural if the beautiful place is not being enjoyed by other people. Since there are many visitors who will come to a certain place to enjoy the scenery or the amusements, it is only natural to find a lot of Ann Arbor bed and breakfast inns.

Those who own an inn should make sure that they are good hosts. There is nothing to worry about if the customers see that their host is someone who makes them feel comfortable. To become a good host, he should follow these easy steps. With these steps, he will surely provide great customer service and experience for his guest.

First, it will be a good idea if he can leave a few notecards in the room. These notecards should contain information related to the food service within the area, most appropriately of the pizza delivery services. This is because most people would want to order pizza on the latter days for their stay.

Show that the staff is accommodating by telling the guest that they should ask in case they need something. He should tell the guest whom to ask if he really has something he needs. If the guest wants to have extra towels, pillows, blankets, or iron and ironing board, he should be ready to accommodate to them.

It will be a good idea for him if he can consider putting together the best recipes in town. In a place that is different from the guest?s hometown, there are food items that are bound to be different and tasty. If he can provide the guest with the basic recipe to create these, he will surely get them in a good vacation mood.

He can also show the guest a good time himself, if the guest have the same hobby as he does. If the guest likes the hobbies that he likes as well, he can ask the guest to come by his workshop and watch while he is working. He can also invite the guest to work together with him so that they can adapt to the techniques that he already know or share their own knowledge about it.

Those inns that have a historic value may want to put together a scrap book. With the scrap book, it should be easy for the guest to know more about the history of the inn that he has chosen to stay in. The scrap book may be displayed in a public area or be placed one copy per room.

It is also a great tip to follow for the person to get a good list of those churches that are located within his area. With the list, it will be possible for the guests to attend any worship service that they want. Of course, he should include the hour for the service. The guest might accidentally walk in during the middle of a service.

There is the need for space and privacy even with guests. The guests, even if they are not staying in their own place, should be at ease. The Ann Arbor bed and breakfast inn should be a place that they can consider their second home.

When a weekend getaway is desired, locals may check out Ann Arbor Bed and Breakfast at www.a2vitosha.com to book a reservation. You will learn about their rates, amenities, and attractions when you click the links at http://www.a2vitosha.com today.

Source: http://travel.queryanswer.com/tips-to-becoming-an-excellent-bed-and-breakfast-host

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Family competing to win Super Bowl commercial contest | Rancho ...

John Snyder (left) and his dog, Charger, starred in a homemade Doritos commercial, which he submitted into the company?s 2012 ?Crash the Super Bowl? contest. Rob Kuty (right) trained the dog for the production. Photo: Claire Harlin

By Claire Harlin

Stacy and John Snyder love their mastiff mix, Charger, and when they were watching the homemade Doritos commercial contest submissions last year during the Super Bowl, they had no doubt in their minds that their Helen Woodward adoptee would be the next big TV star.

?We were thinking, this dog, she just love to do tricks, so why don?t we submit her?? said Stacy, who has lived with John in Rancho Santa Fe for 28 years.

The Snyders called together a little team to produce the 30-second Doritos commercial, which they entered into the ?Crash the Super Bowl? contest last month. They brought together Rob Kuty, who works with Helen Woodward under his company, San Diego Pet Training, and previously trained Charger as a puppy transitioning from the shelter to the Snyders? home. And finding their videographer was somewhat serendipitous ? after months of searching, the Snyders discovered on a five-day trip to the Grand Canyon that a family friend who was there, Kevin Miller, is both a video editor and Rancho Santa Fe resident. Since there?s $1 million on the table for the winner of the contest, the Snyders made a deal with Kuty and Miller ? split it three ways if they win.

So far, the commercial, called ?Crossword Charlie,? has been well-received. It?s gotten more than 1,000 views on Facebook and it?s among videos with the highest ratings given by the company. But the biggest key to their success is getting the most votes from the public, and the commercials will be up for voting on the contest?s Facebook page during the month of January, as well as through Xbox Live. Each person gets one vote per day per platform, states the contest rules.

?Everybody who?s seen it, even people we don?t know, say they love it,? said John, adding that the contest started off as amateurs-only but some contestants ended up submitting major productions, which would have cost much more to make than theirs, which was shot with an iPhone and had no overhead ? save for a dozen or more bags of Doritos.

?Ours is all homegrown, and we?re all from right here in the same community,? Stacy said.

The Snyders spent several months on the commercial, which stars Charger opening doors, wearing glasses and helping John solve the crossword clue, ?world?s tastiest potato chip.? After jumping onto the kitchen counter, sticking her nose in a Doritos bag, and bringing her owner chip after chip, John figures it out. For the purposes of the commercial only, the Snyders changed their dog?s name to Charlie, as contest rules dictate the commercials must not have any team or brand affiliations.

Kuty said working with Charger to perfect her tricks wasn?t hard because she?s been learning tricks from an early age. She already knew how to open doors, but Kuty taught her how to shut them, and also how to easily jump onto chairs and stand at attention.

?The hardest trick was getting her to put her paws on the counter and take a Dorito out of the bag without eating it,? he said.

Miller pieced together trick after trick, and even chose shots in which Charger gives the most appropriate and funny expressions.

?The facial expressions were hard,? said Stacy, but she added that they are also one of the most memorable elements of the commercial. ?We?d have a squeaky toy and get her attention, and capture her face right when she tilts her head.?

Kuty began his 13-years of training animals at SeaWorld, so he said he loves any opportunity to do theatre work that comes his way.

?When they called me, I jumped on it,? he said.

Stacy, a former special education teacher who has been volunteering for years for a variety of organizations, said her main motivator to win is getting to donate the money to a cause she is already involved in ? either Helen Woodward, TERI, cancer research or the San Pasqual Academy.

?I thought, ?Gosh, if we could win this money, wouldn?t it be great to give a significant amount of it to things we?ve already been contributing??? said Stacy. ?Then, we could really make a difference.?

Stacy is involved in Kids Korps USA and has experience starting up a plant nursery for TERI, a school that serves those with autism and other developmental disabilities.

?Now that we?re empty-nesters, we?re not only thinking of things we?d normally be too busy to do, but we realize that all the focus gets put on your dog, this companion there always greeting you, and pleasing you and never talking back,? Stacy said.

John added that they?ve had so much fun making the commercial, that even if they don?t win, he wants to do it again next year ? and some ideas are already brewing.

?Charger had so much fun too,? he said. ?She got so much better with repetition, and she loved being part of the team and getting rewarded.?

Stacy added, ?It really gives her a purpose.?

For more information or to vote in the Crash the Super Bowl contest after Jan. 2, visit www.facebook.com/doritosUSA. You can search ?Crossword Charlie? to find the Snyder?s video, which has the headline, ?Duh?ritos.?

Related posts:

1. Horizon Prep Spirit Bowl
2. Torrey Pines High School Patch workout system a winner for New York Giants/Super Bowl champ Justin Tuck
3. Horizon Prep Spirit Bowl
4. On the Web contest winners; September?s contest is ?Best Vacation? photo
5. Rancho Santa Fe student among winners of water authority contest

Short URL: http://www.ranchosantafereview.com/?p=16871

Source: http://www.ranchosantafereview.com/2012/12/26/family-competing-to-win-super-bowl-commercial-contest/

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LG?s latest projector system is powered by freaking lasers

7 hrs.

Gary Merson , HD Guru

Until now, all consumer front projector systems?produced light using lamps or in rare cases LEDs. The new?LG HECTO FP system, on the other hand, uses lasers for illumination instead. Yes, lasers.

As LG announced on Wednesday, the new projector system uses lasers and a Texas Instruments DLP chip to form images. Typical home front projectors require around a 9 to 12 foot distance from the lens to a 100-inch screen. The LG HECTO requires only a 22-inch throw to fill the screen and can be placed on the floor or the mounted to the ceiling.

The LG HECTO Laser Projection TV will be sold as a complete system with a 100-Inch diagonal screen, a built-in ATSC TV tuner, HDMI switching and a Wi-Fi connection for streaming video.

Specifications include a rated 1,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 1080p resolution, 3 HDMI inputs, an optical audio input, RS-232 interface. Audio is produced by two 10W built-in speakers. The projector measures 5.7-inches high. The HECTO Laser projector does not have 3-D capability. LG has not? provided a brightness rating, a key specification. (Lasers offer the promise of very high intensity using low power.)

The screen is a fixed design and unlike theater screens its surface is black not white. LG claims the system will render a vivid, high contrast crisp image, even in lighter viewing environments.

The Laser TV supports LG's Smart TV platform and will stream movies via Netflix?and?YouTube as well as other services and?apps via its built-in Wi-Fi wireless Internet connection. The HECTO also includes LG's latest Magic Remote control.

LG claims its laser based illumination system has a lifespan of up to 25,000 hours, which is 5 times or more the life of traditional mercury-based lamps.

The LG HECTO Laser projector will be demonstrated at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show early next month. We expect pricing and availability to be announced at the show.

Have a question for the HD Guru? Send an?email.

More?from HD Guru:

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/gadgetbox/lgs-latest-projector-system-powered-freaking-lasers-1C7660219

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helbergsimon: Health & Fitness 2016: Nursing EMT Deluxe - bossmao

Buy on the merchant's on-line searching and scan reviews. If you're making an attempt to find Nursing EMT Deluxe with special price. This is the simplest deals for you. Where you'll notice these item is by online looking stores? Read the review on Nursing EMT Deluxe Now, it's discount deals. So do not lose it.

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Source: http://pophealthfitness384.blogspot.com/2012/12/nursing-emt-deluxe.html

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Lawmakers play waiting game with 'fiscal cliff' deadline in sight

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With only a week left before a deadline for the United States to go over a "fiscal cliff," lawmakers played a waiting game on Monday in the hope that someone will produce a plan to avoid harsh budget cuts and higher taxes for most Americans from New Year's Day.

Though Republicans and Democrats have spent the better part of a year describing a plunge off the cliff as a looming catastrophe, the nation's capital showed no outward signs of worry, let alone impending calamity.

The White House has set up shop in Hawaii, where President Barack Obama is vacationing.

The Capitol was deserted and the Treasury Department - which would have to do a lot of last-minute number-crunching with or without a deal - was closed.

So were all other federal government offices, with Obama having followed a tradition of declaring the Monday before a Tuesday Christmas a holiday for government employees, notwithstanding the approaching fiscal cliff.

Expectations for some 11th-hour rescue focused largely on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, in part because he has performed the role of legislative wizard in previous stalemates.

But McConnell, who is up for re-election in 2014, was shunning the role this year, his spokesman saying that it was now up to the Democrats in the Senate to make the next move.

"We don't yet know what Senator Reid will bring to the floor. He is not negotiating with us and the president is out of town," said McConnell's spokesman, referring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat. "So I just don't know what they're going to do over there," he said.

Two-day-old tweets on leadership websites told the story insofar as it was visible to the public.

House Speaker John Boehner's referred everyone to McConnell. McConnell's tweet passed the responsibility along to Obama, saying it was a "moment that calls for presidential leadership."

Reid's tweet said: "There will be very serious consequences for millions of families if Congress fails to act" on the cliff.

The next session of the Senate is set for Thursday, but the issues presented by across-the-board tax hikes and indiscriminate reductions in government spending, were not on the calendar.

The House has nothing on its schedule for the week, but members have been told they could be called back at 48 hours notice, making a Thursday return a theoretical possibility.

However, aides to the Republican leaders in Congress said there were no talks with Democrats on Monday and none scheduled after negotiations fell off track last week when Boehner failed to persuade House Republicans to accept tax increases on incomes of more than $1 million a year.

"Nothing new, Merry Christmas," an aide to Boehner responded when asked if there was any movement on the fiscal cliff.

But a senior Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said White House aides were talking with Senate Democratic staffers about the situation.

SCALED-BACK EXPECTATIONS

If there is some last-minute legislation, Republicans and Democrats agreed on Sunday news shows that it will not be any sort of "grand bargain" encompassing taxes and spending cuts, but most likely a short-term deal putting everything off for a few weeks or months, thereby risking a negative market reaction.

A limited agreement would still need bipartisan support, as Obama has said he would veto a bill that does not raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

On Monday, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison urged fellow Republicans to be flexible.

"We're now at a point where we're not going to get what we think is right for our economy and our country because we don't control government. So we've got to work within the system we have," she told MSNBC.

Two bills in Congress could conceivably form the basis for a last-minute stopgap measure.

Last spring, Republicans in the House passed a measure that would extend Bush-era tax cuts for everyone, reflecting the party's deep reluctance to increase taxes.

The Democratic-controlled Senate passed a bill in August, extending lower tax rates for everyone except the wealthiest Americans - a group defined at that point as households with a net income of $250,000 or above. Obama has since increased that to $400,000 a year, in an effort to win Republican support.

Analysts say Democrats might be able to get the backing of enough Republicans in both the House and Senate, especially if they are willing to raise the number to $500,000.

Under that scenario, lawmakers might also put off spending cuts of $109 billion that would take effect from January and agree to Republican demands for cuts in entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, the government-run health insurance plans for seniors and the poor.

However, with only a few work days left in Congress after Christmas, there is a good chance that no deal can be worked out and tax rates would then go up, at least briefly, until an agreement is reached in Washington.

"We may go off the cliff on January 1, but we would correct that very quickly thereafter," Democratic Representative John Yarmuth told MSNBC.

The prospects of the United States going over the fiscal cliff dampened enthusiasm on Wall Street for a "Santa rally" in the holiday season, when stocks traditionally rise.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 51.76 points, or 0.39 percent, in Monday's shortened holiday session.

Failure to work out tax rates in the coming days would cause chaos at the Internal Revenue Service, said analyst Chris Krueger of Guggenheim Securities.

"Next weekend is going to be a total, total debacle," he said. The IRS is unlikely to have enough time to revise its tables for withholding taxes.

"The withholding tables are sort of like an aircraft carrier, you can't turn the thing on a dime." he said.

(Additonal reporting by Alina Selyukh, Patrick Temple-West and David Lawder and Mark Felsenthal in Honolulu; Editing by Alistair Bell, Fred Barbash, David Brunnstrom and Paul Simao)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lawmakers-play-waiting-game-fiscal-cliff-deadline-sight-041126510--business.html

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