Springsteen to be honored as MusiCares person of the year

(Reuters) – U.S. rocker Bruce Springsteen has been named MusiCares‘ 2013 Person of the Year in recognition of his artistic achievements as well as his philanthropic work, the Recording Academy said on Wednesday.

Springsteen, 63, will be honored at a February 8 gala in Los Angeles hosted by comedian Jon Stewart and held in conjunction with the annual Grammy Awards, the recording world’s most prestigious honors which will be handed out on February 10.

“The Boss” has actively supported many charities over the years, including those focused on homelessness, hunger and helping veterans, and last year he participated in benefit concerts to aid victims of superstorm Sandy.

Among top music stars slated to perform at the MusiCares gala are Sting, Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, Elton John, Tim McGraw and Patti Smith.

Past MusiCares Person of the Year honorees have included Tony Bennett, Bono, Phil Collins, Neil Diamond, Aretha Franklin Billy Joel, Elton John, Sting, Paul McCartney, Luciano Pavarotti and Barbra Streisand.

New Jersey native Springsteen, known for hits including “Born to Run,” “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Dancing in the Dark,” has won a string of honors including Grammy, Golden Globe and Academy Awards.

He has often taken inspiration from his home state and used his star platform to highlight both its charms and challenges, most notably in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy which devastated New Jersey’s famous coastline in October.

MusiCares, which was established in 1989 by the Recording Academy, maintains a foundation that provides programs and services to members of the music community such as emergency financial assistance, educational workshops and other support services.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud, editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Osterman)

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Hillary Clinton Is Discharged From Hospital After Blood Clot

Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose globe-trotting tour as secretary of state was abruptly halted last month by a series of health problems, was discharged from a New York hospital on Wednesday evening after several days of treatment for a blood clot in a vein in her head.

The news of her release was the first welcome sign in a troubling month that grounded Mrs. Clinton — preventing her from answering questions in Congress about the State Department’s handling of the lethal attack on an American mission in Libya or being present when President Obama announced Senator John Kerry as his choice for her successor when she steps down as secretary of state.

“Her medical team advised her that she is making good progress on all fronts, and they are confident she will make a full recovery,” Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton, said in a statement.

Mrs. Clinton, 65, was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital on Sunday after a scan discovered the blood clot. The scan was part of her follow-up care for a concussion she sustained more than two weeks earlier, when she fainted and fell, striking her head. According to the State Department, the fainting was caused by dehydration, brought on by a stomach virus. The concussion was diagnosed on Dec. 13, though the fall had occurred earlier that week.

The clot was potentially serious, blocking a vein that drains blood from the brain. Untreated, such blockages can lead to brain hemorrhages or strokes. Treatment consists mainly of blood thinners to keep the clot from enlarging and to prevent more clots from forming, and plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration, which is a major risk factor for blood clots.

Photographed leaving the hospital, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea, appeared elated. In a Twitter post on Wednesday, Chelsea Clinton said, “Grateful my Mom discharged from the hospital & is heading home. Even more grateful her medical team confident she’ll make a full recovery.”

Dr. David J. Langer, a brain surgeon and associate professor at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, said that Mrs. Clinton would need close monitoring in the next days, weeks and months to make sure her doses of blood thinners are correct and that the clot is not growing. Dr. Langer is not involved in her care.

Mrs. Clinton’s illness cuts short what would have been a victory lap for her at the State Department. With only a few weeks before the end of President Obama’s first term — the time frame she set for her own departure — she will be able to do little more than say goodbye to her troops.

But she will, at least theoretically, be able to testify before the Senate and House about the attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. She was not able to appear at a hearing in December because of her illness. Republicans, who have sharply criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the attack and its aftermath, had demanded that she appear to explain the department’s role, though in recent days they have modulated their request.

Mrs. Clinton’s blood clot formed in a large vein along the side of her head, behind her right ear, between the brain and the skull. The vein, called the right transverse sinus, has a matching vessel on the left side. These veins drain blood from the brain; blockages can cause strokes or brain hemorrhages. But if only one transverse sinus is blocked, the vein on other side can usually handle the extra flow.

In one sense, Mrs. Clinton was lucky: a clot higher in this drainage system, in a vessel with no partner to take the overflow, would have been far more dangerous, according to Dr. Geoffrey T. Manley, the vice chairman of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. He is not involved in her care.

The fact that Mrs. Clinton had a blood clot in the past — in her leg, in 1998 — suggests that she may have a tendency to form clots, and may need blood-thinners long-term or even for the rest of her life, Dr. Manley said.

One major risk to people who take blood thinners is that the drugs increase bleeding, so blows to the head from falls or other accidents — like the fall that caused Mrs. Clinton’s concussion — become more dangerous, and more likely to cause a brain hemorrhage. Even so, the medication should not interfere with Mrs. Clinton’s career, Dr. Manley said.

“There are lots of people running around on anticoagulants today,” he said. “I don’t see any way it would have any long-term consequences.”

He also said there was no reason to think that this type of clot would recur; he said he had treated many patients for the same condition and had never seen one come back with it again.

Dr. Langer said the vein blocked by the clot might or might not reopen. Sometimes, he said, the clot persists and the body covers it with tissue that closes or narrows the blood vessel. As long as the vein on the other side of the head is open, there is no problem for the patient.

One thing that is unclear, and that may never be known for sure, is what caused Mrs. Clinton’s blood clot. Around the second week in December, she reportedly contracted a stomach virus that caused vomiting and dehydration, passed out, fell and struck her head. A concussion was diagnosed several days after the fall, on Dec. 13, and the public was told Sunday that she had a blood clot, though its location was not revealed until the next day.

She had several risk factors for clots, including dehydration and her previous history of a clot. In addition, women are more prone than men to this type of clot, particularly when dehydrated. The fall may also have been a factor, though it is not clear whether her head injury was serious enough to have caused a blood clot. The type of clot she had is far more likely to be associated with a skull fracture than with a concussion, several experts said.

Did overwork — frequent overseas trips, perpetual jet lag, high-pressure meetings — make her ill? Mrs. Clinton has kept up a punishing schedule since she declared her candidacy for president in 2007. Having logged more than 950,000 miles and visited 112 countries, she is one of the most-traveled secretaries of state in history. She has put on weight and in recent times appeared fatigued. But the same could be said of plenty of people who do not develop clots in their heads.

“You cannot tell me that her hard work resulted in this,” Dr. Langer said. “I can’t imagine that you could make that judgment.”

In theory, Dr. Manley said, exhaustion can weaken the immune system temporarily, and lower a person’s resistance to infections like the stomach virus that apparently started Mrs. Clinton’s problems. But in his opinion, the most important contributing factor to her blood clot was probably the head injury from her fall.

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Net worth of world's richest rose by $241B in 2012

The richest people on the planet got richer in 2012, adding $241 billion to their collective net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world's 100 wealthiest individuals.

The aggregate net worth of the world's top moguls stood at $1.9 trillion at the market close on Dec. 31, according to the index. Retail and telecommunications fortunes surged about 20 percent on average during the year. Of the 100 people who appeared on the final ranking of 2012, only 16 registered a net loss for the 12-month period.

"Last year was a great one for the world's billionaires," said John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of Red Apple Group, in an e-mail written poolside on his BlackBerry in the Bahamas. "In -- that will give them an advantage."

Amancio Ortega, the Spaniard who founded retailer Inditex SA, was the year's biggest gainer. The 76-year-old tycoon's fortune increased $22.2 billion to $57.5 billion, according to the index, as shares of Inditex, operator of the Zara clothing chain, rose 66.7 percent.

"It's an amazing company that has done great and the gains are quite justified given its performance," said Christodoulos Chaviaras, an analyst at Barclays Plc in London who has had an "equalweight" rating on Inditex for about a year. "Can they repeat that? It will be harder. A lot of the positive news is already reflected in the share price."

Global stocks soared in 2012. The MSCI World Index gained 13.2 percent during the year to close at 1,338.50 on Dec. 31. The Standard and Poor's 500 Index rose 13.4 percent to close at 1,426.19.

European stocks surged in the second half of the year. The Stoxx Europe 600 is up 19.6 percent since June 4, advancing as the European Central Bank introduced bond-buying programs, S&P upgraded Greece's debt and German business confidence rose more than forecast. The benchmark gauge's 14.4 percent advance for the year was the best annual return since 2009.

Carlos Slim, the telecommunications magnate who controls Mexico's America Movil SAB, remained the richest person on Earth for the year. The 72-year-old's net worth rose $13.4 billion -- or 21.6 percent -- through Dec. 31, making him the second-biggest gainer by dollars.

Gains by Slim's industrial conglomerate, Grupo Carso, and Grupo Financiero Inbursa, his banking and insurance operation, more than offset the decline posted by America Movil, his biggest holding. The largest mobile phone operator in the Americas by subscribers fell 5.8 percent to close at 14.9 pesos at the end of the year.

"America Movil is no longer the growth story that it has been, given the increase in Latin American wireless penetration over the last five years," said Chris King, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore, Md. "It continues to generate a very high amount of cash flow and has the best set of telecom assets across Latin America."

According to King, one of Slim's biggest challenges will be dealing with regulation in Mexico and Colombia designed to punish or even-out the market share between America Movil and its competitors. Of the 14 analysts who cover the stock, 71 percent have a buy rating on the company, with an average target price of 19.15 pesos per share, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

U.S. software mogul Bill Gates, 57, ranks second on the list, trailing Slim by $12.5 billion. The Microsoft co-founder added $7 billion to his net worth as shares of the Redmond, Wash.-based company rose 2.9 percent. Microsoft stock accounts for less than 20 percent of the billionaire's fortune.

Warren Buffett, 82, lost his title as the world's third- richest man to Ortega Aug. 6. The Berkshire Hathaway chairman gained $5.1 billion during the year, even after donating 22.3 million Berkshire Class B shares in July to charity. The billionaire, who has pledged to give away most of his fortune, spent much of the year pressing for higher taxes on the wealthy.

"On incomes of over $1 million, the excess $1 million should have a minimum tax of 30 percent. And then over $10 million, 35 percent," Buffett said in an interview with Charlie Rose in November. "Tax law should be progressive. And I think that when people make $15 million or $20 million or $200 million and pay a 10 percent rate, something should be done about it."

IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, 86, is the world's fifth- richest person with a $42.9 billion fortune. The complex ownership structure behind IKEA, the world's largest furniture retailer, became more transparent in August after IKEA's franchisor published its financial performance publicly for the first time. His net worth rose 16.6 percent in 2012.

Brazil's Eike Batista, 56, was the year's biggest loser by dollars, falling $10.1 billion. The commodities maven, who vowed a year ago that he'd become the world's wealthiest man by 2015, sold a 5.63 percent stake in his EBX Group in March to Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Development.

As part of the deal, he pledged an unspecified additional stake in 2019 if he fails to meet a 5 percent annual return on the sovereign wealth fund's $2 billion investment, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. Batista now ranks 75th in the world with a $12.4 billion net worth. On March 27, he was worth $34.5 billion and ranked 8th on the Bloomberg index.

"Next year is going to be a lot of work for Eike," said Lucas Brendler, who helps manage about 6 billion reais at Banco Geracao Futuro de Investimentos in Porto Alegre, Brazil. "It's going to be a year for him to recover investors' confidence, and to leave the realm of theory and start delivering results. The EBX companies have great growth potential."

Batista's former title as the richest Brazilian is now held by 73-year-old banker Jorge Paulo Lemann, who ranks 37th with an $18.8 billion fortune. The country's second-richest person is Dirce Camargo, the matriarch behind Camargo Correa SA, the Sao Paulo-based conglomerate that has interests in cement, electricity and Havaianas flip-flops. Her net worth is $13.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg ranking.

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With final vote, Congress resolves 'fiscal cliff' drama

Political analyst Paul Lisnik talks about the fiscal cliff bill passing the House.

The House gave final approval last night to a bill to rescind tax increases for the vast majority of Americans, but only after a day of closed-door debate among Republicans who were forced to allow a vote on a compromise many in their party disdained.

The final tally, 257-167, included most of the chamber’s Democrats and fewer than half of the Republican majority.

The agreement hands a clear victory to President Barack Obama, who won re-election on a promise to address budget woes in part by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. His Republican antagonists were forced to vote against a core tenet of their anti-tax conservative faith.

The deal also resolves, for now, the question of whether Washington can overcome deep ideological differences to avoid harming an economy that is only now beginning to pick up steam after the deepest recession in 80 years.

Consumers, businesses and financial markets have been rattled by the months of budget brinkmanship. The crisis ended when dozens of Republicans in the House of Representatives buckled and backed tax hikes approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Asian stocks hit a five-month high and the dollar fell as markets welcomed the news. China's state news agency Xinhua took a more severe view, warning the United States must get to grips with a budget deficit that threatened not a "fiscal cliff" but a "fiscal abyss". Most of China's $3.3 trillion foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars.

The vote averted immediate pain like tax hikes for almost all U.S. households, but did nothing to resolve other political showdowns on the budget that loom in coming months. Spending cuts of $109 billion in military and domestic programs were only delayed for two months.

Obama urged "a little less drama" when the Congress and White House next address thorny fiscal issues like the government's rapidly mounting $16 trillion debt load.

There was plenty of drama on the first day of 2013 as lawmakers scrambled to avert the "fiscal cliff" of across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts that would have punched a $600 billion hole in the economy this year.

As the rest of the country celebrated New Year's Day with parties and college football games, the Senate stayed up past 2 a.m. on Tuesday and passed the bill by an overwhelming margin of 89 to 8.

When they arrived at the Capitol at noon, House Republicans were forced to decide whether to accept a $620 billion tax hike over 10 years on the wealthiest or shoulder the blame for letting the country slip into budget chaos.

The Republicans mounted an effort to add hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts to the package and spark a confrontation with the Senate.

GOP reluctant

For a few hours, it looked like Washington would send the country over the fiscal cliff after all, until Republican leaders determined that they did not have the votes for spending cuts.

In the end, they reluctantly approved the Senate bill by a bipartisan vote of 257 to 167 and sent it on to Obama to sign into law.

"We are ensuring that taxes aren't increased on 99 percent of our fellow Americans," said Republican Representative David Dreier of California.

The vote underlined the precarious position of House Speaker John Boehner, who will ask his Republicans to re-elect him speaker on Thursday when a new Congress is sworn in. Boehner backed the bill but most House Republicans, including his top lieutenants, voted against it.

The speaker had sought to negotiate a "grand bargain" with Obama to overhaul the U.S. tax code and rein in health and retirement programs that are due to balloon in coming decades as the population ages. But Boehner could not unite his members behind an alternative to Obama's tax measures.

Income tax rates will now rise on families earning more than $450,000 per year and the amount of deductions they can take to lower their tax bill will be limited.

Low temporary rates that have been in place for the past decade will 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 will 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 bill will 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 measure will 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.

Reuters and the Tribune Washington bureau contributed

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Your Snapchats aren’t safe: How to secretly save videos from Snapchat or Facebook’s ‘Poke’

Argue though its executives might, Snapchat is good for two things: sending photos and videos of yourself making stupid faces, and sending photos and videos of yourself naked. The latter, of course, is the more compelling function since that is exactly what the app was designed for. When users send pictures or videos, the recipient can only view them for a set amount of time before they “self-destruct.” Yes, a recipient can take a screenshot but the sender is automatically alerted when that occurs — then, as the saying goes, fool me once… As it turns out, however, Snapchat users (and users of “Poke,” Facebook’s (FB) Snapchat ripoff) can easily save photos and full-length videos received through the service without the sender ever knowing.

[More from BGR: Five tech resolutions for 2013]

As recently relayed by BuzzFeed’s Katie Notopoulos, saving photos and videos from Snapchat or Poke is as easy as connecting a phone to a computer and opening a file browser. The file browser is free and the “trick” requires no jailbreak or any other kind of hack.

[More from BGR: Can Samsung survive without Android?]

Start by leaving the photos and videos you receive in Snapchat or Poke unopened; as soon as a file is viewed, the countdown to its deletion begins.

Then simply connect to a computer and open a free iPhone file explorer like i-FunBox. Open the “User Applications” folder, navigate to the “Snapchat” entry and voilà, all of the photos and videos you have received and not yet opened are available to be copied to your computer’s hard drive.

Then go back and view them normally in the app and the sender will be none the wiser.

The file path is a bit different for Facebook’s Poke app but the end result is the same.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Low-cost Chinese film sets new record

BEIJING (AP) — A low-budget, domestically produced comedy has unexpectedly become the highest-grossing Chinese film to date.

Chinese state media say the wacky road movie “Lost in Thailand” has grossed more than 1 billion yuan ($ 160 million) since its Dec. 12 debut. The official Xinhua News Agency, citing an independent monitor of box office figures, said Wednesday that it also beat James Cameron‘s “Titanic” in 3-D, the most popular foreign film in 2012, in Chinese theaters.

Set in Thailand, the film tells the story of two businessmen who go searching for their boss in the north, and then link up with a tourist eager to explore the country. It is filled with slapstick humor and action scenes.

The previous record for a domestic film was 726 million yuan set by “Painted Skin 2.”

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Well: Good and Bad, the Little Things Add Up in Fitness

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

The past year in fitness has been alternately inspiring, vexing and diverting, as my revisiting of all of the Phys Ed columns published in 2012 makes clear. Taken as a whole, the latest exercise-related science tells us that the right types and amounts of exercise will almost certainly lengthen your life, strengthen your brain, affect your waistline and even clear debris from inside your body’s cells. But too much exercise, other 2012 science intimates, might have undesirable effects on your heart, while popping painkillers, donning stilettos and sitting and reading this column likewise have their costs.

With New Year’s exercise resolutions still fresh and hopefully unbroken on this, day two of 2013, it now seems like the perfect time to review these and other lessons of the past year in fitness science.

First, since I am habitually both overscheduled and indolent, I was delighted to report, as I did in June, that the “sweet sport” for health benefits seems to come from jogging or moderately working out for only a brief period a few times a week.

Specifically, an encouraging 2012 study of 52,656 American adults found that those who ran 1 to 20 miles per week at an average pace of about 10 or 11 minutes per mile — my leisurely jogging speed, in fact — lived longer, on average, than sedentary adults. They also lived longer than the group (admittedly small) who ran more than 20 miles per week.

“These data certainly support the idea that more running is not needed to produce extra health and mortality benefits,” Dr. Carl J. Lavie, a cardiologist in New Orleans and co-author of the study told me. “If anything,” he said, “it appears that less running is associated with the best protection from mortality risk.”

Similarly, in a study from Denmark that I wrote about in September, a group of pudgy young men lost more weight after 13 weeks of exercising moderately for about 30 minutes several times a week than a separate group who worked out twice as much.

The men who exercised the most, the study authors discovered, also subsequently ate more than the moderate exercisers.

Even more striking, however, the vigorous exercisers subsequently sat around more each day than did the men who had exercised less, motion sensors worn by all of the volunteers showed.

“They were fatigued,” said Mads Rosenkilde, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Copenhagen and the study’s co-author.

Meanwhile, the men who had worked out for only about 30 minutes seemed to be energized by their new routines. They stood up, walked, stretched and even bounced in place more than they once had. “It looks like they were taking the stairs now, not the elevators, and just moving around more,” Mr. Rosenkilde said. “It was little things, but they add up.”

And that idea was, in fact, perhaps the most dominant exercise-science theme of 2012: that little things add up, with both positive and pernicious effects. Another of my favorite studies of 2012 found that a mere 10 minutes of physical activity increased life spans in adults by almost two years, even if the adults remained significantly overweight.

But the inverse of that finding proved to be equally true: not fitting periods of activity into a person’s daily life also affected life span. Perhaps the most chilling sentence that I wrote all year reported that, according to a large study of Western adults, “Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.”

I am watching much less television these days.

But not all of the new fitness science I covered this year was quite so sobering or, to be honest, consequential. Some of the more practical studies simply validated common sense, including reports that to succeed in ball sports, keep your eye on the ball; during hot-weather exercise, pour cold water over your head; and, finally, on the day before a marathon, eat a lot.

But when I think about the science that has most affected how I plan my life, I return again and again to those studies showing that physical activity alters how long and how well we live. My days of heedless youth are behind me. So I won’t soon forget the study I wrote about in September detailing how moderate, frequent physical activity in midlife can delay the onset of illness and frailty in old age. Exercise won’t prevent you from aging, of course. Only death does that. But this study and others from this year underscore that staying active, even in moderate doses, dramatically improves how your aging body feels and responds.

Aging also inspired my favorite reader comment of 2012, which was posted in response to a research scientist’s name. “‘Dr. Head,’” the reader wrote. “That shall be the name of my all-senior-citizen metal band,” which, if its members gyrate and vigorously bound about like Mick Jagger on his recent tour, should ensure themselves decades in which to robustly perform.

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Deal to avoid 'cliff' should bolster Street

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks are poised for gains to begin the year after the late passage of a bill to avoid harsh tax hikes that would have hit most Americans and crimped economic growth.

However, harsh reality awaits any euphoria that comes from avoiding the "fiscal cliff". In two months, battles over further spending cuts and, in particular, the U.S. federal debt limit will come to a head.

The House of Representatives voted for a bill passed on Monday by the Senate that will raise taxes on wealthy individuals and families and preserve certain other benefits that will, together, soften some of the blow that would have been sustained without an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff.

That puts Wall Street in prime position to begin 2013 with a rally, even if thorny issues remain to be addressed in the coming months in Washington.

Asian markets extended gains modestly, with the MSCI Asia Pacific ex-Japan index of stocks up 1.7 percent. U.S. markets will not have a chance to react until 6 a.m. ET, when futures trading begins after the New Year's Day holiday.

"When you separate the fundamentals of the economy from the headlines, the fundamentals really suggest we can support higher prices in the new year," said Bill Vaughn, equity portfolio manager at Evercore Wealth Management in San Francisco.

The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index ended the year up 13 percent, its best gain since 2009, mostly shrugging off the debt-related worries that dominated headlines during the year.

Equity markets held up in the last two months of the year as well, expecting a resolution to head off $600 billion in spending cuts and tax hikes that could push the economy into recession if they stay in effect for long. While the deadline to avert the cliff was December 31, legislation can be formulated to retroactively prevent going over.

The back-and-forth in recent weeks has primarily been of concern to businesses, where confidence has eroded. Some slowing in economic growth due to the impasse is expected, but that may play into the hands of value investors if the market corrects in coming months.

"It appears as though politics will dominate for some time," said Richard Bernstein, chief executive of Richard Bernstein Advisors in New York. "That being said, equity market valuations already reflect this ... the stock market is attractive from my perspective."

Stock markets around the world were closed Tuesday because of New Year's Day. Some Republicans in the House had expressed concern on Tuesday afternoon that a bill would not be finished before U.S. markets open.

Many traders will still be away from their desks because of the holiday, indicating trading volume will stay near its recent low levels. The anemic action, coupled with uncertainty over the cliff, resulted in a spike of volatility in December, with the CBOE Volatility index jumping 13.5 percent in the month.

DEBT CEILING BATTLE REMAINS

The bill that passed does not contain the kind of spending cuts that many conservative Republicans favor in order to bring down the high U.S. federal debt.

Even as this battle recedes, markets will look ahead to another fight in the next few months, this time over whether Congress will approve an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling.

The White House has said it will not negotiate the debt ceiling as in 2011, when the fight over what was once a procedural matter preceded the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. But it may be forced into such a battle again. A repeat of that war is most worrisome for markets.

"The spending side fight looms and it will be tougher," said David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors in Sarasota, Florida. "The Republican caucus is tighter on that side."

Markets posted several days of sharp losses in the period surrounding the fight in 2011. Even after a bill to increase the ceiling passed, stocks plunged in what was seen as a vote of "no confidence" in Washington's ability to function, considering how close lawmakers came to a default.

Economists at Goldman Sachs, in a note Tuesday, said the coming fight to raise the debt ceiling -- where Republicans are likely to demand spending cuts while President Obama pushes for more taxes -- "is likely to be at least as politically difficult as the last increase was in the summer of 2011."

During this fight, the markets have been less volatile, largely because the effects of the spending cuts and tax hikes will be gradual, and there was an ongoing expectation that a retroactive fix was in the offing.

(Additional reporting by David Gaffen, David Randall, Chuck Mikolajczak and Richard Leong; Editing by Neil Fullick and Paul Tait)

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Senate approves 'fiscal cliff' deal; House expected to vote today

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate moved the U.S. economy back from the edge of a "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, voting to avoid imminent tax hikes and spending cuts in a bipartisan deal that could still face stiff challenges in the House of Representatives.

In a rare New Year's session at around 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT), senators voted 89-8 to raise some taxes on the wealthy while making permanent low tax rates on the middle class that have been in place for a decade.

But the measure did little to rein in huge annual budget deficits that have helped push the U.S. debt to $16.4 trillion.

The agreement came too late for Congress to meet its own deadline of New Year's Eve for passing laws to halt $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts which strictly speaking came into force on Tuesday.

But with the New Year's Day holiday, there was no real world impact and Congress still had time to draw up legislation, approve it and backdate it to avoid the harsh fiscal measures.

That will need the backing of the House where many of the Republicans who control the chamber complain that President Barack Obama has shown little interest in cutting government spending and is too concerned with raising taxes.

All eyes are now on the House which is to hold a session on Tuesday starting at noon (1700 GMT).

Obama called for the House to act quickly and follow the Senate's lead.

"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," he said in a statement.

"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.

Members were thankful that financial markets were closed, giving them a second chance to return to try to head off the fiscal cliff.

But if lawmakers cannot pass legislation in the coming days, markets are likely to turn sour. The U.S. economy, still recovering from the 2008/2009 downturn, could stall again if Congress fails to fix the budget mess.

"If we do nothing, the threat of a recession is very real. Passing this agreement does not mean negotiations halt, far from it. We can all agree there is more work to be done," Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, told the Senate floor.

A new, informal deadline for Congress to legislate is now Wednesday when the current body expires and it is replaced by a new Congress chosen at last November's election.

The Senate bill, worked out after long negotiations on New Year's Eve between Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also postpones for two months a $109 billion "sequester" of sweeping spending cuts on military and domestic programs.

It extends unemployment insurance to 2 million people for a year and makes permanent the alternative minimum tax "patch" that was set to expire, protecting middle-income Americans from being taxed as if they were rich.

'IMPERFECT SOLUTION'

The tax hikes do not sit easy with Republicans but conservative senators held their noses and voted to raise rates for the rich because not to do so would have meant increases for almost all working Americans.

"It took an imperfect solution to prevent our constituents from a very real financial pain, but in my view, it was worth the effort," McConnell said.

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Olympics, elections and horsing around in odd 2012

LONDON (Reuters) – Presidential preening, golden Olympic gaffes, a royal windfall for a skydiving British queen on her diamond jubilee and the endless end of days marked the odd stories in 2012 which pranced across the news in Gangnam Style.

The year opened with a tale that flocks of magpies and bears had been spotted in mourning for North Korea‘s “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong-il who died in December 2011 and was succeeded by his 20-something son Kim Jong-un.

Winter weather was so cold in Brussels that the Manneken-Pis, a bronze statue of a young boy urinating had to stop peeing because of sub-zero temperatures.

There was slightly warming news about Mondays in Germany, where crematoriums are struggling to adapt to an increasingly obese population and a boom in extra-large coffins.

“We burn particularly large coffins on Monday mornings when the ovens are cold,” one crematorium said.

In March Polish media reported that kite surfer Jan Lisewski fought off repeated shark attacks and overcame thirst and exhaustion in a two-day battle of survival on the Red Sea with just his trusty knife as protection.

“I was stabbing them in the eyes, the nose and gills.”

In other animal news, dairy cows across the world mourned the loss of “Jocko”, the world’s third most-potent breeding bull and Yvonne the German cow who evaded helicopter searches and dodged hunters landed a film deal: “Cow on the Run”.

A Nepali man who was bitten by a cobra snake bit it back and killed the reptile after it attacked him in his rice paddy.

“I could have killed it with a stick but bit it with my teeth instead because I was angry,” Mohamed Salmo Miya said.

A scathing resignation letter of a Goldman Sachs executive published in the New York Times inspired a sheaf of online spoofs, including Star Wars villain Darth Vader.

“The Empire today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about remote strangulation. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore,” Vader wrote in a published letter.

Austerity in Europe saw a once-thriving Greek sex industry become the latest victim of the country’s debt crisis with Greeks spending less on erotic toys, pornography and lingerie.

But lust appeared to be in the rudest of health elsewhere.

Turkish emergency workers rescued an inflatable sex doll floating in the Black Sea and a German disc jockey vowed to press charges against a woman who locked him in her apartment and ravaged him for hours until he rang the police.

“She was sex mad and there was no way out of the flat,” Dieter S. told police.

@ROYALFETUS

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth celebrated her 60th year on the throne with Diamond Jubilee celebrations that saw a 1,000-ship rain-sodden flotilla sail down the River Thames, a massive party in front of Buckingham Palace, street parties across the country and a spoof incarnation of her majesty on Twitter.

“OK, fire up the Bentley. Let’s rock,” tweeted “Elizabeth Windsor“, the comic online alter ego of the British monarch in a typical tweet from the spoof Twitter account @Queen_UK, a virtual monarch with a razor-sharp wit and a penchant for gin.

And Twitter positively exploded with spoof royal accounts later in the year when Elizabeth’s grandson William and his wife Kate announced she was pregnant with a future monarch.

“I may not have bones yet, but I’m already more important than everyone reading this,” was the tweet from @RoyalFetus.

Leadership and change was a theme which ran through a year in which socialist Francois Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Mimi the clown to become French president, Vladimir Putin was elected Russian president again and U.S. President Barack Obama won re-election over Republican Mitt Romney.

Amid the tight election race, Obama met a gaffe-prone Romney for an exchange at a charity dinner ahead of the November poll, where America’s first black president poked fun at Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood for lecturing an empty chair as if it were Obama during the Republican convention.

“Please take your seats,” Obama told the crowd, “or else Clint Eastwood will yell at them.”

“THE MODFATHER”

Sporting news was dominated by the London Olympics during the summer, where the opening ceremony included a vignette of Queen Elizabeth being escorted by James Bond before apparently skydiving into the Olympic stadium for her arrival.

“Good evening Mr. Bond,” was her only line.

Olympic embarrassments were few, but they began early with organizers forced into apologies for displaying the South Korean flag on a video screen for North Korea‘s women’s soccer team.

British cycling sensation Bradley “the Modfather” Wiggins became the first Briton to win the Tour de France, sparking a craze among fans for cutout cardboard sideburns modeled on his own and shouting “here Wiggo” as he raced to Olympic gold.

London’s eccentric and loquacious Mayor Boris Johnson fell rather awkwardly silent when he got stuck dangling from a zip wire, waving two Union flags in drizzling rain.

Olympic chiefs urged youthful athletes to drink “sensibly”.

But there was anything but restraint for Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who declared an early night at one point only to be photographed later with three members of the Swedish women’s handball team. Early one Sunday morning Bolt also dazzled dancers at a London night club with a turn in the DJ booth.

“I am a legend,” Bolt shouted out to a packed dance floor from the decks with his arms raised in the air.

Towards the close of the year, tens of thousands of mystics, hippies and tourists celebrated in the shadow of ancient Maya pyramids in southeastern Mexico as the Earth survived a day billed by doomsday theorists as the end of the world.

“It’s pure Hollywood,” said Luis Mis Rodriguez, 45, a Maya selling obsidian figurines and souvenirs.

Finally, a chubby, rapping singer with slicked-back hair and a tacky suit became the latest musical sensation to burst upon the world from South Korea, via a YouTube music video that has been seen more than a billion times.

Decked out in a bow tie and suit jackets varying from pink to baby blue, as well as a towel for one sequence set in a sauna, Psy busts funky moves based on horse-riding in venues ranging from playgrounds to subways.

The video by Psy has been emulated by everyone from Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei to students at Britain’s elite Eton College, gurning politicians, spotty teens and embarrassing dads worldwide.

“My goal in this music video was to look uncool until the end. I achieved it,” Psy told Reuters.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; editing by Mike Collett-White)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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