Payroll tax deadlock ends as House caves (AP)

WASHINGTON ? House Republicans on Thursday caved to demands by President Barack Obama, congressional Democrats and fellow Republicans for a short-term renewal of payroll tax cuts for all workers. The breakthrough almost certainly spares workers an average $20 a week tax increase Jan. 1.

After days of wrangling that even Speaker John Boehner acknowledged "may not have been politically the smartest thing in the world," the Ohio Republican abruptly changed course and dropped demands for immediate holiday season talks with the Senate on a full-year measure that all sides said they want. Senate leaders had insisted on the two-month extension to buy time for talks next year.

The House and Senate plan to act on the two-month extension Friday.

House Republicans were under fire from their constituents and GOP establishment figures incensed that they would risk losing the tax cut issue to Democrats at the dawn of the 2012 presidential and congressional election year. House GOP arguments about the legislative process and the "uncertainty" a two-month extension would mean for business were unpersuasive.

"In the end House Republicans felt like they were reenacting the Alamo, with no reinforcements and our friends shooting at us," said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.

The compromise legislation would renew the tax break through Feb. 29, along with jobless benefits and a "fix" to prevent doctors from absorbing a big cut in Medicare payments. Its $33 billion cost would be covered by an increased fee on mortgages backed by Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.

The developments were a clear win for Obama. The payroll tax cut was the centerpiece of his three-month campaign-style drive for jobs legislation that seems to have contributed to an uptick in his poll numbers ? and taken a toll on those of congressional Republicans.

"Because of this agreement, every working American will keep his or her tax cut - about $1,000 for the average family," Obama said in a statement. "That's about $40 in every paycheck. And when Congress returns, I urge them to keep working to reach an agreement that will extend this tax cut and unemployment insurance for all of 2012 without drama or delay."

If the cuts had expired as scheduled, 160 million workers would have seen a 2 percentage point increase in their Social Security taxes. And up to 2 million people without jobs for six months would start losing unemployment benefits averaging $300 a week.

The GOP retreat ends a tense standoff in which Boehner's House Republicans came under great pressure to agree to the short-term extension passed by the Senate on Saturday. The speaker was initially open to the idea, but rank-and-file Republicans revolted, and the House instead insisted on immediate talks on the year-long measure passed by the House, which contains curbs to unemployment insurance and other ideas backed by conservatives ? as well as deeper spending cuts to pay for the full-year cost.

After Senate leaders tried but failed to match the House's goal for a full-year pact, the chamber on Saturday instead gave sweeping approval for the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, jobless benefits and doctors' Medicare fees that otherwise would have been cut 27 percent. The House had just days before passed a full-year extension that included a series of conservative policy prescriptions unpalatable to Obama and congressional Democrats.

Obama, Republicans and congressional Democrats all said they preferred a one-year extension but the politics of achieving that eluded them. All pledged to start working on that in January.

"Has this place become so dysfunctional that even when we agree to things we can't do it?" Obama asked. "Enough is enough.".

The top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, was a driving force behind Thursday's agreement, imploring Boehner to accept the deal that McConnell and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid had struck last week and passed with overwhelming support in both parties.

"There remain important differences between the parties on how to implement these policies, and it is critical that we protect middle-class families from a tax increase while we work them out," Reid said after Boehner's announcement.

The breakthrough emerged as a firewall erected by tea party-backed House Republicans crumbled Thursday.

"I don't think that my constituents should have a tax increase because of Washington's dysfunction," said freshman Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis.

The Republican establishment, too, put new pressure on House Republicans to compromise.

The 2008 GOP presidential nominee, John McCain, former Bush administration confidant Karl Rove and The Wall Street Journal editorial page were among conservative voices urging House Republicans to retreat.

Just hours before he announced the breakthrough, Boehner had made the case for a year-long extension. But on a brief late afternoon conference call, he informed his colleagues it was time to yield.

"He said that as your leader, you've in effect asked me to make decisions easy and difficult and I'm making my decision right now," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., paraphrasing Boehner's comments.

Kingston said the conference call lasted just minutes and Boehner did not give anyone time to respond.

There was still carping among tea party freshmen upset that GOP leaders had yielded.

"Even though there is plenty of evidence this is a bad deal for America ... the House has caved yet again to the president and Senate Democrats," said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan. "We were sent here with a clear set of instructions from the American people to put an end to business as usual in Washington, yet here we are being asked to sign off on yet another gimmick."

Almost forgotten in the firestorm is that McConnell and Boehner had extracted a major victory last week, winning a provision that would require Obama to make a swift decision on whether to approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would bring Canadian oil to the U.S. and create thousands of construction jobs. To block the pipeline, Obama would have to declare that is not in the nation's interest.

Obama wanted to put the decision off until after the 2012 election.

House Republicans did win one concession in addition to a promise that Senate Democrats would name negotiators on the one-year House measure: a provision to ease concerns that the 60-day extension would be hard for payroll processing companies to implement.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111223/ap_on_bi_ge/us_payroll_tax

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Russian spacecraft delivers 3 to orbiting station (AP)

MOSCOW ? A Soyuz spacecraft safely delivered a Russian, an American and a Dutchman to the International Space Station on Friday, restoring the permanent crew to six members for the first time since September.

But just as concerns over the reliability of the Soyuz have eased, a different version of the Soyuz rocket failed Friday during an unmanned launch. It was the latest in a string of spectacular launch failures that have raised questions about the state of Russia's space industry.

The craft carrying mission commander Oleg Kononenko, NASA's Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers had traveled through space for two days after blasting off from Baikonur, the Russian-operated cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The ship docked at the orbiting station at 5:19 p.m. (1319GMT) Friday.

About two and half hours later, the three new crew members floated through an opened hatch to join NASA's Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin, who had arrived on the station in November.

"I can't think of a prettier picture than seeing all six back on board the space station," NASA's William Gerstenmaier told the assembled crew during a video linkup with Russian Mission Control outside Moscow.

Families of crew members, who had joined space officials to watch the docking, also sent their greetings, with Kuipers' young child singing him a song in Dutch.

The six crew members will work together on the International Space Station until mid-March.

The failed launch of an unmanned Progress cargo ship in August had raised doubts about future missions to the station, because the Soyuz rocket that crashed used the same upper stage as the booster rockets carrying Soyuz ships to orbit.

The next manned launch was delayed until Russian space officials could determine the cause of the Progress failure and it went off without a hitch in November. The crew on that mission overlapped for eight days with the three crew members remaining on the station, who then returned to Earth later that month.

However, on Friday, a newer version of the Soyuz failed to put a Meridian communications satellite into orbit when launched from Russia's Plesetsk cosmodrome. Space agency head Vladimir Popovkin said the cause was engine failure.

"What happened today was a highly unpleasant situation," Popovkin was quoted by state news agencies as saying. "It confirms that the (aerospace) industry is in crisis and its weakest link is engine building."

The failures Friday and during the Progress launch in August both took place during the third stage. The Soyuz-2.1b that crashed Friday, however, has a different third-stage engine, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.

Friday's failed launch was the sixth in the past year.

Last December, Russia lost three navigation satellites when a rocket carrying them failed to reach orbit. A military satellite was lost in February, and the launch of the Express-AM4, described by officials as Russia's most powerful telecommunications satellite, went awry in August.

In November, Russia sent up its ambitious Phobos-Ground unmanned probe, which was to go to the Phobos moon of Mars, take soil samples and return them to Earth. But engineers lost contact with the ship and were unable to propel it out of Earth orbit and toward Mars. The craft is now expected to fall to Earth in mid-January.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111223/ap_on_sc/sci_space_station

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San Jose City Councilman proposes replacing retiring library workers with volunteers (San Jose Mercury News)

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College students in town for the holidays carjacked, kidnapped, robbed

wwltv.com

Posted on December 19, 2011 at 12:42 PM

Updated Monday, Dec 19 at 12:42 PM

Chelsea Gaudin / Eyewitness News

SLIDELL, La. ? Two female college students, in town for the holidays, met for dinner on Dec. 13 to catch up and ended up being carjacked, kidnapped and robbed at gunpoint, according to the Slidell Police Department.

On Tuesday at 11:30 p.m., the women were sitting in a car in the parking lot of Main Street Centre?, located near Gause Boulevard and I-10, when a masked gunman approached the car and demanded they open the door.

They obliged out of fear for their lives and the man jumped into the back seat, demanded their cell phones so they couldn?t call 911 and forced them to drive to an ATM, police said.

An undisclosed amount of cash was withdrawn from the ATM at ASI Credit Union at 1322 Gause Blvd.

The women, who were unharmed, were then forced to drive to a dark, remote location on Powell Road where the suspect exited the car and fled, police said.

They drove to a nearby gas station and called the police.

The suspect is described as a black man in his mid to late 20s with a black ski mask, black jacket with a hoodie, and black jeans. The gun is described as a black semi-automatic pistol.

If anyone has any information, call the Slidell Police Department at 985-643-3131 or CrimeStoppers at 504-822-1111

Source: http://www.wwltv.com/news/northshore/College-students-in-town-for-the-holidays-carjacked-kidnapped-robbed-135870783.html

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Giving babies salty food may create a lifelong preference

Feeding young babies solid foods such as crackers, cereals and bread, which tend to be high in salt, may set them up for a lifelong preference for salt, researchers reported Tuesday.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that efforts to reduce salt intake among Americans should begin early in life.

It is even possible, the authors said, that infancy contains a "sensitivity window" in which exposure to certain foods and tastes programs the brain to desire them in the future.

Americans' fondness for salt, a source of dismay for health experts, is well known. A 2010 report from the Institute of Medicine concluded that the average intake of 3,436 milligrams a day for Americans over age 2 is more than double what is recommended, and that new government standards are needed to reduce the salt content in processed and restaurant food.

But little is known about the biology behind our love affair with salt. Researchers don't even know what receptors are involved in tasting it. And though babies are born with a clear preference for sweet foods and an absolute distaste for bitter foods, they appear indifferent to salt in the first few months of life, said Leslie Stein, the lead author of the study and a senior research associate at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

"When you give 2-month-old babies salt water, they have no facial expression," Stein said. "This could mean that the baby doesn't detect the salt or just doesn't give a hoot about it."

To get at the issue, Stein and her colleagues first gave 61 healthy 2-month-old infants a mild solution of salt water: Based on facial expressions and how much they drank, the authors concluded the infants indeed were indifferent to the taste.

When the babies were 6 months old, they were brought back to the Monell clinic by their parents. They were presented with three bottles containing water, a mild salt solution or a slightly saltier solution. Researchers recorded how much fluid they drank from each bottle during a one-minute period ? an indication of how much they preferred each solution.

Parents were also asked what, if any, baby food and table foods the children received. Table food is considered regular food that other members of the family might eat.

Almost half of the infants ? 26 ? had been exposed to starchy foods such as crackers, soft bread or cereal, which are often high in salt. During the bottle test, those babies consumed 55% more salt compared with babies who had not yet been exposed to these kinds of foods.

The scientists also reexamined 26 of the children at preschool age and surveyed their mothers about the children's salt preferences, such as whether they licked salt from foods, ate plain table salt or added salt to food before eating it. Children who had been exposed early to the starchy, salt-rich foods clearly had a greater liking for salt, they found.

"It's absolutely possible that exposure early on in life could change the way the salt taste signal is transmitted to the brain," said Dr. James F. Battey Jr., director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, which funded the study. "The brain is very plastic at that time of life."

The study doesn't prove this, however ? it merely shows a correlation between early exposure and a taste for salt later on, Battey added. But if it turns out to be true, "then parents have a way of reducing the risk," he said.

Research on infant feeding practices has shown that babies will learn to like a food if exposed to it at least 10 times. But that doesn't mean they prefer a food, Stein said; they just learn to tolerate it.

And, Stein said, studies have also shown that babies are learning about the flavors in Mom's diet even before birth, in the uterus, as well as afterward through the taste of their mother's breast milk.

"This very early exposure helps them learn to like those flavors as well," Stein said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends mothers breast-feed exclusively for the first six months and continue to breast-feed even after introducing solid foods. Doctors usually recommend introducing solid foods to babies about 6 months of age, but there are few rules over which foods to introduce first and which to offer later.

A 1990 Dutch study showed persistently higher blood pressure for children whose early sodium consumption was highest, said Dr. Stephen R. Daniels, chief of pediatrics at Children's Hospital Colorado, who was not involved in the new study.

"We don't have as much science as we want or need about the best way to introduce babies to solid food," Daniels said. "There's a tremendous opportunity to think of the period during which a baby is being introduced to solid foods as a time to get babies and toddlers on the road to the most healthful diet."

shari.roan@latimes.com

Times staff writer Melissa Healy contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/pSkzi4tEIiw/la-he-babies-salt-20111221,0,1572822.story

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No Xmas at home for detained ex-Philippine leader (AP)

MANILA, Philippines ? A Philippine court rejected on Wednesday requests by arrested ex-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to celebrate Christmas at home and use her cellphone and computer in detention, underscoring recent stunning reversals for a woman once considered among the world's most powerful.

Judge Jesus Mupas of the Pasay Regional Trial Court cited security reasons for denying Arroyo's request to leave a military hospital where she is detained on electoral fraud charges. She wanted to celebrate Christmas and New Year at her upscale home in the capital.

But she obtained small concessions. Mupas allowed her family, children and grandchildren to celebrate the holidays with her in her heavily guarded hospital suite from Dec. 24 to 26 and Dec. 31 to Jan. 2. She will also be allowed to watch TV and listen to the radio.

"The court is not inclined to grant (Arroyo) a Christmas furlough," Mupas said in his order. He said he was allowing her family to visit because "the court is fully aware of the fact that everybody wants to be with his loved ones during Christmas."

Arroyo's Nov. 18 arrest curtailed her rights even though she remains a member of the House of Representatives, Mupas said.

Mupas had ordered Arroyo's arrest on Nov. 18 in her hospital room, where she had sought treatment for a bone ailment, on suspicion of ordering the rigging of 2007 senatorial elections to favor her candidates. She has denied any wrongdoing and has hired a battery of lawyers.

Last month, the Supreme Court lifted a travel ban on her, and she attempted to leave the country with her husband. President Benigno Aquino III's justice secretary, however, defied the Supreme Court order and directed airport authorities to stop her from leaving, fearing she might try to escape from prosecution.

Aquino, who won election on a promise to uproot corruption, blames Arroyo for a decade of graft and corruption scandals that eroded public trust in government and held back foreign investment.

Arroyo, however, accused her successor of resorting to "demagoguery to completely destroy my reputation."

Aquino has accused Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona, a former Arroyo chief of staff whom she appointed shortly before her term ended last year, of obstructing Arroyo's prosecution. Although Corona has denied favoring Arroyo in his rulings, Aquino's allies in the House of Representatives impeached the chief justice last week.

Arroyo, a 64-year-old former economics professor and daughter of an ex-president, survived four opposition impeachment bids and four attempted coups during her nine stormy years in power.

Arroyo once landed near the top of a Forbes magazine list of the 100 most powerful women in the world.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111221/ap_on_re_as/as_philippines_arroyo

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Why are toys selling out? Might be mommy blog buzz

FILE - In this Nov. 27, 2009 file photo, Zhu Zhu Pets are quickly claimed at Toys "R" Us by holiday shoppers in Camp Hill, Pa. Cepia LLC was relatively unknown until mommy bloggers made its robotic Zhu Zhu pets a hit in 2009. Laura Kurzu, Cepia's senior vice president of marketing, works with bloggers every step of the way to develop toys, including a Zhu Zhu building set that it tweaked due to blogger comments. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 27, 2009 file photo, Zhu Zhu Pets are quickly claimed at Toys "R" Us by holiday shoppers in Camp Hill, Pa. Cepia LLC was relatively unknown until mommy bloggers made its robotic Zhu Zhu pets a hit in 2009. Laura Kurzu, Cepia's senior vice president of marketing, works with bloggers every step of the way to develop toys, including a Zhu Zhu building set that it tweaked due to blogger comments. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

This Feb. 14, 2011 product image provided by LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc., shows the LeapPad Explorer. Emily Vanek is not buying up a bunch of LeapPad Explorers herself, but she may be at least partly to blame for some stores selling out of the $99 children's tablet this holiday season. ?The LeapPad is incredible,? the Denver mother of three boys wrote to the 650 followers of her ColoradoMoms.com blog. ?Not only do kids get to have a toy resembling their parents' tablet, it's durable and my favorite part?! It's not just mindless games they are playing.? (AP Photo/LeapFrog Enterprises Inc.)

Emily Vanek is not buying up a bunch of LeapPad Explorers herself, but she may be at least partly to blame for some stores selling out of the $99 children's tablet this holiday season.

"The LeapPad is incredible," the Denver mother of three boys wrote to the 6,000 readers of her ColoradoMoms.com blog. "Not only do kids get to have a toy resembling their parents' tablet, it's durable and my favorite part?! It's not just mindless games they are playing."

These days, mommy bloggers don't just gab about spilled milk and poopy diapers. In fact, they've become so influential in the $22 billion toy market that toy makers go to great lengths to get their seal of approval. Their thumbs-up is particularly important during the holiday shopping season when toy makers hope to create the next hit toy.

It's a major shift for toy companies, which have always given out samples of new dolls, games and other playthings to drive sales. Five years ago, they handed out 98 percent of those products to TV stations, newspapers and magazines. But today, as much as 70 percent go to bloggers.

Mattel Inc., the world's largest toy company, has a database of about 400 mommy bloggers and their location, interests and the children's ages. Canadian toy maker Spin Master, which makes the trading card game Redakai, hired a dedicated staffer whose only job is to reach out to mommy bloggers. And small toy maker Cepia Inc., which makes robotic Zhu Zhu pets, gets feedback from mommy bloggers before its toys hit shelves.

It's hard for toy makers to ignore the monstrous number of mommy bloggers. Nationwide, there are about 4 million or so mommy bloggers who influence millions of other parents around the world.

"Mommy bloggers started because they wanted to share things about a new baby, but the most influential ones got into social media and realized they could make a difference," says Maria Bailey, whose BSM Media firm helps companies pick mommy bloggers with the most reach on the Twitter and Facebook social media websites. "Sometimes that difference is as simple as directing a mom to a toy that will save money."

That's why when LeapFrog Enterprises wanted to roll out its LeapPad Explorer kid-size tablet, it reached out to 200 of the top mommy bloggers. The goal? To get them to generate buzz for the tablet by throwing "mommy parties."

The Emeryville, Calif.-based company sent each blogger a kit that included a LeapPad, a game for it and coupons. LeapFrog also sent tips on how many people to invite (about 5 adults and 15 kids) and suggested recipes (ice cream sundaes).

For bloggers like Vanek, the Denver mom who bills herself as the "go-to answer for all things mom and kids in Colorado," it was a chance to be a hero of sorts to other parents and their kids.

"It not only lets my own children get to try out the newest/hottest toys, it allows them to share them with their friends," she says. "It allows me to get to have my own friends over for something better than a Tupperware party where I'm doing a hard sales pitch."

But for LeapFrog, it was an opportunity to get word-of-mouth going early.

It was the first time the company had hosted "mommy parties," but it seems to have paid off. The company declined to give sales numbers, but the LeapPad has been selling out online and in stores across the country this holiday season.

Earlier this year, SpinMaster also used mommy bloggers to get the word out about its reformulated Moon Dough, a non-sticky PlayDoh-like moldable substance. Within weeks of the company sending samples to more than 500 bloggers, there were thousands of postings about the new product online.

"After playing with our other Moon Dough set just a few days before, I could immediately tell that this Moon Dough was much less flaky," blogged ohsosavvymom.com, a mom in San Antonio, Texas with more than 3,600 Twitter followers.

Harold Chizick, vice president of global communications at Spin Master, says in part because of reviews like that, the product had a double-digit increase in sales, though he declined to give details. If the company had used traditional ways to get the word out, Chizick says, the roll out would have taken several months or longer.

"It was much faster than expected," he says.

Sometimes, buzz from bloggers can backfire.

"If they like something word gets around very quickly, if they don't like something, word will also get around quickly," says Timetoplaymag.com's Jim Silver, a long time toy expert who works with mom bloggers to review products on his website.

In 2009, after Mattel released a silhouette of its new "tween" Dora the Explorer that seemed to deviate from the tomboy-esque look of the original doll, a number of bloggers complained. A Cafemom.com blogger wrote: "Can't they leave anything to the imagination these days?"

Mattel, which had hoped the silhouette would generate excitement ahead of the launch of the new doll, decided to release the full image of the Dora early to reassure moms that the doll wasn't too fancied up.

Crayola also faced scrutiny from mom bloggers this year when its Crayola Colored Bubbles, a product with a wand that kids can blow colored soap bubbles through, caused stains. After bloggers gave it negative reviews, Crayola made some changes, including updating the packaging and adding a warning about the possibility of stains.

"It's just like handing kids a bunch of fabric dye and telling them to throw it around," a blogger on Mommybrunchtales.com wrote.

Still, most toy makers find the risk is worth the reward.

Cepia LLC was relatively unknown until mommy bloggers made its Zhu Zhu pets a hit in 2009. Laura Kurzu, Cepia's senior vice president of marketing, works with bloggers every step of the way to develop toys, including a Zhu Zhu building set that it tweaked due to blogger comments.

"Bloggers can be really great evangelists for the brand, but you have to be invested in listening to what they say to you," she says. "You can't just throw something out there and expect gratuitous support."

_____

Mae Anderson reported from New York.

Follow AP retail coverage at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Retail and Mae Anderson at http://www.twitter.com/Maetron.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2011-12-20-Hot%20Toys-Mommy%20Blogs/id-d151ebdc84ca4e3981a446911e0a0ae2

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