Male artists lead 2013 Grammy nominations

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) – Male artists led the nominations announced on Wednesday for the 2013 Grammys, as fun., Frank Ocean, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys landed six nods each for music’s biggest awards.

The nominations for New York-based indie-pop band fun. – made up of Nate Ruess, Andrew Dost and Jack Antonoff – included the four main categories for record, song and album of the year, and best new artist.

fun., which also performed at the Grammy nominations concert with Janelle Monae, said it felt good to be recognized and “took pride” in its live performances.

“Tonight, all I wanted to do was get up and really give it our all … receiving the nomination is amazing and a culmination of hard work the three of us have put into this band,” lead singer Ruess told reporters backstage.

The group scored a huge hit with its first single, “We Are Young,” and then followed that up with its successful album “Some Nights” and single of the same name.

Joining it in the album, record of the year and best new artist categories was hip hop artist Ocean.

The 25-year-old rapper-singer made waves earlier this year after revealing his first love was a man, a groundbreaking move in the hip hop industry, which has faced criticism in the past for being hostile toward gays.

His debut album, “Channel Orange” was a critical and commercial success, debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart in July.

Ocean and fun. will be competing with blues-rock group Alabama Shakes, country singer Hunter Hayes and folk-rockers The Lumineers for the coveted best new artist title.

While young male artists made up a large portion of nominees in key categories, noticeably absent was 18-year-old Canadian singer Justin Bieber, one of 2012′s biggest pop music stars with chart-topping album “Believe” and singles such as “Boyfriend.”

The winners will be announced at the televised awards show in Los Angeles on February 10.

AFTER ADELE, MALE ARTISTS LEAD

After British singer Adele dominated the previous Grammy Awards with her juggernaut album “21,” male artists took the lead in the album of the year category, where Ocean and fun. are competing with The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons and Jack White.

British folk band Mumford & Sons, which scored six nominations both in 2011 and 2012 for its debut album, “Sigh No More,” landed six more nominations on Wednesday for its chart-topping sophomore album, “Babel,” which is the second biggest-selling album in the United States this year.

Ohio rock duo The Black Keys, formed by frontman Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, landed five nominations, while Auerbach also notched a non-classical producer of the year nomination for his work on four albums.

Blues-rocker Jack White, the former frontman of The White Stripes, picked up three nods for his chart-topping debut solo album “Blunderbuss.”

Rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West continued to pick up nods for their 2011 album, “Watch The Throne,” including best rap performance for “N****s in Paris.” Jay-Z also landed nods for collaborating on songs with Young Jeezy and Rihanna, while West scored multiple nominations for his song “Mercy.”

Kelly Clarkson was one of the few leading female nominees, picking up three nominations, including record of the year and best pop vocal album.

R&B singer Rihanna also landed three nods, including best solo pop performance for “Where Have You Been.”

Record of the year nominees saw an assortment of rock, pop and hip hop nominees, with Clarkson’s “Stronger” competing with The Black Keys‘ “Lonely Boy,” fun.’s “We Are Young,” Australian artist Gotye’s heartbreak hit “Somebody That I Used To Know,” Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You,” and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”

To be eligible for nominations this year, artists had to release their music between October 1, 2011, and September 30, 2012.

Adele, who swept the awards in February with six accolades including the top three, landed only one nomination this year for best pop solo performance, as she did not release any music in the eligibility time frame.

The nominations for the top awards and main categories were announced during an hour-long televised concert in Nashville for the first time, co-hosted by country-pop artist Swift and veteran Grammy host, rapper-actor LL Cool J.

Adding a twist to the announcements, Hayes sang the nominees for best pop album, a tight contest between Maroon 5, Clarkson, Pink, fun. and Florence and the Machine. Hayes picked up two nods for best new artist and best country vocal performance.

British rock legends The Who will receive the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in February.

(Writing by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Peter Cooney and Lisa Shumaker)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington‘s law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle‘s Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

“This is a big day because all our lives we’ve been living under the iron curtain of prohibition,” said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. “The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow.”

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors’ offices. Those offices in King County, the state’s largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: “Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502.”

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department’s lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn’t prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. “The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a ‘Lord of the Rings’ marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to.”

Washington’s new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it’s banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

“The department’s responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged,” said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney’s office. “Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress” — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don’t “nullify” federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would “frustrate the purpose” of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado’s measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state’s regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

___(equals)

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Washington fears 'desperate' Assad could use chemical arms

BEIRUT/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Washington fears a "desperate" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could use chemical weapons as rebels bear down on Damascus, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday, repeating a vow to take swift action if he does.

Rebels fighting to overthrow Assad said they had surrounded an air base near Damascus, a fresh sign the battle is closing in on the Syrian capital, a day after NATO agreed to send air defense missiles to Turkey.

The Western military alliance's decision to send U.S., German and Dutch Patriot missile batteries to help defend the Turkish border would bring European and U.S. troops to Syria's frontier for the first time in the 20-month-old civil war.

Heavier fighting erupted around Damascus a week ago, bringing a war that had previously been fought mainly in the provinces to the centre of Assad's power. Fighters said on Wednesday they had surrounded the Aqraba air base, about 4 km (2.5 miles) outside the capital.

"We still do not control the air base but the fighters are choking it off. We hope within the coming hours we can take it," said Abu Nidal, a spokesman for a rebel force called the Habib al-Mustafa brigade.

He said rebels had captured a unit of air defense soldiers, killing and imprisoning dozens while others escaped.

Syria's state news agency said the army was still firmly in control of the base, but did not comment on rebel claims that they were surrounding the area.

Accounts like this from Syria are impossible to verify, as the government has restricted media access to the country.

For several days, Western officials have repeatedly focused on what they say is a threat that Assad could use poison gas.

After meeting other NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, Clinton said: "Our concerns are that an increasingly desperate Assad regime might turn to chemical weapons, or might lose control of them to one of the many groups that are now operating within Syria.

"We have sent an unmistakable message that this would cross a red line and those responsible would be held to account," she added.

U.S. officials have said this week they have intelligence that Syria may be making preparations to use chemical arms.

Syria, which has not signed the international chemical weapons treaty banning the use of poison gas, says it would never use such weapons on its own people. Those comments were reiterated by Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Maqdad in a television interview with Sky News.

"ASSAD WILL NEVER LEAVE"

Maqdad made the first appearance by a government official for over a week, since fighting around the capital intensified.

He laughed off media reports that he had passed on a letter from Assad exploring the possibility of asylum during his recent trip to Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

"This is funny, this is laughable," he said. "I assure you 100 percent that President Assad will never ever leave his country."

But the rebels have been making advances across the country in recent weeks, despite punishing air raids, and have stepped up fighting outside Damascus. Wednesday saw fighting in a semi-circle of suburbs on the capital's eastern outskirts.

"The shelling is so loud, it feels like every other minute there is an air raid or an artillery shell hitting. We were woken up early by the sounds of the shelling in the eastern suburbs today," Ayman, who lives near the suburb of Jaramana, said by Skype.

Most of the areas being shelled are pro-opposition, apart from Jaramana, seen as a pro-government or neutral area, where town elders have refused rebel requests to pass through.

A rebel unit said fighters had attacked a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jaramana. Heavy fighting was also reported in the suburbs of Saqba, Irbeen, and Zamalka, according to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The army's strategy has been to divide Damascus, Assad's seat of power, from the countryside where rebels are increasingly dominant. Air raids and artillery have pounded rebel-held suburbs near the city for more than a week, in what activists call the worst shelling yet in the area.

A Syrian government source said the army had pushed rebels back 9 km (5 miles) from the capital.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the government, the opposition and their foreign allies to end the bloodshed, which he said had killed more than 40,000 people.

"I am urging again that the parties immediately stop the violence and those countries who may have influence on both parties should be exerting their utmost efforts to influence them to stop," he said at a news conference in Kuwait.

"And those countries that may be providing military equipment and other assistance should stop."

MISSILE DEFENCE

NATO's decision to send air defense missiles to the Turkish frontier is a first military step into the region by an alliance that has so far refused to repeat the kind of armed intervention that helped toppled Libya's Muammar Gaddafi last year.

NATO says the Patriot missiles are purely defensive. Syria and allies Russia and Iran say the move increases regional instability and could set the stage to impose a no-fly zone.

Turkey, a NATO member hostile to Assad and hosting thousands of refugees, says it needs the air defense batteries to shoot down any missiles that might be fired across its border. The German, Dutch and U.S. batteries would take weeks to deploy.

"What it does do, of course, is send a very powerful signal," Lieutenant General Frederick Hodges, commander of NATO's new land command headquarters in the Turkish city of Izmir, told Reuters.

"The Assad regime, the father and now the current Assad, have in desperate times taken desperate steps, so this is a very clear signal about what is not going to be allowed. NATO is not going to allow an expansion of what the Assad regime is doing."

A Turkish foreign ministry official said: "The Patriots were requested to create a counter-measure to every possible kind of threat, first and foremost short-range ballistic missiles, because we know they have them."

Cengiz Candar, a veteran commentator at Turkey's Radikal newspaper who travelled with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Brussels this week, said the government was worried about some of Syria's 500 missiles falling into the wrong hands.

"The minister and his team were of the view that Syria was not expected to use them against Turkey, but that there was a risk of these weapons falling into the hands of 'uncontrolled forces' when the regime collapses," Candar wrote on Wednesday.

Fighting continued for a seventh day near the highway leading to Damascus International Airport, which opposition activists say has become an on-off battle zone.

Fighting around Damascus has led airlines to suspend flights and prompted diplomats to leave, adding to a sense the fight is closing in. Hungary said on Wednesday it would shut its embassy.

(Additional reporting by Peter Apps in London, Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Justyna Pawlak and Adrian Croft in Brussels, Nick Tattersall in Istanbul, Jonathon Burch in Ankara and Krisztina Than in Budapest; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Read More..

Sri Lanka see backlash from Aussie ‘wounded soldiers’

(Reuters) – Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene has warned his team to be wary of a backlash from Australia in their three-test series after the hosts were stung by their series defeat to South Africa earlier this week.

Australia’s hopes of snatching the Proteas’ top test ranking ended in a crushing 309-run defeat in the third and final test in Perth on Monday, but Jayawardene took little comfort from the home side’s disappointment.

“I see them as wounded soldiers – they could come back stronger against us,” Jayawardene told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday, on the eve of a three-day tour match against a Chairman’s XI side.

“So we just need to make sure we are ready for that and start well.

“We can’t be complacent – we need to make sure we know from ball one we give them a good go at it.”

Sri Lanka have their own problems coming into the first test at Hobart next week, losing their last test at home to New Zealand by 167 runs to level a two-match series 1-1, with key batsmen out of form.

Kumar Sangakkara scored five, nought and 16 in his three innings against New Zealand, but Jayawardene backed the veteran to bounce back in Sri Lanka’s bid to win their first test Down Under.

“I am happy that he went through a lean phase because he’ll be really hungry for runs – that’s Kumar for you,” Jayawardene said of the 35-year-old stalwart.

Jayawardene also said he would weigh up his future as captain after the series, which includes tests in Melbourne and Sydney, after taking on the role for a second time in the wake of Tillakaratne Dilshan’s sudden resignation in January.

“After this, we get a well-deserved four weeks off, after about three years, so it gives me a bit of time to think (about) what I need to do,” said Jayawardene, who captained the team for more than three years in his first stint from 2006.

“We need to groom another leader as well. It’s very important to have that changeover done smoothly while the senior players are still in the side.”

Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Ex-”Malcolm in the Middle” star Muniz, 26, suffers mini-stroke

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Former “Malcolm in the Middle” child star Frankie Muniz said on Tuesday he had suffered a mini-stroke, at the age of 26.

“I was in the hospital last Friday. I suffered a ‘Mini Stroke‘, which was not fun at all. Have to start taking care of my body! Getting old!,” Muniz said on Twitter.

Muniz put his acting career on hold six years ago to race cars for a living, and earlier this year he joined a rock band.

According to celebrity website TMZ.com, Muniz was taken ill in Arizona last Friday when friends noticed he was having trouble speaking and understanding.

Mini-strokes usually affect those over the age of 55. They are temporary interruptions of blood flow to part of the brain but do not kill brain tissue, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Muniz’s agent did not return calls for comment.

Muniz played the title role in the hit TV comedy “Malcolm in the Middle” for six years, and appeared in teen movies “Big Fat Liar” and “Agent Cody Banks.”

When the TV show ended its run in 2006, Muniz said he was stepping away from acting to pursue a full-time career as a race-car driver. Earlier his year he joined Pennsylvania-based indie band Kingsfoil as a drummer.

Muniz is due to turn 27 on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; editing by Matthew Lewis)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Trafficked maids to order: The darker side of richer India

NEW DELHI, Dec 4 (TrustLaw) – Inside the crumbling housing estates of Shivaji Enclave, amid the boys playing cricket and housewives chatting from their balconies, winding staircases lead to places where lies a darker side to India‘s economic boom.

Three months ago, police rescued Theresa Kerketa from one of these tiny two-roomed flats. For four years, she was kept here by a placement agency for domestic maids, in between stints as a virtual slave to Delhi‘s middle-class homes.

“They sent me many places – I don’t even know the names of the areas,” said Kerketa, 45, from a village in Chhattisgarh state in central India. “Fifteen days here, one month there. The placement agent kept making excuses and kept me working. She took all my salary.”

Often beaten and locked in the homes she was sent to, Kerketa was forced to work long hours and denied contact with her family. She was not informed when her father and husband died. The police eventually found her when a concerned relative went to a local charity, which traced the agency and rescued her together with the police.

Abuse of migrant maids from Africa and Asia in the Middle East and parts of Southeast Asia is commonly reported.

But the story of Kerketa is the story of many maids and nannies in India, where a surging demand for domestic help is fuelling a business that, in large part, thrives on human trafficking by unregulated placement agencies.

As long as there are no laws to regulate the placement agencies or even define the rights of India’s unofficially estimated 90 million domestic workers, both traffickers and employers may act with impunity, say child and women’s rights activists and government officials.

Activists say the offences are on the rise and link it directly to the country’s economic boom over the last two decades.

“Demand for maids is increasing because of the rising incomes of families who now have money to pay for people to cook, clean and look after their children,” says Bhuwan Ribhu from Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement), the charity that helped rescue Kerketa.

Economic reforms that began in the early 1990s have transformed the lifestyles of many Indian families. Now almost 30 percent of India’s 1.2 billion people are middle class and this is expected to surge to 45 percent by 2020.

Yet as people get wealthier, more women go out to work and more and more families live on their own without relatives to help them, the voracious demand for maids has outstripped supply.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

There are no reliable figures for how many people are trafficked for domestic servitude. The Indian government says 126,321 trafficked children were rescued from domestic work in 2011/12, a rise of almost 27 percent from the previous year. Activists say if you include women over 18 years, the figure could run into the hundreds of thousands.

The abuse is difficult to detect as it is hidden within average houses and apartments, and under-reported, because victims are often too fearful to go to the police. There were 3,517 incidents relating to human trafficking in India in 2011, says the National Crime Records Bureau, compared to 3,422 the previous year.

Conviction rates for typical offences related to trafficking – bonded labor, sexual exploitation, child labor and illegal confinement – are also low at around 20 percent. Cases can take up to two years to come to trial, by which time victims have returned home and cannot afford to return to come to court. Police investigations can be shoddy due to a lack of training and awareness about the seriousness of the crime.

Under pressure from civil society groups as well as media reports of cases of women and children trafficked not just to be maids, but also for prostitution and industrial labor, authorities have paid more attention in recent years.

In 2011, the government began setting up specialized anti-human trafficking units in police stations throughout the country.

There are now 225 units and another 110 due next year whose job it is to collect intelligence, maintain a database of offenders, investigate reports of missing persons and partner with charities in raids to rescue victims.

Parveen Kumari, director in charge of anti-trafficking at the ministry of home affairs, says so far, around 1,500 victims have been rescued from brick kilns, carpet weaving and embroidery factories, brothels, placement agencies and houses.

“We realize trafficking is a bigger issue now with greater demand for labor in the cities and these teams will help,” said Kumari. “The placement agencies are certainly under the radar.”

NATIONAL HEADLINES

The media is full of reports of minors and women lured from their villages by promises of a good life as maids in the cities. They are often sent by agencies to work in homes in Delhi, and its satellite towns such as Noida and Gurgaon, where they face a myriad of abuses.

In April, a 13-year-old maid heard crying for help from the balcony of a second floor flat in a residential complex in Delhi’s Dwarka area became a national cause célèbre.

The girl, from Jharkhand state, had been locked in for six days while her employers went holidaying in Thailand. She was starving and had bruises all over her body.

The child, who had been sold by a placement agency, is now in a government boarding school as her parents are too poor to look after her. The employers deny maltreatment, and the case is under investigation, said Shakti Vahini, the Delhi-based child rights charity which helped rescue her.

In October, the media reported the plight of a 16-year-old girl from Assam, who was also rescued by police and Shakti Vahini from a house in Delhi’s affluent Punjabi Bagh area. She had been kept inside the home for four years by her employer, a doctor. She said he would rape her and then give her emergency contraceptive pills. The doctor has disappeared.

ONE ON EVERY BLOCK

Groups like Save the Children and ActionAid estimate there are 2,300 placement agencies in Delhi alone, and less than one-sixth are legitimate.

“There are so many agencies and we hear so many stories, but we are not like that. We don’t keep the maids’ salaries and all are over 18,” said Purno Chander Das, owner of Das Nurse Bureau, which provides nurses and maids in Delhi’s Tughlakabad village.

The Das Nurse Bureau is registered with authorities – unlike many agencies operating from rented rooms or flats in slums or poorer neighborhoods like Shivaji Enclave in west Delhi. It is often to these places that maids are brought until a job is found.

There are no signboards, but neighbors point out the apartments that house the agencies and talk of the comings and goings of girls who stay for one or two days before being taken away.

“There is at least one agency in every block,” says Rohit, a man in his twenties, who lives in one of scores of dilapidated government-built apartment blocks in Shivaji Enclave.

With a commission fee of up to 30,000 rupees ($ 550) and a maids’ monthly salary of up to 5,000 rupees ($ 90), an agency can make more than $ 1,500 annually for each girl, say anti-trafficking groups.

A ledger recovered after one police raid, shown by the charity Bachpan Bachao Andolan to Thomson Reuters Foundation, had the names, passport pictures and addresses of 111 girls from villages in far-away states like West Bengal, Jharkhand, Assam and Chhattisgarh, most of them minors.

The Delhi state government has written a draft bill to help regulate and monitor placement agencies and has invited civil society groups to provide feedback.

But anti-trafficking groups say what is really needed a country-wide law for these agencies, which are not just mushrooming in cities like Delhi but also Mumbai and other towns and cities.

The legislation would specify minimum wages, proper living and working conditions and a mechanism for financial redress for unpaid salaries. It would also specify that placement agencies keep updated record of all domestic workers which would subject to routine inspection by the labor department.

In the meantime, victims like Theresa Kerketa just want to warn others.

“The agencies and their brokers tell you lies. They trap you in the city where you have no money and know no one,” said Kerketa, now staying with a relative in a slum on the outskirts of south Delhi as she awaits compensation.

“I will go back and tell others. It is better to stay in your village, be beaten by your husband and live as a poor person, than come to the city and suffer at the hands of the rich.”

(TrustLaw is a global news service covering human rights and governance issues and run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters)

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Obama holds firm on 'fiscal cliff' amid Republican disarray

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama held his ground on the "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, insisting on higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, while Republicans showed increasing disarray over how far they should go to compromise with Obama's demands.

With less than a month left to confront the budget cuts and tax increases that will begin taking effect in January unless Congress acts, Obama dangled the possibility of lowering tax rates as part of a broad U.S. tax code revamp in 2013.

But he again insisted, in an interview with Bloomberg Television, that tax rates for the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers must rise in any deal by the end of the year to avert the assorted measures known as the fiscal cliff.

Obama, a Democrat, may face resistance from his own party if and when he's forced to be specific about how he would cut the cost of entitlements, such as the Medicare health insurance program for seniors.

For the moment, however, the overall political picture Tuesday reflected a relatively solid front of Democrats versus an increasingly shaky group of Republicans.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, even avoided endorsing the negotiating position of his House of Representatives ally, Speaker John Boehner.

"I think it is important that the House Republican leadership has tried to move the process forward," McConnell told reporters trying to get his views on a proposal Boehner and the House Republican leadership sent to Obama on Monday.

Outside the capital, concern mounted about how and when - not to mention if - the politicians might put their disagreements behind them and deal conclusively with an issue that economists say could trigger another recession.

Corporate chief executives were scheduled to meet with Obama later on Wednesday. The Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for corporations, has arranged the meetings. In addition to prompt action on the fiscal cliff, the group is seeking tax cuts for their companies.

Boeing Co. CEO Jim McNerney, who chairs the group, said its members want "a balanced solution to the nation's fiscal cliff and long-term deficit and debt issues ... including meaningful and comprehensive tax and entitlement reforms."

The manufacturing sector contracted in November and posted its weakest performance in three years, a report showed on Monday. Companies taking part in the survey said uncertainty over the negotiations in Washington was a factor.

U.S. stocks slipped on Tuesday as investors fretted about Washington's ability to avoid a year-end budget crisis.

REPUBLICAN DISARRAY

On Capitol Hill, conservative South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint attacked Boehner, a fellow Republican, over Monday's fiscal cliff offer, which included $800 billion in revenue increases from overhauling the tax code, along with spending cuts and entitlement revisions, as part of a deficit reduction deal.

That amount, which Boehner informally accepted during previous debt-ceiling negotiations in 2011, was not enough to satisfy Obama. But it was too much for DeMint and other Republicans who have made opposition to tax increases of any kind a central part of their politics for many years.

"Speaker Boehner's $800 billion tax hike will destroy American jobs and allow politicians in Washington to spend even more," DeMint said in a statement on Tuesday.

Signaling some worry about fragmented sentiment in the House, Republican leaders took the unusual step of removing two hard-line Tea Party conservatives, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan, from the House Budget Committee, where elements of a fiscal cliff deal are likely to be considered.

A few House Republicans, such as Mike Simpson of Idaho and Steve King of Iowa, have said tax increases on the wealthiest may be tolerable under certain conditions.

OBAMA PRESSES ADVANTAGE

The president pressed his agenda on Tuesday, reiterating his openness to unspecified reforms in entitlement programs.

He repeated that as part of any deal, low tax rates on 98 percent of taxpayers should be extended, but that taxes on the top 2 percent should rise. "Let's let those go up," Obama said, referring to a "down payment" for future negotiations.

"And then let's set up a process with a time certain, at the end of 2013 or the fall of 2013, where we work on tax reform, we look at what loopholes and deductions both Democrats and Republicans are willing to close, and it's possible that we may be able to lower rates by broadening the base at that point."

Fueling concerns among some Republicans about resisting compromise are surveys, like one released by the Pew Research Center on Tuesday, which showed that about 53 percent of those polled said they would hold Republicans more responsible than Democrats for going over the cliff; 27 percent said they would hold Obama responsible.

(Additional reporting by Kim Dixon, Rachelle Younglai, Fred Barbash; Writing by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Fred Barbash and Eric Beech)

Read More..

Officials: NATO to decide on missiles for Turkey

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO foreign ministers are expected to approve Turkey‘s request for Patriot anti-missile systems to bolster its defense against possible strikes from neighboring Syria.

NATO foreign ministers are meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels. Parliaments in both nations must approve the deployment, which would also involve several hundred soldiers.

Ankara, which has been highly supportive of the Syrian opposition, wants the Patriots to defend against possible retaliatory attacks by Syrian missiles carrying chemical warheads. NATO leaders have repeatedly said they would provide any assistance Turkey needs.

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Facebook voting begins on Instagram data-sharing, email privacy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc opened the polls on Monday for its roughly 1 billion users to vote on a variety of changes to the social network‘s policies, including a proposal to scrap the user voting system that Facebook introduced in 2009.

Facebook also said it had “clarified” some of the proposed changes, specifying that a new policy allowing it to share user data with recently acquired photo-application Instagram will be carried out in compliance with applicable laws and that Facebook will seek user consent when necessary.

The proposed changes, which Facebook announced on November 21, generated roughly 89,000 user comments as well as concerns from some privacy-advocacy groups and a request for more information from the Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where Facebook’s European business has its headquarters.

“Based on your feedback and after consultation with our regulators, including the Irish Data Protection Commissioner‘s Office, we’ve further clarified some of our proposals,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook Vice President of Communications, Public Policy and Marketing in a post on Facebook’s company blog on Monday.

Facebook is proposing to eliminate the 4-year-old system that allows users to vote on changes to its governance policies. The company says the voting system hasn’t functioned as intended and is no longer suited to its current situation as a large publicly traded company subject to oversight by various regulatory agencies.

Facebook said on Monday that it would incorporate user suggestions for creating new tools to “enhance communication” on privacy and governance matters.

Another proposal would loosen the restrictions on how members of the social network can contact other members using the Facebook email system. The company said it planned to replace the “Who can send you Facebook messages” setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.

Facebook’s potential information sharing with Instagram, a photo-sharing service for smartphone users that it bought in October, flows from proposed changes that would allow the company to share information between its own service and other businesses or affiliates it owns.

The change could open the door for Facebook to build unified profiles of its users that include people’s personal data from its social network and from Instagram, similar to recent moves by Google Inc.

Facebook said on Monday that the proposed change was “standard in the industry” and “promotes the efficient and effective use of the services Facebook and its affiliates,” such as allowing users in the U.S. to interact with users in Europe.

“This provision covers Instagram and allows us to store Instagram’s server logs and administrative records in a way that is more efficient than maintaining totally separate storage systems,” the company wrote in a separate post on its website Monday titled “explanation of changes”.

“Where additional consent of our users is required, we will obtain it,” Facebook said.

Facebook users have until December 10 to vote on the policies using a special third-party application provided by Facebook and Facebook said the results will be certified by an independent auditor.

The vote is only binding if at least 30 percent of users take part, and two prior votes never reached that threshold.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Andrew Hay)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

News Corp to buy Cleveland Indians sports channel: sources

(Reuters) – News Corp is expected to announce as early as this week that it will buy SportsTime Ohio, a TV channel owned by the Cleveland Indians baseball team, for around $ 230 million, sources told Reuters, marking its second acquisition of a regional sports channel since late last month.

The deal would give News Corp‘s Fox Sports unit the rights to broadcast the Major League Baseball team‘s games, according to two sources with knowledge of the negotiations. That would add to the games that its Fox Sports Ohio channel carries from basketball’s Cleveland Cavaliers, the Cincinnati Reds baseball team and others.

The move underscores a push by media companies to target regional sports channels as broadcast rights for many major sporting events are already sewn up for years. Such channels show games from local colleges and professional teams that heavyweight ESPN, owned by Walt Disney Co, or other national channels do not carry.

Last month, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp said it would buy a 49 percent stake in the YES network, a sports channel controlled by the New York Yankees baseball team, in a deal that sources said was valued at $ 3 billion. Fox is also negotiating a 25-year extension of its existing agreement to carry Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games, said one of the people, and could pay as much as $ 6 billion for those rights.

New York-based News Corp has been stepping up its efforts to control the rights to key sports teams in response to Time Warner Cable Inc’s deal in February 2011 to pay $ 3 billion to carry the Los Angeles Lakers basketball games for its Time Warner SportsNet Channel.

Time Warner has said it is interested in the Dodgers rights if Fox cannot extend its current agreement with the team. Time Warner had also bid for SportsTime Ohio, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported earlier on its website.

The sources spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been announced.

News Corp representatives did not return emails seeking comment. Representatives for the Cleveland Indians and SportsTime Ohio could not be located.

“Since we launched, people have been interested in buying the network,” SportsTime Ohio President Jim Liberatore was quoted as telling the Plain Dealer.

Indians owner Larry Dolan is eager to complete the deal by the end of December, one of the people with knowledge of the transaction told Reuters, to avoid increased taxes that could be part of ongoing negotiations between President Obama and Congress on a debt reduction package.

Fox Sports, which operates or holds stakes in 20 regional sports networks, provides sports programming to more than 67 million subscribers. It held the rights to Cleveland Indians games until 2006, when Dolan formed the team’s channel.

No decision has been made on whether SportsTime Ohio would continue as a separate operation or be merged with Fox Sports Ohio, one of the sources told Reuters.

(Reporting By Ronald Grover in Los Angeles and Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..