Debt Limit Negotiating Tactic? No Negotiating

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden walk away from the podium after Obama made a statement regarding the passage of the fiscal cliff bill in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Analysis

New for 2013: In the Washington, D.C. fiscal wars we’ve gone from everything must be on the table to politicians declaring they won’t debate.

The fiscal cliff deal either averted disaster or compounded the problem, depending on who you ask. It certainly created new mini-cliffs in a few months as Congress and the president square off on the debt ceiling, spending cuts and government funding. But it also made sure the vast majority of Americans won’t see as big a tax hike as they might have.

President Obama was pretty clear late on New Year’s night as he reacted to Congress’s passage of a bill to take a turn away from the fiscal cliff. He won’t negotiate with Republicans about the debt ceiling.

“Now, one last point I want to make,” said the president, before wrapping up and hopping on Air Force One for a redeye to Hawaii. “While I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed.”

(Read more here about the Fiscal Cliff)

That’s pretty clear. No debt ceiling negotiation. Then he added for emphasis: ”Let me repeat: We can’t not pay bills that we’ve already incurred. If Congress refuses to give the United States government the ability to pay these bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic — far worse than the impact of a fiscal cliff.”

But in Washington, saying you won’t do something these days has almost become like an opening bid. At least, that’s how Republicans are treating the president’s line in the sand.

“The president may not want to have a fight about government spending over the next few months, but it’s the fight he is going to have because it’s a debate the country needs,” wrote Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, in an op-Ed on Yahoo! News about 36 hours later. “For the sake of our future, the president must show up to this debate early and convince his party to do something that neither he nor they have been willing to do until now.”

“We simply cannot increase the nation’s borrowing limit without committing to long overdue reforms to spending programs that are the very cause of our debt,” McConnell said.

The national debt is soon set to reach $16.4 trillion. That’s not a problem that can be solved with one bill or budget. And the two sides will have to figure out some sort of way to talk about entitlement/social safety net reform – meaning things like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – in addition to cutting spending and, most importantly, hope for an improving economy, to deal with those deficits.

House Speaker John Boehner, who has several times now failed to reach a big, broad fiscal deal with President Obama, told colleagues, according to The Hill newspaper, that he’s done with secret White House negotiations. He wants to stick with the constitutional way of doing things, with hearings and bills that are debated on Capitol Hill rather than hatched by the vice president and Senate Republicans.

Okay. Obama won’t negotiate on the debt ceiling. McConnell won’t not negotiate on the debt ceiling. Boehner doesn’t to do things by the book.

But McConnell won’t negotiate on taxes any more.

“Predictably,” McConnell had written earlier in his post, “the president is already claiming that his tax hike on the ‘rich’ isn’t enough. I have news for him: the moment that he and virtually every elected Democrat in Washington signed off on the terms of the current arrangement, it was the last word on taxes. That debate is over.”

It’s a new chapter in the ongoing fiscal saga in Washington. Back when the two sides were talking about a grand bargain or a big deal – some sort of all-inclusive reform that would right the listing deficit with one flip of the rudder – the popular trope was that “everything must be on the table.” That’s basically how Obama put it back in the summer of 2011 when he and Boehner failed to reach a grand bargain. He wanted higher taxes – they were calling them revenues back then. More recently, after Obama won the election and when he and Boehner were trying to hammer out another grand bargain to avert the fiscal cliff, Boehner wanted entitlements on the table. That means he wanted to find ways to curb future spending.

Both sides are declaring they won’t debate certain points, but this far – a full two months – before the mini-cliffs start, those are easier declarations to make than they will be when the government is in danger of defaulting or shutting down.

Even though they’re trying to take elements off the table, both men hope that coming negotiations can be a little more cordial and a little less down-to-the wire.

“Over the next two months they need to deliver the same kind of bipartisan resolution to the spending problem we have now achieved on revenue — before the 11th hour,” wrote McConnell.

“The one thing that I think, hopefully, in the New Year we’ll focus on is seeing if we can put a package like this together with a little bit less drama, a little less brinksmanship, not scare the heck out of folks quite as much,” said Obama.

That’ll be tough if neither side will talk about what the other side wants to talk about.

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Vesta's crater carbon came from asteroids

Lisa Grossman, reporter

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

The mini-planet Vesta took a beating in its past - but the ordeal may have delivered carbon to its surface. A new map of dark material in Vesta's craters shows that the huge rocks that formed them brought carbonaceous material along for the ride.

Vesta's surface is marked by material as black as coal, most of it on and around craters like the one in the 3D model above. It wasn't clear, though, where this carbon-rich material had come from. The answer seems to lie in images taken last year that show two gigantic impact craters which must be the results of 50 to 60-kilometre-wide rocks smacking into Vesta's southern hemisphere.

New analysis shows that the first impact brought something with it. A team led by Vishnu Reddy from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Lindau, Germany, mapped the dark stuff on Vesta's surface. They found that it is concentrated around the huge southern craters, and figured that it arrived in the earlier of the two impacts, 2 to 3 billion years ago. Computer simulations of the impact confirmed that it could have created the patterns of dark material we see today.

That suggests that carbon was delivered to Vesta via an asteroid. And Vesta was probably not the only object to receive such a package, the team says. The same delivery system could have brought one of the essential building blocks of life to Earth.

Journal reference: Icarus, 10.1016/j.icarus.2012.08.011

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Primary schools to receive new teachers twice a year

SINGAPORE: From 2015, primary schools will receive a new batch of teachers twice each year - instead of the current arrangement where new teachers are deployed in June - following changes to the timing of the annual intake of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) (Primary) programme.

The PGDE (Primary) programme is a one-year diploma course conducted at the National Institute of Education. Currently, its graduates are deployed along with their counterparts in the Diploma in Education and Bachelor of Arts (Education) or Bachelor of Science (Education) programmes.

With the change, graduates from the PGDE (Primary) will be posted to their schools in January, instead of June.

Responding to TODAY's queries, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said the key reason for the change is to "better support the schools' manpower needs at the primary level".

Its spokesperson said: "This will allow for two batches of trained teachers to graduate from the different programmes in NIE to be posted to the primary schools ... each year, thereby reducing the schools' waiting time to fill vacancies for trained teachers."

To effect the change, the intake for PGDE (Primary) will be shifted from July to January - starting this year.

The MOE spokesperson said that email notifications were sent in April last year to those who were due to enrol in the programme in July this year - many of whom are currently doing contract teaching - but will now start their course in January next year.

"School leaders with untrained teachers in their schools affected by this change were similarly informed," she said.

While primary school principals whom TODAY spoke to welcomed the change, one untrained teacher who had been due to start the PGDE (Primary) programme this year was upset that he has to wait another six months to begin classes.

The 30-year-old teacher, who wanted to be known only as Mr Tan, said he found out about the change in February last year after MOE replied to his email query on the starting date of his course.

He claimed that he has not received an official notification.

After spending the past year doing contract teaching, Mr Tan said he would have to continue for another year because of the change.

It is not clear how many prospective trainee teachers are affected by the shift in the timing of the intake this year, as the MOE did not reply to queries on the intake size of the PGDE (Primary).

The current teaching force is about 33,000 strong. On average, 2,000 new teachers are recruited each year.

Principals said the change was timely, given how more teachers are taking up MOE initiatives such as the Part-Time Teaching Scheme (PTTS), and the enhanced Professional Development Leave (PDL) scheme which allow teachers with at least six years' service to take leave at half pay to undergo professional development.

Punggol View Primary Principal Kelvin Tay said: "Having two batches would ease issues that come up when teachers are away, such as on maternity leave or professional development, and it would help fill deployment gaps."

As the school calendar begins in January, Nanyang Primary School Principal Lee Hui Feng noted that getting new teachers in the same month will reduce changes to teaching personnel in the middle of the school year.

- TODAY/xq

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Apple to buck the trend in sour computer market, says analyst

Apple's iPad.

(Credit:
Apple)

Apple will be one of the few companies to thrive this year in the midst of weak computer buying from the corporate crowd.

Global corporate spending on Windows PCs and
tablets fell by 4 percent last year, according to a report out yesterday from Forrester Research. Spending is likely to be flat this year as companies slowly replace old Windows PCs with new
Windows 8 devices.

But Apple is "one vendor that will buck this trend," the research firm said in its report. The company is expected to sell $7 billion worth of Macs and $11 billion of iPads to corporate customers this year. Those numbers are predicted to rise to $8 billion worth of Macs and $13 billion of iPads next year.

Despite a decline in PC spending, Windows 8 computers still dominate the corporate market. But Apple has seen greater demand for the Macs among business users over the past few years. And more companies have adopted or at least allowed the use of the
iPad by employees at a time when the overall PC industry is hurting.

"Unless the vendor's name is Apple or perhaps Lenovo, the computer equipment market will still struggle in 2013, with no better growth in sight until 2014," Forrester said in its report. "The 4 percent growth in PCs in 2013 looks more promising, but that is mostly due to growth in tablets, which we count in the broader PC category. It will not be until 2014 when the economic expansion strengthens that CIOs will feel confident enough to commit funds to refreshing their aging stack of PCs, servers, storage devices, and peripherals."

Forrester is eyeing an 8 percent increase in Windows 8 devices and PCs come 2014. But even that growth will be less than the double-digit gains projected for Apple, Android, and Linux products.

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What Lives in Your Gut?

As we enter a new year, many of us will start thinking—if only temporarily—about improving our diet and lifestyle habits. Maybe you'll resolve to drink more water, eat less fat, get more exercise.

But what does your gut want? A new citizen science project aims to find out.

"What diet should you be eating to achieve an optimal, healthy microbiome in your gut? We don't know yet but finding out could be the key to helping people overcome many chronic diseases," said Jeff Leach, co-founder of the American Gut project.

(Read about the secret world of microbes in the January 2013 issue of National Geographic magazine.)

The concept of the crowd-funded project is simple: Pay $99, get a sample collection kit, and mail back a test tube containing "a little bit of brown" swabbed from your used toilet paper. Participants will also be asked to log their food intake for three days and answer a detailed questionnaire about how and where they live.

"Are you a vegetarian? Were you born via C-section? Do you live in a rural or urban area? Do you have dogs? All of these things can influence your microbiome," Leach said.

In return, participants will receive an analysis revealing what organisms dwell in their gut and showing how their own microbial ecosystem compares to others—including a group of hunter-gatherers Leach has been studying in Tanzania. (That research has not yet been published, but he says it reveals "big differences" between the guts of people who consume a Western diet of highly processed foods and those who eat more traditional diets.)

"There's been a lot of research about the human microbiome recently, but the general public never gets to figure out what's in their gut unless you do something like this," said Leach.

Microbes play several vital roles in the gut, including maintaining the mucosal lining of the gastrointestinal tract, protecting against pathogens, and helping the body harvest calories and digest fiber.

Having too much or too little of certain bacteria could contribute to inflammation, a key factor in many chronic diseases. Recent studies have linked diabetes and obesity to imbalances in gut bacteria.

"We want people to understand that this is a major aspect of their health that's in their control," Leach said. "You're born with your genes, but you can shift your microbiome through diet and lifestyle changes."

About a thousand people have joined the project so far, and Leach is hoping another 3,000 or more will sign up to receive a kit before the February 1 deadline.

For more information, visit the American Gut Project http://humanfoodproject.com/american-gut/.

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Quadruple Amputee Gets Two New Hands on Life

It's the simplest thing, the grasp of one hand in another. But Lindsay Ess will never see it that way, because her hands once belonged to someone else.

Growing up in Texas and Virginia, Lindsay, 29, was always one of the pretty girls. She went to college, did some modeling and started building a career in fashion, with an eye on producing fashion shows.

Then she lost her hands and feet.

Watch the full show in a special edition of "Nightline," "To Hold Again," TONIGHT at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC

When she was 24 years old, Lindsay had just graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University's well-regarded fashion program when she developed a blockage in her small intestine from Crohn's Disease. After having surgery to correct the problem, an infection took over and shut down her entire body. To save her life, doctors put her in a medically-induced coma. When she came out of the coma a month later, still in a haze, Lindsay said she knew something was wrong with her hands and feet.

"I would look down and I would see black, almost like a body that had decomposed," she said.

The infection had turned her extremities into dead tissue. Still sedated, Lindsay said she didn't realize what that meant at first.

"There was a period of time where they didn't tell me that they had to amputate, but somebody from the staff said, 'Oh honey, you know what they are going to do to your hands, right?' That's when I knew," she said.

After having her hands and feet amputated, Lindsay adapted. She learned how to drink from a cup, brush her teeth and even text on her cellphone with her arms, which were amputated just below the elbow.

"The most common questions I get are, 'How do you type,'" she said. "It's just like chicken-pecking."

PHOTOS: Lindsay Ess Gets New Hands

Despite her progress, Lindsay said she faced challenges being independent. Her mother, Judith Aronson, basically moved back into her daughter's life to provide basic care, including bathing, dressing and feeding. Having also lost her feet, Lindsay needed her mother to help put on her prosthetic legs.

"I've accepted the fact that my feet are gone, that's acceptable to me," Lindsay said. "My hands [are] not. It's still not. In my dreams I always have my hands."

Through her amputation recovery, Lindsay discovered a lot of things about herself, including that she felt better emotionally by not focusing on the life that was gone and how much she hated needing so much help but that she also truly depends on it.

"I'm such an independent person," she said. "But I'm also grateful that I have a mother like that, because what could I do?"

Lindsay said she found that her prosthetic arms were a struggle.

"These prosthetics are s---," she said. "I can't do anything with them. I can't do anything behind my head. They are heavy. They are made for men. They are claws, they are not feminine whatsoever."

For the next couple of years, Lindsay exercised diligently as part of the commitment she made to qualify for a hand transplant, which required her to be in shape. But the tough young woman now said she saw her body in a different way now.

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Male lynxes duel to the death

Michael Marshall, environment reporter

(Image: Peter Segerström/with permission from Elsevier)

These male lynxes were fighting for control of the lands behind them, and the females that live in it. In this case both survived, but they were lucky. In the previous two battles for this territory, the incumbent male was killed.

Between 2002 and 2011, this territory changed paws three times. The first male was killed in 2002, and his killer took over the area. He was in turn killed and supplanted in 2005.

His usurper, who had the code-name L-03134, held the territory until 2008 when he was driven out. L-03134 is on the left in the photo, losing to the male who went on to take his territory. The new male has since held off a challenger who tried to claim the territory in 2011.

Long-lived animals rarely fight to the death, because it often makes more sense for the weaker animal to give up the fight and try somewhere else. But in northern Sweden, male Eurasian lynxes face intense struggles for territory. They often hold their territories for years, partly because they are rarely hunted by humans, so challengers are forced to fight particularly hard if they are to have any hope of mating.

Journal reference: Mammalian Biology - Zeitschrift für Säugetierkunde, DOI: 10.1016/j.mambio.2012.11.006

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Football: AC Milan storm off pitch after racist chants

ROME: AC Milan striker Kevin-Prince Boateng stormed off the pitch on Thursday forcing the suspension of a friendly match against fourth-tier Pro Patria after racist chants from a group of fans for the opposing team.

"Pulling out was the right choice with something like this," Milan trainer Massimiliano Allegri said after the match was stopped in the 26th minute.

"We have to stop it with these uncouth acts. Italy as a country has to improve and become more civilised and intelligent," he told reporters.

Squad captain Massimo Ambrosini said: "That was intolerable, it was only a friendly! We couldn't have gone on like that, we had to give a signal."

Boateng picked up the ball, kicked it towards the Pro Patria stands and walked off the pitch of Pro Patria's home town of Busto Arsizio.

His teammates joined him despite Pro Patria players begging them to stay and whistles from many of the Pro Patria fans against the racists.

The 25-year-old Boateng, who has Ghanaian citizenship and played for Ghana at the 2010 World Cup, was previously at Tottenham, Borussia Dortmund and Portsmouth.

- AFP/jc

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Apple said to be eyeing new display tech for next iPhone

Apple's iPhone 5.

(Credit:
CNET)

Apple's use of the so-called "in-cell" touch technology in the
iPhone 5 could be short-lived according to a new report that claims the company is already eyeing alternatives for its next iPhone model.

Citing supply chain rumors, The China Times (translation) says Apple is currently evaluating technology called Touch On Display from Innolux, the company formerly named Chimei Innolux which Apple last year listed as one of its component suppliers.

The reason for the change, the report claims, is due to interference with the current in-cell technology where both the display and touch are embedded in the same panel. By comparison, the Touch On technology offers "good" touch sensitivity with minimal thickness, something that's become increasingly import as mobile phones get thinner.

Display technology has been a major feature of the iPhone since Apple's first model, which at 3.5-inches was considerably larger than most competing smartphones when it was released. Apple later increased the pixel density while keeping the 3.5-inch size, technology it called the Retina Display. That same technology ended up on the
iPad and high-end versions of Apple's
MacBook Pro notebooks.

The display continues to be one of the most expensive parts of the iPhone. A virtual teardown by IHS iSuppli last September estimated the combined display and touchscreen to cost Apple $44, putting it well ahead of the components for wireless antennas, NAND flash memory, and the A-series processor.

Rumors have swirled in recent weeks that Apple is preparing an intermediary upgrade to the iPhone 5 for release as soon as this Spring. Alleged shots of its rear casing cropped up last month on a French technology blog that's been known to get accurate shots of Apple components in the past. Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White this week said that he expects the company to roll out a "5S" model in May or June with "more color patterns and screen sizes," similar to what Apple offers on its latest iPod touch models.

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Pictures: Errant Shell Oil Rig Runs Aground Off Alaska, Prompts Massive Response

Photograph courtesy Jonathan Klingenberg, U.S. Coast Guard

Waves lash at the sides of the Shell* drilling rig Kulluk, which ran aground off the rocky southern coast of Alaska on New Year's Eve in a violent storm.

The rig, seen above Tuesday afternoon, was "stable," with no signs of spilled oil products, authorities said. But continued high winds and savage seas hampered efforts to secure the vessel and the 150,000 gallons (568,000 liters) of diesel fuel and lubricants on board. The Kulluk came to rest just east of Sitkalidak Island (map), an uninhabited but ecologically and culturally rich site north of Ocean Bay, after a four-day odyssey, during which it broke free of its tow ships and its 18-member crew had to be rescued by helicopter.

The U.S. Coast Guard, state, local, and industry officials have joined in an effort involving nearly 600 people to gain control of the rig, one of two that Shell used for its landmark Arctic oil-drilling effort last summer. "This must be considered once of the largest marine-response efforts conducted in Alaska in many years," said Steve Russell, of Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation.

The 266-foot (81-meter) rig now is beached off one of the larger islands in the Kodiak archipelago, a land of forest, glaciers, and streams about 300 miles (482 kilometers) south of Anchorage. The American Land Conservancy says that Sitkalidak Island's highly irregular coastline traps abundant food sources upwelling from the central Gulf of Alaska, attracting large numbers of seabirds and marine mammals. The largest flock of common murres ever recorded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was in Sitkalidak Strait, which separates the island from Kodiak. Sitkalidak also has 16 wild salmon rivers and archaeological sites tied to the Alutiiq native peoples dating back more than 7,000 years.

Shell incident commander Susan Childs said Monday night that the company's wildlife management team had started to assess the potential impact of a spill, and would be dispatched to the site when the weather permitted. She said the Kulluk's fuel tanks were in the center of the vessel, encased in heavy steel. "The Kulluk is a pretty sturdy vessel," she said. " It just remains to be seen how long it's on the shoreline and how long the weather is severe."

—Marianne Lavelle

*Shell is sponsor of National Geographic's Great Energy Challenge initiative. National Geographic maintains editorial autonomy.

Published January 2, 2013

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