A Minute With: Pop star Ke$ha on new album “Warrior”












LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop star Ke$ ha made a name for herself with infectious dance-pop hits but the singer-songwriter is stepping out of her Auto-Tune comfort zone on “Warrior”, out this week.


Ke$ ha, 25, stormed the charts with hit songs about drinking, partying and having a good time, such as “TiK ToK” and “Your Love is my Drug” from her 2010 platinum-selling album “Animal”.












Ke$ ha talked with Reuters about the pressures of following up the success of her first album and responding to her critics.


Q: Did you feel additional pressure while working on this album after the success of your debut, “Animal”?


A: “Everybody keeps asking me about pressure, and I think a lot of other people maybe are feeling pressure about this record, but I just want to make a good record. If I sat around trying to make a number one record, I’d just be too consumed with that. I just want to make an awesome, kick-ass record that I love and that my fans love.”


Q: Was there anything that you weren’t happy with on the first album and that you wanted to change for the second?


A: “I just wanted to make sure my entire personality was presented more accurately. I feel like people really got to know the super-wild side of me but then sometimes a more vulnerable side. I didn’t really feel comfortable expressing it. So this time I kind of forced myself to express a little bit more vulnerability, less Auto-Tune, less vocal trickery. It’s a little more raw.”


Q: You received a lot of criticism for your use of Auto-Tune, masking your true singing voice. Was that a valid criticism for you, when many others use it?


A: “I remember having this conversation with my producer, and him saying, ‘We’re using a lot of vocal tricks,’ and I said, ‘People will get to know me as my career goes on, I just want it to sound really weird and cool and clubby right now, and super electronic.’ I made a conscious decision to use Auto-Tune for effect, as ear candy, and vocoders and chop up my words.


“This time around, I have heard so many different people say I can’t sing, it’s quite frankly irritating, so I … made a five-song acoustic EP (‘Deconstructed’, out on December 4) that’s kind of like my middle finger to all those people that said I couldn’t sing, and there’s more of my voice on this record. You know, haters are going to hate, you just have to do what you want to do.”


Q: Talk us through some of the collaborations on “Warrior”. There’s quite a variety, such as with Iggy Pop and Ben Folds.


A: “Ben Folds is a friend of mine. He gave me a giant glitter grand piano that’s in my house, so that one was natural. The Flaming Lips was probably surprising for a lot of people because we’re two super-different genres of music but we had the most fun and we made so many songs, it was super insane. We’re like best friends, we text everyday now, so that kind of came naturally. The one that I really have been working on for years was a collaboration with Iggy Pop. He’s one of my favorite musicians and artists of all time, so that was super exciting for me, because I respect him so much.”


Q: You’ve written tracks for Kelly Clarkson and Britney Spears, and you’ve written all the songs for “Warrior”. What did you want to bring out in your lyrics this time round?


A: “I definitely wanted to maintain the irreverence, because that’s why my fans like me. It’s because I’m super honest, not always PG rated … but I didn’t want to let the haters somehow cramp my style or get the best of me, so I maintain my irreverence … I also really wanted to show the other side of my personality, which kind of is more nerve-wracking to show people, being a real person and the vulnerable side of my personality and voice. So there are tracks on this record that are super vulnerable and were hard even to write. I had to force myself to sit down and write these songs.”


Q: You’ve carved a distinctive image and also just launched your latest collaboration with Baby-G watches. How do you want to evolve your career in the future?


A: “I think that with this record, I really wanted to show that there are no rules or boundaries in art, at all, like I sing and I can use crazy Auto-Tune vocoders and I can rap and I can do a song with Iggy Pop. You can do all these things that make sense. You don’t have to just be one thing, like, you don’t adhere to any sort of stereotype or any boundaries or any rules, so for me it’s really fun to break down these boundaries.”


Q: You came in at the forefront of the electronic dance music explosion in the pop charts two years ago. Why do you think EDM is doing so well?


A: “Dancing is one of the ways we, as adult human beings, still get to play and it’s socially acceptable. Little kids play all the time, but as we grow up, we’re supposed to just not play anymore, so our version of that is going out and dancing, and I think it’s one way people are still visceral and animal-like.”


(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Dale Hudson)


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News


Read More..

Well: Weight Loss Surgery May Not Combat Diabetes Long-Term

Weight loss surgery, which in recent years has been seen as an increasingly attractive option for treating Type 2 diabetes, may not be as effective against the disease as it was initially thought to be, according to a new report. The study found that many obese Type 2 diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery do not experience a remission of their disease, and of those that do, about a third redevelop diabetes within five years of their operation.

The findings contrast with the growing perception that surgery is essentially a cure for Type II diabetes. Earlier this year, two widely publicized studies reported that surgery worked better than drugs, diet and exercise in causing a remission of Type 2 diabetes in overweight people whose blood sugar was out of control, leading some experts to call for greater use of surgery in treating the disease. But the studies were small and relatively short, lasting under two years.

The latest study, published in the journal Obesity Surgery, tracked thousands of diabetics who had gastric bypass surgery for more than a decade. It found that many people whose diabetes at first went away were likely to have it return. While weight regain is a common problem among those who undergo bariatric surgery, regaining lost weight did not appear to be the cause of diabetes relapse. Instead, the study found that people whose diabetes was most severe or in its later stages when they had surgery were more likely to have a relapse, regardless of whether they regained weight.

“Some people are under the impression that you have surgery and you’re cured,” said Dr. Vivian Fonseca, the president for medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association, who was not involved in the study. “There have been a lot of claims about how wonderful surgery is for diabetes, and I think this offers a more realistic picture.”

The findings suggest that weight loss surgery may be most effective for treating diabetes in those whose disease is not very advanced. “What we’re learning is that not all diabetic patients do as well as others,” said Dr. David E. Arterburn, the lead author of the study and an associate investigator at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. “Those who are early in diabetes seem to do the best, which makes a case for potentially earlier intervention.”

One of the strengths of the new study was that it involved thousands of patients enrolled in three large health plans in California and Minnesota, allowing detailed tracking over many years. All told, 4,434 adult diabetics were followed between 1995 and 2008. All were obese, and all underwent Roux-en-Y operations, the most popular type of gastric bypass procedure.

After surgery, about 68 percent of patients experienced a complete remission of their diabetes. But within five years, 35 percent of those patients had it return. Taken together, that means that most of the subjects in the study, about 56 percent — a figure that includes those whose disease never remitted — had no long-lasting remission of diabetes after surgery.

The researchers found that three factors were particularly good predictors of who was likely to have a relapse of diabetes. If patients, before surgery, had a relatively long duration of diabetes, had poor control of their blood sugar, or were taking insulin, then they were least likely to benefit from gastric bypass. A patient’s weight, either before or after surgery, was not correlated with their likelihood of remission or relapse.

In Type 2 diabetes, the beta cells that produce insulin in the pancreas tend to wear out as the disease progresses, which may explain why some people benefit less from surgery. “If someone is too far advanced in their diabetes, where their pancreas is frankly toward the latter stages of being able to produce insulin, then even after losing a bunch of weight their body may not be able to produce enough insulin to control their blood sugar,” Dr. Arterburn said.

Nonetheless, he said it might be the case that obese diabetics, even those whose disease is advanced, can still benefit from gastric surgery, at least as far as their quality of life and their risk factors for heart disease and other complications are concerned.

“It’s not a surefire cure for everyone,” he said. “But almost universally, patients lose weight after weight loss surgery, and that in and of itself may have so many health benefits.”

Read More..

State of the Art: Tablets Are Hot Holiday Gifts, but Which One to Buy? - Review


From left: J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times, Jim Wilson/The New York Times, Everett Kennedy Brown/European Pressphoto Agency


From left, the Kindle PaperWhite, the iPad Mini and the  Nexus 7.







The other day, I joined NPR for a segment about high-tech holiday gifts. I was ready for the calls from listeners. I’d brushed up on cameras, phones, laptops, music players and game consoles. I was prepared to talk about limiting screen time, digital addiction, cyberbullying. I knew where to get the best deals.




But all six callers had the same question: “What tablet should I get?”


There were variations, of course. “— for my kid?” “— for my elderly father?” “— just for reading?” “— for not much money?” But in general, it was clear: the gadget most likely to be found under the tree this year is thin, battery-powered and flat.


No wonder people are confused. The marketplace has gone tablet-crazy. There’s practically a different model for every man, woman and child.


There’s the venerable iPad, of course. And now the iPad Mini. There are new tablets from Google, also in small and large. There are Samsung’s Note tablets in a variety of sizes, with styluses. There are $200 touch-screen color e-book/video players. There’s a new crop of black-and-white e-book readers. There are stunningly cheap plastic models you’ve never heard of. There are tablets for children (and I don’t mean baby aspirin).


So how are you, the confused consumer, supposed to keep tabs on all these tablets? By taking this handy tour through the jungle of tablets 2012. Keep hands and feet inside the tram at all times.


DIRT-CHEAP KNOCKOFFS You can find no-name tablets for $100 or even less. You can also find mystery-brand Chinese tablets in toy stores, marketed to children.


Don’t buy them. They don’t have the apps, the features, the polish or the pleasure of the nicer ones. The junk drawer is already calling their names.


E-BOOK READERS The smallest, lightest, least expensive, easiest to read tablets are the black-and-white e-book readers. If the goal is simply reading — and not, say, watching movies or playing games — these babies are pure joy.


Don’t bother with the lesser brands; if you’re going to get locked into one company’s proprietary, copy-protected book format, you’ll reduce your chances of library obsolescence if you stick with Amazon or Barnes & Noble.


Each company offers a whole bunch of models. But on the latest models, the page background lights up softly, so that you can read in the dark without a flashlight. (These black-and-white models also look fantastic in direct sun — now you get the best of both lighting conditions.)


The one you want is the Kindle PaperWhite ($120), whose illumination is more even and pleasant than the equivalent Nook’s.


Of course, plain, no-touch, no-light Kindles, with ads on the screen saver, start as low as $70. But the light and the touch-screen are really worth having.


COLOR E-READERS/PLAYERS Amazon and B.& N. each sell a seven-inch tablet that, functionally, lands somewhere between an e-book reader and an iPad. They have beautiful, high-definition touch screens. They play music, TV shows, movies and e-books. They can surf the Web. They even run a few handpicked Android apps like Netflix and Angry Birds.


They’re nowhere near as capable as full-blown, computerlike tablets of the iPad/Nexus ilk, mainly because there are so few apps, accessories and add-ons. But they cost $200; you’re paying only a fraction of the price.


The big two here are, once again, Amazon and B.& N. If you’re not already locked in to one of those companies’ books and videos because you owned a previous model, the Nook HD is the one to get. It’s much smaller and lighter than the Kindle Fire HD. It has a much sharper screen. And the $200 price includes a wall charger (the Fire doesn’t) and no ads (the Fire does). Or get the classy Google Nexus 7, also $200. Although its book/music/movie catalog is far smaller, its Android app catalog is far larger (but see “iPad versus Android,” below).


BIG COLOR READERS/PLAYERS This year, both Amazon and B.& N. have introduced jumbo-screen (9-inch) versions of their HD tablets. Here again, B.& N. offers a better value than its 9-inch Kindle Fire HD rival. For $270, the Nook HD+ offers a sharper screen, lighter weight, no ads, a memory-card slot and a wall charger.


E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com



Read More..

Alleged WikiLeaks source says he was illegally punished in jail









A key pretrial hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of giving classified material to the website WikiLeaks, which then made it public, began Tuesday in a case that highlights the government’s resolve to keep war and diplomatic material secret.


Manning, who has been charged on 22 counts, faces life in prison if convicted of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge. His court-martial is scheduled for February.


A former intelligence analyst in Baghdad in 2009 and 2010, Manning is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of logs about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.





The hearing at a military court at Ft. Meade outside Baltimore is scheduled to run through Sunday. Manning is expected to testify at some point. It would be the first time he has spoken publicly about the case and the conditions of his detainment since his arrest in 2010.


The defense will argue that all charges should be dismissed because Manning was subjected to “unlawful pretrial punishment,” according to a post on the website of his supporters, the Bradley Manning Support Network.


Manning will get a chance to testify about his treatment. His lawyers argue that he was illegally punished by being put alone in a cell for nine months at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. Military judges can dismiss all charges if pretrial punishment is particularly egregious, but that rarely happens, though the time in incarceration can be credited toward the sentencing.


“At this extremely important hearing, Bradley’s lawyer David Coombs ... will present evidence that brig psychiatrists opposed the decision to hold Bradley in solitary, and that brig commanders misled the public when they said that Bradley’s treatment was for ‘Prevention of Injury,' " his supporters said.


Manning has offered to take responsibility by pleading guilty to reduced charges. The military has not ruled on that offer.


Manning was in the brig from July 2010 to April 2011. The military argues the treatment there was proper since he classified as a maximum-security detainee. He was later moved to Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., where he was reevaluated and given a medium-security classification.


A United Nations investigator called the conditions of Manning's imprisonment cruel, inhuman and degrading, but stopped short of calling it torture.


ALSO:


Powerball: Test  your knowledge of the game


Eating contestant choked to death on roach parts


Power company officials resign after slow Sandy response





Read More..

Nintendo to Launch $99 'Wii Mini,' But Only in Canada. Why?



The good news: After six years on the market, Wii now has a price of under $100. Bad news: in Canada.


Well: I guess it’s not bad news if you’re Canadian. Wii Mini, announced today by the gamemaker’s northern subsidiary, sports a radically different form factor and color scheme than the original motion-controlled console. It’s a dual-tone matte finish of textured red and black, something that looks like it came from the toy aisle rather than the electronics department. It’s the first version of Wii to not have that cool slot-loading automatic drive; instead, the top pops up and you put the disc on the spindle manually.


Wii, with its innovative motion controls, was a colossal success for Nintendo. Since its launch in 2006, it has sold over 95 million units worldwide, eclipsing sales of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Wii’s massive popularity meant that Nintendo could maintain its launch price of $250 through September 2009. A successor machine, Wii U, which keeps Wii’s motion controllers and adds GamePad, a controller with a built-in touchscreen, launched this month.


Nintendo launched a slight revision of the Wii hardware in 2011 that eliminated the now barely used backward compatibility with the GameCube console. Wii Mini goes a step farther and removes the internet connectivity. So now it’s strictly for playing Wii game discs, of which Nintendo of Canada says 1,300 are available.


So the big question on everyone’s lips is, of course: Why Canada? Is Nintendo unsure of whether consumers will want Wii Mini, and therefore test-marketing it in Canada first?


I think it’s the wrong question. The right question is: Why not the United States?


Two potential reasons spring to mind. Perhaps Wii, bundled with games at $130-150, is just doing too well in the U.S. for Nintendo of America to want to introduce a new model right now. CNET reported on Monday that Nintendo had sold 300,000 Wii systems and 400,000 Wii U last week. Many of those were at discounted rates, some cheaper than the Wii Mini. Perhaps Nintendo of America has every intention of releasing Wii Mini here, but surmised that the old Wii had one more Christmas left in it at prices as high as $150. (It has not yet responded to Wired’s request for comment.)


Or maybe for America, the removal of the Internet functionality was a step too far?


We know two things for sure: One, as of last year 25 percent of Netflix subscribers used Wii to access the streaming video service. Two, Netflix isn’t nearly as big a deal in Canada: The Globe and Mail reported in October that growth has “plateaued,” it doesn’t have nearly as much content as the U.S. version does, and extra charges for bandwidth in Canada can make streaming video a very expensive proposition.


“The problem in Canada is… they have almost third-world access to the internet,” said Netflix’s chief content officer in September, as reported by GigaOm.


So perhaps it’s the case that Nintendo of Canada doesn’t mind nearly as much that Wii Mini has no connectivity.


By removing GameCube compatibility, removing all the networking hardware and replacing the cool slot-loading disc drive with an uncool but presumably much cheaper hinged-door, Nintendo has surely lowered the Wii’s cost of goods to rock bottom with the Mini. With well over 1000 games (and, you know, ten or eleven fantastic ones), a super-cheap Wii could continue to live on and on as a bargain console. With Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 still hovering around $250, it’s doubtful that Microsoft or Sony would ever bother creating models this inexpensive, so Mini could be the only option for families looking for dirt-cheap TV gaming.


In Canada.


Read More..

‘Two and a Half Men’ actor not expected on set












NEW YORK (AP) — The teenage actor who stars in “Two and a Half Men” and called the CBS comedy “filth” may have some time before he faces the show’s producers.


Angus T. Jones wasn’t expected at rehearsal Tuesday because he is not going to be in the episode they are filming, according to a person close to the show who spoke on condition of anonymity because producers were not commenting publicly.












Jones, 19, has been on the show, which used to feature bad-boy actor Charlie Sheen and remains heavy with sexual innuendo, since he was 10 but says in a video posted online by a Christian church that he doesn’t want to be on it anymore.


“Please stop watching it,” Jones said. “Please stop filling your head with filth.”


The person familiar with the production schedule said Jones does not appear in either of the two episodes filming before the end of the year, so he wouldn’t be expected back at work until after the New Year.


His character has been largely absent because he has joined the Army.


CBS and producer Warner Bros. Television have not commented.


“Two and a Half Men” survived a wild publicity ride less than two years ago, when Sheen was fired for his drug use and publicly complained about the network and the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre.


Jones plays Jake, the son of Jon Cryer’s uptight divorced chiropractor character, Alan, and the nephew of Sheen’s hedonistic philandering music jingle writer, Charlie. Sheen was replaced by Ashton Kutcher, who plays billionaire Walden.


In the video posted by Forerunner Chronicles in Seale, Ala., Jones describes a search for a spiritual home. He says the type of entertainment he’s involved in adversely affects the brain and “there’s no playing around when it comes to eternity.”


“You cannot be a true God-fearing person and be on a television show like that,” he said. “I know I can’t. I’m not OK with what I’m learning, what the Bible says, and being on that television show.”


The show was moved from Monday to Thursday this season, and its average viewership has dropped from 20 million an episode to 14.5 million, although last year’s numbers were somewhat inflated by the intense interest in Kutcher’s debut. It is the third most popular comedy on television behind CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory” and ABC’s “Modern Family.”


The actors on “Two and a Half Men” have contracts that run through the end of the season.


Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News


Read More..

Global Update: Investing in Eyeglasses for Poor Would Boost International Economy


BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images







Eliminating the worldwide shortage of eyeglasses could cost up to $28 billion, but would add more than $200 billion to the global economy, according to a study published last month in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.


The $28 billion would cover the cost of training 65,000 optometrists and equipping clinics where they could prescribe eyeglasses, which can now be mass-produced for as little as $2 a pair. The study was done by scientists from Australia and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.


The authors assumed that 703 million people worldwide have uncorrected nearsightedness or farsightedness severe enough to impair their work, and that 80 percent of them could be helped with off-the-rack glasses, which would need to be replaced every five years.


The biggest productivity savings from better vision would not be in very poor regions like Africa but in moderately poor countries where more people have factory jobs or trades like driving or running a sewing machine.


Without the equivalent of reading glasses, “lots of skilled crafts become very difficult after age 40 or 45,” said Kevin Frick, a Johns Hopkins health policy economist and study co-author. “You don’t want to be swinging a hammer if you can’t see the nail.”


If millions of schoolchildren who need glasses got them, the return on investment could be even greater, he said, but that would be in the future and was not calculated in this study.


Read More..

Dark Warnings About Future of Internet Access





PARIS — A commercial and ideological clash is set for next week, when representatives of more than 190 governments, along with telecommunications companies and Internet groups, gather in Dubai for a once-in-a-generation meeting.




The subject: Control of the Internet, politically and commercially.


The stated purpose of the World Conference on International Telecommunications is to update a global treaty on technical standards needed to, say, connect a telephone call from Tokyo to Timbuktu. The previous conference took place in 1988, when the Internet was in its infancy and telecommunications remained a highly regulated, mostly analog-technology business.


Now the Internet is the backbone for worldwide communications and commerce. Critics of the International Telecommunication Union, the agency of the United Nations that is organizing the meeting, see a dark agenda in the meeting. The blogosphere has been raging over supposed plans led by Russia to snatch control of the Internet and hand it to the U.N. agency.


That seems unlikely. Any such move would require an international consensus, and opposition is widespread.


Terry D. Kramer, the former Vodafone executive who is the United States ambassador to the conference, has vowed to veto any change in how the Internet is overseen.


Analysts say the real business of the conference is business. “The far bigger issue — largely obscured by this discussion — are proposals that are more likely to succeed that envision changing the way we pay for Internet services,” Michael Geist, an Internet law professor at the University of Ottawa, said by e-mail.


Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the I.T.U., has repeatedly said that the U.N. group has no desire to take over the Internet or to stifle its growth. On the contrary, he says, one of the main objectives of the conference is to spread Internet access to more of the four and a half billion people around the world who still do not use it.


And yet, groups as diverse as Google, the Internet Society, the International Trade Union Confederation and Greenpeace warn that the discussions could set a bad precedent, encouraging governments to step up censorship or take other actions that would threaten the integrity of the Internet.


“This is a very important moment in the history of the Internet, because this conference may introduce practices that are inimical to its continued growth and openness,” Vinton G. Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google, said in a conference call.


Google set up a Web site last week, “Take Action,” encouraging visitors to sign a petition for a “free and open Internet.” The campaign is modeled on the successful drive last winter to defeat legislative proposals to crack down on Internet piracy in the United States.


More energy is expected to be spent on how companies make money off the Internet. In one submission to the conference, the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association, a lobbying group based in Brussels that represents companies like France Télécom, Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia, proposed that network operators be permitted to assess charges for content providers like Internet video companies that use a lot of bandwidth.


Analysts say the proposal is an acknowledgment by European telecommunications companies that they cannot hope to provide digital content. “The telecoms realize that they have lost the battle,” said Paul Budde, an independent telecommunications analyst in Australia. “They are saying, ‘We can’t beat the Googles and the Facebooks, so let’s try to charge them.’ ”


The European lobbying group says that without the new fees, there will be no money to invest in network upgrades needed to deal with a surge in traffic. Regulators have required European telecommunications operators to open their networks to rivals, and the market for broadband is fiercely competitive, with rock-bottom prices.


In the United States, by contrast, most telecommunications companies have been permitted to maintain local monopolies — or duopolies, with cable companies — in broadband, keeping prices higher. And American regulators have ordered broadband providers to give equal priority to all Internet traffic. Such “network neutrality” is incompatible with charging content providers for moving their bits of data.


Analysts say this may explain why American telecommunications companies have not joined the European call for a new business model. “Models that try to force payment terms between nations and telecom operators run a huge risk of cutting off traffic,” Mr. Kramer said in an interview. “Liberalized markets are the only way to expand the success of the Internet.” People who have been briefed on the conference submissions say that not a single European government delegation has endorsed the telecommunications operators’ proposal, and the European Parliament has passed a resolution denouncing it. Only governments, not private groups or companies, can put items on the meeting agenda.


While many documents prepared for the conference remain secret, several people who have seen submissions say there is broad support for Internet connection fees in French-speaking Africa and among Arab nations — countries in which many telecommunications companies are still owned or heavily regulated by governments.


Much of the attention before the 12-day conference has focused on a proposal from Russia that would effectively remove control of the Internet’s infrastructure from a collection of decentralized and apolitical organizations, mostly based in the United States. “Member states,” Russia proposed, “shall have equal rights to manage the Internet, including in regard to the allotment, assignment and reclamation of Internet numbering, naming, addressing and identification resources.”


Those functions are performed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a private organization with an international board that operates under contract with the United States government.


The Russian proposal was widely interpreted as a call to legitimize domestic censorship of the Internet. Yet analysts note that governments inclined to filter the Web, like China and Iran, have not waited for consensus in an international meeting to do so.


Read More..

Congress returns as 'fiscal cliff' talks slow









WASHINGTON – Congress returned in a lame duck session with no signs of quick compromise to prevent a tax hike for most Americans early next year.


Talks between the White House and Republican leaders in the House continued behind closed doors. Current tax rates expire Dec. 31.


Emboldened by his re-election, President Obama took his case for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to the public on Monday. He warned that the threat of higher taxes on middle-class Americans could dampen the Christmas shopping season.





"The President has called on Congress to take action and stop holding the middle class and our economy hostage over a disagreement on tax cuts for households with incomes over $250,000 per year," the White House said in a statement.


Quiz: How much do you know about the fiscal cliff?


The White House got a boost from billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who said the wealthy – himself included – should pay more. Noting the nation’s growing gap in income disparity, Buffett dismissed the Republican argument that tax hikes would hamper investments.


“In recent years, my gang has been leaving the middle class in the dust,” Buffett said. “So let’s forget about the rich and ultrarich going on strike and stuffing their ample funds under their mattresses if — gasp — capital gains rates and ordinary income rates are increased.”


Key Republicans, including House Speaker John A. Boehner, have signaled they are willing to put new tax revenues on the table, creating the outlines of a possible deal. Several Republican lawmakers used the Sunday talk shows to distance themselves from their party’s anti-tax pledge, publicly breaking with conservative stalwart Grover Norquist, although they insisted any agreement must include spending cuts.


A so-called grand bargain of tax hikes and spending cuts has eluded Washington in the past, but both political parties are wary of rattling the financial markets and sparking a crisis in consumer spending. Wall Street has signaled a bold deficit-reduction plan is needed to prevent a credit downgrade.


PHOTOS: 2016 presidential possibilities


No talks between the president and congressional leaders have been scheduled. The parties had agreed to meet this week to put the framework of a two-part deal on the table.


If Republicans continue to fight higher tax rates for the wealthy, Boehner will face pressure to propose an alternative way to raise new revenue – either by closing individual loopholes or capping deductions in a way that produces new money.


“Congressional and White House staff continue to work to find common ground that is consistent with the ‘balanced approach’ the White House says it wants – with significant spending cuts, and without job-killing small business tax hikes,” said a senior House leadership aide.


Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook


Lisa.Mascaro@latimes.com


CParsons@latimes.com


Twitter: @LisaMascaroinDC





Read More..

Peter Jackson Races to Complete <em>The Hobbit</em> in Time for Premiere



Peter Jackson makes epic films, and epic films take an extraordinary amount of time to produce. In the case of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the trek to completion is coming down to the wire.


Jackson has been working on The Hobbit, which opens next month, at the Park Road Post Production facility in Wellington, New Zealand, for weeks to complete every last VFX trick, CGI shot and sound effect in time for the film’s opening.


“It’s due to be completed literally two days before the premiere. Hopefully,” Jackson says in the film’s latest production video (above). “You’re going to see a lot of sleep-deprived people in this blog — everybody’s working around the clock to get the film finished.”


The clip, which is as funny and fascinating as the eight other production diaries Jackson has released online, shows every last detail going into the film’s final push: Jabez Olssen and Jackson editing the film together, final construction of hundreds of CGI shots, and final sound effects for the movie.



There’s also a wonderful look into the “Department of Internal Beard-Hairs” — the motion-capture wing dedicated to the facial hair worn by the movie’s fantastic characters. “We’ve advanced the art of motion caption quite substantially on The Hobbit, including the detail of motion-capturing the individual hairs of dwarves’ beards,” Jackson says. Judging by the work displayed by his crew in this short clip, digital beards may never be the same.


Finally, there is the music soundtrack, which has been (is being?) recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London. It’s being played, on the day of the video diary at least, by a 93-person orchestra and it sounds, well, amazing. But even once it’s done and laid down in the final film, it’s just the beginning, notes re-recording mixer Michael Semanick.


“We’ve got another three weeks … and then another couple films,” he says. “The journey’s long from over, it’s just really starting.”


Check out the full video diary above. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey hits theaters Dec. 14.


[via io9]


Read More..