10 Things to Know for Thursday

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, center, is transported on the New York Presbyterian Hospital complex Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2013, in New York. Officials say Clinton who was admitted to the New York hospital Sunday continues to be treated with blood thinners to dissolve a clot in the vein behind the right ear. Doctors found the clot during a follow-up exam stemming from a concussion she suffered in early December. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, center, is transported on the New York Presbyterian Hospital complex Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2013, in New York. Officials say Clinton who was admitted to the New York hospital Sunday continues to be treated with blood thinners to dissolve a clot in the vein behind the right ear. Doctors found the clot during a follow-up exam stemming from a concussion she suffered in early December. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2013. The ?fiscal cliff? compromise, for all its chaos and controversy, was enough to send the stock market shooting higher Wednesday, the first trading day of the new year. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

FILE - This 1958 file photo shows singer Patti Page. Page, who made "Tennessee Waltz" the third best-selling recording ever, died Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2012 in Encinitas, Calif. She was 85. (AP Photo, File)

Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and stories that will be talked about Thursday:

1. AL-JAZEERA CHASING AMERICAN VIEWERS

The Pan-Arab network seals a deal to take over Al Gore's Current TV.

2. CLINTON LEAVES HOSPITAL

She'll continue to be treated with blood thinners to dissolve a clot in a vein in her head.

3. FOR LAWMAKERS, BARELY TIME TO TAKE A BREATH

The fiscal cliff deal only sets the stage for more combustible struggles in Washington.

4. INVESTORS JUMP INTO STOCKS

The Dow roars up more than 300 points, despite the many unanswered questions left by the budget compromise.

5. WHERE GOOGLE'S CEO IS VISITING

Eric Schmidt will travel to North Korea, one of the last frontiers of cyberspace, on a private humanitarian mission.

6. BOEHNER HASTENS TO ACT AFTER GOP FIRESTORM

Bowing to angry members of his own party, the House speaker agrees to schedule votes on roughly $60 billion in aid for superstorm victims.

7. WHY SYRIA'S DEATH TOLL IS RISING

Violence escalates as rebels push their fight closer to Assad's stronghold in Damascus.

8. RENEWED CALLS TO REIN IN THE PAPARAZZI

The death of a photographer taking pictures of Justin Bieber's car brings the dangers of the industry into sharp focus.

9. PATTI PAGE, TOP SONGSTRESS OF YESTERYEAR, DIES

The singer of "Tennessee Waltz," the first pop-to-country crossover hit, was to be honored at the Grammys.

10. WHICH NFL TEAM IS A LOCK

The AP's Barry Wilner anoints Green Bay as his best bet this weekend as the playoffs begin.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-01-02-10%20Things%20to%20Know-Thursday/id-b93a1a8b10734530b971129a1558ec7f

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Budget deal leaves U.S. defense firms in limbo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Shares in some major defense companies trailed the broad U.S. stock market on Wednesday as investors fretted that hiring and investment at weapons makers could remain slow until a longer-term fiscal solution is in place.

"Merely delaying sequestration by a couple of months will do little to resolve the uncertainty and chaos surrounding the defense budget," said Todd Harrison, an analyst at the private Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Lockheed Martin Corp , the Pentagon's biggest supplier, said it hoped the last-ditch agreement to avoid the "fiscal cliff" would pave the way for the permanent elimination of automatic across-the-board cuts that it said would harm government programs and damage national security.

Until then, "there will be an overhang on our industry that stifles investment in plant, equipment, people, and future research and development essential to the future health of our industry," said Jennifer Whitlow, spokeswoman for the maker of F-35 fighter jets and Aegis missile defense systems.

Lockheed's shares rose 0.5 percent on the New York Stock Exchange, trailing the almost 2-percent gain in the overall Arca Defense Index and a 1.8-percent advance in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx>.

The defense industry's biggest trade group, the Aerospace Industries Association, said a long-term solution was urgently needed.

"If sequestration is not solved in the next 57 days, it would be an abdication of responsibility by the leaders of this country, one that will only heighten Americans' cynicism and cement the public image of a gridlocked Washington that simply doesn't work," said the group's president, Marion Blakey.

Lockheed and other big arms manufacturers including Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp have complained about the difficulty of running their businesses while facing the potential indiscriminate, automatic spending cuts.

Northrop Grumman shares rose by 0.3 percent on Wednesday while Boeing advanced 1.7 percent.

Blakey last week called the indiscriminate cuts required under sequestration a "mindless meat axe" and urged lawmakers to give the Pentagon more authority over any cuts required.

The 157-page deal reached on Tuesday to avert the "fiscal cliff" delayed $109 billion in spending cuts by two months and delayed the pain of tax hikes for almost all U.S. households, but left many larger issues unresolved.

The spending cuts, which had been slated to take effect on January 2, have been delayed until March 27, giving lawmakers time to debate how to come up with $1.2 trillion in deficit-reducing measures over the next decade.

Of the total cuts slated for fiscal year 2013, which ends September 30, $54.7 billion were to come from the Pentagon's budget, excluding military pay.

Loren Thompson, a Virginia-based defense consultant, said the last-minute agreement by lawmakers signaled that sequestration cuts were unlikely to be ever implemented as currently planned, although some additional cuts were likely.

"When the chips are down, the two parties can find common ground and that means sequestration is not going to happen the way it is currently mandated," Thompson said. "This is not just a reprieve for the defense industry, it's a signal that the worst aspects of sequestration are never going to occur."

Byron Callan, analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, said the deal meant weapons makers would face challenges in framing their financial guidance when they announce quarterly earnings later this month since lawmakers were unlikely to reach a final deal by the next deadline at the end of March.

"Defense spending absolutely will be part of the next debt ceiling/sequestration cliff debates," Callan wrote in a note to investors, noting that any reductions in the Pentagon budget agreed as part of a final solution could be even more disruptive since half the 2013 fiscal year would already be over.

The delay means the defense reductions are now slated to go into effect just when the U.S. Treasury runs out of the ability to borrow money, making for another cliff-hanger.

The deal also leaves unresolved whether the Pentagon would be given more flexibility in how its savings are achieved. The Pentagon has sought to prioritize rather than trim by the same percentage its more than 2,500 programs or projects. Getting more flexibility would require another act of Congress.

The existing law calls for stripping more than $500 billion from projected Pentagon spending levels over 10 years - on top of $487 billion in cuts already being wrung out under a deficit-reduction deal enacted into law in August 2011.

If the same level of security-related cuts were maintained under a future deficit-reduction deal, they would be crammed into the final half of the fiscal year that ends September 30, which could pose fresh challenges for Pentagon budget officials.

(Reporting by Jim Wolf and Andrea Shalal-Esa; editing by Ros Krasny and Phil Berlowitz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/budget-deal-leaves-u-defense-firms-limbo-203849756--business.html

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Poll: Obama begins term facing pessimistic public

President Barack Obama delivers remarks alongside Vice President Joe Biden on Jan. 1. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)As President Barack Obama heads into his second term, he faces a pessimistic and weary public, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll released late Tuesday.

The percentage of Americans satisfied with the direction of the country stands at a paltry 23 percent in a poll taken Dec. 14-17. By a margin of 50 to 47 percent, respondents said the country's best years are over.

Fifty percent of respondents said it is somewhat or very unlikely that today's youth will have a better life than their parents.

That pessimism and negativity extends to the president, according to the poll.

When respondents were asked to choose adjectives to describe their feelings about the president's re-election, the poll showed the excitement and pride many Americans felt about the president's first term has diminished.

Sixty-seven percent of respondents in November 2008 said they felt optimistic about the president's election and the same percentage said it made them feel proud. Last month those numbers fell to 52 percent for optimistic and 48 percent for proud. Forty-three percent of Americans surveyed also said they feel pessimistic about the president's re-election and 36 percent said it made them feel afraid?both increases from 2008.

The president's approval rating, however, hovered at the 50 percent threshold in the USA Today/Gallup survey. This is 1 percentage point above George W. Bush as he headed into his second term, but below the 58 percent rating held by Bill Clinton and 59 percent held by Ronald Reagan.

The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/poll-obama-begins-second-term-facing-pessimistic-public-132253142--election.html

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House skips vote on Sandy aid, angering members from storm-hit states (reuters)

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Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/274301364?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Senate approves deal to avoid fiscal cliff

By NBC News staff and wire reports

Updated at 2:15 a.m. ET --???An agreement in principle to avert broad tax increases and spending cuts passed in the Senate early Tuesday morning, with an overwhelming vote of 89-8.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote before Wednesday.

The interim New Year's Eve tax deal negotiated by Biden and Senate Republican Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky would raise income taxes on single earners with annual incomes above $400,000 and married couples with incomes above $450,000.

It also blocks spending cuts for two months, extends unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, prevents a 27 percent cut in fees for doctors who treat Medicare patients and prevents a spike in milk prices.

MSNBC's Milissa Rehberger talks with contributor Ezra Klein and outlines the potential Senate deal that avert the Fiscal Cliff.

As of mid-afternoon Monday, the sticking point involved the "sequester," the cuts to spending ? about $100 billion to start in 2013 -- that were mandated by the Budget Control Act which President Barack Obama signed into law last year. Republicans have signaled they might let the sequester take effect unless it was offset by other spending cuts; the GOP has also said it might accept a delay, but only for a few months.

The Obama administration, however, was pushing for a longer delay in implementing the sequester. Otherwise, the president said, replacing those automatic cuts must be "balanced" ? shorthand for a combination of new taxes and other spending cuts.

Obama tried to push talks over the finish line earlier in the afternoon with a statement from the White House.

"Today, it appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year's tax hike is within sight," the president said at the White House on Monday. "But it's not done."

In the absence of a broader agreement to resolve the sequester, McConnell appeared in the Senate floor to request a vote only on the tax element of the fiscal cliff.

"Let's pass the tax relief portion now," he said. "Let's take what's been agreed to and keep moving."

NBC's Chuck Todd explains that a fiscal cliff deal has been difficult to reach because President Obama and Speaker Boehner don't want to appear to be caving to the other.

But it's not clear that Democrats, who were led in negotiations by Vice President Joe Biden, would agree to de-link the tax debate from other fights over the sequester and extending expiring unemployment benefits past Dec. 31.

House Republicans were careful to note that it was still possible for them to add votes late on New Year's Eve. But they also argued that there was no Senate-passed legislation on which they could schedule a vote, making the prospect of avoiding the cliff all the less likely.

Democratic and Republican sources in the House told NBC News that a final vote on any deal would now most likely wait until afternoon on New Year's Day, or even on Jan. 2.

Though Congress could still conceivably act after New Year's to preserve existing tax rates ? thereby limiting any lasting effect on consumers ? their inability to reach an agreement until the very last minute could still threaten to rattle the economy and markets.

Vice President Joe Biden has reached a deal with Senate Republicans to avoid the massive tax hikes and spending cuts set to begin on January 1st. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.

The House did act late Sunday, though, to clear the way for emergency consideration of Senate legislation if leaders are able to reach an agreement. The House Rules Committee convened with the purpose of dispensing with a rule instilled by Republicans in the early days of 2011 to require that legislation be posted online for a full 72 hours before a vote in the House. GOP leaders had sought that rule to showcase their own transparency, and in reaction to actions by the previous Democratic majority to quickly pass legislation during the health care reform battles of 2010.

Republicans' move to sidestep their own rule underscores the urgency of fiscal cliff talks in the final hours of 2012. There were few ironclad assurances, though, that any Senate agreement would necessarily win the support of the House.

The lurching nature of legislating has been characteristic of the Congress during the last two years, and that's a phenomenon that may well continue into the next Congress, when Democrats will continue to retain control of the Senate, and Republicans will hold a slightly slimmer grasp on the House.

"We're about to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory," says CNBC's Steve Liesman, who warns that higher unemployment may be ahead.

Source: http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/31/16268297-senate-approves-deal-to-avert-fiscal-cliff?lite

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Suspect in NYC subway death arrested before

NEW YORK (AP) ? The family of a woman accused of shoving a man to his death in front of a subway train called police several times in the past five years because she had not been taking prescribed medication and was difficult to deal with, authorities said Monday.

Erika Menendez, 31, was being held without bail on a murder charge in the death of Sunando Sen. She told police she pushed the 46-year-old India native because she thought he was Muslim, and she hates them, according to prosecutors.

They had never met before she suddenly shoved him off the subway platform because she "thought it would be cool," prosecutors said. The victim was Hindu, not Muslim.

It wasn't clear whether Menendez had a diagnosed mental condition. But her previous arrests and legal troubles paint a portrait of a troubled woman.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly would not say what medication she was taking or whether she had a psychiatric history. Authorities were called to her home five times since 2005 on reports of an emotionally disturbed person.

In one instance, police said, she threw a radio at the responding officers.

Menendez had been arrested several times, starting when she was young. In 2003, she was arrested on charges she punched a 28-year-old man in the face inside her Queens home, but the case was later dropped. She pleaded guilty later that year to assaulting a stranger on the street near her home. The victim, retired Fire Department official Daniel Conlisk, said the attack was violent and relentless.

He said he was sorting recyclables outside his home one night when Menendez approached him and punched him in the face, screaming that he was having sex with her mother.

"It was such a shot," Conlisk said. "And I was surprised she hit so hard, because she was just a girl."

He said he tried to fend her off as she clawed at his skin. He eventually broke free and went inside his home, where he called police. When they arrived, he said, she was still outside screaming about him having sex with her mother, and saying he had stolen jewelry from her in high school.

"That's when everyone realized there's really something wrong with her," he said. Conlisk, 65, said he took out two restraining orders against her but never saw her after he was attacked.

He said that he felt bad that he pressed charges, but that she seemed dangerous.

"I really believe if she had a knife, she would have killed me," he said.

In December 2003, Menendez was arrested for cocaine possession. She was given a conditional discharge after pleading guilty.

Last Thursday, witnesses said a woman pacing and mumbling to herself suddenly shoved Sen off the elevated platform of a No. 7 train that travels between Manhattan and Queens. She fled.

Menendez was spotted by a passer-by who called 911 and said she resembled the wanted suspect. When she was arrested, she told police she shoved Sen because she blamed Muslims and Hindus for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and had been "beating them up" ever since, according to authorities. She said she thought Sen was Muslim.

Sen, a Kolkata native, owned a print shop and had lived in Queens for decades.

She laughed and snickered so much during her court hearing last weekend that the judge admonished her. The attorney who represented her only for her arraignment said she acted the same way with him when he tried to speak with her. He had no further comment.

Calls to Menendez's home on Monday were unanswered. Angel Luis Santiago, who used to work at the Queens building where Menendez's mother and stepfather live, said he was shocked by her arrest on the murder charge.

"It surprised me what she did," he said. "She never acted that way."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suspect-nyc-subway-death-arrested-184159712.html

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Hillary Clinton Admitted To Hospital With Blood Clot - Business Insider

The Associated Press is reporting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been admitted to the hospital with a blood clot following a concussion, according to a spokesperson.?

CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan tweets that a spokesperson for Clinton confirmed that the former First Lady has been taken to New York Presbyterian, and that the hospital will monitor her for the next 48 hours.?

According to Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin, Clinton was scheduled to return to work this week following a three-week recovery from a stomach virus and concussion.?

The illness was first reported December 10, when Clinton's office announced that it was the reason the Secretary of State had canceled a scheduled trip to the Middle East.?On December 15, Clinton's doctors reported that she had also sustained a concussion after fainting from her illness.?

Conservative pundits and bloggers have accused Clinton of faking the illness in order to avoid testifying in an open Congressional hearing about the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton has said she will testify in front of both House and Senate committees when she returns to work.?

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/hillary-clinton-hospital-blood-clot-2012-12

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