“Zero Dark Thirty” won’t be “Hurt Locker” at the Box Office

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Kathryn Bigelow‘s Osama bin Laden manhunt thriller “Zero Dark Thirty” hits theaters Wednesday, and when it comes to the box office, this isn’t going to be “Hurt Locker.”

That was Bigelow’s last film, a gritty Iraq war drama that upset “Avatar” for Oscar’s Best Picture in 2009 but took in just $ 17 million domestically. “Zero Dark Thirty” could well top $ 100 million, say industry analysts – and if the awards season breaks the right way for the Oscar Best Picture front-runner, it could go higher than that.

“ZDT” and this year’s winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, “Amour,” are making limited debuts Wednesday, while the Barbra Streisand-Seth Rogen comedy “Guilt Trip” and a 3D re-release of “Monsters Inc.” go into wide release.

Six more movies will roll out on Friday, including Judd Apatow‘s “This Is 40″ and the Tom Cruise starrer “Jack Reacher,” in what Hollywood is hoping will be a very busy pre-holiday week at the box office.

In the course of detailing the killing of Bin Laden, “ZDT” is an examination of the nation’s war on terror, its prosecution and its effect on America’s collective psyche, and that will help, not hurt, the film at the box office, Exhibitor Relations Senior analyst Jeff Bock told TheWrap.

“This movie is about the biggest American war story since Pearl Harbor,” Bock said. “The American people are at a place now where they are ready to look back and really think about what we’ve been through.

“This movie, particularly if it keeps getting awards buzz, is going to be talked about everywhere, and if you want to have an opinion, you’re going to have to see it.”

Despite all the newcomers arriving Wednesday and Friday, Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” is expected to continue dominating. It took in about $ 7 million Monday – on the heels of its $ 85 million debut weekend – and should cross the $ 100 million mark Tuesday

Sony Classic is rolling out “Amour,” Michael Haneke‘s dark and unsparing look at old age and death, at two theaters in New York and one in L.A. The French-language film was recently named the best film of 2012 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, giving it an important boost during a season in which its chances outside the Oscar foreign-language category hinge on getting Academy voters to see it.

That honor stopped an awards run by “Zero Dark Thirty,” which Sony is rolling out on five screens. The intense tale had won the top award with the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Board of Review, the Boston Film Critics Society and the New York Film Critics Online.

“ZDT” was produced by Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures for about $ 45 million.

Sony’s plan is to go wide with it release on January 11 after the Academy Award nominations.

Beside the film itself and director Bigelow, her producing partner Mark Boal is a good bet for an Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, as is Jessica Chastain in the Best Actress category. All of those earned Golden Globes nominations in those categories.

The gritty and gripping tale is a critical favorite – it has a 97.7 percent rating at Movie Review Intelligence – but a lightning rod for political criticism, from both the left and right of the political spectrum. Some critics have charged the film is an apology for U.S. interrogation tactics that included waterboarding, while others say it’s intended to boost the image of President Obama.

“Our agenda isn’t a partisan agenda – it’s an agenda of trying to look behind the scenes at what went down,” screenwriter Boal told TheWrap earlier. “Hopefully art or cinema can present a point of view that’s a little above the political fray, but that doesn’t mean the political narrative doesn’t try to assert itself and pull you back in.”

“Amour” is a co-production between companies in Austria, France and Germany. It is Austria’s entry and a favorite in Oscar’s Best Foreign Language category, and it has a shot at a Best Picture nomination, too.

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva star as Anne and George, an elderly couple who are retired music teachers and have a daughter (Isabelle Huppert) living abroad. The story, which Haneke wrote and directed based on a similar experience in his own family, focuses on what happens when Anne suffers a stroke.

It was nominated in six categories at the recent European Film Awards and won four, including Best Film and Best Director. The L.A. Film Critics named the 85-year-old Riva co-Best Actress (with Jennifer Lawrence in “Silver Linings Playbook”), and she has an outside shot an Oscar nomination in that category.

“Guilt Trip” is Streisand’s first film foray since “Little Fockers,” which debuted around the same time of year in 2010 for Universal – and her first starring role since 1996′s “The Mirror Has Two Faces.”

“Little Fockers,” a sequel to “Meet the Fockers,” opened to $ 30 million and went on to make $ 148 million. Distributor Paramount will be happy if the PG13-rated “Guilt Trip,” which will be on about 2,300 screens, can match half that debut.” The analysts are looking for it to wind up around $ 12 million.

It’s one of three Paramount releases this week; the Tom Cruise thriller “Jack Reacher” and concert film “Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away” debut Friday.

“They all play to distinctly different demographics, Paramount’s head of distribution Don Harris told TheWrap, “so other than being really busy, we don’t have any problem with these three all in the marketplace.”

What could provide some tough competition is Judd Apatow‘s R-rated comedy “This Is 40,” which Universal is rolling out on roughly 2,900 screens Friday.

Disney will have its 3D version of its 2001 animated hit “Monsters Inc.” in 2,400 theaters. It will be the third 3D re-release of a Disney film this year. The first two did unspectacular but solid business, particularly when you consider the only cost to the studio is the 3D conversion and marketing.

A 3D version of “Beauty and the Beast” debuted to $ 17 million in July and went on to make $ 47 million. In September, a converted “Finding Nemo” took in $ 16 million in its first week and wound up at $ 41 million.

Between “The Hobbit,” the holdover kids holiday film “Rise of the “Monsters Inc.” and a very crowded marketplace, “Monster Inc.” will have a tough time matching those numbers.

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French psychiatrist sentenced after patient commits murder

MARSEILLES, France (Reuters) – A French psychiatrist whose patient hacked an elderly man to death was found guilty of manslaughter on Tuesday in a groundbreaking case that could affect the way patients are treated.

A court in Marseilles said Daniele Canarelli, 58, had committed a “grave error” by failing to recognize the public danger posed by Joel Gaillard, her patient of four years.

Gaillard hacked to death 80-year-old Germain Trabuc with an axe in March 2004 in Gap, in the Alps region of southeastern France, 20 days after fleeing a consultation with Canarelli at Marseilles’s Edouard Toulouse hospital.

Canarelli was handed a one-year prison sentence and ordered to pay 8,500 euros to the victim’s children, in the first case of its kind in France. Defense lawyers said the ruling would have serious repercussions for treatment of the mentally ill.

“If a psychiatrist lives in fear of being sentenced, it will have very real consequences and probably lead to harsher treatment of patients,” said Canarelli’s lawyer, Sylvain Pontier.

The court said Canarelli should have requested Gaillard be placed in a specialized medical unit or referred him to another medical team, as one of her colleagues suggested. Her stubborn refusal had equated to a form of “blindness”, the court president Fabrice Castoldi said.

Gaillard had already been forcibly committed to a secure hospital on several occasions for a series of increasingly dangerous incidents.

The victim’s son, Michel Trabuc, said he hoped the case would set a legal precedent.

“There’s no such thing as zero risk, but I hope this will move psychiatry forward and, above all, that it will never happen again,” he said.

Gaillard was not held responsible for his actions and was freed under medical supervision.

(Reporting by Jean-François Rosnoblet; Writing by Vicky Buffery; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Asia stocks rise over US budget deal optimism

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian stock markets rose Wednesday after U.S. political leaders appeared to be closing in on a budget deal to avert the “fiscal cliff” by the year-end deadline. Economists have been warning the U.S. economy could be thrown back into recession without a deal.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index jumped 1.1 percent to 10,034.45. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.7 percent to 22,640.25. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 advanced 0.3 percent to 4,608.90. Benchmarks in New Zealand, Taiwan, and Malaysia also rose, while those in Singapore and mainland China fell. Stock markets in South Korea were closed for a public holiday during Wednesday’s presidential election.

Stock markets have been on edge for weeks as President Barack Obama and Republican leaders struggle to hammer out an agreement before Jan. 1, when automatic tax hikes and government spending cuts will take effect if no deal is reached.

The two sides appear to be moving closer together, on income taxes at least.

On Monday, Obama offered to freeze income tax rates for taxpayers making $ 400,000 or less and raise them for people making more. Previously, Obama wanted higher taxes for individual income above $ 200,000, or $ 250,000 for couples.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner would allow income tax rates to rise for people making more than $ 1 million per year and would hold rates where they are for everyone making less. The top rate on income exceeding $ 1 million would go from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. Previously, Boehner opposed allowing any tax rates to go up.

“To be honest, the numbers are irrelevant at the moment and will change numerous times before a final deal is settled on,” said Cameron Peacock of IG Markets in Melbourne said in an email commentary. “What is important and what is driving the market higher is that the two parties are now in constructive discussions over specific tax levels and spending programs and working toward a common middle ground.”

Investor sentiment also got a boost after the Standard & Poor’s rating agency said Tuesday that it had raised Greece’s credit grade by six notches to B-, lifting the country out of default. The threat of a Greek default had roiled markets in the first half of this year.

Investors worried that the heavily indebted nation would leave the euro, opening the way for a break-up of the currency block. The ratings firm said the upgrade reflected its view that the other 16 countries using the euro are determined to keep the Greece inside the currency union.

In Japan, the focus remains on the weekend landslide election victory of the Liberal Democratic Party, whose leader, Shinzo Abe, in line to become prime minister, wants to shore up growth with higher public works spending. That was despite concern about the consequences of adding to Japan’s towering public debts and doubts about the effectiveness of looser policy.

Benchmark oil for January delivery rose 2 cents to $ 88.42 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 73 cents Tuesday to finish at $ 87.93 on the Nymex.

In currencies, the euro rose to $ 1.3226 from $ 1.3220 late Tuesday in New York. The dollar rose to 84.36 yen from 84.20 yen.

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NBC’s Engel, TV crew escape abduction in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — NBC‘s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said Tuesday he and members of his network crew escaped unharmed after five days of captivity in Syria, where more than a dozen pro-regime gunmen dragged them from their car, killed one of their rebel escorts and subjected them to mock executions.

Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, an unshaven Engel said he and his team escaped during a firefight Monday night between their captors and rebels at a checkpoint. They crossed into Turkey on Tuesday.

NBC did not say how many people were kidnapped with Engel, although two other men, producer Ghazi Balkiz and photographer John Kooistra, appeared with him on the “Today” show. It was not confirmed whether everyone was accounted for.

Engel said he believes the kidnappers were a Shiite militia group loyal to the Syrian government, which has lost control over swaths of the country’s north and is increasingly on the defensive in a civil war that has killed 40,000 people since March 2011.

“They kept us blindfolded, bound,” said the 39-year-old Engel, who speaks and reads Arabic. “We weren’t physically beaten or tortured. A lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings,” he added.

“They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government,” Engel said. He said the captors were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, but he did not elaborate.

There was no mention of the kidnapping by Syria’s state-run news agency.

Both Iran and Hezbollah are close allies of the embattled Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, who used military force to crush mostly peaceful protests against his regime. The crackdown on protests led many in Syria to take up arms against the government, and the conflict has become a civil war.

Engel said he was told the kidnappers wanted to exchange him and his crew for four Iranian and two Lebanese prisoners being held by the rebels.

“They captured us in order to carry out this exchange,” he said.

Engel and his crew entered Syria on Thursday and were driving through what they thought was rebel-controlled territory when “a group of gunmen just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road.”

“There were probably 15 gunmen. They were wearing ski masks. They were heavily armed. They dragged us out of the car,” he said.

He said the gunmen shot and killed at least one of their rebel escorts on the spot and took the hostages into a waiting truck nearby.

Around 11 p.m. Monday, Engel said he and the others were being moved to another location in northern Idlib province.

“And as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn’t expected. We were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan,” he said. “The kidnappers saw this checkpoint and started a gunfight with it. Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them.”

Engel and his crew crossed back into neighboring Turkey on Tuesday.

The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.

NBC sought to keep the disappearance of Engel and the crew secret for several days while it investigated what happened to them. Major media organizations, including The Associated Press, adhered to a request from the network to refrain from reporting on the issue out of concern it could make the dangers to the captives worse. News of the disappearance did begin to leak out in Turkish media and on some websites on Monday.

Syria has become a danger zone for reporters since the conflict began.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria is by far the deadliest country for the press in 2012, with 28 journalists killed in combat or targeted for murder by government or opposition forces.

Among the journalists killed while covering Syria are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain’s Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

The Syrian government has barred most foreign media coverage of the civil war in Syria. Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Many foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers and travel with rebel escorts or drivers.

Engel joined NBC in 2003 and was named chief foreign correspondent in 2008. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, including during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He has lived in the Middle East since graduating from Stanford University in 1996.

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What If Nothing or Nobody is to Blame for Adam Lanza? Guns, Video Games, Autism or Authorities

What if there is nobody or nothing to blame for Adam Lanza‘s heinous acts? Other than Lanza, of course.

What if school security and the school psychiatrist kept an eye on Lanza since his freshman year? The Wall Street Journal has a compelling narrative about the red flags addressed.

What if he had a form of autism that has little or no link to violent behavior? Lanza may have had Asperger’s syndrome but, even so, that is not a cause.

(RELATED: How To Make Sense of America’s Confusing Patchwork of Gun Control Laws)

What if it’s too simple to lay the massacre at the feet of the gun lobby? Reader Larry Kelly tweets that shaming Aspies “makes about as much sense at stigmatizing the NRA. Pick an enemy … any enemy. Let outrage and fear rule.”

What if Lanza wasn’t provoked by video games? David Axelrod, a close friend an adviser of President Obama, tweeted last night: “In NFL post-game: an ad for shoot ‘em up video game. All for curbing weapons of war. But shouldn’t we also quit marketing murder as a game.”

When I asked whether he was laying groundwork for a White House initiative, Axelrod said no: “Just one man’s observation.” A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said today that Axelrod was not a stalking horse for Obama on this issue.

What if Lanza’s mother did everything she could, short of keeping her guns out her adult son’s reach? What if he wasn’t bullied?

What if there is nobody or nothing to blame? Would that make this inexplicable horror unbearable?

What if we didn’t rush to judgement? What if we didn’t waste our thoughts, prayers and actions on assigning blame for the sake of mere recrimination? What if we calmly and ruthlessly learned whatever lessons we can from the massacre — and prevented the next one?

What if it wasn’t one thing, but everything, that set off Lanza?

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Bird flu kills 4-year-old boy in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A 4-year-old Indonesian boy has died from bird flu, bringing the death toll to 160 in the world’s hardest-hit country.

Health Ministry official Rita Kusriastuti said Tuesday that the boy died Dec. 6 in Tangerang city, just west of Jakarta, the capital. He developed symptoms of a cold and fever on Nov. 30 and was treated at a public health center before being hospitalized the same day he died.

Kusriastuti said the boy, from the West Java district of Bogor, was believed to have been infected with the H5N1 virus after having direct contact with dead fowl around his house.

Bird flu has killed at least 360 people worldwide since 2003. It remains hard for people to catch, but experts fear it could mutate into a more deadly form.

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How the Bar Code Took Over the World

In 1948 a supermarket executive showed up at the Drexel Institute of Technology, in Philadelphia, with a request: He wanted the engineers there to design a technology that could encode information about his products. Two graduate students, Bernard Silver and N. Joseph Woodland, took him up on it. Woodland became obsessed and dropped out of school to concentrate on the problem. That winter he was sitting on Miami Beach, dragging his fingers in the sand, when he had his Eureka moment: a series of lines of different widths could be deciphered like elongated versions of the dots and dashes of Morse Code. In other words, a bar code.

Woodland died last week, at a time when his technology has become so prevalent that it is almost invisible. Boxes of cereal, cans of soup, books, and magazines all have universal product codes. Anything you buy in a supermarket or department store does, too. The next time someone sends you a gift from Amazon.com (AMZN), take a look at the box that UPS (UPS) delivers. The sticker on it has multiple bar codes, all having to do with tracking the package as it makes its way through the bar-coded distribution system. You no longer just scan at the checkout, either. If you still shop for electronics at Best Buy (BBY) stores, chances are you’re “showrooming”—using one of the many smartphone apps that scan codes and check prices against those at other chains, both online and off.

The bar code was a feat of technology, for sure. But it wasn’t a sure thing: The proposed system started off as one option among many in a stand-off among competing interests. So what enabled the bar code to take over the world? How might today’s emerging technologies (we’re looking at you, mobile payments) achieve similar dominance?

Like other successful standards, the bar code had three essential ingredients, all of which are necessary—but not, on their own, sufficient:

A simplicity that overcomes habit. Until the late 1970s, every clerk in every supermarket in America tapped numbers onto a register keypad. The process was rife with errors; Many of us remember our parents poring over grocery receipts before leaving the store. Errors and all, it was the way retail functioned. Only a simple technology with obvious benefits could overcome that inertia. Bar codes are simple and iconic—people have even had them tattooed onto their bodies.

A governing body to knock heads and work out details. If every supermarket and potato-chip maker had chosen its own product-information technology, chaos would have ensued. Instead, a consortium of retailers and manufacturers got together and chose the UPC, an IBM (IBM) design that Woodland, who worked there, helped develop.

An extravagant, surprising, and often expensive effort to “seed the market.” The classic example here comes from the world of credit cards: The Fresno Drop of 1958. Back than, only the wealthy had credit cards. The middle class paid cash, or perhaps paid over time via an installment plan. As Joe Nocera recounts in his classic “A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class”, a manager at Bank of America (BAC), realizing that the only way people would use credit cards is if everyone they knew did, too, had cards sent to every home in Fresno—60,000 in all. For UPC, the seeding of the market was a bit more mundane: the rise of Wal-Mart (WMT), which used the codes to create its legendarily efficient distribution system.

Half a century after the Fresno Drop and Woodland’s epiphany on the beach, there’s a similar battle brewing over mobile payment technologies. Consumers spend trillions of dollars around the world with credit cards. Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), banks, credit-card companies—everyone is scrambling to come up with ways to get a piece of that action.

One of the more interesting is Square, a startup in San Francisco launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Let’s see the ingredients. 
Simplicity? Check: It’s a small plastic square that plugs into an iPhone or iPad. A splashy move to dominate the market? Last month Square announced a deal to be in 7,000 Starbucks (SBUX) across the U.S. Strong consortium or governing body? A tangle of competing alliances is more like it. Two out of three, so far, for Square.

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N. Korea displays Kim Jong Il a year after death

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea unveiled the embalmed body of Kim Jong Il, still in his trademark khaki jumpsuit, on the anniversary of his death Monday as mourning mixed with pride over a recent satellite launch that was a long-held goal of the late authoritarian leader.

Kim lies in state a few floors below his father, national founder Kim Il Sung, in the Kumsusan mausoleum, the cavernous former presidential palace. Kim Jong Il is presented lying beneath a red blanket, a spotlight shining on his face in a room suffused in red.

Wails echoed through the chilly hall as a group of North Korean women sobbed into the sashes of their traditional Korean dresses as they bowed before his body. The hall bearing the glass coffin was opened to select visitors — including The Associated Press — for the first time since his death.

North Korea also unveiled Kim’s yacht and his armored train carriage, where he is said to have died. Among the personal belongings featured in the mausoleum are the parka, sunglasses and pointy platform shoes he famously wore in the last decades of his life. A MacBook Pro lay open on his desk.

North Koreans paid homage to Kim and basked in the success of last week’s launch of a long-range rocket that sent a satellite named after him to space.

The launch, condemned in many other capitals as a violation of bans against developing its missile technology, was portrayed not only as a gift to Kim Jong Il but also as proof that his young son, Kim Jong Un, has the strength and vision to lead the country.

The elder Kim died last Dec. 17 from a heart attack while traveling on his train. His death was followed by scenes of North Koreans dramatically wailing in the streets of Pyongyang, and of the 20-something son leading ranks of uniformed and gray-haired officials through funeral and mourning rites.

The mood in the capital was decidedly more upbeat a year later, with some of the euphoria carrying over from last Wednesday’s launch. The satellite bears one of Kim Jong Il’s nicknames, Kwangmyongsong, or “Lode Star,” a moniker given to him at birth according to the official lore.

Cameras were not allowed inside the mausoleum, and state media did not release any images of Kim Jong Il’s body.

With the death anniversary came a hint that Kim Jong Un himself might soon be a father.

His wife, Ri Sol Ju, was seen on state TV with what appeared to be a baby bump as she walked slowly next to her husband at the mausoleum, where they bowed to statues of Kim’s father and grandfather.

There is no official word from Pyongyang about a pregnancy. In addition, Ri is shown wearing a billowing traditional Korean dress in black that makes it difficult to know for sure.

North Koreans are reluctant to discuss details of the Kim family that have not been released by the state. Still there are rumors even in Pyongyang about whether the country’s first couple is expecting.

To honor Kim’s father, North Koreans stopped in their tracks at midday and bowed their heads as the national flag fluttered at half-staff along streets and from buildings.

Pyongyang construction workers took off their yellow hard hats and bowed at the waist as sirens wailed across the city for three minutes.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans gathered in the frigid plaza outside, newly transformed into a public park with lawns and pergolas. Geese flew past snow-tinged firs and swans dallied in the partly frozen moat that rings the vast complex in Pyongyang’s outskirts.

“Just when we were thinking how best to uphold our general, he passed away,” Kim Jong Ran said at the plaza. “But we upheld leader Kim Jong Un. … We regained our strength and we are filled with determination to work harder for our country.”

Speaking outside the mausoleum, renamed the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the military’s top political officer, Choe Ryong Hae, said North Korea should be proud of the satellite, calling it “a political event with great significance in the history of Korea and humanity.”

Much of the rest of the world, however, was swift in condemning the launch, which was seen by the United States and other nations as a thinly disguised cover for testing missile technology that could someday be used for a nuclear warhead.

The test, which the U.N. Security Council said violated a ban on launches using ballistic missile technology, underlined Kim Jong Un’s determination to continue carrying out his father’s hardline policies even if they draw international condemnation.

Washington said Monday it has no option but to seek to isolate Pyongyang further.

“What’s left to us is to continue to increase pressure on the North Korean regime and we are looking at how to best to do that, both bilaterally and with our partners going forward until they (North Korea) get the message. We are going to further isolate this regime,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Some outside experts worry that Pyongyang’s next move will be to press ahead with a nuclear test in the coming weeks, a step toward building a warhead small enough to be carried by a long-range missile.

Despite inviting further isolation for his impoverished nation and the threat of stiffer sanctions, Kim Jong Un won national prestige and clout by going ahead with the rocket launch.

At a memorial service on Sunday, North Korea’s top leadership not only eulogized Kim Jong Il, but also praised his son. Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of North Korea’s parliament, called the launch a “shining victory” and an emblem of the promise that lies ahead with Kim Jong Un in power.

The rocket’s success also fits neatly into the narrative of Kim Jong Il’s death. Even before he died, the father had laid the groundwork for his son to inherit a government focused on science, technology and improving the economy. And his pursuit of nuclear weapons and the policy of putting the military ahead of all other national concerns have also carried into Kim Jong Un’s reign.

In a sign of the rocket launch’s importance, Kim Jong Un invited the scientists in charge of it to attend the mourning rites in Pyongyang, according to state media.

The reopening of the mausoleum on the anniversary of the leader’s death follows tradition. Kumsusan, the palace where his father, Kim Il Sung, served as president, was reopened as a mausoleum on the anniversary of his death in 1994.

___

Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report. Follow Jean Lee, AP’s bureau chief for Pyongyang and Seoul, at www.twitter.com/newsjean.

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Apple says China iPhone 5 sales in first weekend top two million

(Reuters) – Apple Inc sold more than 2 million of its new iPhone 5 in China during the three days after its launch there on Friday, marking China’s best-selling iPhone rollout ever, the company said late on Sunday.

“Customer response to iPhone 5 in China has been incredible, setting a new record with the best first weekend sales ever in China,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a statement.

Apple’s latest iPhone, which offers a larger 4-inch screen and 4G capability, was launched in the United States and 30 other countries in September, when the company sold more than 5 million of the devices in the first three days.

The device’s highly anticipated release in China, Apple’s second-biggest market, failed to stop the recent share slide of the world’s most valuable technology company, and analysts said Apple’s longer-term China hopes may hinge on a partnership with China Mobile Ltd, the country’s top telecoms carrier.

(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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Boehner opens door to tax hikes, shifts U.S. fiscal cliff talks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner‘s offer to accept a tax rate increase for the wealthiest Americans knocks down a key Republican road block to a deal resolving the year-end “fiscal cliff.”

The question now boils down to what President Barack Obama offers in return. Such major questions, still unanswered so close to the end of the year suggest, however, that no spending and tax agreement is imminent.

A source familiar with the Obama-Boehner talks confirmed that Boehner proposed extending low tax rates for everyone who has less than $ 1 million in net annual income, meaning tax rates would rise on all above that line.

Under current law, the 35 percent top tax rate is scheduled to expire on January 1, and would automatically go to 39.6 percent. Boehner’s proposal would allow that rate to rise as scheduled at a threshold of $ 1 million – putting it back to where it was during the Clinton administration.

The White House has not accepted the proposal and the source could not confirm any additional talks were held on Sunday between Obama and Boehner.

With just over two weeks before the fiscal cliff’s $ 600 billion in automatic tax hikes and spending cuts are triggered, threatening a new recession, there is little time to craft a comprehensive deal that will satisfy both Democrats and Republicans.

Until the latest Republican offer, made on Friday, Boehner had insisted on extending all of the Bush era’s lower tax rates, resisting Obama’s demand to let the marginal rates rise on income above $ 250,000. A rising chorus of business executives also had urged Republicans to agree to this.

Some lawmakers and congressional aides had predicted that Republicans, once serious negotiations began, might try to raise the $ 250,000 threshold, say to $ 500,000 or $ 1 million. They also speculated that Republicans, if forced into a tax rate hike on the upper-income groups, might seek a smaller increase, say to around 37 percent.

Although the White House has not accepted Boehner’s gambit, it could push negotiations away from entrenched, ideological positions.

“Boehner has now accepted the premise of higher rates. So now we’re just arguing over details. I think it’s a significant step,” said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group.

A framework deal spelling out tax revenue and spending cut targets to be finalized in the new year could be possible, Valliere said.

“Boehner’s offer to allow tax rates to go up for taxpayers earning over $ 1 million fundamentally transforms fiscal cliff negotiations,” added Sean West, U.S. policy analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.

In a note to clients, West wrote that it signals, significantly, that Boehner ultimately believes a deal to avoid the cliff is still possible.

“The political burden is now shifted back to the president, who must be willing to take on his party in order to get a deal Boehner can ultimately pass. We do not think the president will overreach: Obama will work with Boehner to get to a deal.”

There are still several critical elements to a deal besides a tax rate increase on the wealthy, including Republican demands to cut spending on social programs.

Changes to the expensive Medicare and Medicaid health care programs for the elderly and the poor could be central to any deal, which must also include an increase in the federal debt limit needed by the end of February.

DEMANDS SOCIAL PROGRAM CUTS

Boehner conditioned his tax rate increase offer on Obama’s agreement to cuts in social program spending, often called entitlements.

Many Republican lawmakers want to raise the eligibility age for Medicare to 67 from 65. They also want to link Medicare to the income of recipients, making wealthier retirees pay more for their care.

Currently, Medicare does have some means testing, charging higher premiums for coverage of doctors visits and prescription drugs to individuals earning more than $ 85,000 and married couples earning more than $ 170,000. Only about 5 percent of recipients pay these higher premiums.

Thus far, Obama has offered only about $ 400 billion in 10-year entitlement savings, mostly through small adjustments in reining in health care costs – not fundamental changes such as raising the eligibility age.

And just as Boehner faces opposition in his own party to raising any tax rates, Obama faces opposition to cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security from Democrats, who pledged in election campaigns they would protect these programs.

A major bloc of congressional Democrats has already signaled they will not accept major cutbacks in Medicare as part of any fiscal cliff deal.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Maryland Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland are among the high ranking Democrats in the House who have come out forcefully in recent days against raising the age for eligibility for Medicare to 67 years of age.

“Given the level of savings that is being talked about from Medicare, you can’t get it all from providers and drug makers,” said Paul Heldman, an analyst at Potomac Research, which tracks Washington policy for investors.

“So opponents of raising the eligibility age have reason to believe beneficiaries will take some sort of hit if a mega-deal is cut,” he said.

If Republicans are not successful in securing entitlement program cuts in exchange for a tax-rate increase on the wealthy, they are adamant about using a debt-limit increase as leverage to overhaul Social Security and Medicare.

The U.S. Treasury expects to reach its $ 16.4 trillion statutory debt cap by year-end, and will exhaust its remaining borrowing capacity around mid-February, risking a potential default.

Louisiana Republican Representative John Fleming, a member of the conservative Tea Party caucus who has never voted to increase the debt ceiling, said he would support a debt limit hike if it were part of a deal to make Medicare and Social Security sustainable.

The pace of activity could pick up the coming week.

House Republicans were told to prepare for a possible weekend session next week, potentially interrupting travel plans for the long Christmas holiday weekend.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor scheduled “possible legislation related to expiring provisions of law,” a reference to the expiring tax cuts, for the end of the week, portending a weekend session. Cantor has said the House would meet through the Christmas holidays and beyond.

(This story was fixed to correct current top tax rate to 35 percent from 36 percent)

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, Richard Cowan and Kim Dixon; Editing by Fred Barbash, Todd Eastham and Jackie Frank)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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