Fiscal Cliff Roadblock Dropped by GOP

Story Created: Dec 30, 2012 at 12:59 PM AKST

Story Updated: Dec 30, 2012 at 12:59 PM AKST

Senate Republicans are dropping a sticking point that Democrats said today was a "major setback" in negotiations to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff" by Jan. 1.

Exiting a conference meeting Sunday afternoon, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, told CBS News that Republicans would not be pursuing their proposed Social Security cut called "chained" consumer price index (CPI). The proposal, which would measure inflation at a different rate and result in lower Social Security payments for recipients, was derided by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., today as being "a major setback" at the negotiating table, according to a Democratic source with knowledge of the talks.

McCain said Republicans had to drop the measure because it looked as if they were fighting for tax cuts for the wealthy, at the expense of Social Security recipients. "We cannot win that argument," he said. Cornyn added that Republicans knew all along it wouldn't make it into the final deal - "When you negotiate, you start big," he said.

Democrats had attacked the idea as being a "poison pill" - a non-starter - and said they wouldn't have the votes in their caucus for a plan that includes "chained" CPI.

During brief remarks on the Senate floor this afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said his office submitted the offer Saturday at 7:10 p.m. ET, and "offered to work through the night to find common ground." Reid said he'd respond by 10 a.m. today, despite the "obvious time crunch," McConnell said, but added, "it's now 2 p.m. and we've yet to receive a response to our good-faith offer."

McConnell said he also placed a call to Vice President Joe Biden "to see if he could help jump start the negotiations on his side. ...The vice president and I have worked together on solutions before, and I believe we can again." During the Republican conference meeting this afternoon, McConnell excused himself briefly to take a call from the vice president.

"We all know that we're running out of time," McConnell said. "I'm willing to get this done, but I need a dance partner."

Immediately following McConnell's remarks, Reid took the podium to announce, "At this stage, we're not able to make a counter-offer. ...The Republican leader has told me that, and he's just said here, that he's working with the vice president," Reid continued. "I wish them well."

Twenty-five minutes later, Reid spoke again, saying that while there are "still serious differences" between Republicans' and Democrats' proposals, "we've made a lot of progress. I appreciate very much Sen. McConnell's good-faith efforts, and I'm confident that he feels the same way about me."

Still, Reid said, "The one thing I do want to mention is that we're not gonna have any Social Security cuts. At this stage, that just doesn't seem appropriate.

"We're open to discussion about entitlement reforms, but we're going to have to take it in a different direction," he continued. "We're willing to make difficult concessions as part of a balanced, comprehensive agreement. But we'll not agree to cut Social Security benefits as part of a smaller, short-term agreement, especially if that agreement gives more handouts to the rich."

Source: http://www.ktva.com/home/outbound-xml-feeds/Fiscal-Cliff-Roadblock-Dropped-by-GOP-185227252.html

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Microsoft confirms zero-day bug in IE6, IE7 and IE8

Microsoft on Saturday confirmed that Internet Explorer (IE) 6, 7 and 8 contain an unpatched bug ? or ?zero-day? vulnerability ? that is being used by attackers to hijack victims' Windows computers. The company is ?working around the clock? on a patch ?

Read more at Computerworld Australia.

Source: http://www.twytter.net/blog/microsoft-confirms-zero-day-bug-in-ie6-ie7-and-ie8/

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With Maine as exception, GOP has no political incentive to make ?fiscal cliff? deal with Obama

WASHINGTON ? Amid the last-minute wrangling over a ?fiscal cliff? deal, it?s important to remember one overlooked fact of the 2012 election: Republicans in the House and Senate have absolutely no political incentive to compromise with President Obama.

The numbers are stark.

Of the 234 Republicans elected to the House on Nov. 6, just 15 sit in congressional districts that Obama also won that day, according to calculations made by the Cook Political Report?s ace analyst David Wasserman. That?s an infinitesimally small number, particularly when compared with the 63 House Republicans who held seats where Obama had won following the 2010 midterm elections.

The Senate landscape paints the same picture ? this time looking forward. Of the 13 states where the 14 Republican Senators will stand for reelection in 2014 (South Carolina has two, with Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott up in two years time), Obama won just one in 2012 ? Maine. In the remaining dozen states, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney won only one, Georgia, by less than double digits. The average margin of victory for Romney across the 13 states was 19.5 percentage points; take out Maine, and Romney?s average margin was 22 points in the remaining 12 states.

The picture on the Democratic side is less clear. Although 96 percent of House Democrats in the 113th Congress will hold seats Obama won in November, according to Wasserman, fully one-third of the 21 Senate Democrats who will stand for reelection in 2014 represent states that Romney won.

While Obama narrowly lost North Carolina, where Sen. Kay Hagan, D, will run for a second term in November 2014, the president lost the other six states where Senate Democrats will be running by double digits. Here?s that list: Alaska (lost by 14), Arkansas (lost by 24), Louisiana (lost by 18), Montana (lost by 13), South Dakota (lost by 18) and West Virginia (lost by 26). Obama?s average margin of defeat across these seven states? A whopping 16 points.

Even the most cursory analysis of those numbers makes two things clear.

First, with the exception of a dozen or so Republicans in the House and Maine?s Susan Collins in the Senate, the number of GOP members of the 113th Congress who see cutting a deal with the president ? in the fiscal cliff or, frankly, anything else ? as politically advantageous is close to zero.

Second, while House Democrats are equally de-incentivized to working across the aisle, there is a large-ish group of Senate Democrats who must find ways of showing their bipartisan spirit if they want to win reelection in states that didn?t favor their party ? or even come close to doing so ? in the 2012 election.

Those twin political realities make the ground on which the fiscal cliff fight ? and future scuffles over gun control measures, etc. ? less heavily tilted toward Democrats than you might think.

Yes, Obama won the election and did so quite convincingly. And, no, he doesn?t ever have to worry again about being reelected, which should, in theory, embolden him. But he is the only person involved in the fiscal cliff talks who has that luxury. Everyone else needs to keep one eye (at least) on their next race.

That mentality means that for the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, a deal is more dangerous than no deal. A deal creates the possibility of a primary challenge from their ideological right in districts and even states that, by and large, went heavily against Obama in November. No deal means they might ? with the emphasis on ?might? ? face some blowback from constituents who want them to get something done for the good of the country and put the partisanship and politics aside.

And so, if you are wondering why congressional Republicans won?t, in the words of Obama, just ?take the deal,? now you know. They have every political reason not to.

Source: http://bangordailynews.com/2012/12/30/politics/with-maine-as-exception-gop-has-no-political-incentive-to-make-fiscal-cliff-deal-with-obama/

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Jacob Bergeron sinks 25-foot putt to win Junior Golf Championship

Joseph Halm, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, December 29, 2012 6:04 p.m.

Jacob Bergeron of Slidell hits onto the sixth green at the Allstate Sugar Bowl Tommy Moore Memorial Junior Golf Championship in Algiers on Saturday. - (Chris Ganger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

Slidell?s Jacob Bergeron drained a 25-foot par putt on the final hole to win the Boys 14-18 Division of the Allstate Sugar Bowl Tommy Moore Memorial Junior Golf Championship during a frigid and windy Saturday at Lakewood Golf Club.

Bergeron, who won the Boys 12-13 Division last year, missed a 5-foot birdie on 17, but recovered from a short approach on the 18^th to close out the dramatic win with an even-par 72 on the final day. He shot a 1-under 143 for the tournament.

?I was looking at the putt, and just like all the putts I had all day, I couldn?t really tell how it was breaking,? he said. ?I just said play it left edge and see what happens, and it broke right in the middle of the hole. It was a cool feeling. I?m really just speechless right now, and I?m super blessed.?

Ross Bell of Madison, Miss., finished second with an even-par 144, and St. Paul?s Brandon Pierce finished third with 2-over-par 146. Bell opened with four straight birdies, but double bogeyed 17 to finish at even-par.

?It was fun trying to play in these conditions,? Bergeron said. ?It was definitely a struggle for the most part. I just played my game and tried to capitalize on the birdie opportunities that I got.?

Pierce, an LSU signee, said his chip-in on 10 helped jump start his back nine after he finished the front nine at 3-over-par.

?I chipped it to within an inch of where I wanted to land it, and it went in,? he said. ?I guess that got me back into it because I don?t think I was completely 100 percent focused. It got me through the rest of the round. The conditions were pretty tough. The first day, I played the first 12 holes with almost no wind, and all day today, it was a two, three, four club wind.?

The tournament featured 80 golfers from eight states in four different divisions. Hayden White of Benton, La., won the Boys 12-13 division with a 154 two-day total. White shared the Day 1 lead after shooting a 4-over-par 76 and said a birdie on the first hole followed by an up-and-down save on the par-3 third set the tone for his day.

?I went through the whole round not making too many bad mistakes,? he said. ?The worst I had today was a double, and it didn?t really get to me that much because I didn?t want it to change my thinking. I had a good short game today.?

In the Girls 14-18 Division, Morgan Nadaline, of Anderson, Ind., sank a six-foot bogey putt on 18 to edge McGehee freshman Angelica Harris for the girls title by one stroke.

Nadaline shot an 80 for a 161 two-day total. After a 3-over-par front nine, she double bogeyed 12 before rebounding for a birdie on 15.

?I think I played better than I did yesterday,? she said. ?I definitely made more putts, but it was just so windy, and the cold made it worse. A lot was going through my mind (on the last putt). I?m not the best putter there is, so some of those putts are iffy for me. I just knew I needed to have confidence, and I made it.?

Harris, who made a triple bogey on the ninth hole, rallied for a birdie on 18 after she hit a 6-iron to within a foot of the pin. She finished with 82 for a 162 two-day total.

?The last hole I was really excited because I just wanted to finish strong,? Harris said. ?Yesterday, I didn?t play that hole too well, so I was able to redeem myself and play it better. I was affected by the wind a little bit, but I just love to play. It doesn?t matter what the conditions are I?ll always be out here. ?

Presley Baggett of Diamondhead, Miss., won the Girls 12-13 Division, finishing with a 176.

?I didn?t play as well as I usually do,? she said. ?The conditions weren?t the worst, but they were pretty bad. The wind was the worst, but it feels really good because I know today was a hard win. My chipping was a lot better than it has been as was my putting.?

**************

Follow Joseph Halm at twitter.com/josephhalm.

Source: http://highschoolsports.nola.com/news/article/-280781310011545467/jacob-bergeron-sinks-25-foot-putt-to-win-junior-golf-championship/

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Helping Hand: Notre Dame athletes aided in tornado relief

From left, Notre Dame track athlete Natalie Geiger and fencers Michael Rossi and Gabriel Acuna help carry a large tree branch to the road in Tuscaloosa in October of 2011. Twenty-four student athletes from Notre Dame were in Tuscaloosa volunteering time during their fall break to help clean up tornado damaged areas. (Robert Sutton | Halifax Media Group)

Published: Friday, December 28, 2012 at 10:46 p.m.

Last Modified: Friday, December 28, 2012 at 10:50 p.m.

TUSCALOOSA ? David Jones saw the best of Alabama?s community in the worst of times.

Jones, a Notre Dame cheerleader, was part of a group of two dozen Fighting Irish athletes that came to Tuscaloosa during fall break in 2011. They were there for a week of cleanup and hard work in a grieving town where more than 50 were left dead because of a tornado a few months earlier.

Now, a year and a half after that week of bonding and goodwill, Notre Dame and Alabama are getting ready to play each other for the BCS national championship.

?With the hospitality I had down in Alabama, it became one of my favorite schools,? Jones said. ?There?s no hostility, but more karma. You meet all these different faces of the Alabama community. You?re just amazed by them and now you?re playing them.?

There were no football players during that weeklong service project dubbed ?Fight for Tide.? They were preparing for the 2011 season, after all.

It wasn?t about football, anyway. Or basketball. Or softball.

The service project began with a call from Tim Cavanaugh, assistant director of Alabama?s ticket office, to Notre Dame program coordinator Sarah Smith seeking donations. The two interned together in South Bend.

That call resulted in clothes shipped to Tuscaloosa, and ultimately the 675-mile bus ride and weeklong trip.

?It?s one of those things that when special things arise we try to do something if we have the resources and the interest from the student-athletes,? said Smith, adding that a group had traveled to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. ?It all just kind of came together for the Alabama trip. A lot of kids were talking about it. We sent a bunch of clothes down there but then the conversation kind of snowballed to, Why don?t we go down there??

Other schools? students and fans also offered a hand in Tuscaloosa, including those who pull for Auburn.

Tragedy trumps rivalry any day.

?I think it speaks volumes for the kind of character and leadership that those people have, from whatever schools they come from,? Tide football coach Nick Saban said. ?People came here from Auburn, which we appreciated. They came from Kent State. I think a willingness to serve other people who are in need at the time for whatever reasons, I think speaks volumes for what kind of person somebody really is. We certainly appreciate that and certainly appreciate anything the Notre Dame students did for our community.?

The Notre Dame group cleared out lots, hauled debris and dug a ditch. There was also lots of listening.

?Everyone had a story: Where they were, who in their family was affected,? Smith said. ?I think it was kind of healing for them to tell their story to other people and that we were down there showing that we cared.

?It kind of created this bond between us and everyone we met, this kind of appreciation that we were there in solidarity. That was pretty cool to feel.?

Tide softball coach Patrick Murphy and some of his players worked with the Notre Dame athletes on a site a few miles from campus in Alberta City and took them to dinner.

?I think they made a lot of fans in Tuscaloosa because that night when we went to eat, there were several people that came up to me and asked what was going on,? Murphy said. ?I said, ?This is a group of Notre Dame student-athletes.? And people gave me a look like, ?Notre Dame??

?I can remember reading in the newspaper people wrote and said that, ?Our opinion of Notre Dame has changed tremendously.? Just a wonderful gesture by these student-athletes. All of us were really touched by it.?

Alabama athletic director Mal Moore, a former Notre Dame assistant football coach, asked to meet with the group from South Bend. He gathered them at midfield in Bryant-Denny Stadium during a stadium tour.

?I told them about my days at Notre Dame and how much I loved my time there ... and how much it meant to me personally that they chose to come here to support Tuscaloosa and the university community after the tragic tornado came through,? Moore said Friday. ?I thanked them for that, and we had a good visit, made a bunch of pictures and had a good time. It was very inspiring to me that they chose to come down and give several days of their time to the community here.?

Smith, meanwhile, said she was taken aback by the southern hospitality. They got a few cultural lessons on things like the meaning of ?Roll Tide? and the houndstooth gear popularized by iconic Tide coach Bear Bryant.

?It was just so cool to share some time together,? Smith said. ?I definitely have a soft spot for Alabama.

?Any time humans are being kind and caring for one another and have that kind of spirit of hospitality, how can you not respect that??

Source: http://www.gadsdentimes.com/article/20121228/wire/121229861

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FBI removes many redactions in Marilyn Monroe file

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? FBI files on Marilyn Monroe that could not be located earlier this year have been found and re-issued, revealing the names of some of the movie star's acquaintances who drew concern from government officials and her own entourage.

The files had previously been heavily redacted, but more details are now public in a version of the file recently obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act. The updated files reveal that some in Monroe's inner circle were concerned about her association with Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who was disinherited from his wealthy family over his leftist views.

The FBI's files on Monroe show the extent the agency was monitoring the actress for ties to communism in the years before her death in August 1962. A trip to Mexico earlier that year to shop for furniture brought her in contact with Field, who was living in the country with his wife in self-imposed exile. Informants reported to the FBI that a "mutual infatuation" had developed between Field and Monroe, which caused concern among some in her inner circle, including her therapist, the files state.

"This situation caused considerable dismay among Miss Monroe's entourage and also among the (American Communist Group in Mexico)," the file states. It includes references to an interior decorator who worked with Monroe's analyst reporting her connection to Field to the doctor.

Field's autobiography devotes an entire chapter to Monroe's Mexico trip, "An Indian Summer Interlude." He mentions that he and his wife accompanied Monroe on shopping trips and meals and he only mentions politics once in a passage on their dinnertime conversations.

"She talked mostly about herself and some of the people who had been or still were important to her," Field wrote in "From Right to Left." ''She told us about her strong feelings for civil rights, for black equality, as well as her admiration for what was being done in China, her anger at red-baiting and McCarthyism and her hatred of (FBI director) J. Edgar Hoover."

Under Hoover's watch, the FBI kept tabs on the political and social lives of many celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Charlie Chaplin and Monroe's ex-husband Arthur Miller. The bureau has also been involved in numerous investigations about crimes against celebrities, including threats against Elizabeth Taylor, an extortion case involving Clark Gable and more recently, trying to solve who killed rapper Notorious B.I.G.

The AP had sought the removal of redactions from Monroe's FBI files earlier this year as part of a series of stories on the 50th anniversary of Monroe's death. The FBI had reported that it had transferred the files to a National Archives facility in Maryland, but archivists said the documents had not been received. A few months after requesting details on the transfer, the FBI released an updated version of the files that eliminate dozens of redactions.

For years, the files have intrigued investigators, biographers and those who don't believe Monroe's death at her Los Angeles area home was a suicide.

A 1982 investigation by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office found no evidence of foul play after reviewing all available investigative records, but noted that the FBI files were "heavily censored."

That characterization intrigued the man who performed Monroe's autopsy, Dr. Thomas Noguchi. While the DA investigation concluded he conducted a thorough autopsy, Noguchi has conceded that no one will likely ever know all the details of Monroe's death. The FBI files and confidential interviews conducted with the actress' friends that have never been made public might help, he wrote in his 1983 memoir "Coroner."

"On the basis of my own involvement in the case, beginning with the autopsy, I would call Monroe's suicide 'very probable,'" Noguchi wrote. "But I also believe that until the complete FBI files are made public and the notes and interviews of the suicide panel released, controversy will continue to swirl around her death."

Monroe's file begins in 1955 and mostly focuses on her travels and associations, searching for signs of leftist views and possible ties to communism. One entry, which previously had been almost completely redacted, concerned intelligence that Monroe and other entertainers sought visas to visit Russia that year.

The file continues up until the months before her death, and also includes several news stories and references to Norman Mailer's biography of the actress, which focused on questions about whether Monroe was killed by the government.

For all the focus on Monroe's closeness to suspected communists, the bureau never found any proof she was a member of the party.

"Subject's views are very positively and concisely leftist; however, if she is being actively used by the Communist Party, it is not general knowledge among those working with the movement in Los Angeles," a July 1962 entry in Monroe's file states.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-removes-many-redactions-marilyn-monroe-file-131729814.html

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C-SPAN Caller Upset With GOP, Asks If Constitution Can Be Amended For Obama 3rd Term

Source: http://videos.mediaite.com/video/CSPAN-122912

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6 ways to optimize your retirement portfolio

1 hr.

John Wasik

CHICAGO --?You may be waiting to optimize your retirement portfolio, thinking that you should know what's going on in Washington and Europe before you act.

However, there are some changes you can set in motion right now that could make a big difference down the road regardless of what happens with the fiscal cliff, tax changes and Wall Street:

1. Boost your contribution rate
The longer you wait to contribute, the greater return you will need to achieve your goals. Thanks to the compounding effect, the more your contribute, the more you can accumulate when dividends and appreciation are added.

Raise it as much as you can because even incremental changes make a huge difference over time. Let's say you're 35, make $75,000 annually and contribute 6 percent with a 100-percent employer match. You start with $50,000 in your account now. If you just bump your contribution rate to 7 percent, your balance in 30 years would rise from $1.6 million to nearly $1.8 million, according to 401kcalculator.org. In any case, you always want to take advantage of the employer match, because it's free money.

2. Align your allocation to your age
Generally, the older you are, the more fixed-income you need -- roughly matching your bond or guaranteed investment contract portion to your age. Let's say you're 30 and you can afford to take market risk. You'd want 30 percent in bonds and 70 percent in stocks. A 60-year-old, conversely, would consider a 40 percent stocks, 60 percent fixed-income mix.

Target-date or "lifestyle" funds can do this for you, but you have to check their allocations the closer you get to retirement to see if you're comfortable with the stock mix. They are all slightly different.

3. Don't worry too much about taxes now, but have a tax plan in mind.
While it's hard to tell what Congress will do with the fiscal cliff dilemma, no one has talked about eliminating the tax break for 401(k)-type plan contributions, which are not subject to federal taxes. You can contribute up to $17,500 in 2013; another $5,500 for those over 50 or for individual retirement accounts.

Concerned about taxes down the road? That's reasonable. Consider a contribution to a Roth IRA or Roth 401(k). The contributions are taxable, although the withdrawals are not if you hold money in these accounts for at least five years past age 59 ?.

4. Lower expenses to boost return
Surprisingly, low-cost index funds accounted for only 30 percent of the assets in top-rated 401(k) plans surveyed by Brightscope for 2012. Every retirement plan should have index funds to cover U.S. and international stocks, bonds and real estate.

Here's what you can do if you don't already have that setup: You probably received a notice earlier this year detailing how much each investment option is costing you. If any of your individual funds cost more than 0.75 percent annually, you should pick a different one.

If you don't have enough options in your company plan, you can ask your employer to find cheaper index funds, which are available for as low as 0.06 percent annually. If you do this, you will easily boost your plan's performance without changing the risk profile or allocation, and it will also pay you back every year in the form of a higher net return.

5. Buy constantly and hold
Most people time the market badly. The best time to buy stocks is during the dips. Most investors can't stomach this idea, though. At the end of 2008, when stocks were really cheap, 401(k) investors only had 37 percent allocated to stocks, and at the end of the dot-com bubble in 2002, investors had 40 percent in stocks, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

What you should do is invest during good times and bad. You have no idea when bull and bear markets are going to start or stop. So if you can afford to take the risk, take advantage of the compounding over time.

6. Cut back on your employer's stock
This could be the most dangerous holding in your portfolio, concentrating a great deal of risk in one company. While you may feel a need to be loyal to your employer, it's not in your best interests. You'd be better off diversifying.

Look at what you sectors you don't have represented in your portfolio. Asset classes that are typically under-represented include real estate investment trusts, inflation-protected bonds and global stocks/bonds. Fortunately, only 8 percent of those surveyed by EBRI hold company stock. If this is still a major holding in your portfolio, make some changes. This also applies to holding single stocks.?

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/6-ways-optimize-your-retirement-portfolio-2013-1C7753897

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What we learned about humanity in 2012

The controversial extinct human lineage known as "hobbits" gained a face this year, one of many projects that shed light in 2012 on the history of modern humans and their relatives. Other discoveries include the earliest known controlled use of fire and the possibility that Neanderthals or other extinct human lineages once sailed to the Mediterranean.

Here's a look at what we learned about ourselves through our ancestors this year.

We're not alone

A trove of discoveries this year revealed a host of other extinct relatives of modern humans. For instance, researchers unearthed 3.4-million-year-old fossils of a hitherto unknown species that lived about the same time and place as Australopithecus afarensis, a leading candidate for the ancestor of the human lineage. In addition, fossils between 1.78 million and 1.95 million years old discovered in 2007 and 2009 in northern Kenya suggest that at least two extinct human species lived alongside Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of our species. Moreover, fossils only between 11,500 and 14,500 years old hint that a previously unknown type of human called the "Red Deer Cave People" once lived in China.

Bones were not all that scientists revealed about modern humans' extinct relatives in 2012. For instance, scientists finally put a face on the hobbit, a nickname for a controversial human lineage. Anthropologist Susan Hayes at the University of Wollongong in Australia reconstructed the appearance of the 3-foot (1-meter) tall, 30-year-old female member of the extinct humans officially known as Homo floresiensis, which were first discovered on the remote Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. [Image Gallery: A Real Life 'Hobbit']

DNA extracted from a recently discovered extinct human lineage known as the Denisovans ? close relatives of Neanderthals ? also revealed new details about this group, which once interbred with modern humans. The Denisovan genome that was sequenced belonged to a little girl with dark skin, brown hair and brown eyes, and displayed about 100,000 recent changes in our genome that occurred after the split from the Denisovans. A number of these changes influenced genes linked with brain function and nervous system development, leading to speculation that we may think differently from the Denisovans.

Genetic analysis also suggested the only modern humans whose ancestors did not interbreed with Neanderthals were apparently sub-Saharan Africans. These findings are just one tidbit regarding the closest extinct relatives of modern humans that was revealed this year. Scientists also found that the unusually powerful right arms of Neanderthals might not have been due to a spear-hunting life as was previously suggested, but rather one often spent scraping animal skins for clothes and shelters. Archaeologists also suggested that Neanderthals and other extinct human lineages might have been ancient mariners, venturing to the Mediterranean Islands millennia before researchers think modern humans arrived at the isles.

Humans' tool use

Ancient artifacts revealed this year also have shown how tool use has helped humanity reshape the world ? and perhaps inadvertently reshape humanity as well.

For instance, ash and charred bone, the earliest known evidence of controlled use of fire, reveal that human ancestors may have used fire 1 million years ago, 300,000 years earlier than thought, suggesting that human ancestors as early as Homo erectus may have begun using fire as part of their way of life. Controlled fires and cooked meat may have influenced human brain evolution, allowing our ancestors to evolve to have larger, more calorie-hungry brains and bodies.

Discoveries involving ancient weapons also revealed that humans learned to make and use these tools far earlier than scientists thought. For instance, what may be ancient stone arrowheads or lethal tools for hurling spearssuggest humans innovated relatively advanced weapons about 70,000 years ago, while a University of Toronto-led team of anthropologists found evidence that humans in South Africa used stone-tipped weapons for hunting 500,000 years ago, which is 200,000 years earlier than previously suggested.

Even the seemingly innocuous discovery this year of the first direct signs of cheesemaking from 7,500-year-old potsherds from Poland might help reveal how animal milk dramatically shaped the genetics of Europe. Most of the world, including the ancestors of modern Europeans, is lactose intolerant, unable to digest the milk sugar lactose as adults. However, while cheese is a dairy product, it is relatively low in lactose. Transforming milk into a product such as cheese that is friendlier to lactose-intolerant people might have helped promote the development of dairying among the first farmers of Europe. The presence of dairying over many generations may then, in turn, have set the stage for the evolution of lactase tolerance in Europe. As such, while cheese might just seem to be a topping on pizza or a companion to wine, it might have changed Western digestive capabilities.

Other clues regarding the diet of ancient relatives also emerged. For example, 2-million-year-old fossils suggest humans' immediate ancestor may have lived off a woodland diet of leaves, fruits and bark, instead of a menu based on the open savanna, as other extinct relatives of humanity did. In addition, fragments of a 1.5-million-year-old skull from a child recently found in Tanzania suggest that later members of the human lineage weren't just occasional carnivores but regular meat eaters, findings that help build the case that meat-eating helped the human lineage evolve large brains.

Humans still evolving

When it comes to the future of humanity, research this year added to accumulating evidence that natural forces of evolution continue to shape humanity. Church records of nearly 6,000 Finns born between 1760 and 1849 showed that despite humans radically altering their environments with behavior such as farming, human patterns of survival and reproduction were comparable with those of other species.

One researcher at Stanford University has even suggested that humans are getting dumber over time, having lost the evolutionary pressure to be smart once we started living in densely populated settlements several millennia ago. However, other scientists dispute this notion, pointing at geniuses such as Stephen Hawking, and suggest that rather than losing our intelligence, people have diversified, resulting in a number of different types of smarts today.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook?& Google+.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/learned-humanity-2012-152654897.html

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Egypt's prosecutor orders probe against opposition

CAIRO (AP) ? An Egyptian official says the country's top prosecutor has ordered an investigation into accusations against opposition leaders of incitement to overthrow the regime.

The prosecution official said Thursday a judge will investigate the report filed last month accusing Mohammed ElBaradei, Nobel Prize laureate and former head of the U.N. nuclear agency, along with Amr Moussa, former foreign minister and Hamdeen Sabahi, a former presidential candidate, of inciting the overthrow of Egypt's first elected president, Mohammed Morsi.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government policies.

The accusations were filed by a lawyer during a political crisis over a series of presidential decrees that granted Morsi and the committee drafting the disputed constitution immunity from judicial oversight. Tensions were fed by deadly clashes between pro- and anti-Morsi demonstrators.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypts-prosecutor-orders-probe-against-opposition-130954124.html

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The Daily Roundup for 12.26.2012

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

Continue reading The Daily Roundup for 12.26.2012

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/26/the-daily-roundup-for-11-26-2012/

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