Armed robbers hit Paris Apple store

PARIS (Reuters) – Armed robbers targeted an Apple Inc store in central Paris on New Year’s Eve, taking thousands of euros (dollars) worth of goods, a police official said on Tuesday.

The robbery took place at about 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Monday, three hours after closing time at one of Apple‘s flagship stores behind the Paris Opera which sells products ranging from iPhones and iPads to Mac computers.

The police official declined to comment on reports the thieves walked away with about 1 million euros ($ 1.32 million) of loot, saying the company was still evaluating the loss.

Christophe Crepin from the police union UNSA told reporters four masked and armed individuals forced their way into the shop and afterwards escaped in a van.

“They were well prepared. As the majority of police were busy watching the Champs Elysees (for New Year’s Eve celebrations), the robbers took advantage of this opportunity,” he said.

($ 1 = 0.7585 euros)

(Reporting By Thierry Leveque and John Irish; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his 'runaway bride'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner's celebrating the new year as a married man once again.

The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his "runaway bride," Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year's Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old "Playmate of the Month" in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.

Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year's Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.

The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner's been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

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Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

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House finally ready to vote on fiscal deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — Maneuvered into a political corner, House Republicans abandoned demands for changes in emergency legislation to prevent widespread tax increases and painful across-the-board spending cuts and cleared the way for a final, climactic New Year's night vote.

The decision capped a day of intense political calculations for conservatives who control the House. They had to weigh their desire to cut spending against the fear that the Senate would refuse to consider any changes they made in the "fiscal cliff" bill, sending it into limbo and saddling Republicans with the blame for a whopping middle class tax increase.

Adding to the GOP discomfort, one Senate Democratic leadership aide said Majority Leader Harry Reid would "absolutely not take up the bill" if the House changed it. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a requirement to keep internal deliberations private.

The legislation cleared the Senate hours earlier on a lopsided pre-dawn vote of 89-8. Administration officials met at the White House to monitor its progress.

"I do not support the bill. We are looking, though, for the best path forward," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., declared after one meeting of the party's rank-and-file.

Despite Cantor's remarks, Speaker John Boehner took no public position on the bill as he sought to negotiate a conclusion to the final crisis of a two-year term full of them.

It wasn't the first time that the tea party-infused House Republican majority has rebelled against the party establishment since the GOP took control of the chamber 24 months ago. But with the two-year term set to end Thursday at noon, it was likely the last. And as was true in earlier cases of a threatened default and government shutdown, the brinkmanship came on a matter of economic urgency, leaving the party open to a public backlash if tax increases do take effect on tens of millions.

After intensive deliberations — a pair of rank-and-file meetings sandwiched around a leadership session, the GOP high command had not yet settled on a course of action by early evening.

Instead, they canvassed Republicans to see if they wanted simply to vote on the Senate measure, or whether they wanted first to try and add spending cuts totaling about $300 billion over a decade. The cuts had passed the House twice earlier in the year but are opposed by most if not all Senate Democrats.

"We've gone as far as we can go," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga. "I think people are ready to bring this to a conclusion, and know we have a whole year ahead of us" for additional fights over spending.

The economic as well as political stakes were considerable.

Economists have warned that without action by Congress, the tax increases and spending cuts that technically took effect with the turn of the new year at midnight could send the economy into recession.

Even with enactment of the legislation, taxes are on the rise for millions.

A 2 percentage point temporary cut in the payroll tax, originally enacted two years ago to stimulate the economy, expired with the end of 2012. Neither Obama nor Republicans have made a significant effort to extend it.

The Senate-passed bill was designed to prevent that while providing for tax increases at upper incomes, as Obama campaigned for in his successful bid for a second term.

It would also prevent an expiration of extended unemployment benefits for an estimated two million jobless, block a 27 percent cut in fees for doctors who treat Medicare patients, stop a $900 pay increase for lawmakers from taking effect in March and head off a threatened spike in milk prices.

At the same time, it would stop $24 billion in spending cuts set to take effect over the next two months, although only about half of that total would be offset with spending reductions elsewhere in the budget.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the measure would add nearly $4 trillion over a decade to federal deficits, a calculation that assumed taxes would otherwise have risen on taxpayers at all income levels. There was little or no evident concern among Republicans on that point, presumably because of their belief that tax cuts pay for themselves by expanding economic growth and do not cause deficits to rise.

The relative paucity of spending cuts was a sticking point with many House Republicans. Among other items, the extension of unemployment benefits costs $30 billion, and is not offset by savings elsewhere.

"I personally hate it," said Rep. John Campbell of California. "The speaker the day after the election said we would give on taxes and we have. But we wanted spending cuts. This bill has spending increases. Are you kidding me? So we get tax increases and spending increases? Come on."

Others said unhappiness over spending outweighed fears that the financial markets will plunge on Wednesday if the fiscal cliff hasn't been averted.

"There's a concern about the markets, but there's a bigger concern, which is getting this right, which is something we haven't been very good at over the past two years," said Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio.

House Democrats met privately with Biden for their review of the measure, and the party's leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, said afterward that Boehner should permit a vote.

"That is what we expect. That is what the American people deserve," she said.

For all the struggle involved in the legislation, even its passage would merely clear the way for another round of controversy almost as soon as the new Congress convenes.

With the Treasury expected to need an expansion in borrowing authority by early spring, and funding authority for most government programs set to expire in late March, Republicans have made it clear they intend to use those events as leverage with the administration to win savings from Medicare and other government benefit programs.

McConnell said as much moments before the 2 a.m. Tuesday vote in the Senate — two hours after the advertised "cliff" deadline.

"We've taken care of the revenue side of this debate. Now it's time to get serious about reducing Washington's out-of-control spending," he said. "That's a debate the American people want. It's the debate we'll have next. And it's a debate Republicans are ready for."

The 89-8 vote in the Senate was unexpectedly lopsided.

Despite grumbling from liberals that Obama had given way too much in the bargaining, only three Democrats opposed the measure.

Among the Republican supporters were Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, an ardent opponent of tax increases, as well as Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, elected to his seat two years ago with tea party support.

It marked the first time in two decades that Republicans willingly supported higher taxes, in this case on incomes over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples. Taxes also would rise on estates greater than $5 million in size, and on capital gains and dividend income made by the wealthy.

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Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Larry Margasak and Julie Pace contributed to this story.

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NKorea's Kim wants better living standards, arms

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Making his first New Year's speech, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called Tuesday for his country to focus on economic improvements with the same urgency that scientists put into the launch of a long-range rocket last month.

Kim, shown speaking on state TV, said lifting living standards is the new year's most important task — a clear acknowledgement that North Koreans want improvement in an economy that has long lagged behind the rest of Northeast Asia.

He also pushed for the development of more advanced weapons, a "revolution" in science and technology and reunification with "compatriots" in South Korea, which elected a president last month who has vowed to open dialogue with Pyongyang after five years of tense ties.

The speech was the first televised New Year's Day message by a North Korean leader in 19 years. North Korea founder Kim Il Sung routinely addressed his people on New Year's Day, but Kim Jong Il never gave a TV address during his 17-year rule. During his leadership, the New Year's message was published as a joint editorial in the nation's three major newspapers.

North Korea also had its first grand New Year's Eve celebration, with residents of the capital treated to the boom of cannons and fireworks at midnight.

The speech itself was a signal that Kim will continue with a leadership style more in line with his gregarious grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung, than with his father, Kim Jong Il, who avoided making public speeches.

Kim Jong Un took power after his father's Dec. 17, 2011, death. Early in his first year, Pyongyang negotiated a deal with Washington for food aid in exchange for a nuclear freeze, but it collapsed after North Korea attempted to shoot a rocket into space in April. The rocket failed shortly after liftoff, but a successful second attempt on Dec. 12 helped Kim gain crucial political and popular support in his country.

North Korea hailed the launch as a big step in peaceful space exploration. Washington and others called the launch a banned test of ballistic missile technology and a step in Pyongyang's pursuit of a nuclear tipped long-range missile.

Governments are also worried by recent analysis of North Korea's main nuclear test site that indicates readiness for a possible third atomic explosion. North Korea has tested two atomic devices since 2006, both times weeks after U.N. condemnation of a long-range launch.

The annual New Year's Day message lays out North Korea's policy goals for the year. The need for a better economy and improvements in science and technology were major elements. North Korea has little arable land, is prone to natural disasters and struggles to grow enough food for its 24 million people.

Kim made no mention of North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons, the issue that most worries Washington, but he did seek to glorify — and link to the economy — the successful rocket launch.

North Korea's slogan for the year, Kim said, should be: "Let us bring about a radical turn in the building of an economic giant with the same spirit and mettle as were displayed in conquering space!"

In Pyongyang, residents danced in the snow at midnight Monday to celebrate the end of a big year for North Korea, including the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung and the first year of Kim Jong Un's leadership. Fireworks lit up the cold night sky, and people stood in fur-lined parkas, taking photos and laughing and dancing with each other in plazas.

Kim Jong Un tried in his speech to tap into North Koreans' fond memories of Kim Il Sung, said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in South Korea.

The rocket launch boosted morale, Koh said. "Now people are expecting him to improve the economy and help them live better economically," Koh said. "Kim Jong Un knows that and feels the pressure of meeting that demand."

Kim's speech avoided harsh criticism of the United States, its wartime enemy. North Korea has used past New Year's editorials to accuse the U.S. of plotting war.

But Kim underlined the need for military strength and modern weapons. "Only when it builds up its military might in every way can it develop into a thriving country and defend the security and happiness of its people," Kim said.

Kim Jong Un has made several high profile changes in his military and government, and in his speech he called on officials to "make a fundamental turnabout in their ideological viewpoint, work style and attitude."

The powerful military chief Ri Yong Ho was dismissed last year, and some officials viewed as more moderate, including Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, were elevated.

Kim Jong Un should "now work with those moderates he recently appointed to insure that North Korea immediately returns to negotiations and unilaterally announces a moratorium on all missile launches and nuclear tests," Joseph DeTrani, a former North Korea specialist for the U.S. government, wrote recently.

South Korean President-elect Park Geun-hye has said she will make efforts in her five-year term to boost aid and engage North Korea.

"If Kim Jong Un is going to engineer a shift from 'military-first' to 'It's the economy, stupid,' he is going to need Seoul's encouragement, and he doesn't have five years to wait," John Delury, an analyst at Seoul's Yonsei University, wrote recently. He said it's up to South Korea "to unclench its fist first, so that the leader of the weaker state can outstretch his hand."

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Associated Press writer Kim Kwang Hyon contributed to this story from Pyongyang, North Korea.

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Movers roundup: Facebook, Best Buy

Among the stock activity stories for Monday, Dec. 31, from AP Business News:

— Shares of Facebook Inc. rose after an analyst said advertising spending was picking up on the Internet social network and raised his rating on its stock.

— Shares of Best Buy Co. rose on light volume as the struggling electronics retailer closed out a rocky year.

— Shares of Duff & Phelps Corp. rose on news that the company had agreed to be acquired.

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Willard completes program, avoids lewdness charge

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor Fred Willard has completed a diversion program for his arrest this summer for a suspected lewd act at a Hollywood adult theater.

Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the Los Angeles city attorney's office, said Monday that the 72-year-old comic actor completed the program in September and as a result no longer faces charges stemming from the July 18 incident.

Willard was arrested after uniformed vice officers were conducting a routine investigation of the theater and they said they saw him engaging in a lewd act.

He was fired shortly thereafter from his job narrating "Market Warriors," which is produced by Boston public television station WGBH. His film credits include "Best in Show" and "Waiting for Guffman."

An email message left for Willard's agent, Mike Eisenstadt, was not immediately returned.

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Clinton's blood clot an uncommon complication

The kind of blood clot in the skull that doctors say Hillary Rodham Clinton has is relatively uncommon but can occur after an injury like the fall and concussion the secretary of state was diagnosed with earlier this month.

Doctors said Monday that an MRI scan revealed a clot in a vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind Clinton's right ear.

The clot did not lead to a stroke or neurological damage and is being treated with blood thinners, and she will be released once the proper dose is worked out, her doctors said in a statement.

Clinton has been at New York-Presbyterian Hospital since Sunday, when the clot was diagnosed during what the doctors called a routine follow-up exam. At the time, her spokesman would not say where the clot was located, leading to speculation it was another leg clot like the one she suffered behind her right knee in 1998.

Clinton had been diagnosed with a concussion Dec. 13 after a fall in her home that was blamed on a stomach virus that left her weak and dehydrated.

The type of clot she developed, a sinus venous thrombosis, "certainly isn't the most common thing to happen after a concussion" and is one of the few types of blood clots in the skull or head that are treated with blood thinners, said neurologist Dr. Larry Goldstein. He is director of Duke University's stroke center and has no role in Clinton's care or personal knowledge of it.

The area where Clinton's clot developed is "a drainage channel, the equivalent of a big vein inside the skull — it's how the blood gets back to the heart," Goldstein explained.

It should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, he said.

Dr. Joseph Broderick, chairman of neurology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, also called Clinton's problem "relatively uncommon" after a concussion.

He and Goldstein said the problem often is overdiagnosed. They said scans often show these large "draining pipes" on either side of the head are different sizes, which can mean blood has pooled or can be merely an anatomical difference.

"I'm sure she's got the best doctors in the world looking at her," and if they are saying she has no neurological damage, "I would think it would be a pretty optimistic long-term outcome," Broderick said.

A review article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 describes the condition, which more often occurs in newborns or young people but can occur after a head injury. With modern treatment, more than 80 percent have a good neurologic outcome, the report says.

In the statement, Clinton's doctors said she "is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff."

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Tentative ‘fiscal cliff’ deal reached in Senate

President Barack Obama discusses the negotiations with Capitol Hill on the looming fiscal cliff in front of middle …Racing to beat a midnight deadline, Vice President Joe Biden arrived on Capitol Hill Monday night to sell wary Democratic senators on an 11th-hour deal to avert income tax hikes on all but a sliver of the richest Americans.

Grinning broadly, Biden ignored reporters questions on whether he and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had finally forged a compromise to avoid the "fiscal cliff" that threatened the still-fragile economy with a new recession. "Happy new year," he replied.

But a Democratic Senate aide told Yahoo News that "the White House and Republicans have a deal," while a source familiar with the negotiations said President Barack Obama had discussed the compromise with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and "they both signed off."

The apparent agreement set up a Senate vote late Monday or possibly in the wee hours of Tuesday. The House of Representatives was due back at noon on Tuesday to take it up.

Under the compromise arrangement, taxes would rise on income above $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for households, while exemptions and deductions the wealthiest Americans use to reduce their tax bill would face new limits. The accord would also raise the taxes paid on large inheritances from 35% to 40% for estates over $5 million. And it would extend by one year unemployment benefits for some two million Americans.

Biden, a 36-year Senate veteran, worked out the agreement with McConnell after talks between Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner collapsed.

But with time running short, the country appeared on track to go over the cliff at midnight -- though quick congressional action, and the fact that financial markets were to be closed on New Year's Day, were expected to limit the damage.

“Today, it appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year's tax hike is within sight, but it's not done,” Obama said in hastily announced midday remarks at the White House. “There are still issues left to resolve, but we're hopeful that Congress can get it done – but it’s not done.”

"One thing we can count on with respect to this Congress is that if there is even one second left before you have to do what you’re supposed to do, they will use that last second," he said.

Obama’s remarks – by turns scolding, triumphant, and mocking of Congress – came after talks between McConnell and Biden appeared to seal the breakthrough deal.

Efforts to modify the first installment of $1.2 trillion in cuts to domestic and defense programs over 10 years -- the other portion of the “fiscal cliff,” known as sequestration -- had proved a sticking point late in the game. Democrats had sought a year-long freeze but appeared to have caved to Republican pressure and signed on to just a two-month delay. That would put the next battle over those cuts right around the time that the White House and its Republican foes are battling it out over whether to raise the country's debt limit. Republicans have vowed to push for more spending cuts, equivalent to the amount of new borrowing. Obama has vowed not to negotiate as he did in 2011, when a bruising fight threatened the first-ever default on America's obligations and resulted in the first-ever downgrade of the country's credit rating.

Experts had warned that the fiscal cliff's tax increases and spending cuts, taken together, could plunge the still-fragile economy into a new recession.

“I can report that we’ve reached an agreement on all of the tax issues,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “We are very, very close to an agreement.”

The Kentucky Republican later briefed Republicans on the details of the deal. Lawmakers emerged from that closed-door session offered hopeful appraisals that, after clearing a few last-minute hurdles, they could vote on New Year’s Eve or with 2013 just hours old.

“Tonight, I hope,” Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee told reporters. “It may be at 1, 2, 3, 4 in the morning. Oh, I guess that’s technically tomorrow.”

Republican Senators said negotiators were still working on a way to forestall two months of the “sequester” spending cuts, about $20 billion worth. And some expressed disquiet that the tentative compromise ran high on tax increases and low on spending cuts -- while warning that failure to act, triggering some $600 billion in income tax increases on all Americans who pay it and draconian spending cuts, was the worse option.

McConnell earlier had called for a vote on the tax component of the deal.

“Let me be clear: We’ll continue to work on finding smarter ways to cut spending, but let’s not let that hold up protecting Americans from the tax hike,” McConnell urged. “Let’s pass the tax relief portion now. Let’s take what’s been agreed to and get moving.”Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., followed by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., second from right, leaves …

The final compromise needed to clear the Democratic-led Senate and Republican-held House. Aides in both chambers doubted that could happen by midnight – but emphasized that there was no need to move the family into the Doomsday bunker in the back yard. Yet.

Unlike a college student who writes an end-of-semester paper overnight before a morning deadline, then drops the assignment off hours after it was due, Congress can write its own rules to minimize the damage – and Americans whose taxes are staying the same won’t see a change in their bottom line.

“It’s basically a matter of saying it’s effective January 1,” one senior Republican aide shrugged.

But passage was not a sure thing: Both the AFL-CIO labor union and the conservative Heritage Action organization argued against the package.

The breakthrough came after McConnell announced Sunday that he had started to negotiate with Biden in a bid to "jump-start" stalled talks to avoid the fiscal cliff.

Under their tentative deal, the top tax rate on household income above $450,000 would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent -- where it was under Bill Clinton, before the reductions enacted under George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003.

Some congressional liberals had expressed objections to extending tax cuts above the $250,000 income threshold Obama cited throughout the 2012 campaign. Democrats were huddling in private as well to work out whether they could support the arrangement.

Possibly with balking progressives in mind, Obama trumpeted victories dear to the left of his party. "The potential agreement that’s being talked about would not only make sure the taxes don’t go up on middle-class families, it also would extend tax credits for families with children. It would extend our tuition tax credit that’s helped millions of families pay for college. It would extend tax credits for clean energy companies that are creating jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. It would extend unemployment insurance to 2 million Americans who are out there still actively looking for a job."

Obama said he had hoped for "a larger agreement, a bigger deal, a grand bargain," to stem the tide of red ink swamping the country’s finances – but shelved that goal.

"With this Congress, that was obviously a little too much to hope for at this time," he said. "It may be we can do it in stages. We’re going to solve this problem instead in several steps."

The president also looked ahead to his next budgetary battle with Republicans, warning that “any future deficit agreement” will have to couple spending cuts with tax increases. He expressed a willingness to reduce spending on popular programs like Medicare, but said entitlement reform would have to go hand in hand with new tax revenues.

“If Republicans think that I will finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts alone … then they’ve another thing coming,” Obama said defiantly. “That’s not how it’s going to work.”

“If we’re serious about deficit reduction and debt reduction, then it’s going to have to be a matter of shared sacrifice. At least as long as I’m president. And I’m going to be president for the next four years, I hope,” he said.

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Indian gang rape victim's body cremated privately

NEW DELHI (AP) — A young woman who died after being gang-raped and beaten on a bus in India's capital was cremated privately as millions of grieving, angry residents demanded greater protection for women from sexual violence.

The cremation took place during a private ceremony in New Delhi soon after the woman's body arrived in the capital Sunday on a special Air India flight from Singapore, where she died at a hospital Saturday after being sent for medical treatment.

The attack has forced India to confront the reality that sexually assaulted women are often blamed for the crime, forced to keep quiet and discouraged from going to authorities for fear of exposing their families to ridicule. Police often refuse to accept complaints from rape victims, and the rare prosecutions that reach courts can drag on for years.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party, were at the airport to receive the woman's body and meet family members of the victim who were on the flight. Security was tight, with no access to the public or media at the crematorium.

Six men have been arrested and charged with murder in the attack on a New Delhi bus on Dec. 16. Police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said they face the death penalty if convicted.

The woman, who has not been identified, was first treated at a New Delhi hospital before being moved to Singapore's Mount Elizabeth hospital, which specializes in multi-organ transplants. The attackers inserted an iron rod into the woman's body, severely damaging her organs.

Following her death, thousands of Indians lit candles, held prayer meetings and marched through cities and towns Saturday night to express their grief and demand stronger protection for women and the death penalty for rape, which is now punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment.

But in a sign of how pervasive such crimes are, police in West Bengal state were investigating another suspected gang-rape and death.

The family of a woman said she and her husband were attacked by six men as they returned home after working at a brick factory. They dragged the woman into a nearby farm after pouring acid into her husband's mouth, the family said.

The woman was found dead with multiple injuries, said police officer Bhaskar Mukherjee, adding he was waiting for an autopsy report.

No charges have been laid. Another police officer, Sugata Sen, said four men had been detained for questioning.

In the capital, dozens of protesters tried to break through a police cordon Sunday and march to the parliament building but were pushed back. The protesters, belonging to the student wing of main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, shouted anti-government slogans as they marched.

Hundreds of policemen have sealed off the high-security area, where the seat of India's government is located, in anticipation of more protests. The area is home to parliament, the president's palace, the prime minister's office and several ministries.

Gandhi assured the protesters in a statement that the rape victim's death "deepens our determination to battle the pervasive, the shameful social attitudes and mindset that allow men to rape and molest women and girls with such an impunity."

Attitudes by Indians toward rape are so entrenched that even politicians and opinion makers have often suggested that women should not go out at night or wear clothes that might be seen as provocative.

A statement from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he offered condolences to the victim's family and urged India's government to take steps to deter such crimes and strengthen services for victims.

"Violence against women must never be accepted, never excused, never tolerated," the statement said. "Every girl and woman has the right to be respected, valued and protected."

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