COMMENTARY | Juliet Steer wanted to be buried according to Hebrew traditions in the interfaith area of Ahvath Achim Cemetery in Colchester, Conn., in accordance with Hebrew traditions, CBS reports. Steer, a black Christian, got her wish after dying of lymphoma. Her brother, Paul Steer, is being sued with the goal of exhuming his sister and moving her body out of the cemetery.
Maria Balaban is a 72-year-old cemetery board member, according to the Associated Press. Balaban was present when the board voted to allow non-Jewish people to be interred in the interfaith section of the cemetery. A countersuit filed by Balaban's congregation is accusing her of working to be rid of Ms. Steer because of her skin color rather than over religious grounds.
If that's the case what we may have here is a good, old-fashioned case of a bitter, old racist reacting as if the skin color of a corpse will somehow filter through the ground and infect the bodies of lily-white-skinned Jews in nearby plots. The very idea of digging up Steer's body because she is black is shocking to me, particularly when it comes from a member of a religious body so familiar with being on the receiving end of discrimination.
Balaban's lawyer states his client is not a racist, but Steer's brother Paul disagrees, according to CNN. He claims Balaban stated, "If she was buried at the back of the cemetery she would accept it more," and added, "Only a racist would say something like that."
Such a phrase is frighteningly close to pre-civil rights era admonitions to people of color ordering them to sit at the back of the bus. I think Rosa Parks would turn in her grave like a top spun by a teenager hopped up on crystal meth if she heard about this.
While I don't understand most religious motivations I do understand that the rules of the cemetery should be respected. If those rules allow for the burial of non-Jews than Balaban should take her objections and bury them while issuing a vow never to exhume them.
Wikipedia may black out its website Wednesday to protest anti-piracy legislation under consideration in Congress.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced on Twitter Monday that the popular community-based online encyclopedia will shut down its English versions for 24 hours in protest. Users of the site have discussed for more than a month whether it should react to the legislation and in the past few days, tried to decide how.
The foundation behind the site, Wikimedia, says it is still collecting input from users and expects to make its final decision later Monday evening on the details of the protest based on that feedback. However, a large-scale blackout is expected at this time.
"We are looking at a powerful protest," said Jay Walsh, spokesman for the foundation.
The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act pending in Congress are designed to crack down on sales of pirated U.S. products overseas.
Supporters say the legislation is needed to protect intellectual property and jobs. Critics say the legislation could hurt the technology industry and infringe on free-speech rights.
Tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others have questioned the legislation and said it poses a serious risk to the industry. Several online communities such as Reddit, Boing Boing and others have announced plans to go dark in protest.
Wikipedia is considering several different forms of response, from a banner across the top of the page to a black out in certain areas, up to a worldwide shutdown, Walsh said. If Wikipedia opts to black out, it would be the largest and most well-known website to do so.
"It's not a muscle that is normally flexed," Walsh said.
The Obama administration has also raised concerns about the legislation and said over the weekend that it will work with Congress on legislation to help battle piracy and counterfeiting while defending free expression, privacy, security and innovation in the Internet.
PARIS ? Standard & Poor's swept the debt-ridden European continent with punishing credit downgrades Friday, stripping France of its coveted AAA status and dropping Italy even lower. Germany retained its top-notch rating, but Portugal's debt was consigned to junk.
In all, S&P, which took away the United States' AAA rating last summer, lowered the ratings of nine countries, complicating Europe's efforts to find a way out of a debt crisis that still threatens to cause worldwide economic harm.
Austria also lost its AAA status, Italy and Spain fell by two notches, and S&P also cut ratings on Malta, Cyprus, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The downgrades on more half of the countries that use the euro could drive up yields on European government debt as investors demand more compensation for holding bonds deemed to be riskier. Higher borrowing costs would put more financial pressure on countries already contending with heavy debt burdens.
"In our view, the policy initiatives taken by European policymakers in recent weeks may be insufficient to fully address ongoing systemic stresses in the eurozone," S&P said in a statement.
Stocks fell Friday as downgrade rumors reached the trading floors of Europe and the United States. But the declines were nothing like the wrenching swings of last summer and fall, when the debt crisis threw the markets into turmoil.
The Dow Jones industrial average in New York was down 0.5 percent. Stocks fell 0.6 percent in Germany, 0.5 percent in Britain and 0.1 in France, but each of those markets closed before French Finance Minister Francois Baroin gave first word of the country's downgrade on French television.
Earlier Friday, the euro hit its lowest level in more than a year and borrowing costs for European nations rose.
Some analysts downplayed the impact of the downgrades.
"It's going to create bad headlines for a day or two," said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. But "there's no underlying new information ... This will be quickly forgotten."
Still, the cut in the French credit rating may lead bond traders to raise borrowing costs for the financial rescue fund, said Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, a financial firm.
"There's a legitimate reason to be concerned," he said. "A weaker France means a weaker bailout fund."
France's downgrade to AA+ lowers it to the level of U.S. long-term debt, which S&P downgraded last summer. S&P had warned 15 European nations in December that they were at risk for a downgrade.
France is the second-largest contributor behind Germany to Europe's financial rescue fund. The fund still has a rating of AAA. That means that it can borrow on the bond market at low rates.
Borrowing costs for the French government rose before the announcement. The yield on France's 10-year government bond rose to 3.1 percent from 3 percent earlier. That is still less than the 3.36 percent rate on the same bond last week and far below the 6.6 percent that Italy has to pay to borrow money from bond investors for 10 years.
Germany, the strongest economy in Europe, pays a yield of just 1.76 percent. The United States 10-year Treasury note paid 1.85 percent Friday, down 0.08 percentage points ? a sign that investors were seeking safety in U.S. debt.
Speaking on France-2 Television, Baroin said the downgrade of France's AAA sovereign debt rating was not "a catastrophe." He underscored that France still had a solid rating.
"The United States, the world's largest economy, was downgraded over the summer," Baroin said. "You have to be relative, you have keep your cool. It's necessary not to frighten the French people about it."
Some affected countries took issue with S&P's conclusions. Portugal's Finance Ministry said there were "significant methodological shortcomings" in the agency's appraisal because it overlooked the bailed-out country's debt-reduction and economic reform efforts.
European Commission Vice President Olli Rehn called S&P's actions "inconsistent." He said countries affected by the euro crisis have taken "decisive action in all fronts of its crisis response" to push reforms and strengthen banks.
Fears of a downgrade brought a sour end to a mildly encouraging week for Europe's heavily indebted nations and were a stark reminder that the 17-country eurozone's debt crisis is far from over.
Earlier Friday, Italy had capped a strong week for government debt auctions, seeing its borrowing costs drop for a second day in a row as it successfully raised as much as euro4.75 billion ($6.05 billion).
Spain and Italy completed successful bond auctions on Thursday, and European Central Bank president Mario Draghi noted "tentative signs of stabilization" in the region's economy.
The downgrades could drive up the cost of European government debt as investors demand more compensation for holding bonds deemed to be riskier than they had been. Higher borrowing costs would put more financial pressure on countries already contending with heavy debt burdens.
In Greece, negotiations Friday to get investors to take a voluntary cut on their Greek bond holdings appeared close to collapse, raising the specter of a potentially disastrous default by the country that kicked off Europe's financial troubles more than two years ago.
The deal, known as the Private Sector Involvement, aims to reduce Greece's debt by euro100 billion by swapping private creditors' bonds with new ones with a lower value, and is a key part of a euro130 billion international bailout. Without it, the country could suffer a catastrophic default that would send shock waves through the global economy.
Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos met on Thursday and Friday with representatives of the Institute of International Finance, a global body representing the private bondholders. Finance ministry officials from the eurozone also met in Brussels Thursday night.
At Friday's Italian auction, investors demanded an interest rate of 4.83 percent to lend Italy three-year money, down from an average rate of 5.62 percent in the previous auction and far lower than the 7.89 percent in November, when the country's financial crisis was most acute.
While Italy paid a slightly higher rate for bonds maturing in 2018, which were also sold in Friday's auction, demand was between 1.2 percent and 2.2 percent higher than what was on offer.
The results were not as strong as those of bond auctions the previous day, when Italy raised euro12 billion and demand was strong for a sale of Spanish debt.
"Overall, it underscores that while all the auctions in the eurozone have been battle victories, the war is a long way from being resolved (either way)," said Marc Ostwald, strategist at Monument Securities. "These euro area auctions will continue to present themselves as market risk events for a very protracted period."
Italy's euro1.9 trillion in government debt and heavy borrowing needs this year have made it a focal point of the European debt crisis.
Italy has passed austerity measures and is on a structural reform course that Premier Mario Monti claims should bring down Italy's high bond yields, which he says are no longer warranted.
Analysts have said the successful recent bond auctions were at least in part the work of the ECB, which has inundated banks with cheap loans, giving them ready cash that at least some appear to be using to buy higher-yielding short-term government bonds.
Some 523 banks took euro489 billion in credit for up to three years at a current interest cost of 1 percent.
___
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome, Associated Press writer Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels and AP Business writers David McHugh in Frankfurt, Paul Wiseman in Washington and Matthew Craft in New York.
We went hands-on with the Droid RAZR MAXX at CES 2012 and well -- it's a Droid RAZR with a 3300 mAh battery taking place of the original 1780 mAh power source and while that's impressive in its own right, the most impressive point is that it doesn't add any extra bulk. That said; If you skipped out on the original Droid RAZR due to battery concerns, come Jan. 26 you can pick up the Droid RAZR MAXX from Verizon Wireless for $299 with a two-year contract.
>>winter storm
making its way from the the midwest to the northeast. now we'll go to al upstairs with details on the story. hey, al.
>>thank you very much, ann. we are talking about a big
winter storm
that's dumped anywhere from six to
12 inches of snow
through the midwest. this is wisconsin where they are digging out. they have the snow shovels going. we have more to talk about. let's look at what we have seen as far as snowfall amounts. gaylord, michigan, 9 inches. dupage, illinois, 6.4.
downers grove
, illinois, 6.4. chicago, five inches.
winter storm
warnings and
winter weather
advisories from
traverse city
, michigan down to bristol and out to caribou, maine. we have a system and a front pushing through. we can see rain in new
york city
. behind it, snow from chicago,
green bay
, alpena into pittsburgh. snowfall amounts, real
lake effect
snowfall amounts. anywhere from 12 to 18 inches of snow buffalo to watertown. cleveland, three to six inches. beckley, 1 to 6. moves out quickly but a lot of cold air behind
University of Houston opens Sleep and Anxiety Center for KidsPublic release date: 10-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Melissa Carroll mcarroll@uh.edu 713-743-8153 University of Houston
Clinical research center provides low-cost evaluation, treatment for children and adolescents
Children who have chronic sleep problems may be much more likely to develop mental health disorders as adolescents and adults, according to Candice Alfano, associate professor in clinical psychology at the University of Houston (UH) and director of the new Sleep and Anxiety Center for Kids (SACK).
To address this problem and further research in the area, Alfano opened SACK, a clinical research center at UH that provides low-cost, empirically based evaluation and treatment services for children and adolescents who struggle with anxiety and/or sleep disorders. "Several research studies also are being conducted at SACK, which means that many of the families calling (on behalf of their children) will qualify to participate in a study where they will get top-of-the-line treatment at no cost," Alfano said.
"We know from previous research that anxiety and sleep problems are among the most common in kids, affecting up to 30 percent of youth," she said. "Despite their high prevalence, there is little research taking place to teach us how exactly sleep and mental health disorders are related. What we do know is that this relationship is much more complex than simply saying these problems co-occur. If we can identify the kids who are most likely to be anxious or depressed, perhaps based on the earlier emergence of sleep problems, then we can intervene before these disorders take hold."
In addition to the possibility of developing mental health problems later, chronically insufficient sleep in children has been found to have negative effects on performance in school, extracurricular activities and social functioning. Inadequate sleep may interfere with a child's ability to concentrate and follow directions, and is continually linked with behavior problems, irritability, accidents and injuries, and conflict in relationships with family and friends.
"There are some kids who have a tough time 'shutting off' at night and blocking out different types of stimuli in the environment," Alfano said. "Sleep masks and earplugs are a good way to help some kids settle into sleep. Other kids, however, need more help."
"We teach families about the importance of sleep and that it should be made a priority, the same way eating right and exercising are important. We teach children about sleep hygiene, which includes things like keeping the same bedtime and wake time every day, not having caffeinated drinks after lunch, and sleeping in your own bed every night. We also teach kids self-imagery and relaxation skills to deal with intrusive thoughts and feelings of restlessness when trying to fall asleep."
As a recipient of a Mentored Career Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Alfano enters year four of a five-year research study that is examining sleep disturbances in children with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). "We are studying a total of 80 children, ages 7 to 11 years, based on several measures of sleep," Alfano said. She completed the first half of recruitment for the project previously at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and will be completing data collection over the next two years in Houston.
"We in the process of submitting preliminary findings from the study for publication," Alfano said. "What is exciting is that we are finding the same objective sleep patterns in children with GAD that we see in depressed adults. This is particularly intriguing because we know that having GAD as a child is a huge risk factor for developing depression later on, but we don't yet understand exactly why this is. This data suggests it's more than just a co-occurring problem, sleep abnormalities could be a mechanism through which anxiety and depression develop."
Alfano uses a range of methods to assess children's sleep, including clinical interviews with parents and children, polysomnography and actigraphy. An actigraph is a watch-like device worn on the wrist to measure sleep patterns. "It collects data continuously for up to two weeks," she said. "A computer-generated algorithm is then used to score sleep and wake periods. It's a nice, non-invasive way to get a picture of what's going on with a child's sleep without having them sleep in a laboratory with electrodes and wires all over them."
For more detailed questions about sleep (e.g., sleep stages including rapid eye movement sleep) she uses polysomnography, a comprehensive recording of the complex, internal changes in the brain and body that occur during sleep. Polysomnography is often used to diagnose or rule out sleep disorders such as narcolepsy, periodic limb movement disorder and obstructive sleep apnea.
The type of award Alfano received, the Career Development Award from NIMH, requires mentorship and led her to collaborate with Dr. Daniel Glaze, a neurologist and chief of the Texas Children's Sleep Center at Texas Children's Hospital.
"It's a great situation to work with Dr. Glaze and the Texas Children's Sleep Center, one of the few accredited centers in the country specializing in pediatric sleep disorders," Alfano said. "I look forward to a long and productive relationship working with Dr. Glaze and other sleep experts as Texas Children's Hospital."
Alfano is co-author of the book, "Child Anxiety Disorders: A Guide to Research and Treatment," and co-editor of the book, "Social Anxiety Disorder in Adolescents and Young Adults: Translating Developmental Science into Practice." She also serves as associate editor of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders.
###
About the Sleep and Anxiety Center for Kids (SACK)
The Sleep and Anxiety Center for Kids (SACK) is a clinical research center in the department of psychology at the University of Houston dedicated to understanding the connections between children's sleep at night and their behavior and emotions during the day. Research at SACK focuses on helping school-aged children manage and overcome their anxieties, fears and sleep-related problems. Both research opportunities and low-cost clinical services based on the latest scientific evidence are offered to families. For more information about research opportunities and clinical services at SACK, please call 713-743-8600 or visit the SACK website, http://www.uh.edu/SACK
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation's fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 39,500 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
University of Houston opens Sleep and Anxiety Center for KidsPublic release date: 10-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Melissa Carroll mcarroll@uh.edu 713-743-8153 University of Houston
Clinical research center provides low-cost evaluation, treatment for children and adolescents
Children who have chronic sleep problems may be much more likely to develop mental health disorders as adolescents and adults, according to Candice Alfano, associate professor in clinical psychology at the University of Houston (UH) and director of the new Sleep and Anxiety Center for Kids (SACK).
To address this problem and further research in the area, Alfano opened SACK, a clinical research center at UH that provides low-cost, empirically based evaluation and treatment services for children and adolescents who struggle with anxiety and/or sleep disorders. "Several research studies also are being conducted at SACK, which means that many of the families calling (on behalf of their children) will qualify to participate in a study where they will get top-of-the-line treatment at no cost," Alfano said.
"We know from previous research that anxiety and sleep problems are among the most common in kids, affecting up to 30 percent of youth," she said. "Despite their high prevalence, there is little research taking place to teach us how exactly sleep and mental health disorders are related. What we do know is that this relationship is much more complex than simply saying these problems co-occur. If we can identify the kids who are most likely to be anxious or depressed, perhaps based on the earlier emergence of sleep problems, then we can intervene before these disorders take hold."
In addition to the possibility of developing mental health problems later, chronically insufficient sleep in children has been found to have negative effects on performance in school, extracurricular activities and social functioning. Inadequate sleep may interfere with a child's ability to concentrate and follow directions, and is continually linked with behavior problems, irritability, accidents and injuries, and conflict in relationships with family and friends.
"There are some kids who have a tough time 'shutting off' at night and blocking out different types of stimuli in the environment," Alfano said. "Sleep masks and earplugs are a good way to help some kids settle into sleep. Other kids, however, need more help."
"We teach families about the importance of sleep and that it should be made a priority, the same way eating right and exercising are important. We teach children about sleep hygiene, which includes things like keeping the same bedtime and wake time every day, not having caffeinated drinks after lunch, and sleeping in your own bed every night. We also teach kids self-imagery and relaxation skills to deal with intrusive thoughts and feelings of restlessness when trying to fall asleep."
As a recipient of a Mentored Career Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Alfano enters year four of a five-year research study that is examining sleep disturbances in children with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). "We are studying a total of 80 children, ages 7 to 11 years, based on several measures of sleep," Alfano said. She completed the first half of recruitment for the project previously at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and will be completing data collection over the next two years in Houston.
"We in the process of submitting preliminary findings from the study for publication," Alfano said. "What is exciting is that we are finding the same objective sleep patterns in children with GAD that we see in depressed adults. This is particularly intriguing because we know that having GAD as a child is a huge risk factor for developing depression later on, but we don't yet understand exactly why this is. This data suggests it's more than just a co-occurring problem, sleep abnormalities could be a mechanism through which anxiety and depression develop."
Alfano uses a range of methods to assess children's sleep, including clinical interviews with parents and children, polysomnography and actigraphy. An actigraph is a watch-like device worn on the wrist to measure sleep patterns. "It collects data continuously for up to two weeks," she said. "A computer-generated algorithm is then used to score sleep and wake periods. It's a nice, non-invasive way to get a picture of what's going on with a child's sleep without having them sleep in a laboratory with electrodes and wires all over them."
For more detailed questions about sleep (e.g., sleep stages including rapid eye movement sleep) she uses polysomnography, a comprehensive recording of the complex, internal changes in the brain and body that occur during sleep. Polysomnography is often used to diagnose or rule out sleep disorders such as narcolepsy, periodic limb movement disorder and obstructive sleep apnea.
The type of award Alfano received, the Career Development Award from NIMH, requires mentorship and led her to collaborate with Dr. Daniel Glaze, a neurologist and chief of the Texas Children's Sleep Center at Texas Children's Hospital.
"It's a great situation to work with Dr. Glaze and the Texas Children's Sleep Center, one of the few accredited centers in the country specializing in pediatric sleep disorders," Alfano said. "I look forward to a long and productive relationship working with Dr. Glaze and other sleep experts as Texas Children's Hospital."
Alfano is co-author of the book, "Child Anxiety Disorders: A Guide to Research and Treatment," and co-editor of the book, "Social Anxiety Disorder in Adolescents and Young Adults: Translating Developmental Science into Practice." She also serves as associate editor of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders.
###
About the Sleep and Anxiety Center for Kids (SACK)
The Sleep and Anxiety Center for Kids (SACK) is a clinical research center in the department of psychology at the University of Houston dedicated to understanding the connections between children's sleep at night and their behavior and emotions during the day. Research at SACK focuses on helping school-aged children manage and overcome their anxieties, fears and sleep-related problems. Both research opportunities and low-cost clinical services based on the latest scientific evidence are offered to families. For more information about research opportunities and clinical services at SACK, please call 713-743-8600 or visit the SACK website, http://www.uh.edu/SACK
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation's fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 39,500 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
HTC should be feeling pretty proud of itself right about now.
This morning at CES, the smartphone-maker managed to bag two U.S. firsts. Not only was its Titan II the first to announce the world's first 4G LTE Windows Phone, but it also contains the highest-megapixel smartphone camera we've heard of stateside, a 16-megapixel whopper.
Just after the smartphone was announced today, I got a chance to get eye-to-eye with the Titan II. At first blush, it looks nearly identical to the original Titan, which is new to the scene in its own right. There are some subtle differences, you may call them, but I find them improvements.
For instance, instead of a hard plastic backing, the Titan II is covered everywhere with a soft-touch finish of a lighter gray, and there's some pocked texturing over the battery cover at the base of the phone's back. Overall, it's a lot more comfortable in the hand.
The phone still has its hungry-man build and its 4.7-inch Super LCD display, which nicely showcases the clean, simple Windows Phone interface. There's a 1.3-megapixel camera on the front as well.
It's the back of the phone that's the most thrilling--a 16-megapixel camera that has the capability to beat the pants off every other high-end 8-megapixel camera out there (the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ion that was announced today has a 12-megapixel camera, FYI.)
The HTC Titan II took this impressive outdoor shot, which has been cropped, but not resized.
(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
I took a few minutes to see how well the camera actually performed. There was an abundance of natural light, so I wasn't able to stress test the Titan II in low-lighting situations or night shots. The photos that I did take were very impressive indeed, with accurate focus and sharp edges throughout. There were some weird lighting gradients with the front-facing camera, but so far the 16-megapixel camera is truly a winner.
In addition to the camera boost, the Titan II has a larger battery--now 1,730mAh, up from 1,650mAh on the original Titan. This is one handset I can't wait to try out in the real world, whenever that is. Unfortunately, AT&T and HTC are still mum on pricing and availability.
WASHINGTON ? Americans are feeling confident enough in the economy to go back to a time-honored tradition ? taking on a little extra debt.
Consumer borrowing surged in November by $20.4 billion, the Federal Reserve said Monday. It was the third straight increase and the largest monthly gain in a decade.
The jump in borrowing was largely because people took out more loans to buy cars and swiped their credit cards frequently to purchase holiday gifts.
In November, total consumer borrowing rose to seasonally adjusted $2.48 trillion. That's nearly at pre-recession levels and up from a post-recession low point of $2.39 trillion reached in September 2010. Borrowing had tumbled for more than two years during and immediately after the recession.
Since then, consumers have increased their borrowing in 13 of the past 14 months. Americans are taking on more debt after seeing the unemployment rate drop and the economy improve, albeit modestly. Many are also leaning on their credit cards and loans to make up for wages that haven't kept pace with inflation this year.
Holiday sales were solid in November, and the U.S. auto industry had its two best sales months for the year in November and December. The Fed's credit report appeared to reflect those sales.
The category that measures credit card debt rose in November by $5.6 billion, the most since March 2008. The gauge that tracks auto loans and student loans increased $14.8 billion, nearly matching July's gain that was the biggest since February 2005.
Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at the Martin Smith School of Business at California State University, said many consumers were likely persuaded by incentives that retailers and auto dealers offered to boost sales.
Still, Paul Edelstein, director of financial economics at IHS Global Insight, expressed concern that consumers may have relied on their credit cards to finance holiday purchases.
The rise in borrowing comes as many consumers are seeing little to no growth in their paychecks. Inflation-adjusted, after-tax incomes shrank by nearly 2 percent in the July-September period.
To make up the difference, many consumers have reduced the amount they save. The savings rate fell in November to 3.5 percent ? the lowest level since the recession began. The savings rate jumped in 2008 to 5 percent and stayed above that level until early last year.
Sohn said he expects the savings rate to level off near November's level. He also said the increase in consumer demand should prompt businesses to hire more workers. Those gains would allow consumers to finance their spending with rising incomes.
In December, employers added 200,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent, the government said Friday. It was the sixth month in a row that the economy had added at least 100,000 jobs, the longest streak since 2006. And the unemployment rate dropped to its lowest level in nearly three years.
With more jobs and better pay, consumers could step up spending even further. That could lead more companies to add workers, which ultimately drives more spending and more hiring. Economists call that a virtuous cycle.
Still, a recession in Europe could dampen demand for U.S. exports and weaken financial markets.
The Federal Reserve's borrowing report covers auto loans, student loans and credit cards. It excludes mortgages, home equity loans and other loans tied to real estate.
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MT @QuinnipiacPoll: FL 01/09/12 Romney Has Big GOP Likely Voter Lead In FL; Most Voters Say They Might Change Their Mind; details 2foloIl y a environ 2 heuresvia TweetDeck
Here are the Baseball Hall Of Fame voting results for 2012. This year will see the enshrinement of Reds shortstop Barry Larkin, a worthy Hall Of Famer and a scary N.L. Central opponent for Pirates pitchers in the 1990s. Players who got less than the necessary 75 percent of the vote but more than 50 percent are, in order, Jack Morris, Jeff Bagwell, Lee Smith, Tim Raines and Alan Trammell. This will come as no shock to serious baseball fans, but that order doesn't make much sense. There isn't much reason not to enshrine Bagwell (another fearsome N.L. Central opponent) besides totally unsubstantiated steroid suspicions. And anyone who thinks Morris or Smith are half as deserving as Raines or Trammell probably needs their heads examined. Nonetheless, Larkin is a very deserving pick.
To no one's surprise, none of the three former Pirates on the ballot (Jeromy Burnitz, Terry Mulholland and Tony Womack) received any votes.
Check out Bucs Dugout's interview with Barry Larkin here.
Hundreds of bloggers were bribed to write posts promoting Google Chrome in recent weeks. The scandal is only worsened by Google's excuse: The whole scheme was dreamed up by the company it hired to help make things popular on the web.
You might want to clear some space on your desk for your forehead before reading any further.
Professional Google obsessive Danny Sullivan revealed yesterday that the web was littered with more than 400 mostly vapid blog posts touting Google Chrome and declaring themselves "sponsored by Google." At least one of the posts helped juice Google Chrome's search engine rankings, in direct violation of Google's own guidelines. And a great many more of the posts were, as Sullivan put it, garbage, reading like they were assembled by computer algorithm.
Google's reply? It blamed the ad agencies it hired, including Unruly, which touts its ability to make web videos popular, and Essence Digital, which helps clients navigate the world of pay-per-click advertising.
One might think the operator of the world's most popular video site and pay-per-click advertising scheme would have some in-house expertise on such matters. But then, maybe Google's experts have better things to do. Building the world's largest internet borg is one thing; having to actually use it is something entirely different.
SANTIAGO, Chile?? Firefighters are making progress against a major blaze in one of Chile's most spectacular national parks, the government said Sunday, and the Israeli tourist accused of setting the fire denied guilt.
Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter announced that light rain and diminished winds had helped emergency workers control three of the six areas of the fire at the Torres del Paine park, though the blaze has burned more 48 square miles (12,500 hectares) since starting Tuesday.
A court on Saturday ordered Rotem Singer, a 23-year-old Israeli citizen, to remain in the region while he faces charges of negligently setting the blaze. Officials said he failed to completely extinguish a fire set to burn toilet paper at a camp.
Singer denied responsibility in an interview Sunday with Israeli Army Radio.
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Gingrich becomes tearful speaking about his mother
"It's important for me to say that it wasn't me. They've placed the blame on me," Singer said.
He said he was not sure how he became "the main suspect" and was waiting for a lawyer to arrive from Santiago.
If convicted, Singer could face a fine and 41 to 60 days in jail, though Chilean law can allow short sentences to be served outside confinement if the convicted person appears to periodically register with officials.
More than 500 firefighters are trying to quell the fire, which forced officials to evacuate 400 tourists and close the park, famed for its dramatic, snowcapped peaks, through January, damaging the economy of the area.
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Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
PASADENA, Calif. ? As planet Earth rang in the new year, a different kind of countdown was happening at the moon.
After a 3 1/2-month journey, a NASA spacecraft flew over the moon's south pole, fired its engine and dropped into orbit Saturday in the first of two back-to-back arrivals over the New Year's weekend.
Mission control at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers and applause after receiving confirmation that the probe was healthy and circling the moon. An engineer was seen on closed-circuit television blowing a noisemaker to herald the New Year's Eve arrival.
"Everything went just as we hoped. The burn was spot-on," chief scientist Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a post-mission interview with The Associated Press.
The team toasted sparkling cider, but the celebration was brief. Despite the successful maneuver, the work was not over. Its twin still had to enter lunar orbit on New Year's Day.
The Grail probes ? short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory ? have been cruising independently toward their destination since launching in September aboard the same rocket on a mission to measure lunar gravity.
Hours before revelers in Times Square watched the ball drop, Grail-A approached the moon and fired its engine for about 40 minutes to get captured into orbit. Deep space antennas in the California desert and Madrid tracked every move and fed real-time updates to ground controllers
About 270 family members and friends of the mission team descended on the NASA campus to watch the drama unfold on a live feed.
"This is great, a big relief," deputy project scientist Sami Asmar told the jubilant crowd.
Grail is the 110th mission to target the moon since the dawn of the Space Age including the six Apollo moon landings that put 12 astronauts on the surface. Despite the attention the moon has received, scientists don't know everything about Earth's nearest neighbor.
Why the moon is ever so slightly lopsided with the far side more mountainous than the side that always faces Earth remains a mystery. A theory put forth earlier this year suggested that Earth once had two moons that collided early in the solar system's history, producing the hummocky region.
Grail is expected to help researchers better understand why the moon is asymmetrical and how it formed by mapping the uneven lunar gravity field that will indicate what's below the surface.
Previous lunar missions have attempted to study the moon's gravity ? which is about one-sixth Earth's pull ? with mixed results. Grail is the first mission devoted to this goal.
Once in orbit, the near-identical spacecraft will spend the next two months refining their positions until they are just 34 miles above the surface and flying in formation. Data collection will begin in March.
The $496 million mission will be closely watched by schoolchildren. An effort by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, will allow middle school students to use cameras aboard the probes to zoom in and pick out their favorite lunar spots to photograph.
Despite the latest focus on the moon, NASA won't be sending astronauts back anytime soon. The Obama administration last year nixed a lunar return in favor of landing humans on an asteroid and eventually Mars.
A jaunt to the moon is usually speedy. It took the Apollo astronauts three days to zip there aboard the powerful Saturn V rocket. Since NASA wanted to economize by launching on a small rocket, it took Grail a leisurely 3 1/2 months to make a roundabout trip.
NASA's last moonshot occurred in 2009 with the launch of a pair of spacecraft ? one that circled the moon and another that deliberately crashed into the surface and uncovered frozen water in one of the permanently shadowed lunar craters.
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Online:
Mission: http://grail.nasa.gov
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Follow Alicia Chang's coverage at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia
Brave souls are seen participating in the last year's Coney Island Polar Bear Club New Year's Day Plunge.
By Rob Lovitt, msnbc.com contributor
Resolutions, shmesolutions. If you really want to get a jump on the new year, there?s nothing like a plunge into icy water to clear the head, focus one?s attention and put things in perspective.
?You?re totally immersed in this intense experience,? said Dennis Thomas, president of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, a winter-swimming group that sponsors an annual New Year?s Day plunge?in the Long Island beach community.
?It?s not about work or family or money or any of the other stressful things we deal with every day,? he said. ?It takes you somewhere else so simultaneously, it?s a way to leave things behind.?
Like your sanity? Not so, maintains Thomas. ?It used to be a bunch of old weird guys doing it; now we have 150 members and get about 100 swimmers every weekend,? he told msnbc.com. ?We?re not those nuts on the beach anymore.?
For newbies, the New Year?s Day swim offers a good introduction as the water temperature will be in the mid-40s, relatively balmy compared to the 31 or 32 degrees it?ll be later in the winter. According to Thomas, approximately 1,200 swimmers will take the plunge with another 5,000?6,000 less-adventurous spectators cheering them on.
They should be in good, albeit goosebumped, company as similar New Year?s plunges will take place in Boston, Seattle, Toronto and other cities across the U.S. and Canada. Most are free, although many ask participants to gather pledges for charitable causes.
The Coney Island plunge, for example, is one of 11 mid-winter events that are participating in Freezin? for a Reason, a fundraiser for Camp Sunshine, a retreat for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. Ranging from an ice-choked lake in Virginia to the frigid waters of Maine?s Casco Bay, the events promise to be heartwarming and bone-chilling at the same time.
Then again, if misery truly loves company, it?d be hard to beat the MSP Polar Bear Plunge?in Annapolis, Md., on Jan. 28, when as many as 12,000 hardy souls will take to the waters of Chesapeake Bay. Now in its 16th year, the event has raised more than $400,000 for Special Olympics Maryland.
The event is part of a day-long festival called PlungeFest, which will feature live music, a pee-wee plunge for the kids ? think wading pools, not open water ? and a beer garden for adults. Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco is scheduled to make a celebrity plunge ? unless, that is, he has to be in Indianapolis for the Super Bowl a week later.
Then again, whether Flacco goes in the water or not, other plungers may be too focused on their own impending immersion to notice. With typical late-January water temperatures registering in the mid-30s, even experienced plungers have been known to get goosebumps before they even get wet.
?As many times as I?ve done it, I still get nervous,? said Kelley Schniedwind, spokesperson for Special Olympics Maryland and herself a frequent plunger. ?You?re standing on the beach, saying, ?Am I really about to do this???
Afterward, though, she?s always glad she did. ?You look around, people are laughing and yelling, and you think, wow, I just did something crazy, it was fun and I survived. I feel really good.?
More on Itineraries
Rob Lovitt is a longtime travel writer who still believes the journey is as important as the destination. Follow him at Twitter.
ABUJA (Reuters) ? The death toll from a bomb attack on a church just outside Nigeria's capital Abuja on Christmas Day has risen to 37, with 57 people wounded, a source at the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said on Friday.
The bombing at St. Theresa's Catholic church in Madalla on Abuja's outskirts during a packed Christmas mass was the deadliest of a series of Christmas attacks on Nigerian churches and other targets by the militant Islamist sect Boko Haram.
"As of just now, the latest death toll from the bombing of St. Theresa's church is at 37. Wounded, we have 57," a senior NEMA official said. The initial death toll had been 27.
The official asked not to be identified because the victims were now in the hands of hospitals and morgues.
President Goodluck Jonathan's office put out a statement late on Friday pledging that "the government will fight Boko Haram, the group of evil-minded people who want to cause anarchy, to the end."
Jonathan held talks on Friday with Mohame Bazoum, Deputy Prime Minister of Niger. Security officials suspect the countries' porous common border is a gathering point for militants, and that Boko Haram may have made contact there with al Qaeda's north African wing.
"The perpetrators pass through borders at will and we have to ensure that there are no safe havens for them in the sub-region," Jonathan said.
He had summoned his security chiefs for an emergency meeting on Thursday to discuss the growing Islamist militant threat and how to deal with it.
National Security Adviser General Owoye Andrew Azazi told Reuters that Nigerian security services were considering making contact with moderate members of Boko Haram via "back channels," even though explicit talks are officially ruled out.
EXPLOSIONS, SHOOTINGS IN NORTHEAST
This year was the second in a row that Boko Haram has attacked churches at Christmas. Its strikes are becoming deadlier and more sophisticated, and suggest that it is trying to ignite sectarian strife in a country historically prone to conflicts between a largely Muslim north and Christian south.
Three explosions struck the northeastern city of Maiduguri shortly after Muslim Friday prayers, but caused no casualties, the military said. In a separate incident, gunmen shot dead three members of a cleric's family.
Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful" in the northern Hausa language, has been blamed for a campaign of shootings and bombings against security forces and authorities in the north.
Attacks in and around the capital - including one on the U.N. headquarters in August that killed at least 24 people - suggest the group is trying to raise its profile and radiate out from its heartland in the northeast.
On Tuesday night, unidentified attackers threw a homemade bomb into an Islamic school in the southern Delta state, an apparent sectarian reprisal that wounded seven people, six of them young children.
On Wednesday night, an explosion in a local bar in the northern city of Gombe wounded one person, police said.
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Public release date: 10-Jan-2012
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Hundreds of bloggers were bribed to write posts promoting Google Chrome in recent weeks. The scandal is only worsened by Google's excuse: The whole scheme was dreamed up by the company it hired to help make things popular on the web.