Wisconsin Assembly's all-nighters targeted

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — To young people, pulling an all-nighter usually involves lots of caffeine and staying up to study.
To the Wisconsin state Assembly, it's an all-too-familiar method of doing the state's business.
The new Republican speaker of the Assembly has some ideas for ending the all-night sessions, but he refused to announce what any of them were after a private meeting Tuesday with Democratic leaders. Talks were to resume Wednesday, but Democratic Minority Leader Peter Barca said "we're worlds apart."
If Democrats don't go along with what Republicans want, the Assembly's debate Thursday on approving the new rules could — wait for it — go all night.
"It's not hard to get people to agree it's not good to be working at 3 in the morning," said former Wisconsin state Rep. Bob Ziegelbauer. "It's another thing to create the conditions where that doesn't happen."
Going past midnight happens elsewhere, especially at the end of sessions or as other deadlines loom. But the Wisconsin Assembly routinely pushes debates and votes on contentious bills into the wee hours, when only lobbyists and the cleaning crew are left in the building.
"Those overnight sessions are just killers," said former Democratic state Rep. Mordecai Lee. "After a while you just zonk out. I remember being in overnight sessions and I couldn't think straight."
Some other states have taken steps to rein in the late-night sessions, such as the 11 p.m. in curfew in Pennsylvania or the midnight one in Oklahoma. In Minnesota, lawmakers require a vote to work past midnight, although they still routinely do it. The New York Senate has an unofficial but strict rule against marathon sessions. But there's no such rule in the New York Assembly, where the final session days have all gone into the early morning in recent years.
The Wisconsin Assembly's late-night sessions have produced some dramatic moments. Passage of Republican Gov. Scott Walker's plan effectively ending collective bargaining for public workers in 2011 came at 1 a.m. after a 61-hour filibuster. Republicans hustled off the floor to a barrage of insults from the gallery and yells of "Shame!" from Democrats.
Other times, lawmakers have burst into song, imitated one other or just become unusually candid.
Take Rep. Gary Sherman's tirade around 4 a.m. in 2008.
"This is unprofessional. This is stupid. We have no business to be here," Sherman yelled. "There's people in this room with cancer. There's people in this room with heart disease. A third of the room has high blood pressure. There's elderly people. There's pregnant people. What the hell are we doing?"
Ziegelbauer, who served 20 years in the Assembly before retiring last year, said the late nights can be frustrating.
"I drove home between 3 and 6 in the morning more times than I'd like to think," said Ziegelbauer, who lives about 2 1/2 hours from the Capitol. "It used to drive me crazy. The first couple sessions I would sit there and grind my teeth when the guy who lives 15 minutes away picks a fight that's going keep us there until 2 in the morning."
Lawmakers aren't alone in their dislike of the late nights.
"It's a huge impediment to citizen oversight of the Legislature," said Mike McCabe, director of the nonpartisan government watchdog group the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. "It leads to fewer eyes watching the Legislature, and that's never healthy."
Any solution requires cooperation from both parties and a willingness to make the change, Ziegelbauer said. It could also mean being in session more than just a day or two a week, as is typical in Wisconsin, he said.
Previous attempts to make the Assembly act more like the Senate, which is normally done by 5 p.m., have failed.
Fresh off knocking Democrats out of control of the Assembly in 1995, Republicans instituted a rule ending debate at 8 p.m. But Democrats used that to their advantage, and Republicans repealed the rule two years later.
Democrats routinely stalled debate until 8 p.m., making it more difficult for bills they opposed to be taken up, said state Sen. Luther Olsen, a Republican who was in the Assembly the two years of the curfew. Olsen said Democrats would "just talk and talk and talk" until the deadline, then start the fight anew the next morning.
David Prosser, now a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, was speaker of the Assembly at the time. He said such rules can work.
"It seems to me a rule that ends debate at a reasonable hour, except in extreme circumstances, is a very sensible rule," Prosser said. "On the other hand, there's practical difficulty in making that rule work if everybody in the body doesn't appreciate the value of the rule."
Walker has found himself on both sides of the issue.
As a member of the Assembly in 1997, he voted with Republicans to eliminate the 8 p.m. curfew. But in his run for governor in 2010, after the Assembly pulled two all-nighters, Walker promised to sign legislation that would bar voting after 10 p.m. or before 9 a.m.
"I have two teenagers and I tell them that nothing good happens after midnight. That's even more true in politics," Walker said then. "The people of Wisconsin deserve to know what their elected leaders are voting on."

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AIG says obliged to consider joining lawsuit against government

BOSTON (Reuters) - AIG has an obligation to consider a demand by its former chief executive that the company join a lawsuit challenging some of the terms of the insurer's 2008 government rescue, AIG said on Tuesday.
In a statement, American International Group said its board expected to make a decision "in the next several weeks."

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U.S. launches review of Shell Arctic drilling program

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Interior Department will review Royal Dutch Shell's 2012 Arctic oil drilling program to assess the challenges the oil company faced and to help guide future permitting in the region.
The announcement on Tuesday follows the grounding of one of Shell's rigs off the coast of Alaska last week, the latest mishap the company has encountered as it undertakes an ambitious Arctic exploration effort.
"Exploration allows us to better comprehend the true scope of our resources in the Arctic ... but we also recognize that the unique challenges posed by the Arctic environment demand an even higher level of scrutiny," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.
Any changes in permitting requirements or delays due to the review could threaten Shell's drilling plans for 2013. The company faces a limited window during the summer when weather conditions and regulators will allow drilling.
Interior said it hopes to complete its "high-level" assessment within 60 days.
Also on Tuesday, the U.S. Coast Guard in Alaska ordered a special investigation into the causes of last week's grounding of Shell's Kulluk drill ship, a probe that the Coast Guard said was expected to take several months.
Known as a formal marine casualty investigation, it is convened when a shipping accident has considerable regional significance or may indicate vessel class problems, or if such an investigation is the best way to assess technical issues that may have contributed to the problem, the Coast Guard said.
Shell has spent $4.5 billion since 2005 to develop the Arctic's vast oil reserves, but the company has faced intense opposition from environmentalists and native groups, as well as regulatory and technical hurdles.
The oil company made some strides last year, actually beginning preparatory drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. But the work was far short of completing up to three wells in the Chukchi and up to two in the Beaufort, as Shell planned.
Instead, its 2012 drilling season was beset by delays due to lingering ice in the water and problems with getting a mandatory oil spill containment vessel certified by the Coast Guard.
Shell welcomed the department's review, conceding that it had experienced some challenges.
"We have already been in dialogue with the DOI on lessons learned from this season, and a high level review will help strengthen our Alaska exploration program going forward," Shell spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh said in a statement.
Interior said it would examine the issues with Shell's containment vessel, as well as issues with Shell's two Arctic drilling rigs, the Kulluk and Noble Corp's Discoverer, which Shell has under contract there.
It was the Kulluk that broke away from tow boats and ran aground on New Year's Eve in what were described as near hurricane conditions before being towed to safety on Monday.
U.S. Senator Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat and strong supporter of offshore Arctic drilling, called on Tuesday for a hearing to examine the Kulluk situation.
"While this incident notably involves marine transportation and not oil exploration or drilling, we must quickly answer the many questions surrounding the Kulluk grounding and improve any regulatory or operational standards as needed to ensure this type of maritime accident does not occur again," Begich said in a letter to Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Robert Papp and to Shell.
Environmentalists see the Kulluk accident as new evidence that oil companies are not ready for Arctic drilling, calling on the government to put permitting there on hold.
One group calling for a pause in permitting, conservation group Oceana, said Interior's review was a step in the right direction, but it must be "more than a paper exercise."
"The Department of the Interior, after all, is complicit in Shell's failures because it granted the approvals that allowed Shell to operate," said Michael LeVine, Pacific senior counsel at the ocean conservation group.
As for the Kulluk itself, the unified command for the accident response said it remained anchored in its bay of refuge and still showed no signs of leaks or spills. Later on Tuesday, remote operated vehicles are expected to examine the hull and divers will be called in if necessary, the statement said.

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Congress won't act on gun control. But Obama and the states can

For starters, the president can and should close the "gun show loophole"
It has now been nearly two weeks since the Newtown massacre once again cast an ugly shadow of gun violence over our country. In the ensuing fortnight, the pundits have been working overtime generating their ideas on "what to do" about guns.
Their ideas aren't new: Ban assault weapons. Limit high-capacity magazines. Make access to mental health care as easy as access to a gun. All reasonable ideas, though it must be acknowledged that 1) such hand-wringing after past shootings has faded rather quickly as the public moves on and 2) if anything, because today's congressional districts are drawn up so safely, lawmakers are less inclined to do anything about guns than ever before.
Let's face facts: Congress hasn't passed a major gun control bill since 1994, when at the behest of Ronald Reagan, it approved an assault weapons ban (long since expired) and, in 1993, the Brady Bill, which requires background checks on gun buyers when a gun is bought for the first time. (Subsequent sales of those used weapons are often unregulated, thus the so-called "gun show loophole.") The fights to pass those laws were nasty and protracted, and in the ensuing years, positions have hardened even more. Bottom line: As disturbing and outrageous as the Newtown massacre was, there is essentially zero chance that Congress will do anything of substance about it.
So what can be done?
The Constitution grants any president of the United States executive powers. Some have argued that President Obama could exercise them to close the gun show loophole — which has arguably allowed up to 40 percent of all private gun purchases to occur with no background check whatsoever, just pay and be on your way. This appears to be easy politics. Even before Newtown, a survey by GOP pollster Frank Luntz said that 85 percent of non-NRA gun owners and 69 percent of NRA members favored this.
Look for this to be among the recommendations given to Obama by his "gun czar," Vice President Biden. These background checks could also include any known information on a customer's mental health. The Justice Department has also studied the idea of better information-sharing among different agencies, sort of like how the CIA and FBI began working better together after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. These are all ideas worth discussing, though state's rights and privacy laws are legitimate barriers.
Even the National Rifle Association has a few ideas. The NRA's Wayne LaPierre, blaming just about everyone other than his own organization for Newtown, says Hollywood is at fault for gratuitous violence, as are the manufacturers of violent videogames (one, he said, was called "Kindergarten Killer"). He calls this kind of content "the filthiest form of pornography." On this one point, LaPierre is right. Parents should know better than to expose their kids to this kind of garbage. But here's a question for Mr. LaPierre: If the NRA insists that the Second Amendment is sacred and must be protected, is it not hypocritical to suggest that the First Amendment, whose free speech protections cover movie and game makers, be weakened? (It's a moot point anyway: The Supreme Court, in June 2011, upheld the free speech rights of videogame makers to spew out their filth.)
LaPierre has also suggested, as you've no doubt heard, that guns in schools might have prevented the Newtown massacre. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," he insisted. LaPierre, whose rantings caused former President George H.W. Bush to quit the NRA in outrage in 1995, seems to have forgotten that an armed guard at Columbine High School couldn't prevent the murder of 12 students and a teacher (he fired four times and missed). There were plenty of good guys with guns at the Fort Hood army base in 2009. And on and on.
So why not go after guns — and the NRA itself — the way 46 states went after cigarettes back in the 1990s? Guns are similar to cigarettes in one key respect: Long after they are used, both incur very large and ongoing costs that states, local communities, and thus taxpayers are forced to absorb. Aside from the immediate anguish and grief that can result from the use of a gun, the economic burden is spread over many years, in the form of lost work, medical care, insurance, law enforcement, and criminal justice. One study puts a price on this: $174 billion a year.
The societal cost of just one gun homicide averages $5 million, according to the institute. That includes $1.6 million in lost work; $29,000 in medical care; $11,000 on surviving families' mental-health treatment; $397,000 in criminal-justice, incarceration and police expenses; $9,000 in employer losses; and $3 million in pain, suffering and lost quality of life.
Who pays for much of this? You do. Doesn't matter whether you have a gun or not. Just like smoking. You pay for much of its after-effects whether you smoke or not.
Here is what the states did about cigarettes: In November 1998, Big Tobacco, worn down by legal wrangling on dozens of fronts, agreed to pay 46 states a minimum of $206 billion over 25 years. The landmark deal, known as the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), exempted Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard from private tort liability resulting from harm caused by tobacco use. In addition to paying billions, the companies agreed to end or limit marketing of cigarettes, fund anti-smoking education campaigns, and dissolve industry-funded trade groups such as the "Tobacco Institute."
The landmark agreement with the states wasn't designed to put cigarette makers out of business, just make them more accountable and responsible for the use of their product, which was and remains legal. Guns, by virtue of the Second Amendment, are even more protected, but this hardly excuses their defenders from accountability for their use. Only a handful of states and the District of Columbia have laws governing private sales at gun shows. Those who lack such laws can cite states' rights, a legitimate point — but often it's the taxpayers in those states who pay for years to come. States with tougher laws can sue neighboring states that don't to recover their costs; the NRA can be sued for similar reasons. Want a gun? Oppose reasonable restrictions on them? Fine. But you know the saying: Freedom isn't free. Give those who oppose tighter gun laws an economic incentive to comply.

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Is it wrong to publish the names and addresses of gun owners?

A suburban New York newspaper plots a map of the names and addresses of gun owners, and many readers are up in arms
As the debate over gun control continues to rage in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut, a suburban New York newspaper fanned the flames by publishing a controversial interactive map listing the names and addresses of gun permit holders in Westchester and Rockland Counties. The article, "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about weapons in your neighborhood," was published by the White Plains-based Journal News and on its affiliated website, LoHud.com. The paper noted that the map uses data obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request and cautioned that "being included in this map does not mean the individual at a specific location owns a weapon, just that they are licensed to do so."
The reaction: This is outright intimidation, says Ben Shapiro at Breitbart.com. "Publishing the names and addresses of gun owners makes them more vulnerable to robbery when they aren't at home, since criminals will know where the guns are." On the contrary, says conservative radio host Tammy Bruce on Twitter, the Journal News' map "reveals to criminals which homes *are not* protected by firearms." Regardless of who is put in the most danger by this map, this is "unforgivable," tweeted Town Hall's Katie Pavlich. "Time to publish the names and addresses of everyone who works at the Journal News." Amid the controversy, the newspaper has defended its decision. "We knew publication of the database would be controversial but we felt sharing as much information as we could about gun ownership in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings," said the Journal News' editor CynDee Royle in a statement. While "any member of the public has a right to inquire about a specific person as to licensure status," said Journal News reader Mark T. Hoops, a "newspaper does not have the right to ADVERTISE this information WHOLESALE. What you have done is reprehensible."

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The 5 best fiction books of the year

1. Bring Up the Bodies
by Hilary Mantel (Holt, $28)
In Hilary Mantel's hands, Thomas Cromwell has become "one of literature's most compelling characters," said Radhika Jones in Time. Henry VIII's chief adviser was both "loyal and scheming, generous and cruel" — traits Mantel brought to the fore in 2009's Wolf Hall, the first installment of her Cromwell trilogy. In the second, she "deepens her portrait of the master puppeteer." Mantel's "exhilarating prose, unrivaled in contemporary fiction," puts us whisper-close to Cromwell as he maneuvers Anne Boleyn toward the executioner's block while inescapably sowing the seeds of his own eventual demise. Mantel obviously understands that "what gives fiction its vitality is not the accurate detail but the animate one," said James Wood in The New Yorker. "Quite a few readers would be prepared to yawn" at an encounter between Cromwell and theologian Thomas Cranmer, but Mantel makes such scenes "alive, silvery," and "rapid with insight."
A caveat: This book feels too much like a bridge to the next installment, a "highly entertaining throat-clearing," said William Georgiades at Slate.
2. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
by Ben Fountain (Ecco, $15)
The Iraq War era has found its Catch-22, said Jeff Turrentine in The Washington Post. Ben Fountain's "masterful gut-punch of a debut novel" unfolds on a recent Thanksgiving Day as the surviving members of a combat unit, fresh from battlefield heroics celebrated endlessly by Fox News, are feted during the megawatt halftime show of the holiday's Dallas Cowboys game. With "hardly a false note," Fountain records the spectacle through the 19-year-old eyes of Billy Lynn, who's just hours away from redeployment and trying to hold his emotions in check as he soldiers his way into the belly of the beast of American excess. Fountain's novel "left me breathless," said Jonathan Evison at NPR. This brilliant satire is also remarkably visceral. "From the sodium glare of the stadium lights to the acid sting of bitterness in the throat," you "feel the story with your whole body."
A caveat: Billy Lynn is "95 percent the most entertaining novel I've read in ages," said Adam Langer in the San Francisco Chronicle. But the ending feels forced.
3. NW
by Zadie Smith (Penguin, $27)
When in doubt, return to your roots, said K. Thomas Kahn at TheMillions.com. Zadie Smith's fourth novel circles back to Willesden, the northwest London neighborhood of her youth and the setting of her stunning 2000 debut, White Teeth. But NW is a "more poetic and abstract novel," with stream-of-consciousness sections that owe a debt to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Leah and Natalie, the dual protagonists, grew up together in a neighborhood housing project, and both have made it out. But each friend is struggling, amid the claims that race, class, and gender make on her, to find and embrace a comfortable identity. This is a "deeply ambitious" novel, said David L. Ulin in the Los Angeles Times. But it's also "exuberant, lush with language," and "intensely readable, intensely human": It signals the maturation of a writer already wise beyond her years.
A caveat: "The people in this book are more stereotypes than individuals, more ham-handed cartoons than emotionally detailed human beings," said Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times.
4. Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn (Crown, $25)
"A great crime novel is an unstable thing, entertainment and literature suspended in some undetermined solution," said Laura Miller at Salon. Gillian Flynn's "ingenious, pitch-black" third novel mixes the ingredients to perfection. Nick and Amy lead charmed lives in New York City until a turn of the economy demotes them to a McMansion in the Missouri town where Nick grew up. Then Amy disappears, leaving a trace of blood, and all signs point to Nick. From then on, readers ache to solve "two mysteries — what happened to Amy, and what happened to Nick-and-Amy?" Neither puzzle is easily solved, said Janet Maslin in The New York Times. "Both Nick and Amy are extremely adept liars, and they lied to each other a lot." They lie to you, too — Nick in the present tense and Amy in diary entries. All along, Flynn displays "ice-pick sharp" control, with "characters so well-imagined they're hard to part with — even if, as in Amy's case, they are already departed."
A caveat: Flynn's characters are "slightly cartoonish, and more than once, their over-the-top scheming strains credulity," said Amy Gutman in the Chicago Tribune.
5. Building Stories
by Chris Ware (Pantheon, $50)
This remarkable work of fiction is less a book than a "keepsake box full of things you don't want to forget," said Melissa Maerz in Entertainment Weekly. Each board-game-size box contains 14 odd-shaped bits of "beautifully illustrated" literature, from a flip book to a poster to an ersatz children's reader. The whole package is the work of graphic novelist Chris Ware, and there's no right way in. Picking things up at random, you find your way into an affecting story about the lonely lives of four inhabitants of one Chicago brownstone. My initial irritation at having to piece Ware's story together "gave way to enchantment," said Steve Almond in The New Republic. A "poet of solitude," Ware has used the comic-book format as a tool of psychological investigation — conveying the scope of his characters' "private torments" and "unfulfilled lives" in a few well-wrought panels. Building Stories might be too bleak for some readers, but it's "brutal in the way all great art is." In fact, it's "one of the most important pieces of art I have ever experienced."

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Did a rapidly changing climate make early humans smarter?

A new study points out that a constantly shifting environment may have forced us to get smart or die trying
The question: Scientists are always on the hunt for clues in our evolutionary history that might help explain why we have such highly advanced brains. Some have pointed to the advent of cooked food as a tipping point, giving our brains the nutrients and proteins needed to grow. Others say it's the invention of agriculture, which diverted our attention away from merely surviving to more intellectual pursuits. Now, scientists from Penn State University think the rapidly fluctuating climate some 2 million years ago may have forced homo erectus — a direct ancestor of modern humans — to change their behavior as they migrated from the forest to the dry, flat grasslands and back again. Did climate change spark a period of major intelligence gains?
How it was tested: Researchers focused on a region in Africa called the Olduvai Gorge — an area where humankind is thought to have originated. Scientists believed that the area began drying up 3 million years ago in something they call the "Great Drying," robbing the area of trees and other lush plant life. Biochemists used techniques like gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to analyze carbon isotopes from wax leaf samples. With that data, they were able to create a timeline for the amount of vegetation in the area over a period of 200,000 years.
The outcome: The area didn't dry out slowly and consistently over time, but was instead highly variable, meaning it was changing all the time. In just 10 to 100 generations, early humans would have had to migrate from areas with trees and forest cover to vast open areas with only grass — and vice versa. The temperature was constantly in flux, possibly as a result of changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun. More intriguingly, variability in the environment happened to coincide with a critical period in human evolution when the first hand tools began to emerge.
What the experts say: "Changes in food availability, food type, or the way you get food can trigger evolutionary mechanisms to deal with those changes," says researcher Clayton Magill. "The result can be increased brain size and cognition, changes in locomotion, and even social changes — how you interact with others in a group. Our data are consistent with these hypotheses." Yes, "there was a complete restructuring of the ecosystem from grassland to forest and back again," says researcher Katherine Freeman. "I've worked on carbon isotopes my whole career, and I've never seen anything like this before."

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The 13 biggest pop culture moments of 2012

From the rise of an unexpected NBA superstar to the announcement of a royal baby, this was a year of smiles, shocks, and sheer Gangnamminess
1. Linsanity takes over the NBA
When the New York Knicks picked up Jeremy Lin as a backup point guard in late 2011, he was widely regarded as a temporary Band-Aid designed to cover for injured players Iman Shumpert and Baron Davis. Shocking both fans and analysts, Lin came from nowhere and absolutely dominated for a weeks-long stretch in early 2012, averaging nearly 25 points and 9 assists per game, with a peak of 38 points in a February 10 game against the Lakers. Lin's remarkable ascent led The New York Times to dub him the Knicks' "most popular player in a decade," and, though Lin's subsequent tenure this season with the Houston Rockets has been less successful, the brief period of "Linsanity" qualifies as the NBA's most surprising and entertaining story in years.
2. Whitney Houston dies
The music world was rocked in February by the unexpected death of best-selling singer and actress Whitney Houston at age 48. Famous for songs like "The Greatest Love of All" and "I Will Always Love You," Houston enjoyed enormous success in the 80s and 90s but floundered amid widely publicized reports of drug use in the early 2000s. Despite numerous attempts at rehabilitation, Houston drowned in a bathtub after ingesting drugs that included Xanax, marijuana, and cocaine. Her death triggered an outpouring of grief from admirers and friends including Oprah Winfrey, Dolly Parton, and Mariah Carey, who called Houston "one of the greatest voices to ever grace the earth."
3. Encyclopedia Britannica suspends print edition
In a March blog post titled "Change: It's okay. Really," the editors of the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica — the massive, leather-bound tomes seen in libraries and schools since 1768 — announced that they were discontinuing the printed edition. The blog post goes on to promise that "the encyclopedia would live on" in "bigger, more numerous, and more vibrant digital forms," but the end of the 244-year old institution was yet another harbinger of the death of printt.
4. Fifty Shades of Grey sparks "mommy porn" revolution
There was no bigger story in the literary world this summer than the remarkable rise of E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels, which sold even faster than the works of J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) or Stephenie Meyer (Twilight). The books — which chronicle the sadomasochistic romance between billionaire Christian Grey and the virginal Anastasia Steele — were largely consumed by married women over 30, which led many in the media to dub them "mommy porn." And as 2012 draws to a close, a Fifty Shades film is reportedly in development, with fans eagerly debating who should step into the lead roles.
5. The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises square off at the box-office
Though superhero blockbusters have dominated the summer movie season for the better part of a decade, two of the most anticipated takes on the genre, The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, upped the stakes this year. In the end, the funnier, looser Avengers, an ensemble piece, came out on top, earning over $1.5 billion worldwide — but Warner Bros. shouldn't feel too bad about the box-office take of their grimmer star vehicle, The Dark Knight Rises, the only other movie to earn more than $1 billion worldwide in 2012.
6. "Gangnam Style" takes over the world
Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" may have been this summer's buzziest new single, but no song has defined 2012 more than Psy's inescapable "Gangnam Style," which recently set the record for most-viewed YouTube video ever. "Gangnam Style" has become a worldwide phenomenon, earning more than 1 billion views (and counting), spawning thousands of tribute videos, and giving the South Korean singer the opportunity to do his crazy horse-riding dance with everyone from Madonna to Britney Spears. Hey, sexy lady, indeed.
7. London's Summer Olympics delight
The 2012 Summer Olympics, which took place from July 27 to Aug. 12, were a widely celebrated, headline-dominating affair. More than 10,000 athletes from 204 countries hopped a flight to London, England to participate in more than 300 events. In the end, the United States won more gold medals and more medals overall than any other nation, with China and Great Britain taking second and third.
8. NHL lockout: No end in sight
NHL fans have suffered through lockouts before, but virtually no one expected the 2012 lockout, which officially began on Sep. 15, to last for more than a few weeks — let alone for nearly half the season. But as December draws to a close, no end is in sight for the lockout, as the franchise owners and the NHL Players' Association continue to battle over contracts and hockey-related revenue — all to the increasing frustration of fans. "It's pure madness in my opinion. All of it. Both sides," said ESPN's Pierre Lebrun in a recent column.
9. Felix Baumgartner completes world's highest skydive
On October 14, daredevil Felix Baumgartner leapt from a capsule floating nearly 24 miles over the earth in a successful attempt to break the record for the world's highest skydive. To complete his daring feat, Baumgartner relied on a specially designed balloon and pressure suit, and the help of an entire ground control team. Baumgartner's leap was also a triumph for online media: The event set a record for live-streaming with the most concurrent views on YouTube.
10. AMC's The Walking Dead smashes ratings records
AMC's The Walking Dead has always been a hit, but few TV analysts foresaw the strength with which the show would begin its third season. An average of 10.9 million viewers tuned in for the gory zombie drama's Oct. 14 premiere, making it the most-watched drama-series telecast in basic cable history, and soundly trouncing any of the show's network competitors.
11. Disney buys Lucasfilm, prepares Star Wars: Episode VII for 2014 release
Hundreds of thousands of Star Wars fans felt a great disturbance in the Force when Disney announced it was acquiring Lucasfilm and all of its assets, including the venerable Star Wars franchise, and was planning to release a new installment in the series in 2014. Though virtually nothing is known about the tentatively titled Star Wars: Episode VII, the announcement may herald a new direction for the franchise. Star Wars' future has never been more open-ended.
12. The Twilight Saga draws to a close
The Nov. 16 release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 marked the end of the massively popular tween franchise, though the series' influence will be felt in the countless paranormal-romance novels and films its revenues have inspired. The five films in the Twilight series earned a combined total of $1.35 billion at the box office, and turned young, relatively untested stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson into international icons.
13. Will and Kate announce royal pregnancy
On Dec. 3, St. James Palace announced that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge — otherwise known as William and Kate — are expecting their first child. Unfortunately, the joyful news has been tempered by Kate's hyperemesis gravidarum, a pregnancy illness that resulted in her extended stay at a hospital, and the suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, which occurred shortly after Saldanha was the victim of a prank phone call by a pair of Australian DJs.

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Off Fiscal Cliff, Obama Goes Golfing

Taking a break from the fiscal cliff negotiations, President Obama is spending the first day of his holiday vacation golfing with friends and aides, including longtime pal Bobby Titcomb, who was arrested last year on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute.
After arriving in Hawaii late last night, the president spent this morning at his family's vacation residence along the shores of Kailua, a quiet town on a stretch of beach on the east end of Oahu.
Shortly before noon, the president made the trip to the Kailua Marine Corps Base, where he is hitting the links at the Kaneohe Clipper course.
Obama is golfing with close aide Marvin Nicholson, White House chef Sam Kass, and childhood friends Mike Ramos and Titcomb, whom the president has known since they attended Honolulu's Punahou School together in the 1970s.
Titcomb was arrested in April 2011 in an undercover prostitution sting operation. He pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge and the conviction was reportedly later expunged from his record.
With negotiations over the deficit at a standstill and Congress closed for the Christmas holiday, the first family left Washington late Friday for their annual vacation in Obama's native state, his first vacation of the year.
The president told reporters in a hastily scheduled appearance in the briefing room that he would "see you next week." His return date is still to be determined.

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Reid urges quick appointment of Inouye successor

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is asking Hawaii's governor to act before the end of the year to fill the Senate vacancy created by the death of Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.
Reid says he's asked Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie to appoint Inouye's successor "with due haste." Reid says he wants to ensure Hawaii is fully represented "in the pivotal decisions" the Senate will be making.
Inouye died of respiratory complications last week, leaving Democrats down one seat as the Senate prepares for the possibility of voting on a measure that would avoid a "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts.
Hawaii Rep. Colleen Hanabusa is the favorite for the post. Inouye, a fellow Democrat, endorsed Hanabusa in a letter he sent to Abercrombie on the day he died.

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Early signs show Egypt's new constitution passing

Early indications showed Egyptians approved an Islamist-drafted constitution after Saturday's final round of voting in a referendum despite opposition criticism of the measure as divisive.
An official from the Muslim Brotherhood's political party, which backs Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, said that after nearly 4 million votes had been counted there was a majority of 74 percent in favor of the constitution.
Exit polls from the opposition National Salvation Front also showed the constitution passing, an official said.
Last week's first round returned 57 percent in favor of the constitution, according to unofficial data. The vote was split over two days as many judges refused to supervise the ballot.
The referendum committee may not declare official results for the two rounds until Monday, after hearing appeals.
Islamist backers of Mursi say the constitution is vital to move to democracy, nearly two years after an Arab Spring revolt overthrew authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak. It will provide stability for a weak economy, they say.
But the opposition accuses Mursi of pushing through a text that favors Islamists and ignores the rights of Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the population, as well as women.
"I'm voting 'no' because Egypt can't be ruled by one faction," said Karim Nahas, 35, a stockbroker, heading to a polling station in Giza, in greater Cairo.
At another polling station, some voters said they were more interested in ending Egypt's long period of political instability than in the Islamist aspects of the charter.
"We have to extend our hands to Mursi to help fix the country," said Hisham Kamal, an accountant.
VICE PRESIDENT ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION
Hours before polls closed, Vice President Mahmoud Mekky announced his resignation. He said he wanted to quit last month but stayed on to help Mursi tackle a crisis that blew up when the Islamist leader assumed wide powers.
Mekky, a prominent judge who said he was uncomfortable in politics, disclosed earlier he had not been informed of Mursi's power grab. The timing of his resignation appeared linked to the lack of a vice-presidential post under the draft constitution.
Rights groups reported alleged law violations during voting. They said some polling stations opened late, that Islamists illegally campaigned at some of them, and complained of voter registration irregularities, including listing of a dead person.
The new basic law sets a limit of two four-year presidential terms. It says sharia law principles remain the main source of legislation but adds an article to explain this further. It also says Islamic authorities will be consulted on sharia - a source of concern to Christians and other non-Muslims.
If the constitution passes, there will be parliamentary elections in about two months.
After the first round of voting, the opposition said alleged abuses meant the first stage of the referendum should be re-run.
But the committee overseeing the two-stage vote said its investigations showed no major irregularities in voting on December 15, which covered about half of Egypt's 51 million voters. About 25 million were eligible to vote in the second round.
MORE UNREST
If the charter is approved, the opposition says it is a recipe for trouble since it will not have received sufficiently broad backing and that it will not have been a fair vote.
"I see more unrest," said Ahmed Said, head of the liberal Free Egyptians Party and a member of the National Salvation Front, an opposition coalition formed after Mursi expanded his powers on November 22 and then pushed the constitution to a vote.
Protesters accused the president of acting like a pharaoh, and he was forced to issue a second decree two weeks ago that amended a provision putting his decisions above legal challenge.
Said cited "serious violations" on the first day of voting, and said anger against Mursi was growing. "People are not going to accept the way they are dealing with the situation."
At least eight people were killed in protests outside the presidential palace in Cairo this month. Islamists and rivals hurled stones at each other on Friday in Alexandria, the second-biggest city. Two buses were torched.
Late on Saturday, Mursi announced the names of 90 new members he had appointed to the upper house of parliament, state media reported, and a presidential official said the list was mainly liberals and other non-Islamists.
Mursi's main opponents from liberal, socialist and other parties said they had refused to take any seats.
Two-thirds of the 270-member upper house was elected in a vote early this year, with one third appointed by the president. Mursi, elected in June, had not named them till now. Mursi's Islamist party and its allies dominate the assembly.

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Obama starts Hawaiian vacation, leaving Washington on ice

Taking what promised to be a very brief Christmas break from the ongoing struggle to avoid the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts, President Barack Obama relaxed with his family on Saturday at a beach retreat in Hawaii.
Congress was to return to Washington next Thursday and Obama has pledged to work with lawmakers to strike a deal to avoid the economic shock from tax and spending measures set to take effect on January 1 if a deal can't be reached, which many economists say could push the U.S. economy back into recession.
The president is expected to indulge in some of his favorite pastimes on the island where he was born and raised: golf, an expedition for the local treat "shave ice," and an evening out with family and friends. He hit the links at the nearby Marine Corps base under sunny skies on Saturday afternoon.
On Sunday, he is expected to attend funeral services for Senator Daniel Inouye, the long-serving Democrat from Hawaii who died on Monday, but the president has no other public events on his schedule.
On Saturday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he had urged Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat, to name Inouye's successor "with due haste."
"It is critically important to ensure that the people of Hawaii are fully represented in the pivotal decisions the Senate will be making before the end of the year," Reid, of Nevada, said in a statement.
Obama's idyll was not expected to last more than four days, and he will likely retrace the more than 4,800-mile trip from the Aloha State to Washington after Christmas in a bid to cut a deal with Republicans, who failed on Thursday to agree on competing tax and spending bills of their own.
Before leaving Washington on Friday evening, Obama urged Congress to come up with a stopgap measure to spare the U.S. economy the jolt of $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts economists say would likely derail the economy.
The president asked lawmakers for a stripped-down deal to continue lower tax rates on middle income earners and extend unemployment insurance benefits to avoid some of the worst effects of the "fiscal cliff" in the new year.
Obama's family holiday, in a quiet beach front community on the other side of the island from bustling Honolulu, should also provide some respite from the somber focus on the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre and the consequent bitter debate over measures to change America's gun culture and prevent violence.
The president's weekly radio and Internet addresses, which in recent weeks have centered on his argument for extending tax cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans, on Saturday offered holiday greetings to U.S. military forces.

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Italy dissolves parliament, Monti mulls future

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's head of state dissolved parliament on Saturday and opened the way to a February election, with doubts growing over whether outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti will participate in what promises to be a bitter campaign.
Monti resigned on Friday a couple of months ahead of the end of his term of office, after his technocrat government lost the support of Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party.
For weeks, speculation has swirled over what role Monti will play in the election, which cabinet confirmed would be held over two days on February 24-25.
The former European commissioner, appointed to lead an unelected government to save Italy from financial crisis a year ago, has faced growing pressure to seek a second term and earlier this week Italian media widely reported he would do so.
That now seems far less certain, as Monti has had to digest opinion polls that suggest a centrist group headed by him would probably come a distant third or even fourth in the election, expected to be won by the centre-left Democratic party (PD), led by Pier Luigi Bersani.
"The outcome of the election may well not be all that favorable and the question is where that would leave his own credibility and also his reform agenda," a person close to Monti told Reuters.
Italy's main newspapers reported on Saturday that he was inclined not to run, partly because of disappointing opinion polls and partly because of doubts about the quality of the centrist parties that would be using his name.
Another source familiar with the discussions that have been going on between Monti and these centrist groups said he was no longer in direct contact with his potential allies and was now thinking things through on his own.
"It's very open, Monti's looking at all the possibilities and thinking," the source said. "The thing is that without him, the centrist project doesn't make any sense."
Several centrist politicians who had been hoping for Monti's endorsement appeared almost resigned to going on alone.
"Monti would have given more significance to the initiative but it doesn't change things," Ferdinando Adornato, a member of the centrist UDC party told TGCom 24 news television. "What Bersani and Berlusconi are offering is not enough to change the situation from what it was before Monti arrived."
TAX HIKES
European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso have called for Monti's economic reform agenda to continue but Italy's two main parties insist he should stay out of the race.
"We underlined the fact that as we're going into elections with a non-elected, technocrat government, that government, in the person of the prime minister, should remain outside the contest," Fabrizio Cicchitto, PDL leader in the lower house of parliament said after meeting President Giorgio Napolitano.
Italians are weary of repeated tax hikes and spending cuts and opinion polls offer little evidence they are ready to give Monti a second term. A survey this week showed 61 percent saying he should not stand.
Berlusconi, who was forced to make way for Monti in November last year as Italian borrowing costs surged, has stepped up attacks on his successor in recent days and welcomed his resignation on Friday.
"Today the experience of the technical government is finished and we must hope there will never again be a similar suspension of democracy," he told reporters.
Monti, who has kept his cards close to his chest, is expected to outline his plans at a news conference on Sunday.
Rather than announce his candidacy or endorse a centrist alliance to run in his name, two options widely touted in recent days, he may simply present a summary of the reforms his technocrat government has achieved and those still required.
"On Sunday, he will probably only present a policy memorandum, there is unlikely to be any decision on any more direct involvement in the campaign until after Christmas," the second source said.
This would put flesh on the rather nebulous "Monti agenda" which has been a buzz-word of Italy's political debate since it became clear he was considering staying in front-line politics.
It would then be up to the political parties to commit to or reject the priorities set out.
By playing for time, Monti would run less risk of being caught up in the crossfire of what promises to be a messy and bitter campaign and would still be free to step into the fray later on, depending on opinion polls.

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