Former Thai PM faces murder charge from protests

BANGKOK (AP) — Thai law enforcement authorities have decided to file a murder charge against former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in the first prosecutions of officials related to a deadly 2010 crackdown on anti-government protests.

Department of Special Investigation chief Tharit Phengdit said Thursday that investigators found Abhisit possibly culpable in the death of a taxi driver because he allowed troops to use war weapons and live ammunition against protesters.

Abhisit and former Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban will be summoned to the DSI office on Dec. 12 to be formally charged.

An inquest recently found that the taxi driver was killed by guns used by military personnel during the crackdown against protesters in Bangkok.

No comment was immediately available from Abhisit, who is currently leader of the opposition.

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Individuality takes center stage at Grammys

Fun. helped break up the sound of dance and electronic music on Top 40 radio with its edgy pop-rock grooves. Frank Ocean made a bold statement in R&B — with an announcement about his sexuality and with his critically revered, multi-genre album, "channel ORANGE." And Mumford & Sons continued to bring its folk-rock swag and style to the Billboard charts with its sophomore album.

They all were rewarded Wednesday when The Recording Academy announced the nominees for the 2013 Grammy Awards.

Those acts, who scored the most nominations with six each, were joined by typical Grammy contenders like Jay-Z and Kanye West, who also got six nominations. The Black Keys' drummer, Dan Auerbach, is also up for six awards, thanks to his nomination for producer of the year. His band earned five nods, along with R&B singer Miguel and jazz pianist Chick Corea.

"It feels like alternative music is back," said fun. guitarist Jack Antonoff. His band's gold-selling "Some Nights" is up for album of the year, competing with Black Keys' "El Camino," Mumford & Sons' "Babel," Jack White's "Blunderbuss" and "channel ORANGE," the major label debut from Ocean.

Fun. is nominated in all of the major categories, including best new artist, and record and song of the year for its breakthrough anthem "We Are Young."

Ocean, whose mother attended the nominations special, scored nods in three of the top four categories. His song "Thinkin Bout You" — which he originally wrote for another singer — will compete for record of the year with Black Keys' "Lonely Boy" and four No. 1 hits: Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," ''Somebody I Used to Know" by Gotye and Kimbra, Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" and "We Are Young" by fun.

Song of the year, too, features some No. 1 hits, including fun. and Clarkson's jams, as well as Carly Rae Jepsen's viral smash "Call Me Maybe." But then there's Ed Sheeran's "The A Team," a slow groove about a homeless prostitute, and Miguel's "Adorn," the R&B singer-songwriter's crossover hit.

"It's like one of those songs that wrote itself and I was the vessel," the 26-year-old said in an phone interview from New York City late Wednesday, where he performed with Trey Songz and Elle Varner.

While Miguel's excited to compete for song of the year, he's more thrilled about his sophomore album's nomination for best urban contemporary album, a new category that recognizes R&B albums with edge and multiple sounds.

"That's a huge complement to say that your entire body of work was the best of the year," he said of "Kaleidoscope Dream." ''That's the one that means the most to me. I'm really hoping maybe, just maybe."

Miguel, along with Gotye, Alabama Shakes and the Lumineers, is part of the pack of nominees who have showcased individuality and have marched to the beat of their own drum in today's music industry.

Though nominated albums by The Black Keys and Mumford & Sons are platinum-sellers, their songs are not regularly heard on Top 40 radio. Electronic and dance music, which has dominated radio airplay for a few years, were left out of the top awards this year. Also, One Direction — the boy band that released two top-selling albums this years and sold-out many arenas — was snubbed for best new artist.

Lionel Richie has one of the year's top-selling albums with his country collaboration collection, "Tuskegee," but he didn't earn any nominations. And Nicki Minaj, who released a gold-selling album this year and had a hit with "Starships," wasn't nominated for a single award.

Jay-Z and West dominated the rap categories, a familiar refrain at the Grammys. Nas scored four nominations, including best rap album for "Life Is Good." Jeff Bhasker, the producer behind fun.'s breakthrough album, also scored four nods.

Swift, who released her latest album, "Red," after the Grammy eligibility date, still scored three nominations, including two for "Safe & Sound" with The Civil Wars. Country acts were mainly left out of the major categories this year, though the genre usually has success at the Grammys. Aside from Swift's pop song competing for record of the year, there is 21-year-old Hunter Hayes, who is up for best new artist against fun., Ocean, Alabama Shakes and the Lumineers.

"I'm so proud to be, as you say, representing country music in the new artist category," said Hayes, who is also nominated for best country album and country solo performance. "I don't even feel worthy of saying that, but it's so cool for me to be able to say that."

Swift hosted the CBS special with LL Cool J and it featured performances by The Who and Maroon 5, who received multiple nominations.

The five-year-old nominations show spent its first year outside Los Angeles, making its debut in Nashville, Tenn., at the Bridgestone Arena. It marked the largest venue the show has been held in.

The 55th annual Grammy Awards take place Feb. 10 in Los Angeles.

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Online:

http://www.grammys.com

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AP Music Writer Chris Talbott and AP Writer Caitlin R. King in Nashville contributed to this report.

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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Philippine typhoon death toll tops 270

NEW BATAAN, Philippines (AP) — The death toll from a powerful typhoon in the southern Philippines climbed to more than 270 people Wednesday and officials feared many more bodies could be found as rescuers reach hard-hit areas that had been isolated by landslides, floods and downed communications.

At least 151 people have died in the worst-hit province of Compostela Valley since Typhoon Bopha began lashing the region early Tuesday, including 66 villagers and soldiers who perished in a flash flood that swamped two emergency shelters and a military camp in New Bataan town, provincial spokeswoman Fe Maestre told The Associated Press.

About 80 people survived the deluge in New Bataan with injuries, but an unspecified number of villagers remain missing. On Wednesday, the farming town of 45,000 people was a muddy wasteland of collapsed houses and columns of coconut and banana trees felled by Bopha's ferocious winds.

Outside a town gymnasium, several mud-stained bodies were laid side-by-side, covered by cloth and banana leaves and surrounded by villagers covering their noses to fight the stench. A man sprayed insecticide on the remains to turn away swarms of flies.

"It's hard so say how many more are missing," Maestre said. "We're now searching everywhere."

In nearby Davao Oriental, the coastal province first struck by the typhoon as it blew inland from the Pacific Ocean, at least 115 people perished mostly in three towns that were so battered by the wind wind it was hard to find any building or house with a roof left, provincial officer Freddie Bendulo and other officials said.

"We had a problem where to take the evacuees. All the evacuation centers have lost their roofs," Davao Oriental Gov. Corazon Malanyaon said.

Disaster-response agencies reported 13 other typhoon-related deaths elsewhere.

Unlike the previous day's turbulent weather, the sun was back Wednesday, prompting residents to lay their soiled clothes, books and other belongings out on roadsides to dry and revealing the extent of the damage to farmland. Thousands of banana trees in one Compostela Valley plantation were toppled by the wind, the young bananas still wrapped in blue plastic covers.

After slamming into Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley, Bopha roared fast across southern Mindanao and central regions, knocking out power in two entire provinces, triggering landslides and leaving houses and coconut and banana plantations disheveled. More than 170,000 fled from homes to evacuation centers.

The typhoon, one of the strongest to hit the country this year, had blown past southwestern Palawan province into the South China Sea by mid-Wednesday.

The deaths came despite efforts by President Benigno Aquino III's government to force residents out of high-risk communities prone to landslides, flash floods and storm surges as the typhoon approached. Some 20 typhoons and storms lash the northern and central Philippines each year, but they rarely hit the vast southern Mindanao region.

A rare storm in the south last December killed more than 1,200 people and left many more homeless and traumatized, including in Cagayan de Oro city, where church bells rang relentlessly on Tuesday to warn residents to scramble to safety as a major river started to rise.

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Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Teresa Cerojano and Oliver Teves in Manila contributed to this report.

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Facebook just realized it made a horrible mistake

Facebook (FB) announced on Tuesday that it will begin opening Facebook Messenger to consumers who do not have a Facebook account, starting in countries like India and South Africa, and later rolling out the service in the United States and Europe. This is a belated acknowledgement of a staggering strategic mistake Facebook made two years ago. That is when the messaging app competition was still wide open and giants like Facebook or Google (GOOG) could have entered the competition. WhatsApp, the leading messaging app firm, had just 1 million users as late as December 2009. By the end of 2010, that number had grown to 10 million. Right now, it likely tops 200 million, though there is no current official number on the matter.

SMS usage started peaking in countries like Netherlands in 2010. Companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google were being offered a giant new market on a silver platter with more than 3 billion consumers worldwide use texting on their phones and many of them started drifting away from basic SMS towards IP-based alternatives a few years ago. None of the behemoths saw or understood the opportunity.

They allowed the mobile messaging market to turn into a free-for-all between tiny start-ups like KakaoTalk, Kik, Viber, WhatsApp, etc. And with astonishing speed, the global market picked a winner and rallied around it. Back in early 2011, there was serious debate about the relative merits of different messaging apps and which one might ultimately edge ahead.

In December 2012, the competitive landscape is stark. Kik is not a Top 5 app in any country in the world. Viber is a Top 5 app in 21 countries, but they are countries like Barbados, Nepal and Tajikistan. WhatsApp is a Top 5 app in 141 countries, including the U.S,, U.K., Germany, Brazil and India. The only real weakness of WhatsApp lies in China, Japan and South Korea, where local champions still lead. But those local apps have zero chance of breaking out of their home markets.

The mobile messaging app competition is over. It turned into a red rout sometime during late 2011 and WhatsApp has emerged as the sole beneficiary of a textbook case of the network effect.

Facebook, Google and Twitter threw away their golden chance to create an SMS killer and grab hold of a billion users globally. It would have been so easy and cheap to develop a simple texting app in 2009, leverage the current user base of any of the IT giants and then watch the app soar to global prominence.

And it is so very, very hard to do now. Dislodging WhatsApp now would mean neutralizing a smartphone market penetration advantage that is hitting 80% in some markets. People often ask me why I’m so fixated on WhatsApp and the answer is simple: it’s the most popular and important mobile app in the world. And it beat Facebook, Twitter, Google and other major companies before they even realized there was an important war being waged.

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Cashing in on Gangnam Style's YouTube fame

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — As "Gangnam Style" gallops toward 1 billion views on YouTube, the first Asian pop artist to capture a massive global audience has gotten richer click by click. So too has his agent and his grandmother. But the money from music sales isn't flowing in from the rapper's homeland South Korea or elsewhere in Asia.

With one song, 34-year-old Park Jae-sang — better known as PSY — is set to become a millionaire from YouTube ads and iTunes downloads, underlining a shift in how money is being made in the music business. An even bigger dollop of cash will come from TV commercials.

From just those sources, PSY and his camp will rake in at least $7.9 million this year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of publicly available information and industry estimates. But for online music sales in South Korea, he'll earn less than $60,000.

Here's how it works.

YOUTUBE

"Gangnam Style" with its catchy tune and much imitated horse-riding dance is the most-watched video on YouTube ever.

The viral video has clocked more than 880 million YouTube views since its July release, beating Justin Bieber's "Baby," which racked up more than 808 million views since February 2010. PSY's official channel on YouTube, which curates his songs and videos of his concerts, has nearly 1.3 billion views.

TubeMogul, a video ad buying platform, estimates that PSY and his agent YG Entertainment have raked in about $870,000 as their share of the revenue from ads that appear with YouTube videos. The Google Inc.-owned video service keeps approximately half.

PSY and YG Entertainment also earn money from views of videos that parody his songs.

Google detects videos that use copyrighted content. Artists can have the video removed or allow it to stay online and share ad revenue with YouTube. In the last week of September when "Gangnam Style" had around 300 million views, more than 33,000 videos were identified by the content identification system as using "Gangnam Style."

But since YouTube can be accessed from all over the world, wouldn't Asia be responsible for a significant chunk of the $870,000? The countries with the second and third-highest views of the video are Thailand and South Korea.

"Ads rates vary depending on which country the video is played. Developed countries have higher ad rates and developing countries lower," said Brian Suh, head of YouTube Partnership in Seoul.

And the country with the most views of "Gangnam Style?" The United States.

LEGAL DOWNLOADS, CDs

"Gangnam Style" has been downloaded 2.7 million times in the U.S. and has been the No. 1 or No. 2 seller for most weeks since its debut, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The song sells for $1.29 on Apple's iTunes Store, the market leader in song downloads. Apple generally keeps about 30 percent of all sales, so the PSY camp could be due more than $2.4 million.

How much PSY keeps and how much goes to his managers, staff and record label is unclear. South Korean industry insiders said PSY likely gets 70 percent and YG Entertainment 30 percent for U.S. downloads.

But earnings from downloads in PSY's homeland are far from an embarrassment of riches.

South Koreans pay less than $10 a month for a subscription to a music service that allows them to download hundreds of songs or have unlimited access to a music streaming service. That makes the cost of a downloaded song about 10 cents on average. The average price for streaming a song is 0.2 cent.

PSY's cut for downloads is 14 percent. That falls to 7.5 percent for streamed songs. Yes, 7.5 percent of 0.2 cent. And that's before PSY's "Gangnam Style" co-composer take his share. The biggest cut goes to his agent and online retailers.

According to South Korea's national Gaon Chart, "Gangnam Style" was downloaded more than 3.6 million times and streamed around 40 million times as of November. That adds up to a little more than $61,000.

It's likely the fast fading music CD industry generated even smaller revenue. PSY's 9 percent cut from sales of 102,000 CDs in South Korea would earn him $50,000 or more, according to an estimate by Kim Dong-hyun, a senior manager at Korea Music Copyright Association.

As for many other parts of Asia, illegal downloads and pirated CDS are so pervasive that only a small minority are willing to pay up for the legal versions.

TV COMMERCIALS

PSY has been jetting around the world, performing on shows such as "The X-Factor Australia" and NBC's "Today Show," but such programs usually cover travel costs and not much else, said Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of concert trade magazine Pollstar.

It is television commercials that are the big money spinner for the most successful of South Korea's K-pop stars. PSY has been popping up in TV commercials in South Korea for top brands such as Samsung Electronics and mobile carrier LG Uplus.

Chung Yu-seok, an analyst at Kyobo Securities, estimates PSY's commercial deals would amount to 5 billion won ($4.6 million) this year.

The money is cool. The products not so much. PSY is now the face of a new Samsung refrigerator and a major noodle company.

THE FAMILY

A fact little known outside South Korea is that PSY's father, uncle and grandmother own a combined 30 percent of DI Corp., a company which makes equipment that semiconductor companies use to make computer chips.

It's a stretch to plausibly explain how the success of "Gangnam Style" will boost DI's profits but that doesn't matter to the South Korean stock market. Perhaps inspired by the pure power of pop, DI shares surged eightfold from July after PSY's hit reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the U.K. singles chart.

It was time to cash in for PSY's grandmother, who sold 5,378 shares for about $65,000.

The share price has fallen since then but is still about double what it was before the release of "Gangnam Style."

PSY's agent YG Entertainment has also done well. Its share price is up about 30 percent since mid-July. The value of CEO Yang Hyun-suk's stake has swelled to about $200 million, making him among the richest in South Korea's entertainment industry.

THE FUTURE

The question now hanging over PSY is whether he will replicate the blockbuster success of "Gangnam Style" or end up remembered as a one-hit wonder.

"When this slows down, what comes next for PSY?" said Nielsen analytics vice president David Bakula. "Is it the evolution of a new musical style, something audiences are going to be craving en masse, or is it something that's just a passing fancy?"

Analysts say "Gangnam Style" alone will not be enough to propel PSY into the ranks of musicians such as Adele and may not even be enough to make him the top-grossing K-pop star. That will depend largely on his upcoming album, which PSY said will be released in March.

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Ryan Nakashima contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

Youkyung Lee can be reached via Twitter: www.twitter.com/YKLeeAP

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Study: Drug coverage to vary under health law

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new study says basic prescription drug coverage could vary dramatically from state to state under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

That's because states get to set benefits for private health plans that will be offered starting in 2014 through new insurance exchanges.

The study out Tuesday from the market analysis firm Avalere Health found that some states will require coverage of virtually all FDA-approved drugs, while others will only require coverage of about half of medications.

Consumers will still have access to essential medications, but some may not have as much choice.

Connecticut, Virginia and Arizona will be among the states with the most generous coverage, while California, Minnesota and North Carolina will be among states with the most limited.

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Online:

Avalere Health: http://tinyurl.com/d3b3hfv

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Obama holds firm on 'fiscal cliff' amid Republican disarray

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama held his ground on the "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, insisting on higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, while Republicans showed increasing disarray over how far they should go to compromise with Obama's demands.

With less than a month left to confront the budget cuts and tax increases that will begin taking effect in January unless Congress acts, Obama dangled the possibility of lowering tax rates as part of a broad U.S. tax code revamp in 2013.

But he again insisted, in an interview with Bloomberg Television, that tax rates for the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers must rise in any deal by the end of the year to avert the assorted measures known as the fiscal cliff.

Obama, a Democrat, may face resistance from his own party if and when he's forced to be specific about how he would cut the cost of entitlements, such as the Medicare health insurance program for seniors.

For the moment, however, the overall political picture Tuesday reflected a relatively solid front of Democrats versus an increasingly shaky group of Republicans.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, even avoided endorsing the negotiating position of his House of Representatives ally, Speaker John Boehner.

"I think it is important that the House Republican leadership has tried to move the process forward," McConnell told reporters trying to get his views on a proposal Boehner and the House Republican leadership sent to Obama on Monday.

Outside the capital, concern mounted about how and when - not to mention if - the politicians might put their disagreements behind them and deal conclusively with an issue that economists say could trigger another recession.

Corporate chief executives were scheduled to meet with Obama later on Wednesday. The Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for corporations, has arranged the meetings. In addition to prompt action on the fiscal cliff, the group is seeking tax cuts for their companies.

Boeing Co. CEO Jim McNerney, who chairs the group, said its members want "a balanced solution to the nation's fiscal cliff and long-term deficit and debt issues ... including meaningful and comprehensive tax and entitlement reforms."

The manufacturing sector contracted in November and posted its weakest performance in three years, a report showed on Monday. Companies taking part in the survey said uncertainty over the negotiations in Washington was a factor.

U.S. stocks slipped on Tuesday as investors fretted about Washington's ability to avoid a year-end budget crisis.

REPUBLICAN DISARRAY

On Capitol Hill, conservative South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint attacked Boehner, a fellow Republican, over Monday's fiscal cliff offer, which included $800 billion in revenue increases from overhauling the tax code, along with spending cuts and entitlement revisions, as part of a deficit reduction deal.

That amount, which Boehner informally accepted during previous debt-ceiling negotiations in 2011, was not enough to satisfy Obama. But it was too much for DeMint and other Republicans who have made opposition to tax increases of any kind a central part of their politics for many years.

"Speaker Boehner's $800 billion tax hike will destroy American jobs and allow politicians in Washington to spend even more," DeMint said in a statement on Tuesday.

Signaling some worry about fragmented sentiment in the House, Republican leaders took the unusual step of removing two hard-line Tea Party conservatives, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan, from the House Budget Committee, where elements of a fiscal cliff deal are likely to be considered.

A few House Republicans, such as Mike Simpson of Idaho and Steve King of Iowa, have said tax increases on the wealthiest may be tolerable under certain conditions.

OBAMA PRESSES ADVANTAGE

The president pressed his agenda on Tuesday, reiterating his openness to unspecified reforms in entitlement programs.

He repeated that as part of any deal, low tax rates on 98 percent of taxpayers should be extended, but that taxes on the top 2 percent should rise. "Let's let those go up," Obama said, referring to a "down payment" for future negotiations.

"And then let's set up a process with a time certain, at the end of 2013 or the fall of 2013, where we work on tax reform, we look at what loopholes and deductions both Democrats and Republicans are willing to close, and it's possible that we may be able to lower rates by broadening the base at that point."

Fueling concerns among some Republicans about resisting compromise are surveys, like one released by the Pew Research Center on Tuesday, which showed that about 53 percent of those polled said they would hold Republicans more responsible than Democrats for going over the cliff; 27 percent said they would hold Obama responsible.

(Additional reporting by Kim Dixon, Rachelle Younglai, Fred Barbash; Writing by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Fred Barbash and Eric Beech)

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Japan tunnel disaster shows aging of public works

TOKYO (AP) — The deadly collapse last weekend of hundreds of concrete ceiling slabs in a tunnel outside Tokyo is raising calls for more spending on Japan's aging infrastructure, but the country might simply not have the money.

Nine people were killed Sunday in the tunnel, a major link between the capital and central Japan that opened in 1977 at the peak of the country's postwar road construction boom. Police searched the tunnel operator's offices Tuesday, looking for evidence of negligence.

The transport ministry has ordered inspections of 49 other highway and road tunnels of similar construction around the mountainous country.

Much more of Japan's transportation system may require refurbishing after years of spending cuts that starved projects of funding, including for needed basic maintenance.

The infrastructure ministry, which is in charge of land and roads, joined with three government highway operators last month in forming a panel on how to handle problems of deteriorating expressways and tunnels.

Experts told the panel that about 40 percent of the 8,716 kilometers of expressways the agencies run had been in operation for more than 30 years, the Yomiuri newspaper reported Tuesday.

The paper cited Kyoto University expert Toyoaki Miyagawa as saying that countermeasures are "urgently needed" because the roadways and tunnels were built according to specifications suiting much lighter traffic loads than today's.

Such projects would pose an extra burden at a time when Japan's public debt already has soared to more than 200 percent of its GDP.

Miyagawa said Sunday's tunnel accident likely resulted from a faster-than-anticipated aging of the structure.

About 270 concrete slabs collapsed onto the roadway deep inside the Sasago Tunnel 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Tokyo, falling on three moving vehicles.

Central Nippon Expressway Co., the tunnel's government-owned operator, said it had no record of any major repairs performed since the tunnel opened, but company official Satoshi Noguchi said an inspection of the tunnel's roof in September found nothing amiss.

About a dozen uniformed police were shown on television Tuesday entering the company's headquarters in the central city of Nagoya, toting cardboard and plastic boxes.

"Yes they are searching our offices here. We will be fully cooperating with them," said Osamu Funahashi, another company official.

The slabs, each weighing 1.4 metric tons (1.54 short tons), fell over a stretch of about 110 meters (120 yards). They had been suspended from the arched roof of the tunnel.

The operator was exploring the possibility that bolts holding a metal piece suspending the panels above the road had weakened with age. The panels, measuring about 5 meters (16 feet) by 1.2 meters (4 feet), and 8 centimeters (3 inches) thick, were installed when the 4.7-kilometer-long (3-mile-long) tunnel was built.

Recovery work in the tunnel about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Tokyo halted Monday to allow reinforcement of the roof to prevent more collapses, said Jun Goto, an official at the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

By Tuesday, crews were removing the concrete slabs from the tunnel, said Goto, who added that authorities do not expect to find any more victims inside.

Spending on public works once was the lifeblood of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan for most of the decades since in World War II, though it was ousted by the Democratic Party of Japan in 2009.

The government created huge oceanside reclamation projects, bullet train lines and other vital infrastructure, as well as notorious "bridges to nowhere."

Political reforms beginning in the early 2000s focused on cutting spending on public works, but they failed to differentiate between projects that contributed to efficiency and competitiveness and those that did not, said Masahiro Matsumura, a politics professor at St. Andrews University in Osaka, Japan.

"Basically, we didn't spend enough on renovating our decaying water pipes, bridges and tunnels. We didn't spend enough on public infrastructure," Matsumura said.

Japan, however, has other expensive needs, even as it tries to cope with massive debt. Rebuilding from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and ensuing nuclear disaster, is diverting attention and resources from such wider issues.

LDP chief Shinzo Abe has made boosting public spending a key platform of his campaign in the Dec. 16 parliamentary election. He accuses current Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of not doing enough to stimulate the economy after two decades of stagnation.

But what worked decades ago during an era of fast growth and ample tax revenues may not have the same impact in today's fast-aging Japan, especially when the economy is suffering from the global crisis, says Andrew DeWit, a professor at Tokyo's Rikkyo University.

"Now you have this tunnel that fell apart. That has reignited enthusiasm for construction," he said. "The question is, do they have the money to spend on that?"

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Court upholds $319M verdict in 'Millionaire' case

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a $319 million verdict over profits from the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and rejected Walt Disney Co.'s request for a new trial.

A jury decided in 2010 that Disney hid the show's profits from its creators, London-based Celador International. The ruling Monday by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found no issues with the verdict or with a judge's rulings in the case.

"I am pleased that justice has been done," Celador Chairman Paul Smith said in a statement.

Disney did not immediately comment on the decision.

The ruling comes more than two years after the jury ruled in Celador's favor after a lengthy trial that featured testimony from several top Disney executives. The company sued in 2004, claiming Disney was using creative accounting to hide profits from the show, which first ran in the United States from August 1999 to May 2002 and was a huge hit for ABC.

The jury found that Celador was owed $269.2 million, and a judge later added $50 million in interest to the judgment.

The appeals court determined the verdict was not "grossly excessive or monstrous" and that it was not based on speculation or guesswork.

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