Obama Wins 2012 Election: Why Your Taxes Are Going Up

When President Obama and the new Congress begin to tackle important legislation and federal policy in January, one of the key issues will be how to reform America's byzantine tax code.Obama campaigned on a platform to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, declaring that millionaires and billionaires need to "pay their fair share." The president proposed the highly controversial "Buffett Rule,"...

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Senators Watch ‘Lincoln’ with Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis

Grab the popcorn: Its movie night tonight in the Senate.The Senate has taken an official recess from floor debate for a few hours to screen the movie “Lincoln” in the Capitol Visitors Center within the Capitol complex.Appearing with director Steven Spielberg and actor Daniel Day-Lewis on Capitol Hill this evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that he hopes the message of the movie...

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Videogames under fire, Hollywood lays low after school shooting

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The multi-billion-dollar videogame industry came under scrutiny on Wednesday after Hollywood canceled, postponed or played down a slew of movies and TV shows with violent content in the wake of last week's shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.In Washington, Senator John Rockefeller called for a national study of the impact of violent videogames on children and a review...

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'Homeland' star Claire Danes gives birth to first child

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Emmy-winning actress Claire Danes has given birth to her first child, a boy, the publicist for the "Homeland" star said on Wednesday.Cyrus Michael Christopher Dancy was born on Monday to Danes, 33, and her husband, British actor Hugh Dancy.Danes' performance as CIA operative Carrie Matheson on Showtime's "Homeland" series scored her an Emmy win in September, while the psychological...

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'Lincoln' at the Capitol draws director and star

WASHINGTON (AP) — Today's lawmakers might be excused for thinking they've seen this movie: A recently re-elected president spars with a quarrelsome Congress over an issue that roils the nation.The so-called fiscal cliff wasn't at the core of the film screened Wednesday in the Capitol for lawmakers. The movie "Lincoln" explores the political machinations involving President Abraham Lincoln and Congress...

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Book Talk: The sin of envy on a small Greek island

TOKYO (Reuters) - After a Greek bride is abandoned at the altar and her prospective bridegroom is found blinded from an acid attack, local villagers are baffled until Hermes Diaktoras, a portly man in white tennis shoes, arrives to help.So begins "The Doctor of Thessaly," the third in a series of detective stories by British-born author Anne Zouroudi that feature Hermes, who even as he works to unravel...

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Smoking in pregnancy tied to lower reading scores

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Babies exposed to their mother's cigarette smoke in the womb later perform more poorly on reading comprehension tests, according to a new study."It's not a little difference - it's a big difference in accuracy and comprehension at a critical time when children are being assessed, and are getting a sense of what it means to be successful," lead author Dr. Jeffrey Gruen...

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Antibiotics in pregnancy tied to asthma in kids

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children whose mothers took antibiotics while they were pregnant were slightly more likely than other kids to develop asthma in a new Danish study.The results don't prove that antibiotics caused the higher asthma risk, but they support a current theory that the body's own "friendly" bacteria have a role in whether a child develops asthma, and antibiotics can disrupt those...

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Exclusive: Google to replace M&A chief

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc is replacing the head of its in-house mergers and acquisitions group, David Lawee, with one of its top lawyers, according to a person familiar with the matter. Don Harrison, a high-ranking lawyer at Google, will replace Lawee as head of the Internet search company's corporate development group, which oversees mergers and acquisitions, said the source, who...

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SEC wrestles with Internet age in Netflix case

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. regulatory probe of Netflix Inc over disclosures made on its chief executive's Facebook page could prove an important test of whether a rule designed to prevent leaks to analysts can translate to the social media age. The movie and TV streaming service revealed on Thursday that it may face action from the Securities and Exchange Commission if the agency...

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