Monti urges debate on Italy election as rivals open fire

ROME (Reuters) – Outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti posted his reform agenda online on Monday, urging Italians to join a debate on their country’s future as potentially bitter election campaign gets underway two months before Italy goes to polls.

Following weeks of hesitation, Monti declared his availability on Sunday to lead a reform-minded centrist alliance to seek a second term to complete the economic reform program begun when he took office just over a year ago.

The former European Commissioner, appointed at the head of a technocrat government to save Italy from financial crisis, has now thrown off his mantle of neutrality and entered a race that will be dominated by his tough reform agenda.

Even if he confirms his entry into the campaign, Monti appears unlikely at this stage to return to office but his involvement could strengthen a centrist alliance and help shape the agenda of the next government.

The center-left Democratic Party (PD), which has pledged to maintain Monti’s broad reform course while giving more help to workers and pensioners and emphasizing growth more, is favored to win but may have to strike a coalition deal with the center.

In an open letter to Italians posted online and accompanied by a 25-page policy program, Monti said he hoped that the agenda would lead to an “open reflection” that would help shape the debate ahead of the election on February 24-25.

He urged a mix of budget rigor and structural reform as well as measures to crack down on corruption and get more women and young people to work.

However the tone of the campaign has inevitably moved away from calm debate and into the murky and sometimes treacherous territory of Italian party politics, where Monti is a novice.

GLOVES COME OFF

At a news conference on Sunday, he attacked left-wing trade unions for resisting reform but reserved special criticism for his scandal-plagued predecessor Silvio Berlusconi, whom he picked on repeatedly for his “bewildering” changes of position.

Speaking to one of his own television channels, the 76 year-old media billionaire responded by saying it would be “immoral” for Monti to fight the election after governing as an unelected premier with the support of the main parties.

One of Berlusconi’s chief lieutenants, Fabrizio Cicchitto, parliamentary floor leader of his People of Freedom (PDL) party, indicated that Monti’s international standing and the respect he enjoys among Italy’s European partners would count for little.

“He’s taken aim at the PDL, which obviously has no choice but to respond in kind,” he said.

Monti, a Life Senator who does not need to stand for election to parliament, has not said exactly what forces he could support but the centrist parties he has been linked with greeted his announcement with great enthusiasm.

“We’re not forcing Monti but obviously if it happens, the value it adds to our project will be enormous,” Pierferdinando Casini, head of the centrist UDC party, which is close to the Catholic church, told the daily La Repubblica.

A small number of centrists from both the two main parties, including former Foreign Minister Franco Frattini announced they were leaving their parties and would support Monti, whose reform agenda is strongly backed by Italy’s business establishment.

However the centrist group lags both the center-left Democratic Party (PD) and the PDL as well as the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement in opinion polls and without Monti, it has little chance of making any significant gains.

Even with the respected economics professor at its head, a centrist alliance including the UDC and other smaller parties including a new group created by Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, appears likely to struggle to pass 15 percent.

(Reporting By James Mackenzie; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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How to Get Free Last-Minute Shipping

First, the bad news: the cut off for free shipping on most online sites was Tuesday, Dec 18^th. But the good news – we’ve got some sneaky ways to finagle free rush shipping and a list of sites still offering free shipping guaranteed to arrive before December 25^th.

Free Rush Shipping
Some of the biggest online retailers are still offering free last minute shipping:

• Barnes & Noble – free shipping on Nook HD through Dec. 22


• MacMall – free 2-day shipping on orders over $ 299 and under 25lbs – through 6 p.m. PST Dec. 22.


• Macy’s – free shipping on orders over $ 99. Place order 11:59 p.m. EST Dec. 20.


• The Northface – free 2-day shipping on everything through 11:59 p.m. Dec. 19.


• Walmart.com has extended free shipping through December 19^th on some items (check product page for eligibility)


• Overstock.com – free shipping on select gifts. Place order by Dec. 22 to receive by Christmas.


• Newegg   Free 2-Day shipping on over 200 items


• Target – free shipping on Daily Deals


• Victoria’s Secret – free shipping on orders over $ 100 using code “SHIP12.” Order by 5 p.m. EST on Dec. 20.


• Zappos – free shipping for all items with guaranteed Christmas delivery if ordered by 11:59 p.m. PST Dec. 22.

And the biggest of the big online retailers, Amazon, has a limited set of items available for free expedited shipping. These include jewelry, watches, clothing, video games, laptops, headphones, and kitchen items.

[Related: Great Gifts for Under $ 25]

But since many of the above deals are limited to select items, take a look at…

How to Get Free 2-Day Shipping on Just About Everything
Amazon Prime is a yearly subscription service. In exchange for a $ 79 fee, you get free 2 day shipping all year long. And yes, that also applies at Christmas (must order by 3 p.m. EST Dec. 22 to receive on time). Best deal is that you can get a free 6-month trial.

And here’s the real sneaky surprise: Do you have a family member who already belongs to Prime? They can nominate up to four people for the same free shipping benefits. Prime members nominate someone by going to their account, clicking “Settings” and “Manage Prime Membership.”

Also, Amazon Student is a free 6-month membership to Prime with all the benefits, providing you have an email address that ends in .edu.

But you don’t have to limit yourself to Amazon. Shoprunner.com also offers free 2-day shipping, though the membership service costs $ 8.95 a month – so not entirely free, but if you have numerous items still to buy, you could save a bundle.  And Shoprunner has tons of participating online retailers like Toys R Us, Sports Authority, Claire’s, PetSmart and EMS. Say you want to buy something from PetSmart.com, if you sign in with Shoprunner, many of the items on the site will be eligible for free 2-day shipping. One more thing to try: I was able to sign up for a free 1-year membership to Shoprunner using the promo code RUNNER. The site implied I had to be an American Express member, but it never asked for my details about the credit card, and now I have a membership. Good luck.

Ship to Store
Finally, the best last-minute option for many is to ship to store. You peruse all the options from home, pay online, and then pick up your selection at your local store. Tons of big retailers offer this service, and it guarantees your item will be in stock and waiting for you at customer service. Major retailers offering free Ship to Store include:

• Best Buy


• Target


• Toys R Us


• Walmart


• Sears

[Related: Best E-Reader for Under $ 100]

Brad Marshland contributed to this story.

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Few tests done at toxic sites after superstorm

OLD BRIDGE, N.J. (AP) — For more than a month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said that the recent superstorm didn’t cause significant problems at any of the 247 Superfund toxic waste sites it’s monitoring in New York and New Jersey.

But in many cases, no actual tests of soil or water are being conducted, just visual inspections.

The EPA conducted a handful of tests right after the storm, but couldn’t provide details or locations of any recent testing when asked last week. New Jersey officials point out that federally designated Superfund sites are EPA’s responsibility.

The 1980 Superfund law gave EPA the power to order cleanups of abandoned, spilled and illegally dumped hazardous wastes that threaten human health or the environment. The sites can involve long-term or short-term cleanups.

Jeff Tittel, executive director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey, says officials haven’t done enough to ensure there is no contamination from Superfund sites. He’s worried toxins could leach into groundwater and the ocean.

“It’s really serious and I think the EPA and the state of New Jersey have not done due diligence to make sure these sites have not created problems,” Tittel said.

The EPA said last month that none of the Superfund sites it monitors in New York or New Jersey sustained significant damage, but that it has done follow-up sampling at the Gowanus Canal site in Brooklyn, the Newtown Creek site on the border of Queens and Brooklyn, and the Raritan Bay Slag site, all of which flooded during the storm.

But last week, EPA spokeswoman Stacy Kika didn’t respond to questions about whether any soil or water tests have been done at the other 243 Superfund sites. The agency hasn’t said exactly how many of the sites flooded.

“Currently, we do not believe that any sites were impacted in ways that would pose a threat to nearby communities,” EPA said in a statement.

Politicians have been asking similar questions, too. On Nov. 29, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., wrote to the EPA to ask for “an additional assessment” of Sandy’s impact on Superfund sites in the state.

Elevated levels of lead, antimony, arsenic and copper have been found at the Raritan Bay Slag site, a Superfund site since 2009. Blast furnaces dumped lead at the site in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and lead slag was also used there to construct a seawall and jetty.

The EPA found lead levels as high as 142,000 parts per million were found at Raritan Bay in 2007. Natural soil levels for lead range from 50 to 400 parts per million.

The EPA took four samples from the site after Superstorm Sandy: two from a fenced-off beach area and two from a nearby public playground. One of the beach samples tested above the recreational limit for lead. In early November, the EPA said it was taking additional samples “to get a more detailed picture of how the material might have shifted” and will “take appropriate steps to prevent public exposure” at the site, according to a bulletin posted on its website. But six weeks later, the agency couldn’t provide more details of what has been found.

The Newtown Creek site, with pesticides, metals, PCBs and volatile organic compounds, and the Gowanus Canal site, heavily contaminated with PCBs, heavy metals, volatile organics and coal tar wastes, were added to the Superfund list in 2010.

Some say the lead at the Raritan Bay site can disperse easily.

Gabriel Fillippeli, director of the Center for Urban Health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said lead tends to stay in the soil once it is deposited but can be moved around by stormwaters or winds. Arsenic, which has been found in the surface water at the site, can leach into the water table, Fillippeli said.

“My concern is twofold. One is, a storm like that surely moved some of that material physically to other places, I would think,” Fillippeli said. “If they don’t cap that or seal it or clean it up, arsenic will continue to make its way slowly into groundwater and lead will be distributed around the neighborhood.”

The lack of testing has left some residents with lingering worries.

The Raritan Bay Slag site sits on the beach overlooking a placid harbor with a view of Staten Island. On a recent foggy morning, workers were hauling out debris, and some nearby residents wondered whether the superstorm increased or spread the amount of pollution at the site.

“I think it brought a lot of crud in from what’s out there,” said Elise Pelletier, whose small bungalow sits on a hill overlooking the Raritan Bay Slag site. “You don’t know what came in from the water.” Her street did not flood because it is up high, but she worries about a park below where people go fishing and walk their dogs. She would like to see more testing done.

Thomas Burke, an associate dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, says both federal and state officials generally have a good handle on the major Superfund sites, which often use caps and walls to contain pollution.

“They are designed to hold up,” Burke said of such structures, but added that “you always have to be concerned that an unusual event can spread things around in the environment.” Burke noted that the storm brought in a “tremendous amount” of water, raising the possibility that groundwater plumes could have changed.

“There really have to be evaluations” of communities near the Superfund sites, he said. “It’s important to take a look.”

Officials in both New York and New Jersey note they’ve also been monitoring less toxic sites known as brownfields and haven’t found major problems. The New York DEC said in a statement that brownfields in that state “were not significantly impacted” and that they don’t plan further tests for storm impacts.

Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said the agency has done visual inspections of major brownfield sites and also alerted towns and cities to be on the lookout for problems. Ragonese said they just aren’t getting calls voicing such concerns.

Back at the Raritan Bay slag site, some residents want more information. And they want the toxic soil, which has sat here for years, out.

Pat Churchill, who was walking her dog in the park along the water, said she’s still worried.

“There are unanswered questions. You can’t tell me this is all contained. It has to move around,” Churchill said.

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Syria jets kill tens as international envoy visits

BEIRUT (AP) — A government airstrike on a bakery in a rebel-held town in central Syria killed more than 60 people on Sunday, activists said, casting a pall over a visit by the international envoy charged with negotiating an end to the country’s civil war.

The strike on the town of Halfaya left scattered bodies and debris up and down a street, and more than a dozen dead and wounded were trapped in tangled heap of dirt and rubble.

The attack appeared to be the government response to a newly announced rebel offensive seeking to drive the Syrian army from a constellation of towns and village north of the central city of Hama. Halfaya was the first of the area’s towns to be “liberated” by rebel fighters, and activists saw Sunday’s attack as payback.

“Halfaya was the first and biggest victory in the Hama countryside,” said Hama activist Mousab Alhamadee via Skype. “That’s why the regime is punishing them in this way.”

The total death toll remained unclear, but the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 60 people were killed. That number is expected to rise, it said, because some 50 of those wounded in the strike are in critical condition.

Amateur videos posted online Sunday showed residents and armed rebels rushing to the scene. One stopped to cover a mound of human flesh lying in the street with his coat.

More than a dozen dead or seriously wounded people lay in the street near a simple, concrete building, some in puddles of blood. Near its front wall, bodies jutted from a pile of dirt and rubble on the sidewalk.

Rebels screamed in distress while trying to extract the bodies, while others carried away the wounded.

It was unclear from the videos if the building was indeed a bakery. Nearly all the dead and wounded appeared to be men, some wore camouflage, raising the possibility that the jet had targeted a rebel gathering.

For the past week, rebels have been launching attacks in the area, most notably in the nearby village of Morek, where they hope to seize control of the country’s main north-south highway, preventing the regime from getting supplies to its forces further north in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

On Saturday, one rebel group threatened to storm two predominantly Christian towns nearby if their residents did not “evict” government troops they said were using them as a base to attack nearby areas.

The activist accounts could not be independently verified due to restrictions on reporting in Syria. The Syrian government does not respond to requests for comment on its military activities.

The attack coincided with the start of a two-day visit by Lakhdar Barhimi, who represents the U.N. And the Arab League, to meet with top Syrian officials.

Brahimi has made little apparent progress toward ending Syria’s crisis since assuming his post in September, mostly because the sides appear more interested in fighting it out than in sitting down for talks.

Brahimi did not speak publicly upon arriving in Damascus for a two-day mission, and it was unclear whether he would present new ideas to end the war. His trip appeared troubled from the start.

Instead of flying directly to Syria as he had on previous visits, Brahimi landed in Beirut and traveled to the Syrian capital by land because of fighting near the Damascus airport, Lebanese officials said.

The Lebanese officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters, said Brahimi was expected to meet Syria’s foreign minister later Sunday and President Bashar Assad on Monday.

The trip is Brahimi’s third since taking the job following the resignation of former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan after both sides disregarded a cease-fire he brokered in April.

While not advancing a comprehensive peace plan, Brahimi has called on the sides to negotiate a solution.

The security situation has gotten notably worse for the regime since his last visit, with rebels storming a number of military bases and seizing valuable munitions. Russia, Assad’s most powerful international backer, also appears to have changed his assessment of Assad’s strength, as top officials say they do not seek to preserve his regime, while still calling for a negotiated solution.

Still, neither side appears willing to talk.

In a lengthy Sunday news conference, Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi repeated the Syrian government’s line that it is fighting terrorist groups backed by foreign powers who seek to destroy Syria.

Al-Zoubi said the government was willing to engage in dialogue but said the other side wasn’t.

“We speak of dialogue with those who believe in national dialogue,” he said. “But those who rejected dialogue in their statements and called for arms and use of weapons, that’s a different issue. They don’t want dialogue.”

Rebel groups refuse to talk to Assad, saying too many people have died for him to be considered part of the solution.

Violence raged elsewhere in the country on Sunday. Anti-regime activists reported government airstrikes on suburbs east of the capital and the northern province of Aleppo.

Airstrikes on the town of al-Safira, south of Aleppo, killed 13 people, including a mother and five daughters from one family, a local activist named Hussein said via Skype. He gave only his first name for fear of retribution.

The town lies next to a large military complex with factories and artillery and air defense bases. Hussein guessed the airstrike was payback for recent rebel attacks on the complex.

“The strikes don’t hit the fighters at all,” he said. “They want to take revenge on the civilians.”

The Observatory said at least 10 rebels and an unknown number of government troops were killed in clashes in Afreen, near Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, as rebels sought to storm an army base there.

Anti-regime activists say more than 40,000 people have been killed since Syria’s crisis began in March 2011.

___

Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed reporting from Damascus.

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Retailers facing ‘critical’ time

23 December 2012 Last updated at 19:14 ET

Nearly 140 retailers are in a “critical condition” despite Christmas being their peak trading time, business recovery firm Begbies Traynor has said.

Its UK business solvency survey found 13,700 more firms were in distress, a 35% rise in the quarter to December.

It said many could struggle to meet their quarterly rent payment, due on Christmas Day.

Begbies Traynor has predicted a rise in the number of both national and regional retail insolvencies in 2013.

The report suggested the worst affected retailers include specialists in books, news and stationery, where distress signals were 85% higher on the previous quarter.

Online retailers, supermarkets and shops selling decor and household goods have meanwhile, seen sales figures improve.

Traders of furniture, lighting, home decorations, hardware and paints have seen a combined 13% fall in distress levels in the last three months, as homeowners decide to “improve, not move”.

‘Window shopping”

Julie Palmer, partner at the company, said many consumers were browsing in high street stores before finding the product they want for a better price on the internet.

“While book sales usually peak in the run up to Christmas, the move by consumers to use traditional book retailers simply for window shopping before purchasing online at discount prices has seriously impacted this sector, which has already suffered considerably from the growing popularity of e-book readers,” she said.

Pharmacies, personal care outlets, and off-licences have also seen their distress signals rise.

Begbies Traynor said this was thanks to consumers being more careful with what they spent their money on.

The latest high-profile high street casualty was electrical chain Comet, which closed all its 236 stores this month.

Ms Palmer added: “Though the performance of national retailers is well documented, it represents just the tip of the iceberg with thousands of smaller and specialist retailers struggling to stay afloat in today’s austerity Britain.

She said that some may survive, thanks to last-minute Christmas shopping, but that others would be hit by the quarterly rent day, which falls on Christmas Day, as well as fierce competition and pressure to keep profit margins low.

The predicts a number of national or regional retail chains could fail in the next 12 months.

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Reports: Rolling Stones guitarist Wood ties knot

LONDON (AP) — Two British newspapers say Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood has married his fiancee Sally Humphreys at a ceremony at London‘s Dorchester Hotel.

The Sun and the Daily Mirror carried photographs of the 65-year-old rocker with a pale boutonniere and a dark blue suit, and his 34-year-old bride in a traditional white gown and a clutch of matching white flowers.

The Sun quoted Wood as saying “I’m feeling great” as he and his bride kissed and posed for pictures outside the exclusive hotel in London’s upscale Mayfair district.

The newspapers said the guests included singer Rod Stewart and his wife Penny Lancaster as well as ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell.

A call and an email to Wood’s U.S.-based agent weren’t immediately returned Saturday.

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Analysis: Stop-gap fix most likely outcome of “fiscal cliff” talks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The “fiscal cliff” deadline is days away and the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama have left town for Christmas.

But even if they were still here, it wouldn’t have mattered, according to Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. He says they were going nowhere to resolving the disagreement over how to fix the nation’s fiscal problems.

Last month’s dreams of a “grand bargain” of tax hikes and spending cuts seem long gone. They had been reduced to more modest bargains in mid-December, and as 2013 approaches, are on the verge of relegation to a “stop-gap measure,” at best the sort of temporary fix that Congress undertook in 2011.

A stop-gap that puts everything off for a while but resolves nothing is now the most promising alternative, if there is to be one, to the across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts described as a “fiscal cliff” because they threaten to send the U.S. economy plunging into another recession.

It is also the way fiscal showdowns have ended in Washington in recent years.

Such a fix, at best, would delay the spending cuts and tax hikes further into 2013 as well as work to address in a long-term way a government budget that has generated deficits exceeding $ 1 trillion in each of the last four years. Even worse, it would set up a huge fight in January and February over raising the U.S. debt ceiling, which controls the amount of money the federal government can borrow.

Dysfunction in Washington was specifically cited as one of the reasons rating agency Standard & Poor’s cut the U.S. debt rating to AA-plus after a battle over the debt ceiling in 2011. That alone – not to mention going over the cliff – could lead to another rating cut.

At worst, the new year could start with a full-fledged jump off the ‘cliff,’ with an understanding, communicated to financial markets, that Congress and the White House would come back and try again for a solution.

Given the apparent deadlock, some congressional aides this week said that Washington needed to begin telegraphing to Wall Street that markets should not panic if a “fiscal cliff” deal is not struck in December.

The goal, one aide said on condition of anonymity, is to avoid starting 2013 with a steep stock market drop like the one the U.S. suffered in 2008, when the country’s financial industry was falling apart and Congress was divided over what to do.

On Friday, Obama acknowledged that only small steps might be possible with so little time remaining.

Those, the Democratic president said, would consist of extending benefits for the long-term unemployed and keeping income tax rates low for 98 percent of Americans – meaning raising taxes on households with net incomes above $ 250,000 a year but not for those earning less.

He held out the possibility of something “comprehensive,” as he put it, but it had a hollow ring at the close of a work week that saw House Speaker John Boehner step back from negotiations and pursue a partisan plan that even some of his fellow Republicans could not stomach.

MARKET PRESSURE

The steps that Obama outlined were immediately rejected by Republicans, who have given ground on their previous steadfast opposition to any tax hikes but are still demanding that the White House agree to more substantial spending cuts.

“The president has failed to offer any solution that passes the test of balance,” declared Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck, minutes after the end of Obama’s statement on Friday.

On Saturday, a spokesman for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was similarly dismissive, noting Obama’s call had neither bipartisan support nor spending cuts to ride along with tax increases.

McConnell, on Friday, suggested bringing up a House-passed bill that extends current tax rates for all Americans, including the top earners, and then pushes for comprehensive tax reform next year that theoretically could raise new revenues to help cut deficits.

But Obama has promised repeatedly to veto any extension of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts that fail to hike rates for the wealthy.

And Democrats, who control the Senate, have dismissed the McConnell idea, arguing that Obama ran his successful 2012 re-election campaign on a promise of forcing the wealthy to bear more of the burden of deficit reduction.

Democratic aides in Congress think their own bill implementing Obama’s $ 250,000 income threshold, which passed the 100-member Senate in July with 51 votes, could breeze through this month, or next year after the “fiscal cliff” is breached.

The prospect of a breach is being discussed far more seriously now, and not just as a bluff or to set up the other side for blame.

“I think we’re going to go over the cliff,” said Republican Representative Patrick Tiberi of Ohio. “I don’t see something getting done.”

In an MSNBC interview Friday, Hoyer, a 31-year veteran of Congress from Maryland, said it wouldn’t matter if everyone was in Washington instead of on holiday.

“Frankly, we’ve been in town for four weeks and members haven`t been doing much,” he said, calling it “one of the least productive times that I’ve been in Congress.”

Even Obama speaks of “a mismatch” between how people are thinking about the looming tax hikes and spending cuts “outside of this town and how folks are operating here. And we’ve just got to get that aligned,” he said in his statement.

ITG Investment Research Chief Economist Steve Blitz on Saturday said sliding the “fiscal cliff” negotiations into the new year was not a huge deal. “I think markets will pressure for a deal in January,” he said.

The “pressure” could be in the form of a significant stock market drop, which would hit workers’ retirement plans, threaten to deter consumer and business spending, and possibly rattle other countries’ economies at a time when the global economy is far from robust.

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Martin Howell and Paul Simao)

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Canada spending growth sluggish in November, Mastercard says

(Reuters) – Canada‘s holiday shopping season got off to a slow start in November with retail sales rising only 1.3 percent from the previous year, compared with 4.2 percent growth a year earlier, according to data released by MasterCard on Thursday.

Still, the shopping season was still young in November. MasterCard Advisors, the payment company’s research and consulting division, found that in recent years, holiday shopping peaks from December 20 to December 22.

“Many Canadians may have gotten an early start with Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, but it’s still a very young phenomenon in Canada,” Senior Vice-President Richard McLaughlin, said in a release.

The Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving is the unofficial start to the holiday shopping season south of the border, and in recent years retailers have imported Black Friday sales to Canada.

Some also promote online sales the following Monday.

Canada’s online retail sales continued to grow in November, increasing 26.4 percent.

(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Peter Galloway)

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Obama starts Hawaiian vacation, leaving Washington on ice

KAILUA, Hawaii (Reuters) – 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.

(Reporting By Mark Felsenthal and Richard Cowan; Editing by Vicki Allen, Todd Eastham and Paul Simao)

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Brain Benefits for the Holidays? Stuff the Stocking with Video Games

Title Post: Brain Benefits for the Holidays? Stuff the Stocking with Video Games
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
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