L.A. gun buyback program breaks a record

A one-day gun buyback event in Los Angeles on Wednesday gathered 2,037 firearms, including 75 assault weapons and two rocket launchers, officials said. The total was nearly 400 more weapons than were collected in a similar buyback earlier this year.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the collection at two locations was so successful that the city ran out of money for supermarket gift cards and got a private donation through the city controller to bolster the pot.

The gun buyback was moved up from its usual Mother's Day date in response to the massacre Dec. 14 that claimed the lives of 26 people, including 20 students, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

"As you can see to my right and left, these weren't just guns that weren't functioning anymore," Villaraigosa said at a news conference Thursday morning. "These were serious guns — semiautomatic weapons, guns that have no place on the streets of Los Angeles or any other city."

The mayor described the event as a success, but acknowledged that there were still many guns on the streets.

Hundreds lined up in cars to get Ralphs gift cards in exchange for different types of guns. Villaraigosa said the LAPD collected 901 handguns, 698 rifles, 363 shotguns and 75 assault weapons. The weapons will be melted down.

He said that nearly three-quarters of those turning in the weapons said in an informal survey that they felt safer with the weapons off the street.

"Perhaps the most honest testament to the success of yesterday's program can be seen in the 166 weapons that were surrendered for nothing," Villaraigosa said.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said it was the most successful gun buyback event since the city began the program.

"Those are weapons of war, weapons of death," Beck said, motioning to a selection of military-style weapons on a display table. "These are not hunting guns. These are not target guns. These are made to put high-velocity, extremely deadly, long-range rounds down-range as quickly as possible, and they have no place in our great city."

Beck acknowledged that the weapons would not be checked for connections to crimes before being melted down. He said the sheer number would make that difficult, and he does not want to deter people from turning in firearms.

Villaraigosa again Thursday called for a national assault weapons ban and for strengthening the California assault weapons law to close loopholes.

richard.winton@latimes.com

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KOL’s Nathan Followill, Jessie Baylin welcome baby

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Kings of Leon family has just gotten bigger.

Drummer Nathan Followill and his wife, singer-songwriter Jessie Baylin, welcomed a baby girl on Wednesday. It’s the first baby for the couple and the third for the Followill family band. Nathan Followill’s brother Caleb and cousin Matthew also have children.

A spokesman says Violet Marlowe Followill was born at 4:01 p.m. in Nashville. She was 7 pounds, 13 ounces at birth.

The baby comes before what promises to be a busy 2013 for Kings of Leon. The Nashville, Tenn.-based band has been working on new music for an album that’s expected to be released next year. Baylin released her third album, “Little Spark,” earlier this year.

The couple has been married since 2009.

___

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http://kingsofleon.com

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7-Eleven Stores Focus on Healthier Food Options

The chain that is home of the Slurpee, Big Gulp and self-serve nachos with chili and cheese is betting that consumers will stop in for yogurt parfaits, crudité and lean turkey on whole wheat bread.

7-Eleven, the convenience store chain, is restocking its shelves with an eye toward health. Over the last year, the retailer has introduced a line of fresh foods for the calorie conscious and trimmed down its more indulgent fare by creating portion-size items.

The change is as much about consumers’ expanding waistlines as the company’s bottom line. By 2015, the retailer aims to have 20 percent of sales come from fresh foods in its American and Canadian stores, up from about 10 percent currently, according to a company spokesman.

“We’re aspiring to be more of a food and beverage company, and that aligns with what the consumer now wants, which is more tasty, healthy, fresh food choices,” said Joseph M. DePinto, the chief executive of 7-Eleven, a subsidiary of the Japanese company, Seven & i Holdings.

Convenience stores have typically been among the most nimble of retailers. In the 1980s, they added Pac-Man arcade games as a way to keep customers in stores longer and to buy more merchandise. They installed A.T.M.’s a decade later, taking a slice of the transaction fees. More recently, they built refrigerated dairy cases, with milk, eggs, cheese and other staples.

But just as they have taken business from traditional supermarkets, convenience stores have faced increased competition from the likes of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, which offer a basic menu of fresh foods for consumers on the go.

At the same time, a major profit driver for convenience stores — cigarettes — has been in steady decline over the last decade as the rate of smoking has dropped in the United States.

Fresh foods can help offset some of those losses. The markup on such merchandise can be significant, bolstering a store’s overall profits. It’s also a fast-growing category.

“If you can figure out how to deliver consistent quality and the products consumers want, fresh food is attractive because margins are higher, and it addresses some of the competitive issues you’re facing,” said Richard Meyer, a longtime consultant for the convenience store industry. “But it’s not easy to do.”

7-Eleven has been selling fresh food since the late 1990s. But much of its innovation has been limited to the variety of hot dogs spinning on the roller grill or the breakfast sandwiches languishing beneath a heating lamp.

As 7-Eleven refocuses its lineup, the retail chain has assembled a team of culinary and food science experts to study industry trends and develop new products. Such groups have been around for a while at fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s and packaged-goods manufacturers like Kraft. But it’s a relatively new concept for players like 7-Eleven, which have typically relied on their suppliers to provide product innovation.

“We’re working to create a portfolio of fresh foods,” said Anne Readhimer, senior director of fresh food innovation, who joined the company in May from Yum Brands, where she had worked on the KFC and Pizza Hut brands. “Some will be for snacking, some for a quick meal, but we hope everything we offer our guests is convenient and tasty.”

One new menu item just hitting stores is a Bistro Snack Protein Pack, which includes mini pita rounds, cheddar cheese cubes, grapes, celery, baby carrots and hummus. The meal in a box, similar to one carried by Starbucks, is part of a broader menu with healthier items under 400 calories.

The company is also taking existing products and retooling them for single portions. For example, customers can now buy jelly doughnuts and tacos, in mini sizes.

“There are definitely customers who want healthy options, but there are also lots of customers who are excited about the new sandwich options that aren’t low calorie — and minidoughnuts are doing very well,” said Lori Primavera, senior manager of fresh food innovation at 7-Eleven, who previously worked for Food and Drink Resources, a consulting firm for restaurant companies.

Norman Jemal, a franchisee, said sales of the new products are growing steadily in the three 7-Eleven stores that he owns in Manhattan. “At first, people are surprised when they come in here and see a bag of carrots and celery,” Mr. Jemal said. “They say, ‘I came in here for a bag of chips — I can’t believe you have fruit cups or yogurt cups.’ ”

He said the Yoplait Parfait, a cup of vanilla yogurt topped with fresh strawberries or blueberries and granola, is his best-selling fresh food item, while the 7 Smart turkey sandwich is his top sandwich.

The fresh food in Mr. Jemal’s stores and other locations around the country are supplied from a system of 29 commissaries and bakeries that fulfill orders from 7-Eleven. They tailor menu items for specific markets. In the Miami area, they produce a hot Cuban sandwich with ham, cheese, pickles and mustard. The Turkey Gobbler with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce sells in Northeastern stores around the holidays.

Each store has a data system that allows it to see exactly what is selling, which helps manage waste. Stores can track consumers’ purchase habits over a month, and adjust their orders based on those behaviors.

“In this 28-day cycle, I know I sold 3,563 bananas to customers in this store,” said Todd Ferguson, who owns five 7-Eleven locations in Las Vegas.

Mr. Ferguson has owned 7-Eleven franchises since 1986, and he said the variety of fresh food options in the stores is far better than before. The category already accounts for 20 percent of his sales, and his goal is to reach a quarter of sales volume.

“We used to be a place for people to buy beer, wine, cigarettes, candy and chips, and people would occasionally ask where they could go to get something to eat,” Mr. Ferguson said. “We’re no longer getting that question because now you can get something to eat right here.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 27, 2012

An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified a 7-Eleven franchisee in Las Vegas. He is Todd Ferguson, not Tom Ferguson.

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Latest Netflix Disruption Highlights Challenges of Cloud Computing

For some on Christmas Eve, “White Christmas” was a blackout on Netflix.

That’s because problems with Amazon’s cloud computing service, which provides storage and computing power for all kinds of Web sites and services, caused Netflix to go down for much of the day.

In updates on a Web site that reports on the status of its online services, Amazon traced the trouble to Elastic Load Balancing, a part of its service that helps spread heavy traffic among multiple servers to prevent overload. The company gave few details about the problems in its data center in Northern Virginia beyond this.

Social networks filled with complaints. Some customers also complained that Amazon’s own streaming service, Amazon Prime, was down. Amazon said it had fixed the problem completely by the afternoon of Christmas Day, and Netflix said it had restored its services to most of the affected consumers by late Christmas Eve. But the episode highlighted how consumers are increasingly using “the cloud.”

As more everyday devices, appliances and even automobiles rely on services connected to the Internet, consumers expect those services to be available at all times. Yet all sorts of disruptions — harsh weather conditions or an apparent overload — can knock a service out for hours.

In October, problems with the same Amazon data center in Virginia took down Reddit, Foursquare and Heroku. The instance was explained on the status Web site as “degraded performance” in some parts of Amazon’s storage service. In June, a lightning storm hit the Virginia data center, taking Netflix as well as Pinterest, Instagram and other sites off line for hours. That time, too, customers were offered little insight into what had happened.

In April 2011, an Amazon failure took down many smaller sites that had rented cloud storage space from the Internet giant. That time, the companies that were most affected were start-ups that were less likely to pay for so-called redundancies, or backup systems that kick in when a service fails. Netflix was not affected then, and said at the time it was because it had taken advantage of the redundancies that Amazon offers.

Netflix has said that it has built several redundancies into its cloud-based system. For instance, it stores its data across multiple “zones,” so if there is a failure in one zone, it can retry in another. It says it also spends money on more capacity than it needs, so that if there are large spikes in customer activity, the service is less likely to go down.

Joris Evers, a Netflix spokesman, declined to elaborate on why Netflix went down despite these safeguards. He said the company was investigating the cause and would do what it could to prevent the interruption from recurring.

“We are happy that people opening gifts of Netflix or Netflix-capable devices on Christmas morning could watch TV shows and movies and apologize for any inconvenience caused Christmas Eve,” Mr. Evers said.

Tera Randall, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company has been “heads down” to ensure services are running smoothly and that a full summary of the incident would be published in a few days.

Amazon is one of the biggest players in online services, hosting data storage and computation for hundreds of companies, including Netflix, Instagram and Pinterest. Once a sideline Amazon set up six years ago, the cloud service has since exploded into a business that is expected to bring in about $1 billion to the company this year.

Other companies offer similar services, notably Google, which introduced its competitor in June. Microsoft is also in the business with Windows Azure.

Although the service disruptions may annoy some companies and their customers, it’s unlikely many businesses will end their partnerships with Amazon in light of this latest Netflix failure, said James McQuivey, an analyst for Forrester Research. He added that it was unlikely that a temporary service failure for Netflix was going to cause many to cancel subscriptions.

He said companies can pay extra to Amazon to add safeguards that increase reliability of their online services, but they typically choose to save costs and take the risk of their services going down temporarily. He said that Amazon has been especially popular among businesses because it has been gradually improving its services and lowering its costs.

Businesses, “of course, are going to say, ‘Gee, Amazon, what’s going on?’ ” Mr. McQuivey said. “But in reality they’re all getting such a great deal. I don’t see them getting that upset about it.”

For consumers, though, it may be a different matter. On Christmas Eve, Merrilee and Alex Barton were watching an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” when their Netflix feed started to stammer and finally froze, then began to buffer excessively. “It would try to load and get to about 2 to 7 percent of the way through and then just hang there for five minutes,” Mrs. Barton said.

Eventually the two said they gave up and — with nothing else going on in Farmingdale, N.Y. — decided to “nerd it up.” They played a few games of Minecraft, a video game in which the players can build whatever they wish. In the game, all the technology worked.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 28, 2012

An article on Thursday about problems with Amazon’s cloud computing service referred incorrectly at one point to the company’s public comments on the issue. As the article correctly noted elsewhere, Tera Randall, an Amazon spokeswoman, said that the company was working to ensure services were running smoothly and that Amazon would publish a full summary within a few days. It is not the case that Amazon “did not offer an official statement or explanation.” The article also misstated the month that problems at an Amazon data center in Virginia took down Reddit, Foursquare and Heroku. That occurred in October, not last month.

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Toyota to pay big to settle suits

Toyota Motor Corp., moving to put years of legal problems behind it, has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle dozens of lawsuits relating to sudden acceleration.

The proposed deal, filed Wednesday in federal court, would be among the largest ever paid out by an automaker. It applies to numerous suits claiming economic damages caused by safety defects in the automaker's vehicles, but does not cover dozens of personal injury and wrongful-death suits that are still pending around the nation.

The suits were filed over the last three years by Toyota and Lexus owners who claimed that the value of their vehicles had been hurt by the potential for defects, including floor mats that could cause the vehicles to surge out of control.

ROAD TO RECALL: Read The Times' award winning coverage

In addition, Toyota said it is close to settling suits filed by the Orange County district attorney and a coalition of state attorneys general who had accused the automaker of deceptive business practices. The costs of those agreements would be included in a $1.1-billion charge the Japanese automaker said it will take against earnings to cover the actions.

"We concluded that turning the page on this legacy legal issue through the positive steps we are taking is in the best interests of the company, our employees, our dealers and, most of all, our customers," Christopher Reynolds, Toyota's chief counsel in the U.S., said in a statement.

Toyota's lengthy history of sudden acceleration was the subject of a series of Los Angeles Times articles in 2009, after a horrific crash outside San Diego that took the life of an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer and his family.

Under terms of the agreement, which has not yet been approved in court, Toyota would install brake override systems in numerous models and provide cash payments from a $250-million fund to owners whose vehicles cannot be modified to incorporate that safety measure.

In addition, the automaker plans to offer extended repair coverage on throttle systems in 16 million vehicles and offer cash payments from a separate $250-million fund to Toyota and Lexus owners who sold their vehicles or turned them in at the end of a lease in 2009 or 2010. The total value of the settlement could reach $1.4 billion, according to Steve Berman, the lead plaintiff attorney in the case.

The lawsuits, filed over the last several years, had been seeking class certification.

News of the agreement comes scarcely a week after Toyota agreed to pay a record $17.35-million fine to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for failing to report a potential floor mat defect in a Lexus SUV. Those come on top of almost $50 million in fines paid by Toyota for other violations related to sudden acceleration since 2010.

The massive settlement does not, however, put Toyota's legal woes to rest. The automaker still faces numerous injury and wrongful death claims around the country, including a group of cases that have been consolidated in federal court in Santa Ana, and other cases awaiting trial in Los Angeles County.

The first of the federal cases, involving a Utah man who was killed in a Camry that slammed into a wall in 2010, is slated for trial in mid-February.

The California cases are set to begin in April, among them a suit involving a 66-year-old Upland woman who was killed after her vehicle allegedly reached 100 miles per hour and slammed into a tree.

Edgar Heiskell III, a West Virginia attorney who has a dozen pending suits against Toyota, said he is preparing to go to trial this summer in a case that involved a Flint, Mich., woman who was killed when her 2005 Camry suddenly accelerated near her home.

"We are proceeding with absolute confidence that we can get our cases heard on the merits and that we expect to prove defects in Toyota's electronic control system," he said.

Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said the settlement would have no bearing on the personal injury cases.

"All carmakers face these kinds of suits," he said. "We'll defend those as we normally would."

The giant automaker's sudden acceleration problems first gained widespread attention after the August 2009 crash of a Lexus ES outside San Diego.

That accident set off a string of recalls, an unprecedented decision to temporarily stop sales of all Toyota vehicles and a string of investigations, including a highly unusual apology by Toyota President Akio Toyoda before a congressional committee. Eventually Toyota recalled more than 10 million vehicles worldwide and has since spent huge sums — estimated at more than $2 billion, not including Wednesday's proposed settlement — to repair both its automobiles and public image.

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DC police investigating ‘Meet the Press’ incident

WASHINGTON (AP) — District of Columbia police say they are investigating an incident in which NBC News journalist David Gregory displayed what he described as a high-capacity ammunition magazine on “Meet the Press.”

Gun laws in the nation’s capital generally restrict the possession of high-capacity magazines, regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm. Gregory held up the magazine as a prop for Sunday’s segment, apparently to make a point during an interview, even though D.C. police say NBC had already been advised not to use it in the show.

“NBC contacted (the Metropolitan Police Department) inquiring if they could utilize a high capacity magazine for their segment. NBC was informed that possession of a high capacity magazine is not permissible and their request was denied. This matter is currently being investigated,” police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said in a written statement. She declined to comment further.

While interviewing National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre for Sunday’s program, Gregory held up an object that he said was a magazine that could hold 30 rounds.

“Here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets. Now, isn’t it possible that if we got rid of these, if we replaced them and said, ‘Well, you can only have a magazine that carries five bullets or ten bullets,’ isn’t it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?’” Gregory asked, referring to the December 14 shooting in which a gunman massacred 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

LaPierre replied: “I don’t believe that’s going to make one difference. There are so many different ways to evade that even if you had that” ban.

It was not clear how or where Gregory obtained the magazine, and an NBC News spokeswoman declined to comment Wednesday.

“Meet the Press” is generally taped in Washington.

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Elwood V. Jensen, Pioneer in Breast Cancer Treatment, Dies at 92

Elwood V. Jensen, a medical researcher whose studies of steroid hormones led to new treatments for breast cancer that have been credited with saving or extending hundreds of thousands of lives, died on Dec. 16 in Cincinnati. He was 92.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, his son, Thomas Jensen, said.

In 2004 Dr. Jensen received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, one of the most respected science prizes in the world.

When Dr. Jensen started his research at the University of Chicago in the 1950s, steroid hormones, which alter the functioning of cells, were thought to interact with cells through a series of chemical reactions involving enzymes.

However, Dr. Jensen used radioactive tracers to show that steroid hormones actually affect cells by binding to a specific receptor protein inside them. He first focused on the steroid hormone estrogen.

By 1968, Dr. Jensen had developed a test for the presence of estrogen receptors in breast cancer cells. He later concluded that such receptors were present in about a third of those cells.

Breast cancers that are estrogen positive, meaning they have receptors for the hormone, can be treated with medications like Tamoxifen or with other methods of inhibiting estrogen in a patient’s system, like removal of the ovaries. Women with receptor-rich breast cancers often go into remission when estrogen is blocked or removed.

By the mid-1980s, a test developed by Dr. Jensen and a colleague at the University of Chicago, Dr. Geoffrey Greene, could be used to determine the extent of estrogen receptors in breast and other cancers. That test became a standard part of care for breast cancer patients.

Scientists like Dr. Pierre Chambon and Dr. Ronald M. Evans, who shared the 2004 Lasker prize with Dr. Jensen, went on to show that many types of receptors exist. The receptors are crucial components of the cell’s control system and transmit signals in an array of vital functions, from the development of organs in the womb to the control of fat cells and the regulation of cholesterol.

Dr. Jensen’s work also led to the development of drugs that can enhance or inhibit the effects of hormones. Such drugs are used to treat prostate and other cancers.

Elwood Vernon Jensen was born in Fargo, N.D., on Jan. 13, 1920, to Eli and Vera Morris Jensen. He majored in chemistry at what was then Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, and had begun graduate training in organic chemistry at the University of Chicago when World War II began.

Dr. Jensen wanted to join the Army Air Forces, but his poor vision kept him from becoming a pilot. During the war he synthesized poison gases at the University of Chicago, exposure to which twice put him in the hospital. His work on toxic chemicals, he said, inspired him to pursue biology and medicine.

Dr. Jensen studied steroid hormone chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology on a Guggenheim Fellowship after the war. While there, he climbed the Matterhorn, one of the highest peaks in the Alps, even though he had no mountaineering experience. He often equated his successful research to the novel approach taken by Edward Whymper, the first mountaineer to reach the Matterhorn’s summit. Mr. Whymper went against conventional wisdom and scaled the mountain’s Swiss face, after twice failing to reach the summit on the Italian side.

Dr. Jensen joined the University of Chicago as an assistant professor of surgery in 1947, working closely with the Nobel laureate Charles Huggins. He became an original member of the research team at the Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research (now the Ben May Department for Cancer Research) in 1951, and became the director after Dr. Huggins stepped down.

He came to work at the University of Cincinnati in 2002, and continued to do research there until last year.

His first wife, the former Mary Collette, died in 1982. In addition to his son, Dr. Jensen is survived by his second wife, the former Hiltrud Herborg; a daughter, Karen C. Jensen; a sister, Margaret Brennan; two grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Dr. Jensen’s wife was found to have breast cancer in 2005. She had the tumor removed, he said in an interview, but tested positive for the estrogen receptor and was successfully treated with a medication that prevents estrogen synthesis.

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As Fiscal Deadline Looms, Path to Deal Remains Unclear

Alex Wong/Getty Images

House Republican leaders called on the Senate to act on fiscal legislation, which focused new attention on Senator Mitch McConnell, right.

WASHINGTON — With just five days left to make a deal, President Obama and members of the Senate were set to return to Washington on Thursday with no clear path out of their fiscal morass even as the Treasury Department warned that the government will soon be unable to pay its bills unless Congress acts.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, adding to the building tension over how to handle a year-end pileup of threatened tax increases and spending cuts, formally notified Congress on Wednesday that the government would hit its statutory borrowing limit on Monday, raising anew the threat of a federal default as the two parties remained in a standoff.

Mr. Geithner wrote that he would take “extraordinary measures” to keep the government afloat but said that with so much uncertainty over the shape of the tax code and future government spending he did not know how long the Treasury could shuffle accounts before the government could no longer pay its creditors.

For months, President Obama, members of Congress of both parties and top economists have warned that the nation’s fragile economy could be swept back into recession if the two parties did not come to a post-election compromise on January’s combination of tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts.

Yet with days left before the fiscal punch lands, both sides are exhibiting little sense of urgency, and new public statements Wednesday appeared to be designed more to ensure the other side is blamed rather than to foster progress toward a deal.

After a high-level telephone conference call, House Republican leaders called on the Senate to act but opened the door to bringing to the House floor any last-minute legislation the Senate could produce.

“The House will take this action on whatever the Senate can pass, but the Senate first must act,” said the statement issued on behalf of Speaker John A. Boehner and his three top lieutenants.

But Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, instead called on House Republicans to pass an existing Senate measure that would prevent tax increases on household income up to $250,000. “The Senate has already rejected House Republicans’ Tea Party bills, and no further legislation can move through the Senate until Republicans drop their knee-jerk obstruction,” he said in a statement.

Senators will return to the Capitol on Thursday evening with nothing yet to consider. The series of votes waiting for them are unrelated to the fiscal deadline. The House will be gaveled into session at 2 p.m., but since Mr. Boehner has not called the members back to Washington, it will most likely be gaveled back into recess shortly thereafter.

The shift to the Senate has focused new attention on Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and a deal-making veteran. Democrats say they need assurances from Mr. McConnell that he will not use procedural tactics to delay any potential bill for an interim solution to avert the fiscal crisis.

But Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, said no one from the White House or from Mr. Reid’s office has reached out to begin negotiations. Democrats say that Mr. McConnell knows full well what they are proposing: the same Senate bill that passed in July extending all the expiring Bush-era income tax cuts on incomes below $250,000, setting the tax rate on dividends and capital gains at 20 percent, and stopping the alternative minimum tax from rising to hit more middle class taxpayers. Onto that, Democrats would like to add an extension of expiring unemployment benefits and a delay in across-the-board spending cuts while negotiations on a broader deficit reduction plan slips into next year.

Democrats now suggest that Republicans are content to wait until after the January deadline. On Jan. 3, Mr. Boehner is likely to be re-elected speaker for the 113th Congress. After that roll call, he may feel less pressure from his right flank against a deal.

For its part, the Senate may simply be out of time. Without unanimous agreement, Mr. Reid would have to take procedural steps to begin considering a bill. He could then be forced to press for another vote to cut off debate before final passage. If forced to jump through those hoops, the 112th Congress could expire before final votes could be cast.

“I think there’s some chance that we get a deal done in the early weeks of January, which technically means you’re going over the cliff,” Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, said on CNBC on Wednesday.

Lawmakers from both parties say Mr. McConnell could be the key to a resolution. He has played the role of adjudicator for Congressional Republicans before, during last year’s fight over a payroll tax extension and the battle between Democrats and Republicans over how, or if, to pay for an emergency disaster financing bill.

With days to spare, Mr. McConnell must decide whether to allow on the Senate floor the Democrats’ bill to extend expiring tax cuts. If passed without a filibuster, that legislation could force the House speaker’s hand and quiet his raucous Republican conference. Or Mr. McConnell, who is up for re-election in 2014 and would like to avoid a primary fight, could stand back quietly and hope that Mr. Boehner and Mr. Obama somehow manage to put together a deal that saves him the trouble.

If Mr. McConnell cannot come to the rescue, there is another hope: Starbucks. Howard Schultz, the company’s chief executive officer, asked baristas who work in Washington-area Starbucks to scrawl “Come Together” on coffee cups for the rest of the week to generate enthusiasm for a compromise.

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Lakers snap Christmas Day streak with win over Knicks

Lakers 100, Knicks 94 (final)

The Lakers closed out the New York Knicks on Christmas Day to win their fifth in a row, avenging a Dec. 13 loss in New York, the low point of the season during a four-game losing streak. 

The Lakers haven't dropped a game since.

With the Lakers up by three points, Pau Gasol found a lane to the basket from the high post and flushed down a dunk to seal the victory with 11.6 seconds left.  Steve Nash, in his second game back from a leg injury, scored 16 points and dished 11 assists.

The Lakers shot 48.1% from the field but it was their defense that was instrumental in the victory, holding New York to only 16 points in the fourth quarter.

The Knicks shot 42.7% from the field despite 34 from Carmelo Anthony (13-23 shooting), who exploded in the third quarter to give the Knicks a nine-point lead.  The Lakers never led by more than five points.

Kobe Bryant also scored 34 points on 14-for-24 shooting.  Metta World Peace fouled out after scoring 20.  For the second consecutive game, Pau Gasol had six assists.

Knicks center Tyson Chandler also fouled out, finishing with six points and nine rebounds.  J.R. Smith helped carry the offensive load for New York with 25 points.

The Lakers will play on Wednesday night against the Nuggets in Denver.

Knicks 78, Lakers 77 (end of third quarter)

The Lakers survived a 17-point quarter from Carmelo Anthony to close to within one point after three quarters.

Falling behind by as many as nine points after halftime, the Lakers had a chance to go up by a point but Kobe Bryant missed a pair of free throws with 2.6 seconds left in the quarter.

Anthony climbed to 27 points for the game on 11-for-20 shooting while his Knicks shot 43.8% through three.  J.R. Smith contributed 20 points off the bench.

The Lakers were led by Bryant's 26 points on 11-for-18 shooting, while getting 18 points from Metta World Peace and 14 from Steve Nash.

Some of New York's lead was earned from behind the three-point line with eight makes in 22 tries.  The Lakers shot 48.3% from the field but only five of 18 (27.8%) from three-point range.

World Peace started the second half in place of Darius Morris but Anthony had the hot hand.

Lakers 51, Knicks 49 (halftime)

For the second consecutive quarter, the Lakers closed well against the Knicks. After New York's reserves had helped push the Knicks to a six-point advantage, the Lakers rallied to take a two-point lead at halftime.

Carmelo Anthony and Metta World Peace battled through a very physical period, challenging each other in the post. Anthony finished the half with 10 points while World Peace had a game-high 16 points after coming off the Lakers' bench.

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NORAD says record number of calls to track Santa

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AP) — Most of the thousands of children who call the annual Santa-tracking operation at a Colorado Air Force Base on Christmas Eve ask the usual questions: “Where’s Santa, and when will he get here?”

So volunteer Sara Berghoff was caught off-guard Monday when a child called to see if Santa could be especially kind this year to the families affected by the Connecticut school shooting.

“I’m from Newtown, Connecticut, where the shooting was,” she remembers the child asking. “Is it possible that Santa can bring extra presents so I can deliver them to the families that lost kids?”

Sara, just 13 herself, was surprised but gathered her thoughts quickly. “If I can get ahold of him, I’ll try to get the message to him,” she told the child.

Sara was one of hundreds of volunteers at NORAD Tracks Santa who answered thousands of calls, program spokeswoman Marisa Novobilski said. Spokeswoman 1st Lt. Stacey Fenton said that as of midnight Tuesday, trackers answered more than 111,000 calls, breaking last year’s record of 107,000.

First lady Michelle Obama, who is spending the holidays with her family in Hawaii, also joined in answering calls as she has in recent years. She spent about 30 minutes talking with children from across the country, telling some who asked that her favorite toys growing up were Barbie dolls and an Easy Bake oven.

She also received an invitation to visit an 11-year-old boy in Fort Worth, Texas, and a request to put her husband on the phone. “He’s not here right now. But you know what, I will tell him you asked about him. OK?” she replied.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S.-Canada command responsible for protecting the skies over both nations, tracks Santa from its home at Peterson Air Force Base.

NORAD and its predecessor have been fielding Christmas Eve phone calls from children — and a few adults — since 1955. That’s when a newspaper ad listed the wrong phone number for kids to call Santa. Callers ended up getting the Continental Air Defense Command, which later became NORAD. CONAD commanders played along, and the ritual has been repeated every year since.

After 57 years, NORAD can predict what most kids will ask. Its 11-page playbook for volunteers includes a list of nearly 20 questions and answers, including how old is Santa (at least 16 centuries) and has Santa ever crashed into anything (no).

But kids still manage to ask the unexpected, including, “Does Santa leave presents for dogs?”

A sampling of anecdotes from the program this year:

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THE REAL DEAL: A young boy called to ask if Santa was real.

Air Force Maj. Jamie Humphries, who took the call, said, “I’m 37 years old, and I believe in Santa, and if you believe in him as well, then he must be real.”

The boy turned from the phone and yelled to others in the room, “I told you guys he was real!”

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DON’T WORRY, HE’LL FIND YOU: Glenn Barr took a call from a 10-year-old who wasn’t sure if he would be sleeping at his mom’s house or his dad’s and was worried about whether Santa would find him.

“I told him Santa would know where he was and not to worry,” Barr said.

Another child asked if he was on the nice list or the naughty list.

“That’s a closely guarded secret, and only Santa knows,” Barr replied.

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TOYS IN HEAVEN: A boy who called from Missouri asked when Santa would drop off toys in heaven.

His mother got on the line and explained to Jennifer Eckels, who took the call, that the boy’s younger sister died this year.

“He kept saying ‘in heaven,’” Eckels said. She told him, “I think Santa headed there first thing.”

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BEST OF: Choice questions and comments wound up posted on a flip chart.

“Big sister wanted to add her 3-year-old brother to the naughty list,” one read.

“Are there police elves?” said another.

“How much to adopt one of Santa’s reindeer?”

“What’s the best way to booby-trap the living room to trap Santa?”

“When you see Santa, tell him hello for me, I never see him.”

“How does Santa make iPads?”

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INTERNATIONAL FLAVOR: NORAD got calls from 220 countries and territories last year, and non-English-speakers called this year as well.

Volunteers who speak other languages get green Santa hats and a placard listing their languages so organizers can find them quickly.

“Need a Spanish speaker!” one organizer called as he rushed out of one of three phone rooms.

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HE KNOWS WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE: At NORAD’s suggestion, volunteers often tell callers that Santa won’t drop off the presents until all the kids in the home are asleep.

“Ohhhhhhh,” said an 8-year-old from Illinois, as if trying to digest a brand-new fact.

“I’m going to be asleep by 4 o’clock,” said a child from Virginia.

“Thank you so much for that information,” said a grateful mom from Michigan.

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CHRISTMAS EVE IN AFGHANISTAN: Five U.S. service personnel answered calls from Afghanistan for about 90 minutes through a conferencing hookup.

“They had a great time,” said Novobilski, the program spokeswoman.

NORAD wanted to set up a call center in Afghanistan but that proved too complex, she said.

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HEY, MR. ELF: “Mr. Elf,” said one caller, “This is Adam, and I’ve been really good this year.”

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FOR GEARHEADS: For people who want to know the specs of Santa’s sleigh, NORAD offers a trove of tidbits, including:

Weight at takeoff: 75,000 GD (gumdrops).

Propulsion: 9 RP (reindeer power).

Fuel: Hay, oats and carrots (for reindeer).

Emissions: Classified.

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Online:

Track Santa online at http://www.noradsanta.org

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Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP

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