New 401k and IRA contribution limits in 2013 - Budgeting and ...

Did you hear about the new 401k and IRA contribution limits that start in 2013?

Beginning in January 2013, eligible workers can contribute $17,500 to their 401k and $5,500 to their IRA. That's an increase of $500 in each account above the 2012 contribution limits, which were $17,000 and $5,000, respectively. The catch-up contribution limit remains unchanged.

Are you planning on investing an extra $500 in your retirement account? Share your story in the forum!

Source: http://budgeting.about.com/b/2012/11/25/401k-and-ira-contribution-limits-in-2013.htm

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Egypt's stock market tumbles after Morsi's decree

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's benchmark stock index plunged by nearly 10 percent Sunday in the first trading session since the country's Islamist president issued decrees to assume sweeping new powers, while police in central Cairo fired tear gas at protesters who accuse the Egyptian leader of a blatant power grab.

President Mohammed Morsi's edicts, which were announced on Thursday, place him above oversight of any kind, including that of the courts. The move has thrown Egypt's already troubled transition to democracy into further turmoil, sparking angry protests across the country to demand the decrees be immediately rescinded.

The judiciary, which was the main target of Morsi's edicts, has pushed back. Judges and prosecutors stayed away from several courts in Cairo and across much of the country.

The nation's highest judicial body called on judges and prosecutors to return to work and announced that its members would meet with Mosri on Monday to try to persuade him to restrict immunity to major state decisions like declaring war or martial law.

With the opening bell of the country's stock market on Sunday, the first day of the workweek in Egypt, the turmoil spread from the country's bitter politics to its already ailing economy. The Egyptian Exchange's EGX30 index dropped 9.59 percentage points, making the losses among the biggest since the turbulent days and weeks immediately after the ouster in a popular uprising of authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak last year.

The loss in the value of shares was estimated at close to $5 billion.

Morsi, who narrowly won the presidency in June, says his measures were designed to "protect the revolution," but they triggered an uproar among non-Islamist political groups now vowing to press on with street protests to force him to back down.

Late Sunday, Morsi's office issued an English-language statement defending his decrees, repeating the argument he used when addressing supporters Friday outside his Cairo palace that the measures were designed to bolster the country's transition to democratic rule and dismantle Mubarak's old regime.

"The presidency reiterates the temporary nature of the said measures, which are not meant to concentrate powers," it said. The statement also pledged Morsi's commitment to engaging all political forces in drafting a new constitution. Secular and Christian members withdrew from the panel drafting the document, claiming that the Islamists who dominate the body have hijacked the process to produce a charter with an Islamist slant.

Prominent Egyptian democracy advocate Mohammed ElBaradei warned Saturday of increasing turmoil that could potentially lead to the military stepping in unless Morsi rescinds his new powers, as the country's long fragmented opposition sought to unite and rally new protests.

Egypt's liberal and secular forces ? long divided, weakened and uncertain amid the rise of Islamist parties to power ? are seeking to rally themselves in response to the decrees.

On Sunday, protesters clashed with police in Cairo's Tahrir square, birthplace of the uprising that toppled Mubarak, and in the side streets and avenues leading off the plaza. The Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police, said 267 protesters have been arrested and 164 policemen injured since the unrest began a week ago, initially to mark the anniversary of street protests a year ago against the nation's then-military rulers. Forty-two protesters were killed in those demonstrations.

The ministry did not say how many protesters were injured in the latest clashes, but security officials put the figure at 260. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information.

Several dozen protesters are staging a sit-in in Tahrir, vowing not to leave before Morsi rescinds his decrees. The two sides have called for massive rival protests on Tuesday at two Cairo locations less than a mile apart, raising the possibility of renewed clashes between supporters and opponents of Morsi.

In the latest sign of the unrest sweeping the country, suspected militants blew up a military installation under construction in the central Sinai Peninsula area of al-Qaseema early Sunday, wounding three workers, according to security officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

It was the second blast to target a military building in Sinai in as many days. On Saturday, another border guard structure under construction was blown up in Rafah, close to the Israeli border.

Nobody claimed responsibility for either attack, but authorities have been battling al-Qaida-inspired militants in Sinai who have stepped up attacks against Egyptian security forces, and even on occasion staged cross-border raids targeting Israelis.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypts-stock-market-tumbles-morsis-decree-135821153--finance.html

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42 arrested in melee at San Jose house party

By Lori Preuitt, NBCBayArea.com

A wild scene played out Friday night at a house party in east ?San Jose.

In the end one, San Jose police officer was dragged through the house, dozens of officers were attacked by flying glass bottles (two were injured) and 42 residents were under arrest.

Police said it all started just before 11 p.m. when neighbors on Patt Avenue called 911 to report shots fired.?

When the first officers arrived on scene they said they found a large party. They immediately noticed a few of the party-goers jumped the fence into the back yard.

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Police said some in the group then started throwing glass objects at the officers. One officer was struck by an object and then someone attempted to drag him to the rear of the house, according to police.

The officer was able to escape. A second officer was also injured as a result of the incident. Both officers were treated by medical staff.

Police said people both inside and outside the home continued to throw objects at the officers and refused to cooperate.

Officers called for back up and took up a position of safety and attempted to make contact with the residents, but they were met with resistance, according to police.? Some 60 officers were called to the house.

After a short standoff everyone on the property "surrendered."

In the end 42 people were arrested. Some of them will face charges of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer.

Those facing the most serious charges were booked into the Santa Clara County Jail or Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall and others were issued citations and released at the scene.

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/24/15416426-42-arrested-in-melee-at-san-jose-house-party?lite

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Activists hope storm-hit US will deliver at climate talks

Andrew Burton / Reuters

A U.S. flag is seen hanging in the Breezy Point neighborhood of Queens, New York Nov. 11 in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy.

By The Associated Press

During a year with a monster storm and scorching heat waves, Americans have experienced the kind of freakish weather that many scientists say will occur more often on a warming planet.

And as a re-elected president talks about global warming again, climate activists are cautiously optimistic that the U.S. will be more than a disinterested bystander when the U.N. climate talks resume Monday with a two-week conference in Qatar.

"I think there will be expectations from countries to hear a new voice from the United States," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate and energy program at the World Resources Institute in Washington.

The climate officials and environment ministers meeting in the Qatari capital of Doha will not come up with an answer to the global temperature rise that is already melting Arctic sea ice and permafrost, raising and acidifying the seas, and shifting rainfall patterns, which has an impact on floods and droughts.

They will focus on side issues, like extending the Kyoto protocol ? an expiring emissions pact with a dwindling number of members ? and ramping up climate financing for poor nations.

Climate-changing methane 'rapidly destabilizing' off East Coast, study finds

They will also try to structure the talks for a new global climate deal that is supposed to be adopted in 2015, a process in which American leadership is considered crucial.

Many were disappointed that Obama didn't put more emphasis on climate change during his first term. He took some steps to rein in emissions of heat-trapping gases, such as sharply increasing fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. But a climate bill that would have capped U.S. emissions stalled in the Senate.

Obama: 'I won't go' for climate action that hurts jobs, growth

"We need the U.S. to engage even more," European Union Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told The Associated Press. "Because that can change the dynamic of the talks."

The world tried to move forward without the U.S. after the Bush Administration abandoned the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 pact limiting greenhouse emissions from industrialized nations that expires this year.

The concentration of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide has jumped 20 percent since 2000, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil, according to a U.N. report released this week.

US roads, airports unready for extreme weather

Obama raised hopes of a more robust U.S. role in the talks when he called for a national "conversation" on climate change after winning re-election. The issue had been virtually absent in the presidential campaigning until Hurricane Sandy slammed into the East Coast.

A signal that Washington has faith in the international process would go a long way, analysts said.

For thousands of years, permafrost has trapped Siberia's carbon-rich soil, a compost of Ice Age plant and animal remains. But global warming is melting the permafrost and exposing the soil, causing highly flammable methane to seep out. NBC's Jim Maceda reports.

Thawing Arctic permafrost is releasing methane

"The perception of many negotiators and countries is that the U.S. is not really interested in increasing action on climate change in general," said Bill Hare, senior scientist at Climate Analytics, a non-profit organization based in Berlin.

For example, Hare said, the U.S. could stop "talking down" the stated goal of the U.N. talks to keep the temperature rise below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) compared to pre-industrial levels.

Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy on climate change, caused alarm among climate activists in August when he said that "insisting on a structure that would guarantee such a goal will only lead to deadlock." He later clarified that the U.S. still supports the 2-degree target, but favors a more flexible way to reach it than dividing up carbon rights to the atmosphere.

Ex-climate change skeptic: Humans cause global warming

Countries adopted the 2-degree target in 2009, reasoning that a warming world is a dangerous world, with flooding of coastal cities and island nations, disruptions to agriculture and drinking water, and the spread of diseases and the extinction of species.

A recent World Bank report found the world is on track toward 4 degrees C (6.2 F) of warming, which would entail "extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise."

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? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/24/15408232-activists-hope-storm-struck-us-will-deliver-at-doha-climate-talks?lite

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Economics Professor James J. Heckman Stresses Early Childhood ...

Investing in preventative, data-driven early childhood education is the most cost-effective way to grow the nation?s economy, a Nobel Laureate in economics said Thursday evening.

?It?s more important than ever before to have an empirically grounded public policy,? said James J. Heckman, Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago.

Heckman delivered the keynote address titled ?Building a Productive Workforce and Strengthening the Economy from Birth? to about 275 residents at Unity Temple in Oak Park. He spoke at the invitation of the Collaboration for Early Childhood Education, a public-private partnership made up of more than 40 local agencies.

An expert in the economics of human development, Heckman said politicians who set public policy for the past 50 years have been misguided in their efforts to address social problems one at a time, rather than holistically.

?Fragmented solutions don?t work, and the problems need to be addressed at the core level,? he said.

Armed with statistics looking at income, educational attainment and the role of parents, Heckman said the gap in socially relevant skills between the advantaged and the disadvantaged ?opens up very early in the lives of children.? Attempts to close the gap through anti-poverty initiatives, programs to improve cognition or book learning, and crime interventions haven?t been as successful and have even led to declines in some indicators, such as high school graduation rates.

The skills that need to be developed, Heckman said, are softer skills, such as perseverance, attention, self-discipline, motivation and self-confidence. Investing in programs that develop these skills, he added, would be socially fair, promote equal opportunity and have a greater return on investment.

?It sounds soft and fuzzy, but we have research that these skills are important and can be produced,? he said.

In fact, the annual rate of return on a proper investment in early childhood education would be between 6 percent and 10 percent, much higher than the 0 percent return of a training program such as Job Corps, he said.

?It?s cheaper and more effective to give the kids money and put it in a passbook account than to reduce classroom size by five students,? he said.

But the family ? particularly the mother ? most influences the outcome of the child, Heckman insisted.

?Any policy investing in children should be investing in families,? he said.

Heckman praised Oak Park and its residents for thinking beyond the usual solutions and trying to think outside the box with initiatives such as the collaborative, which has a goal of spending $1.5 million to bolster early childhood programs. However, Heckman said he feared that even $280 spent on each of the 5,400 pre-school-age children living in Oak Park might not be enough.

During opening comments, Village President David Pope noted that early childhood education could be crucial to reducing Oak Park?s expenditures. Of the police department?s $18 million budget, about 75 percent, or $14 million, is spent on interaction with youth, he said.

?We have a huge challenge in Oak Park with the children who come into our schools with the kind of deficits many of them face,? he said.

?

By Rebecca Bibbs?

Source:?River Forest Leaves -?http://goo.gl/iRNtH

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Source: http://www.childup.com/blog/economics-professor-james-j-heckman-stresses-early-childhood-education/

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Steinbrueck says SPD-Greens ahead of Merkel bloc before vote

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's center-left opposition is closer to winning a majority in next September's election than Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right alliance, Social Democrat (SPD) chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrueck said on Friday.

In a fiery speech to SPD leaders, Steinbrueck acknowledged having initial problems in his campaign to oust Merkel's government but pointed out that the SPD and their allies, the Greens, had moved ahead of Merkel's coalition in the polls.

Steinbrueck said that with the SPD and Greens at a combined 44 percent in opinion polls, they are closer to winning power in September than Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) with 39 percent and their Free Democrat (FDP) allies at just 4 percent.

Both sides would be short of a majority because the opposition Left party was projected by the Infratest dimap poll for ARD TV to win 6 percent - meaning the SPD and Greens would need at least 46 percent to win a parliamentary majority.

The center-right is further away from 46 percent. The FDP would fail to win any seats if it stays below the 5 percent threshold needed to return to parliament.

"I want to run a campaign that will clearly spell out the differences between us and them," said Steinbrueck, a former finance minister whose early campaign has been marred by controversy over his lucrative earnings as a public speaker.

CENTER GROUND

"I want you to help me mobilize our side so that our opponents don't put everyone to sleep like last time in 2009 with a campaign to demobilize us," said Steinbrueck.

He was referring to Merkel's soft-style tactics and her conservatives' shift to the political center.

Support for the SPD itself has recently stayed fairly flat but the Greens received a boost after their new leaders made a pitch for conservative voters by projecting a more moderate, sober image. A poll this week gave them 16 percent, the highest level this year, amid talk of them trying to cut a coalition deal with Merkel, not the SPD, next year.

The SPD plunged to a post-World War Two low of 23 percent in 2009, losing nearly half the support - 40.9 percent - they got when they won power with the Greens in 1998. Merkel pushed her conservatives to the center, siphoning away some SPD voters and prompting others to stay home on election day.

"We need to take clear positions and stand up for them. We can't let them take away our issues again because we're closer to winning a majority than they are - even if the FDP manage to get back above the 5 percent hurdle," said Steinbrueck.

"An SPD-Greens government is much more probable at the moment than a CDU/CSU-FDP government," he said, referring to the center-left's small lead in the polls.

Steinbrueck fell well behind Merkel in personal popularity ratings in the last month, losing support with his abrasive style and the row over his well-paid speaking engagements. He spent much of his first month as candidate defending himself for earning 1.25 million euros as an after-dinner speaker in three years - more than many SPD voters earn in a lifetime.

Steinbrueck was once seen as the center-left's best hope of winning back the chancellery they last held under Gerhard Schroeder from 1998 to 2005.

Steinbrueck served as finance minister in an unwieldy, conservative-SPD "grand coalition" under Merkel from 2005 to 2009. Political analysts say such a coalition is the most likely scenario after next year's election too, but Steinbrueck has ruled out serving again under Merkel.

He showed SPD leaders on Friday he was ready for a spirited campaign and poked fun at the fact that, unlike Schroeder, who has been married four times, he has had only one wife.

"If you want to accomplish anything in the SPD it seems you have to have been divorced four times," Steinbrueck joked. "Maybe that's why I'm having so many problems at the moment - I'm still in my first marriage."

(Editing by Gareth Jones and Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/steinbrueck-says-spd-greens-ahead-merkel-bloc-vote-174157135.html

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2 killed, 60 wounded in Afghan suicide attack

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A suicide attacker detonated a car laden with explosives Friday in eastern Afghanistan, killing two civilians and wounding about 60 others, officials said.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying in a statement that the attack was in response to the recent execution of four Taliban detainees at the Afghan government's main detention center in Kabul.

The men were convicted and sentenced to death in Afghan courts for a variety of crimes, including murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery and cruelty against children. The Taliban condemned the hangings, saying the detainees were prisoners of war who were unjustly jailed.

Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for Wardak province, said the blast went off shortly before 7:30 a.m. on a street where international and Afghan security forces have a coordination office. He said at least two people were killed and 60 others were wounded in the explosion.

The Taliban said two suicide bombers were involved in the attack in Maidan Shahr, the capital of Wardak province. The insurgent group claimed the two attackers killed tens of Afghan and international troops, although the Taliban often exaggerate the number of casualties caused in their attacks.

Afghan and international forces have been working to root out insurgents in Wardak province to keep them from moving north into the Afghan capital. The international forces are scheduled to turn over security responsibility to local troops by the end of 2014.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/2-killed-60-wounded-afghan-suicide-attack-062725376.html

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