Legal Scholar Robert Bork Dies

American legal scholar Robert Bork, who was nominated by Ronald Reagan for the U.S. Supreme Court, died on Wednesday morning. He was 85.
The Senate rejected Bork’s nomination to the high court following objections from civil rights groups over his views of the federal government and voting rights.
Conservatives blamed his failed nomination on partisanship.
During the 2012 election, Mitt Romney made Bork the chairman of his Justice Advisory Board.
Bork died in Virginia from heart disease.

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Republicans Turn to Bush for Inspiration

As Republicans reassess their future in the presidential wilderness, seeking a message and messenger to resonate with a new generation of voters, one unlikely name has popped up as a role model: former President George W. Bush.
Prominent Republicans eager to rebuild the party in the wake of the 2012 election are pointing to Bush’s successful campaigns for Hispanic votes, his efforts to pass immigration reform, and his mantra of “compassionate conservatism.” Bush won 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000 and at least 40 percent in 2004, a high-water mark for a Republican presidential candidate.
In contrast, Romney received only 27 percent of the Latino vote, after taking a hard-line approach to illegal immigration during the Republican presidential primaries, touting “self-deportation” for undocumented workers. In exit polls, a majority of voters said that Romney was out of touch with the American people and that his policies would favor the rich. While Romney beat Obama on questions of leadership, values, and vision, the president trounced him by 63 points when voters were asked which candidate “cares about people like me.”
These signs of wear and tear to the Republican brand are prompting some of Bush’s critics to acknowledge his political foresight and ability to connect with a diverse swath of Americans, although the economic crash and unpopular wars on his watch make it unlikely he will ever be held up as a great president.
“I think I owe an apology to George W. Bush,” wrote Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of the conservative National Review Online, after the election. “I still don't like compassionate conservatism or its conception of the role of government. But given the election results, I have to acknowledge that Bush was more prescient than I appreciated at the time.”
The ebb in Bush-bashing could help pave the way for a 2016 presidential bid by his brother, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, another proponent of immigration reform with proven appeal in the Hispanic community. “The Bush family knows how to expand the party and how to win,” said GOP consultant Mark McKinnon, a former George W. Bush political aide, when asked about a possible Jeb Bush campaign. Voter wariness toward a third Bush administration could ease if the former president and his father, who served one term, are remembered less for their failures and more for their advocacy of “compassionate conservatism” and “a kinder, gentler nation.”
“I think all that certainly helps if Jeb decides to do so something down the road, though I think he will eventually be judged on his own,” said Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union, who led the Florida Republican Party when Bush was governor.
President Bush’s press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was tapped last week by the Republican National Committee to serve on a five-member committee examining what went wrong in the 2012 election. Two days earlier, a survey released by Resurgent Republic and the Hispanic Leadership Network found that a majority of Hispanic voters in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico  don’t think the GOP “respects” their values and concerns.
“One of the party’s biggest challenges going forward is the perception that Republicans don’t care about people, about minorities, about gays, about poor people,” Fleischer said. “President Bush regularly made a push to send welcoming messages, and one of the lessons of 2012 is that we have to demonstrate that we are an inclusive party.”
President Bush’s success with minority voters stemmed in large part from his two campaigns for governor in Texas. He liked to say, “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande.” Unlike Romney, who invested little in Spanish-language advertising until the final two months of his campaign, Bush began reaching out to Hispanics early; he outspent his Democratic opponents in Spanish media in both the 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
“I remember people grumbling about making calls in December 2003, but we kept pushing,” said Jennifer Korn, who led Bush’s Hispanic outreach in his 2004 campaign. The president’s upbeat Spanish-language ads depicted Latino families getting ahead in school and at work. “I’m with Bush because he understands my family,” was the theme of one spot.
Korn, who now serves as executive director of the Hispanic Leadership Network, said Republicans are constantly asking her how the party can win a bigger share of the Latino vote.
“I tell them we already did it,” she said. “President Obama just took Bush’s plan and updated it.”
Republicans are also looking at the groundwork that Bush laid on immigration reform. He has kept a low profile since leaving office, but he waded into the debate in a speech in Dallas last month. The legislation he backed in his second term would have increased border security, created a guest-worker program, and allowed illegal immigrants to earn citizenship after paying penalties and back taxes.
“America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time,” Bush said in Dallas. “As our nation debates the proper course of action related to immigration I hope we do so with a benevolent spirit and keep in mind the contributions of immigrants.”
Bush is even a presence in the current high-stakes budget negotiations between Capitol Hill and the White House. Although the tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration for the wealthiest Americans have been a major sticking point, the tax policy it put in place for the vast majority of households has bipartisan support.
“When you consider that the Obama administration is talking about not whether to extend the Bush tax cuts but how much of them to extend, you see that Bush is still setting the agenda,” said Republican consultant Alex Castellanos, who worked on Bush’s 2004 campaign.
While a possible presidential bid by Jeb Bush heightens the impact of his brother’s evolving legacy, it’s not unusual for a president’s image to change after leaving office. (Look at former President Clinton, who enjoyed positive ratings during most of his presidency, infuriated Obama supporters during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008, and emerged after the election as a better Democratic spokesman than Obama.)  Gallup pegged Bush’s presidential approval at 25 percent at the end of his second term, the lowest ranking since Richard Nixon. But after President Obama spearheaded unpopular spending packages and health care reforms, Bush’s popularity began to tick up.
A Bloomberg News survey in late September showed Bush’s favorability at 46 percent, 3 points higher than Romney’s rating. Still, with a majority of voters viewing the former president unfavorably, Romney rarely, if ever, mentioned his name during the campaign. Asked to address the differences between him and the former president in one of the debates, Romney said, “I’m going to get us to a balanced budget. President Bush didn’t.” Obama seized on the comparison, taking the unusual tack of praising the Republican successor he had vilified in his first campaign to portray Romney as an extremist.
“George Bush didn’t propose turning Medicare into a voucher,” Obama said. “George Bush embraced comprehensive immigration reform. He didn’t call for self-deportation. George Bush never suggested that we eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood.”
Democrats and moderate Republicans found themselves cheering for Bush, if only for a moment. A majority of voters said that Bush is more to blame for the current economic problems than Obama, according to exit polling. If Bush wasn’t the bigger scapegoat, Obama may not have won a second term.
Veterans of Bush’s campaigns and administrations say that while learning from his mistakes, Republicans should also take note of the political risks he took by proposing reforms to immigration and education laws and boosting funding for community health centers and AIDS outreach in Africa.
“One of the issues we ran into in the 2012 campaign is that there weren’t a lot of differences between Mitt Romney and Republican orthodoxy,” said Terry Nelson, Bush’s political director in the 2004 campaign. “I think that’s something Republican candidates in the future have to consider.  The public respects it when you can show you can stand up to your party on certain issues. Bush did that.

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Senators Screen 'Lincoln' with Stars Tonight

As lawmakers struggle to solve the fiscal cliff, they're set for a movie night tonight in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.,will meet with the cast and crew of "Lincoln" including Director Steven Spielberg and actor Daniel Day-Lewis in the Capitol before the special showing.
Then each senator, along with their spouse, will be invited to watch the film in the Capitol Visitors Center within the Capitol Complex.
The film's release was delayed until after the 2012 election - but DreamWorks still scheduled a special extended two-minute TV ad during the commercial break right after the first presidential debate.
Reid, a Democrat, is a huge fan of the biopic about the most famous Republican president.

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In crusade against guns, Bloomberg finds platform beyond City Hall

NEW YORK—Just days after he publicly scolded President Barack Obama for not being more aggressive in his efforts to curb gun violence, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was “very encouraged” to see Obama pressing for new gun measures in the wake of last week’s deadly school shooting in Connecticut.
“His announcement is an important step in the right direction,” Bloomberg said in response to Obama announcing that he’s setting up a task force to come up with gun control proposals. “This country needs his leadership if we are going to reduce the daily bloodshed from gun violence that we have seen for far too long.”
But, the mayor added, Obama’s task force needs to “move quickly with its work.”
It was the latest example of the outspoken mayor holding the Obama administration’s feet to the fire on the hot-button issue of gun control—a subject that has been long close to the mayor’s heart.
In the days since last week’s shooting, Bloomberg has arguably become one of the key public faces of the tragedy as he bluntly urged the president and members of Congress to offer more than just “talk” in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting.
His aggressive posture comes as Bloomberg seeks to transition from being the lame duck mayor of the nation's largest city to a potentially more prominent role on the national political stage.
The 70-year-old billionaire media mogul, who is a registered Independent, has already sought to position himself as someone who can influence and shape public policy on the issues he cares about, including gun control, climate change and health care.
New York City has already been a laboratory for some of Bloomberg’s ideas throughout his three terms. Over the last decade, he’s implemented a smoking ban in New York’s restaurants, bars and parks, and pushed fast-food restaurants to post calorie counts—controversial ideas that have since been embraced by other cities around the country. More recently, Bloomberg sought to curb New York’s growing obesity epidemic by restricting the sizes of some sodas and other sugary drinks sold in the city.
"Bloomberg has been fearless in stepping out on big, controversial issues. I think he is on his way to becoming the most influential private citizen in the history of the country,” Mark McKinnon, a Texas-based political strategist who previously worked for George W. Bush, told Yahoo News.
McKinnon, who has worked with Bloomberg on a group called “No Labels,” which aims to promote nonpartisanship in politics, said the mayor’s influence extends “well beyond New York City, where he has proven what a determined mayor can get accomplished.”
But Bloomberg’s outspoken stance on guns in the aftermath of the Connecticut shooting could prove to be turning point in his efforts to move beyond City Hall.
Bloomberg co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns in 2006 and launched a super PAC last fall that worked to unseat lawmakers who were against gun control. But since last week’s shooting, the mayor has been the gun control movement's most visible champion—willing to aggressively challenge lawmakers, as he’s put it, to "do the right thing.”
Just hours after Obama went before cameras last Friday to pledge “meaningful action” in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting, Bloomberg issued a tough statement calling on the president to offer more than just “rhetoric.”
"Calling for 'meaningful action' is not enough. We need immediate action," the mayor said. "We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership—not from the White House and not from Congress."
Bloomberg followed up that statement with a litany of television appearances in recent days. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, the mayor insisted curbing gun violence should be Obama’s “No. 1 agenda.”
“He’s president of the United States,” Bloomberg told NBC. “And if he does nothing during his second term, something like 48,000 Americans will be killed with illegal guns.”
On Monday, Bloomberg held a news conference featuring family members of those killed in other mass shootings, including the deadly attack at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in July, and the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech.
Addressing the group just one day after Obama spoke at a memorial service in Newtown, where he vowed to act, Bloomberg didn’t let up on the pressure, telling the group of Obama’s speech, “Words alone cannot heal our nation. Only action can do that.”
It’s unclear how influential Bloomberg is with Obama, whom he endorsed in the final weeks of the 2012 election. While Bloomberg said he had spoken with Vice President Joe Biden, who is leading the president’s task force on gun violence, there was no indication he had spoken to the president.
Asked about his Obama endorsement on “Meet the Press,” Bloomberg didn’t backtrack.
“I said in my endorsement that I endorse Barack Obama because I think his views on issues like this are the right views,” Bloomberg said. “But the president has to translate those views into action.  His job is not just to be well-meaning. His job is to perform and to protect the American public.

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Gun lobbyists plan media push after Newtown massacre

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One week after a school shooting that shocked Americans - with many of the 27 victims buried and time allowed for prayers and investigation - the National Rifle Association will dive in to the fierce national debate about gun control.
The largest U.S. gun rights lobby plans a well-coordinated public entrance to the conversation on how to prevent such tragedies, starting with a rare news conference on Friday at a hotel across the street from the White House.
NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre and President David Keene will then appear on separate Sunday television talk shows for their first interviews since gunman Adam Lanza killed his mother, 20 young children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, last Friday.
Inside and outside the NRA, an organization with powerful ties to politicians in Washington, expectations are the group will offer condolences and condemn the killings but offer little in the way of compromise over gun laws.
The group kept largely quiet in the first days after the Connecticut shooting, citing "common decency" and the need to allow time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts. It broke its silence on Tuesday to say it wanted to contribute meaningfully to prevent another massacre and announced its plans for the Friday news conference.
"They will talk about how terrible the violence is, about helping the victims, about violence in society," said Robert Spitzer, a professor at the State University of New York at Cortland and author of "The Politics of Gun Control."
Spitzer said he did not expect the NRA media blitz to lay out specific plans because so many within the organization consider the right to own guns absolute.
"If they did, it would contradict the path they have been following for about the last 35 years," he said. "Much of their membership would declare war on their leaders."
One NRA board member, Houston lawyer Charles Cotton, said the NRA should not say much until it hears more from gun-control supporters like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
"You can't say specifically what you want to do before you sit around a table and talk about it," Cotton told Reuters.
NRA board member Bob Barr, a former Georgia congressman, said he was skeptical any new law would make a difference.
"None of the laws that the gun control folks want to put into place would have prevented this shooting. I think that's where we all start from," he said. Even proposed bans on guns known as assault weapons would not cover all semi-automatic rifles, he said.
America's unique gun culture means there are hundreds of millions of firearms in the United States for hunting, self-defense and leisure, as well as illicit uses. No one knows how many guns there are because there is no national registry.
About 11,100 Americans died in gun-related killings during 2011, not including suicides, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There were 19,766 suicides by firearms in 2011, the CDC said.
POLITICAL PRESSURE
The NRA uses political pressure against individual lawmakers in Congress and in state legislatures to press for loosening restrictions on gun sales and ownership while promoting hunting and gun sports.
Gun-control proponents have been pushing for tighter gun controls since the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre, the fourth mass shooting in the United States this year.
President Barack Obama has vowed to present a detailed plan in January. On Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden held the first meeting of an interagency effort among Cabinet members and law enforcement officials.
"The president is absolutely committed to keeping the promise that he will act," said Biden, who authored a crime bill in 1994 that included a ban on some semiautomatic rifles that has since expired. "We have to take action," he said.
Democrats in Congress who favor gun control have called for quick votes on measures to ban assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, hoping that the slaying of the 6- and 7-year olds in Newtown might be enough to win over more lawmakers.
Lanza used a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle, police said.
The NRA's power is partly due to its large and active membership, which reportedly has been growing rapidly since the Newtown shootings. NRA officials did not immediately comment, but Fox News, citing a source within the organization, said the group has been adding 8,000 new members a day.
FLOODING LAWMAKERS WITH CALLS
The NRA is frequently described as having 4 million members, although nonprofit groups are not required to disclose their membership or how they define the term.
At key moments, such as before votes in Congress, many of those members flood lawmakers' offices with calls - a tactic few organizations can pull off, and one that the NRA's opponents want to imitate.
Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group co-led by Bloomberg, said his group orchestrated tens of thousands of calls that jammed White House phones on Wednesday.
"It's the kind of thing that makes a difference in public policy. It's the kind of thing the NRA does very well," Glaze said. "And that's the kind of movement that we have to build if we're going to make any kind of difference."
There is a vast difference in resources of the organizations lining up in the gun debate.
During 2011, the NRA spent $3.1 million on lobbying lawmakers and federal agencies, while all gun-control groups combined spent $280,000 - a ratio of 11-to-one - according to records the groups filed with Congress.
Some of the NRA's money goes to Washington lobbying and law firms not usually associated with gun rights. SNR Denton, for instance, represents not only the NRA but major insurance, food and pharmaceutical companies. Lobbyists there did not return calls.
On another measure, that of spending on political campaigns, gun-control organizations have been more competitive. Independence USA PAC, a vehicle for Bloomberg's personal fortune on issues including gun control, spent $8.2 million on the 2012 election, compared to the NRA's $18.9 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Violence, named for President Ronald Reagan's press secretary James Brady who was injured in a 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan, spent $5,816 on the election, much lower than the $1.7 million it spent on the 2000 election, according to the center.

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Half of all cancers are preventable: study

Half of all cancers could be prevented if people just adopted healthier behaviors, US scientists argued on Wednesday.
Smoking is blamed for a third of all US cancer cases and being overweight leads to another 20 percent of the deadly burden that costs the United States some $226 billion per year in health care expenses and lost productivity.
For instance, up to three quarters of US lung cancer cases could be avoided if people did not smoke, said the article in the US journal Science Translational Medicine.
Science has shown that plenty of other cancers can also be prevented, either with vaccines to prevent human papillomavirus and hepatitis, which can cause cervical and liver cancers, or by protecting against sun exposure, which can cause skin cancer.
Society as a whole must recognize the need for these changes and take seriously an attempt to instill healthier habits, said the researchers.
"It's time we made an investment in implementing what we know," said lead author Graham Colditz, an epidemiologist at the Siteman Cancer Center at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.
Exercising, eating right and refraining from smoking are key ways to prevent up to half of the 577,000 deaths from cancer in the United States expected this year, a toll that is second only to heart disease, according to the study.
But a series of obstacles to change are well enshrined in the United States, which will see an estimated 1,638,910 new cancer cases diagnosed this year.
Those hurdles include skepticism that cancer can be prevented and the habit of intervening too late in life to stop or prevent cancer that has already taken root.
Also, much of the research on cancer focuses on treatment instead of prevention, and tends to take a short-term view rather than a long-term approach.
"Humans are impatient, and that human trait itself is an obstacle to cancer prevention," said the study.
Further complicating those factors are the income gaps between the upper and lower social classes that mean poor people tend to be more exposed to cancer risk factors than the wealthy.
"Pollution and crime, poor public transportation, lack of parks for play and exercise, and absence of nearby supermarkets for fresh food hinder the adoption and sustained practice of a lifestyle that minimizes the risk of cancer and other diseases," said the study.
"As in other countries, social stratification in the United States exacerbates lifestyle differences such as access to health care, especially prevention and early detection services.
"Mammograms, colon screening, diet and nutrition support, smoking cessation resources and sun protection mechanisms are simply less available to the poor."
That means any bid to overcome deep social imbalances must be supported by policy changes, said co-author Sarah Gehlert, professor of racial and ethnic diversity at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work and the School of Medicine.
"After working in public health for 25 years, I've learned that if we want to change health, we need to change policy," she said.
"Stricter tobacco policy is a good example. But we can't make policy change on our own. We can tell the story, but it requires a critical mass of people to talk more forcefully about the need for change."
A separate annual report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other major US cancer groups found that death rates from cancer in the United States continued to decline between 1.3 and 1.7 percent from 1998 to 2008.
New cancer diagnoses also decreased less than one percent per year from 1996 to 2006 and leveled off from 2006 to 2008.
However, the Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer also highlighted the problem of obesity-related cancers, such as colorectal cancer, as well as cancer of the kidney, esophagus, pancreas, breast and endometrial lining.
"If you watch your diet, exercise, and manage your weight, you can not only prevent your risk of getting many lethal forms of cancer, you will also increase your chances of doing well if you should get almost any form of cancer," counseled Edward Benz, president of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

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How to find a good yoga teacher

Finding a yoga class is easy, but finding one that is a good fit is an altogether different matter. If you're new to yoga, or still searching for a class that strikes the right chord, here are a few tips to keep in mind.
A good place to start is by talking: ask your friends or colleagues at work to recommend a teacher or studio or school. Even if you consider yourself in great shape but are new to yoga, sign up for a beginner's class. Also investigate the methods beforehand: some techniques are notoriously intense, such as Ashtanga, while others are gentle, such as Kripalu.

Before unrolling your mat, have an idea of what you're getting to. Get the details beforehand on the length of the class, the cost, what kind of dress is recommended (for example, for heated classes such as Bikram and Power Yoga, you'll want lightweight clothes that breathe), whether or not you need to bring your own yoga mat, and how large the class is. More experienced and popular teachers can draw huge, tightly packed classes, meaning less time to work with individuals. Newer teachers, while a little rougher around the edges, will have more time to give you personalized attention.

When it comes to finding a good teacher, make sure he or she not only has been certified to teach yoga but also continues to practice and study under a master yoga teacher. Talk to your teacher beforehand if you have any problems or issues, and look for a teacher who is patient and respectful.

While yoga can be challenging and will initially at least cause some pain, never perform a position in class that generates "bad" pain, especially in the knees, lower back, and neck. Talk to your teacher, ask for a modified pose, or assume a rest position. Never allow a teacher to encourage you to "work through" this kind of pain.

Also a good teacher will walk around the class, looking at the students' poses, making adjustments as necessary. Get a feel for how the students respond, whether or not there is camaraderie in the class, and if he or she offers feedback and alternatives. Also be sure your teacher incorporates some breath work, which is an intricate part of all forms of yoga.

If you find a teacher you like, it's best to study under that teacher as much as you can, allowing your teacher to familiarize herself with your practice. A good teacher will take a personal interest in you and your yoga by listening to your goals and hopes.

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How to Avoid a High Tax Bracket in Retirement

We spend many years saving and investing in our retirement portfolios. And when we retire, there is still more work to be done. You probably have many accounts in your retirement portfolio including a 401(k), traditional IRA, Roth IRA, after-tax brokerage account, annuity, Social Security benefits, and perhaps even a traditional pension. You will need to use all of these sources of income efficiently to best replace the paychecks you used to get from your job.

One of the most important strategies is to keep tax to a minimum. Due to tax-deferred retirement accounts, many of us have delayed paying taxes on much of our retirement income. And that tax bill becomes due when we withdraw the money in retirement. Aiming to stay in a low tax bracket can help retirees to minimize the tax they pay on their retirement savings. Here's a look at the current tax brackets:

Tax Brackets 2012	Single	Married Filing Jointly	Head of Household
10 percent bracket	$0-$8,700	$0-$17,400	$0-$12,400
15 percent bracket	$8,700-$35,350	$17,400-$70,700	$12,400- $47,350
25 percent bracket	$35,350-$85,650	$70,700-$142,700	$47,350- $122,300
28 percent bracket	$85,650-$178,650	$142,700-$217,450	$122,300- $198,050
33 percent bracket	$178,650-$388,350	$217,450- $388,350	$198,050- $388,350
35 percent bracket	$388,350+	$388,350+	$388,350+

In retirement, we should strive to avoid the 25 percent tax rate (or higher) as much as possible. To stay in the 15 percent bracket, we will have to make sure our adjusted gross income stays under $35,000. There are several things we can do to accomplish this.

Let's say a single retiree needs $3,000 per month after taxes to cover expenses. Can a retiree bring in this income, but still avoid the 25 percent tax rate? It depends on where the income comes from.

Annuity, pension, and Social Security income are each taxed differently than regular earned income. In this example, let's assume the taxable portion of these types of income is around $15,000 per year.

Then we could withdraw $20,000 from a 401(k) or traditional IRA and still stay in a low tax bracket. These are both pre-tax accounts and any withdrawals are taxed at the earned income rate.

So far this retiree has an adjusted gross income of $35,000, which allows him to avoid the 25 percent tax bracket, and instead pay an effective tax rate of around 13.75 percent. This is about $2,500 per month in after-tax income. But we are still $500 short of $3,000 per month for expenses.

We can then tap an after-tax account for this shortfall. The current long-term capital gains tax rate is 0 percent for people in the 10 or 15 percent tax bracket. You could also withdraw the money from aRoth IRA or Roth 401(k). No income tax is due on these withdrawals because you already pre-paid the income tax up front.

If you want to remain in a low tax bracket in retirement, generate $35,000 or less from taxable income sources including a 401(k), IRA, Social Security, annuity, and pension. Once you hit $35,000 worth of taxable income, switch to after-tax accounts like the Roth IRA to generate the rest of your target income.

This flexibility is why it is important to invest in a Roth IRA and after-tax accounts. While you don't get an immediate tax break, these accounts add tax diversification to your portfolio that can be extremely useful when it's time to withdraw the money. While employers often encourage us to contribute to traditional 401(k) accounts, don't ignore the future tax benefit of the Roth IRA. It's best to contribute to both a traditional and Roth 401(k) or IRA, and an after-tax brokerage account.

Joe Udo is planning an exit strategy from his corporate job by reducing expenses and increasing passive income. He blogs about his journey to early retirement at Retire by 40.

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Tattooist gives nipples, new life, to US cancer survivors

Few tattoo artists tell their clients they could win a wet T-shirt contest.Then again, few tattoo artists are quite like Vincent "Vinnie" Myers.
In his shop in a modest strip mall in Finksburg, a half-hour drive from Baltimore, Myers specializes in tattooing nipples and areolas onto women who have undergone breast cancer surgery.
Using precisely mixed pigments, he creates a perfect 3-D illusion of the real thing -- and in doing so, enables women who have undergone mastectomies to feel fully like women once again.
"It's far more rewarding than anything else I have ever done," said Myers, 49, who has dedicated the last decade of his 28 years as a tattoo artist concentrating on post-op cosmetic tattoos.
He has treated around 3,000 breast cancer survivors so far, including many referred to him by surgeons at Baltimore's prestigious Johns Hopkins medical center and other hospitals around the United States.
"When it's completed and they see the final results, most women feel very emotional because they realize: 'The thing is over, I'm whole again,'" Myers said.
Myers, a Baltimore native, discovered tattooing when he was a US army medic in South Korea in the 1980s. In 2001, a friend asked him if he might tattoo some patients who had undergone breast reconstruction.
Typical of the women who have gone under the needle at Little Vinnies Tattoos is Susan, 58, an elegant retiree with a wish "to look as normal as possible."
"I'm doing this for me. It makes you feel prettier," she told AFP the other day as Myers pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves and prepared to work is magic.
-- 'There's a huge mental impact' --
"Any complications? Any allergies?" the tattooist asked before carefully mixing pigments in tiny pots and joking that Susan "might win" a T-shirt contest once the tattoo is done.
"We're going to go with, not peach, but more like taupe, a little bit more blue," he said, before smearing a bit of pigment onto Susan's fair skin to determine if he had mixed the exact color for her complexion.
"The perfect reconstructed breast doesn't look like a breast without a nipple," said Myers, whose fee ranges from $350 to $1,000 depending on the complexity of the task at hand.
"You get out of the shower in the morning, you look out at yourself in the mirror, and you have no nipples -- there's a huge mental impact," he said. "It's critical that the visual appearance is as close to normal as possible."
Hospitals also offer post-mastectomy tattoos, but Myers said they are typically carried out by nurses with no more than "a couple of days" training.
On average, it takes Myers two hours to complete his work, during which he will determine the color and size of the areolas of each patient.
"They will be some shade of color on the areola itself and a darker shade on the nipples because that is normally darker," he said.
"Then you do a kind of grey shadow on the bottom side to highlight the top side so as to give it some depth ... using 'trompe l'oeil' to make it look like it's three dimensional."
When he is not in Fricksburg, Myers is often on the road, treating women in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston in South Carolina and the Saint Charles surgical hospital in New Orleans.
Myers reckoned that only a handful of his fellow tattoo artists do what he does, and in order to meet a growing demand, he has already trained two others in the secrets of his unique craft.
Some 200,000 cases of breast cancer are detected in the United States every year. Half of them require breast reconstruction, even if surgeons using the latest techniques try to retain as much of the nipple area as possible.
It helps, Myers said, that his tattoo shop is just that -- a tattoo shop, not a medical clinic. Patients feel more relaxed "and you can have a little more fun here than you can at the hospital.

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Trio of chefs nominated in 'Time' magazine's 100 most influential people list

Chefs René Redzepi, David Chang and José Andrés have been nominated in Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
The trio of world renowned chefs joins a pool of politicians, heads of state, actors, musicians and human rights activists as candidates in the publication’s Time 100 list.
Last year, Chef Grant Achatz was the only food personality among nominees like Jamie Oliver, US food writer Mark Bittman and Redzepi to break through the final round.
Voting is now open and closes April 6. The poll winner will be included in the Time 100 list, and the remaining people chosen by the magazine editors. The winners will be announced April 17.
Here’s how the food personalities are being described in the nominations:
José Andrés
Age: 42
Activist Chef
Andrés is a decorated chef for his Washington DC restaurants Jaleo and Minibar. Last year, he was named Outstanding Chef at the James Beard Foundation Awards. But it’s for his anti-hunger and anti-poverty efforts that he’s been singled out by Time this year. His World Central Kitchen, for instance, is described as an international think tank that tries to find creative solutions for feeding the world’s hungry.
David Chang
Age: 34
Occupation: Chef
In addition to expanding his Momofuku restaurant empire to Sydney and Toronto, Chang --  described as the “enfant terrible" of the New York dining scene -– has become a publishing mogul with a cookbook and foodie magazine Lucky Peach. But mostly, it’s his gourmet pan-Asian cooking that has diners raving.

René Redzepi
Age: 34
Occupation: Chef
Odds are good for Redzepi to make the final round, given that he graced the cover of Time magazine recently as a “Locavore Hero” for pioneering the foraging movement within haute cuisine. He’s also credited for launching new Nordic cuisine and elevating Scandinavian gastronomy to new heights. His Copenhagen restaurant Noma is currently considered the best in the world, according to Restaurant magazine. Like Andrés and Chang, Redzepi has also branched out of the kitchen to organize an annual food festival MAD Food Camp that gathers the top culinary minds to Denmark.

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Living at high altitude tied to developmental delay

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - South American babies and toddlers living at high altitude were more likely to score poorly on early tests of brain development, in a new study.

Of all kids age three months to two years, one in five was at high risk of developmental delays, according to tests done at their pediatricians' offices. That rose to between one in three and one in four for those who lived above 2,600 meters, or 8,530 feet.

Because there is less oxygen at higher elevations, researchers said blood flow in the uterus may also be decreased at altitude - which could impact the brain of a developing fetus.

"The findings emphasize the need for health care providers and policy-makers to recognize that altitude may increase developmental risks not just for physical growth, as has been reported, but for neurologic and cognitive development," wrote George Wehby from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who conducted the research.

His study involved over 2,000 young kids evaluated at offices in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador in 2005 and 2006.

The babies and toddlers were all given a series of problem-solving and motor tasks to complete, which their doctors used to measure which ones might be at risk for delayed development.

Wehby found that on average, for every 100-meter (328-feet) increase in elevation, kids were 2 percent more likely to be judged at high risk of future developmental problems.

Compared to kids living below 800 meters (2,625 feet), those above 8,530 feet were twice as likely to be at high risk, according to their pediatricians' evaluations.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

All of the babies in Bolivia lived above the 8,530-foot cut-off, and all the kids in Argentina, Brazil and Chile lived below it. Ecuador was the only country in the study that included kids from both high- and low-altitude regions.

Of the largest cities in the United States, Albuquerque has a high point of 6,120 feet and Denver of 5,470 feet. Many Western states - including California, Colorado, Nevada and Utah - have regions above 10,000 feet.

However, it's hard to know whether the results apply to other communities at high elevation, according to Alexis Handal, an epidemiologist from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, who does her research in Ecuador.

"We're starting to realize there's such a complicated social context within which these populations live that it's very hard to look at one area and try to generalize to other areas," Handal, who wasn't involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.

For example, she said, parents' work hours, whether families have access to nutritious food and what environmental toxins communities might be exposed to can all interact with factors like altitude to influence maternal and child health.

"Perhaps what we also have to focus on is… how can we also develop programs that promote infant development, that help families?" she added.

Wehby said in the study that babies born at higher elevations may be helped by earlier health screening to make sure they're developing normally.

But he also pointed to the need for more research on why altitude may affect development - and whether similar patterns apply to kids in other high-altitude regions.

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Nurses Who Saved NICU Babies Remember Harrowing Hurricane Night

Nurses at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at New York University's Langone Medical Center  have challenging jobs, even in the best of times. Their patients are babies, some weighing as little as 2 pounds, who require constant and careful care as they struggle to stay alive.

On Monday night, as superstorm Sandy bore down on Manhattan, the nurses' jobs took on a whole new sense of urgency as failing power forced the hospital's patients, including the NICU nurses' tiny charges, to evacuate.

"20/20" recently reunited seven of those nurses: Claudia Roman, Nicola Zanzotta-Tagle, Margot Condon, Sandra Kyong Bradbury, Beth Largey, Annie Irace and Menchu Sanchez. They described how they managed to do their jobs – and save the most vulnerable of lives – under near-impossible circumstances.

On Monday night, as Sandy's wind and rain buffeted the hospital's windows, the nurses were preparing for a shift change and the day nurses had begun to brief the night shift nurses. Suddenly, the hospital was plunged into darkness. The respirators and monitors keeping the infants alive all went silent.

For one brief moment, everyone froze. Then the alarms began to ring as backup batteries kicked in. But the coast wasn't clear – the nurses were soon horrified to learn that the hospital's generator had failed, and that the East River had risen to start flooding the hospital.

"Everybody ran to a patient to make sure that the babies were fine," Nicola Zanzotto-Tagle recalled. "If you had your phone with a flashlight on the phone, you held it right over the baby."

For now, the four most critical patients – infants that couldn't breathe on their own – were being supplied oxygen by battery-powered respirators, but the clock was ticking. They had, at most, just four hours before the machines were at risk of failing.

Watch the full story on "20/20: Heroes Among Us" online.

Annie Irache tended to the most critical baby -- he had had abdominal surgery just the day before – as an evacuation of 20 NICU babies began.

"[He] was on medications to keep up his blood pressure," Irache said, "and he also had a cardiac defect, so he was our first baby to go."

One by one, each tiny infant, swaddled in blankets and a heating pad, cradled by one nurse and surrounded by at least five others, was carried down nine flights of stairs. Security guards and secretaries pitched in, lighting the way with flashlights and cell phones.

The procession moved slowly. As nurses took their careful steps, they carefully squeezed bags of oxygen into the babies' lungs.

"We literally synchronized our steps going down nine flights," Zanzotto-Tagle said. "I would say 'Step, step, step."

With their adrenaline pumping, the nurses said, it was imperative that they stay focused.

"We're not usually bagging a baby down a stairwell ... n the dark," said Claudia Roman. "I was most worried about, 'Let me not trip on this staircase as I'm carrying someone's precious child, because that would be unforgivable."

When the medical staff and the 20 babies emerged, a line of ambulances was waiting. A video of Margot Condon cradling a tiny baby as she rode a gurney struck a chord worldwide. But Condon said she had a singular goal.

"I was making sure the tube was in place, that the baby was pink," she said. "I was not taking my eyes off that baby or that tube."

Like other nurses, she did not feel panic. Her precious patient helped keep her calm.

"[Babies] love to be held, so every time I would look down at the baby, the baby had his little hand on my chest, like 'And this is good!'"

Langone patients were evacuated to various New York hospitals, including Mount Sinai Medical Center, where mother Luz Martinez wrapped nurse Beth Largey in an embrace. Largey had carried her 2-pound baby boy to safety.

In Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, another mom tearfully expressed her gratitude to Sandra Kyong Bradbury, who ensured the safe evacuation of a baby named Jackson.

"I'm just so thankful," she said.

The nurses would later receive praise from President Obama, who said they represented the "brightest in America."

Many others call them heroes.

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Modest results in program to reduce kids' screen time

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A program aimed at reducing the number of hours young children spent in front of a screen didn't accomplish that goal, but it did cut back on the meals they ate in front of a television, a new study found.

That's good news according to the lead author, because people tend to eat more and eat unhealthy food while watching television.

"The relationship between screen time and obesity is linked to eating in front of a screen," said Dr. Catherine S. Birken, a pediatrician at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

In addition to its association with obesity, the study's researchers say screen time - whether it is in front of a television, computer or video game console - has been linked to children having problems with language development and behavior, and their likelihood of cigarette smoking.

"These are really important health outcomes in young children," said Birken. "So we need to understand what works and what doesn't."

So far, studies scrutinizing various methods of cutting back on kids' screen time have found little success.

However, Birken told Reuters Health that a couple of past studies did find promising results in preschool children, which is why her team decided to test a practical approach in that age group.

For their study, published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday, Birken and her colleagues recruited three-year-old children from a network of clinics around the Toronto area during their annual checkups. The children and their parents were randomly assigned into one of two groups.

In an intervention group of 64 children, the parents were told about the health impact of screen time on kids and how to reduce their children's hours.

Some of the techniques included removing televisions from the kids' bedrooms and not allowing them to eat with the television on.

Those families, along with a control group of 68 similar children and their parents, were also educated about safe media use, such as rating systems, Internet safety and violent programming.

The researchers then looked to see if the children's viewing or eating habits changed when they returned for a checkup a year later.

"TAKING IT SERIOUSLY"

Overall, the amount of time the children spent in front of a screen did not significantly differ between the two groups.

At the end of the study, the children in both groups spent between 60 and 65 minutes in front of a screen on weekdays. On the weekends, they spent between 80 and 90 minutes in front of a screen.

There also wasn't a difference in the children's BMI scores - a measure of weight in relation to height - between the start and end of the study. However, Birken said (for statistical reasons) she would only expect to see that in a larger group of children.

But, there was a statistically significant difference in the number of meals the children in the intervention group ate in front of the television.

At the start of the study, each group of kids ate about two meals with the television on daily. A year later, that number remained the same for the control group, but fell to about 1.6 for the intervention group.

That, the researchers note, works out to be at least two fewer meals per week in front of the television.

"I don't think there is much harm in turning the TV off during meals. I think that is a good message either way," said Birken.

But, she added that her team would have liked to see the kids spending less time in front of a television. She said it could be that the program needs to be spread out across society, including the children's doctors and teachers.

Dayna M. Maniccia, an assistant professor at the University of Albany who has researched screen time interventions, said even if the study didn't show a reduction in screen time, it makes people think about it.

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Iron, omega-3s tied to different effects on kids' brains

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For children with low stores of two brain-power nutrients, supplements may have different, and complex, effects, a new clinical trial suggests.

Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency worldwide, affecting about 2 billion people, according to the World Health Organization.

Poor children in developing countries are at particular risk for shortfalls in iron, as well as other nutrients, including the omega-3 fats found largely in oily fish.

So the new study looked at the effects of giving 321 schoolchildren in South Africa either supplements containing iron, omega-3s or both. All of the kids had low levels of both nutrients, which are vital for children's growth and healthy brain development.

After about eight months, researchers found varied changes in the kids' memory and learning abilities.

In general, children given iron showed improvements on tests of memory and learning. That was especially true if they had outright anemia - a disorder wherein the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity is reduced, causing problems like fatigue and difficulty with concentration and memory.

For example, on a memory test, anemic kids given iron were able to recall an extra two words out of 12.

In contrast, there was no overall benefit linked to omega-3 supplements. And when the researchers zeroed in on kids with anemia, those who used omega-3s did worse than before on one test of memory.

Then there were the children with clear iron deficiency, but not anemia. Of those kids, girls who got omega-3s fared worse, while boys improved their test scores.

What it all means for kids with nutritional deficiencies is unclear, according to lead researcher Jeannine Baumgartner, of North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa.

One limitation of the study, she said in an email, is that the number of children in each group her team analyzed was small. There were 67 kids with anemia, for example.

Thus, "the results need to be interpreted cautiously," Baumgartner told Reuters Health in an email.

There are still a lot of questions, according to Baumgartner, whose group's findings are published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The children in this study were 6 to 11 years old. But, Baumgartner said, animal research suggests brain deficits that take shape early in life might not be reversible.

"The question arises whether supplementation during school age might be too late to achieve beneficial effects on cognitive performance," she said.

Still, the omega-3 findings are consistent with some recent animal research. Baumgartner said her team found that in rats deficient in both iron and omega-3s, giving either supplement alone seemed to worsen the animals' memory performance. The picture was better, though, when the rats were given both iron and omega-3s.

In children, things are more complicated. Other nutritional deficiencies, as well as exposure to toxins like lead and the general effects of poverty could all dampen kids' brain development, Baumgartner pointed out.

"We believe that more research is needed to investigate the biological and functional links between nutrients essential for brain development and cognitive functioning," she said.

Since this study focused on impoverished children with low iron, and possibly other nutritional deficiencies, the results cannot be extended to children in general, according to Baumgartner.

In the U.S., recommendations call for babies to get an iron test during the first year of life to check for deficiencies. For healthy kids older than six months, the recommended iron intake varies from 7 to 15 mg of iron per day, depending on their age and sex.

There is a risk from getting too much iron and experts tell parents to ask their doctor before giving children iron supplements.

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