Mr. Obama also would establish a minimum tax on multinational corporations’ foreign earnings, the official said, to discourage “accounting games to shift profits abroad” or actual relocation of production overseas.

With the framework for changes that the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, will outline on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will enter an election-year debate with Republicans in Congress and in the presidential race who seek even lower taxes for businesses. But an overhaul of the corporate code is unlikely this year, given that political backdrop and the complexity of an undertaking that would generate a lobbying frenzy as businesses vie to defend old tax breaks or win new ones.

The announcement comes two days before Mitt Romney, a Republican candidate for president, is expected to expand on his economic platform in Detroit.

The administration plan to revamp a corporate code that is widely derided as inefficient and anticompetitive has been in the works at Treasury for two years, and is a priority of Mr. Geithner. Yet he has been preoccupied with crisis management, and is unlikely to see the project through since he plans to leave office after this year.

The proposed overhaul “will help level the playing field for businesses and allow the government to collect needed revenue while promoting economic growth,” Mr. Geithner told a Congressional committee last week, without details.

Republicans and business groups complain that the 35 percent corporate tax rate is among the highest in the world, leaving American companies at a competitive disadvantage. They typically seek a 25 percent rate, with many of them saying that the current tax breaks should be kept in place as well.

Nonpartisan tax analysts consistently find that corporations here on average pay just slightly more than their competitors in other developed countries after exploiting the many tax breaks and loopholes. Recent news accounts have highlighted the low effective rates paid by companies like Google, Boeing and General Electric.

One analysis concluded that 115 of the 500 companies in the Standard and Poor’s stock index paid a total corporate tax rate — federal and otherwise — of less than 20 percent over a five-year period. A study by the Government Accountability Office in 2008 found that 55 percent of American companies paid no federal income taxes during at least one year in a seven-year period it studied.

“Under the current tax system, the United States will soon have the highest statutory corporate tax rate among developed countries, within a system that features a large number of tax expenditures for special interests,” said a senior administration official, who did not want to speak ahead of Mr. Geithner except on condition of anonymity.

“This puts American businesses — especially those in areas like manufacturing that are subject to more intense international competition — at a disadvantage. And this system is also unnecessarily complicated for America’s small businesses.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Obama proposed to end tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas and to create new breaks for those that bring jobs back.

Corporate taxes make up an increasingly small share of the federal government’s revenue, in part because of tax-avoidance maneuvers by businesses.

Mr. Obama is proposing that the simplification of the corporate code should not add to the deficit, and that most or all revenue raised by closing tax breaks should be used to lower rates or offset the cost of new or existing tax breaks favoring manufacturing, clean energy, and research and development activities, according to administration officials.

Mr. Obama is not proposing to overhaul the tax code for individuals, though he was spoken of it as a goal. Both codes were last revamped a quarter-century ago and the accretion of tax breaks in recent years has given rise to widespread calls, including from Mr. Obama’s 2010 Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission, to overhaul the tax systems in a way that raises enough revenue to both lower rates and reduce annual budget deficits.

But every tax break has its defenders, from homeowners who want their mortgage-interest deduction to corporations protective of depreciation tax breaks.

In October, Dave Camp of Michigan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, proposed a 25 percent corporate rate without saying how he would offset the sizable revenue loss.

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/business/economy/obama-offers-to-cut-corporate-tax-rate-to-28.html?_r=1&ref=business

Officials said the announcement, which will be held at the Treasury Department, will fill in details of the tax reform outline Obama gave during his State of the Union address.

The president said at the time he wants to lower the overall corporate tax rate “for the first time in 25 years.” The U.S. corporate rate of 35 percent is one of the highest in the world.

The Wall St. Journal reported that the administration will propose lowering the top income-tax rate for corporations to 28 percent from 35 percent, citing a senior White House official. But the tax revamp will raise overall revenue by eliminating certain deductions as part of the effort to reform the corporate tax code.

The White House is calling for more “fairness” and “simplicity” in the system. According to officials, this will include incentives for U.S. manufacturing but also a minimum tax on foreign earnings.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a House committee last week that the administration wants to create more incentives for corporations to invest in the United States.

“We want to bring down the rate, and we think we can, to a level that’s closer to the average of that of our major competitors,” Geithner told the House Ways and Means Committee.

During his State of the Union address, Obama pitched the tax reform as a way to “knock down barriers that stand in the way” of economic success.

He described the tax code as the product of a “parade of lobbyists” rigging the system.

“Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change,” Obama said in January. He urged Congress to “simplify” the system, get rid of loopholes and use the savings to lower the corporate rate.

The president’s plan will be unveiled by Treasury Department officials, though administration officials insisted the president is behind the plan and that the Treasury Department is merely filling in the details.

White House press Jay Carney said earlier Tuesday that the administration would unveil the corporate tax reform plan by the end of the month.

Officials later confirmed the announcement would be Wednesday.

White House economic adviser Gene Sperling has said the administration also is seeking a minimum tax on global profits. Currently, many corporations do not invest overseas profits in the United States to avoid the 35 percent tax rate.

Many members of both parties have said they favor overhauling the nation’s individual and corporate tax systems, which they complain have rates that are too high and are riddled with too many deductions.

The corporate tax debate has also become an element of presidential politics. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has called for a 25 percent rate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., would cut the corporate tax rate to 12.5 percent, and former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would exempt domestic manufacturers from the corporate tax and halve the top rate for other businesses.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/21/obama-administration-to-unveil-corporate-tax-reform-plan/

The double signs of defiance reflected continued Iranian determination not to bow to demands that it defuse suspicions about its nuclear activities despite rapidly growing international sanctions imposed over its refusal to signal it is ready to compromise.

With the International Atomic Energy Agency already failing to dent Iranian stonewalling in talks that ended just three weeks ago, hopes had been muted that the latest effort would be any more successful even before the IAEA issued its statement.

The fact that the communique was issued early Wednesday, shortly after midnight and just after the IAEA experts left Tehran, reflected the urgency the agency attached to telling its side of the story.

As the two-day IAEA visit was winding down, Iranian officials sought to cast it in a positive light, with foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast telling reporters that “cooperation with the agency continues and is at its best level.”

Beyond differing with that view, the language of the IAEA communique clearly — if indirectly — blamed Tehran for the lack of progress.

“We engaged in a constructive spirit, but no agreement was reached,” it quoted IAEA chief Yukiya Amano as saying.

The communique said that on both visits, Iran did not grant requests by the IAEA mission to visit Parchin — a military site thought to be used for explosives testing related to nuclear detonations, and cited Amano as calling this decision “disappointing.”

It also said that no agreement was reached on how to begin “clarification of unresolved issues in connection with Iran’s nuclear programme, particularly those relating to possible military dimensions.”

The abortive trip was just the latest sign of Iranian resolve to continue hard-line resistance in the face of international pressure to curb its nuclear activities, despite sanctions and U.S. and Israeli warnings of possible last-resort military action should diplomacy fail.

Iran over the weekend announced that it will stop selling oil to Britain and France in retaliation for a planned European oil embargo this summer.

The move was mainly symbolic — Britain and France import almost no oil from Iran — but it raised concerns that Iran could take the same hard line with other European nations that use more Iranian crude.

The European Union buys about 18 percent of Iran’s oil exports, though most of that comes from sales to just two countries: Italy and Spain.

Iran flailed out again just hours before the IAEA team left, with Gen. Mohammed Hejazi, who heads the military’s logistical wing, warning that Iran will “not wait for enemies to take action against us.”

“We will use all our means to protect our national interests,” he told the semiofficial Fars news agency.

His comments followed Iran’s announcement of war games to practice protecting nuclear and other sensitive sites, the latest military maneuver viewed as a message to the U.S. and Israel that the Islamic Republic is ready both to defend itself and to retaliate against an armed strike.

The official news agency IRNA said the four-day air defense war games, dubbed “Sarallah,” or “God’s Revenge,” were taking place in the south of the country and involve anti-aircraft batteries, radar, and warplanes. The drill will be held over 73,000 square miles near the port of Bushehr, the site of Iran’s lone nuclear power plant.

Iran has held multiple air, land, and sea maneuvers in recent months as tensions increase, while at the same time continuing to deny any interest in nuclear weapons. It asserts that the allegations of secret work on developing such arms are based on fabricated U.S. and Israeli intelligence.

But Amano, the IAEA chief, outlined his concerns in a 13-page summary late last year listing clandestine activities that he said can either be used in civilian or military nuclear programs, or “are specific to nuclear weapons.”

Among these were indications that Iran has conducted high-explosives testing to set off a nuclear charge at Parchin — the site the agency said Wednesday that the IAEA team was not allowed to visit.

Other suspicions include computer modeling of a core of a nuclear warhead and alleged preparatory work for a nuclear weapons test and development of a nuclear payload for Iran’s Shahab 3 intermediate range missile — a weapon that could reach Israel.

The IAEA team had hoped to talk to key Iranian scientists suspected of working on the alleged weapons program, break down opposition to their plans to inspect documents related to nuclear work and secure commitments from Iranian authorities to allow future visits.

Beyond denying any covert work on nuclear arms, Iran also insists concerns that it will turn its uranium enrichment program to making fissile warhead material are unfounded, saying it is enriching uranium only to make nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes such as producing energy.

But because of weapons fears, the U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions on Tehran in a failed attempt to force it to stop enrichment.

More recently, the U.S., the European Union and other Western allies have either tightened up their own sanctions or rapidly put new penalties in place striking at the heart of Iran’s oil exports lifeline and its financial system.

Tehran’s expanding enrichment activities at its plant at Fordo, near the holy city of Qom, are of particular concern for Israel — which has warned it will not let Iran develop nuclear arms — because it is dug into a mountain and possibly resistant to attack.

In interviews late last week, diplomats told The Associated Press that Iran is poised to install thousands of new-generation centrifuges at the cavernous facility. That would mean that Iran would have the capability of enriching to weapons-grade level much more quickly and efficiently that with its present, less efficient mainstay machines.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/21/un-nuclear-agency-says-iran-blocking-probe-into-atomic-work/

U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials plan to investigate whether inhalable caffeine sold in lipstick-sized canisters is safe for consumers and if its manufacturer was right to brand it as a dietary supplement.

AeroShot went on the market late last month in Massachusetts and New York, and it’s also available in France. Consumers put one end of the canister in their mouths and breathe in, releasing a fine powder that dissolves almost instantly.

Each grey-and-yellow plastic canister contains B vitamins, plus 100 milligrams of caffeine powder, about the equivalent of the caffeine in a large cup of coffee.

AeroShot inventor, Harvard biomedical engineering professor David Edwards, says the product is safe and doesn’t contain taurine and other common additives used to enhance the effect in energy drinks.

AeroShot didn’t require FDA review before hitting the U.S. market because it’s sold as a dietary supplement. But New York’s U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said he met with FDA Commissioner

Dr. Margaret Hamburg and she agreed to review the safety and legality of AeroShot.

“I am worried about how a product like this impacts kids and teens, who are particularly vulnerable to overusing a product that allows one to take hit after hit after hit, in rapid succession,” Schumer said.

Tom Hadfield, chief executive of Breathable Foods, which makes AeroShot in France, did not immediately respond to a phone message and email seeking comment. A publicist for the company also did not respond to a phone message and email seeking comment.

Sen. Schumer planned to announce the AeroShot review Sunday.

Meanwhile, an FDA official who was at the meeting confirmed the decision, telling The Associated Press that the review will include a study of the law to determine whether AeroShot qualifies as a dietary supplement. The product will also be tested to figure out whether it’s safe for consumption, the official said.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because that official was not authorized to discuss the matter.

Schumer pressed the FDA in December to review AeroShot, saying he fears that it will be used as a club drug so that young people can keep going until they drop. He cited incidents that occurred last year when students looking for a quick and cheap buzz began packed alcoholic drinks they dubbed “blackout in a can” because of their potency.

Pressure from the senator and others helped persuade the FDA to stop the marketing, distribution and sale of these beverages, including Four Loko.

“We need to make sure that AeroShot does not become the next Four Loko by facilitating dangerous levels of drinking among teenagers and college students,” Schumer said in a statement.

Breathable Foods says the product is different from the potent beverages. The company says that it’s not targeting anyone under 18 and that AeroShot safely delivers caffeine into the mouth, just like coffee does.

A single unit costs $2.99 at convenience stores, mom-and-pops, and liquor and online stores. The product packaging warns people not to consume more than three AeroShots a day.

“When used in accordance with its label, AeroShot provides a safe shot of caffeine and B vitamins for ingestion,” the manufacturer says on its website. “Caffeine has been proven to offer a variety of potential benefits for health to individuals when consumed in moderation, from providing energy to enhancing attention and focus.”

AeroShot, the flagship product of Cambridge, Mass.-based Breathable Foods, is the product of a conversation that Edwards had with celebrity French chef Thierry Marks over lunch in the summer of 2007.The first venture Edwards worked on with Harvard students was the breathable chocolate, called Le Whif. Now he’s preparing to promote a product called Le Whaf, which involves putting food and drinks in futuristic-looking glass bowls and turning them into low calorie clouds of flavor.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/02/20/fda-to-review-inhalable-caffeine/

MOSCOW –  It was an Ice Age squirrel’s treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species.

The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.

The experiment proves that permafrost serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms, said the Russian researchers, who published their findings in Tuesday’s issue of “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” of the United States.

“We consider it essential to continue permafrost studies in search of an ancient genetic pool, that of pre-existing life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth’s surface,” the scientists said in the article.

Canadian researchers had earlier regenerated some significantly younger plants from seeds found in burrows.

Svetlana Yashina of the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy Of Sciences, who led the regeneration effort, said the revived plant looked very similar to its modern version, which still grows in the same area in northeastern Siberia.

“It’s a very viable plant, and it adapts really well,” she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the Russian town of Pushchino where her lab is located.

She voiced hope the team could continue its work and regenerate more plant species.

The Russian research team recovered the fruit after investigating dozens of fossil burrows hidden in ice deposits on the right bank of the lower Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia, the sediments dating back 30,000-32,000 years.

The sediments were firmly cemented together and often totally filled with ice, making any water infiltration impossible — creating a natural freezing chamber fully isolated from the surface.

“The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,” said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. “It’s a natural cryobank.”

The burrows were located 125 feet below the present surface in layers containing bones of large mammals, such as mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, bison, horse and deer.

Gubin said the study has demonstrated that tissue can survive ice conservation for tens of thousands of years, opening the way to the possible resurrection of Ice Age mammals.

“If we are lucky, we can find some frozen squirrel tissue,” Gubin told the AP. “And this path could lead us all the way to mammoth.”

Japanese scientists are already searching in the same area for mammoth remains, but Gubin voiced hope that the Russians will be the first to find some frozen animal tissue that could be used for regeneration.

“It’s our land, we will try to get them first,” he said.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/21/russians-resurrect-30000-year-old-frozen-flower/

The opinion by Judge Thomas Parker was issued Friday in the case of a woman who sued her doctors for wrongful death when her baby died in the womb while only three months in gestation.

The Alabama Supreme Court threw out a DeKalb Circuit Court summary judgment in favor of the defendants that held the wrongful-death action could not be maintained because the unborn child was not viable.

Parker wrote that the Supreme Court “erroneously” concluded in Roe that the unborn have no rights as “persons,” but since 1973, mounds of cases have been decided in tort and criminal law in favor of babies with prenatal injuries “regardless whether the injury occurred either before or after the point of viability.”

Citing the National Conference of State Legislatures, Parker wrote that 38 states have enacted fetal-homicide statutes, of which 28 protect life from conception, and noted a ruling from last year by his own court that concluded that Alabama’s wrongful death law applies to an unborn child at any stage of gestation. He added that at least nine other states permit recovery for the wrongful death of previable unborn children.

“This court recognized the arbitrariness of ‘draw(ing) a line that allows recovery on behalf of a fetus injured before viability that dies after achieving viability but that prevents recovery on behalf of a fetus injured that, as a result of those injuries, does not survive to viability,’” Parker wrote.

Extending the argument, Parker, whose opinion was signed by three other judges, wrote that “Roe’s statement that unborn children are not ‘persons’ within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment is irrelevant to the question whether unborn children are ‘persons’ under state law. Because the Fourteenth Amendment ‘right’ recognized in Roe is not implicated unless state action violates a woman’s ‘right’ to end a pregnancy, the other parts of the superstructure of Roe, including the viability standard, are not controlling outside abortion law.”

The court’s ruling only affects Alabama law, for now, but pro-life groups said Parker’s opinion will be picked up in other courts in other states.

“Roe v. Wade is an island by itself and that island is getting smaller and smaller and that perimeter is eroding,” said Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit legal group dedicated to sanctity of life and religious freedom issues.

Staver noted that viability “will vary over time” and medical advances that give the child a chance to live outside the womb constantly change. “What stays constant is that at the moment of conception the child is a human being.”

In the case, Amy Hamilton argued that her baby died in utero because of negligent acts by her doctors. She claimed that for six weeks beginning in early January 2005 she sought ultrasounds to monitor her baby after she contracted “fifth disease,” an infection caused by human parvovirus. When the technician finally gave her an ultrasound at the end of February, the baby was shown to have problems. He was still born two weeks later.

Hamilton filed suit that the baby’s death could have been avoided if she had been monitored as recommended. The lower court gave a summary judgment to the doctors, claiming that the wrongful-death action could only be claimed if the child had been able to survive outside the womb.

But the high court ruled that both legislatively and in the court, nonviable fetuses have been regarded as persons.

The Supreme Court did uphold the lower court’s summary judgment for the doctors that Hamilton suffered physical injury as a result of the loss, saying that she had argued that the fetus from its conception was a separate being so she could not have been the one to suffer physical injury as a result of the baby’s death.

The case now returns to the lower court to be judged on the merits of wrongful death statutes.

Pro-choice group NARAL did not respond to a request for comment.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/20/alabama-courts-wrongful-death-ruling-used-to-recommend-abandoning-viability/

I talk a lot about the importance of keeping your computer safe from viruses, malware and other things that can expose you and your information to security risks.

But today I’m talking about good old-fashioned, low-tech germs. They can shut down your productivity just as quickly as a so-called indestructible computer virus.

It’s that time of year, no matter where you live, when cold- and flu-season is spreading like wildfire. We just experienced a mini-epidemic at our office, complete with both the upper respiratory stuff and the stomach version sweeping through whole departments for days at a time.

There are many ways to disinfect your work space and minimize your exposure when these nasty viruses are spreading. But there’s nothing we touch more than our desktops, laptops, tablets and cell phones. I kept hearing the office germophobes say, “Too bad there’s no way to clean a computer.”

Nonsense. Some digital gadgets are easier to disinfect than others, but there’s plenty you can do to lessen your exposure at work. Here are seven steps to a flu-free work station.

1) Attack that germy keyboard and mouse. They get touched the most at work and in your home office. If your keyboard and mouse are wired, unplug them from the computer. If they’re wireless, shut them off and remove the batteries. Then use bleach-free wipes to clean and disinfect the keyboard and mouse. Go over the accessories again with a dry and soft lint-free cloth.

You want to avoid getting moisture into openings. Never use spray cleaners or spray disinfectants. If a wipe is very damp, squeeze it to remove the excess liquid. Also avoid using paper or cloth towels, because the lint can be harmful.

2) Have a laptop? Clean off the internal keyboard and trackpad the same way. Again, be sure to shut down the computer and unplug the power supply first.

3) To clean a desktop computer, shut it down and unplug the power cord. Disconnect peripherals. Use a disinfectant wipe to go over plastic and metal surfaces. For the display, use a soft, slightly damp lint-free cloth.

4) Phones with keyboards can be swabbed with a slightly damp disinfecting wipe. Most smartphone makers recommend using only a soft cloth to clean touchscreens. But several studies have reported that the average cell phone is more germ infested than a public toilet. And you put that to your face how many times a day?

Your best line of defense may be to consider buying a screen protector for your smartphone. They’re available for the more popular touchscreen phones, so that you can clean and replace them as needed. Meanwhile, don’t forget to disinfect the handpiece and mouthpiece on your wired desk phone.

5) Place a bottle of alcohol-based hand sanitizer and a box of tissues next to your computer and use them frequently. This will go far to help control the introduction or transfer of germs.

Alcohol, however, can damage computer screens and touchscreen phones. Don’t apply it directly to any of your electronics and never use an alcohol-based cleaner or a disinfectant wipe containing alcohol on any of your screens.

6) Of course, frequent hand-washing is the simplest – and most effective – way to stop the spread of illness both at work and in the home. Washing before meals – ever when you go out to lunch during the workday – and after going to the bathroom, shaking hands, handling a pen or working at another desk or work station, can go a long way in halting the spread of germs.

7) Finally, your mom was right. Keep your hands away from your eyes and mouth, and don’t touch handrails or door knobs without washing afterward. The biggest germ sources are still low tech.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/19/7-steps-to-flu-free-work-station/

The four were among three groups of skiers — about a dozen people in all — making their way through a foot and a half of fresh snow on the back side of Stevens Pass when the avalanche hit. Stevens Pass is in the Cascade Mountains, about 80 miles northeast of Seattle.

All were buried to some extent, but the men who died were swept approximately 1,500 feet down a chute in the Tunnel Creek Canyon area, King County Sheriff’s Sgt. Katie Larson said.

Most of the other skiers, all well-equipped, were able to free themselves and rushed to dig out the victims. They performed CPR on the three men to no avail, Larson said.

The fourth skier who was swept down the mountain, a woman, appeared to avoid a similar fate because of the avalanche safety device she was wearing, Larson said.

Such devices include wearable airbags that can be deployed to help a person float atop an avalanche rather than being buried underneath it, or inflatable bags that create space between a person’s mouth and the snow. It wasn’t immediately known which kind the woman had, said Deputy Chris Bedker of the sheriff’s search-and-rescue unit.

The men who died were believed to be in their 30s and 40s.

“Most of the people involved in this were well-known to the ski community up here, especially to the ski patrol,” Bedker said. “It was their friends who they recovered.”

Initial reports of the avalanche reached the sheriff’s office just after noon, and for some time it wasn’t clear whether the other skiers had also been swept up in the slide.

The Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center on Sunday issued a warning for high avalanche danger for areas above 5,000 feet, saying warmer weather could loosen surface snow and trigger a slide on steeper slopes. The elevation of the avalanche wasn’t immediately clear.

At mid-afternoon, the temperature at the base of the Stevens Pass ski resort was 24 degrees, with light winds and good visibility. The temperature at the top of the mountain was 22 degrees, according to the resort’s website.

John Gifford, the ski area’s general manager, said Sunday that the resort had received 19 inches of snow in the past 24 hours.

Stevens Pass is one of the most popular outdoor recreation areas in the state, with visitors flocking to the scenic site to go cross-country, back-country and downhill skiing, as well as snowshoeing and backpacking.

It’s been a deadly winter in Washington’s mountains. Four people disappeared in vicious storms while camping and climbing on Mount Rainier last month. The four remain missing, and authorities have said they’re hoping to find their bodies when the snow melts this summer.

Across the West, there had been 13 avalanche deaths this season as of Thursday, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, which tracks avalanche deaths in the U.S.

Experts have said the risk of additional slides in the region could remain high all season. They attribute the dangers in part to a weak base layer of snow caused by a dry winter.

Avalanche deaths are more common in the backcountry than at ski resorts. Out of about 900 avalanche deaths nationwide since the winter of 1950-51, 32 were within terrain that was open for riding at ski resorts, according to the Utah Avalanche Center.

Also Sunday, King County Sheriff’s Sgt. Cindi West said a snowboarder was killed in a separate incident at the Alpental ski area east of Seattle. The snowboarder, a man, went over a cliff.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/02/19/3-people-killed-and-up-to-8-missing-after-avalanche-near-washington-ski-resort/

Nationally, gas prices are $3.53 a gallon, up 25 cents since Jan. 1, and likely headed to $4.25 a gallon by late April. Republicans have demanded more oil production at home, as well as building the Keystone XL pipeline across the middle of the U.S. to allow oil from Canada to reach Texas refineries.

Obama rejected the plan, but one of his spokesmen, Robert Gibbs, said the president is looking to increase domestic energy production.

“Just on Friday, the Department of Interior issued permits that will expand our exploration in the Arctic. The president has increased our fuel efficiency and energy efficiency standards so we do use less energy, which will help drive down the price,” Gibbs said. “Our domestic oil production is at an eight-year high, and our use of foreign oil is at a 16-year low. So we’re making progress.”

But John Hofmeister, former CEO of Shell Oil and founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy, told Fox News that oil production today is only 7 million barrels per day when it used to be 10 million per day.

Hofmeister warned that the global economy is in “the crosshairs” of a precarious situation in which China is growing it demand for oil each year by millions of barrels per day and turmoil in the Middle East is creating “some of the most unpredictable, volatile, geopolitical situations” in the world.

“The failure of the United States of America, the world’s largest consumer, to adopt government policies to enable domestic production to increase and meet these conditions has been nil, nada, nothing, and that is unfortunate for American consumers,” Hofmeister told Fox News.

“We know where the oil is but the government has to allow the companies to get the oil,” he said, charging the Obama administration with being “anti-drilling,” as demonstrated by the moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP spill in 2010.

The average price of gas this month so far is $3.49 a gallon — up 21 cents since the beginning of the year — and $1.60 more per gallon than when Obama took office in January 2009.

For every 25-cent jump in gasoline prices over a year, $35 billion — or about one-third of the recently passed payroll tax cut — is removed from other uses in the economy, and much of it is sent abroad. Americans spent 8.4 percent of their household income on gasoline last year when gas averaged $3.51 a gallon — that’s double the percentage a decade ago.

While the economy grew at a 1.7 percent rate in 2011 — modest following a recession — the annual increase in gas prices — compounded by a switch to lighter formula gases sold in the spring and summer — could easily top the July 2008 record of $4.11 per gallon.

As the administration praises the direction of employment and consumption numbers, the president’s economic recovery plans could be severely hampered by a rise in gas prices, warn analysts and politicians.

“One out of every six Americans is unemployed, working part-time, looking for full-time work or so discouraged they’re — they’ve dropped out of the workforce altogether, and gas is now $3.53 a gallon, going to $4,” said former George W. Bush senior adviser Karl Rove, a Fox News contributor.

“If I were in the White House, I wouldn’t be picking out my second term office just yet,” Rove said.

“You can’t guarantee anything. But you guarantee under the Obama plan, there’s going to be less American production, higher prices. We already have highest price on average in history,” said Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, noting that the administration has been aggressive in filing environmental rules and lawsuits that prevent oil production. Gingrich said without domestic production, U.S. oil dependency remains tied to the Middle East.

While the U.S. dependence on foreign sources of oil persists, domestically produced oil from Texas is currently priced at $103 billion per barrel, up 19 percent from a year ago, but still cheaper than the $119 per barrel, a proxy for Mideast oil. That’s up 11 percent this year.

Hofmeister, who supports increasing biofuel and natural gas production from 3 million to 4 million gallons daily and the development of more fuel-efficient cars, particularly using the know-how of an internal combustion engine, said it’s “almost too late” to get the U.S. back on path toward reasonable prices.

And while Gibbs, who appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” acknowledged that “there are no magic bullets,” he said the president is focused on an “all-of-the-above energy policy.”

“We’re going to have to do all of these things:  We’re going to have to look for more energy here at home. We’re going to have to conserve energy. We’re going to have to make the energy we use more efficient. All of those things will help us get ahead of this problem,” he said.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/19/domestic-production-eyed-as-gas-prices-head-toward-record-breaking-height/

The free Facebook app If I Die gives people a chance to write their messages or record their videos well before the end arrives. Upon death, three “trustees” — friends that you assign — must verify your death, at which point your updates will be released to the public.

Messages can be released either all at once or on a predetermined schedule — meaning your words can go on, and on, and on … online that is.

But if you’re thinking of changing your will “from beyond the grave,” think again, said Steven M. Fox, a member of the Tax and Estate Planning practice group at law firm Buchalter Nemer. If I Die messages may hold meaning but they won’t hold legal water.

“They would have no legal bearing,” Nemer told FoxNews.com. “So if anyone contests the trusteeship appointment the deceased made on his or her Facebook page, that appointment will not hold water.”

The problem, Nemer said, is in accountability. If I Die messages have more holes than a ghost mask, from a legal perspective.

“It’s too easily forged and cannot be proven to be the intent of the deceased, so [If I Die messages are] not valid,” he said.

The Israeli startup that developed the app, Willook (which specializes in “time capsule” services) suggests instead leaving behind a final farewell, a long-held secret, or even one final insult.

Morbid, certainly — but also potentially useful.

“We all have things to say and don’t necessarily have the audience with the patience to hear us,” co-founder and CEO Eran Alfonta told Mashable.com. “Actually, we all want to leave something behind, we all want to leave a stamp behind us.”

Alfonta got the idea after a near fatal car crash with family and friends while traveling in Italy. After the incident, Alfonta’s friends implored him to create a service “where they could record something secret to their kids that would only be sent if they died,” Mashable reported.

The app can also bring peace of mind to those with terminal illnesses and are looking to get their things in order in the era of Facebook.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/17/if-die-app-updates-your-facebook-when-youre-dead/