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rates to rise on million-dollar-plus incomes, Lieberman said: "It's the first time that I feel it's more likely we'll go over the cliff than not," meaning that higher taxes for most Americans and painful federal agency budget cuts would be in line to go ahead.
• ___

• ATLANTA (AP) -- Last-minute shoppers crowded into malls and stores to scoop up discounted clothing and toys during the last weekend before Christmas, but many didn't seem to be in the spending spirit.
• This holiday season, Americans have a lot on their minds on top of the now familiar job worries.
• Consumers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, which account for 24 percent of retail sales nationwide, were tripped up by Superstorm Sandy. The storm hit in late October and disrupted businesses and households for several weeks.
• Shoppers are also increasingly worried about the fast approaching "fiscal cliff" deadline -- the possibility that a stalemate between Congress and the White House over the U.S. budget could trigger a series of tax increases and spending cuts starting Jan. 1. Confidence among U.S. consumers dropped to its lowest point in December since July because of growing concerns about the economy, according to a monthly index released Friday.
• And the recent Newtown, Conn., school shooting also dampened shoppers' spirits, analysts said.
• ___

• LONG BEACH, N.Y. (AP) -- The text from Sister Diane at St. Ignatius Martyr church was as odd as it was urgent: "A man is going to call. You must answer the phone."
• Kerry Ann Troy had just finished her daily "cry time" -- that half-hour between dropping the kids off at school and driving back to her gutted house on New York's Long Island, or to the hurricane relief center, or to wherever she was headed in those desperate days after Sandy, when life seemed an endless blur of hopelessness and worry.

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