Syria envoy Brahimi due for talks in Moscow on December 29

Syrian diplomats earlier on Thursday entered the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow to discuss proposals for a peaceful resolution to the crisis following a diplomatic push by Brahimi in Damascus this week.

Plans made by Brahimi to broker a peaceful transfer of power in Syria will top the agenda when Lavrov and Brahimi meet on later this week, the foreign ministry spokesman said.

"We plan to discuss a range of issues linked to a political and diplomatic settlement in Syria, including Brahimi's efforts aimed at ending the violence and the launch of a comprehensive national dialogue," Alexander Lukashevich said.

On Thursday, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Makdad and another aide will meet Lavrov and Mikhail Bogdanov, the Kremlin's envoy for Middle East affairs, a Russian foreign ministry source said, without detailing the nature of the talks.

6 dead, several injured as powerful winter storm system pounds Northeast

A powerful winter storm system that pounded the nation's midsection, wrecking holiday travel plans and dumping a record snowfall in Arkansas, began lashing the Northeast on Wednesday with high winds, snow and sleet.

The storm, which knocked out power to thousands of utility customersm mainly in Arkansas, was blamed in at least six deaths.

Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed, scores of motorists got stuck on icy roads or slid into drifts and blizzard warnings were issued amid snowy gusts of 30 mph that blanketed roads and windshields, at times causing whiteout conditions.

"The way I've been describing it is as a low-end blizzard, but that's sort of like saying a small Tyrannosaurus rex," said John Kwiatkowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Indianapolis.

The system, which spawned Gulf Coast region tornadoes on Christmas Day, pushed through the Upper Ohio Valley and headed into the Northeast Wednesday night. High winds, snow and sleet slickened roads in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, causing dozens of minor accidents and spinouts. Forecasts called for 12 to 18 inches of snow inland from western New York to Maine into Thursday.

The National Weather Service said early Thursday that snow was falling heavily in Pennsylvania, upstate New York and some New England states. Among the highest snow totals were 2 to five inches in southeastern Massachusetts, 3 to 6 inches in Connecticut, up to a foot in some Pennsylvania counties and 10 to 11 inches in some parts of western New York.

The system was expected to taper off into a mix of rain and snow closer to the coast, where little or no accumulation was expected in such cities as Philadelphia, Boston and New York.

The storm left freezing temperatures in its aftermath, and forecasters also said parts of the Southeast from Virginia to Florida would see severe thunderstorms.

Schools on break and workers taking holiday vacations meant that many people could avoid messy commutes, but those who had to travel were implored to avoid it. Snow was blamed for scores of vehicle accidents as far east as Maryland, and about two dozen counties in Indiana and Ohio issued snow emergency travel alerts, urging people to go out on the roads only if necessary.

About 40 vehicles got bogged down trying to make it up a slick hill in central Indiana, and four state snowplows slid off roads as snow fell at the rate of 3 inches an hour in some places.

Two passengers in a car on a sleet-slickened Arkansas highway were killed Wednesday in a head-on collision, and two people, including a 76-year-old Milwaukee woman, were killed Tuesday on Oklahoma highways. Deaths from wind-toppled trees were reported in Texas and Louisiana.

The day after Christmas wasn't expected to be particularly busy for AAA, but its Cincinnati-area branch had its busiest Wednesday of the year. By mid-afternoon, nearly 400 members had been helped with tows, jump starts and other aid, with calls still coming in, spokesman Mike Mills said.

Jennifer Miller was taking a bus Wednesday from Cincinnati to visit family in Columbus.

"I wish this had come yesterday and was gone today," she said, struggling with a rolling suitcase and three smaller bags on a slushy sidewalk near the station. "I'm glad I don't have to drive in this."

Traffic crawled at 25 mph on Interstate 81 in Maryland, where authorities reported scores of accidents.

"We're going to try to go down south and get below" the storm, said Richard Power, traveling from home in Levittown, N.Y., to Kentucky with his wife, two children and their beagle, Lucky.

He said they were well on their way until they hit snow in Pennsylvania, then 15-mph traffic on I-81 at Hagerstown, Md.

"We're going to go as far as we can go. ... If it doesn't get better, we're going to just get a hotel," he said.

More than 1,600 flights were canceled, according to the aviation tracking website FlightAware.com, and some airlines said they would waive change fees. Lengthy delays were reported Wednesday at the three major New York City-area airports, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

In Arkansas, some of the nearly 200,000 people who lost power could be without it for as long as a week because of snapped poles and wires after ice and 10 inches of snow coated power lines, said the state's largest utility, Entergy Arkansas.

Gov. Mike Beebe, who declared a statewide emergency, sent out National Guard teams, and Humvees transported medical workers and patients. Snow hadn't fallen in Little Rock on Christmas since 1926, but the capital ended Tuesday with 10.3 inches of it.

Other states also had scattered outages. Duke Energy said it had nearly 300 outages in Indiana, with few left in Ohio by early afternoon after scores were reported in the morning.

As the storm moved east, New England state highway departments were treating roads and getting ready to mobilize with snowfall forecasts of a foot or more.

"People are picking up salt and a lot of shovels today," said Andy Greenwood, an assistant manager at Aubuchon Hardware in Keene, N.H.

As usual, winter-sports enthusiasts welcomed the snow. At Smiling Hill Farm in Maine, Warren Knight was hoping for enough snow to allow the opening of trails.

"We watch the weather more carefully for cross-country skiing than we do for farming. And we're pretty diligent about farming. We're glued to the weather radio," said Knight, who described the weather at the 500-acre farm in Westbrook as being akin to the prizes in "Cracker Jacks -- we don't know what we're going to get."

Behind the storm, Mississippi's governor declared states of emergency in eight counties with more than 25 people reported injured and 70 homes left damaged.

Cindy Williams stood near a home in McNeill, Miss., where its front had collapsed into a pile of wood and brick, a balcony and the porch ripped apart. Large oak trees were uprooted and winds sheared off treetops in a nearby grove. But she focused instead on the fact that all her family members had escaped harm.

"We are so thankful," she said. "God took care of us."

Triumph of politics, 'fiscal cliff' viewed as apocalyptic event

Americans may find it useful to remember how the nation got to this point.

While politicians and many in the media treat the "fiscal cliff" as some sort of apocalyptic event, as if it were a date foretold on an ancient Mayan calendar, it is in fact an invention of the politicians themselves; a set of drastic steps designed to present such a horrible and unthinkable situation as to trump the natural inclinations of politics. Whereas representatives and senators tend to think in terms of their own constituents and decisions that would help ensure re-election, the cliff was a mutually agreed upon set of circumstances that would force those interests to come together and compromise for the good of the whole.

It may yet work, although so far the strategy hasn't moved either side very far.

We should also note that politicians on both sides had hoped the 2012 elections would bring clarity to the matter, with each side hoping its philosophy would prevail. That didn't happen, although Democrats gained a bit of traction by retaining the White House and picking up seats in Congress. Each side retains the power to block the other.

Nearly two years ago, Congress created a bipartisan committee to design a long-term solution to the nation's deficit-ridden budget and its growing national debt. This so-called "super committee" was charged with coming up with at least $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years through cuts, tax increases or any other legal means. It was to do so by Nov. 23, 2011. And just to make sure both sides took the committee's work seriously, the agreement was for $1.2 trillion in haphazard cuts to be triggered at the start of 2013 if the committee failed in its task.

The committee never came close to succeeding. Members were heavily lobbied by their own parties in terms of things to which they should not agree, rather than suggestions for possible points of agreement.

It just so happened that the Bush-era tax cuts and a temporary cut in payroll taxes also were set to expire at the start of 2013. Several other tax measures will expire then, as well. In all, the nation faces $500 billion in tax hikes and $200 billion in cuts if Congress and the president can't agree on a plan.

But every single aspect of the "fiscal cliff" was artificially created by Washington politicians. Congress and the president could simply change the rules, repeal the automatic cuts and extend the other tax cuts until both sides can reach an agreement, but doing so may be worse than going over the cliff. If would indicate to the rest of the world that the United States truly has a dysfunctional government, and it would destroy whatever credibility Congress currently retains.

The good thing about the automatic cuts, or sequestration, that would begin taking effect Jan.1, is that they are large enough to suggest the proper scope of what the nation needs in order to keep itself from the path to insolvency. The bad news is that even such stark consequences haven't budged some politicians toward the center.

Conventional wisdom is that even if Congress and the president reach an agreement to avoid the cliff before next week, it won't be the type of long-term reform needed to put the nation on a sound fiscal path. That means many more cliffs and crises ahead.

The woodcarving favorite improved

Collection on the market, a calligraphy reach tens of millions, or even billions, maybe a lot of people would not be surprised, but if hear that a woodcarving prices can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, even hundreds of million, I believe there will be a lot of people surprised.

Chinese wood carving art originated in the Neolithic period, the Qin and Han dynasties process to take advantage of mature, to Tang Dynasty processes increasingly perfect, reached its peak period to the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Since ancient times, the carvings have a wide range of favorite crowd, and has been an important category in the collection on the market.

Art auction had just begun in the 1990s, wood carving art began to appear in the film field, although occasionally individual boutique can be sold for millions of dollars for high-priced, but with hundreds of thousands of yuan, such as painting and calligraphy, porcelain billion astronomical compared, woodcarving apparently been less, which is a long time to woodcarving is seen as the main reason for "unpopular" collections. However, this phenomenon began to emerge from last year completely changed. Since last year, with the record high price of painting and calligraphy, porcelain price bubble burst, had 'upset' woodcarving art began rapid warming, this year, some large domestic auction, many woodcarving auction price exceeded one million yuan mark the fine woodcarving even shoot a new record of 10 million yuan.

In this year's spring auction, a Ming Dynasty "the ichthyosaur the Marine Mammals sandalwood pen holder", although the film a pre-sale estimate of up to 12 million to 18 million yuan, but the final transaction price of 55.2 million yuan, refresh wood carving pen holder auction record . A small wood carving pen holder worth up to tens of millions of dollars, enough to illustrate the degree of wood carving works of art sought after. Addition to the art auction market, the price of wood carving art in the collection on the market folk surprisingly little rare wood carvings to sell hundreds of million no longer new.

Gucci released Li Bingbing BAMBOO watches and bracelets

To the quality of craftsmanship, creative and Italy famous Gucci brand firmly believe that: human, environment and the society is held responsible attitude, this is very important.

Bamboo series Li Bingbing special ladies watch with a circular design style, with bright light bamboo material table ring. In the code ( 35 mm ) table uses the fine steel and bamboo material watch bracelet, with Gucci logo of the snaffle bit clasp. Dial with ivory, display the entire watch creamy color scheme; design extension of the simple style, only a few Rome standard embellishment. The "Gucci " mark and the " Swiss Made " ( Swiss ) words were carved at twelve o'clock and six o'clock positions. To indicate that the cooperation between the two sides, the back engraved with the " Gucci case and Li Bingbing for Responsible Life".

Special section of Bamboo series and watches with a beaded bracelet jewelry, it is Gucci Bamboo series of special section. This beautiful beaded bracelet using contrasting wood and drawn from the palm tree kernel milky white beaded hand strung. The adjustable rope bracelet decorated with a sterling silver beads, carved on a " Gucci" logo; inscribed " Gucci " logo and the Li Bingbing Responsible Life identifies two Sterling Silver Pendant are dotted on both sides.

Palm tree nuts are a sustainable material, "the plant called" ivory. The use of renewable materials, suggests that Gucci watches jewelry for sustainable material desire, especially the use of palm nuts completely replaced from the elephant, whale or marine animal gets Ivory demand for raw materials.

Talk about the cooperation and the new Bamboo products, Gucci watches jewelry CEO Michele Sofisti said: " we are very happy to further expand and miss Li Bingbing cooperation, the cooperation projects reflect Gucci and miss Li Bingbing both on environmental commitment. These products are a reflection of the ecological spirit, because their design into a natural bamboo elements. "