Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

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Evidence found at shooter’s home may point to motive, police say

Conn. State police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance at Saturday morning's news conference. (Jason Sickles/Yahoo News)

NEWTOWN, CT - Evidence recovered at gunman Adam Lanza's home may provide a motive for the massacre that left 26 dead at an elementary school, police said on Saturday.

State police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance declined to provide specifics about the evidence but said, "we're hopeful it will paint a complete picture."

Authorities say Lanza, 20, killed his mother at their home Friday morning before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary where he forced his way in to commit one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

[Related: Follow the latest updates from our reporters in Newtown]

Armed with two semi-automatic pistols, Lanza rapidly sprayed bullets in hallways and classrooms. Twenty children, many of them kindergarteners, and six faculty members lost their lives. Lanza killed himself before police officers could reach home.

Lt. Vance said all the bodies were removed from the school overnight. A medical examiner is expected to release the names of the victims later today.

Police have assigned a trooper to support each victim's family in the days ahead. Vance asked reporters to respect the families' grief and privacy.

"This is an extremely heartbreaking thing for them to endure," Lt. Vance said.

It will likely take investigators two more days to process the school crime scene where it is believed Lanza fired as many as 100 rounds from his guns.

"It's going to be a slow, painstaking process," Lt. Vance said.

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NKorea rocket launch shows young leader as gambler

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — A triumphant North Korea staged a mass rally of soldiers and civilians Friday to glorify the country's young ruler, who took a big gamble this week in sending a satellite into orbit in defiance of international warnings.

Wednesday's rocket launch came just eight months after a similar attempt ended in an embarrassing public failure, and just under a year after Kim Jong Un inherited power following his father's death.

The surprising success of the launch may have earned Kim global condemnation, but at home the gamble paid off, at least in the short term. To his people, it made the 20-something Kim appear powerful, capable and determined in the face of foreign adversaries.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans, packed into snowy Kim Il Sung Square, clenched their fists in a unified show of resolve as a military band tooted horns and pounded on drums.

Huge red banners positioned in the square called on North Koreans to defend Kim Jong Un with their lives. They also paid homage to Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, North Korean founder Kim Il Sung.

Pyongyang says the rocket put a crop and weather monitoring satellite into orbit. Much of the rest of the world sees it as a thinly disguised test of banned long-range missile technology. It could bring a fresh round of U.N. sanctions that would increase his country's international isolation. At the same time, the success of the launch could strengthen North Korea's military, the only entity that poses a potential threat to Kim's rule.

The launch's success, 14 years after North Korea's first attempt, shows more than a little of the gambling spirit in the third Kim to rule North Korea since it became a country in 1948.

"North Korean officials will long be touting Kim Jong Un as a gutsy leader" who commanded the rocket launch despite being new to the job and young, said Kim Byung-ro, a North Korea specialist at Seoul National University in South Korea.

The propaganda machinery churned into action early Friday, with state media detailing how Kim Jong Un issued the order to fire off the rocket just days after scientists fretted over technical issues, ignoring the chorus of warnings from Washington to Moscow against a move likely to invite more sanctions.

Top officials followed Kim in shrugging off international condemnation.

Workers' Party Secretary Kim Ki Nam told the crowd, bundled up against a winter chill in the heart of the capital, that "hostile forces" had dubbed the launch a missile test. He rejected the claim and called on North Koreans to stand their ground against the "cunning" critics.

North Korea called the satellite a gift to Kim Jong Il, who is said to have set the lofty goal of getting a satellite into space and then tapped his son to see it into fruition. The satellite, which North Korean scientists say is designed to send back data about crops and weather, was named Kwangmyongsong, or "Lode Star" — the nickname legendarily given to the elder Kim at birth.

Kim Jong Il died on Dec. 17, 2011, so to North Koreans, the successful launch is a tribute. State TV have been replaying video of the launch to "Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il."

But it is the son who will bask in the glory, and face the international censure that may follow.

Even while he was being groomed to succeed his father, Kim Jong Un had been portrayed as championing science and technology as a way to lift North Korea out of decades of economic hardship.

"It makes me happy that our satellite is flying in space," Pyongyang citizen Jong Sun Hui said as Friday's ceremony came to a close and tens of thousands rushed into the streets, many linking arms as they went.

"The satellite launch demonstrated our strong power and the might of our science and technology once again," she told The Associated Press. "And it also clearly testifies that a thriving nation is in our near future."

Aside from winning him support from the people, the success of the launch helps his image as he works to consolidate power over a government crammed with elderly, old-school lieutenants of his father and grandfather, foreign analysts said.

Experts say that what is unclear, however, is whether Kim will continue to smoothly solidify power, steering clear of friction with the powerful military while dealing with the strong possibility of more crushing sanctions. The United Nations says North Korea already has a serious hunger problem.

"Certainly in the short run, this is an enormous boost to his prestige," according to Marcus Noland, a North Korea analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Noland, however, also mentioned the "Machiavellian argument" that this could cause future problems for Kim by significantly boosting the power of the military — "the only real threat to his rule."

Successfully firing a rocket was so politically crucial for Kim at the onset of his rule that he allowed an April launch to go through even though it resulted in the collapse of a nascent food-aid-for-nuclear-freeze deal with the United States, said North Korea analyst Kim Yeon-su of Korea National Defense University in Seoul.

The launch success consolidates his image as heir to his father's legacy. But it could end up deepening North Korea's political and economic isolation, he said.

On Friday, the section at the rally reserved for foreign diplomats was noticeably sparse. U.N. officials and some European envoys stayed away from the celebration, as they did in April after the last launch.

Despite the success, experts say North Korea is years from even having a shot at developing reliable missiles that could bombard the American mainland and other distant targets.

North Korea will need larger and more dependable missiles, and more advanced nuclear weapons, to threaten U.S. shores, though it already poses a shorter-range missile threat to its neighbors.

The next big question is how the outside world will punish Pyongyang — and try to steer North Korea from what could come next: a nuclear test. In 2009, the North conducted an atomic explosion just weeks after a rocket launch.

Scott Snyder, a Korea specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently that North Korea's nuclear ambitions should inspire the U.S., China, South Korea and Japan to put aside their issues and focus on dealing with Pyongyang.

If there is a common threat that should galvanize regional cooperation, "it most certainly should be the prospect of a 30-year-old leader of a terrorized population with his finger on a nuclear trigger," Snyder said.

____

Jon Chol Jin in Pyongyang, and Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. Follow Jean H. Lee on Twitter: (at)newsjean.

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Home invasion victim gets help over Xbox headset

NORTH APOLLO, Pa. (AP) — Police say a Pennsylvania man used his Xbox headphones to call for help after being bound with duct tape and menaced with a gun during a home invasion.

Investigators say the 22-year-old suburban Pittsburgh man was playing video games in an upstairs bedroom when he heard his front door open. The man initially thought it was a family member but saw an armed man wearing a ski mask when he looked downstairs.

Authorities say the intruder bound Derick Shaffer and led him around the North Apollo home to locate valuables, then fled in Shaffer’s car. Shaffer reached a friend over his Xbox Live headset and had him call police.

The missing car was located about an hour later. Police questioned three people but are still trying to identify a suspect.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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From 'Sherlock' to 'Star Trek' for Cumberbatch

LONDON (AP) — Benedict Cumberbatch has had a busy 24 hours.

The British actor was nominated for a Golden Globe, chased by the paparazzi in London and unveiled the first nine minutes of the new "Star Trek" movie Friday.

At a special IMAX presentation of the footage in London, Cumberbatch's menacing character John Harrison was introduced at the beginning of the much-anticipated "Star Trek Into Darkness."

The sequel kicks off at a fast pace, with Captain Kirk's trademark quips, a volcano erupting and Spock in grave danger during a mission to save a planet.

Cumberbatch was not allowed to reveal much about the plot, but the 36-year-old did admit that he auditioned for the role of Harrison — who he describes as "a phenomenal one-man weapon of mass destruction" — on an iPhone in his friend's kitchen.

Fans wanting to see the footage can catch it in front of selected IMAX 3D screenings worldwide of "The Hobbit," beginning Friday.

"Star Trek Into Darkness," directed by J.J. Abrams, opens next May.

___

The Associated Press spoke to the "Sherlock" star Friday after the presentation.

AP: "How did it feel coming here and seeing your face so big on that screen?"

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: "I always get incredibly nervous, especially on an empty stomach having only had a macchiato. It makes your heart beat a lot faster and I don't like it. I look away when it's me, I don't like being my own audience. It's very weird. ... You probably saw my nostril hairs, counted how many pores I've got on my nose and which one of my teeth is wonky. "

AP: "It's obviously in the great tradition of having an English baddie."

CUMBERBATCH: "I'm following in the very hallowed footsteps of (Jeremy) Irons, (Alan) Rickman and Tom Hiddleston, my great friend in this summer's "Avengers." There are a few of us who have done it before, it stretches back as old as time. They get excited about these actors with theatre training who can do stuff. It's hugely flattering but you're not going to see me do a whole raft of villains after this."

AP: "Congratulations on the Golden Globe nomination (best actor in a miniseries for "Sherlock"). Did you celebrate?"

CUMBERBATCH: "I went out with my niece, who is my PA (personal assistant) Emily, and we got papped (followed by paparazzi) to the point that I couldn't actually see and I had to put my head down and just blink a couple of times. I was trying to get in the car with her and so immediately they presume, 'ah, beautiful blonde.' Poor girl, she's never experienced that before — I've never experienced that — like 15 of them hanging off the bonnet of the car."

AP: "Surely it's only going to get worse after this "Star Trek" film?"

CUMBERBATCH: "I hope not. I don't court it. I think you have to be in certain places at certain times. Of course, promoting a film you're out in the public and I'm proud to do that for the work I've done. But I'm quite a private person at heart."

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

Read More..

At least three injured, one dead in Conn. elementary school shooting

Students evacuate Sandy Hook elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012. (AP)

At least three are  injured and multiple people dead after a shooting in a Connecticut elementary school Friday morning, according to local news reports. At least one child is dead, according to the Hartford Courant.

State police entered the elementary school after a shooting was reported there, spokesman Lt. Paul Vance told Yahoo News. Vance said the scene is still "active" and that "every available on- and off-duty officer in the vicinity" is responding to the scene.

State police told the Hartford Courant the shooter is believed to be dead, and that two handguns have been recovered from the scene. According to the newspaper, the gunman had been in the main office of Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., during the attack. Police said a person in one room had "numerous gunshot wounds." At least three people were taken to a nearby hospital in an ambulance, according to NBC Connecticut.

Matt Pitrone's family owns a glass business about a quarter mile from Shady Hook. He and his mother rushed to the school when they saw police cars and ambulance headed for the school.

"My nephew was in there," Pitrone told Yahoo News. "He's fine, but it was a crazy scene.""An EMT told me that there were two casualties, both of them adults," Pitrone said. "It doesn't look like any of the kids were hurt, just shaken up and crying."

The school is on lockdown and police began evacuating the building this morning, NBC Connecticut also reports.

Connecticut's News 8 WTNH-TV says a witness saw one child with a bloody face leaving the building.

The school's website says only that afternoon kindergarten is canceled today. Newtown has a population of 27,000 and is located about 80 miles northeast of New York City.

—Yahoo News reporter Jason Sickles contributed to this report.

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Panetta: Karzai to meet Obama in Washington

KABUL (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accepted an invitation from President Barack Obama to meet in Washington.

Panetta said at a joint news conference with Karzai that the meeting is to be held during the week of Jan. 7.

The two leaders will use the meeting to discuss Afghanistan's future. Karzai said he and Obama will discuss the number of U.S. troops that will remain in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends there in December 2014.

Panetta also said that a suicide car bomber who staged an attack at the Kandahar Air Base killed one American serviceman and wounded three others. Two Afghan civilians were also killed in the attack Thursday.

Taliban spokesman Qari Jusuf Ahmedi claimed responsibility for the attack in an email, saying a suicide car bomber had targeted foreign military vehicles that were stopped near the gate of Kandahar Airfield.

It was unclear if the attack had anything to do with Panetta's unannounced visit to Kandahar Airfield. Kandahar is a huge and sprawling facility that houses more than 20,000 service members from 20 countries and has more than 11,000 civilian contract workers.

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Lidl Christmas dinner offer goes viral on Twitter

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Discount retailer Lidl faces a 200,000-euro ($ 260,000) Christmas dinner bill after an offer of chicken vol-au-vents and ice cream cake for the poor went viral.

The supermarket launched a Twitter campaign in Belgium on Monday, saying it would hand out five four-course Christmas dinners to food banks for each tweet on a hash tag.

Lidl had expected to hand out about 1,000 of the 20-euro dinner packs, consisting of tomato soup, vol-au-vents with chips, an ice-cream cake and chocolates, a spokesman for the German-based company’s Belgium unit said on Wednesday.

But local newspapers wrote about the offer and people retweeted using the hash tag – #luxevooriedereen, Dutch for “luxury for everyone”.

By the end of the 24-hour campaign, 1,500 people had tweeted, meaning Lidl has to deliver 7,500 dinners. That sparked reports the supermarket had been caught out by its campaign.

To quash such talk, Lidl rounded up the number of dinners to 10,000, and branded the campaign a success.

Lidl said it had not yet decided whether to repeat the exercise next year.

“We’ve learnt quite a few lessons over the past 48 hours, to say the least,” the spokesman said.

($ 1 = 0.7693 euros)

(Reporting By Ben Deighton. Editing By Sebastian Moffett.)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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'Lincoln' leads Golden Globes with 7 nominations

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Steven Spielberg's Civil War epic "Lincoln" led the Golden Globes on Thursday with seven nominations, among them best drama, best director for Spielberg and acting honors for Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.

Tied for second-place with five nominations each, including best drama are Ben Affleck's Iran hostage-crisis thriller "Argo" and Quentin Tarantino's slave-turned-bounty-hunter tale "Django Unchained."

Other best-drama nominees put forward by The Hollywood Foreign Press Association are Ang Lee's shipwreck story "Life of Pi" and Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden manhunt thriller "Zero Dark Thirty."

Nominated for best musical or comedy were: the British retiree adventure "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"; the Victor Hugo musical "Les Miserables"; the first-love tale "Moonrise Kingdom"; the fishing romance "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"; and the lost-soul romance "Silver Linings Playbook."

Globe attention can give contenders a boost for Hollywood's top honors, the Academy Awards, whose nominations come out Jan. 10, three days before the Globe ceremony.

The directing lineup came entirely from dramatic films, with Affleck, Bigelow, Lee, Spielberg and Tarantino all in the running.

"It's very gratifying to get this many nominations from the HFPA for a film I worked so hard on and am so passionate about. I look forward to having fun at the Golden Globes with my cast mates and fellow nominees," Tarantino said in a statement.

Filmmakers behind best musical or comedy nominees were shut out for director, including Tom Hooper for "Les Miserables" and David O. Russell for "Silver Linings Playbook."

Along with Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Spielberg's epic, best dramatic actor contenders are Richard Gere as a deceitful Wall Streeter in "Arbitrage"; John Hawkes as a polio victim trying to lose his virginity in "The Sessions"; Joaquin Phoenix as a Navy veteran under the sway of a cult leader in "The Master"; and Denzel Washington as a boozy airline pilot in "Flight."

Dramatic-actress nominees are Jessica Chastain as a CIA analyst hunting Osama bin Laden in "Zero Dark Thirty"; Marion Cotillard as a whale biologist beset by tragedy in "Rust and Bone"; Helen Mirren as Alfred Hitchcock's strong-minded wife in "Hitchcock"; Naomi Watts as a woman caught up in a devastating tsunami in "The Impossible"; and Rachel Weisz as a woman ruined by an affair in "The Deep Blue Sea."

For musical or comedy actress, the lineup is Emily Blunt as a consultant for a Mideast sheik in "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"; Judi Dench as a widow who retires overseas in "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"; Jennifer Lawrence as a young widow in a new romance in "Silver Linings Playbook"; Maggie Smith as an aging singer in a retirement home in "Quartet"; and Meryl Streep as a wife trying to save her marriage in "Hope Springs."

Nominees for musical or comedy actor are Jack Black as a solicitous mortician in "Bernie"; Bradley Cooper as a troubled man fresh out of a mental hospital in "Silver Linings Playbook"; Hugh Jackman as Hugo's long-suffering hero Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables"; Ewan McGregor as a British fisheries expert in "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"; and Bill Murray as Franklin Roosevelt in "Hyde Park on Hudson."

Cooper said he watched the telecast from his mother's bedroom in Los Angeles and both were thrilled when co-presenter Megan Fox called his name.

"It's funny, you're listening, you're watching their mouths move, you know, and trying to see if they're going to form your word, the word of your name. It's actually kind of pathetic. So when Megan Fox actually said Bradley Cooper, I thought, 'Oh wow!'"

Competing for supporting actor are Alan Arkin as a Hollywood producer helping a CIA operation in "Argo"; Leonardo DiCaprio as a cruel slave owner in "Django Unchained"; Philip Seymour Hoffman as a mesmerizing cult leader in "The Master"; Tommy Lee Jones as firebrand abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens in "Lincoln"; and Christoph Waltz as a genteel bounty hunter in "Django Unchained."

The supporting-actress picks are Amy Adams as a cult leader's devoted wife in "The Master"; Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln in "Lincoln"; Anne Hathaway as a mother fallen into prostitution in "Les Miserables"; Helen Hunt as a sexual surrogate in "The Sessions"; and Nicole Kidman as a trashy mistress of a Death Row inmate in "The Paperboy."

Field said the story of Lincoln connected with moviegoers on a personal level. "It really reflects about a family, a family who's in the heart of it, who faces such hardship. And families are facing terrible hardships all over the world, and then this one man who rises above it and keeps his eye on the prize and really the cost that that he paid."

Kidman was a dual nominee, also in the running as best actress in a TV movie or miniseries for "Hemingway & Gellhorn."

"As an actor you look for roles that are rich, complicated, and that stretch you and this year I was blessed to find two," Kidman said in a statement. "To have the chance to play them was a gift in itself and to then be acknowledged this way is icing on the cake."

"Quartet" star Smith also had a second nomination, for supporting actress in a TV series, miniseries or movie for "Downton Abbey."

Snubbed completely was the low-budget critical darling "Beasts of the Southern Wild," which won top honors at last January's Sundance Film Festival. Also shut out was the stripper hit "Magic Mike," which had good buzz for supporting player Matthew McConaughey, who also earned acclaim for roles in "Bernie" and "Killer Joe." Another film to not notch a single nomination was "The Hobbit," a prelude to the "The Lord of the Rings" films, which all got Globe nods.

With three nominations, "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" was a surprise inclusion Thursday, since the film had virtually no awards buzz behind it.

There will be some friendly rivalry among the hosts at the Globe ceremony, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Both were nominated for best actress in a TV comedy, Fey for "30 Rock" and Poehler for "Parks and Recreation."

Fey and Poehler follow Ricky Gervais, who was host the last three years and rubbed some Hollywood egos the wrong way with sharp wisecracks about A-list stars and the foreign press association itself.

The Sarah Palin drama "Game Change" leads TV contenders with five nominations: including best movie or miniseries and acting honors for Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, Ed Harris and Sarah Paulson.

Best TV comedy series nominees are "The Big Bang Theory," ''Episodes," ''Girls," ''Modern Family" and "Smash." TV drama picks are "Breaking Bad," ''Boardwalk Empire," ''Downton Abbey: Season 2," ''Homeland" and "The Newsroom."

Hayden Panettiere was in Nashville, Tenn., when she got word that she'd been nominated as best supporting actress in a TV series for "Nashville."

"I had my phone on my chest sleeping because they told me to be around just in case, but I never expected to get this call," she said. "It took me a second and then it hit me and I just started welling up. I got pretty emotional."

Globe acting winners often go on to receive the same prizes at the Oscars. All four Oscar winners last season — lead performers Meryl Streep of "The Iron Lady" and Jean Dujardin of "The Artist," and supporting players Octavia Spencer of "The Help" and Christopher Plummer of "Beginners" — won Globes first.

The Globes have a spotty record predicting which films might go on to earn the best-picture prize at the Academy Awards, however.

Last year's Oscar best-picture winner, "The Artist," preceded that honor with a Globe win for best musical or comedy. But in the seven years before that, only one winner in the Globes' two best-picture categories — 2008's "Slumdog Millionaire" — followed up with an Oscar best-picture win.

Along with 14 film prizes, the Globes hand out awards in 11 television categories.

Jodie Foster, a two-time Oscar and Globe winner for "The Accused" and "The Silence of the Lambs," will receive the group's Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.

With stars sharing drinks and dinner, the Globes have a reputation as one of Hollywood's loose and unpredictable awards gatherings. Winners occasionally have been off in the restroom when their names were announced, and there have been moments of onstage spontaneity such as Jack Nicholson mooning the crowd or Ving Rhames handing over his trophy to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon.

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AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen contributed to this report.

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Online:

http://www.goldenglobes.org

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