Obama Taps Twitter for Tax-Cut Push

President Obama today sought to inject a dose of public pressure into the "fiscal cliff" debate, urging Americans who face an across-the-board tax hike in 34 days to lobby lawmakers by phone, email and Twitter.

"If there's one thing I've learned; when the American people speak loudly enough, lo and behold, Congress listens," Obama said from a White House auditorium.

He was flanked by middle-income earners who wrote to the administration about the importance of keeping tax rates low.

Obama branded the effort "#My2K" for social media users, reflecting White House estimates that the average family of four faces a more than $2,000 income tax increase in 2013, unless Congress extends existing rates as part of a debt- and deficit-reduction deal.

The hashtag rose to a top U.S. trend on Twitter by the conclusion of Obama's remarks. But it's unclear what impact the messaging would have on the broader debate, which hinges on whether to raise tax rates on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and families earning more than $250,000 a year.

Republicans remain largely opposed to any tax rate increases, even though some have in recent days expressed openness to raising revenue through other means -- breaking a longstanding anti-tax pledge -- or even voting to extend lower rates for the middle class now and debating rates for upper-income earners later.

Jewl Samad/AFP/Getty Images

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Obama today pushed for certainty on tax rates for 98 percent of Americans. "If both parties agreed we should not raise taxes on middle-class families, let's begin our work where we agree," he said, voicing optimism that a "framework" for a broader deal can be achieved in the coming weeks with hopes for a final bill by Christmas.

Notably absent from the White House's campaign on "fiscal cliff," however, is any effort to rally public support for corresponding changes in entitlement programs aimed at curbing government spending, something Republicans and leaders of Obama's fiscal commission have called essential to any debt- and deficit-reduction deal.

Administration officials will not say whether an openness to means-testing Medicare, for example, remains on the table even though Obama and his campaign had previously expressed support for asking wealthier seniors to pay higher premiums as part of a deal.

Some top Democrats have even suggested separating entitlement overhaul from the "fiscal cliff" negotiations altogether, focusing only on taxes and other smaller-bore spending reduction measures before the end of the year.

White House spokesman Jay Carney suggested Tuesday that entitlement savings already included in Obama's budget could be sufficient as part of a balanced deal to avert the "cliff," rather than agreeing to potentially more controversial structural changes such as raising the Medicare and Social Security eligibility age.

"It is the president's position that when we're talking about a broad, balanced approach to dealing with our fiscal challenges, that that includes dealing with entitlements," Carney said. "And the president's budget, as you know, includes $340 billion in savings from our entitlement health-care program. So he has demonstrated yet again his commitment to the principle that we need to include as part of our balance approach savings from entitlements."

Republicans and some Democrats, including former Clinton chief of staff and fiscal commission co-chair Erskine Bowles, insist that more sweeping changes must be considered.

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Egyptians challenge Mursi in nationwide protests

CAIRO (Reuters) - Tens of thousands Egyptians protested on Tuesday against President Mohamed Mursi in one of the biggest rallies since Hosni Mubarak's overthrow, accusing the Islamist leader of seeking to impose a new era of autocracy.

Police fired tear gas at stone-throwing youths in streets near the main protest in Cairo's Tahrir Square, heart of the uprising that toppled Mubarak last year. Clashes between Mursi's opponents and supporters erupted in a city north of Cairo.

But violence could not overshadow the show of strength by the normally divided opponents of Islamists in power, posing Mursi with the biggest challenge in his five months in office.

"The people want to bring down the regime," protesters in Tahrir chanted, echoing slogans used in the 2011 revolt.

Protesters also turned out in Alexandria, Suez, Minya and other Nile Delta cities.

Tuesday's protest called by leftists, liberals and other groups deepened the worst crisis since the Muslim Brotherhood politician was elected in June, and exposed the deep divide between the newly empowered Islamists and their opponents.

A 52-year-old protester died after inhaling teargas in Cairo, the second death since Mursi last week issued a decree that expanded his powers and barred court challenges to his decisions.

Mursi's administration has defended the decree as an effort to speed up reforms and complete a democratic transformation.

But opponents say Mursi is behaving like a modern-day pharaoh, a jibe leveled at Mubarak. The United States, a benefactor to Egypt's military, has expressed concern about more turbulence in a country that has a peace treaty with Israel.

"We don't want a dictatorship again. The Mubarak regime was a dictatorship. We had a revolution to have justice and freedom," 32-year-old Ahmed Husseini said in Cairo.

The fractious ranks of Egypt's non-Islamist opposition have been united on the street by crisis, although they have yet to build an electoral machine to challenge well-organized Islamists, who have beaten their more secular-minded rivals at the ballot box in two elections held since Mubarak was ousted.

MISCALCULATION

"There are signs that over the last couple of days that Mursi and the Brotherhood realized their mistake," said Elijah Zarwan, a fellow with The European Council on Foreign Relations, adding the protests were "a very clear illustration of how much of a political miscalculation this was."

Mursi's move provoked a rebellion by judges and has battered confidence in an economy struggling after two years of turmoil. The president still has to implement unpopular measures to rein in Egypt's crushing budget deficit, action needed to finalize a deal for a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan.

Some protesters have been camped out since Friday in Tahrir, and violence has flared around the country, including in a town north of Cairo where a Muslim Brotherhood youth was killed in clashes on Sunday. Hundreds have been injured.

Supporters and opponents of Mursi threw stones at each other and some hurled petrol bombs in the Delta city of el-Mahalla el-Kubra. Medical sources said almost 200 people were wounded.

"The main demand is to withdraw the constitutional declaration (decree). This is the point," said Amr Moussa, former Arab League chief and presidential candidate who has joined the new opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front. The group includes several top liberal politicians.

Some scholars from the prestigious al-Azhar mosque and university joined Tuesday's protest, showing that Mursi and his Brotherhood have alienated some more moderate Muslims. Members of Egypt's large Christian minority also joined in.

Mursi formally quit the Brotherhood on taking office, saying he would be a president for all Egyptians, but he is still a member of its Freedom and Justice Party.

The decree issued on Thursday expanded his powers and protected his decisions from judicial review until the election of a new parliament expected in the first half of 2013.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said it gives Mursi more power than the interim military junta from which he took over.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an Austrian paper he would encourage Mursi to resolve the issue by dialogue.

TENSIONS

Trying to ease tensions with judges, Mursi assured Egypt's highest judicial authority that elements of his decree giving his decisions immunity applied only to matters of "sovereign" importance. That should limit it to issues such as declaring war, but experts said there was room for interpretation.

In another step to avoid more confrontation, the Muslim Brotherhood cancelled plans for a rival mass rally in Cairo on Tuesday to support the decree. Violence has flared in Cairo in the past when both sides have taken to the streets.

But there has been no retreat on other elements of the decree, including a stipulation that the Islamist-dominated body writing a new constitution be protected from legal challenge.

"The decree must be cancelled and the constituent assembly should be reformed. All intellectuals have left it and now it is controlled by Islamists," said 50-year-old Noha Abol Fotouh.

With its popular legitimacy undermined by the withdrawal of most of its non-Islamist members, the assembly faces a series of court cases from plaintiffs who claim it was formed illegally.

Mursi issued the decree on November 22, a day after he won U.S. and international praise for brokering an end to eight days of violence between Israel and Hamas around the Gaza Strip.

Mursi's decree was seen as targeting in part a legal establishment still largely unreformed from Mubarak's era, when the Brotherhood was outlawed.

Though both Islamists and their opponents broadly agree that the judiciary needs reform, Mursi's rivals oppose his methods.

Rulings from an array of courts this year have dealt a series of blows to the Brotherhood, leading to the dissolution of the first constitutional assembly and the lower house of parliament elected a year ago. The Brotherhood dominated both.

The judiciary blocked an attempt by Mursi to reconvene the Brotherhood-led parliament after his election victory. It also stood in the way of his attempt to sack the prosecutor general, another Mubarak holdover, in October.

In his decree, Mursi gave himself the power to sack that prosecutor and appoint a new one. In open defiance of Mursi, some judges are refusing to acknowledge that step.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Seham Eloraby, Marwa Awad and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and Michael Shields in Vienna; Writing by Edmund Blair and Tom Perry; Editing by Anna Willard, David Stamp, Alastair Macdonald and Giles Elgood)

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Gas explosion blamed for deadly German fire

TITISEE-NEUSTADT, Germany: An explosion following a gas leak triggered a fierce blaze in a workshop for the disabled in Germany which killed 14 people, officials said on Tuesday.

All but one of the dead from the fire which began on Monday at the centre in the southwestern town of Titisee-Neustadt in Germany's Black Forest region were handicapped, police said.

A 50-year-old female carer was also killed, they said, while another nine people were badly hurt and a further five suffered more minor injuries, officials said.

Initial indications suggested the fire was sparked by an explosion after gas escaped from a heater for unknown reasons and ignited, a spokesman for the Freiburg public prosecutor's office told a news conference.

"The investigations are in this respect not finished," Peter Haeberle said.

A preliminary investigation against unknown persons into suspected negligent manslaughter and negligent arson has been opened but does not mean prosecutors already have suspicions in this direction, he said.

"Everything's pointing to an accident," he added.

President of Freiburg's government Baerbel Schaefer said the fire protection precautions at the workshop had been "absolutely correct" and the rescue operation had been "exemplary".

Hundreds of firefighters backed by helicopters had battled the fire at the workshop run by the Roman Catholic Caritas welfare association for the mentally and physically disabled which made Christmas decorations among other things.

Candles have been placed outside the modern building whose windows were broken, and police stood at the entrance while more officers combed through the blackened interior.

Up to 60 people were in the centre at the time of the fire, which broke out just before 2 pm (1300 GMT) and spread quickly, damaging one floor of the site in Titisee-Neustadt, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the city of Freiburg.

Pope Benedict XVI sent his condolences, saying in a telegram he would remember in his prayers the victims of this "tragic accident", according to the Freiburg archbishopric.

A memorial service has been planned for Saturday at a local cathedral, the mayor's office said.

Among the dead were 13 disabled people, of whom 10 were women. They were all aged between 28 and 68, according to a police statement.

Gotthard Benitz, of the Titisee-Neustadt fire service, told AFP earlier that the fire began on the ground floor of the building which also had a basement and an upper floor.

"The victims were all on the same floor where the fire was," he said adding this was the only area to have sustained fire damage and the stairwell had remained smoke-free meaning those on the other two floors had been able to use it.

He also said firefighters were prepared for dealing with an emergency at the workshop as practice fire alarms were regularly carried out there, with the last one having been last year.

The head of Caritas in Germany, Peter Neher, told ZDF public television that emergency practice drills were done regularly.

"But everyone knows who has taken part in such a drill, that the practice is one thing and when it's really an emergency situation, everyone reacts very individually," he said.

Local resident Dietlinde Kerler said she had thought a practice drill was underway initially as she watched from her balcony.

"Those in wheelchairs came out of the back and they even carried one... Only then did we notice that it was smouldering, that it was burning, the real thing," she said.

-AFP/ac

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AIADMK, BJD to vote against UPA on FDI

NEW DELHI: The BJP-Left combine's move to team up and insist on a vote on FDI policy seems to have paid off. The vote is expected to see parties like AIADMK and BJD opposing the government, deepening the impression of a near vertical split in political opinion over FDI.

Although UPA leaders claim the standoff over the FDI policy was not as grave as it was made out to be, it needed some persistent negotiations to bring all supporters on board. Space had to be created for allies like DMK to retreat from their public opposition to FDI.

Government managers can pat itself for getting DMK, SP and BSP - all of whom participated in a nationwide Opposition bandh against FDI last December - to back UPA on a vote in Parliament. The discussion is likely to take place early next week.

In the end getting outside supporters SP and BSP on board proved less challenging than anticipated with Congress sources pointing to the regional parties keeping their distance from recent Opposition sponsored anti-government protests.

Not all the bills are likely to be passed, but the government will like to prioritize some along with taking the advantage of a freshly-minted political consensus over the Lokpal bill to ensure its passage at least in Rajya Sabha where it is pending.

Finance minister P Chidambaram has repeatedly told Congress and in UPA meetings that the government needs to pass the important legislation as there are limits to executive action. The passage of important bills can also persuade the Reserve Bank of India to lower rates. So far, RBI has pointed to the high deficit and inflation to plead its inability to lower lending rates.

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CDC: HIV spread high in young gay males

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials say 1 in 5 new HIV infections occur in a tiny segment of the population — young men who are gay or bisexual.

The government on Tuesday released new numbers that spotlight how the spread of the AIDS virus is heavily concentrated in young males who have sex with other males. Only about a quarter of new infections in the 13-to-24 age group are from injecting drugs or heterosexual sex.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said blacks represented more than half of new infections in youths. The estimates are based on 2010 figures.

Overall, new U.S. HIV infections have held steady at around 50,000 annually. About 12,000 are in teens and young adults, and most youth with HIV haven't been tested.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns

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GOP Senators More Troubled After Rice Meeting

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice's attempts to "make nice" with a trio of Republican senators who have criticized her response to the Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, seem to have backfired.

The senators said they left their face-to-face meeting with Rice this morning "more concerned" and "significantly troubled."

The three Republicans, Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, said not only did Rice, who was joined by Acting CIA Director Mike Morell, not answer all their questions about the attack but did little to assuage their overall worries.

"We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got, and some that we didn't get concerning evidence that was overwhelming leading up to the attack on the consulate," McCain said.

"The concerns I have are greater today than before, and we're not even close to getting the basic answers," Graham said.

Today's meeting was seen as part of Rice's Capitol Hill "charm offensive," as her possible nomination to become the next secretary of state has met with some vocal opposition – especially from McCain, Graham and Ayotte, who still seemed to steer clear of questions about whether they would stand in the way if Rice was nominated.

"Before anybody can make an intelligent decision about promoting someone involved in Benghazi, we need to do a lot more," Graham said. "To this date, we don't have the FBI interviews of the survivors conducted one or two days after the attack. We don't have the basic information about what was said the night of the attack ... as of this date."

Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Dick Durbin on 'This Week' Watch Video

Graham compared the situation to 2006, when Senate Democrats blocked the nomination of John Bolton, President Bush's choice for U.N. ambassador.

What the senators seemed to find most problematic was Rice's statement on the Sunday morning news shows days after the attack. At first, she said it was a "spontaneous" attack and not a terrorist attack.

Ayotte said that in today's meeting Rice called the information she first gave to the American people wrong.

"It's certainly clear from the beginning that we knew that those with ties to al Qaeda were involved in the attack on the embassy, and clearly the impression that was given, the information given to the American people, was wrong," Ayotte said,

Rice said in a statement following the meeting: "We explained that the talking points provided by the intelligence community, and the initial assessment upon which they were based, were incorrect in a key respect: There was no protest or demonstration in Benghazi. While, we certainly wish that we had had perfect information just days after the terrorist attack, as is often the case, the intelligence assessment has evolved. We stressed that neither I nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in this process, and the administration updated Congress and the American people as our assessments evolved."

Ayotte said that as the U.N. ambassador, Rice should have stepped up and said that she couldn't go on the Sunday morning news shows and talk about the attack without complete information.

Graham, like Ayotte, said it would have been better not to have given any information at all.

"If you can give nothing but bad information, isn't it better to give no information at all? It was unjustified to give the scenarios as presented by Ambassador Rice and President Obama three weeks before an election."

Rice is expected to meet with outgoing Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., later today. A close ally of McCain (Lieberman endorsed McCain for president in 2008), Lieberman has not been as quick to criticize Rice.

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Egypt's Mursi holds crisis talks over power grab

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's president negotiated with judges on Monday to try to defuse a crisis over his seizure of extended powers which set off violent protests reminiscent of the uprising that thrust his Islamist movement into government.

The justice minister said he thought President Mohamed Mursi would agree with a proposal from the highest judicial authority to curb the scope of new powers. Mursi was "very optimistic Egyptians would overcome the crisis", his spokesman said.

But the protesters, some camped in Cairo's Tahrir Square, have said only retracting the decree will satisfy them, a sign of the deep rift between Islamists and their opponents that is destabilizing Egypt nearly two years after Hosni Mubarak fell.

"There is no use amending the decree," said Tarek Ahmed, 26, a protester who stayed the night in Tahrir, where tents covered the central traffic circle. "It must be scrapped."

One person has been killed and about 370 injured in clashes between police and protesters since Mursi issued a decree on Thursday shielding his decisions from judicial review, emboldened by international plaudits for brokering an end to eight days of violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Mursi's political opponents have accused him of behaving like a dictator and the West has voiced its concern, worried by more turbulence in a country that has a peace treaty with Israel and lies at the heart of the Arab Spring.

Mursi's administration has defended his decree as an effort to speed up reforms and complete a democratic transformation. Leftists, liberals, socialists and others say it has exposed the autocratic impulses of a man once jailed by Mubarak.

Mursi's opponents have called for a protest on Tuesday and leading leftist, Hamdeen Sabahy, vowed peaceful demonstrations would continue until the decree was "brought down", saying Tahrir would a model of an "Egypt that will not accept a new dictator because it brought down the old one".

In a bid to lower tensions, the Brotherhood delayed its rival protest in support of Mursi that it had planned for Tuesday, a spokesman for the group's party said. The Salafi al-Nour Party also said it would stay away from the streets.

"President Mursi is very optimistic that Egyptians will overcome this challenge as they have overcome other challenges," presidential spokesman Yasser Ali told reporters, shortly before the president held his meeting with members of Egypt's highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council.

COMPROMISE?

The Supreme Judicial Council has hinted at a compromise, saying Mursi's decree should apply only to "sovereign matters". That suggests it did not reject the declaration outright.

Justice Minister Ahmed Mekky, speaking about the council statement, said: "I believe President Mohamed Mursi wants that."

Legal experts said "sovereign matters" could be confined to issues such as declaring war or calling elections that are already beyond legal challenge. But they said Egypt's legal system had sometimes used the term more broadly, suggesting that any deal could leave wide room for interpretation.

And any deal with a judiciary dominated by Mubarak-era judges, which Mursi has pledged to reform, may not placate them.

Though both Islamists and their opponents broadly agree that the judiciary needs reform, his rivals oppose Mursi's methods.

The Supreme Constitutional Court was responsible for declaring the Islamist-dominated parliament void, leading to its dissolution this year. One presidential source said Mursi was looking for ways to reach a deal to restructure that court.

A group of lawyers and activists has also challenged Mursi's decree in an administrative court, which said it would hold its first hearing on December 4. Other decisions by Mursi have faced similar legal challenges brought to court by opponents.

The protesters are worried that Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood aims to dominate the post-Mubarak era after winning the first democratic parliamentary and presidential elections this year.

Banners in Tahrir called for dissolving the assembly drawing up a constitution, an Islamist-dominated body Mursi made immune from legal challenge. Many liberals and others have walked out of the assembly saying their voices were not being heard.

FURTHER ESCALATION?

Only once a constitution is written can a new parliamentary election be held. Until then, legislative and executive power remains in Mursi's hands, and Thursday's decree puts his decisions above judicial oversight.

One Muslim Brotherhood member was killed and 60 people were hurt on Sunday in an attack on the main office of the Brotherhood in the Egyptian Nile Delta town of Damanhour, the website of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party said.

The party's offices have also been attacked in other cities.

One politician said the scale of the crisis could push opponents towards a deal to avoid a further escalation.

"I am very cautiously optimistic because the consequences are quite, quite serious - the most serious they have been since the revolution," said Mona Makram Ebeid, a former member of parliament and prominent figure in Egyptian politics.

Mursi's office repeated assurances that the steps would be temporary, and said he wanted dialogue with political groups to find "common ground" over what should go into the constitution.

But though the presidency has called for dialogue, that has been rejected by members of the National Salvation Front, a new opposition coalition of liberals, leftists and other politicians and parties, who until Mursi's decree had been a fractious bunch struggling to unite.

The Front includes Sabahy, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa.

The military has stayed out of the crisis after leading Egypt through a messy 16-month transition to a presidential election in June. Analysts say Mursi neutralized the army when he sacked top generals in August, appointing a new generation who now owe their advancement to the Islamist president.

Though the military still wields influence through business interests and a security role, it is out of frontline politics.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Patrick Werr and Marwa Awad in Cairo; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Giles Elgood and Alastair Macdonald)

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Google acquisition release was hoax

NEW YORK: A bogus news release prompted several websites to run incorrect articles about Google making a $400 million acquisition of a wireless company on Monday, the target company said.

"This was a hoax. We are investigating the source," said an emailed statement from George Strouthopoulos, chairman and chief executive of ICOA, the wireless firm Google purportedly was acquiring.

The reports began after the fake release was posted on the PRWeb site which is owned by the cloud software firm Vocus.

"This is NOT TRUE!!" Strouthopoulos said in an email. "Never had any discussions with any potential acquirers!! This is absolutely false!."

The executive added that "someone, I guess a stock promoter with a dubious interest, is disseminating wrong, false and misleading info in the PR circles."

He said ICOA "will report this to the proper authorities."

For several hours, reports were circulating that Google had made the purchase as part of an effort to moving into wireless communications. Google officials refused to confirm the news about an acquisition.

The Rhode Island-based ICOA saw a spike in price and volume in morning trade in over-the-counter "pink sheets" trades in stocks which are not listed on major exchanges.

- AFP/fa

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SP, BSP spar over quota bill, but unite on retail FDI

NEW DELHI: The Centre has again managed to balance Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party despite the UP outfits crossing swords over a discussion on promotion quota bill.

Sworn rivals SP and BSP were seated opposite each other at the all-party meeting called to discuss the logjam on FDI. In keeping with the seating arrangement, they took little time to clash over "promotion quota", a favourite with Mayawati but blocked by Mulayam Singh Yadav's men as "unconstitutional".

The faceoff between the UPA's "outside supporters", however, did not stop government managers from being all smiles as both UP parties showed surprising consensus on FDI. They said the issue of voting on FDI in multi-brand retail be left to the chair of the two Houses.

The stance taken by BSP chief Mayawati and Rajya Sabha leader Ramgopal Yadav brightened the chances of government managing a thin majority if a discussion on the policy to allow foreign retail marts is voted upon.

Mayawati struck a discordant note at the meeting by complaining that the blockade of Parliament was not allowing the constitutional amendment to restore "promotion quota". She said, "Last session, quota bill got stuck because of Coalgate and now it is because of FDI. Parliament should run since it is holding back many issues of importance."

The rivals clashed, with SP leader Naresh Aggarwal snubbing JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav who tried to broker peace by assuring support for the quota move at a later stage.

SP general secretary Rajesh Dixit said, "We will never allow promotion quota bill to be taken up. We made it clear to the government. But we are opposed to voting on any discussion on FDI in Parliament."

Consultations between SP and the government have picked up with Mulayam and Ramgopal meeting PM Manmohan Singh before the resumption of Parliament on Monday. Ramgopal is likely to become the chairman of the ethics committee in the upper House, another sign of the growing bonhomie between Congress and SP.

But the fury of the squabbling Uttar Pradesh players did not come in the way of government's comfort on FDI. Neither put the condition that it would support the Centre on FDI only if its view on promotion quota was accepted. In fact, government listed the quota bill in Rajya Sabha even if it risked provoking SP.

The Centre in September approved a constitutional amendment to ensure promotion quota after an adverse court order but failed to get it past Rajya Sabha owing to protests from SP.

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Bounce houses a party hit but kids' injuries soar

CHICAGO (AP) — They may be a big hit at kids' birthday parties, but inflatable bounce houses can be dangerous, with the number of injuries soaring in recent years, a nationwide study found.

Kids often crowd into bounce houses, and jumping up and down can send other children flying into the air, too.

The numbers suggest 30 U.S. children a day are treated in emergency rooms for broken bones, sprains, cuts and concussions from bounce house accidents. Most involve children falling inside or out of the inflated playthings, and many children get hurt when they collide with other bouncing kids.

The number of children aged 17 and younger who got emergency-room treatment for bounce house injuries has climbed along with the popularity of bounce houses — from fewer than 1,000 in 1995 to nearly 11,000 in 2010. That's a 15-fold increase, and a doubling just since 2008.

"I was surprised by the number, especially by the rapid increase in the number of injuries," said lead author Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Amusement parks and fairs have bounce houses, and the playthings can also be rented or purchased for home use.

Smith and colleagues analyzed national surveillance data on ER treatment for nonfatal injuries linked with bounce houses, maintained by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Their study was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Only about 3 percent of children were hospitalized, mostly for broken bones.

More than one-third of the injuries were in children aged 5 and younger. The safety commission recommends against letting children younger than 6 use full-size trampolines, and Smith said barring kids that young from even smaller, home-use bounce houses would make sense.

"There is no evidence that the size or location of an inflatable bouncer affects the injury risk," he said.

Other recommendations, often listed in manufacturers' instruction pamphlets, include not overloading bounce houses with too many kids and not allowing young children to bounce with much older, heavier kids or adults, said Laura Woodburn, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Amusement Ride Safety Officials.

The study didn't include deaths, but some accidents are fatal. Separate data from the product safety commission show four bounce house deaths from 2003 to 2007, all involving children striking their heads on a hard surface.

Several nonfatal accidents occurred last year when bounce houses collapsed or were lifted by high winds.

A group that issues voluntary industry standards says bounce houses should be supervised by trained operators and recommends that bouncers be prohibited from doing flips and purposefully colliding with others, the study authors noted.

Bounce house injuries are similar to those linked with trampolines, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended against using trampolines at home. Policymakers should consider whether bounce houses warrant similar precautions, the authors said.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

Trade group: http://www.naarso.com

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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