10 things you need to know today: January 12, 2015

(Image credit: (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Images))

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1. Democrats unveil middle class tax break plan
2. France deploys security forces to guard Jewish schools
3. Linklater wins big at Golden Globes
4. Divers recover one of two black boxes from AirAsia jet
5. South Korean leader proposes summit with the North
6. Kerry to visit France for counterterrorism talks
7. Bus crash kills 62 in Pakistan
8. Croatia elects its first female president
9. Pope Francis backs public breastfeeding in the Sistine Chapel
10. Packers and Colts advance to NFL conference championships

By Harold Maass, The Week US

published 12 January 2015

1. Democrats unveil middle class tax break plan

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) on Monday unveiled a proposal to extend tax breaks to middle class families while scaling back benefits for the nation's top income earners. The plan includes a "paycheck bonus credit" that would cut $2,000 a year in taxes for couples earning less than $200,000, and it would nearly triple child tax credits while giving a $250 bonus to workers who put $500 a year into retirement funds. The package would cost $1.2 trillion over a decade, paid for with a 0.1 percent tax on high-volume stock trades — what Hollen termed a "high-roller fee" — and the rolling back of tax breaks for top earners. The plan stands little chance of passing in the GOP-controlled Congress.

France is sending thousands of police and soldiers to protect 700 Jewish schools from possible terrorist attacks, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday. France is deploying as many as 10,000 troops to increase security at "sensitive sites" as a precaution following the terrorist attacks that left 17 people dead at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher grocery. In a posthumously released video, the gunman who killed four hostages at the Paris grocery on Friday said he had been in contact with the Islamic State, or ISIS, and was acting on the Islamist extremist group’s behalf.

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Director Richard Linklater won best director and best dramatic film Golden Globe awards on Sunday for Boyhood, capping a big night for unconventional winners. Boyhood was produced by the low-profile IFC films. Amazon and Netflix, relative newcomers as content producers, also did well, with Amazon's in-house studio snagging its first statuettes for Transparent, which won for best TV comedy series, while star Jeffrey Tambor won for best performance in a TV comedy. Kevin Spacey won best performance in a TV drama for his role as scheming politician Francis Underwood in House of Cards. Indie hero Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel won best comedy film.

Indonesian navy divers have retrieved the flight data recorder from AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed into the Java Sea last month, killing all 162 people on board. Both black boxes came to rest on the sea floor near the wing, but the other one, containing the cockpit voice recorder, had not been recovered as of early Monday. The black boxes, which appeared to be in fair condition, contain data that investigators hope will help explain what caused the plane to crash in rough weather on a flight from Indonesia to Singapore.

South Korean President Park Geun Hye said Monday that she was open to meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the first summit between the two nations since 2007. Park repeated a call for Pyongyang to drop its pursuit of nuclear weapons as a step toward reunification, but said there were "no preconditions" for scheduling talks. Park proposed a symbolic reunifications of families separated for more than 60 years by the Korean War as a sign of goodwill.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that he would go to France this week for counterterrorism talks. The Obama administration faced criticism on Sunday for failing to send a high-ranking representative to an unprecedented rally in Paris that drew more than a million people and 40 world leaders to show unity after the massacre of 12 people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Kerry dismissed the complaints as "quibbling" and said the U.S. had been "deeply engaged" with France since the magazine was targeted.

Croatian conservative opposition candidate Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic narrowly defeated incumbent Ivo Josipivic in a runoff presidential election on Sunday. Grabar-Kitarovic won 50.4 percent of the vote, while Josipivic got 49.6 percent. Grabar-Kitarovic, a former foreign minister and ex-ambassador to the U.S., will be the first female president in the country, which is in its sixth year of recession and has one of the slowest economies in the European Union.

Pope Francis gave a boost to mothers seeking the right to breastfeed in public on Sunday, encouraging women to feed their babies if necessary while he baptized 33 infants in the Sistine Chapel. "You mothers give your children milk and even now, if they cry because they are hungry, breastfeed them, don't worry," he said. Francis also expressed support for public breastfeeding in 2013 interview with La Stampa.

The Green Bay Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys 26-21 on Sunday to advance to next weekend's NFC championship game against the Seattle Seahawks. The Packers rallied back from an 11-point deficit, helped by two fourth-quarter touchdown passes by Aaron Rodgers and one controversial call — the overturning of a critical Dez Bryant catch. The Indianapolis Colts upset Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos 24-13 to advance to the AFC championship game against the New England Patriots.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.