President Bush says the new year brings new opportunities for progress, and he is looking forward to working with the new Congress.

"The Congress has changed. Our obligations to the country have not changed," he said. "Tomorrow, members of the 110th Congress will take their oath of office and I congratulate them. I welcome their arrival into town. I am looking forward to working with them."

President Bush says he is encouraged by what he says have been productive meetings with leaders from both parties. He says it is time to set aside politics and focus on the nation's future.

Democrats won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in November elections that focused largely on voter discontent over the war in Iraq.

With the president preparing what he says will be a new way forward in Iraq, Democratic leaders plan to start their legislative agenda with domestic issues, including a higher minimum wage.

President Bush says the new Congress should make sure it spends the people's money wisely. He says legislators should reform the federal retirement program and subsidized medical care.

He wants Democrats to give him a line-item veto and to rein in spending on legislative earmarks that direct money to specific projects in members' districts, a tactic that has come to be known as pork-barrel politics.

"One important message we all should take from the elections is that people want to end the secretive process by which Washington insiders are able to get billions of dollars directed to projects, many of them pork-barrel projects that have never been reviewed or voted on by the Congress," he said.

The president says he will send Congress a five-year budget proposal that will balance the federal budget by 2012. He says his proposal will restrain spending, but will continue to fund the fight against terrorism.

WASHINGTON – Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, the Internal Revenue Service will implement revised user fees for installment agreements. For eligible individuals with income at or below certain levels, the fee for entering new agreements will not increase but remain at the 2006 level.

The Office of Management and Budget has directed federal agencies to charge user fees reflecting the full cost of goods or services that convey special benefits to recipients beyond those accruing to the general public. The installment agreement user fees have not been increased since first implemented in 1995. Increases in labor and other costs of processing have increased the cost of processing installment agreements. 

User fees for entering into a non-direct debit installment agreement will increase from $43 to $105, and the fee for direct debit installment agreements will increase from $43 to $52.

Taxpayers with income at or below established levels, based on the Department of Health and Human Services poverty guidelines, can apply and be qualified to pay a reduced user fee of $43 for establishing new agreements including direct debit installments. Information about requesting the reduced user fee will be included in installment agreement acceptance letter sent to individuals.

The fee for restructured or reinstated agreements will increase from $24 to $45 regardless of income level.

Ban, however, took a different approach, never mentioning the U.N. ban on the death penalty in all its international tribunals, and the right to life enshrined in the U.N. Charter.

"Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against Iraqi people and we should never forget victims of his crime," Ban said in response to a reporter's question about Saddam's execution Saturday for crimes against humanity. "The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide."

His ambiguous answer put a question mark over the U.N.'s stance on the death penalty. It also gave the new chief an early taste of how tricky global issues are, and how every word can make a difference.

Texas smokers will pay considerably more for cigarettes beginning today as a new excise tax takes effect.

The state Legislature approved the measure in May in an effort to pressure smokers to quit and to allow a break on property taxes. The tax will increase $1 from a moderate 41 cents to $1.41 a pack, placing Texas among the 15 states with the highest cigarette levies. New Jersey has the highest tax, at $2.58 a pack. The increase will push the price of a single pack of cigarettes in Texas to about $4.50.

The state comptroller's office has estimated the tax increase will generate $700 million a year, enabling a reduction in property taxes.

In a ruling that could boost federal efforts to prosecute athletes who used steroids, a US appeals court said yesterday that lower courts had wrongly blocked the US government from access to confidential Major League Baseball drug tests.

At issue are subpoenas involving more than 100 baseball players in tests by two laboratories. Prosecutors continue to investigate whether players such as Barry Bonds, who holds the record for home runs in a single season, lied to a federal grand jury in San Francisco about steroid use.

A three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a lower-court judge who had overseen cases involving Balco, a San Francisco-area lab that illegally distributed steroids to athletes, had abused her discretion.

“The subpoenas were not unreasonable and did not constitute harassment,” Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote for the panel. The drug tests could provide key evidence in showing which players used steroids, drugs many observers see as behind an explosion of home runs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Amid growing scrutiny in recent years, Major League Baseball started unannounced steroid testing of players in 2003.

Michael Rains, criminal attorney for Bonds, said the tests did not incriminate his client, who could become the major leagues’ all-time home-run king next season.

“If what the government saw and got in April of 2004 was harmful to Barry Bonds, you can darn well bet that would have been leaked by now,” he said in an interview. “There is nothing at all about those tests that is harmful to Barry Bonds.”

“The government’s quest to get these — initially I’m sure just to target Barry — has been just another of a goose egg for them in their continuing efforts to both target, harass, indict and prosecute Barry Bonds.” US Attorney Kevin Ryan said in a statement, “We are pleased that the majority of the 9th Circuit panel found that the government’s seizures and use of grand jury subpoenas were reasonable.”

“We will continue to review the ... opinion to determine what the next investigative step may be,” Ryan said.

Investigators initially obtained a subpoena in 2003 to receive the anonymous drug testing results for 11 baseball players, and then sought to get the results from two firms that did the work, Quest Diagnostics in New Jersey and Comprehensive Diagnostic Testing, or CDT, in Long Beach, California.

A legal fight ensued and federal agents in April 2004 searched CDT, finding positive drug test results for eight players, with possible positive results for 26 others, according to the court ruling.

The government sought further records amid opposition from the labs and the Major League Baseball Players Association. A different judge in Nevada ordered the return of specimens and notes. That ruling was also wrong, the 9th Circuit said.

In a partial dissent in the 115-page ruling, Judge Sidney Thomas expressed concern the ruling would ease the way for prosecutors to seize confidential medical records.

“There is no question that the baseball players who participated in the random testing had a justified expectation of privacy in the test results,” Thomas wrote.

“The scope of the majority’s new holding in the digital age could not be greater; it removes confidential electronic records from the protections of the Fourth Amendment.”

A spokesman for Major League Baseball declined comment, saying lawyers had not yet reviewed the decision.