Negotiations

The plan to move 450 jobs from the Financial Management Services facility in Hyattsville to the Bureau of Public Debt in Parkersburg, W.Va., has been postponed for five years, members of the Maryland congressional delegation announced Thursday. The move — proposed by the Obama administration to save $96 million over five years — was set to begin in February 2014, but the Maryland congressional delegation negotiated with the Treasury Department for the delay. "We must have a more frugal government, but not one that hangs our people out to dry," Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said in a statement.

Despite all the cliff drama in the past week that sent stocks spiraling downward, all three major U.S. stock indices ended the year higher — which might come as a surprise to many investors U.S. stocks rallied Monday in the last hours of trading for 2012, as it appeared Washington lawmakers had reached a deal to prevent a combination of automatic spending cuts and tax increases known as the fiscal cliff. Despite the recent political drama that sent stocks spiraling downward, all three major U.S. stock indices ended the year higher — which might come as a surprise to many investors "If you just read the headlines and took people's pulse, you would think the market was down 5 to 10 percent," said Andy Brooks, head of U.S equity trading at Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price.

In her historical novels, Annapolis author Erika Robuck invents everyday men and women whose lives intersect with those of acclaimed American authors. She figures that fiction is sometimes the best way of learning something true. "I'm interested in famous writers and how they used the people in their lives," Robuck says. "They take things, and they don't always ask permission. It's such a betrayal. " Robuck's current novel, "Hemingway's Girl," tells the story of Mariella Bennet, a young, half-Cuban housemaid who must negotiate the marital minefield created by Ernest Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer.

Baltimore County police tactical and hostage negotiating teams responded to an incident Thursday morning in Cockeysville after receiving a call that a resident there was suicidal. At 9:29 a.m., police were dispatched to the unit block of Kings Crossing Court after receiving a 911 call from a medical professional. Police took the resident, a 56-year-old male, into custody without incident and transported him to a local hospital for treatment and evaluation. No charges have been filed, officials said.

"Compromise or confrontation?" So ran a recent headline on CNN.com, above a story about the "fiscal cliff" and a confrontational-looking picture of President Barack Obama. The implication was clear: Our leaders must compromise or confront each other on the precipice. Even clearer, in the view of most Americans, was the solution: Compromise, already! Endless confrontation has made the need for compromise as obvious as the election results. Or has it? Actually, decades of negotiation research have cast doubt on the conventional wisdom, showing that compromise vs. confrontation represents a false choice, and compromise a false ideal.

For all those who believe The Sun's position on Palestinian statehood has merit, the following is offered for consideration ("Pressure on Israel to negotiate," Nov. 30). The Palestinian statehood that they are seeking now, they could have had in 1948 with an internationalized Jerusalem if not for the Arab world's belligerence in and out of the United Nations to this very day. The territory they lost to the Israelis was a direct result of the many attacks and provocations the Arab world initiated and against which the Israelis defended themselves successfully.

The arrest of a Baltimore blogger this weekend showed how a normally mundane bit of police work - the serving of a warrant - can be complicated in an age of Twitter and Internet radio. It briefly put a national spotlight on what normally wouldn't even make the local news. Frank James MacArthur, 47, a steady presence as an observer at city crime scenes and a cab driver by trade, took to Twitter and an online radio service to stream his dealings with police at his home Saturday to execute an arrest warrant connected to 2009 weapons charges for which he had received probation before judgment.

A Baltimore blogger wanted on a court-issued warrant refused to come out of his home for hours, broadcasting his discussion with a police negotiator live on the Internet before turning himself in peacefully. Frank James MacArthur, 47, was taken into custody outside his home in the 600 block of McKewin Ave. at about 11 p.m. - timed, he said, for local news stations - after a standoff lasting more than five hours and which involved the department's SWAT team. Police were there to serve a warrant issued in June by his probation agent stemming from a 2009 gun case and another for subsequent failure to appear in court, according to court records, and the situation was ratcheted up after police said MacArthur made threatening statements to officers over social media.

Over the strenuous objections of the U.S. and Israel, the United Nations General Assembly voted today to grant nonmember observer status to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. The U.N. action, which was widely anticipated, was largely a symbolic move that does nothing to change the situation on the ground or lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. But it does raise international pressure on Israel to show it is serious about reaching a negotiated settlement, while allowing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to claim a historic advance in his people's quest for global recognition.

Rep. Eric Cantor, the number two Republican in the Congress, has now joined his leader, House Speaker John Boehner, in calling for President Barack Obama's health reform law to be put on the table in the debate over how to avoid the fiscal cliff. Until now , the two issues were pretty clear: Increased tax revenue from the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans in return for cutting entitlement programs. Adding Obamacare to the mix is a classic negotiating tactic. When you are losing the negotiation, put another chip on the table.