BERLIN, New Hampshire (Reuters) – A more confident and energized Mitt Romney is putting his people skills to the test in New Hampshire as he tries to fix a likeability issue that hurt his failed bid for the White House in 2008.

The Republican presidential hopeful is shaking hands, signing autographs and pumping diesel in a dozen appearances over three days in a classic campaign bus tour aimed at winning the Republican nomination backed by television ads.

In an interview with Reuters, the former Massachusetts governor said he has embraced retail politics with a different mindset than in 2008 when he lost the nomination to John McCain, who was then beaten by Barack Obama in the general election.

A multi-millionaire former businessman, Romney was often described as wooden and unable to connect with ordinary people like mechanics, nurses and farmers during his earlier bid.

"I think I recognize this time, perhaps more than in my last run, that a lot of this is out of my control," Romney said on his spacious tour bus, which was manufactured in North Dakota and custom-wrapped in Tennessee with the signage "Conservative Business Leader" and "Believe in America."

"What ultimately happens is not just a function of my work, and my campaign, but also things that occur in the nation and things that occur in other peoples' campaigns. And so I'm a little more philosophical about the process," Romney said.

Romney has had some celebrated awkward moments on the 2012 campaign trail, from his "corporations are people, my friend" comment in Iowa to telling a group of jobless people in Florida that he is also unemployed.

With most polls showing him enjoying a sizable lead in New Hampshire, Romney is attempting to drive home his advantage in the lead up to the state's January 10 primary election.

Long-time associates say Romney 2012 is leaner and more focused, taking on board fewer consultants and advisers, who often sent conflicting messages in his previous campaign.

SMOOTH TALK

At Hypotherm Inc in Hanover, where Romney did a tour of the factory floor and held a town hall meeting for staff, machinist Robert Von Baltzer, wasn't buying Romney's smooth answers.

"I've heard the talk. I would like to see the walk," said Von Baltzer, 57. "What can you say to me and to other voters that are sitting here, that the promises that you're making, that you can walk the talk?" he asked.

"That's a fair sentiment there," answered Romney, who then went into typical campaign speech mode urging Americans to do more for their country.

Romney,64, has been a front-runner in the Republican race for months. But, despite running a smooth campaign while rivals crumble, he has yet to light a fire and is stuck at around 25 percent in polls. Conservatives have yet to warm to him.

A former venture capitalist, Romney said his work as a lay leader in the Mormon church near his home in Belmont, Massachusetts in the 1980s had helped him deal with different types of people.

"That has allowed me to stay connected with people who face very different circumstances than myself. That experience, as well as my service overseas to my church, has made me understand the extraordinary psychological pain associated with unemployment, for instance ... I have not lived my life detached from the world."

Many who met Romney this week, including some who showed up to events still undecided on their vote, came away with a favorable impression.

DAIRY COWS, HARDWARE STORE


In remote Lancaster, Romney chatted with Jessica Hebert about her experiences raising prize-winning dairy cows as a teenager.


"He was down to earth and very personable. I like that he's come to a local place," said Hebert, 32, a political independent who voted for Obama in 2008. "Meeting someone face to face - you look at them in a different way."


At the Agway farm supply and hardware store in Lancaster, in New Hampshire's northernmost Coos County, Romney compared retail politics favorably to the glitzy fund-raisers he has attended while amassing a large campaign war-chest.


But Bernard Folta of Claremont, said he found Romney overly rehearsed during a brief encounter in Newport, New Hampshire.


"A primary campaign is a theatrical situation, and there are stock answers to the majority of the issues that will come up on the stump," said Folta, 69, who is retired from a computing job and a registered Republican. "He's a sharp guy, with good consultants."


Jim Merrill, who was Romney's New Hampshire campaign manager in 2008 and is a strategist in the state this year, said Romney is more relaxed in his personal encounters with voters this time around. "He's more his own man," Merrill said.


Romney went door to door in the town of Berlin wearing only a light jacket in near freezing temperatures. At one point he ran several blocks after the car of a local official he knew.


"He relates well to people. He seems more genuine than the other contenders," said Shelley Harter, 59, who was visiting from Pasadena, California.


Younger voters were less convinced. In Conway, college student Kallie Durkit, 21, said Romney lacked "relatability" and his message did not resonate the way that Obama's had in 2008.


"I don't think he will be able to mobilize the college-age students," Durkit said.


(Additional reporting by Steve Holland; editing by Alistair Bell and Anthony Boadle)

WASHINGTON – Capping a full retreat by House GOP leaders, Congress will convene Friday in hopes of approving a stopgap measure renewing payroll tax cuts for every worker and unemployment benefits for millions — despite serious opposition among some tea party Republicans.
Friday's unusual session, if all goes according to plan, will send a bill to President Barack Obama to become law for two months and put off until January a fight over how to pay for the 2 percentage point tax cut, extend jobless benefits averaging around $300 a week and prevent doctors from absorbing a big cut in Medicare payments through 2012.
Those goals had been embraced by virtually every lawmaker in the House and Senate, but had been derailed in a quarrel over demands by House Republicans for immediate negotiations on a long-term extension bill. Senate leaders of both parties had tried to barter such an agreement among themselves a week ago but failed, instead agreeing upon a 60-day measure to buy time for talks next year.
The decision by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to cave in to the Senate came after days of criticism from Obama and Democrats. But perhaps more tellingly, GOP stalwarts like strategist Karl Rove and the Wall St. Journal editorial board warned that if the tax cuts were allowed to expire, Republicans would take a political beating that would harm efforts to unseat Obama next year.
Friday's House and Senate sessions are remarkable. Both chambers have recessed for the holidays but leaders in both parties are trying to pass the short-term agreement under debate rules that would allow any individual member of Congress to derail the pact, at least for a time.
The developments were a clear win for Obama. The payroll tax cut was the centerpiece of his three-month, campaign-style drive for jobs legislation that seems to have contributed to an uptick in his poll numbers — and taken a toll on those of congressional Republicans.
Obama, Republicans and congressional Democrats all said they preferred a one-year extension but the politics of achieving the goal, particularly the spending cuts and new fees required to pay for it, eluded them. All pledged to start working on that in January.
"There remain important differences between the parties on how to implement these policies, and it is critical that we protect middle-class families from a tax increase while we work them out," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.
House GOP arguments about the legislative process and what the "uncertainty" of a two-month extension would mean for businesses were unpersuasive, and Obama was clearly on the offensive.
"Has this place become so dysfunctional that even when we agree to things, we can't do it?" Obama said. "Enough is enough."
The top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, was a driving force behind Thursday's agreement, imploring Boehner to accept the deal that McConnell and Reid had struck last week and passed with overwhelming support in both parties.
Meanwhile, tea party-backed House Republicans began to abandon their leadership.
"I don't think that my constituents should have a tax increase because of Washington's dysfunction," freshman Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., said.
If the cuts had expired as scheduled, 160 million workers would have seen a tax increase of $20 a week for an average worker earning about $50,000 a year. And up to 2 million people without jobs for six months would start losing unemployment benefits averaging $300 a week. Doctors would have seen a 27 percent cut in their Medicare payments, the product of an archaic 1997 cut that Congress has been unable to fix.
Even though GOP leaders like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., promised that the two sides could quickly iron out their differences, the truth is that it'll take intense talks to figure out both the spending cuts and fee increases required to finance the measure.
Just hours before he announced the breakthrough, Boehner had made the case for a yearlong extension. But on a brief late afternoon conference call, he informed his colleagues it was time to yield.
"He said that as your leader, you've in effect asked me to make decisions easy and difficult, and I'm making my decision right now," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., paraphrasing Boehner's comments.
Kingston said the conference call lasted just minutes and Boehner did not give anyone time to respond.

There was still carping among tea party freshmen upset that GOP leaders had yielded.

"Even though there is plenty of evidence this is a bad deal for America ... the House has caved yet again to the president and Senate Democrats," Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., said. "We were sent here with a clear set of instructions from the American people to put an end to business as usual in Washington, yet here we are being asked to sign off on yet another gimmick."

Almost forgotten in the firestorm is that McConnell and Boehner had extracted a major victory last week, winning a provision that would require Obama to make a swift decision on whether to approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would bring Canadian oil to the U.S. and create thousands of construction jobs. To block the pipeline, Obama would have to declare that is not in the nation's interest.

Obama wanted to put the decision off until after the 2012 election.

House Republicans did win one concession in addition to a promise that Senate Democrats would name negotiators on the one-year House measure: a provision to ease concerns that the 60-day extension would be hard for payroll processing companies to implement.

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Name: ConnectYard
[More from Mashable: 6 Crazy Tech Predictions for 2012]

Quick Pitch: A social media platform that connects students and professors through their preferred form of communication.

Genius Idea: A professor emails a student and it’s delivered in whatever form the student prefers, such as a text message or Twitter and Facebook post.
[More from Mashable: How Facebook Conquered the Social Web in 2011]


More students these days prefer interacting on mobile devices and social media sites over traditional forms of communication such as email. To help eliminate the communication barriers between students and their professors, institutions from Cornell University to Georgia State University are turning to a social platform called ConnectYard that allows them both to send and receive messages however they like.

If students prefer interacting through text messages or on Facebook and Twitter, they can send messages to their professors this way. In turn, professors can receive and send responses however they prefer – and typically, that’s through email, according to ConnectYard CEO Donald Doane.

"Faculty isn’t always keen on adopting new technology and many don’t want to encroach on the personal space of students on social networking sites," Doane told Mashable. "ConnectYard allows students and professors to interact on the platforms they prefer to use. If a teacher cancels a class and sends an email to students, some students might choose to receive the message as a text or Facebook post instead."

Students can also respond to messages on whatever platform they choose. If they are on Facebook and send an email to their professor about a class, the professor can receive it through email.

"We wanted to give students and faculty an easy way to reach each other and interact without having anyone change their communication habits," Doane said. "We’ve had great success with it so far and more institutions are jumping on board."

ConnectYard also integrates with other popular learning platforms such as Blackboard and Desire2Learn, so students and professors can post and respond to queries, and the site archives all interactions as a reference, regardless of where they originate.

In addition, if a student is reading an ebook, she can pose a question from their ereader and the professor can respond via email, It will then show up directly in the the student's ebook notes on the device.

"ConnectYard is flexible in how it allows students and faculty members communicate," Doane said. "Everyone prefers to communicate in different ways, so we want to make sure people can interact with others however they feel most comfortable -- whether it's just through email or through a high-tech device or social platform."

This story originally published on Mashable here.

PHOENIX – Danilo Gallinari scored a game-high 23 points and the Denver Nuggets opened the fourth quarter with a 16-3 run en route to a 110-85 win over the Phoenix Suns in an exhibition game Thursday night.
Corey Brewer scored eight of his 20 points during the decisive run which saw the Nuggets extend an eight-point advantage to 95-74 with 7:04 remaining.
Kosta Koufos scored 15 points and DeMarre Carroll added 14 for Denver, which swept the two-game exhibition series against Phoenix.
Jared Dudley scored 17 points, Hakim Warrick had 15 and Shannon Brown added 14 for the Suns, who were without forward Marcin Gortat, out with a slight non-displaced fracture of his right thumb.
Steve Nash had five points on 2-of-9 shooting and added eight assists in just over 26 minutes for the Suns, who earlier Thursday waived guard-forward Mickael Pietrus.
After opening the game 6 of 24 from the floor in the first quarter, the Suns recovered and led 60-56 on Markieff Morris' 3-pointer with 7:40 left in the third quarter.
But Gallinari and the Nuggets took over from there. Gallinari converted a three-point play, Chris Andersen sank a pair of free throws and Brewer hit a 14-foot turnaround jumper with 5:04 to go in the third for a 70-60 lead.
Phoenix rallied to within six at 77-71 on a three-point play by Brown with 13.5 seconds left in the period, but Gallinari hit a fade away jump shot at the third-quarter buzzer and the Nuggets coasted the rest of the way.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China's state news agency Xinhua plans to list its online portal in a 1 billion yuan ($157.8 million) stock market offering in Shanghai with China International Capital Corp underwriting the deal, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Friday.

The exact timing of the initial public offering of Xinhuanet.com has not been fixed, the sources told Reuters.

"It's around 1 billion yuan," one of the sources said.

Xinhua was not immediately available for comment.

Other state news outlets are also looking to list their online operations. People.com.cn, the online news portal run by the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party -- the People's Daily -- is looking to list in Shanghai, sources have told Reuters.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Nick Edwards)