BOSTON (Reuters) – A storm system expected to drench the Southeast on Tuesday was set to barrel northward later in the day, forecasters said, bringing damaging winds and some snow to parts of the Northeast.

Strong-to-severe thunderstorms were forecast to rumble across parts of the Southeast coast, with areas from southern North Carolina to northern Georgia the most likely to be hit, according to AccuWeather.com.

Damaging winds and downpours are the major threats, with the possibility of a tornado from the strongest storms, it said.

The fast-moving storm was expected to track north and east, bringing with it wet weather and wind.

"The rain, snow, and wind will really crank up tonight across the Northeast, with locally heavy rainfall possible from the Mid-Atlantic to the Maine Coast," said Mark Avery, lead meteorologist for the Weather Channel.

Flooding of small creeks and streams was possible in parts of eastern Pennsylvania, northern Delaware and western New Jersey where a flood watch was in effect through the evening, according to the National Weather Service.

Whipping winds were expected to continue on Wednesday across the Northeast, according to the Weather Channel, with snow expected in parts of northern New York and northern New England.

Wind gusting over 45 mph at times on Wednesday could cause scattered power outages and impact air travel in cities from Philadelphia to Boston, AccuWeather.com said.

(Reporting by Lauren Keiper; Editing by Jerry Norton)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitian National Police forces have used illegal excessive force against prisoners and it may have been such abuse that led to the deaths of at least nine people in the capital, the United Nations contended in two reports published Tuesday.
The charges are raised in two reports by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the human rights section of the U.N peacekeeping mission in Haiti. The reports focus on investigations involving 20 members of the police force who may have committed abuses in six separate incidents.
Of particular concern: A 44-year-old man who was beaten to death inside a police station in the presence of senior officers.
Police chief Mario Andresol didn't immediately respond to a text message seeking comment Tuesday, but said in a recent meeting that he is willing to address the issue in "a quick and effective way," one of the reports stated.
The reports contend that police leaders have not taken enough action against officers suspected of unlawful killings and torture. In some cases, accused officers were suspended and detained as investigations were launched, the reports say, but none was convicted.
In several cases, the suspended police personnel resumed their functions even before the investigations into their conduct were concluded, according to the reports.
The summaries were compiled after the U.N. human rights section in Haiti received multiple complaints of killings, including summary executions, allegedly committed by officers from the Haitian National Police beginning in October 2010.
The human rights section investigated the deaths of eight people allegedly at the hands of 16 Haitian police officers in the metropolitan area of the capital, Port-au-Prince, between October 2010 and May 2011.
Those five incidents represent only a portion of deaths that allegedly occurred at the hands of police in the past year, one of the reports said.
The second U.N. report contends that two men, Serge Demosthene and Feckel Plaisimond, were illegally arrested and tortured in the Petionville police station to make them confess their guilt in the June 2011 slaying of Guiteau Toussaint, a prominent banker who was the director of the National Bank of Credit.
Plaisimond was released after several months of detention. But Demosthene was brought unconscious, 12 hours after his arrest, to the general hospital in Port-au-Prince and pronounced dead on arrival. He died as the result of being beaten in front of senior officers, the report said.
The national police force has only 8,000 officers in a country of 10 million. There have been efforts by the U.N., the Canadian government and others to reform the agency.
In an unrelated case, 13 police officers are currently on trial for their role in a 2010 prison riot in southern Haiti that left at least 10 inmates dead. A verdict is expected next month.
The case is being regarded as a test of Haiti's justice system, which is seen as corrupt and dysfunctional.

A week before Iowa's January 3 caucuses, the outcome of the Republican contest is hard to predict: Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney all stand a chance at winning. But something else already seems clear: Iowa has blown its special claim as the first state to vote in presidential contests.
Iowa's first-to-vote-status dates to 1972, when a quirk in Democratic Party rules scheduled its caucuses ahead of the New Hampshire primary, which had opened the presidential nominating process since 1920. Republicans followed suit four years later. Iowa's political establishment quickly found that it enjoyed all the attention and economic activity that came with going first, and enshrined into state law a mandate that Iowa vote at least eight days before any other state. (Read "Romney's Message Not Taking Root in Iowa.")
Iowa seems to have gotten away with this leap to the front of the line in part thanks to its folksy all-American image as a heartland state home to honest, common-sense rural folks. But with every passing decade, Iowa's electoral character grows more out of step with the reality of the United States. Iowa is an unusually homogenous -- that is, white -- and rural state in an increasingly diverse and urban nation. And it's long been a custom of presidential politics to see the candidates extol the virtues of expensive farm and ethanol subsidies with precious little economic rationale.
In response, Iowans insist that their state has special virtues that make for sound presidential vetting. The state Republican Party's website, for instance, boasts that Iowa's small size, along with the intangible virtue of its people, justifies its exalted position:
Iowans take the caucuses very seriously and respect their position as First in the Nation. Many Iowans meet candidates personally and ask them detailed questions about particular policies. Some presidential candidates have noted that Iowa voters ask some of the most sophisticated and nuanced policy questions they receive while on the campaign trail.
Sounds nice, but that rationale doesn't withstand much scrutiny. Iowa may take the caucuses seriously, but why wouldn't we expect any another state to do the same. And while Iowa voters sometimes ask great questions, so do voters elsewhere. I've also heard Iowa voters ask some really silly and uninformed questions. The idea that geography determines political aptitude is more than a little dubious.
Here's where the experience of 2012 should be most damning for Iowa's privileged place. The mythology of the caucuses is based on close personal contact between voters and candidates. In theory, the candidates traverse the state's plains and cornfields to let voters size them up at close range, to test them and take their measure in coffee shops and meeting halls where people live plain and simple -- and political spin just doesn't fly. (Read "Campaign Countdown: 24 Days Till Iowa.")
But the candidates who have spent the most time and effort on the state, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum (who has famously visited each of the state's 99 counties, the poor man), are reaping precious few rewards in the polls. The caucus frontrunners, by contrast, haven't really played by Iowa's rules. Mitt Romney spent most of 2011 avoiding the state. Newt Gingrich campaigned there sporadically until his surge, and even then has showed his respect by leaving at critical moments. Then there's Ron Paul, who may win the caucuses with a small plurality while peddling a foreign policy message totally unacceptable to most of the state's Republicans.
So why have these candidates risen to the top? Because the entire Iowa campaign has tracked the national one. Iowa's procession of frontrunners -- Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Gingrich, Paul -- has roughly mirrored the boom-and-bust pattern found in national polls. It seems unlikely that these fluctuations have been driven by the "sophisticated and nuanced policy questions" of Iowans. More likely, they reflect the drama of the televised debates and national media events like Herman Cain's string of female accusers. (Cain, by the way, leapt to first place in the state at a time when he was paying it no visits at all.) What's the point in having Iowa go first if its voters are simply reacting to the same debate zingers as the rest of the country?
And by the way, remember the Ames straw poll in August? That contest was supposed to tell us important things about the candidates' true strength and appeal in the state, and to winnow the field in ways that would make it stronger. But the straw poll's victor, Michele Bachmann, promptly tanked, and the candidate whose third-place finish drove him from the field -- Tim Pawlenty -- looks in hindsight like the credible Mitt Romney alternative for whom the party has spent the past six months searching. It's been six months in which Iowa has played along with the hyping of one candidate after another.
Iowa is a lovely state packed with wonderful, thoughtful and good people. But is this really the picture of an unusually discerning and responsible electorate? And if not, why in the world should Iowa continue to get the first say?
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Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol is pleading -- for at least the third time -- for someone better to get in the Republican presidential primary at the last minute and save the party from the current candidates. Kristol tries to guilt trip the guys who've decided to stay out of the race this year -- Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Chris Christe aren't mentioned by name, but they've all been subject of his admiration -- into changing their mind by calling them fair weather Americans. He doesn't ask why the Republican field has been dominated by flawed candidates this year, but if he ever gets curious, he can look to himself. It was Kristol's most famous political crush, Sarah Palin, who taught conservative voters that it's okay to support candidates who have little experience, not know all that much about foreign policy, have a soapy personal life, say outrageous things, and even have trouble speaking complete sentences.


As this is no time for voters to choose fecklessly, it is no time for leaders to duck responsibility. Those who have stood aside -- and who now may have concluded, as they may not have when they announced their original decision, that the current field is lacking -- will surely hear the words of Thomas Paine echoing down the centuries: "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." Now is not a time for leaders to engage in clever calculations of the odds of success, or to succumb to concerns about how they will look if they enter the fray and fall short. Now is a time to come to the aid of our country.

NEW YORK – A growing number of shoppers apparently need only the briefest of breaks before diving back in, especially if they can log in to shop.
IBM found that online shopping jumped 16.4 percent on Christmas Day over last year, and the dollar amount of those purchases that were made using mobile devices leaped 172.9 percent.
IBM tracks shopping at more than 500 websites other than Amazon.com, which is the largest. It found a huge increase in the number of shoppers making their purchases with iPhones, iPads and Android-powered mobile devices.
In fact, nearly 7 percent of all online purchases were made using iPads, just 18 months after the tablet computers were released by Apple Inc., said John Squire, chief strategy officer for IBM's Smarter Commerce unit.
The online uptick was continuing on Monday. As of 3 p.m. Eastern time, shopping was up 10 percent over Dec. 26, 2010. And the expectation was that the pace of buying would increase as the day wore on and consumers clicked on sales at various retailers.
Squire said consumers were chasing sales on both Sunday and Monday. The data did not show what portion of purchases was made using gift cards.