BlackBerry Z10 with AT&T-compatible LTE uncovered ahead of January unveiling

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Eric Prydz Picks a New Year's Eve Playlist

By Dahvi Shira

12/31/2012 at 06:50 PM EST

Unfortunately not everyone can be in Las Vegas when the ball drops this year, but Eric Prydz is bringing the party to PEOPLE.com readers in advance.

The DJ and producer, 36 – best known for his 2004 hit single, "Call on Me" – is playing a three-hour extended set at Surrender Nightclub on Monday, and he's sharing the tracks he's most excited to spin, including songs from his album, Eric Prydz Presents Pryda.

"I love to play on New Year's Eve because it has that special tension in the air," Prydz says. "People are so excited about the new year coming, leaving the old behind and starting fresh. It's also the perfect excuse to blow off some steam after that long Christmas with family. Let's make New Year's Eve 2013 one to remember!"

Recently scoring a Grammy nomination for his remix of M83's "Midnight City," Prydz, who is relocating to Los Angeles, already predicts 2013 "is going to be an amazing year."

As for his evening playlist, he plans to "blend a lot of the highlights from the past year with classics and brand new music set to blow up in 2013."

Check out part of his planned set below:

• Jeremy Olander – "Let Me Feel"
"This tune has spring/summer of 2013 written all over it. It's such a feel good track!"
Listen here

• Fehrplay – "I Can't Stop It"
"Fehrplay had a great year in 2012 and is set to blow up in 2013. This is his forthcoming single on my Pryda Friends imprint. The first time I heard this record, it took me somewhere really nice."
Listen here

• Rone – "Parade (Dominik Eulberg Remix)"
"Every now and then there is a track that comes along and blows your mind. This is one of those tracks. Nine minutes of pure emotion."
Listen here

• Eric Prydz – "Every Day"
"This one has been huge for me this summer and fall. Enough said."
Listen here

• Pachanga Boys – "Time"
"This was the soundtrack of my summer 2012. And I'm sure I'm not alone on that one."
Listen here

• Para One – "When the Night (Breakbot Remix)"
"I've been a fan of Para One's music for many years and this one is no exception. This song has a great retro vibe with a modern touch from Breakbot on this remix."
Listen here

• Pig & Dan – "Savage"
"This is a real club stomper. I can't wait to play this one out."
Listen here

• Pryda – "The End"
"I had to throw this one in. It's one of the biggest releases on Pryda to date."
Listen here

• Green Velvet & Harvard Bass – "Lazer Beams"
"Hit me with those laser beams!"
Listen here.

• Deetron feat. Hercules & Love Affair – "Crave (Deetron cRAVE Dub)"
"This song is a dark, big room destroyer."
Listen here

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Clinton receiving blood thinners to dissolve clot

WASHINGTON (AP) — Doctors treating Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for a blood clot in her head said blood thinners are being used to dissolve the clot and they are confident she will make a full recovery.

Clinton didn't suffer a stroke or neurological damage from the clot that formed after she suffered a concussion during a fainting spell at her home in early December, doctors said in a statement Monday.

Clinton, 65, was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday when the clot turned up on a follow-up exam on the concussion, Clinton spokesman Phillipe Reines said.

The clot is located in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She will be released once the medication dose for the blood thinners has been established, the doctors said.

In their statement, Dr. Lisa Bardack of the Mount Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University said Clinton was making excellent progress and was in good spirits.

Clinton's complication "certainly isn't the most common thing to happen after a concussion" and is one of the few types of blood clots in the skull or head that are treated with blood thinners, said Dr. Larry Goldstein, a neurologist who is director of Duke University's stroke center. He is not involved in Clinton's care.

The area where Clinton's clot developed is "a drainage channel, the equivalent of a big vein inside the skull. It's how the blood gets back to the heart," Goldstein said.

Blood thinners usually are enough to treat the clot and it should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, Goldstein said.

Clinton returned to the U.S. from a trip to Europe, then fell ill with a stomach virus in early December that left her severely dehydrated and forced her to cancel a trip to North Africa and the Middle East. Until then, she had canceled only two scheduled overseas trips, one to Europe after breaking her elbow in June 2009 and one to Asia after the February 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Her condition worsened when she fainted, fell and suffered a concussion while at home alone in mid-December as she recovered from the virus. It was announced Dec. 13.

This isn't the first time Clinton has suffered a blood clot. In 1998, midway through her husband's second term as president, Clinton was in New York fundraising for the midterm elections when a swollen right foot led her doctor to diagnose a clot in her knee requiring immediate treatment.

Clinton had planned to step down as secretary of state at the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term. Whether she will return to work before she resigns remained a question.

Democrats are privately if not publicly speculating: How might her illness affect a decision about running for president in 2016?

After decades in politics, Clinton says she plans to spend the next year resting. She has long insisted she had no intention of mounting a second campaign for the White House four years from now. But the door is not entirely closed, and she would almost certainly emerge as the Democrat to beat if she decided to give in to calls by Democratic fans and run again.

Her age — and thereby health — would probably be a factor under consideration, given that Clinton would be 69 when sworn in, if she were elected in 2016. That might become even more of an issue in the early jockeying for 2016 if what started as a bad stomach bug becomes a prolonged, public bout with more serious infirmity.

Not that Democrats are willing to talk openly about the political implications of a long illness, choosing to keep any discussions about her condition behind closed doors. Publicly, Democrats reject the notion that a blood clot could hinder her political prospects.

"Some of those concerns could be borderline sexist," said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist who worked for Clinton when she was a senator. "Dick Cheney had significant heart problems when he was vice president, and people joked about it. He took the time he needed to get better, and it wasn't a problem."

It isn't uncommon for presidential candidates' health — and age — to be an issue. Both in 2000 and 2008, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had to rebut concerns he was too old to be commander in chief or that his skin cancer could resurface.

Two decades after Clinton became the first lady, signs of her popularity — and her political strength — are ubiquitous.

Obama had barely declared victory in November when Democrats started zealously plugging Clinton as their strongest White House contender four years from now, should she choose to take that leap.

"Wouldn't that be exciting?" House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi declared in December. "I hope she goes. Why wouldn't she?"

Even Republicans concede that were she to run, Clinton would be a force to be reckoned with.

"Trying to win that will be truly the Super Bowl," Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker and 2012 GOP presidential candidate, said in December. "The Republican Party today is incapable of competing at that level."

Americans admire Clinton more than any other woman in the world, according to a Gallup poll released Monday — the 17th time in 20 years that Clinton has claimed that title. And a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 57 percent of Americans would support Clinton as a candidate for president in 2016, with just 37 percent opposed. Websites have already cropped up hawking "Clinton 2016" mugs and tote bags.

Beyond talk of future politics, Clinton's three-week absence from the State Department has raised eyebrows among some conservative commentators who questioned the seriousness of her ailment after she canceled planned Dec. 20 testimony before Congress on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton had been due to discuss with lawmakers a scathing report she had commissioned on the attack. It found serious failures of leadership and management in two State Department bureaus were to blame for insufficient security at the facility. Clinton took responsibility for the incident before the report was released, but she was not blamed. Four officials cited in the report have either resigned or been reassigned.

___

Associated Press writer Ken Thomas in Washington and AP Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

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Senate approves 'fiscal cliff' deal, crisis eased

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate moved the U.S. economy back from the edge of a "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, voting to avoid imminent tax hikes and spending cuts in a bipartisan deal that could still face stiff challenges in the House of Representatives.

In a rare New Year's session at around 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT), senators voted 89-8 to raise some taxes on the wealthy while making permanent low tax rates on the middle class that have been in place for a decade.

But the measure did little to rein in huge annual budget deficits that have helped push the U.S. debt to $16.4 trillion.

The agreement came too late for Congress to meet its own deadline of New Year's Eve for passing laws to halt $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts which strictly speaking came into force on Tuesday.

But with the New Year's Day holiday, there was no real world impact and Congress still had time to draw up legislation, approve it and backdate it to avoid the harsh fiscal measures.

That will need the backing of the House where many of the Republicans who control the chamber complain that President Barack Obama has shown little interest in cutting government spending and is too concerned with raising taxes.

All eyes are now on the House which is to hold a session on Tuesday starting at noon (1700 GMT).

Obama called for the House to act quickly and follow the Senate's lead.

"While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay," he said in a statement.

"There's more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I'm willing to do it. But tonight's agreement ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest Americans," Obama said.

Members were thankful that financial markets were closed, giving them a second chance to return to try to head off the fiscal cliff.

But if lawmakers cannot pass legislation in the coming days, markets are likely to turn sour. The U.S. economy, still recovering from the 2008/2009 downturn, could stall again if Congress fails to fix the budget mess.

"If we do nothing, the threat of a recession is very real. Passing this agreement does not mean negotiations halt, far from it. We can all agree there is more work to be done," Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, told the Senate floor.

A new, informal deadline for Congress to legislate is now Wednesday when the current body expires and it is replaced by a new Congress chosen at last November's election.

The Senate bill, worked out after long negotiations on New Year's Eve between Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also postpones for two months a $109 billion "sequester" of sweeping spending cuts on military and domestic programs.

It extends unemployment insurance to 2 million people for a year and makes permanent the alternative minimum tax "patch" that was set to expire, protecting middle-income Americans from being taxed as if they were rich.

'IMPERFECT SOLUTION'

The tax hikes do not sit easy with Republicans but conservative senators held their noses and voted to raise rates for the rich because not to do so would have meant increases for almost all working Americans.

"It took an imperfect solution to prevent our constituents from a very real financial pain, but in my view, it was worth the effort," McConnell said.

House Speaker John Boehner - the top Republican in Congress - said the House would consider the Senate deal. But he left open the possibility of the House amending the Senate bill, which would spark another round of legislating.

"The House will honor its commitment to consider the Senate agreement if it is passed. Decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members ... have been able to review the legislation," Boehner and other House Republican leaders said in a statement.

Boehner has struggled for two years to get control over a group of several dozen Tea Party fiscal conservatives in his caucus who strongly oppose tax increases and demand that he force Obama to make savings in the Medicare and Social Security healthcare and retirement programs.

A campaign-style event held by Obama in the White House as negotiations with Senate leaders were taking place on Monday may have made it more difficult for Republicans to back the deal. In remarks to a group of supporters that resembled a victory lap, the president noted that his rivals were coming around to his way of seeing things.

"Keep in mind that just last month Republicans in Congress said they would never agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans. Obviously, the agreement that's currently being discussed would raise those rates and raise them permanently," he said to applause before the Senate deal was sealed.

Obama's words and tone annoyed Republican lawmakers who seemed to feel that the Democrat was gloating.

"That's not the way presidents should lead," said Republican Senator John McCain, Obama's rival in the 2008 election.

A deal with the House on Tuesday, while uncertain, would not mark the end of congressional budget fights. The "sequester" spending cuts will come up again in February as will the contentious "debt ceiling," which caps how much debt the federal government can hold.

Republicans may see those two issues as their best chance to try to rein in government spending and clip Obama's wings at the start of his second term.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Mark Felsenthal, Rachelle Younglai, Kim Dixon and Jeff Mason; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Dec. 31

NEWS Indian women poured their anger into public demonstrations last week, reacting to news of the gang rape of a young woman who had moved to the city from a small village, with a new life in front of her. Many women in India say they are still subject to regular harassment and assault during the day and are fearful of leaving their homes alone after dark. Now they are demanding that the government, and a police force that they say offers women little or no protection, do something about it. Heather Timmons and Sruthi Gottipati report from New Delhi.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on Sunday distributed emergency cold-weather supplies to families in a refugee camp where two days earlier a 3-year-old died of exposure to the freezing temperatures. But camp leaders and Afghan government officials criticized the aid delivery as inadequate to protect residents from the weather and to prevent more deaths. Last winter, more than 100 children died of the cold in refugee camps around Kabul. Rod Nordland reports from Kabul, Afghanistan.

Say what you will about the euro zone’s quarreling policy makers. They can claim at least one achievement during 2012: Their common currency still has a heartbeat. On the threshold of 2013, the debate is less about whether the euro will exist and more about how long it will take for the euro zone economy to recover and what must be changed to avoid future crises. Jack Ewing writes from Frankfurt.

A year ago, many people seriously doubted whether the euro would still exist by now. On the threshold of 2013, the debate is more about how long it will take for the euro zone economy to recover and what must be changed to avoid future crises.

In Germany, the Social Democrats’ candidate for chancellor, Peer Steinbrück, finds himself facing questions about speaking fees and a comment that Angela Merkel has the advantage of a “women’s bonus.” Nicholas Kulish reports from Berlin.

EDUCATION A ratings system that gives lesser-known universities the chance to highlight their qualities by paying a fee creates potential for conflicts of interest, detractors say. D.D. Guttenplan writes from London.

ARTS The year ahead: Experiments in rapidly evolving areas of design for personal use, like 3-D printing and other digital production technologies, could eventually benefit millions of people. Alice Rawsthorn on design.

SPORTS Tony Greig, who died Saturday at age 66, did enough as a player to have been the most notable death in the cricket world in 2012.Yet his greater significance lay in the birth of World Series Cricket. Huw Richards writes from Bridgnorth, England.

When Thierry Henry was at Arsenal, he displayed almost feline speed of movement with impeccable ball skills. Theo Walcott is hoping to evolve into his successor. Rob Hughes on soccer.

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Ms. Mac: ‘Cute, Awkwardly Dressed’

Designer: PabloDeLaRocha.com, BlueStacks

She has freckles, a normal-sized head, wears t-shirts and jeans. She is also “awkwardly dressed” and “pretty cute.” She is the average female Mac user, according to an infographic complied and released by software start-up BlueStacks.

The company, which makes software that allows Android apps to run on computers, just released a new version of its Mac app. Install the program and you can access Android apps right from Apple’s OS X operating system – Angry Birds, Instagram, all your favorites.

But the company didn’t want to just release the software. In honor of the announcement, it created an infographic based on data from its Facebook users about what Ms. Mac looks like.

According to the graphic, which you can view below, 27 percent of female Mac users have long hair, 48 percent wear glasses and 52 percent are under 20. Forty percent use Mac OS X Lion, 14 percent OS X Mountain Lion, 20 percent OS X Leopard, and 8 percent Snow Leopard.

However, you should take these findings with a grain of salt; they are based primarily on responses from BlueStacks’ 1.1 million Facebook fans. Some of it is based on data from Nielsen, but BlueStacks confirmed that the majority of the information was pulled from its own users and its social media fans.

“We have a lot of early adopter fans who were into helping,” BlueStacks VP of marketing, John Gargiulo, told ABC News. “We also hired a data scientist who has been parsing through the data and talking with people who use BlueStacks. We like to do things that are a bit fun and different.”

BlueStacks created a similar infographic about Android users last year. Not surprisingly, 70 percent of male Android users wear t-shits and 62 percent wear jeans. (It’s like that line from that ’90s movie “Can’t Hardly Wait”: “He is sort of tall, with hair and wears t-shirts sometimes.”)

Regardless, if you’re looking for a fun infographic / full body image of the alleged Ms. Mac 2012, you can click the image below.

Also Read
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Ms. Mac: ‘Cute, Awkwardly Dressed’
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Kim Kardashian and Kanye West Expecting a Child

By Mike Fleeman

12/31/2012 at 03:45 AM EST

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West

Splash News Online

Talk about onstage pyrotechnics!

Kanye West dropped a bombshell during an Atlantic City concert on Sunday night, revealing that he and girlfriend Kim Kardashian are expecting a child.

The news of the reality starlet's pregnancy was quickly followed by an outpouring of congratulatory Twitter messages from family members.

"Oh BABY BABY BABY!!" shouts Kim's mom Kris Jenner.

Adds sister Kourtney: "Been wanting to shout from the rooftops with joy and now I can! Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!

More to Come …

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."

"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

___

Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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Euro shares dip as fiscal cliff deadline nears

LONDON (Reuters) - World stocks were set to end the year up 15 percent but dipped on Monday as U.S. politicians prepared for last-minute talks to avoid a fiscal crunch of spending cuts and tax hikes that could drag down the world economy.

In Washington, the two political parties are set to hold further talks to try and find a way to avoid the $600 billion "fiscal cliff" due to kick in from the start of January.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Senate would resume sitting at 11 a.m. Washington time on Monday (1600 GMT), to continue discussions, but there were still significant differences between the two sides.

After a subdued day in Asia, where Japan's Nikkei as well as a number of other indexes had already shut for the year, European stock markets opened fractionally lower.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 <.fteu3>, which has risen roughly 16 percent this year, was down 0.1 percent as London's FTSE <.ftse> and the Paris CAC 40 <.fchi> both started a shortened trading day in negative territory. German markets were closed.

"Volumes are very depressed and we're going to see a lot of cash off the table and investors are probably going to take profit on cyclical shares," Ishaq Siddiqi, a market strategist at ETX Capital, said.

Siddiqi said a failure to avert the "fiscal cliff" may push the FTSE back to a late November low of 5,800 in the coming sessions.

Midnight on Monday marks the deadline for a U.S. budget deal, though the government can pass legislation in 2013 that retroactively prevents going over the cliff, an option that is viewed as politically easier.

In currency markets, the U.S. dollar last stood at 85.78 yen, having retreated from Friday's high of 86.64 yen, which was the greenback's strongest level versus the Japanese currency since August 2010.

As the year draws to a close, the dollar is up about 11.9 percent against the yen, putting it on track for its biggest percentage gain versus the Japanese currency since 2005.

The euro was down 0.16 percent to $1.3192 on Monday. An agreement on the U.S. budget would be viewed as positive for riskier currencies such as the euro and Australian dollar, while a deadlock is deemed positive for the haven and highly liquid dollar.

Gold was $1,664.10 an ounce by 0810 GMT, up around 6 percent for the year and is on track for a 12th consecutive year of gains on rock-bottom interest rates, concerns over the financial stability of the euro zone, and diversification into bullion by central banks.

Oil prices slipped on Monday for a third consecutive session on the U.S. budget crisis, with failure to reach a solution seen likely to cause a large drop in fuel consumption.

Brent crude slipped 23 cents to $110.39 a barrel, but is set to post a 2.8 percent year-on-year increase in 2012, up for a fourth consecutive year.

(Additional reporting by Francesco Canepa; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Gérard Depardieu Stirs Belgian Border Town

Benoit Tessier/Reuters

French actor Gérard Depardieu is accused by the French government of trying to dodge taxes by moving to Belgium.

NÉCHIN, Belgium — The last time a big star lit up this sleepy village of potato fields and rain-drenched pastures was in 1667, when the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, stopped by for the day. But even he may not have created quite the commotion caused by Gérard Depardieu, the celebrated actor, turbulent bon vivant and, since a visit to the mayor’s office here on Dec. 7 to register as a resident, France’s most reviled tax exile.

“I thought it was a joke,” said the mayor, Daniel Senesael, recalling his disbelief when he was first told that Mr. Depardieu intended to leave his mansion in Paris and move to Néchin, a rural settlement in Belgium with just 2,200 people, two cafes, a fast-food fry shop, a ruined chateau and no cinema.

“Let’s be honest, this is not Las Vegas,” Mr. Senesael said. “There are no lights and no discos. I get flooded with complaints when anyone suggests opening even a wind farm.”

Michel Sardou, a veteran French singer who has joined a frenzy of criticism directed at Mr. Depardieu in France, mocked the actor’s flight to Néchin, predicting that he would be “as bored as a rat” here. “So, there is some divine justice after all,” the singer joked on French television.

For Mr. Depardieu, and scores of wealthy French citizens who already live here, however, Néchin does have one seductive asset: it is beyond the reach of the French tax authorities but so close to France that an unmarked border running through the village puts the gardens of some properties in France and adjoining houses in Belgium.

“Our geographic situation makes us very attractive,” said Mr. Senesael, noting that Néchin is an easy place to get into and out of, with a nearby airport, a major highway and a railway station just a few miles away in the French city of Lille with regular high-speed trains to Paris, Brussels and London.

“Nobody should be astonished that big fortunes have found a certain fiscal advantage” in moving to this side of the border, said the mayor, whose domain covers Néchin and a cluster of other hamlets that form what is known as the Entity of Estaimpuis. Mr. Depardieu’s critics, he said, should direct their ire not at the actor but at the failure of European governments to harmonize tax rates across the 27 nations of the European Union.

A customs post and border guards disappeared decades ago from the end of Néchin’s main street, swept away by Europe’s effort after World War II to break down barriers that led to past conflicts and to allow for the free flow of goods, services and people.

Still firmly in place, however, are rigidly defined tax frontiers that mean that people living just a few yards from one another can pay vastly different levels of tax, particularly if they happen to be wealthy.

Belgium has higher income taxes for most people than in much of Europe, but the country is much easier on the rich than France, where the government of President François Hollande has announced a “temporary supertax” of 75 percent on annual incomes of more than 1 million euros, or about $1.3 million. France’s Constitutional Council on Saturday declared the tax unconstitutional, prompting the government to announce that it would introduce a revised version next year. France also has a “wealth tax” on assets worth more than $1.7 million, something that does not exist in Belgium, as well as far higher taxes on capital gains and inheritance.

“We’ve abolished border controls but not all the other stupidities,” said Philippe Vandenhemel, the owner of a garage just outside Néchin that sells and repairs imported American cars and was visited several times by Mr. Depardieu. (The actor apparently likes old American cars.)

Mr. Vandenhemel scoffed at attacks on the movie star by French politicians and commentators. “If I were in his shoes, I would do exactly the same thing and leave,” he said. Mr. Depardieu, he added, will benefit not only from lower taxes in Belgium but also from the fact that “we Belgians are not jealous and don’t mind people getting rich.”

“Jealousy is France’s national disease,” he said.

Mr. Hollande, who made a pledge to squeeze the rich to help reduce the government’s budget deficit a cornerstone of his successful election campaign this year, once said on television, “I don’t like the rich.” His right-wing predecessor and rival and in the May election, Nicolas Sarkozy, lost in part because he flaunted a liking for expensive watches and other accessories and the company of rich friends, a habit that earned him mockery as “Le Président Bling-Bling.”

Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.

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