S.F. mourns a twin with a passion for fashion

SAN FRANCISCO — They were known simply as the San Francisco Twins.

At 5-foot-1 and about 100 pounds apiece, the fashion enthusiasts were an integral part of the city fabric for four decades. With matching furs, hats and high-end purses, they completed each other's sentences, posed for countless tourist snapshots and modeled for the likes of Reebok, Joe Boxer and IBM.

Now one is gone.

Vivian Brown, 85, who had Alzheimer's, died in her sleep Wednesday, leaving behind Marian, who was eight minutes younger. The illness, and news of the twins' financial distress, brought an outpouring of support from city residents in recent months.

Donations managed by Jewish Family and Children Services helped Vivian move into an elegant assisted living facility in Lower Pacific Heights and provided for a car service so Marian could visit "as much as she wanted to," Development Director Barbara Farber said. "The community really responded.…It's been a beautiful thing."

At a benefit concert for the twins in August, the Go-Go's Jane Wiedlin and other musicians honored Marian. Cash flowed in to cover her meals at Uncle Vito's Pizza on Nob Hill, long one of the ladies' regular haunts.

On Friday, fans offered collective condolences as they swallowed some bitter medicine: The sightings that brought joy to many — of the twins in leopard-print cowboy hats parading up and down Powell Street and window shopping at Union Square — are forever a thing of the past.

In saying goodbye to Vivian, the city has ushered out an era of style.

"All of that has gone, and that's true of all cities," said Ann Moller Caen, the widow of Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, who wrote often about the twins. "They've lost the elegant few."

Mayor Ed Lee echoed residents' grief in online postings throughout the day, saying that "San Francisco is heartbroken" over Vivian's passing and was "fortunate to have called her a true friend."

The twins, who were born in Kalamazoo, Mich., and held degrees in business administration, moved to San Francisco in 1973, prompted by Vivian's chronic bronchial condition. Once on the West Coast, Vivian became a legal secretary and Marian worked at a bank.

But fashion was their passion, and they cut a striking double image.

There were the fitted white suit jackets with pleated skirts, veiled hats and white fur coats; the red wool Ellen Tracy suits with black felt hats and black gloves.

"When you first came to the city and saw them, you might think it was a little joke. But it really wasn't," Caen said Friday. "They were very warm and very pleasant to everyone, and they just loved Herb. And he loved them."

Evelyn Adler recalled that her father, who sold shoes at the Emporium on San Francisco's Market Street in the 1970s, had regularly waited on "the girls," as he called them.

"They were always at the very height of sometimes ridiculous fashion," said Adler, 82. Her father, she said, had talked of how years of wearing pointy shoes left the twins with overlapping toes. (They later embraced lower heels that were "much more suited to their feet," Adler said.)

As a volunteer for Jewish Family Services, Adler recently shopped for a new wardrobe for Vivian — and was taken aback by the sight of the twins in separate outfits. About a quarter-century ago, the twins admitted to an interviewer that after a six-month attempt to dress differently in their 20s, they had abandoned the project forever. Even their lingerie matched.

They had their regular haunts, which Marian now frequents solo.

David Dubiner, owner of Uncle Vito's Pizza, said the sisters began coming in nearly two decades ago. They always sat at the table by the window, chatting with tourists for so long that their food had to be reheated.

Vivian often did more talking, Dubiner said, but Marian now holds court for two.

On Thursday evening, Marian arrived alone at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel on Union Square to "have a glass of champagne and toast her sister goodbye," said Tom Sweeney, chief doorman at the hotel who for the last 37 years watched the twins descend the four blocks from their Nob Hill apartment.

"They're quite the personalities of San Francisco," Sweeney said. "We'll definitely miss Vivian."

lee.romney@latimes.com

Read More..

Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: The Star Factory

This is a near-infrared, colour-coded composite image of a sky field in the south-western part of the galactic star-forming region Messier 17. In this image, young and heavily obscured stars are recognized by their red colour. Bluer objects are either foreground stars or well-developed massive stars whose intense light ionizes the hydrogen in this region. The diffuse light that is visible nearly everywhere in the photo is due to emission from hydrogen atoms that have (re-)combined from protons and electrons. The dark areas are due to obscuration of the light from background objects by large amounts of dust — this effect also causes many of those stars to appear quite red. A cluster of young stars in the upper-left part of the photo, so deeply embedded in the nebula that it is invisible in optical light, is well visible in this infrared image. Technical information : The exposures were made through three filtres, J (at wavelength 1.25 µm; exposure time 5 min; here rendered as blue), H (1.65 µm; 5 min; green) and Ks (2.2 µm; 5 min; red); an additional 15 min was spent on separate sky frames. The seeing was 0.5 - 0.6 arcsec. The objects in the uppermost left corner area appear somewhat elongated because of a colour-dependent aberration introduced at the edge by the large-field optics. The sky field shown measures approx. 5 x 5 arcmin 2 (corresponding to about 3% of the full moon). North is up and East is left.

Image: ESO [high-resolution]

Caption: ESO

Read More..

Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure.

The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s.

“My work?” Ms. Mitchell said. “No, no, no, not my work.”

Earlier, the city medical examiner’s office, where Ms. Mitchell said she was employed from 2000 to 2011, said it was reviewing 843 rape cases handled by a lab technician who might have missed critical evidence.

So far, it has finished looking over about half the cases, and found 26 in which the technician had missed biological evidence and 19 in which evidence was commingled with evidence from other cases. In seven cases where evidence was missed, the medical examiner’s office was able to extract a DNA profile, raising the possibility that detectives could have caught some suspects sooner.

The office declined to identify the technician. Documents said she quit in November 2011 after the office moved to fire her, once supervisors had begun to discover deficiencies in her work. A city official who declined to be identified said Ms. Mitchell was the technician.

However, Ms. Mitchell, reached at her home in the Bronx on Friday, said she had never been told there were problems. “It couldn’t be me because your work gets checked,” she said. “You have supervisors.”

She also said that she had resigned because of a rotator cuff injury that impeded her movement. “I loved the job so much that I stayed a little longer,” she said, explaining that she had not expected to stay with the medical examiner’s office so long. “Then it was time to leave.”

Also on Friday, the Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal defense lawyers for most of the city’s poor defendants, said it was demanding that the city turn over information about the cases under review.

If needed, Legal Aid will sue the city to gain access to identifying information about the cases, its chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said, noting that New York was one of only 14 states that did not require routine disclosure of criminal evidence before trial.

Disclosure of the faulty examination of the evidence is prompting questions about outside review of the medical examiner’s office. The City Council on Friday announced plans for an emergency oversight committee, and its members spoke with outrage about the likelihood that missed semen stains and “false negatives” might have enabled rapists to go unpunished.

“The mishandling of rape cases is making double victims of women who have already suffered an indescribably horrific event,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker.

A few more details emerged Friday about a 2001 case involving the rape of a minor in Brooklyn, in which the technician missed biological evidence, the review found. The victim accused an 18-year-old acquaintance of forcing himself on her, and he was questioned by the police but not charged, according to a law enforcement official.

Unrelated to the rape, he pleaded guilty in 2005 to third-degree robbery and served two years in prison. The DNA sample he gave in the robbery case was matched with the one belatedly developed from evidence the technician had overlooked in the 2001 rape, law enforcement officials said. He was recently indicted in the 2001 rape.

Especially alarming to defense lawyers was the possibility that DNA samples were cross-contaminated and led to false convictions, or could do so in the future.

“Up to this point,” Mr. Banks said, “they have not made information available to us, as the primary defender in New York City, to determine whether there’s an injustice that’s been done in past cases, pending cases, or allowing us to be on the lookout in future cases.” He added, “If it could happen with one analyst, how does anyone know that it stops there?”

The medical examiner’s office has said that the risk of cross-contamination was extremely low and that it does not appear that anyone was wrongly convicted in the cases that have been reviewed so far. And officials in at least two of the city’s district attorneys’ offices — for Brooklyn and Manhattan — said they had not found any erroneous convictions.

But Mr. Banks said the authorities needed to do more, and that their statements thus far were the equivalent of “trust us.”

“Given what’s happened,” he said, “that’s cold comfort.”

Read More..

Business Briefing | Retailing: Best Buy Shares Rally on Improved Holiday Sales

The Best Buy Company had better-than-expected holiday sales, setting off a gain of $2, or 16.4 percent, in its stock price, to $14.21 a share on Friday. The holiday quarter accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s revenue last year. The chain said that revenue at stores open at least a year fell 1.4 percent for the nine weeks ended Jan. 5. The company’s performance in the United States was flat. The chief executive, Hubert Joly, said in a statement that the result was better than the last several quarters. A Morningstar analyst, R. J. Hottovy, said the results showed that some of Best Buy’s initiatives, like more employee training and online price matching helped increase sales.

Read More..

Academy doesn't follow the script in directors' race

Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow were behind two of the most acclaimed movies of 2012, the fact-based pictures "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty." The smart money in Hollywood had both vying for directing honors at next month's Academy Awards.

Yet when the Oscar nominations were announced Thursday, Affleck and Bigelow were passed over. Instead, two of the five slots went to longshot Hollywood outsiders: a 30-year-old New Orleans artist making his feature debut and an Austrian auteur who has worked almost exclusively outside the English language.

The nominations for Benh Zeitlin and Michael Haneke — whose Louisiana coming-of-age-story "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and French-language old-age drama "Amour," respectively, have grossed only a combined $12 million in the U.S. — had much of Hollywood baffled and buzzing, and trying to come up with an explanation.

PHOTOS: Top Oscar nominees

"I have no theory for it," said Amy Pascal, co-chair of Sony Pictures, which released "Zero Dark Thirty." "I don't understand it — everybody is like, 'What?' She [Bigelow] is the center of gravity of the movie." The director Ang Lee, who did land a spot on the list for his 3-D adventure "Life of Pi," joining Steven Spielberg ("Lincoln") and David O. Russell ("Silver Linings Playbook"), said, "It's shocking. Normally there's a pattern. There's no pattern this year."

Even Michael Barker, the co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, which released "Amour," called it "incomprehensible" that Bigelow wasn't nominated. Bigelow and Affleck had earned nominations in nearly every other major awards group.

Many voters, pundits and Oscar nominees offered up possible explanations for what Oscar watchers regard as one of the more surprising upsets in recent years. Theories included controversy over the accuracy of "Zero Dark's" torture scenes to voters turning to other movies because they thought Affleck and Bigelow were locks, much in the way a political candidate ahead in the polls will generate a low voter turnout.

Some felt that Affleck and Bigelow, whose movies, about the Iran hostage drama of 1979 and the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, were both based on shattering moments in recent history, split the vote; others thought the list reflected a desire for fresh voices. The politics of Hollywood and the peculiarities of awards voting also came in for consideration.

The slight to Bigelow was especially noteworthy because she is the only woman to have won a directing Oscar, for "The Hurt Locker." She may have been damaged by a controversy in which lawmakers, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), said the film erroneously suggested torture helped lead to the capture of Bin Laden.

The academy's nominees deviated sharply from the selections of the Directors Guild of America, announced earlier in the week. The DGA is usually a strong indicator of Oscars but only overlapped on two of the five choices (Spielberg and Lee).

LIST: Complete list of Oscar nominees

In past years, academy members often took their cues from the DGA, but this year Oscar voting closed several weeks earlier, before the DGA announced its selections.

It was also hard to avoid the quirks of academy voting. Although the Oscars are considered an overarching seal of quality, the nominations for all but best picture are decided by a small group, known as a branch.

So even though the Directors Guild of America is composed of nearly 15,000 members, the academy's director branch is far smaller, made up of about 360 people. Voters list their five choices in what is known as a preferential balloting system, with every member being credited with only one vote.

According to Steve Pond, an Oscar pundit with the industry website the Wrap, a director needs just 62 votes to land a nomination — a startlingly small total that can lead to surprising choices.

The median age of the director's branch, according to a study conducted last year by The Times, is 64, making it the second-oldest branch in the academy. That possibly helped "Amour" make the cut because the film deals with aging.

But there were cultural factors at work too.

One Oscar voter, the writer-director Keith Gordon, said in an interview that he put Zeitlin on the top of his ballot because of what he saw as "a trend toward smaller, more offbeat films." Also omitted from the list was Tom Hooper, the winner for "The King's Speech" two years ago, who helmed 2012's splashy "Les Miserables."

OSCARS 2013: Complete list | Snubs & surprises | Ballot | Oscar Watch | Timeline

Joe Cavalier, a TV veteran and member of the branch, said that he was "so tired of the same people getting nominated." He added, "I think people should go for dark horses, and other people that I talk to in the academy feel the same way."

Read More..

Canadian Tax Collectors Solve Mystery of Open Source Government

When you think of hotbeds of open source innovation, Canada’s Treasury Board typically doesn’t make the cut. But over the past three years, coders at this slightly obscure Canadian tax-collecting agency have produced something that’s pretty rare in government: a hit open source project.

We’re not talking about the next Linux here, but this summer, the Treasury Board of Canada hosted a CodeFest to invite hackers — mostly government staffers — to hack its Web Experience Toolkit, or WET — a set of open-source tools that the Treasury Board uses for building websites.

One hundred and fifty people came. Many of them were young developers, excitedly swapping code and sharing ideas across tables. To Lucia Harper, a communications consultant at the event who has worked for the Canadian government, it wasn’t your federal coder snoozefest. It looked like the kind of hackathon that you’d see at private companies. There “were pods of people gathered in groups all sporting laptops; giant screens on the walls with Twitter feeds, code demonstrations, style guides and the like,” she wrote in a blog post about the event. “There was a hubbub people. There was a buzz of anticipation and solutions.”

2012 was the year that the U.S. government put the full court press on software developers. As we reported earlier this week, the federal CIO Steven VanRoekel has a vision of a more hackable, more accessible government where code-sharing is far more common — and far more useful.

And this vision is starting to pay off. Over the past few years, government use of the social-coding website, GitHub, has skyrocketed. Today, there are more than 350 government projects hosted there. But the sad truth is that most of this code hasn’t been able to attract a wide group of developers, outside of the folks who were paid to write the original code. That kind of crossover success is the hallmark of a really successful open source effort.

And that’s what’s starting to happen with WET. It already has contributors from 34 federal agencies, but now that’s starting to branch out. “We’ve had contributions from business and even academia,” says Paul Jackson, a web project officer with the Treasury Board. There’s a contributor in Spain, and another who works as a contractor for the City of Ottawa. There are close to 200 contributors in all, but the real number of people who have now participated in the project is surely much larger as many of those official contributors are simply passing along code that others on their team have developed.

With about 30 private sector participants, the project is getting contributions that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

That means that, for example, the Treasury Board gets the benefits of someone else’s user interface testing. “We’re still evolving with learning how to do user experience and improving the useability of our website,” Jackson says. “But there are a lot of firms out there that are dedicated to that very purpose. And if they can share their testing results and get involved and help us with improving our designs, it can make the product better as a whole.”

Down in New York State, Luke Charde says he’s using the success of WET to try to sell his colleagues on the idea of doing more open source development. “That’s my vision for what I want to do across different agencies in New York,” says Charde, a user-interface design lead with New York’s Office of IT Services. As he sees things, WET is a runaway success. Among GitHub’s government pages, at least, it’s “one of the first examples of massive collaboration happening and savings,” he says.

Read More..

UK’s Savile abused hundreds over six decades: report

LONDON (Reuters) – The late British TV presenter Jimmy Savile physically abused hundreds of people over six decades, according to a police-led report on Friday which said he carried out attacks at the BBC and at hospitals where he did voluntary work.

Of his victims, 73 percent were under 18 and 82 percent were female. The oldest was 47 and the youngest just 8.

“Savile’s offending footprint was vast, predatory and opportunistic,” Commander Peter Spindler told reporters.

Savile, one of the BBC’s biggest stars of the 1970s and 80s received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth for charity work. He died in 2011, aged 84, a year before allegations about his abusive behavior emerged in a TV documentary.

Friday’s report said he had committed 214 criminal offences including 34 rapes or serious sexual assaults across the country.

His offending first occurred in 1955 in the northern English city of Manchester and the last attack was in 2009, the report said. He abused people at the BBC from 1965 including in 2006 at the last recording of popular weekly show Top of the Pops.

He also targeted people at hospitals over 30 years from 1965, including at the renowned Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London.

“It is now clear that Savile was hiding in plain sight and using his celebrity status and fund-raising activity to gain uncontrolled access to vulnerable people across six decades,” the report said.

In all, 600 people had come forward to police with information of which 450 related to Savile.

The report, issued jointly by London police and the NSPCC children’s charity, said it was likely there would be more victims who did not feel able to come forward.

Friday’s report is one of 14 launched since the allegations about Savile emerged, including four at the BBC.

The revelations about Savile plunged the BBC into weeks of turmoil and led to resignation of the publicly funded broadcaster’s director general just 54 days into his job.

OTHER STARS QUESTIONED

Detectives have also been looking into allegations against Savile acting with others and into related sex crimes which had no direct link to Savile.

They have since questioned 10 men, including Jim Davidson, a comedian who hosted prime time shows on the BBC in the 1990s, former BBC radio DJ Dave Lee Travis, and Max Clifford, Britain’s most high-profile celebrity publicist.

They all deny any wrongdoing.

A one-time professional wrestler, Savile became famous as a pioneering DJ in the 1960s before becoming a regular fixture on TV hosting prime-time pop and children’s shows until the 1990s.

He also ran about 200 marathons for charity, raising tens of millions of pounds for hospitals, leading some to give him keys to rooms where victims now allege they were abused.

While many colleagues and viewers thought the cigar-chomping Savile was weird, with his long blonde hair, penchant for garish outfits and flashy jewellery, he was considered a “national treasure”, honored not just by the queen but also by the late Pope John Paul II who made him a papal knight in 1990.

Despite rumors and suspicions, his sex crimes only came to light when rival broadcaster ITV aired allegations against him.

That prompted allegations the BBC had covered up allegations of sex abuse after it was revealed it had dropped its own expose shortly after Savile’s death and had run tribute shows about him instead.

A lengthy report last month cleared of the BBC of any cover-up but said it had missed numerous warnings and proved incapable of dealing with the scandal when it finally broke.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: UK’s Savile abused hundreds over six decades: report
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/uks-savile-abused-hundreds-over-six-decades-report/
Link To Post : UK’s Savile abused hundreds over six decades: report
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: Taking a Zen Approach to Caregiving

You try to help your elderly father. Irritated and defensive, he snaps at you instead of going along with your suggestion. And you think “this is so unfair” and feel a rising tide of anger.

How to handle situations like this, which arise often and create so much angst for caregivers?

Jennifer Block finds the answer in what she calls “contemplative caregiving” — the application of Buddhist principles to caregiving and the subject of a year-long course that starts at the San Francisco Zen Center in a few weeks.

This approach aims to cultivate compassion, both for older people and the people they depend on, said Ms. Block, 49, a Buddhist chaplain and the course’s lead instructor. She’s also the former director of education at the Zen Hospice project in San Francisco and founder of the Beyond Measure School for Contemplative Care, which is helping develop a new, Zen-inspired senior living community in the area.

I caught up with Ms. Block recently, and what follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Let’s start with your experience. Have you been a caregiver?

My experience in caregiving is as a professional providing spiritual care to individuals and families when they are facing and coping with aging and sickness and loss and dying, particularly in hospital and hospice settings.

What kinds of challenges have you witnessed?

People are for the most part unprepared for caregiving. They’re either untrained or unable to trust their own instincts. They lack confidence as well as knowledge. By confidence, I mean understanding and accepting that we don’t know all the answers – what to do, how to fix things.

This past weekend, I was on the phone with a woman who’d brought her mom to live near her in assisted living. The mom had been to the hospital the day before. My conversation with the daughter was about helping her see the truth that her mother needed more care and that was going to change the daughter’s responsibilities and her life. And also, her mother was frail, elderly, and coming nearer to death.

That’s hard, isn’t it?

Yes, because we live in a death-denying society. Also, we live in a fast-paced, demanding world that says don’t sit still — do something. But people receiving care often need most of all for us to spend time with them. When we do that, their mortality and our grief and our helplessness becomes closer to us and more apparent.

How can contemplative caregiving help?

We teach people to cultivate a relationship with aging, sickness and dying. To turn toward it rather than turning away, and to pay close attention. Most people don’t want to do this.

A person needs training to face what is difficult in oneself and in others. There are spiritual muscles we need to develop, just like we develop physical muscles in a gym. Also, the mind needs to be trained to be responsive instead of reactive.

What does that mean?

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re trying to help your mother, and she says something off-putting to you like “you’ve always been terrible at keeping house. It’s no wonder you lost my pajamas.”

The first thing is to notice your experience. To become aware of that feeling, almost like being slapped emotionally. To notice your chest tightening.

Then I tell people to take a deep breath. And say something to themselves like “soften” to address that tightness. That’s how you can stay facing something uncomfortable rather than turning away.

If I were in this position, I might say something to myself like “hello unhappiness” or “hello suffering” or “hello aging” to tether myself.

The second step would be curiosity about that experience. Like, wow, where do I feel that anger that rose up in me, or that fear? Oh, it’s in my chest. I’m going to feel that, stay with it, investigate it.

Why is that important?

Because as we investigate something we come to understand it. And, paradoxically, when we pay attention to pain it changes. It softens. It moves. It lessens. It deepens. And we get to know it and learn not to be afraid of it or change it or fix it but just come alongside of it.

Over hours, days, months, years, the mind and heart come to know pain. And the response to pain is compassion — the wish for the alleviation of pain.

Let’s go back to what mother said about your housekeeping and the pajamas. Maybe you leave the room for five minutes so you can pay attention to your reaction and remember your training. Then, you can go back in and have a response rather than a reaction. Maybe something like “Mom, I think you’re right. I may not be the world’s best housekeeper. I’m sorry I lost your pajamas. It seems like you’re having a pretty strong response to that, and I’d like to know why it matters so much to you. What’s happening with you today?”

Are other skills important?

Another skill is to become aware of how much we receive as well as give in caregiving. Caregiving can be really gratifying. It’s an expression of our values and identity: the way we want the world to be. So, I try to teach people how this role benefits them. Such as learning what it’s like to be old. Or having a close, intimate relationship with an older parent for the first time in decades. It isn’t necessarily pleasant or easy. But the alternative is missing someone’s final chapter, and that can be a real loss.

What will you do in your course?

We’ll teach the principles of contemplative care and discuss them. We’ll have homework, such as ‘Bring me three examples of someone you were caring for who was caring toward you in return.’ That’s one way of practicing attention. And people will train in meditation.

We’ll also explore our own relationship to aging, sickness, dying and loss. We’ll tell our stories: this is the situation I was in, this is where I felt myself shut down, this was the edge of my comfort or knowledge. And we’ll teach principles from Buddhism. Equanimity. Compassion. Deep inner connectedness.

What can people do on their own?

Mindfulness training is offered in almost every city. That’s one of the core components of this approach.

I think every caregiver needs to have their own caregiver — a therapist or a colleague or a friend, someone who is there for them and with whom they can unburden themselves. I think of caregiving as drawing water from a well. We need to make sure that we have whatever nurtures us, whatever supplies that well. And often, that’s connecting with others.

Are other groups doing this kind of work?

In New York City, the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care educates the public and professionals about contemplative care. And in New Mexico, the Upaya Zen Center does similar work, much of it centered around death and dying.

People who want to read about this might want to look at a new book of essays, “The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work” (Wisdom Publications, 2012).

Read More..

F.A.A. to Begin a Review of Boeing 787s

Federal authorities said Friday they would order a review of electrical systems in Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner following a spate of incidents, including a battery fire earlier this week in Boston, 15 months after the technologically advanced aircraft came into service.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it would examine critical systems on the Boeing 787, including the design, manufacture and assembly of the aircraft. More details were to be announced at a news conference Friday in Washington with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood; the administrator of the F.A.A., Michael Huerta; and Ray Conner, the head of Boeing’s commercial airplane division.

The review comes amid an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board into why a battery pack caught fire in a parked 787 at Logan International Airport in Boston on Monday. The fire occurred in a Japan Airlines plane from Tokyo after the passengers and crew had left the plane.

The battery, which powered the auxiliary power unit used when the plane is on the ground, sustained “severe fire damage,” according to the N.T.S.B.

Earlier on Friday, All Nippon Airlines of Japan reported cracks in the cockpit window of a 787 Dreamliner heading from Tokyo to Matsuyama. A spokeswoman said it was the third time that cracks had appeared in the windshield of one of the 17 787s operated by A.N.A.; the other two incidents happened last year.

Boeing has delivered 50 of the 787 airplanes so far and has received orders for more than 800 of the planes. But since their first commercial flight in November 2011, some 787s have had electrical fires, fuel leaks or other problems.

The 787, which makes extensive use of lightweight carbon composites, also relies on electric systems more than previous generations of airplanes. Electrical systems, not mechanical ones, operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. The plane also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones.

Read More..

Irvine City Council overhauls oversight, spending on Great Park

Capping a raucous eight-hour-plus meeting, the Irvine City Council early Wednesday voted to overhaul the oversight and spending on the beleaguered Orange County Great Park while authorizing an audit of the more than $220 million that so far has been spent on the ambitious project.

A newly elected City Council majority voted 3 to 2 to terminate contracts with two firms that had been paid a combined $1.1 million a year for consulting, lobbying, marketing and public relations. One of those firms — Forde & Mollrich public relations — has been paid $12.4 million since county voters approved the Great Park plan in 2002.

"We need to stop talking about building a Great Park and actually start building a Great Park," council member Jeff Lalloway said.

The council, by the same split vote, also changed the composition of the Great Park's board of directors, shedding four non-elected members and handing control to Irvine's five council members.

The actions mark a significant turning point in the decade-long effort to turn the former El Toro Marine base into a 1,447-acre municipal park with man-made canyons, rivers, forests and gardens that planners hoped would rival New York's Central Park.

The city hoped to finish and maintain the park for years to come with $1.4 billion in state redevelopment funds. But that money vanished last year as part of the cutbacks to deal with California's massive budget deficit.

"We've gone through $220 million, but where has it gone?" council member Christina Shea said of the project's initial funding from developers in exchange for the right to build around the site. "The fact of the matter is the money is almost gone. It can't be business as usual."

The council majority said the changes will bring accountability and efficiencies to a project that critics say has been larded with wasteful spending and no-bid contracts. For all that has been spent, only about 200 acres of the park has been developed and half of that is leased to farmers.

But council members Larry Agran and Beth Krom, who have steered the course of the project since its inception, voted against reconfiguring the Great Park's board of directors and canceling the contracts with the two firms.

Krom has called the move a "witch hunt" against her and Agran. Feuding between liberal and conservative factions on the council has long shaped Irvine politics.

"This is a power play," she said. "There's a new sheriff in town."

The council meeting stretched long into the night, with the final vote coming Wednesday at 1:34 a.m. Tensions were high in the packed chambers with cheering, clapping and heckling coming from the crowd.

At one point council member Lalloway lamented that he "couldn't hear himself think."

During public comments, newly elected Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer chastised the council for "fighting like schoolchildren." Earlier this week he said that if the Irvine's new council majority can't make progress on the Great Park, he would seek a ballot initiative to have the county take over.

And Spitzer angrily told Agran that his stewardship of the project had been a failure.

"You know what?" he said. "It's their vision now. You're in the minority."

mike.anton@latimes.com

rhea.mahbubani@latimes.com

Read More..

Stranded Motorist Photos Are Metaphor for Hurricanes, Recession and Loneliness

If you’re ever broken down on the side of an American highway and a woman with a light meter around her neck stops her car and approaches you, don’t be afraid. She’s not there to rob or hurt you.

It’s just Amy Stein, and all she wants to do is take your picture for her portrait series, Stranded. It might be a little awkward at first, but you’ll quickly see she’s chatty, friendly and not only carries a camera, but also a set of jumper cables, a jack, water and snacks.

For nearly a decade now, Stein has been traversing the country helping and photographing motorists. The project, as interesting as it is just as a concept, is not just about people stuck in shitty situations. Motorists for Stein are a stand-in for something larger.

“To me it’s a metaphor for what’s been happening across the country,” she says.

The project was originally conceived back in 2005 right after Hurricane Katrina hit. At the time Stein was in graduate school and had been told by a professor that she should get down to New Orleans to document the event. But instead of trying to document things like everyone else, she came up with Stranded.

At the time she was working on another project that took her from her home in New York City to Pennsylvania several times a week. With Katrina floating around in her head, she started noticing stranded motorists and quickly made the comparison. Like the residents of New Orleans, these drivers were experiencing hardship and watching as the world zoomed by.

“It became about being left behind,” she says.

Since Katrina, the project for Stein has grown to represent any number of situations facing the country. The recession, for example, with so many people sidetracked or flat-out ruined by job loss and foreclosures.

“I think there is this general post-Katrina malaise that continues to affect the country,” she says.

Back in 2008 she thought the project might have been over with the election of President Obama because he was an enormous morale boost and everyone hoped for a quick economic recovery. When things didn’t turn out quite as expected, the project went on.

For Stein, Stranded also relates to the isolation in people’s private lives. That’s why she carries water and other supplies – she doesn’t want to exacerbate the drivers’ vulnerability by taking their picture and leaving. She wants to help.

Driving for hours along desolate freeways without finding anyone to photograph gives Stein an empathy for her subjects. It can be downright depressing.

“It can become psychologically quite heavy,” she says. “It zens you out in terms or trying to control the project.”

The encounters are always unpredictable. In West Virginia Stein spotted a group of guys in orange climbing over the hill with guns while their friend stayed behind to fix the truck. The man doing the work — Gary — said his friends figured they might as well get some hunting in while they waited. He agreed to have his picture taken, but only if he could have his hunting mask on.

Then there was the time when Stein and her husband, who accompanies her sometimes, came upon on a broken-down work crew of federal inmates. The prison official said he didn’t want to be in the picture, but the inmates agreed to be photographed if they could take their own picture of Stein with their phone cameras in return.

The most productive patch of road, Stein says, has to be the freeway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Packed with motorists, she’s run into a lot of characters. What happens in Vegas seems to come out on the side of the highway when you’re stranded.

Surprisingly, Stein says she’s never felt endangered while shooting. She tries to judge the situation before stopping, but so far has had incredible luck. The biggest danger, she says, is the traffic zooming by. She shoots with a medium-format camera on a tripod so it takes a second to get set up and she’s more exposed than if she were to just pull out a DSLR.

“Nothing has ever happened, and – knock on wood – I hope that nothing ever happens,” she says.

Read More..

‘The Hunger Games’ lead fan favorites at People’s Choice awards

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Post-apocalyptic action film “The Hunger Games” was the big winner at the People’s Choice Awards on Thursday, picking up five awards including favorite movie of the year, while singer Katy Perry again led in the music categories.

Hosted by “The Big Bang Theory” actress Kaley Cuoco, the People’s Choice Awards named winners in more than 40 categories across film, television and music. About 475 million fans voted through the People’s Choice website.

“The Hunger Games,” based on the trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins, beat out “The Avengers,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Snow White and the Huntsman” for the coveted favorite movie accolade.

Jennifer Lawrence, who plays “Hunger Games” heroine Katniss Everdeen, won the favorite movie actress award over Mila Kunis, Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway and Scarlett Johansson.

“Thank you for loving movies as much as I do, and loving this movie and voting,” Lawrence said.

“The Hunger Games” was also named favorite action film and favorite movie franchise, while its stars Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth won favorite on-screen chemistry.

The People’s Choice is the first of Hollywood’s annual awards shows, but unlike the Oscars or the Golden Globes, the winners are determined by fans, so it provides few insights into likely winners of the movie industry’s top honors in February.

“The Avengers,” which was nominated in eight categories, didn’t go home empty-handed. Robert Downey Jr. was named favorite movie actor for his role as Iron Man in the superhero ensemble box office hit.

“You’ve chosen wisely,” the actor joked on stage.

Adam Sandler picked up the fan favorite award for comedic actor, while former “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston picked up the favorite comedic movie actress award, beating out Mila Kunis, Reese Witherspoon, Emily Blunt and Cameron Diaz.

“I cannot thank you enough for allowing me to be honored with this, after supporting me for almost 20 years,” Aniston said.

Emma Watson of “Harry Potter” fame picked up the favorite dramatic actress accolade for her role in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”

“Perks” was also named favorite dramatic movie, while “Ted,” the raunchy R-rated comedy from “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane, was named favorite comedy film.

MUSIC AND TELEVISION WINNERS

Katy Perry took home four trophies this year, including favorite female artist and a surprise win for favorite pop artist over Justin Bieber.

Fan favorite Taylor Swift beat out Tim McGraw, Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood for favorite country artist.

“You guys have blown my mind with what you’ve done with this album ‘Red.’ I want to thank you for caring about my music and me,” the singer said in her acceptance speech.

Her chart-topping album “Red,” which the singer based on her experiences, was one of 2012′s top-sellers. The singer attended the awards alone following a widely reported split from boyfriend Harry Styles of U.K. boy band One Direction.

Maroon 5 picked up the favorite band award. The band’s popularity skyrocketed in 2012 after lead singer Adam Levine served as a judge on television talent show “The Voice.”

British boy band The Wanted won favorite breakout artist.

In the television categories, CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory” was named favorite network comedy, while ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” picked up favorite network drama.

Ellen Pompeo of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Castle” actor Nathan Fillion won the favorite TV dramatic actress and actor awards, while “Glee” stars Lea Michele and Chris Colfer picked up the favorite TV comedic actress and actor awards.

Sandra Bullock was named favorite humanitarian for her efforts in helping victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: ‘The Hunger Games’ lead fan favorites at People’s Choice awards
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/the-hunger-games-lead-fan-favorites-at-peoples-choice-awards/
Link To Post : ‘The Hunger Games’ lead fan favorites at People’s Choice awards
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Flu Widespread, Leading a Range of Winter’s Ills

It is not your imagination — more people you know are sick this winter, even people who have had flu shots.

The country is in the grip of three emerging flu or flulike epidemics: an early start to the annual flu season with an unusually aggressive virus, a surge in a new type of norovirus, and the worst whooping cough outbreak in 60 years. And these are all developing amid the normal winter highs for the many viruses that cause symptoms on the “colds and flu” spectrum.

Influenza is widespread, and causing local crises. On Wednesday, Boston’s mayor declared a public health emergency as cases flooded hospital emergency rooms.

Google’s national flu trend maps, which track flu-related searches, are almost solid red (for “intense activity”) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly FluView maps, which track confirmed cases, are nearly solid brown (for “widespread activity”).

“Yesterday, I saw a construction worker, a big strong guy in his Carhartts who looked like he could fall off a roof without noticing it,” said Dr. Beth Zeeman, an emergency room doctor for MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Mass., just outside Boston. “He was in a fetal position with fever and chills, like a wet rag. When I see one of those cases, I just tighten up my mask a little.”

Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston started asking visitors with even mild cold symptoms to wear masks and to avoid maternity wards. The hospital has treated 532 confirmed influenza patients this season and admitted 167, even more than it did by this date during the 2009-10 swine flu pandemic.

At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 100 patients were crowded into spaces licensed for 53. Beds lined halls and pressed against vending machines. Overflow patients sat on benches in the lobby wearing surgical masks.

“Today was the first time I think I was experiencing my first pandemic,” said Heidi Crim, the nursing director, who saw both the swine flu and SARS outbreaks here. Adding to the problem, she said, many staff members were at home sick and supplies like flu test swabs were running out.

Nationally, deaths and hospitalizations are still below epidemic thresholds. But experts do not expect that to remain true. Pneumonia usually shows up in national statistics only a week or two after emergency rooms report surges in cases, and deaths start rising a week or two after that, said Dr. Gregory A. Poland, a vaccine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The predominant flu strain circulating is an H3N2, which typically kills more people than the H1N1 strains that usually predominate; the relatively lethal 2003-4 “Fujian flu” season was overwhelmingly H3N2.

No cases have been resistant to Tamiflu, which can ease symptoms if taken within 48 hours, and this year’s flu shot is well-matched to the H3N2 strain, the C.D.C. said. Flu shots are imperfect, especially in the elderly, whose immune systems may not be strong enough to produce enough antibodies.

Simultaneously, the country is seeing a large and early outbreak of norovirus, the “cruise ship flu” or “stomach flu,” said Dr. Aron J. Hall of the C.D.C.’s viral gastroenterology branch. It includes a new strain, which first appeared in Australia and is known as the Sydney 2012 variant.

This week, Maine’s health department said that state was seeing a large spike in cases. Cities across Canada reported norovirus outbreaks so serious that hospitals were shutting down whole wards for disinfection because patients were getting infected after moving into the rooms of those who had just recovered. The classic symptoms of norovirus are “explosive” diarrhea and “projectile” vomiting, which can send infectious particles flying yards away.

“I also saw a woman I’m sure had norovirus,” Dr. Zeeman said. “She said she’d gone to the bathroom 14 times at home and 4 times since she came into the E.R. You can get dehydrated really quickly that way.”

This month, the C.D.C. said the United States was having its biggest outbreak of pertussis in 60 years; there were about 42,000 confirmed cases, the highest total since 1955. The disease is unrelated to flu but causes a hacking, constant cough and breathlessness. While it is unpleasant, adults almost always survive; the greatest danger is to infants, especially premature ones with undeveloped lungs. Of the 18 recorded deaths in 2012, all but three were of infants under age 1.

That outbreak is worst in cold-weather states, including Colorado, Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Vermont.

Although most children are vaccinated several times against pertussis, those shots wear off with age. It is possible, the authorities said, that a new, safer vaccine introduced in the 1990s gives protection that does not last as long, so more teenagers and adults are vulnerable.

And, Dr. Poland said, if many New Yorkers are catching laryngitis, as has been reported, it is probably a rhinovirus. “It’s typically a sore, really scratchy throat, and you sometimes lose your voice,” he said.

Though flu cases in New York City are rising rapidly, the city health department has no plans to declare an emergency, largely because of concern that doing so would drive mildly sick people to emergency rooms, said Dr. Jay K. Varma, deputy director for disease control. The city would prefer people went to private doctors or, if still healthy, to pharmacies for flu shots. Nursing homes have had worrisome outbreaks, he said, and nine elderly patients have died. Homes need to be more alert, vaccinate patients, separate those who fall ill and treat them faster with antivirals, he said.

Dr. Susan I. Gerber of the C.D.C.’s respiratory diseases branch, said her agency has not seen any unusual spike of rhinovirus, parainfluenza, adenovirus, coronavirus or the dozens of other causes of the “common cold,” but the country is having its typical winter surge of some, like respiratory syncytial virus “that can mimic flulike symptoms, especially in young children.”

The C.D.C. and the local health authorities continue to advocate getting flu shots. Although it takes up to two weeks to build immunity, “we don’t know if the season has peaked yet,” said Dr. Joseph Bresee, chief of prevention in the agency’s flu division.

Flu shots and nasal mists contain vaccines against three strains, the H3N2, the H1N1 and a B. Thus far this season, Dr. Bresee said, H1N1 cases have been rare, and the H3N2 component has been a good match against almost all the confirmed H3N2 samples the agency has tested.

About a fifth of all flus this year thus far are from B strains. That part of the vaccine is a good match only 70 percent of the time, because two B’s are circulating.

For that reason, he said, flu shots are being reformulated. Within two years, they said, most will contain vaccines against both B strains.

Joanna Constantine, 28, a stylist at the Guy Thomas Hair Salon on West 56th Street in Manhattan, said she recently was so sick that she was off work and in bed for five days — and silenced by laryngitis for four of them.

She did not have the classic flu symptoms — a high fever, aches and chills — so she knew it was probably something else.

Still, she said, it scared her enough that she will get a flu shot next year. She had not bothered to get one since her last pregnancy, she said. But she has a 7-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter, “and my little guys get theirs every year.”

Jess Bidgood contributed reporting.

Read More..

European Central Bank Leaves Key Rate Unchanged

FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank left its main interest rate at a record low Thursday, apparently concluding that any further reduction would be powerless to ease a severe credit crunch in countries like Italy or Spain.

The E.C.B. left its benchmark rate at 0.75 percent. Some bank watchers had looked for a further reduction, in light of recent data showing that inflation is falling and many businesses continue to have trouble getting credit. A recovery of the European economy is unlikely until businesses are able to borrow again.

While cutting interest rates is a standard policy tool of central banks, Mario Draghi, the president of the E.C.B., has often complained that the central bank has lost much of its influence over rates in troubled countries like Spain. Comercial banks there are already struggling with problem loans and reluctant to lend except at much higher rates.

The E.C.B. governing council, which held its regularly monthly monetary policy meeting in Frankfurt, may have concluded that a rate cut now would be superfluous. The E.C.B. has been allowing banks to borrow as much as they want from the central bank at 0.75 percent, if they can provide collateral. But the E.C.B. cannot compel banks to pass on lower rates to customers, and many do not.

In addition, governing council members including Jens Weidmann, president of the German Bundesbank, may have argued that there is a danger of inflation in some countries if the benchmark rate is cut any further.

The annual rate of inflation in the euro zone is 2.2 percent and has been falling. The E.C.B. aims for a rate of 2 percent, and outside Germany — which is historically hypersensitive to inflation fears — few people are worried about rising prices.

Analysts had been divided on whether the E.C.B. would cut rates Thursday. The euro zone economy is shrinking, unemployment is rising, and E.C.B. figures released last week showed that credit issued to businesses continued to decline.

“In a normal world, a central bank confronted with these circumstances would look for ways to ease monetary conditions,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist of High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York, wrote in a note to clients.

But other economists expected the E.C.B. to wait because of signs that the euro zone economy could be poised for a mild recovery. Several indicators of business sentiment, such as the Ifo index in Germany, have shown that managers have become more optimistic and more willing to invest, because they are less afraid that the euro zone will break up.

“These indicators again came in better in December, with a particularly strong improvement in the Ifo Index, which argues for unchanged key rates in January,” Michael Schubert, an analyst at Commerzbank, wrote in a note.

Read More..

Charlie Sheen downplays Baja encounter with L.A. mayor

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa found himself sucked deeper into the Charlie Sheen-TMZ-Hollywood gossip vortex Tuesday, with the actor speaking out again about the night they met up at a hotel in Mexico over the holidays.

Sheen made news last month after he tweeted a picture of himself with his arm around Villaraigosa the night of Sheen's bar opening in Baja California, Mexico. The former star of "Two and a Half Men" praised the mayor as a man who "knows how to party." But Villaraigosa downplayed the significance of the image, telling KNBC's Conan Nolan over the weekend that he had only "bumped into" Sheen and engaged in a three-minute conversation.

On Tuesday, Sheen challenged Villaraigosa's account, telling celebrity website TMZ that the mayor was drinking in Sheen's hotel suite in a room full of beautiful women, including at least one porn star. "I memorize 95 pages a week, so the last thing that I am is memory challenged," Sheen told the website. "We hung out for the better part of two hours."

Hours later, Sheen issued a more muted account, saying the mayor had spoken to many other people at the opening of the bar. "I am a giant fan of the mayor's and apologize if any of my words have been misconstrued," the statement said.

By then, however, Villaraigosa found himself fending off related questions at a news conference meant to be devoted to billionaire Eli Broad's new downtown art museum. "Can you just set the record straight for us?" asked one reporter. "What was it? Two hours or three minutes?" asked another. Then came the zinger: "Does what happens in Cabo stay in Cabo?"

Villaraigosa cackled at the Cabo crack but refused to take the bait. "I've said what I'm going to say on that, everybody," Villaraigosa declared. "You had fun. Let's talk about the important things, like a thousand jobs today" — a reference to construction work going on at Broad's museum.

Villaraigosa has frequently bristled at media questions about his personal life, going silent on some occasions and becoming visibly angry on others. Last week, he told KNBC's Nolan that Nolan had asked a "bozo question" about the Sheen photograph. He also noted that Nolan and other newsroom staffers have, like Sheen, asked the mayor to pose for pictures with them.

Sheen has been a TMZ staple, using the website as a platform to talk up his $100,000 gift to celebrity Lindsay Lohan and his porn star "goddesses." And Villaraigosa has glided easily between the world of politics and the entertainment industry since being elected in 2005.

"He's a celebrity mayor. And he's always wanted to be that," said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State L.A. "If you're going to be a celebrity mayor, you have to take the good and the bad and everything in between" when it comes to news coverage.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Read More..

Kickstarter Campaigns Reap $319M in 2012

While Kickstarter’s hardware projects made headlines in 2012, film and gaming ideas (of both the video and board variety) were the real cash magnets for the crowdfunding site, raising a combined $176 million.

That’s just one of the many stats Kickstarter recently released on its crowdfunding activity in 2012, arguably the year the online service, and the notion of crowdfunding, went mainstream. In 2012 Kickstarter attracted more than 2 million backers who pledged a combined $319 million on everything from one-woman comedy shows to iPhone-enabled watches and electronic banana pianos. The money total blew away 2011 by 221 percent, and the number of backers grew a corresponding 238 percent.

But just because a campaign launched didn’t mean it was successful, in fact, it got harder as the year went on (especially for hardware projects), both by Kickstarter’s design and as the public wised up to beautiful-looking renderings of gadgets that would never get shipped. Of the 41,765 projects launched on Kickstarter, only 18,109 campaigns (about 43 percent) were successful.

Across project categories, gaming projects took in the most money, $83 million, thanks in large part to the Ouya gaming console, which raised $8.6 million in August. Film and video projects raised close to $58 million, the second-highest amount of cash, and Kickstarter notes that 10 percent of films at the January 2012 Sundance film festival were funded on the site. In third place were design projects (including furniture, iPhone cases, and bike accessories), which raised $50.1 million.

The single biggest Kickstarter star last year was the Pebble watch, which pulled in a record-shattering $10 million in May. However, in Kickstarter’s 50 slide “Best of 2012” presentation, there’s no mention of the e-paper watch nor hardly any other physical goods. The spotlight is clearly on art and performance campaigns; a not so subtle hint at Kickstarter’s growing fatigue with design and technology projects, which caused the crowdfunding site considerable pain in 2012.

Here was the problem: fully 84 percent of the top physical product-based projects were delayed. That in turn led to a wave of unhappy backers who mistakenly thought pledging amounted to online shopping. As a result, Kickstarter laid out stricter guidelines for campaigns in the design and technology categories, where you find nearly all of the non-food consumer products on the site.

Product inventors must now have photographs of their working prototypes instead of computer renderings, and clearly articulate to backers the risks of their project. Even if you follow these guidelines perfectly, the odds you’ll get your product accepted on Kickstarter have diminished. The startup’s widely-discussed “Kickstarter is Not A Store” blog post from September made it clear that Kickstarter doesn’t know how to handle million-dollar hardware projects and has no desire to figure it out.

In many ways, the decisions about what to include and exclude in its 2012 roundup are an indication of where Kickstarter wants to place its emphasis going forward. It’s projects like this video game proposal, the XOXO Festival (one of the first major festivals funded on the site), and a community hackerspace in Baghdad.

As cool as the Pebble watch may be, it’s not likely you’ll see the likes of it rise up again on Kickstarter, especially as other crowdfunding sites emerge and start to specialize in the categories and projects with which Kickstarter would rather not bother.

Read More..

TV drama production in L.A. plunges by 20% in 2012

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The filming of TV dramas and reality shows in Los Angeles plummeted in 2012, according to figures released Tuesday by FilmL.A., the non-profit agency that coordinates location shoots in the region.

TV drama shoots were off by 20 percent from 2011, while the filming of reality shows dropped by 11.8 percent. Those numbers overshadowed the report’s good news on overall location shooting, movie production and commercial filming, all of which were up from the previous year.

The TV drama number is critical to the overall health of local filming, because those shows — mainly hour-long, high-end and multiple episodes – employ more people and bring more economic benefits than other types of productions. A typical 22-episode-a-year network series has a budget of $ 60 million and generates 840 direct and indirect jobs, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

The numbers confirm what many had feared since a midyear FilmL.A. report indicated that L.A. was losing its grip on this critical production sector.

Of 23 TV drama pilots launched last year, just two were based in L.A., with the rest being shot in Canada, and other U.S. states including New York and North Carolina.

The TV drama figures clouded the otherwise positive report. Paced by upticks in feature film and commercial shoots, overall on-location production in 2012 rose 4.7 percent from the previous year, to its highest level since 2008.

FilmLA measures filming activity by permitted production days. Last year there were 46,254, compared to 45,484 in the previous year.

Overall TV production was dragged down by the drama and reality losses, falling 3.4 percent for the year (16,762 PPD in 2012 vs.17,349 in 2011). It would have been worse, but for a surge in sitcom production that powered an 11.9 percent fourth quarter increase.

L.A. still dominates in terms of sitcom production, but those are mainly half-hour shows shot primarily on soundstages. Comedy pilots employ fewer people and cost about $ 2 million to produce, compared to $ 5.5 million for drama pilots, the agency said.

“We know that part of the decline in our TV drama figures stems from producers’ desire to cut costs by filming more on studio back-lots and soundstages,” said FilmLA president Paul Audley. “Unfortunately, last year we also saw a record number of new TV drama series shot out of state, resulting in negative economic consequences.”

On-location movie production increased 3.7 percent for the year (5,892 PPD in 2012 vs. 5,682 PPD in 2011). This was the category’s best year since 2008, the year before feature production declined precipitously and state lawmakers enacted the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program.

The Warner Bros.’ movie “Gangster Squad,” which qualified for the state tax credit, provided a bright spot for the program.

The film, which opens Friday, was shot entirely in the city of Los Angeles and prominently features a number of local landmarks including City Hall and Union Station.

It reversed a trend that had seen L.A.-set period films “Hollywoodland” and “Black Dahlia” go elsewhere to film. Those 2006 movies shot some exteriors in Los Angeles, but “Hollywoodland” was produced mainly in Toronto and “The Black Dahlia” was filmed in Bulgaria.

In all, projects that qualified for the state tax credit accounted for 5.9 percent of the total movie shoots last year. Among the films that were shot utilizing the program were “10 Things I Hate About Life,” “Baggage Claim,” “The Bling Ring,” “Dark Skies,” “The Hive,” “Jesus in Cowboy Boots,” “Look of Love,” and “Plush.”

“Last year saw our industry rocked by dramatic changes in the local production landscape,” Audley said. “If we seek a more secure future for filming in Los Angeles, we must continue to innovate and expand upon the programs proven to attract new projects to California.”

Lawmakers last year voted to extend the program, which has been over-subscribed and provides lesser breaks than several competing states, through the 2016-17 fiscal year. New York in particular has become a major lure for producers, having added post-production tax credits last year, on top of filming incentives.

Other projects driving a significant amount of location filming in the L.A..area in 2012 included “Bad Words” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” from director J.J. Abrams.

Commercials production was another bright spot. Commercial shoots increased 14.1 percent for the year (8,078 PPD in 2012 vs. 7,079 in 2011), driven in part by a surge in the number of locally produced Internet commercial projects. Their production accounted for 7.9 percent of the commercials total, well up from the 1.7 percent web-based commercials generated when FilmL.A. first began tracking them in 2008.

Roughly 585,850 jobs directly or indirectly tied to the entertainment industry brought in $ 43.3 billion in labor income in 2011, according to the most recent figures from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Commission. That’s equivalent to 17.6 percent of L.A. County’s 3.3 million jobs. The industry generated $ 5.6 billion in state and local taxes that year.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: TV drama production in L.A. plunges by 20% in 2012
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/tv-drama-production-in-l-a-plunges-by-20-in-2012/
Link To Post : TV drama production in L.A. plunges by 20% in 2012
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Recipes for Health: Cauliflower and Tuna Salad — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I have added tuna to a classic Italian antipasto of cauliflower and capers dressed with vinegar and olive oil. For the best results give the cauliflower lots of time to marinate.

1 large or 2 small or medium cauliflowers, broken into small florets

1 5-ounce can water-packed light (not albacore) tuna, drained

1 plump garlic clove, minced or pureéd

1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

3 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar or champagne vinegar

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Place the cauliflower in a steaming basket over 1 inch of boiling water, cover and steam 1 minute. Lift the lid for 15 seconds, then cover again and steam for 5 to 8 minutes, until tender. Refresh with cold water, then drain on paper towels.

2. In a large bowl, break up the tuna fish and add the cauliflower.

3. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix together the garlic, parsley, capers, lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add the cauliflower and toss together. Marinate, stirring from time to time, for 30 minutes if possible before serving. Serve warm, cold, or at room temperature.

Yield: Serves 6 as a starter or side dish

Advance preparation: You can make this up to a day ahead, but omit the parsley until shortly before serving so that it doesn’t fade. It keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Nutritional information per serving: 188 calories; 15 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 10 grams monounsaturated fat; 10 milligrams cholesterol; 8 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 9 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

Read More..

DealBook: Ping An Shares Fall for 2nd Straight Day

SHANGHAI – Shares in the Ping An Group, the Chinese insurance and banking giant, fell in Shanghai trading for the second consecutive day on Wednesday over concerns that the British bank HSBC was having trouble selling its 15.6 percent stake in the company.

HSBC had announced plans in December to sell a $9.4 billion stake in Ping An to the Charoen Pokphand Group of Thailand. Part of that sale has already been completed. But media outlets have reported this week that the China Development Bank, a big state lender, has decided not to finance the rest of the deal and that the China Insurance Regulatory Commission is likely to reject the deal.

The report, first published by The South China Morning Post, could not be independently confirmed. The parties involved all declined to comment on Wednesday. A spokesman for Ping An, which is based in Shenzhen, China, would say only that approval of the deal was proceeding normally.

But several analysts have expressed doubts that the full deal will go through on time. In Hong Kong, Ping An shares rebounded on Wednesday from a sharp drop on Tuesday, while Ping An’s share price continued to decline for a second day in trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The deal is facing difficulty at a time of growing scrutiny of Ping An. The company, which is one of the largest insurers in China and a financial conglomerate worth about $60 billion, has longstanding financial ties to the relatives of China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

The Times reported in October and November that the relatives of China’s prime minister had amassed a multibillion-dollar stake in Ping An before the company’s initial public stock offering in 2004.

The stake was bought from a Chinese state-owned company for about $65 million in late 2002, and was at one time worth as much as $3.7 billion. The relatives of Mr. Wen owned a portion of those shares through a series of holding companies. It is unclear whether they have sold their entire stake.

The relatives of China’s former Central Bank chief, Dai Xianglong, also held a Ping An stake through holding companies during the same period. At one time, the companies controlled about $3.1 billion in Ping An shares, according to corporate documents obtained by The Times.

The relatives obtained the shares at a time when the two senior government officials were effectively acting as financial regulators with oversight of Ping An during a crucial period before its I.P.O. in 2004.

The relatives of the two senior officials have denied holding the stakes.

HSBC acquired its initial stake in Ping An in September 2002, and bought additional stakes in Ping An from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. On Dec. 5, HSBC said it planned to sell its entire 15.6 percent stake to the Charoen Pokphand Group of Thailand to increase capital.

Soon after, one of China’s top business publications, Caixin, reported that a large part of the payment for the first part of the purchase would come from a group of Chinese investors and Ping An’s management team, as well as the former president of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. Ping An and Charoen Pokphand disputed the Caixin magazine report.

Ping An is widely regarded as one of the most successful financial services firms in China. The company was founded in 1988, and has operated as a shareholding company since shortly after that time. It is not considered a state- owned company, but the government of Shenzhen has always held a big stake in Ping An, which operates the country’s second-largest insurer.

Read More..

LAPD force exceeds 10,000 for the first time, officials say

For the first time in the city's history, Los Angeles' police force now exceeds 10,000 officers, city officials said Monday.

Appearing with LAPD Chief Charlie Beck to discuss the continued drop in crime last year, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the department is budgeted for 10,023 officers, up from the 9,963 authorized over the last three years, during a deep budget crisis.

The staffing increase took effect Jan. 1, when 60 sworn officers moved into the LAPD from the General Services Department, which patrols parks, libraries and other municipal buildings, said Villaraigosa spokesman Peter Sanders. Those officers will continue to patrol city facilities, budget officials said.

Some questioned the significance of the staffing milestone, since the overall number of sworn officers employed by the city hasn't grown.

"It's an increase for show," said Kevin James, a candidate for mayor in the March 5 election who has questioned Villaraigosa's LAPD hiring goals. "The mayor really wanted to get to 10,000 one way or the other before he left office, and this was the way he could do it under the current budget constraints."

Los Angeles experienced a 10.5% decrease in gang crime and an 8.2% drop in violent crime last year, compared with 2011. The city had the lowest number of violent crimes per capita of any major city, including New York and Chicago, Villaraigosa said.

The mayor attributed those numbers — and a decade-long decline in crime — in large part to the expansion of the police force.

Villaraigosa originally promised to add 1,000 new officers to the department during the 2005 election campaign, criticizing then-Mayor James K. Hahn for failing to do so. Since then, he has succeeded in adding 800 officers, Sanders said. On Monday, Villaraigosa suggested that the addition of the final 200 will not be achieved until after June 30, when he leaves office.

"I would hope that the next mayor would, as we get out of this economic crisis, increase our Police Department to that 1,000," he said.

While Villaraigosa has been pushing for continued hiring at the LAPD, Beck has warned in recent weeks that the LAPD would lose 500 officers if voters fail to approve Proposition A, a half-cent sales tax measure on the March 5 ballot. That would represent more than half of the LAPD buildup accomplished by Villaraigosa.

Despite Beck's warnings, Villaraigosa said he is not ready to endorse Proposition A until the council makes a series of cost-cutting moves, such as turning over operation of the city zoo to a private entity.

Since Villaraigosa took office, homicides have decreased 38% and gang crime has dropped by a similar amount. The number of slayings has stayed largely the same over the last three years, with 297 homicides in 2010, 297 in 2011 and 298 last year. Overall crime dropped 1.4% last year. Property crimes, which are more numerous than violent crimes, increased for the first time in several years — driven in part by a 30% increase in cell phone thefts, officials said.

With little money to pay officers for overtime, the department has been compensating them with time off. The resulting staffing loss has been the equivalent of about 450 officers at any given time, according to department figures — a hit that has complicated crime-fighting strategies.

Preserving LAPD funding has become increasingly challenging for council members. For nine months they have debated whether to lay off dozens of civilian LAPD employees while continuing to hire enough police officers to maintain current staffing levels.

Councilman Paul Koretz, who opposed the layoffs, said the movement of the 60 building patrol officers to the LAPD was "a little smoke and mirrors." He questioned whether the LAPD buildup in the Villaraigosa era was financially sustainable.

"It just seems like we really never did the analysis to see if we could afford it," he said.

A defeat of the sales tax increase, which is projected to generate roughly $215 million in new revenue, would leave council members no choice but to roll back the size of the LAPD, Koretz said.

But Villaraigosa warned that would be dangerous, saying other California cities have seen upticks in crime after cutting back on officers.

"I know some people think that 10,000 cops is a magical illusion, a meaningless number, that more officers don't necessarily lead to a reduction in crime," said the mayor, adding: "Those critics talk a lot, but they're just plain wrong."

david.zahniser@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

Read More..

Bare-Bones Photo Tour of London Squat Proves Content Is King

While flashy animations and interactions are fun to play with on the web, photographers don’t always need to think big-budget to tell their story online. With just a little bit of HTML and jQuery, photographer Adrian Nettleship has churned out a timely and purpose-built web experience that lets users explore a London squat and meet its inhabitants.

Nettleship’s photos and audio are combined into a simple choose-your-own-adventure walk-through of the squat that lacks gloss, but is nonetheless captivating.

“I’ve sometimes found the medium of photography slightly frustrating, almost limiting, in its ability to show the relation of one image to another,” he says. “I’ve never liked to use captions to [solely] explain context.”

Occupy and Explore is a response to new amendments to U.K. law that re-categorize squatting as a criminal offense, punishable by a six-month jail term and fines up to £5,000 ($8,000). The new laws increase the power of property owners in legal dispute with squatters, who according to the U.K. government number 20,000. Squatting groups say the real number is more. 

Pro-squatter campaign group Squatters’ Action for Secure Homes (SQUASH) says there are an estimated 650,000 empty properties, that it is society’s most vulnerable who squat and that the new laws will lead to increased homelessness. Furthermore, SQUASH says the new laws will, over five years, cost $790 million to enforce and that mass evictions and prosecution of peaceful squatters will burden the police, courts and charities for years to come.

In the U.K., squatters’ lifestyles have long divided opinion, but Nettleship feels some sections of the British media leading up to the law change demonized squatters.

“There was a huge amount of misinformation about the subject, such as tabloid stories about eastern European home invaders seizing houses while their owners were away for the weekend,” says Nettleship. “It has always been illegal to invade someone else’s home, but this was being omitted from the discussion. I wanted to counter the stereotype, to show how squatters can be thoughtful people who maintain and improve abandoned buildings.”

Nettleship’s use of software tools is as resourceful as his subjects’ use and reuse of spaces and materials. Over a number of weeks, he taught himself to use Dreamweaver and jQuery to complement his basic HTML knowledge. For those photographers balking at tackling an interactive project, Occupy is an example of basic navigation enriching a simple story — a success due in no small part to the way it addresses the context of the issue. It’s more difficult to unfairly lambast a population in the abstract after meeting its individual people.

The project also comes at a time of larger political shifts. Since coming to power, the coalition Conservative/Liberal Democrat government has steadily lost public support. Repeated austerity measures and service cuts have hit some communities hard and not since the ’80s has talk of class division been so prevalent.

“There’s so much to say at the moment,” says Nettleship. “The balance of power between government, people and large organizations is undergoing adjustment, as is the United Kingdom’s role in world affairs. We need to be clear on what values are important to us, and defend them. As with the changes of the Thatcher years, the effects will be felt for many years to come.”

Nettleship admits that he was only able to make it through the early years of his photography career by living with his parents and eating their food. From looking at the lives of his friends, he says his longish route to self reliance was not — and increasingly is not — unusual.

“Divisions [between the haves and have-nots] seem to lie along who your parents were, and most importantly how much they accumulated during the prosperous years of North Sea oil and property growth,” says Nettleship. “It’s not uncommon for people to live at home into their 30s enabling them to study or work an unpaid internship in order to get the job they want. My friends who didn’t take or didn’t have those opportunities are finding it much harder. People are starting to buy houses, but I know very few who have done it without a helping hand on the deposit. The baby-boomer generation are soaking up the impact of austerity on their children. The middle classes won’t feel the full impact until a generation down the line, when the money runs out.”

Nettleship is exhibiting a physical adaptation of Occupy and Explore, whereby his photographs will be sectioned out in space and joined by colored string to show paths through the squat.

Read More..

David Bowie breaks long silence with new music release

LONDON (Reuters) – British singer David Bowie released his first new song in nearly a decade on Tuesday in a surprise launch coinciding with his 66th birthday.

“Where Are We Now?”, produced by his long-term collaborator Tony Visconti, is a mournful look back to the time he spent in Berlin in the 1970s with an accompanying video featuring black-and-white footage of the city when it was still divided.

The song, available on iTunes and free to view on his re-launched website, was recorded in New York and will be followed by his first studio album since 2003, “The Next Day”, due to hit shelves in March.

Bowie’s label Columbia Records said the new song was a “treasure” that appeared “as if out of nowhere”, underlining the element of surprise from a release that ends years of speculation among fans over whether he would record again.

“Throwing shadows and avoiding the industry treadmill is very David Bowie despite his extraordinary track record that includes album sales in excess of 130 million not to mention his massive contributions in the area of art, fashion, style, sexual exploration and social commentary,” the label said.

The album will consist of 14 songs, and a deluxe edition will feature three bonus tracks.

The glam-rock star shot to fame with “Space Oddity” in 1969, and later with his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, before establishing himself as a chart-topping force in the early 1980s.

Known for his constant desire to re-invent and experiment with different musical genres, Bowie is considered one of the most influential, and unusual stars of the pop era.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: David Bowie breaks long silence with new music release
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/david-bowie-breaks-long-silence-with-new-music-release/
Link To Post : David Bowie breaks long silence with new music release
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: Who Should Receive Organ Transplants?

Joe Gammalo had been contending with pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs, for more than a decade when he came to the Cleveland Clinic in 2008 seeking a lung transplant.

“It had gotten to the point where I was on oxygen all the time and in a wheelchair,” he told me in an interview. “I didn’t expect to live.”

Lung transplants are a dicey proposition, involving a huge surgical procedure, arduous follow-up, the lifelong use of potent immunosuppressive drugs and high rates of serious side effects. “It’s not like taking out an appendix,” said Dr. Marie Budev, the medical director of the clinic’s lung transplant program.

Only 50 to 57 percent of all recipients live for five years, she noted, and they will still die of their disease. But there’s no other treatment for pulmonary fibrosis.

Some medical centers would have turned Mr. Gammalo away. Because survival rates are even lower for older patients, guidelines from the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation caution against lung transplants for those over 65, though they set no age limit.

But “we are known as an aggressive, high-risk center,” said Dr. Budev. So Mr. Gammalo was 66 when he received a lung; his newly found buddy, Clyde Conn, who received the other lung from the same donor, was 69.

You can’t mistake the trend: A graying population and revised policies determining who gets priority for donated organs, have led to a rising proportion of older adults receiving transplants.

My colleague Judith Graham has reported on the increase in heart transplants, but the pattern extends to other organs, too.

The number of kidney transplants performed annually on adults over 65 tripled between 1998 and last year, according to data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. In 2001, 7.4 percent of liver transplant recipients were over 65; last year, that rose to 13 percent.

The rise in elderly lung transplant candidates is particularly dramatic because, since 2005, a “lung allocation score” puts those at the highest mortality risk, rather than those who’ve waited longest, at the top of the list.

In 2001, about 3 percent of those on the wait list and of those transplanted were over 65; last year, older patients represented almost 18 percent of wait-listed candidates and more than a quarter of transplant recipients. (Medicare pays for the surgery, though patients face co-pays and considerable out-of-pocket costs, including for drugs and travel.)

The debate has grown, too: When the number of adults awaiting transplants keeps growing, but organ donations stay flat, is it desirable or even ethical that an increasing proportion of recipients are elderly?

Dr. Budev, who estimated that a third of her program’s patients are over 65, votes yes. As long as a program selects candidates carefully, “how can you deny them a therapy?” she asked. So the Cleveland Clinic has no age limit. “We feel that everyone should have a chance.”

At the University of Michigan, by contrast, the age limit remains 65, though Dr. Kevin Chan, the transplant program’s medical director, acknowledged that some fit older patients get transplanted.

“You can talk about this all day — it’s a tough one,” Dr. Chan said. Younger recipients have greater physiologic reserve to aid in the arduous recovery; older ones face higher risk of subsequent kidney failure, stroke, diabetes and other diseases, and, of course, their lifespans are shorter to begin with.

Donated lungs, fragile and prone to injury, are a particularly scarce commodity. Last year, surgeons performed 16,055 kidney transplants, 5,805 liver transplants and 1,949 heart transplants. Only1,830 patients received lung transplants.

“What if there’s a 35-year-old on a ventilator who needs the lung just as much?” Dr. Chan said. “Why should a 72-year-old possibly take away a lung from a 35-year-old?” Yet, he acknowledged, “it’s easy to look at the statistics and say, ‘Give the lungs to younger patients.’ At the bedside, when you meet this patient and family, it’s a lot different.”

These questions about who deserves scarce resources — those most likely to die without them? or those most likely to live longer with them? — will persist as the population ages. They’re also likely to arise when the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation begins working towards revised guidelines this spring. (I’d also like to hear your take, below.)

Lots of 65- and 75-year-olds are very healthy. Yet transplants themselves can cause harm and there’s no backup, like dialysis. Without the transplant, they die. But when the transplant goes wrong, they also die.

More than four years post-transplant, the Cleveland Clinic’s “lung brothers” are success stories. Mr. Conn, who lives near Dayton, Ohio, can’t walk very far or lift more than 10 pounds, but he works part time as a real-estate appraiser and enjoys cruises with his wife.

Mr. Gammalo, a onetime musician, has developed diabetes, like nearly half of all lung recipients. But he went onstage a few weeks back to sing “Don’t Be Cruel” with his son’s rock band, “a highlight of both our lives,” he said.

Yet when I asked Mr. Conn, now 73, how he felt about having priority over a younger but healthier person, he paused. “It’s a good question,” he said, to which he had no answer.

---

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

Read More..