'Life of Pi' a huge gamble for 20th Century Fox

Many people in Hollywood considered "Life of Pi" to be unfilmable. Now that it's about to hit theaters Wednesday, there's a new question: Can it be profitable?

Director Ang Lee's $120-million adaptation of Yann Martel's 2001 book, which has sold 9 million copies worldwide, is precisely the kind of movie that many complain the big studios don't make anymore: an ambitious and highbrow creation that's not a sequel and isn't based on a comic book or theme park ride.

Marketing the movie in no easy task either. A boy's spiritual journey across the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat with a tiger doesn't easily translate into a 30-second commercial.

HOLIDAY SNEAKS: A look at this year's seasonal films

"It's the biggest gamble I've ever taken," said Elizabeth Gabler, the veteran 20th Century Fox executive who oversaw the film.

There's a reason studios prefer to make movies such as "Star Wars" and "Transformers." Eight of the top 10 films at the box office this year have been sequels or adaptations of kid-friendly books such as "The Hunger Games." Last year, all 10 fell into those two categories.

When show business executives dare to invest in sophisticated material, they generally keep budgets low (this past weekend's "Sliver Linings Playbook" cost $21 million) and make sure they have a recognizable star (such as Daniel Day-Lewis in "Lincoln").

"I read the book shortly after it came out and I remember thinking, 'This shouldn't be made into a movie,'" Lee said. "The artistic and the economic sides didn't meet. If you spend too much money, you have to be mainstream. But if you don't spend the money, you are not doing justice to the book."

Although early reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, pre-release surveys have found lukewarm moviegoer interest in "Life of Pi," shot in 3-D. Early estimates suggest the film will do about $20 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend. The new James Bond thriller, "Skyfall," by comparison, cost almost $200 million and opened to nearly half that amount.

On Fox's Century City lot, there's still hope of defying the odds. With an Indian actor starring and Taiwanese native Lee directing, studio executives believe the film will do particularly well in Asia. They also hope strong word-of-mouth could keep the movie in theaters through Christmas.

One thing they are not doing is predicting a box office smash.

"It can't always be about the bottom line," said Fox Chairman Jim Gianopulos. "It has to be about the art and the value of cinema that we all got into this business for."

In many ways, the challenges are similar to those facing "Hugo," director Martin Scorsese's 3-D adaptation of a revered children's book that opened Thanksgiving weekend last year. Even with strong reviews, the $156-million production failed to connect with moviegoers and was a financial failure.

"I do think it's a specialized movie," Lee said of "Life of Pi," using the industry jargon for an art-house film. "But I hope it reaches out to the mainstream in some way."

"Life of Pi" features a menagerie of animals, including a Bengal tiger and thousands of flying fish. To replicate Pacific storms, the production crew built a 1.7-million-gallon water tank in Taiwan that generated capsizing waves.

The four animals stranded on the lifeboat with Pi, the only person to survive a cargo ship's sinking, are a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and the tiger. To ensure that lead actor Suraj Sharma wouldn't be ripped to shreds by his costars, the realistic animals are almost entirely computer-animated creations.

But that was the least of the filmmaking challenges. "Life of Pi's" journey to the big screen was nearly as miraculous as the technology behind it.

Gabler's Fox 2000 label acquired the movie rights soon after "Life of Pi" was published in 2001. But one filmmaker after another proved unable to adapt the book, more moving spiritual allegory than compelling page turner.

"Lara Craft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" and "The Manchurian Candidate" remake screenwriter Dean Georgaris never managed to deliver a script. "The Sixth Sense" writer-director M. Night Shyamalan expressed interest in directing the movie in 2003 but ended up backing out. "Amélie" director Jean-Pierre Jeunet in 2005 pitched his idea to make "Life of Pi" entirely with live animals. Fox estimated he would need some 300 days of filming, about four times as long as typical big-budget productions, and torpedoed his version.

The Oscar-winning Lee, whose diverse resume includes "Brokeback Mountain," "Hulk" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," came onto the project in 2008, drawn by its many challenges.

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The Legacy of Linus Torvalds: Linux, Git, and One Giant Flamethrower

Linus Torvalds created Linux, which now runs vast swathes of the internet, including Google and Facebook. And he invented Git, software that’s now used by developers across the net to build new applications of all kinds. But that’s not all Torvalds has given the internet.

He’s also started some serious flame wars.

Over the past few years, Torvalds has emerged as one of the most articulate and engaging critics of the technology industry. His funny and plainspoken posts to Google+ routinely generate more comments and attention than most stories on The New York Times — or even Wired.

Linus, you see, has the gift for the geek gab. Some of his gems — “Talk is cheap. Show me the code.” — are the stuff of T-shirt slogans. Others — such his portrait of the hard drive as the new Satan or the F-bomb he dropped on Nvidia, “the single worst company” the Linux developer community has ever dealt with — have a certain knack for keeping marketing people up at night.

Torvalds can say what he wants because — unlike most of the world’s best-known software developers — he doesn’t work for a big technology company with a public relations department. If he worked for IBM or Red Hat, he’d probably be clamped down. But Torvalds is a free operator, his salary paid by the non-profit Linux Foundation. So whenever he needs a break from code-wrangling the Linux project, he fires away on Google+. It’s the same honest attitude that turned Linux into such a success story.

Earlier this year, Torvalds joined luminaries such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Van Jacobsen as an inductee to the Internet Society’s (ISOC) Internet Hall of Fame. It only make sense. Today, Linux is not only part of the genetic material of the internet, it powers the millions of Android phones that people use to access it. And GitHub — based on his Git software — has reinvented the art of collaborative software development, not to mention the social network.

But when we told Torvalds that we wanted to profile him in honor of his induction into the Internet Hall of Fame, his other contribution to internet life appeared in all its glory.

At first, he blew us off. Torvalds is entering that middle-aged period of his life where he’s suddenly one of the guys who gets honored in international awards ceremonies. And though he didn’t say so, we got the sense that he wasn’t into pontificating about the role of Linux in the internet.

So we gently trolled him over his use of Google+.

“Why are you the only person of interest on Google+?” we asked, not so innocently.

“Christ, that may be the saddest sentence ever on the internet,” Torvalds fired back. “The fact that I’m not very politically correct (in fact, I find people who get ‘offended’ to be annoying twits), and get grumpy and public about it isn’t all that interesting. I actually think that I’m a rather optimistic and happy person, it’s just that I’m not a very positive person, if you see the difference.

“So I rant a bit on G+ and the comments can be fun to watch (in a sad, sad way), but ‘only person of interest’ means that your editor may want to expand his circles a bit.”

Soon, we’re having a very interesting back-and-forth about people who are easily offended, euthanasia, and a favorite topic: the misdeeds of security industry and security researchers who become famous by uncovering the mistakes that people like Torvalds have missed.

‘The economics of the security world are all horribly horribly nasty, and are largely based on fear, intimidation and blackmail. It’s why I compared them to the TSA — even when you know there are morons that didn’t finish high school and are stealing camera equipment and harassing people with ridiculous rules, you can’t actually speak up against them because there’s no recourse.’

— Linus Torvalds

As you might have guessed, he’s a critic. “[T]hey start off with a sane and obvious premise (‘security is important’) and then push it beyond all recognition (‘security matters more than anything else’), and use fear-mongering as their main way to push their agenda,” he said.

By then, he was on a roll.

“The economics of the security world are all horribly horribly nasty, and are largely based on fear, intimidation and blackmail. It’s why I compared them to the TSA — even when you know there are morons that didn’t finish high school and are stealing camera equipment and harassing people with ridiculous rules, you can’t actually speak up against them because there’s no recourse.”

A serious roll.

“I’m occasionally impressed by the things some of the people do — especially the people finding some really obscure way to take some innocent-looking bug and turn it into an exploit — but then in order to take advantage of their discovery they have to take that really interesting intellectual exercise and turn it into this really sordid affair. It’s either some (very) thinly veiled blackmail behind some ‘best security practices’ bullshit, or it’s a carefully orchestrated PR event with the timing set so that they look important and interesting.”

Then he slammed people like us in the tech press for eating it all up and turning everything into a “big circus.”

It was great.

The thing is, if you ever have the pleasure of meeting Torvalds, he’s not some raging maniac. He’s mild-mannered and friendly. His candor is wonderfully endearing. You might think differently of his slightly grumpy online writings, but they’re really rather insightful, and we think they’re fun too — even if he’s comparing us to clowns.

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Bieber sweeps American Music Awards with big wins

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Canadian pop star Justin Bieber swept the American Music Awards on Sunday, topping strong competition from Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, and sending newcomers British boybands One Direction and The Wanted home empty-handed.

Bieber, 18, won all three categories in which he was nominated, including the night’s biggest award, artist of the year, over Rihanna, Katy Perry, Maroon 5 and Drake.

“This is for all the haters who thought that maybe I was just here for one or two years, but I feel like I am going to be here for a very long time,” Bieber said on stage, dedicating his first win of the night to his mother, Pattie Mallette, who accompanied him after his widely reported split from girlfriend Selena Gomez.

“It’s hard growing up with everything going on, with everyone watching me. I wanted to say that as long as you guys keep believing in me, I want to always make you proud,” Bieber said at the end of the night.

Bieber, who also won favorite pop/rock male artist and favorite pop/rock album for “Believe,” took to a bare stage to sing an acoustic stripped-down version of his latest single “As Long As You Love Me” before livening up the show with Nicki Minaj for “Beauty and a Beat.”

The American Music Award nominees and winners are voted online by fans, and the awards are handed out during a live three-hour broadcast featuring performances by artists.

R&B singer Rihanna, 24, and rapper Minaj, 29, led the nominees going into Sunday’s awards with four apiece.

Minaj won favorite rap/hip hop artist and rap/hip hop album of the year for “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded.” The singer, known for her extravagant on-stage performances, sang her latest hit “Freedom” in a winter wonderland-themed set.

Rihanna came away with one win. She couldn’t make the show because she is in Berlin, midway through a seven-day tour across seven cities around the world promoting her upcoming “Unapologetic” album.

Canadian pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen, 26, picked up the coveted new artist-of-the-year award over One Direction, Australian artist Gotye, indie-pop band fun. and rapper J. Cole. She performed her hit “Call Me Maybe.”

“I am floored,” the singer said, thanking Bieber along with her fans in her acceptance speech.

ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC AWARD

Newcomer British-Irish boy bands One Direction, which had three nominations, and The Wanted, which had one nomination, went home empty-handed, losing out in the favorite pop/rock group category to well-established Los Angeles group Maroon 5.

French DJ David Guetta won the first-ever American Music Award for electronic dance music over DJs Calvin Harris and Skrillex.

“It’s wonderful also to see electronic music recognized at this level in the U.S.,” Guetta said in a taped acceptance speech.

Only 13 of the 20 awards were handed out during the live broadcast. Katy Perry was named favorite female pop/rock artist, Shakira was named favorite Latin artist, while Beyonce was voted favorite soul artist. None of the three attended the show.

Country-pop darling Taylor Swift, 22, scored the favorite female country artist award before performing her latest single “I Knew You Were Trouble” from her chart-topping album “Red,” on a masquerade ballroom-style stage with dancers in tuxedos, gowns and Venetian masks.

R&B star Usher kicked off the night with a medley of his hits on a laser-filled stage, while pop-rocker Pink teamed her performance of her latest single “Try” with a dramatic interpretive dance covered in paint with a male dancer on a stage filled with burning debris.

1990s ska-punk band No Doubt performed “Looking Hot” from their first album in a decade, “Push & Shove,” while rockers Linkin Park performed their latest “Burn It Down” after winning favorite alternative rock band over The Black Keys and Gotye.

Korean rapper Psy didn’t score any nominations, but he was named the AMA new media honoree for his viral hit music video “Gangnam Style,” accompanied by his trademark horse-riding dance.

The star closed out the show with his hit song, joined by surprise guest MC Hammer, one of the pioneering rappers from the 1980s, who was known for his catch phrase ‘Hammer Time.’

Singer Brandy paid tribute to the late Whitney Houston, who died suddenly at age 48 on the night before the Grammy Awards in February this year from accidental drowning.

AMA founder Dick Clark, who also passed away earlier this year, was given a touching tribute by veteran soul singer Stevie Wonder, who sang a medley of hits including “Hotter Than July” and “My Cherie Amour,” against a backdrop of pictures of Clark. Wonder was introduced by “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest, who also paid homage to Clark’s influence.

“Dick loved the power of music and the ability to create pure joy,” Seacrest said.

The awards show, which marked its 40th anniversary this year, treated the audience to some of its greatest moments, including R&B star Beyonce performing “Single Ladies” at the 2008 show, Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff at the 1989 awards show, and various clips of AMA regular, the late singer Michael Jackson.

(Additional reporting by Jill Serjeant, editing by Christine Kearney and Philip Barbara)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Teenage Boys, Worried About Body Image, Take Health Risks

Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times

David Abusheikh at a gym in Brooklyn. He goes six days a week and says he uses protein supplements to help build muscle.

It is not just girls these days who are consumed by an unattainable body image.

Take David Abusheikh. At age 15, he started lifting weights for two hours a day, six days a week. Now that he is a senior at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, he has been adding protein bars and shakes to his diet to put on muscle without gaining fat.

“I didn’t used to be into supplements,” said Mr. Abusheikh, 18, who plans on a career in engineering, “but I wanted something that would help me get bigger a little faster.”

Pediatricians are starting to sound alarm bells about boys who take unhealthy measures to try to achieve Charles Atlas bodies that only genetics can truly confer. Whether it is long hours in the gym, allowances blown on expensive supplements or even risky experiments with illegal steroids, the price American boys are willing to pay for the perfect body appears to be on the rise.

In a study to be published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics, more than 40 percent of boys in middle school and high school said they regularly exercised with the goal of increasing muscle mass. Thirty-eight percent said they used protein supplements, and nearly 6 percent said they had experimented with steroids.

Over all, 90 percent of the 2,800 boys in the survey — who lived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, but typify what doctors say is a national phenomenon — said they exercised at least occasionally to add muscle.

“There has been a striking change in attitudes toward male body image in the last 30 years,” said Dr. Harrison Pope, a psychiatry professor at Harvard who studies bodybuilding culture and was not involved in the study. The portrayal of men as fat-free and chiseled “is dramatically more prevalent in society then it was a generation ago,” he said.

While college-age men have long been interested in bodybuilding, pediatricians say they have been surprised to find that now even middle school boys are so absorbed with building muscles. And their youth adds an element of risk.

Just as girls who count every calorie in an effort to be thin may do themselves more harm than good, boys who chase an illusory image of manhood may end up stunting their development, doctors say, particularly when they turn to supplements — or, worse, steroids — to supercharge their results.

“The problem with supplements is they’re not regulated like drugs, so it’s very hard to know what’s in them,” said Dr. Shalender Bhasin, a professor of medicine at Boston Medical Center. Some contain anabolic steroids, and even high-quality protein supplements might be dangerous in large amounts, or if taken to replace meals, he said. “These things just haven’t been studied very well,” he said.

Anabolic steroids pose a special danger to developing bodies, Dr. Bhasin said. Steroids “stop testosterone production in men,” he said, leading to terrible withdrawal problems when still-growing boys try to stop taking them. Still, the constant association of steroids with elite athletes like Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds perpetuates the notion that they can be managed successfully.

Online, in bodybuilding forums for teenagers, boys barely out of puberty share weight-lifting regimens and body fat percentages, and judge one another’s progress. On Tumblr and Facebook, teenagers post images of ripped athletes under the heading “fitspo” or “fitspiraton,” which are short for “fitness inspiration.” The tags are spinoffs of “thinspo” and “thinspiration” pictures and videos, which have been banned from many sites for promoting anorexia.

“Lifted b4 school today felt good but was weak as hell,” wrote one boy who said he was 15 and from Tallahassee, Fla., on a message board on Bodybuilding.com in September, saying he bench-pressed 245 pounds. “Barely got it.”

Many of these boys probably see themselves in Mike Sorrentino, “The Situation” from the “Jersey Shore” series on MTV, or the Adam Sackler character, on the HBO series “Girls,” who rarely wears a shirt or takes a break from his crunches.

Mr. Abusheikh, for instance, has a Facebook page full of photos of himself shirtless or showing off his six-pack abs. At his high school, participation in the annual bodybuilding competition hit an all-time high of 30 students this year.

“They ask us about everything,” said Peter Rivera, a physical education teacher at Fort Hamilton High School who helps oversee the competition. “How do I lose weight? How do I gain muscle? How many times a week should I work out?” Some boys want to be stronger for sports, Mr. Rivera said, but others “want to change their body type.”

Compared with a sedentary lifestyle of video games and TV, an obsession with working out may not quite qualify as a health hazard. And instructors like Mr. Rivera say most boys are eager for advice on the healthiest, drug-free ways to get in shape.

With so little known about supplements, it can be difficult, particularly for teenagers, to make wise decisions.

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Which Tablet to Buy Among Dozens Confuses Shoppers

Holiday shoppers with a tablet computer on their gift list this year might be forgiven for feeling a little panicked.

Look at the tablets available online or at a consumer electronics store and it can be dizzying to choose from among the dozens of slim rectangles with touch screens — each with various sizes, features, prices and applications.

Tablets were supposed to be a simple alternative to the bloated personal computer market. And when “tablet” was synonymous with “iPad,” that was true.

But this is the first holiday season in which the iPad faces competitors that have built up a solid footing in the market. Amazon and Google introduced tablets just in time for the shopping rush. As a result, many consumers and analysts say, the new market of keyboardless computers is quickly becoming as confusing as that of the old-school PC.

“What’s different about this holiday season is that consumers have not just more choice, but really good choices,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, who studies consumer computing trends at Forrester. “There have been many iPad wannabes but no real quality alternatives, and now there are several.”

While choice is a good thing for consumers, she said, it also makes shopping “confusing and complicated.”

For the companies that make tablets, the choice means everything. The stakes are much higher than the sale of individual devices. Each company is trying to snag lifelong customers for their other products — like music, apps, e-books, movies, Web search or word-processing software.

While Apple has dominated the market until now, selling more tablets than any other company, its perch is being threatened by the newcomers.

“Apple left a lot of room for rivals to grow,” said Tero Kuittinen, an independent mobile analyst.

By keeping its tablet prices so high, he said, Apple could lose its place as the biggest tablet seller, just as it did with smartphones when it lost the first-place position to Samsung, which makes less expensive phones using Google’s Android software. The iPad still dominates the market with a 50 percent share, according to third-quarter figures from the research firm IDC, but that is down from 60 percent a year ago. Samsung is in second place with an 18 percent share, Amazon is third with 9 percent, and Asus, which makes Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, is in fourth with 8.6 percent of the market.

But Google, which makes the vast majority of its revenue on Web ads, still lags in the tablet market, even though sales of its Nexus 7 tablet are approaching one million a month, according to Asus. About 98 percent of Web traffic from tablets comes from iPads, according to Onswipe, a digital publishing company. Google would like more of that traffic, as well as more buyers for apps and media from its Google Play store, as would Amazon and Microsoft.

“The first decision you make is what ecosystem am I in, do I want the Android Play store and content or some other?” said Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s vice president for engineering for Android. “So the importance of the ecosystem can’t be overstated.”

But the decisions after that are still complex.

Say, for example, that you want a tablet that runs Google’s Android operating system. There is the Nexus 7, a seven-inch tablet made by Asus, and the Nexus 10, a 10-inch tablet made by Samsung. Then there are the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (not to be confused with the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, a 5.5-inch smartphone). And that’s not to mention the dozens of Android tablets made by Lenovo, Toshiba and others.

This year, Microsoft also has a tablet, called Surface. Amazon has the Kindle Fire and Fire HD, and Barnes & Noble has the Nook HD and HD+. Once shoppers choose one, they have more choices to make, like whether they want to pay $15 more for the privilege of not seeing ads on the Kindle Fire.

Even Apple, which has always prided itself on having simple product lines, now offers the new iPad, the older iPad 2 and the iPad Mini. If you factor in the various amounts of storage and the choice of cellular data or just Wi-Fi, there are essentially 14 iPad models to choose from.

Complicating the decision on hardware, different tablets connect to different online stores for apps, music and video. If you have built your music and app collection on Apple devices, an Android tablet may mean starting from scratch, and vice versa.

The proliferation of products is nothing new for a mature market, as anyone who has stood in front of a wall of televisions at Best Buy or in a parking lot of Priuses at a Toyota dealership knows.

But some consumer electronics companies that have given their customers too many options have run into trouble, said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee. They include Motorola Mobility, which is trying to rescue its cellphone business by paring its lineup of 27 devices, and Research in Motion, which offers a perplexing matrix of BlackBerrys with confusing names, like the BlackBerry Torch 9810, 9850 and 9860.

Google in particular runs this risk, said Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst at Gartner, because it gives away its Android operating system to any device manufacturer that wants to use it, resulting in an uncontrolled array of Android devices running different versions of the software. Some apps will work only with particular versions, making it difficult to know exactly what you are getting.

Google has tried to address this problem in recent months. It gave its line of Nexus products names corresponding to their screen size and began selling them in its Play store. (Google teams up with manufacturers to build the Nexus devices.) It began running ads for the tablets online, on billboards, in print and on television, which had been rare for the company, and assigned a public relations employee to focus on selling hardware to consumers.

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A young shooting victim wrestles with his fears

After the nightmares started, Davien Graham avoided his bicycle.

In his dreams, he pedaled his silver BMX bike through his neighborhood, heard gunfire and died.

If I stay off my bike, I'll be safe, he thought.

He placed it in a backyard shed, where it sat for months. But Jan. 12, 2008, dawned so spectacular that Davien decided to risk it.

He ate Cap'n Crunch Berries cereal, grabbed the bike and rode a half-mile west to Calvary Grace, a Southern Baptist church that was his haven.

Davien lived with an unemployed aunt and uncle, a former Crip, and five other kids in a cramped four-bedroom house in Monrovia, about 20 miles east of Los Angeles.

Yet as a 16-year-old junior at Monrovia High School, Davien earned A's and B's, played JV football and volunteered with the video club. He cleaned the church on Saturdays for minimum wage.

If I live right, God will protect me.

That afternoon, sweaty from cleaning, Davien reached for his wallet to buy a snack — only to realize he had forgotten it at home.

After returning to his house, he caught his reflection in the front window. He was 6 feet 2 and wiry. His skinny chest was beginning to broaden. He was trying to add weight to his 160-pound frame in time for varsity football tryouts.

He showered, told his aunt he would be right back and again jumped on his bike, size-14 Nike Jordans churning, heading for a convenience store near the church.

At the store, he bought Arizona fruit punch and lime chili Lay's potato chips. He recognized a kindergarten-age Latino boy and bought him Twinkies.

Davien pedaled down the empty sidewalk along Peck Road. He could hear kids playing basketball nearby. As he neared the church, a car passed, going in the opposite direction. He barely noticed.

He heard car tires crunching on asphalt behind him. He glanced back, expecting a friend.

Instead he heard: "Hey, fool."

The gun was gray. It had a slide. Davien recognized that much from watching the Military Channel.

Behind the barrel, he saw forearms braced to fire and the face of a Latino man, a former classmate.

The gunman shouted, "Dirt Rock!," cursing a local black gang, the Duroc Crips.

Davien's mind raced: Don't panic. Watch the barrel. Duck.

Suddenly, he was falling. Then he was on the ground, looking up at the church steeple and the cross.

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Israel's Rocket-Hunting Ace Got His Start Playing <em>Warcraft</em>

War has once again erupted between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces, with the Gaza-based militant group launching hundreds of rockets and missiles at Israeli towns. But many of these projectiles never made it to their targets, thanks to the new Iron Dome missile defense system that’s arguably become this conflict’s most important technological difference-maker. This article, first published in April, tracks the story of Iron Dome’s most prolific “gunner.” While his record for shooting down missiles and rockets has by now undoubtedly fallen, the tale still gives insight into the battle now gripping Israel and Gaza.

KFAR GVIROL, Israel — While many of the boys in Idan Yahya’s high school class were buffing up and preparing themselves for selection into elite combat units, this gawky teenager was spending “a lot of time” playing Warcraft — the real-time strategy computer game where opposing players command virtual armies in a battle to dominate the fictional world of Azeroth.

Four years later, the high school jocks who sweated it out in pre-military academies so they could make the cut into the Israel Defense Force’s Special Operations units are now crawling through the sand dunes on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip and watching while Idan knocks rockets out of the sky hundreds of meters above their heads. Idan Yahya, 22, an Iron Dome “gunner” in the Active Air Defense Wing 167, currently holds the record for the number of rockets intercepted: eight.

People in the army describe him variously as a geek and an ace. But the geek who grew up playing Warcraft is now a highly prized soldier on the cutting edge of real war craft. He’s the Israeli army’s top rocket interceptor.

The Iron Dome is a mobile anti-rocket interception system that Israel moves around the country to shoot down the rockets fired at its civilian population centers by armed groups in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Its radar picks up launches and fires interceptor missiles at them if they’re calculated to be heading towards populated centers. The system has become increasingly important as Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups amass surface-to-surface missiles to hit the Israeli home front with, thus bypassing the Israel Defense Force’s overwhelming advantage of concentrated firepower and fighter aircraft. Should Israel attack Iran’s nuclear installations, the expected rocket reprisals from the armed groups on its borders will keep Iron Dome very, very busy.

As the war between Israelis and Arabs enters its sixth decade (or its 500th depending on who you ask), it is increasingly becoming a hi-tech rocket war. The IDF’s Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi in February said there were 200,000 rockets aimed at Israel from the south, north and east. And in this increasingly technological battlefield of rockets, anti-rocket interceptors, radars, control rooms, drones and drone hacking, it is soldiers like Idan Yahya (and whoever his counterparts on the Arab side are) who are making the most impact.

Computer geek, keyboard combatant, soldier, call him what you will, Idan and others like him man the controls of the latest rock star in advanced military technology. “There are a lot of flashing blips, signs, symbols, colors and pictures on the screen. You look at your tactical map; see where the threat is coming from. You have to make sure you’re locked onto the right target. There’s a lot of information and there is very little time. It definitely reminds me of Warcraft and other online strategy games,” Idan says.

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NY Times article questions what CEO knew of BBC sex scandal: can Mark Thompson survive?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The New York Times has turned its guns on one of its own, and right about now Mark Thompson must be looking for somewhere in the corporate suite to hide.

In a devastating article, the paper of record raises questions about what its newly minted chief executive officer knew about a pedophilia scandal at the BBC and when he knew it. Thompson stepped down as BBC director-general in September and assumed his new perch at The Times on Monday.

Yet his cross-Atlantic transition has been turbulent. He has found himself dogged by the scandal engulfing the BBC after allegations emerged that he tried to prevent an exposé by one of the network’s investigative programs into claims that children’s TV host Jimmy Savile routinely coerced teenage girls into having sex. Savile, who died in 2011, was one of the BBC’s biggest stars.

Thompson has maintained that he learned of the claims against Savile after leaving the BBC, but a legal letter indicates that he was aware of the accusations before he stepped down from his post, according to the article in The Times. In the piece, reporter Matthew Purdy writes that lawyers representing Thompson threatened to sue The Sunday Times over an article it was writing that claimed he had squelched his network’s investigative report on Savile’s sexual behavior. The letter was sent 10 days before Thompson resigned from the BBC.

The Sunday Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and is based in the United Kingdom.

“There were other moments during Mr. Thompson’s final months at the BBC – involving brief conversations and articles appearing in London news media – when he might have picked up on the gravity of the Savile case,” Purdy writes. “But the letter is different because it shows Mr. Thompson was involved in an aggressive action to challenge an article about the case that was likely to reflect poorly on the BBC and on him.”

The letter purportedly included a summary of Savile’s alleged abuses. The Times reports that an aide to Thompson said he authorized the letter orally, but was not fully informed about its contents.

After the story broke, speculation mounted on Twitter among media watchers that Thompson’s position at The Times might be in jeopardy.

“The odds on Mark Thompson staying as CEO of the New York Times just changed,” Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, tweeted.

At the very least, it appears that reporters at the paper have taken to heart Public Editor Margaret Sullivan’s charge to cover the BBC scandal aggressively.

“As the BBC has found out in the most painful way, for The Times to pull its punches will not be a wise way to go,” Sullivan wrote.

As Thompson, still nursing Purdy’s uppercut, just found out, The Times looks ready to put some muscle into it.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The Neediest Cases: Emerging From a Bleak Life to Become Fabulous Phil

For years, Phillip Johnson was caught in what seemed like an endless trench of bad luck. He was fired from a job, experienced intensifying psychological problems, lost his apartment and spent time in homeless shelters. At one point, he was hospitalized after overdosing on an antipsychotic drug.

“I had a rough road,” he said.

Since his hospital stay two years ago, and despite setbacks, Mr. Johnson, 27, has been getting his life on track. At Brooklyn Community Services, where he goes for daily counseling and therapy, everybody knows him as Fabulous Phil.

“Phillip is a light, the way he evokes happiness in other people,” his former caseworker, Teresa O’Brien, said. “Phillip’s character led directly to his nickname.”

About six months ago, with Ms. O’Brien’s help, Mr. Johnson started an event: Fabulous Phil Friday Dance Party Fridays.

One recent afternoon at the agency, 30 clients and a few counselors were eating cake, drinking soft drinks and juice, and grooving for 45 minutes to Jay-Z and Drake pulsating from a boom box.

Mr. Johnson’s voice rose with excitement when he talked about the party. Clients and counselors, he said, “enjoy themselves.”

“They connect more; they communicate more,” he continued. “Everybody is celebrating and laughing.”

The leadership Mr. Johnson now displays seems to be a far cry from the excruciatingly introverted person he was.

As an only child living with his single mother in public housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, he said, he tended to isolate himself. “A lot of kids my age would say, ‘Come outside,’ but I would always stay in my room,” he said. He occupied himself by writing comic books or reading them, his favorites being Batman and Spiderman because, he said, “they were heroes who saved the day.”

After graduating from high school in 2003, he worked odd jobs until 2006, when he took a full-time position at a food court at La Guardia Airport, where he helped to clean up. The steady paycheck allowed him to leave his mother’s apartment and rent a room in Queens.

But the depression and bleak moods that had shadowed him throughout middle and high school asserted themselves.

“My thinking got confused,” he said. “Racing thoughts through my mind. Disorganized thoughts. I had a hard time focusing on one thing.”

In 2008, after two years on the job, Mr. Johnson was fired for loud and inappropriate behavior, and for being “unpredictable,” he said. The boss said he needed counseling. He moved back in with his mother, and in 2009 entered a program at an outpatient addiction treatment service, Bridge Back to Life. It was there, he said, that he received a diagnosis of schizophrenia and help with his depression and marijuana use.

But one evening in May 2010, he had a bout with insomnia.

He realized the antipsychotic medication he had been prescribed, Risperdal, made him feel tired, he said, so he took 12 of the pills, rather than his usual dosage of two pills twice a day. When 12 did not work, he took 6 more.

“The next morning when I woke up, it was hard for me to breathe,” he said.

He called an ambulance, which took to Woodhull Hospital. He was released after about a month.

Not long after, he returned to his mother’s apartment, but by February 2011, they both decided he should leave, and he relocated to a homeless shelter in East New York, where, he said, eight other people were crammed into his cubicle and there were “bedbugs, people lying in your bed, breaking into your locker to steal your stuff.”

In late spring 2011, he found a room for rent in Manhattan, but by Thanksgiving he was hospitalized again. Another stint in a shelter followed in April, when his building was sold.

Finally, in July, Mr. Johnson moved to supported housing on Staten Island, where he lives with a roommate. His monthly $900 Social Security disability check is sent to the residence, which deducts $600 for rent and gives him $175 in spending money; he has breakfast and lunch at the Brooklyn agency. To assist Mr. Johnson with unexpected expenses, a grant of $550 through The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund went to buy him a bed and pay a Medicare prescription plan fee for three months.

“I was so happy I have a bed to sleep on,” he said about the replacement for an air mattress. “When I have a long day, I have a bed to lay in, and I feel good about that.”

Mr. Johnson’s goals include getting his driver’s license — “I already have a learner’s permit,” he said, proudly — finishing his program at the agency, and then entering an apprenticeship program to become a plumber, carpenter or mechanic.

But seeing how his peers have benefited from Fabulous Phil Fridays has made him vow to remain involved with people dealing with mental illnesses or substance abuse.

He was asked at the party: Might he be like the comic-book heroes he loves? A smile spread across his face. He seemed to think so.

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Former O.C. Sheriff Michael Carona seeks to cut prison sentence

Attorneys for former Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona — who is now serving 66 months in federal prison for witness tampering — are asking that the former lawman's sentence be cut by nearly half, potentially freeing him.

In a motion, Carona's attorneys argued that the sentence handed down in 2009 by U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford should be adjusted after changes in the law.

His attorneys contend that the judge sentenced Carona on the witness tampering charge by "cross-referencing" charges on which he was acquitted, a practice his attorneys argue that the U.S. Supreme Court overruled in a case involving former Enron President Jeffrey Skilling.

"Carona seeks relief on the ground that the court erred in determining his sentence by using honest services fraud as the 'underlying offense' under United States sentencing guidelines," his lawyers wrote in the motion filed earlier this month. They added that "the conduct at issue did not constitute honest services fraud or any other federal offense."

His lawyers, according to the motion, are seeking to reduce his time to a term of 24 months to 30 months.

Brett Sagel, the federal prosecutor on the case, said in an emailed statement Thursday that the government contends "Carona's filing lacks merit both factually and legally."

Carona was acquitted in 2009 on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and one count of witness tampering. But the jury found him guilty on another count of witness tampering after he was recorded as he tried to persuade his former assistant sheriff to lie to a grand jury investigating allegations of corruption.

Carona, 57, was widely considered to be a rising political star at the time of his indictment.

The former sheriff began serving his 51/2 -year prison sentence in January 2011 at Englewood Federal Correctional Institution in Littleton, Colo., where he joined other prominent criminals — including Skilling, who is serving a 24-year sentence; and disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

When Carona's sentence began, officials at the prison — dubbed by Forbes magazine as one of the "12 best places to go to prison" — said the former sheriff would put in 71/2-hour days doing landscaping, plumbing, painting or food service.

But he could have access to the low-security prison's amenities, including college courses and the use of indoor and outdoor recreational facilities with a running track, bicycle court and exercise bicycles.

Carona's lawyers said that he had exhausted his appeals when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his conviction shortly before he reported to the prison.

rick.rojas@latimes.com

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