Taliban Claim Role in Attack That Kills Pakistan Politician

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility on Saturday for a suicide bomb attack that killed a senior politician in northwest Pakistan who was one of the group’s most vocal critics. At least eight other people were killed in the attack and more than 15 others were wounded, senior government officials and doctors at a local hospital said.

The politician, Bashir Ahmad Bilour, was a senior minister in the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, where the Taliban have a strong presence. Mr. Bilour was long on the target list of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella organization of the Pakistani militant groups, for publicly denouncing them and challenging their violent policies.

Mr. Bilour was coming out of a meeting of his Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party in the provincial capital of Peshawar, when the suicide bomber blew himself up, said the secretary of home and tribal affairs, Azam Khan.

Mr. Bilour had been taken to the hospital in critical condition, said Dr. Arshad Javed, chief executive of the city’s Lady Reading Hospital.

Among those killed were Mr. Bilour’s secretary and a police officer, Mr. Khan said.

The provincial information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, called for immediate action against militants in the nearby tribal region of North Waziristan, the safest haven for militants in Pakistan, saying it was time to take action against all militants. “Let there be no difference between good Taliban and bad Taliban,” he said.

A security analyst, Asad Munir, a retired brigadier, said the attack would further complicate campaigning in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province for a national election expected next year. He said that secular, liberal and nationalist parties would have a difficult time because they are on the Taliban hit list, and that, “Religious parties will take advantage of the situation.”

Also on Saturday, police officials in the southern province of Sindh said that a mob had tortured and killed a man accused of burning the Koran, the latest in a series of violent episodes in Pakistan stemming from allegations of blasphemy.

The killing occurred Friday in Seeta, a remote village in the Dadu district in southern Sindh Province. The village’s head cleric, Usman Memon, said charred remnants of the Koran had been found in the mosque that morning, and that the victim had been staying at the mosque alone. It is common for impoverished travelers and religious proselytizers to stay at mosques while traveling.

The man, whose name was not known, was handed over to the police and accused of violating Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, Mr. Memon said.

But as news of the episode spread later on Friday, an angry crowd gathered outside the police station and eventually forced its way in. The man was dragged out, tortured and killed, and his body was set on fire, according to the police.

Usman Ghani, the district’s senior police superintendent, said that he had suspended the official in charge of the police station and filed administrative charges against seven other officers for negligence.

He said that charges had been filed against 1,000 people believed to have participated in the mob action and that 150 people had been arrested.

Little was known about the victim or what motive he was thought to have had for burning the Koran, if he did so. Cases of violence arising from blasphemy accusations appear to be on the rise in Pakistan. Human rights groups have said that most of those victimized are members of religious minorities, particularly Christians, but Muslims are sometimes accused.

In a case similar to Friday’s, a mentally disabled man was beaten and burned to death in Punjab Province in July, also after an angry crowd broke into a police station.

Blasphemy is a capital crime in Pakistan, and it is a highly delicate and emotional issue for the deeply conservative country. Calls for repealing or revising the blasphemy laws have met with strong resistance from religious leaders, who have organized large protests against efforts to amend them. Two prominent advocates of changing the laws were assassinated last year.

Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan. Zia ur-Rehman contributed reporting from Karachi, Pakistan.

Read More..

Google working on "X Phone", "X" tablet to take on rivals - WSJ

(Reuters) - Google Inc is working with recently acquired Motorola on a handset codenamed "X-phone", aimed at grabbing market share from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Google acquired Motorola in May for $12.5 billion to bolster its patent portfolio as its Android mobile operating system competes with rivals such as Apple and Samsung.

The Journal quoted the people saying that Motorola is working on two fronts: devices that will be sold by carrier partner Verizon Wireless, and on the X phone.

Motorola plans to enhance the X Phone with its recent acquisition of Viewdle, an imaging and gesture-recognition software developer. The new handset is due out sometime next year, the business daily said, citing a person familiar with the plans.

Motorola is also expected to work on an "X" tablet after the phone. Google Chief Executive Larry Page is said to have promised a significant marketing budget for the unit, the newspaper said quoting the persons.

Google was not immediately reachable for comments outside regular U.S. business hours.

(Reporting by Balaji Sridharan in Bangalore; Editing by Richard Chang)

Read More..

Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ashton Kutcher filed court papers Friday to end his seven-year marriage to actress Demi Moore.

The actor's divorce petition cites irreconcilable differences and does not list a date that the couple separated. Moore announced last year that she was ending her marriage to the actor 15 years her junior, but she never filed a petition.

Kutcher's filing does not indicate that the couple has a prenuptial agreement. The filing states Kutcher signed the document Friday, hours before it was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Kutcher and Moore married in September 2005 and until recently kept their relationship very public, communicating with each other and fans on the social networking site Twitter. After their breakup, Moore changed her name on the site from (at)mrskutcher to (at)justdemi.

Kutcher currently stars on CBS' "Two and a Half Men."

Messages sent to Kutcher's and Moore's publicists were not immediately returned Friday.

Moore, 50, and Kutcher, 34, created the DNA Foundation, also known as the Demi and Ashton Foundation, in 2010 to combat the organized sexual exploitation of girls around the globe. They later lent their support to the United Nations' efforts to fight human trafficking, a scourge the international organization estimates affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.

Moore was previously married to actor Bruce Willis for 13 years. They had three daughters together — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle — before divorcing in 2000. Willis later married model-actress Emma Heming in an intimate 2009 ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands that attended by their children, as well as Moore and Kutcher.

Kutcher has been dating former "That '70s Show" co-star Mila Kunis.

The divorce filing was first reported Friday by People magazine.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP.

Read More..

The Neediest Cases: The Daughter of a Sick Woman Falls Prey to a Craigslist Scam

Sitting side by side on their living room sofa, Patricia Morales and her daughter, Katherine, could be any mother-daughter duo. Both have dark hair, dark eyes and welcoming, infectious smiles.

Librado Romero/The New York Times

Patricia Morales, 62, at home in the Bronx. Her treatment for ailments like rheumatoid arthritis and hepatitis C led to depression.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$3,375,394

Recorded Wednesday:

182,251

*Total:

$3,557,645

Last year to date:

$3,320,812

*Includes $709,856 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

The Youngest Donors

If your child or family is using creative techniques to raise money for this year’s campaign, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line on Facebook or talk to us on Twitter.

But the ties that bind them go beyond their genes, beyond the bodies they were born with.

“It’s called a neck ring. It’s a silver curved barbell, one inch,” Katherine, 20, said as she swept aside her shoulder-length black hair to show the piercing in the back of her neck, a show of solidarity with her mother. She had it done when she was 16. “I wanted to know what it felt like for my mom.”

Her mother then turned around and outlined with her finger two lengthy scars that run down her back.

“I’ve had a lot of physical problems,” Ms. Morales, 62, said. Shaking her head at her daughter’s piercing, she added, “I’ve had rods put in my upper and lower spine, but I could never do that.”

The rods were surgically planted to treat herniated discs, the result of having a cruel combination of osteoporosis, hepatitis C, fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis. Ms. Morales contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion she received in 1972 after the birth of her only son, she said.

“I didn’t even know about it until 10 years ago,” she said. “My liver blood count was a little high.”

Since the diagnosis, Ms. Morales, a former schoolteacher, has ridden the arduous highs and lows common to patients with hepatitis C. Her treatments for the disease, which debilitates the liver over time, have included pills and injections that can cause depression. Ms. Morales, a single parent, found an unforgiving salve in alcohol.

“I was depressed; I was totally drunk,” she said. “I didn’t want to live anymore.”

Then, about a year ago, she reached a turning point when visiting her hepatitis C specialist.

“I was 210 pounds,” she said. “The doctor said: ‘You have to stop drinking. You have to lose weight.’ ”

To help combat the depression, her doctor referred her to Jewish Association Serving the Aging, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. She began weekly counseling sessions with a social worker and started taking an antidepressant medication. The federation drew about $600 from the fund in May so that Ms. Morales could buy a mattress.

“I had a horrible bed,” she said. “I felt like I was sleeping on rocks, and with rods in my back, I was waking up every hour.”

After several months of therapy and starting a diet, Ms. Morales was on her way to losing 60 pounds. Today, she weighs 148.

Light was starting to show itself again when the family took an unexpected financial hit this summer. While taking time off from attending Hostos Community College, Katherine Morales looked for work on Craigslist.

“I saw my mom, and I realized I needed to get a job,” Katherine said shyly. “This guy asked me to be his personal assistant, and he asked me to wire money.”

Offering $400 a week, the man requested help transferring almost $2,000 from what he said was his wife’s account. He transferred the money to Katherine’s account, asking her to wire it to a bank account in Malaysia.

Shortly after she wired the money, the bank froze the account, which Katherine and her mother shared. It was then that Katherine realized she had been the victim of a scam. The money transferred into her account turned out to have been stolen, and she was responsible for repaying it.

Katherine went to detectives immediately with more than 20 pages of evidentiary e-mails, but found that she was unable to file a complaint.

“They told me it wasn’t enough,” she said. “These things happen all the time.”

They lost almost $2,000.

Ms. Morales lives on a fixed income. She receives just over $700 a month from Social Security and $200 month in food stamps. The rent for the apartment she shares with her daughter in the Throgs Neck neighborhood of the Bronx is $230, and Ms. Morales has a monthly combined phone and cable bill of $140. Ms. Morales has a son, but he is unable to help the family.

Falling behind on her bills, Ms. Morales turned once again to JASA for help paying a combined phone and cable bill of nearly $200, a grant the agency drew from the Neediest Cases Fund.

“It was terrible, because my intention was to help my mom,” said Katherine, who has since found a part-time job at a vitamin shop.

Ms. Morales has been feeling much better, but she is nervous about an appointment with her hepatitis C specialist in January.

“I’m taking things one day at a time, but I’m looking forward to someone taking care of me,” she said. “I want to live a little bit longer, but not that long.”

“Why are you putting a time limit on it?” Katherine said, jokingly. “Seventy’s the new 20!” she added, nudging her mother in the side. “Remember, the doctor said you wouldn’t live past your late 50s, but you did.”

Read More..

As Shoppers Hop From Tablet to PC to Phone, Retailers Try to Adapt

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Shoppers often visit ModCloth, a Web site that sells women’s clothes, on their phones but return on a different kind of device to buy something, said Sarah Rose, a vice president at ModCloth.

Ryan O’Neil, a Connecticut government employee, was in the market to buy a digital weather station this month. His wife researched options on their iPad, but even though she found the lowest-price option there, Mr. O’Neil made the purchase on his laptop.

“I do use the iPad to browse sites,” Mr. O’Neil said, but when it comes time to close the deal, he finds it easier to do on a computer.

Many online retailers had visions of holiday shoppers lounging beneath the Christmas tree with their mobile devices in hand, making purchases. The size of the average order on tablets, particularly iPads, tends to be bigger than on PCs. So retailers poured money and marketing into mobile Web sites and apps with rich images and, they thought, easy checkout.

But while visits to e-commerce sites and apps on tablets and phones have nearly doubled since last year, consumers like Mr. O’Neil are more frequently using multiple devices to shop. In many cases, they are more comfortable making the final purchase on a computer, with its bigger screen and keyboard. So retailers are trying to figure out how to appeal to a shopper who may use a cellphone to research products, a tablet to browse the options and a computer to buy.

“I’ve been yelling at customers for two years, saying, ‘Mobile, mobile, mobile,’ ” said Jason Spero, director of mobile sales and strategy at Google. “But the funny thing is, now we’re going to say: ‘Don’t put mobile in a silo. It’s also about the desktop.’ ”

The challenges are daunting, though. It is technically difficult to track consumers as they hop from phone to computer to tablet and back again. This means customers who, say, fill shopping carts on their tablets have to do all the work again on their PCs or other devices. The biggest obstacle, retailers say, is that the tools used to track shoppers on computers — cookies, or bundles of data stored in Web browsers — don’t transfer across devices.

Instead, retailers are figuring out how to sync the experience in other ways, like prompting shoppers to log in on each device. And being able to track people across devices gives retailers more insight into how they shop.

The retailers’ efforts are backed by research. While one-quarter of the visits to e-commerce sites occur on mobile devices, only around 15 percent of purchases do, according to data from I.B.M. According to Google, 85 percent of online shoppers start searching on one device — most often a mobile phone — and make a purchase on another.

At eBags, customers are shopping on their tablets in the evening and returning on their work computers the next day. But eBags has not yet synced the shoppers across devices, so customers must build their shopping carts from scratch if they switch devices.

“That is a blind spot with a lot of sites,” said Peter Cobb, co-founder of eBags. “It is a requirement moving forward.”

At eBay, one-third of the purchases involve mobile devices at some point, even if the final purchase is made on a computer.

At eBay, once shoppers log in on a device, they do not need to log in again. Their information, like shipping and credit card details and saved items, syncs across all their devices. If an eBay shopper is interested in a certain handbag, and saves that search on a computer, eBay will send alerts to her cellphone when a new handbag arrives or an auction is about to end.

“They might discover an item on a phone or tablet, do a saved-search push alert later on some other screen and eventually close on the Web site,” said Steve Yankovich, who runs eBay Mobile. “People are buying and shopping and consuming potentially every waking moment of the day.”

ModCloth, an e-commerce site for women’s clothes, said that while a quarter of its visits come from mobile devices, people are not yet buying there in the same proportion, though they are becoming more comfortable with checking out on those devices.

“She’s visiting us more on the phone, but she’s actually transacting somewhere else,” said Sarah Rose, vice president of product at ModCloth.

For example, a shopper will skim through new arrivals on her phone while on the bus and add items to her wish list, then visit that evening on her tablet to make a purchase, Ms. Rose said.

Read More..

N.R.A. Calls for Armed Guards at Schools

WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Association on Friday called for schools to be protected by armed guards as the best way to protect children from gun violence.

The proposal from the pro-gun lobbying group, long the most vocal and influential organization generally opposing stricter regulation of firearms, came during the N.R.A.'s first organized media event after the deadly shootings in Newtown, Conn. The group also called for steps other than gun control, including cracking down on criminals and fighting violence in the media and on video games.

Wayne LaPierre, the group’s executive vice president, read a statement to reporters but did not take questions, and ignored outbursts from protesters who interrupted him.

But it was the vehement insistence that the single best line of defense was to put armed guards in schools — and the absence of any openness to various suggestions for new gun control measures — that dominated the event at a downtown hotel not far from the White House.

Mr. LaPierre said this should be done right away, with the details left to the discretion of local schools. The N.R.A. would provide a template or model program after consulting with security experts.

“The only way — the only way — to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection,” Mr. LaPierre said. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Gun-free school zones identified by signs, he said, serve only to “tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to effect maximum mayhem with minimum risk.”

“So why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect the president of our country or our police but bad when it’s used to protect our children in our schools?” he continued. “They’re our kids. They’re our responsibility. And it’s not just our duty to protect them; it’s our right to protect them.”

Criticism of the group's proposals came quickly. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, released a statement shortly after the event ended, calling the N.R.A.'s ideas “beyond belief.”

“It is beyond belief that following the Newtown tragedy, the National Rifle Association’s leaders wants to fill our communities with guns and arm more Americans," he said in a statement. "The N.R.A. points the finger of blame everywhere and anywhere it can, but they cannot escape the devastating effects of their reckless comments and irresponsible lobbying tactics.”

“Everyone agrees our schools, movie theaters shopping malls, streets and communities need to be safer,” Representative Mike Thompson, Democrat of California, said in a statement. “But we need a comprehensive approach that goes beyond just arming more people with more guns to make this happen.”

At the event, it was announced that the group named Asa Hutchinson, a former congressman and law enforcement official, to lead a task force financed by the N.R.A., charging him with devising a model program including what he described as “armed, trained, qualified school security personnel” — perhaps local volunteers.

During the event, which was broadcast live on multiple cable channels and streamed online, protesters repeatedly interrupted, raised a banner saying “NRA killing our children” and shouting similar messages, such as “N.R.A. has blood on its hands” and “ban assault weapons now.”

In the days immediately after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the N.R.A. had remained largely silent as pressure mounted for stricter regulations of guns and other measures to confront violence.

On Tuesday, it scheduled the news conference, saying that it was “prepared to offer meaningful contributions to make sure this never happens again.” But it offered no specifics.

At times, Mr. LaPierre’s presentation was at times confrontational in tone.

“You know, five years ago, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy,” he said. “But what if, what if when Adam Lanza started shooting his way in the Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he’d been confronted by qualified armed security? Will you at least admit it’s possible that 26 little kids -- that 26 innocent lives might have been spared that day?”

The authorities say that Mr. Lanza, after killing his mother, killed 20 children and 6 adults at the school before taking his own life.

The N.R.A. has about four million members, and exerts its influence on lawmakers through campaign contributions and by rating their votes on gun-related legislation.

According to polling data released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, public attitudes about gun control have shifted only modestly since the Newtown shootings. “Currently, 49 percent say it is more important to control gun ownership, while 42 percent say it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns,” the center said. Five months ago, opinion was almost evenly divided on these questions; four years ago, a majority said they favored stricter gun control.

On its Web site, the N.R.A. cites other polling, by Gallup. “Americans are most likely to say that an increased police presence at schools, increased government spending on mental health screening and treatment, and decreased depiction of gun violence in entertainment venues would be effective in preventing mass shootings at schools,” it says. “Americans rate the potential effectiveness of a ban on assault and semiautomatic guns as fourth on a list of six actions Gallup asked about.”

Read More..

Analysis: Apple's swoon exposes risk lurking in mutual funds

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The nearly 28 percent decline in shares of Apple Inc since mid-September isn't just painful to individual shareholders. It's also being felt by investors who chased hot mutual funds that loaded up on Apple as the stock raced to a record $705 per share.

Apple makes up 10 percent or more of assets in 117 out of the 1,119 funds that own its shares, according to data from Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company. Those big stakes have contributed positively to each fund's annual performance to date, with Apple still up about 32 percent for the year. It was trading at $527.73 soon after the opening on Friday.

But that year-to-date outcome may not accurately reflect the performance of the funds for individual investors. All told, approximately $4.5 billion has been added to funds with overweight stakes in Apple this year, according to Morningstar data. The majority of these dollars were invested after March and after Apple first exceeded $600 per share - meaning many investors have been riding down with the decline.

The $302 million Matthew 25 fund, for instance, holds 17.4 percent of its assets in Apple, according to Lipper. The fund's 31.9 percent gain through Thursday makes it one of the top performing funds for the year.

Most of its Apple shares were bought years ago at a bargain basement price of about $125 per share. But $158.9 million of the fund's assets - or 53 percent - were invested after the end of March, when Apple was trading near $615 per share, according to Morningstar data.

For those investors that bought after March, all that concentration in Apple hasn't led to a stellar gain but rather a drag on the portfolio. Someone who invested in Matthew 25 in early April has seen the value of the fund's Apple stake fall about 19 percent, while someone who invested at the beginning of September has watched that outsized Apple stake drop 27.2 percent.

In turn, the majority of the fund's investors have reaped a much more modest performance than its year-end numbers suggest. Since the end of March, the fund has gained 6.7 percent, according to Morningstar data, far less than its 31 percent year-to-date gain and about two percentage points more than the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index.

Since, September the fund is down nearly 3 percent through Thursday's close, compared with a 1.1 percent decline in the S&P 500 in that period.

The impact of Apple's falling stock price shows some of the drawbacks of portfolio concentration, experts say. These stakes can leave the funds overexposed to the ups and downs of one company - counter to what most mutual funds are supposed to do for investors.

"Any time you get over 10 percent of the portfolio in one company it's a red flag," said Michel Herbst, director of active fund research at Morningstar. Many fund managers do have risk management rules that prevent them from devoting more than 5 percent to 6 percent of their portfolio to any one stock, he said.

Then again, some funds purposely invest in just a few stocks. Mark Mulholland, the portfolio manager of the Matthew 25 fund, said that taking concentrated positions in companies is the only way to beat an index over longer periods of time.

'RIGHT-SIZING' PORTFOLIOS

Along with concerns about iPhone sales in China and tax-motivated selling among people who want to avoid potentially higher capital gains taxes in 2013, the wide fund ownership of Apple may be a factor in the size of the stock's recent declines, fund managers said. In addition, with so many funds already heavily invested in the high-priced stock, there may be fewer marginal buyers available to push prices up again when shares begin to dip.

"The stock didn't go from $700 to $520 because people didn't like the new iPad. It's become a favorite short of hedge funds because they know they can get in on this," said Mark Spellman, a portfolio manager of the $300 million Value Line Income and Growth fund with a small position in Apple.

Short interest in the stock rose to 20.6 million shares at the end of November from 15.1 million shares at the end of September, according to Nasdaq.

"Some of my competitors have 12 percent of their assets in Apple, which I think is ludicrous", said Spellman, who said the company is no longer trading on its fundamentals.

Sandy Villere, who has a 2.5 percent weighting of Apple in his $276 million Villere Balanced fund, said that some mutual fund managers are selling shares because of the over-weighting.

"Right now many people who did take huge overweight positions are right-sizing their portfolios to get it in line with their regular weightings," he said.

Still, some bullish investors see the stock's recent declines as a buying opportunity.

Mulholland, the Matthew 25 portfolio manager, continues to say that shares should be priced at over $1,000 per share based on his valuation of the company at 10 times enterprise value divided by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). Apple trades at about 7 times that figure now.

Wall Street analysts' average price target as of Thursday is $742.56, according to Thomson Reuters data. But Mulholland is happy to be more bullish than his peers.

"I'm glad that I'm able to get it at these prices," he said.

(Reporting By David Randall; Editing by Jennifer Merritt)

Read More..

PSY's 'Gangnam Style' reaches 1B views on YouTube

NEW YORK (AP) — Viral star PSY has reached a new milestone on YouTube.

The South Korean rapper's video for "Gangnam Style" has reached 1 billion views, according to YouTube's own counter. It's the first time any clip has surpassed that mark on the streaming service owned by Google Inc.

It shows the enduring popularity of the self-deprecating video that features Park Jae-sang's giddy up-style dance moves. The video has been available on YouTube since July 15, averaging more than 200 million views per month.

Justin Bieber's video for "Baby" held the previous YouTube record at more than 800 million views.

PSY wasn't just popular on YouTube, either. Earlier this month Google announced "Gangnam Style" was the second highest trending search of 2012 behind Whitney Houston, who passed away in February.

Read More..

Stigma Fading, Marijuana Common in California

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

At a San Francisco concert in 2010, marijuana use was general while signatures were collected for a measure to decriminalize it.

LOS ANGELES — Let Colorado and Washington be the marijuana trailblazers. Let them struggle with the messy details of what it means to actually legalize the drug. Marijuana is, as a practical matter, already legal in much of California.

No matter that its recreational use remains technically against the law. Marijuana has, in many parts of this state, become the equivalent of a beer in a paper bag on the streets of Greenwich Village. It is losing whatever stigma it ever had and still has in many parts of the country, including New York City, where the kind of open marijuana use that is common here would attract the attention of any passing law officer.

“It’s shocking, from my perspective, the number of people that we all know who are recreational marijuana users,” said Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor. “These are incredibly upstanding citizens: Leaders in our community, and exceptional people. Increasingly, people are willing to share how they use it and not be ashamed of it.”

Marijuana can be smelled in suburban backyards in neighborhoods from Hollywood to Topanga Canyon as dusk falls — what in other places is known as the cocktail hour — often wafting in from three sides. In some homes in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, it is offered at the start of a dinner party with the customary ease of a host offering a chilled Bombay Sapphire martini.

Lighting up a cigarette (the tobacco kind) can get you booted from many venues in this rigorously antitobacco state. But no one seemed to mind as marijuana smoke filled the air at an outdoor concert at the Hollywood Bowl in September or even in the much more intimate, enclosed atmosphere of the Troubadour in West Hollywood during a Mountain Goats concert last week.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor, ticked off the acceptance of open marijuana smoking in a list of reasons he thought Venice was such a wonderful place for his morning bicycle rides. With so many people smoking in so many places, he said in an interview this year, there was no reason to light up one’s own joint.

“You just inhale, and you live off everyone else,” said Mr. Schwarzenegger, who as governor signed a law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Some Californians react disdainfully to anyone from out of state who still harbors illicit associations with the drug. Bill Maher, the television host, was speaking about the prevalence of marijuana smoking at dinner parties hosted by Sue Mengers, a retired Hollywood agent famous for her high-powered gatherings of actors and journalists, in an interview after her death last year. “I used to bring her pot,” he said. “And I wasn’t the only one.”

When a reporter sought to ascertain whether this was an on-the-record conversation, Mr. Maher responded tartly: “Where do you think you are? This is California in the year 2011.”

John Burton, the state Democratic chairman, said he recalled an era when the drug was stigmatized under tough antidrug laws. He called the changes in thinking toward marijuana one of the two most striking shifts in public attitude he had seen in 40 years here (the other was gay rights).

“I can remember when your second conviction of having a single marijuana cigarette would get you two to 20 in San Quentin,” he said.

In a Field Poll of California voters conducted in October 2010, 47 percent of respondents said they had smoked marijuana at least once, and 50 percent said it should be legalized. The poll was taken shortly before Californians voted down, by a narrow margin, an initiative to decriminalize marijuana.

“In a Republican year, the legalization came within two points,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who worked on the campaign in favor of the initiative. He said that was evidence of the “fact that the public has evolved on the issue and is ahead of the pols.”

A study by the California Office of Traffic Safety last month found that motorists were more likely to be driving under the influence of marijuana than under the influence of alcohol.

Read More..

At Queens High Rise, Fear, Death and Myth Collided

Sergey Shinderman

Residents of the Sand Castle in Far Rockaway struggled after the hurricane hit New York.

On Nov. 7, little more than a week after Hurricane Sandy battered New York, a filmmaker, Kate Balandina, navigated the dark hallways and staircases of 7-11 Seagirt Avenue, four hulking towers with more than 900 apartments along the beach in Far Rockaway, Queens.

The action she captured played out by flashlight beam, illuminating elderly men and women swaddled in coats, robes, sweaters, hats and scarves in their apartments. “It’s cold, so cold,” one gray-haired man said in Russian, sounding short of breath. The privately owned high rise had been without heat, water or working elevators since the evening of the storm.

In the lobby, Rodney Duff, a burly resident in a black sweatshirt, made a grim prediction. “Two hundred seniors that can’t move up and down these stairs,” Mr. Duff said. “One of them is going to die in this building tonight.”

Those scenes inside the complex, known as the Sand Castle, soon appeared in a disturbing five-minute video on YouTube, telling what has become a familiar story in the storm’s aftermath. Like thousands of other vulnerable city residents, the tenants endured hunger, cold and fear for days, deprived of assistance and, in some cases, vital medicines. Almost everyone — the residents, their families, the building owners, city officials and aid workers — was poorly prepared for the magnitude of need caused by power failures that persisted long after the hurricane had passed.

But the video produced by Ms. Balandina, who was volunteering aid and pulled out her camera because she was horrified at what she was seeing, made this story all its own. After YouTube viewers witnessed the desperation at the Far Rockaway complex, some sprang into action. Aid convoys rumbled in from out of state. People as far away as Britain called City Hall, pleading that officials help the Sand Castle. Ambulances were summoned there by residents of Pennsylvania.

Facebook reports and blog posts, some by people who had not visited the buildings, even circulated accounts of multiple bodies being removed from the complex when the power was out. Those reports were not borne out by the police, medical examiner and health department records, but they contributed to the making of a myth, a social-media tale that seemed believable amid so much misery.

After the lights came on nearly two weeks after the storm, Danny Sanchez, an assistant superintendent, used a master key to enter Apartment C on the 13th floor of Building B, where no one had answered the door on repeated visits. There, he found Thomas S. Anderson, 89, who had lived alone, face up on the floor beside his bed.

His was the sole death at the Sand Castle, where no one in the days after the storm could claim to understand the full story of what was happening and what it meant.

The New York City medical examiner’s office classified Mr. Anderson’s death as natural after consulting with his doctor. A World War II veteran, he was buried the next week with military honors at Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island. Without an autopsy, the specific factors that preceded his death and the possible ways the post-hurricane conditions might have contributed to it — A fall in his unlighted studio? Heart disease worsened by stress? — will never be known.

But what can be said for certain is that Mr. Anderson spent his last days largely alone in the dark, trapped high above the ground without heat, dependent on the haphazard good will of others for his survival.

Perpetually Cool

Mr. Anderson projected cool well into his 80s, a tattooed, earring-wearing great-grandfather with a white Van Dyke mustache that curved into a goatee. He wore glasses and rarely left his apartment without a baseball cap or beanie and his clip-on, yellow-tinted shades.

Before retiring, Mr. Anderson, a native of North Carolina, had worked in a post office and as a supervisor at Marboro Books in Lower Manhattan, a chain acquired by Barnes & Noble. He once took tailoring classes to learn to make his own suits, and loved baseball — he had played with an old-timers club in Harlem called The Unknowns and watched or attended nearly every Mets game.

In his early 20s, he was an Army infantryman who served in the Pacific during World War II and earned several decorations, his daughter, Jannette Elliott, said.

Alain Delaquérière, Lisa Schwartz and Jack Styczynski contributed research.

Follow Sheri Fink on Twitter: @SheriFink

Read More..

Deutsche Telekom finance head to become CEO at end 2013

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Rene Obermann will step down at the end of next year and be succeeded at the helm of Germany's former state telecoms monopoly by finance director Timotheus Hoettges.

Hoettges, 50, said on Thursday he was not planning major changes to strategy and would continue Obermann's drive of investing in the United States and Germany as the firm battles to return to revenue growth against a tough economic backdrop.

"I have worked with Obermann for 12 years, and I don't expect to change a lot in the way that we do things," he told journalists during a conference call.

This month, Deutsche Telekom announced a cut in dividends for the next two years by almost a third as its investment drive eats away cash.

European peers Telefonica, the Netherlands' KPN, Telekom Austria, and France Telecom had already cut their dividends earlier this year as the industry struggles with sluggish economic growth, costly investments and cut-throat competition.

Obermann, with Deutsche Telekom since 1998, became the youngest-ever chief executive of a German blue-chip company at the time when he took over in 2006 at just 43.

His image has been that of a low-key leader, eager to keep unions and politicians happy and wary of taking big strategic decisions.

One of his boldest moves was a deal to sell troubled T-Mobile USA to AT&T, but it collapsed last year amid concerns from competition regulators, dealing a blow to Obermann's reputation.

T-Mobile USA was a strong growth engine for Deutsche Telekom in its early days but is a rundown asset now that has been hemorrhaging customers for a while.

"This is the right time to prepare to pass the baton and ensure a smooth transition," said Obermann, 49, adding he was not being pushed out, and that he wanted a change.

He is going to work for a smaller company where he can be "closer to the engine room", he said, without giving details.

Exane BNP analyst Mathieu Robilliard said it looked like a personal decision.

"If the board or the main shareholders were unhappy about the CEO's performance, they probably would have appointed an outsider, not the CFO, who also has been responsible for what has happened at the company over the last few years," he said.

Hoettges promises to bring a fresh spark to Deutsche Telekom, as he is considered by analysts to have the energy to take on challenges and an ability to absorb knowledge.

Hoettges joined the group in 2000 after playing a central role in the merger of VIAG AG - where he was a member of the extended management board - and VEBA AG to form E.ON, now Germany's biggest utility.

He was promoted to finance chief at Deutsche Telekom in 2009 and, among other things, oversaw the move to put its British mobile business in a joint venture with France Telecom.

Hoettges said the company had not yet decided on a new finance director to replace him.

At 11:05 ET, Deutsche Telekom shares were up 0.6 percent at 8.633 euros, outperforming a 0.2 percent fall in the STOXX Europe 600 European telecoms index.

(Editing by Mark Potter)

Read More..

Grammy nominee Bobby Sanabria feels like a winner

NEW YORK (AP) — Bobby Sanabria already feels like a winner.

The Latin jazz musician, who led the protest against the Recording Academy when it downsized from 109 to 78 categories last year, is nominated for best Latin jazz album — one of the awards that had been eliminated but returns at the awards show next year.

"We're very proud," Sanabria said in a recent interview. "It just places emphasis on the importance of this uniquely American art form. ... Of all the forms of music that are still getting recognition from the Grammys, this is one of the most disenfranchised forms because it isn't part of mainstream culture."

The Recording Academy announced in June that it would reinstate the best Latin Jazz album award and added two others, bringing the total number of awards 81.

Sanabria's nomination in the category for "Multiverse" — along with his Big Band — is his third time competing in the field. His band's song, "Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite for Ellington," is also nominated for best instrumental arrangement; the nomination goes to arranger Michael Philip Mossman.

Bronx-born Sanabria said he's excited that the best Latin jazz album was restored, but he hopes the others come back as well.

"CD sales are down, so the more categories we have, it's just good business," he said.

The Academy shook up the music industry when it announced in April 2011 that it would downsize its categories to make the awards more competitive. That meant eliminating categories by gender, so men and women compete in the same vocal categories. Artists like Herbie Hancock, Paul Simon and Bill Cosby complained, and Sanabria led the group that filed a lawsuit, which was dismissed.

The 55-year-old drummer and percussionist said that the Grammys cut is a sign of the dying appreciation of jazz and blues music in American culture.

"We live in age now where DJs are more respected than musicians and I have nothing against DJs . but there's something to be said for the artistry of a human being taking a musical instrument and performing at a virtuosic level on it, and it takes years of dedication," he explained. "I read something that in New York City they're having trouble filling the demand for DJs for New Year's Eve, and that used to be the night all musicians worked. That isn't the case anymore and something needs to be changed in the culture, and the Grammys can help in that respect with categories like (best Latin jazz album) . and the classical music categories."

Sanabria's latest album is a mixture of sounds, and he said he has his parents to thank for diversifying his musical exposure. He wants to win the Grammy so that they can witness it.

"(They are in) their eighties now and they're not in good health (and) they were the impetus for me," he said.

Among his competition for best Latin jazz album, Sanabria will battle one of his students from New York's The New School, Manuel Valera of the New Cuban Express. He said he's excited to see his student get this kind of recognition, and hopes other young adults will learn to appreciate jazz music's importance. On Feb. 8 and Feb. 9, a day before the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Sanabria is performing a concert special — "Family Concert: What is Latin Jazz?" — at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York.

"Without blues and jazz, you have nothing. There's no Beyonce, there's no Jay-Z, there's no Katy Perry, there's no Aerosmith," he said. "It's the foundation of American music and it's sad that it isn't being taught as part of the history curriculum at every public school."

___

Online:

http://www.bobbysanabria.com/

___

Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin

Read More..

Obama to Give Congress Plan on Gun Control Within Weeks

WASHINGTON — President Obama declared Wednesday that he would make gun control a “central issue” as he opens a second term, submitting broad new gun control proposals to Congress no later than January and committing the power of his office to overcoming political opposition in the wake of last week’s school massacre.

The president’s pledge came as House Republicans restated their firm opposition to enacting any new limits on firearms or ammunition, setting up the possibility of a philosophical clash over the Second Amendment early in Mr. Obama’s second term.

“This time, the words need to lead to action,” Mr. Obama said, referring to to past mass shootings that prompted outrage but led to little or no legislative changes.

He said the proposals would not be just about weapons. “We are going to need to work on making access to mental health care at least as easy as access to guns,” he said.

At an appearance in the White House briefing room, the president said he had directed Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to lead an interagency effort to develop in the next several weeks what the White House says will be a multifaceted approach to preventing similar mass shootings and the many other gun deaths that occur each year.

Mr. Obama, flanked by Mr. Biden, did not offer any specifics about the proposals. But he promised to confront the longstanding opposition in Congress that has previously blocked broad gun control measures.

“I will use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies like this,” Mr. Obama said. “It won’t be easy, but that can’t be an excuse not to try.”

The president said Mr. Biden’s group would make proposals for new laws and actions in January, and he said those will be “proposals that I then intend to push without delay.” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Biden’s effort: “This is not some Washington commission” that will take six months and be shelved.

He said the “conversation has to continue. But this time, the words need to lead to action. I urge the new Congress to hold votes on these new measure next year, in a timely manner.”

When asked about the fiscal negotiations, Mr. Obama said he would be reaching out to Congressional leaders on both sides to try to move the talks forward even as House Republicans were preparing to vote on their alternative proposals.

The deaths of 20 young children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., appears to have softened opposition to gun control among some Democratic lawmakers, particularly in the Senate. But there has been little indication that Republicans who control the House of Representatives are willing to accept new restrictions.

Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia and the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday that had has no interest in moving any sort of gun control legislation through the chamber.

“We’re going to take a look at what happened there and what can be done to help avoid it in the future, but gun control is not going to be something that I would support,” Mr. Goodlatte told the Roll Call newspaper.

Representative Howard Coble, Republican of North Carolina, said in an interview that he thought the talk of gun control was “probably a rush to judgment” that missed the real issue.

“I think it’s more of a mental health problem than a gun problem right now,” he said. “Traditionally states that enact rigid, inflexible gun laws do not show a corresponding diminishment in crime. I think we need to be careful there. I think we need to look at how the mentally impaired get access to firearms.”

While he said he would want to study any proposal made by the president, he said the rest of the Judiciary Committee majority would probably agree with his views. “I suspect it would be pretty much what Chairman Goodlatte told you and what I told you,” he said.

Read More..

Strong software sales push Oracle shares to 19-month high

(Reuters) - Shares of Oracle Corp, the world's No. 3 software maker, rose 4 percent to their highest in 19 months on Wednesday after it forecast strong sales for next year, prompting several brokerages to raise their price targets on the stock.

The company's results often set the tone for smaller software makers, and analysts said the 17 percent jump in its quarterly software sales boded well for the industry.

Investors pay close attention to new software sales as they generate high-margin, long-term maintenance contracts and are an important gauge of a company's future profits.

"Oracle delivered strong results in a challenging environment," Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Derrick Wood said in a note to clients.

Investors are worried that corporations would postpone spending on technology because of uncertainty over the year-end deadline for Congress and U.S. President Barack Obama to reach a compromise on the looming "fiscal cliff", an automatic rise in tax rates and government spending cuts next year.

Shares of Oracle, which competes with Germany's SAP AG and Salesforce.com Inc, rose to $34.15 in early Wednesday trading on the Nasdaq.

Oracle said earlier this month it would give over $800 million back to shareholders, joining a rising number of companies accelerating dividend payments or declaring special dividends because of uncertainty surrounding the U.S. government's fiscal plans.

"(Oracle's) investments and efforts to build out its product portfolio and sales capacity are clearly starting to pay off handsomely and enable it to navigate the rough seas," Stifel Nicolaus analyst Brad Reback said.

Reback, who has a "buy" rating on the stock, raised his price target by $1 to $38.

Oracle, which was slow to embrace cloud computing -- a broad term referring to the delivery of computer services via the Internet from remote data centers -- is now trying to drive growth by promoting its suite of cloud computing products.

Corporate technology buyers like the approach because it is faster to implement and has lower upfront costs than traditional software, which businesses need to install on their own computer systems.

"Calendar 2013 is promising for Oracle thanks to a strong product cycle, market share gains, and healthy secular trends for cloud spend," FBR Capital Markets analysts said.

The brokerage, which has an "outperform" rating on the company's stock, raised its price target by $1 to $37.

"The only blemish in the quarter was on the hardware front, as the company remains focused on sunsetting uneconomical product offerings," FBR said.

The company's hardware business, which it acquired with its $5.6 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems in January 2010, continued to be sluggish, and quarterly hardware systems product sales fell 23 percent from a year earlier.

(Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)

Read More..

Adele voted AP Entertainer of the Year

NEW YORK (AP) — Though Adele didn't have a new album or a worldwide tour in 2012, she's still rolling. After a year of Grammy glory and James Bond soundtracking, Adele has been voted The Associated Press Entertainer of the Year.

In 132 ballots submitted by members and subscribers of the AP, Adele easily outpaced other vote-getters like Taylor Swift, "Fifty Shades of Grey" author E.L. James, the South Korean viral video star PSY and the cast of "Twilight." Editors and broadcasters were asked to cast their ballot for the person who had the most influence on entertainment and culture in 2012.

Adele's year began in triumph at the Grammys, took a turn through recording the theme to the 007 film "Skyfall," and ended with the birth of her son in October. The ubiquitous Adele was that rare thing in pop culture: an unqualified sensation, a megastar in a universe of niche hits.

By the end of the year, her sophomore album, "21," had passed 10 million copies sold in the U.S., only the 21st album in the Nielsen SoundScan era (begun in 1991) to achieve diamond status. Buoyed by hits like "Someone Like You" and "Rolling in the Deep" long after its release in early 2011, "21" was also the top-selling album on iTunes for the second year running.

As David Panian, news editor for Michigan's Daily Telegram, put it: "It just seemed like you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing one of her songs."

Women have had a lock on the annual Entertainer of the Year selection. Previous winners include Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Betty White and Tina Fey. Stephen Colbert is the lone male winner in the six-year history of voting.

The Grammy Awards in February were essentially the de-facto crowning of the 24-year-old Adele, whose real name is Adele Adkins, as a pop queen. She won six awards, including album of the year. It was also a comeback of sorts for Adele, who performed for the first time since having vocal cord surgery, drawing a standing ovation from the Staples Center crowd.

Accepting the album of the year award, a teary Adele exclaimed: "Mum, girl did good!" The emotional, sniffling singer endeared many viewers to her when she copped in her acceptance speech to having "a bit of snot."

"This record is inspired by something that is really normal and everyone's been through it: just a rubbish relationship," said Adele.

But her luck in love has since turned, thanks to her boyfriend Simon Konecki. In an interview with Vogue magazine, Adele said she was through with break-up records and done being "a bitter witch." When Adele announced in June that she was having a baby with Konecki, her website promptly crashed under the heavy traffic. Their son was born in October.

With such an avalanche of success and now a mother of a newborn son, Adele has understandably taken a step out of the spotlight. One notable exception was recording the opening credits theme song to "Skyfall." The song was recorded with her "21" producer Paul Epworth at the Abbey Road Studios in London with a 77-piece orchestra. Within hours, it zoomed to the top of digital charts.

"There was an overwhelming embrace of Adele and her music," said Joe Butkiewicz, executive editor of the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. "And that was never more evident to me than when I heard teenagers express their enthusiastic expectations for the new James Bond movie because Adele performed the theme song."

The song recently received a Golden Globe nomination. No Bond theme has ever won the best original song Oscar, but given Adele's awards success thus far, it wouldn't be a stretch to think she has a chance of changing that. The tune is among the 75 short-listed songs in the Academy Awards category.

___

Projects Editor Brooke Lansdale contributed to this report.

Read More..

Global Update: African Children Still at Risk of Pneumonia Despite Ceramic Stoves

Small ceramic indoor stoves, such as those sold by women in AIDS self-help groups in Africa, do save fuel and cut down on eye-irritating smoke, a new study has found — but they do not save children from pneumonia.

The study, published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, compared 168 households in rural Kenya that used either “upesi jiko” stoves or traditional three-stone indoor fires. The former — the name means “quick stove” in Swahili — has a locally made ceramic firebox that sells for $3. Clay and mud must be built up around it to insulate it and support the pot.

Since it uses less wood, it saves local forests. But it has no chimney, so the smoke stays indoors.

Biweekly visits by researchers found that children in both the stove and open-fire homes got pneumonia equally often. Pneumonia is a leading cause of death for infants in poor countries, and a 2008 study showed that the fine particles and toxic gases in cooking smoke inflame their lungs, doubling the pneumonia risk.

Two years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton committed $50 million in American aid to help the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves get 100 million efficient stoves into households by 2020. But experts are still divided over which stove to pursue; chimneys do not solve all the problems, and stoves with fans burn more cleanly but are expensive and fragile.

Read More..

Backing Off Deal, Boehner Invokes ‘Plan B’ on Taxes

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

 John Boehner winced while talking to a reporter on the way to a closed-door meeting with House Republicans today.

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner, pivoting to hardball tactics just days before a deadline in the fiscal impasse, promised to bring a bill to the House floor this week that would raise tax rates only on income over $1 million and leave in place across-the-board spending cuts to military and domestic programs that Republicans have warned could have dire consequences.

The move came less than 24 hours after President Obama offered a more comprehensive deal that would raise tax rates on income over $400,000, raise $1.2 trillion in new revenue and cut $930 billion in spending over 10 years. Mr. Boehner declared that unbalanced and insufficient.

“What we’ve offered meets the definition of a balanced approach, but the president is not there yet,” Mr. Boehner said Tuesday.

The speaker made it clear he would continue negotiating with the president, and some House Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting with Mr. Boehner confident that a deal was now in reach.

“We’re getting there,” said Representative James B. Renacci, Republican of Ohio.

But to raise the pressure, House leaders will proceed with what they are calling “Plan B,” which could come to a vote as early as Thursday. Under that plan, the House would take up tax legislation and consider two amendments. The first would mirror a bill passed by the Senate that would extend expiring Bush-era tax cuts for income below $250,000. That would be expected to fail, showing the president that his initial offer could not pass. A second amendment would raise that threshold to income below $1 million. The House may also vote on some middle ground, like the president’s $400,000 threshold.

Mr. Boehner told his conference that he would also like the bill to include provisions preventing the existing alternative minimum tax from expanding more to affect the middle class and extending existing tax rates on inherited estates.

But he said the bill would not cancel across-the-board spending cuts, known as sequestration, that would total $110 billion in 2013 and more than $1 trillion over 10 years.

Republicans would then resume the fight over broad spending cuts — especially to entitlement programs like Medicare — in late January or February, when the government must raise its borrowing limit, which many Republicans believe will give them much more leverage than they have now.

Mr. Boehner told Republicans on Tuesday: “Taxes are going up on everyone on Jan. 1. They’re baked into current law. And we have to stop whatever tax rate increases we can. In the absence of an alternative, as of this morning, a ‘modified Plan B’ is the plan.”

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican whip, said his operation would be checking whether the party had the votes to pass any tax legislation. If Democrats stay united against the $1 million threshold, it could fail because some Republicans are unlikely to ever vote for a tax increase. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, met with House Democrats on Tuesday and urged unity against the speaker’s plan.

The White House came out strongly against the speaker’s move. The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said “Plan B” could not pass the Senate and “therefore will not protect middle-class families” from large tax increases beginning Jan. 1.

“The president has put a balanced, reasonable proposal on the table that achieves significant deficit reduction and reflects real compromise by meeting the Republicans halfway on revenue and more than halfway on spending from where each side started,” he said. “That is the essence of compromise.”

It is not clear how much this alternative plan is real or a bargaining tactic to extract more concessions from Mr. Obama. Rob Nabors, the president’s chief liaison to Congress, met with House Democrats on Tuesday and said talks were moving forward. But privately, he expressed pessimism that Mr. Boehner could sign on to any deal, according to people familiar with those conversations.

In spite of statements to the contrary just a week ago, House Republicans on Tuesday seemed almost uniformly resigned to some sort of tax rate increases on the nation’s highest earners, though they remained committed to keeping that group as small as possible. “The principle of trying to limit the increases is a good one,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah. “But now we’ve got to see more spending cuts.”

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

Read More..

Samsung drops attempt to ban Apple sales in Europe

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Korea's Samsung Electronics on Tuesday said it would drop law suits aimed at banning the sale of Apple Inc. products in Europe just a day after scoring a victory in a battle in the United States with the maker of iPhones.

Samsung and Apple, the world's top two smartphone makers, have been locked in patent disputes in at least 10 countries over the last 18 months since Apple sued Samsung, saying the Korean firm copied its best-selling iPhone and iPad.

On Tuesday, Samsung said it was dropping an attempt to stop the sale of some Apple products in Germany, Britain, France, Italy and the Netherlands, though it did not say it would halt its court battle for compensation.

"Samsung remains committed to licensing our technologies on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, and we strongly believe it is better when companies compete fairly in the marketplace, rather than in court," the company said in a statement.

A spokesman for Apple declined to comment on Samsung's decision.

The decision comes a day after a judge rejected Apple Inc's request for a ban on the sale of Samsung Electronics' smartphones in the United States.

In August, Apple was awarded $1.05 billion in damages after a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad. The Samsung products run on the Android operating system, developed by Google.

In January, the European Commission opened an investigation into whether Samsung Electronics has distorted competition in the European mobile device market, breaking EU antitrust rules.

(Reporting by Simon Johnson, additional reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Louise Heavens)

Read More..

Who was Gossip Girl? The series finale told all

NEW YORK (AP) — "Gossip Girl" ended its six-season run with a major reveal: The identity of its tattle-tale blogger.

Known only as Gossip Girl and given narrative voice by actress Kristen Bell, she turned out to be a he. The Monday night finale revealed Gossip Girl was secretly the work of character Dan Humphrey.

Dan, played by Penn Badgley, was a budding poet and a student at Manhattan's posh St. Jude's Preparatory School for Boys. But he came from the other side of the tracks, or rather, from Brooklyn, across the East River.

His Gossip Girl blog was a sassy tell-all account of the lives of the privileged young adults who made up the CW drama. Other series stars included Blake Lively, Leighton Meester and Chace Crawford.

At the end, Dan fittingly pronounced Gossip Girl dead.

___

Online:

http://www.cwtv.com

Read More..

Mind: A Misguided Focus on Mental Illness in Gun Control Debate

The gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, has been described as a loner who was intelligent and socially awkward. And while no official diagnosis has been made public, armchair diagnosticians have been quick to assert that keeping guns from getting into the hands of people with mental illness would help solve the problem of gun homicides.

Arguing against stricter gun-control measures, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and a former F.B.I. agent, said, “What the more realistic discussion is, ‘How do we target people with mental illness who use firearms?’ ”

Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, told The New York Times: “To reduce the risk of multivictim violence, we would be better advised to focus on early detection and treatment of mental illness.”

But there is overwhelming epidemiological evidence that the vast majority of people with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts. Only about 4 percent of violence in the United States can be attributed to people with mental illness.

This does not mean that mental illness is not a risk factor for violence. It is, but the risk is actually small. Only certain serious psychiatric illnesses are linked to an increased risk of violence.

One of the largest studies, the National Institute of Mental Health’s Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, which followed nearly 18,000 subjects, found that the lifetime prevalence of violence among people with serious mental illness — like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — was 16 percent, compared with 7 percent among people without any mental disorder. Anxiety disorders, in contrast, do not seem to increase the risk at all.

Alcohol and drug abuse are far more likely to result in violent behavior than mental illness by itself. In the National Institute of Mental Health’s E.C.A. study, for example, people with no mental disorder who abused alcohol or drugs were nearly seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violent acts.

It’s possible that preventing people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses from getting guns might decrease the risk of mass killings. Even the Supreme Court, which in 2008 strongly affirmed a broad right to bear arms, at the same time endorsed prohibitions on gun ownership “by felons and the mentally ill.”

But mass killings are very rare events, and because people with mental illness contribute so little to overall violence, these measures would have little impact on everyday firearm-related killings. Consider that between 2001 and 2010, there were nearly 120,000 gun-related homicides, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Few were perpetrated by people with mental illness.

Perhaps more significant, we are not very good at predicting who is likely to be dangerous in the future. According to Dr. Michael Stone, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia and an expert on mass murderers, “Most of these killers are young men who are not floridly psychotic. They tend to be paranoid loners who hold a grudge and are full of rage.”

Even though we know from large-scale epidemiologic studies like the E.C.A. study that a young psychotic male who is intoxicated with alcohol and has a history of involuntary commitment is at a high risk of violence, most individuals who fit this profile are harmless.

Jeffery Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University and a leading expert in the epidemiology of violence, said in an e-mail, “Can we reliably predict violence?  ‘No’ is the short answer. Psychiatrists, using clinical judgment, are not much better than chance at predicting which individual patients will do something violent and which will not.”

It would be even harder to predict a mass shooting, Dr. Swanson said, “You can profile the perpetrators after the fact and you’ll get a description of troubled young men, which also matches the description of thousands of other troubled young men who would never do something like this.”

Even if clinicians could predict violence perfectly, keeping guns from people with mental illness is easier said than done. Nearly five years after Congress enacted the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, only about half of the states have submitted more than a tiny proportion of their mental health records.

How effective are laws that prohibit people with mental illness from obtaining guns? According to Dr. Swanson’s recent research, these measures may prevent some violent crime. But, he added, “there are a lot of people who are undeterred by these laws.”

Adam Lanza was prohibited from purchasing a gun, because he was too young. Yet he managed to get his hands on guns — his mother’s — anyway. If we really want to stop young men like him from becoming mass murderers, and prevent the small amount of violence attributable to mental illness, we should invest our resources in better screening for, and treatment of, psychiatric illness in young people.

All the focus on the small number of people with mental illness who are violent serves to make us feel safer by displacing and limiting the threat of violence to a small, well-defined group. But the sad and frightening truth is that the vast majority of homicides are carried out by outwardly normal people in the grip of all too ordinary human aggression to whom we provide nearly unfettered access to deadly force.

Read More..

Advertising: Finding a Documentary Audience, for a Cause

DOCUMENTARY films are notoriously difficult to finance, with filmmakers often spending more time scrounging up money to make a film than actually producing it. Unlike big Hollywood films, where having the presence of a marquee name can attract dollars, documentary filmmakers often must try to explain how a niche idea can succeed at the box office.

The director and backers of “Girl Rising,” a documentary that is a cornerstone of a media campaign about educating girls around the world, hope to change that. To promote the new film, and demonstrate the impact that documentaries can have on audiences, they will rely on technologies often used by more traditional advertisers, including personalized ads for employees of companies viewing them online.

“If what you are after is engagement and connection to a cause,” said Richard E. Robbins, the director, “how you use the tools that are available to you is very different than if you are trying to market ‘Batman.’ ”

Money donated by consumers seeing the film will be funneled to a nonprofit group, 10x10, which will then distribute the funds to various nonprofits helping to educate girls.

Many documentary filmmakers have trouble quantifying the social and financial impact their films can have, Mr. Robbins said. And many are confronted with “a dearth of evidence to support the idea that documentary films affect change.”

But using highly targeted advertising can help filmmakers learn who is donating, how much they are donating, how much interest there is in a film and whether there is enough interest to warrant a screening in a city, he said. Having that information might also help persuade future investors to support documentaries connected to causes.

“Girl Rising,” which will be released in March, is being financed in part by 10x10, which supports educating girls around the world through film and social media advocacy.

Ads promoting “Girl Rising” will be shown to employees of 57 companies that the filmmakers selected in hopes they will support efforts to educate girls in developing countries. Those companies include Apple, Bank of America, Oracle, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, Disney and Procter & Gamble.

“Those companies are deeply invested in vibrant economies overseas, healthy supply chains, diversity, attracting and retaining and identifying new employees, skilled employees,” said Holly Gordon, executive director at 10x10. “We thought that they would be advocates for these issues of gender diversity and global education.”

Employees at the companies will see ads on their computers at work, customized to use the company name. For example, an Oracle employee will see an ad that says “Oracle employees can change the world,” with a link to see a trailer for the film and donate to the cause.

A group of former ABC News journalists, known as the Documentary Group, and Vulcan Productions announced the creation of 10x10 and its media campaign at the United Nation’s first International Day of the Girl in October. Additional funds for organization came from Intel, the Ford Foundation, Google, the Nike Foundation, the Skoll Foundation and the Fledgling Fund.

“Girl Rising,” the first film backed by the group, features stories inspired by nine girls in countries like Haiti, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Afghanistan. Some of the segments are narrated by celebrities like Meryl Streep, Selena Gomez and Kerry Washington.

Well-known writers from each of the countries, including Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American author, and Edwidge Danticat of Haiti helped to write the stories of each of the girls to whom they were paired. Each story will be presented differently; some will be animated while others will be live action.

Chris Golec, the chief executive of Demandbase, the company behind the ads, said technology that aimed at the Internet addresses at the companies would be used to find the right users for each ad.

“Targeting people at work is four times more likely to drive engagement than somebody coming from a residential I.P. address,” said Mr. Golec, referring to the Internet addresses of home viewers. “If you personalize the ad with the company name that they work for you get a three times higher click through rate on the ad.”

Using such digital advertising also helps the filmmakers and producers in another way, said Mr. Robbins. “It’s infinitely more trackable, there’s so much more data,” he said. “We can measure conversion rates, who our audience is — its not just anonymous people buying tickets.”

Distribution of “Girl Rising” will be in phases, beginning in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where one chapter will be shown. It will make its official debut in March for International Women’s Day at an event in New York City, and with a smaller event in Los Angeles. CNN will show the film in June as part of the network’s new film division.

Organizers are also using technology to get viewers to book a screening of the film in the city of their choice. Supporters of 10x10 will receive an e-mail asking them to go to a Web site, Gathr.us, which will keep track of the number of screening requests from various cities.

Read More..

The Lede Blog: Latest Updates on Shooting Aftermath

Two of the children killed in Friday’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., were to be buried Monday, as investigators continued to try to piece together the motive behind Adam Lanza’s rampage, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults at the school and Mr. Lanza’s mother before Mr. Lanza killed himself.

Read More..

U.S. could wrap up Google probe this week: sources

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators this week could drop their investigation of how Google ranks certain searches, without requiring any major changes in how the online giant does business, according to two people knowledgeable about the investigation.

Google had been accused of giving competitors in lucrative areas like travel a lower ranking in search results, thus making it harder for their customers to find them.

But the Federal Trade Commission is expected to conclude that Google's actions were legal and end its more than two-year probe of the company.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz has said he wanted the case wrapped up by the end of the year. He is widely expected to step down within a month but has not announced his resignation.

Google is expected to agree to some changes in its business practices, however. For example, it is expected to end the practice of "scraping," or using reviews from other websites, for its own products, the sources said.

And it is also expected to allow customers who use its advertising network to be able to export data on the effectiveness of those ad campaigns, the sources said.

Google and the FTC are also expected to reach an agreement on when the company can request sales bans when filing patent infringement lawsuits.

The company is expected to agree to strict conditions when filing these lawsuits if the patent in question has been determined to be essential to a standard, the sources said.

The European Commission, which is also probing Google on the issue of search fairness, is expected to announce a decision next month.

Google's U.S. critics, anticipating disappointment from the FTC, have already said they would take their evidence to the Justice Department to press the antitrust division to take up the case.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz)

Read More..