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.”

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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.

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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.”

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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

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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)

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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."

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Online:

http://www.bobbysanabria.com/

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

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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.

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