Fire Sweeps Through Nightclub in Brazil; Scores Dead

RIO DE JANEIRO — A fire ignited by a flare from a live band’s pyrotechnic spectacle swept through a nightclub filled with hundreds of university students early Sunday morning in Santa Maria, a city in southern Brazil, leaving at least 232 people dead, police officials said.

Throughout Sunday morning, health workers hauled bodies from the nightclub, called Kiss, to hospitals in Santa Maria, with some survivors were taken to the nearby city of Porto Alegre to be treated for burns. Valdeci Oliveira, a local legislator, said he saw piles of bodies in the nightclub’s bathrooms after entering the venue with rescue workers.

Col. Guido Pedroso de Melo, the commander of the city’s fire department, said security guards had locked the doors needed to exit the club, intensifying a panicked stampede to flee the blaze. Public security officials in Santa Maria said Sunday that emergency responders had counted at least 232 dead, down from a previous estimate of 245.

Witnesses who survived the fire described a scene of mayhem inside the nightclub as patrons rushed for its main exit.

“I only got out because I am strong,” Ezequiel Corte Real, a 23-year-old survivor, told reporters. He said he helped others escape the blaze, as well.

The disaster in Rio Grande do Sul, a relatively prosperous state in southern Brazil, sent shock waves throughout the country. President Dilma Rousseff canceled appointments at a summit meeting in Chile to travel to Santa Maria, city of about 260,000 residents that is known for its cluster of universities.

Brazil is not alone in facing such a tragedy. The disaster ranks among the deadliest nightclub fires in recent memory, comparable to the 2003 blaze in Rhode Island that killed 100 people, a nightclub fire in 2004 in Buenos Aires in which 194 were killed and a fire at a club in China in 2000 that left 309 dead.

Still, the circumstances surrounding the blaze, from the use of pyrotechnics in a crowded nightclub to reports of locked exits, are also expected to raise questions as to whether the owners of the venue were negligent in the episode. While it is not clear why patrons were initially not allowed to escape, it is common across Brazil for nightclubs and bars to have customers to pay their entire tab upon leaving, instead of on a per-drink basis.

“It is a scene of horror,” Elizabeth Shimomura, a police investigator who arrived at the nightclub Sunday, said in televised comment.

Indignation among some of the survivors on Sunday already pointed to a heated discussion over who was responsible for the tragedy.

“Only after a multitude pushed down the security guards did they see the crap they had done,” said Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, a medical student who survived the fire, in comments posted on Facebook.

Witnesses said the fire started around 2 a.m. after a rock band, Gurizada Fangangueira, began performing for an audience numbering in the hundreds, mostly students in the agronomy and veterinary medicine programs in a local university.

At least one member of the five-person band, which is based in Santa Maria and advertised its use of pyrotechnics in its own publicity materials, was reportedly killed in the fire. Many of the other victims died of smoke inhalation, according to emergency officials.

“The smoke spread very quickly,” said Aline Santos Silva, 29, a survivor of the blaze, in comments to the GloboNews television network. “Those who were closest to the stage, where the band was playing, had the most difficulty getting out.”

More broadly, the blaze may also focus attention on issues of accountability in Brazil, pointing to the disconnect between an economy on more solid footing and the relaxed enforcement of measures aimed at protecting citizens. Preventable disasters still commonly claim lives in Brazil, as illustrated by Rio de Janeiro’s building collapses, manhole explosions and trolley mishaps.

“Bureaucracy and corruption also cause tragedies,” said Andre Barcinski, a columnist for Folha de São Paulo, one of Brazil’s largest newspapers.

Human rights officials focused Sunday on the grief in Santa Maria. “How many families are now searching for their young one?” asked Maria do Rosário Nunes, a cabinet minister who is Ms. Rousseff’s top human rights official.

Brazilian television stations broadcast images of trucks carrying corpses to hospitals in Santa Maria, where family members were gathering on Sunday. Photographs taken shortly after the blaze and posted on the Web sites of local news organizations showed frantic scenes in which people on the street outside the nightclub pulled bodies from the charred venue.

The tragedy took place in a part of Brazil in which Ms. Rousseff made her political career before rising to national prominence as a top aide to the former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and running for president herself. Before departing from the summit in Chile on Sunday, she appeared distraught, crying in front of reporters as she absorbed details of the blaze.

“This is a tragedy,” she said, “for all of us.”

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Japan to start 4K TV broadcast in July 2014: report

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese government is set to launch the world's first 4K TV broadcast in July 2014, roughly two years ahead of schedule, to help stir demand for ultra high-definition televisions, the Asahi newspaper reported on Sunday without citing sources.

The service will begin from communications satellites, followed by satellite broadcasting and ground digital broadcasting, the report said.

The 4K TVs, which boast four times the resolution of current high-definition TVs, are now on sale by Japanese makers including Sony Corp , Panasonic and Sharp Corp . Other manufacturers include South Korea's LG Electronics .

Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications had aimed to kick-start the 4K TV service in 2016. That has been brought forward to July 2014, when the final match of the 2014 football World Cup is set to take place in Brazil, the Asahi report said.

In Japan, the development of super high-definition 8K TVs is in progress, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications plans to launch the test 8K TV broadcast in 2016, two years ahead of schedule, it said.

(Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Paul Tait)

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Guild gold: Actors gather for SAG's big night

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A puzzling Academy Awards season will sort itself out a bit more on Sunday with the Screen Actors Guild Awards, where top performers gather to honor their own in what often is a prelude for who'll go home with an Oscar.

Among nominees for the 19th annual guild awards are Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones for the Civil War epic "Lincoln"; Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway for the Victor Hugo musical adaptation "Les Miserables"; and Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Oscar recipient Robert De Niro for the oddball romance "Silver Linings Playbook."

De Niro and Jones are in an exclusive supporting-actors group where all five nominees are past Oscar winners. The others are Alan Arkin for the Iran hostage-crisis thriller "Argo," Javier Bardem for the James Bond adventure "Skyfall" and Philip Seymour Hoffman for the cult drama "The Master."

Honors from the actors union, next weekend's Directors Guild of America Awards and Saturday night's Producers Guild of America Awards — whose top honor went to "Argo" — typically help to establish clear favorites for the Oscars.

But Oscar night on Feb. 24 looks more uncertain this time after some top directing prospects, including Ben Affleck for "Argo" and Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty," missed out on nominations. Both films were nominated for best picture, but a movie rarely wins the top Oscar if its director is not also in the running.

Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" would seem the Oscar favorite with 12 nominations. Yet "Argo" and Affleck were surprise best-drama and director winners at the Golden Globes, and then there's Saturday's Producers Guild win for "Argo," leaving the Oscar race looking like anybody's guess.

The Screen Actors Guild honors at least should help to establish solid front-runners for the stars. All four of the guild's individual acting winners often go on to receive the same prizes at the Academy Awards.

Last year, the guild went just three-for-four — with lead actor Jean Dujardin of "The Artist" and supporting players Octavia Spencer of "The Help" and Christopher Plummer of "Beginners" also taking home Oscars. The guild's lead-actress winner, Viola Davis of "The Help," missed out on the Oscar, which went to Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady."

The guild also presents an award for overall cast performance, its equivalent of a best-picture honor. The nominees are "Argo," ''The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," ''Les Miserables," ''Lincoln" and "Silver Linings Playbook."

Yet the cast prize has a spotty record at predicting the eventual best-picture recipient at the Oscars. Only eight of 17 times since the guild added the category has the cast winner gone on to take the best-picture Oscar. "The Help" won the guild's cast prize last year, while Oscar voters named "The Artist" as best picture.

Such past guild cast winners as "The Birdcage," ''Gosford Park" and "Inglourious Basterds" also failed to take the top Oscar.

Airing live on TNT and TBS, the show features nine television categories, as well.

The SAG ceremony also includes awards for film and TV stunt ensemble. The film stunt nominees are "The Amazing Spider-Man," ''The Bourne Legacy," ''The Dark Knight Rises," ''Les Miserables" and "Skyfall."

Receiving the guild's life-achievement award is Dick Van Dyke, who presented the same prize last year to his "The Dick Van Dyke Show" co-star, Mary Tyler Moore. Van Dyke's award will be presented by his 1960s sitcom's creator and co-star, Carl Reiner, and Alec Baldwin.

___

Online:

http://www.sagawards.com

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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Unboxed: Literary History, Seen Through Big Data’s Lens

ANY list of the leading novelists of the 19th century, writing in English, would almost surely include Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain.

But they do not appear at the top of a list of the most influential writers of their time. Instead, a recent study has found, Jane Austen, author of “Pride and Prejudice, “ and Sir Walter Scott, the creator of “Ivanhoe,” had the greatest effect on other authors, in terms of writing style and themes.

These two were “the literary equivalent of Homo erectus, or, if you prefer, Adam and Eve,” Matthew L. Jockers wrote in research published last year. He based his conclusion on an analysis of 3,592 works published from 1780 to 1900. It was a lot of digging, and a computer did it.

The study, which involved statistical parsing and aggregation of thousands of novels, made other striking observations. For example, Austen’s works cluster tightly together in style and theme, while those of George Eliot (a k a Mary Ann Evans) range more broadly, and more closely resemble the patterns of male writers. Using similar criteria, Harriet Beecher Stowe was 20 years ahead of her time, said Mr. Jockers, whose research will soon be published in a book, “Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History” (University of Illinois Press).

These findings are hardly the last word. At this stage, this kind of digital analysis is mostly an intriguing sign that Big Data technology is steadily pushing beyond the Internet industry and scientific research into seemingly foreign fields like the social sciences and the humanities. The new tools of discovery provide a fresh look at culture, much as the microscope gave us a closer look at the subtleties of life and the telescope opened the way to faraway galaxies.

“Traditionally, literary history was done by studying a relative handful of texts,” says Mr. Jockers, an assistant professor of English and a researcher at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska. “What this technology does is let you see the big picture — the context in which a writer worked — on a scale we’ve never seen before.”

Mr. Jockers, 46, personifies the digital advance in the humanities. He received a Ph.D. in English literature from Southern Illinois University, but was also fascinated by computing and became a self-taught programmer. Before he moved to the University of Nebraska last year, he spent more than a decade at Stanford, where he was a founder of the Stanford Literary Lab, which is dedicated to the digital exploration of books.

Today, Mr. Jockers describes the tools of his trade in terms familiar to an Internet software engineer — algorithms that use machine learning and network analysis techniques. His mathematical models are tailored to identify word patterns and thematic elements in written text. The number and strength of links among novels determine influence, much the way Google ranks Web sites.

It is this ability to collect, measure and analyze data for meaningful insights that is the promise of Big Data technology. In the humanities and social sciences, the flood of new data comes from many sources including books scanned into digital form, Web sites, blog posts and social network communications.

Data-centric specialties are growing fast, giving rise to a new vocabulary. In political science, this quantitative analysis is called political methodology. In history, there is cliometrics, which applies econometrics to history. In literature, stylometry is the study of an author’s writing style, and these days it leans heavily on computing and statistical analysis. Culturomics is the umbrella term used to describe rigorous quantitative inquiries in the social sciences and humanities.

“Some call it computer science and some call it statistics, but the essence is that these algorithmic methods are increasingly part of every discipline now,” says Gary King, director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard.

Cultural data analysts often adapt biological analogies to describe their work. Mr. Jockers, for example, called his research presentation “Computing and Visualizing the 19th-Century Literary Genome.”

Such biological metaphors seem apt, because much of the research is a quantitative examination of words. Just as genes are the fundamental building blocks of biology, words are the raw material of ideas.

“What is critical and distinctive to human evolution is ideas, and how they evolve,” says Jean-Baptiste Michel, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard.

Mr. Michel and another researcher, Erez Lieberman Aiden, led a project to mine the virtual book depository known as Google Books and to track the use of words over time, compare related words and even graph them.

Google cooperated and built the software for making graphs open to the public. The initial version of Google’s cultural exploration site began at the end of 2010, based on more than five million books, dating from 1500. By now, Google has scanned 20 million books, and the site is used 50 times a minute. For example, type in “women” in comparison to “men,” and you see that for centuries the number of references to men dwarfed those for women. The crossover came in 1985, with women ahead ever since.

In work published in Science magazine in 2011, Mr. Michel and the research team tapped the Google Books data to find how quickly the past fades from books. For instance, references to “1880,” which peaked in that year, fell to half by 1912, a lag of 32 years. By contrast, “1973” declined to half its peak by 1983, only 10 years later. “We are forgetting our past faster with each passing year,” the authors wrote.

JON KLEINBERG, a computer scientist at Cornell, and a group of researchers approached collective memory from a very different perspective.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 27, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated Matthew L. Jockers’s age. He is 46, not 48. 

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Religious Groups and Employers Battle Contraception Mandate

Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency

President Obama, with his health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, offering a compromise on the contraception mandate last year.

In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious freedom and health care access that appears headed to the Supreme Court.

In recent months, federal courts have seen dozens of lawsuits brought not only by religious institutions like Catholic dioceses but also by private employers ranging from a pizza mogul to produce transporters who say the government is forcing them to violate core tenets of their faith. Some have been turned away by judges convinced that access to contraception is a vital health need and a compelling state interest. Others have been told that their beliefs appear to outweigh any state interest and that they may hold off complying with the law until their cases have been judged. New suits are filed nearly weekly.

“This is highly likely to end up at the Supreme Court,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia and one of the country’s top scholars on church-state conflicts. “There are so many cases, and we are already getting strong disagreements among the circuit courts.”

President Obama’s health care law, known as the Affordable Care Act, was the most fought-over piece of legislation in his first term and was the focus of a highly contentious Supreme Court decision last year that found it to be constitutional.

But a provision requiring the full coverage of contraception remains a matter of fierce controversy. The law says that companies must fully cover all “contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures” approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including “morning-after pills” and intrauterine devices whose effects some contend are akin to abortion.

As applied by the Health and Human Services Department, the law offers an exemption for “religious employers,” meaning those who meet a four-part test: that their purpose is to inculcate religious values, that they primarily employ and serve people who share their religious tenets, and that they are nonprofit groups under federal tax law.

But many institutions, including religious schools and colleges, do not meet those criteria because they employ and teach members of other religions and have a broader purpose than inculcating religious values.

“We represent a Catholic college founded by Benedictine monks,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has brought a number of the cases to court. “They don’t qualify as a house of worship and don’t turn away people in hiring or as students because they are not Catholic.”

In that case, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, a federal appeals court panel in Washington told the college last month that it could hold off on complying with the law while the federal government works on a promised exemption for religiously-affiliated institutions. The court told the government that it wanted an update by mid-February.

Defenders of the provision say employers may not be permitted to impose their views on employees, especially when something so central as health care is concerned.

“Ninety-nine percent of women use contraceptives at some time in their lives,” said Judy Waxman, a vice president of the National Women’s Law Center, which filed a brief supporting the government in one of the cases. “There is a strong and legitimate government interest because it affects the health of women and babies.”

She added, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Contraception was declared by the C.D.C. to be one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.”

Officials at the Justice Department and the Health and Human Services Department declined to comment, saying the cases were pending.

A compromise for religious institutions may be worked out. The government hopes that by placing the burden on insurance companies rather than on the organizations, the objections will be overcome. Even more challenging cases involve private companies run by people who reject all or many forms of contraception.

The Alliance Defending Freedom — like Becket, a conservative group — has brought a case on behalf of Hercules Industries, a company based in Denver that makes sheet metal products. It was granted an injunction by a judge in Colorado who said the religious values of the family owners were infringed by the law.

“Two-thirds of the cases have had injunctions against Obamacare, and most are headed to courts of appeals,” said Matt Bowman, senior legal counsel for the alliance. “It is clear that a substantial number of these cases will vindicate religious freedom over Obamacare. But it seems likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately resolve the dispute.”

The timing of these cases remains in flux. Half a dozen will probably be argued by this summer, perhaps in time for inclusion on the Supreme Court’s docket next term. So far, two- and three-judge panels on four federal appeals courts have weighed in, granting some injunctions while denying others.

One of the biggest cases involves Hobby Lobby, which started as a picture framing shop in an Oklahoma City garage with $600 and is now one of the country’s largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 stores in 41 states.

David Green, the company’s founder, is an evangelical Christian who says he runs his company on biblical principles, including closing on Sunday so employees can be with their families, paying nearly double the minimum wage and providing employees with comprehensive health insurance.

Mr. Green does not object to covering contraception but considers morning-after pills to be abortion-inducing and therefore wrong.

“Our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and have supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families,” Mr. Green said in a statement. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit last month turned down his family’s request for a preliminary injunction, but the company has found a legal way to delay compliance for some months.

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Samsung puts lid on capex for the first time since financial crisis

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co turned cautious on spending for the first time since the global financial crisis, keeping its annual investment plan unchanged at 2012 levels, as demand for computer chips wanes and the smartphone market slows.

Samsung, one of the industry's most aggressive spenders, has ramped up capital expenditure every year since 2004 except 2009 to meet soaring demand for its array of consumer electronics and mobile devices. It sold a record 700,000 smartphones a day in the last quarter.

But with the personal computer market shrinking for the first time in 11 years, the global smartphone market growing more slowly, and Apple Inc moving to buy fewer of Samsung's microprocessors used in the iPhone and iPad, the South Korean IT giant is now forced to keep a lid on spending.

"Overall its earnings momentum remains intact, and smartphone shipments will continue to grow even in the traditionally weak first quarter, as Samsung's got a broader product line-up and Apple appears to be struggling in pushing iPhone volumes aggressively," said Lee Se-chul, a Seoul-based analyst at Meritz Securities.

Samsung, which reported a record quarterly and annual profit on Friday, said it would keep 2013 capital expenditure unchanged from 2012.

"The key word for us in investment in 2013 is flexibility. We'll decide as the market demand dictates," Robert Yi, head of Samsung's investor relations, told analysts.

Data from the company shows Samsung started to slow down planned investment in the last quarter.

Samsung said it spent 4.4 trillion won in October-December, pushing its 2012 investment to a record 23 trillion won ($21.5 billion). But the company said in October that it was on course to spend 25 trillion won in 2012.

Analysts had expected a 4-20 percent cut in Samsung's 2013 capital spending.

By contrast, Taiwanese rival TSMC is planning to raise its capital expenditure to $9 billion this year, aimed in part at winning Apple orders away from Samsung.

Shares in Samsung fell 2.1 percent as of 0250 GMT, lagging a 1.1 percent decline in the wider market.

RECORD EARNINGS

Samsung had poured money into factories to boost production of chips and panels used in Apple products and its Galaxy range devices, pushing its operating profit to 8.84 trillion won in the last quarter. The 89 percent increase from a year earlier was in line with its earlier estimate.

Profit at its mobile devices division, which makes phones, tablets and cameras, more than doubled to 5.44 trillion won in the quarter from a year earlier, lifted by a broader offering of smartphones - from the very cheap to the very expensive.

The division accounted for 62 percent of Samsung's overall fourth-quarter profit, up from 55 percent a year earlier.

Samsung is also seeing strong sales of its Note phablet, which analysts expect to help Samsung get through any seasonal weakness better than rivals.

Samsung, which doesn't provide a breakdown of smartphone sales, is estimated to have sold around 63 million smartphones in the last quarter, including 15 million Galaxy S IIIs and 7 million Note IIs.

The company also said 2012 operating profit rose 86 percent to an all-time high of 29 trillion won.

SAMSUNG VS APPLE

Samsung sold 213 million smartphones last year and enlarged its share of the global market to 30.4 percent from around 20 percent in 2011, a report by market research firm Strategy Analytics showed on Friday. The sharp increase reflects Samsung's aggressive marketing of its wide product range.

Apple's share of the market rose slightly to 19.4 percent from 19.0 percent in 2011, according to the report.

Globally, sales of smartphones surged 42.7 percent last year to 700 million, Strategy Analytics said.

Samsung said on Friday it expects the global smartphone segment to shrink in January-March from the seasonally strong fourth quarter, and that growth of the overall handset market will slow to the mid single-digits this year.

The forecast is in line with industry estimates, with signs of a slowdown having already emerged.

Apple shipped 47.8 million iPhones in the three months ended December, a record that nonetheless disappointed many analysts accustomed to years of outperformance. The Cupertino, California-based company also missed Wall Street's revenue forecast for a third straight quarter as iPhone sales lagged expectations.

Apple shares have dropped by more than a third since mid-September as investors fret that its days of hyper growth are over and its devices are no longer as 'must-have' as they were.

By contrast, shares in Samsung have risen 12 percent in the same period as the company once seen as quick to copy the ideas of others now sets the pace in innovation.

At the world's biggest electronics show in Las Vegas this month, Samsung unveiled a prototype phone with a flexible display that can be folded almost like paper, and a microchip with eight processing cores, creating a buzz that these may be used in the next Galaxy range.

"It's very probable to us that the Exynos 5 Octa (processor) will find its way into the Galaxy S4," UBS analyst Nicolas Gaudois wrote in a recent note.

"It also looked as if the curved display is close enough to finished product. We came away even more convinced that displays will provide significant differentiation to Samsung devices, and application processors will materially grow over time," Gaudois said. ($1 = 1066.2000 Korean won)

(This story corrects 19th paragraph to show Apple's 2012 smartphone market share rose slightly according to Strategy Analytics.)

(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Ryan Woo)

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Kutcher takes on tech idol Steve Jobs in 'jOBS'

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Ashton Kutcher says playing Steve Jobs on screen "was honestly one of the most terrifying things I've ever tried to do in my life."

The 34-year-old actor helped premiere the biopic "jOBS" Friday, which was the closing-night film at the Sundance Film Festival.

Kutcher plays the Apple Inc. founder from the company's humble origins in the 1970s until the launch of the first iPod in 2001. A digital entrepreneur himself, Kutcher said he considers Jobs a personal hero.

"He's a guy who failed and got back on the horse," Kutcher said. "I think we can all sort of relate to that at some point in life."

Kutcher even embodied the Jobs character as he pursued his own high-tech interests off-screen.

"What was nice was when I was preparing for the character, I could still work on product development for technology companies, and I would sort of stay in character, in the mode of the character," he said. "But I didn't feel like I was compromising the work on the film by working on technology stuff because it was pretty much in the same field."

But playing the real-life tech icon who died in 2011 still felt risky, he said, because "he's fresh in our minds."

"It was kind of like throwing myself into this gauntlet of, I know, massive amounts of criticism because somebody's going to go 'well, it wasn't exactly...,'" Kutcher said.

While the filmmakers say they tried to be as historically accurate as possible, there was also a disclaimer at the very end of the credits that said portions of the film might not be completely accurate.

Still, realism was always the focus for Kutcher, who watched "hundreds of hours of footage," listened to Jobs' past speeches and interviewed several of his friends to prepare for the role.

The actor even adopted the entrepreneur's "fruitarian diet," which he said "can lead to some serious issues."

"I ended up in the hospital two days before we started shooting the movie," he said. "I was like doubled over in pain, and my pancreas levels were completely out of whack, which was completely terrifying, considering everything."

Jobs died of complications from pancreatic cancer.

Still, Kutcher was up to the challenge of playing Jobs, in part because of his admiration for the man who created the Macintosh computer and the iPod.

"I admire this man so much and what he's done. I admire the way he built things," Kutcher said. "This guy created a tool that we use every day in our life, and he believed in it when nobody else did."

The film also shows Jobs' less appealing side, withholding stock options from some of the company's original employees and denying child support to the mother of his eldest child.

Kutcher still found the man inspiring. Jobs had a singular focus, Kutcher said, and felt like anyone could change the world.

"I don't know if there's ever been an entrepreneur who's had more compassion and care for his consumer than Steve Jobs," Kutcher said. "He wanted to put something in your hand that you could use and you could use it easily... and he really cared about that."

___

AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy.

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Religious Groups and Employers Battle Contraception Mandate

Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency

President Obama, with his health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, offering a compromise on the contraception mandate last year.

In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious freedom and health care access that appears headed to the Supreme Court.

In recent months, federal courts have seen dozens of lawsuits brought not only by religious institutions like Catholic dioceses but also by private employers ranging from a pizza mogul to produce transporters who say the government is forcing them to violate core tenets of their faith. Some have been turned away by judges convinced that access to contraception is a vital health need and a compelling state interest. Others have been told that their beliefs appear to outweigh any state interest and that they may hold off complying with the law until their cases have been judged. New suits are filed nearly weekly.

“This is highly likely to end up at the Supreme Court,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia and one of the country’s top scholars on church-state conflicts. “There are so many cases, and we are already getting strong disagreements among the circuit courts.”

President Obama’s health care law, known as the Affordable Care Act, was the most fought-over piece of legislation in his first term and was the focus of a highly contentious Supreme Court decision last year that found it to be constitutional.

But a provision requiring the full coverage of contraception remains a matter of fierce controversy. The law says that companies must fully cover all “contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures” approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including “morning-after pills” and intrauterine devices whose effects some contend are akin to abortion.

As applied by the Health and Human Services Department, the law offers an exemption for “religious employers,” meaning those who meet a four-part test: that their purpose is to inculcate religious values, that they primarily employ and serve people who share their religious tenets, and that they are nonprofit groups under federal tax law.

But many institutions, including religious schools and colleges, do not meet those criteria because they employ and teach members of other religions and have a broader purpose than inculcating religious values.

“We represent a Catholic college founded by Benedictine monks,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has brought a number of the cases to court. “They don’t qualify as a house of worship and don’t turn away people in hiring or as students because they are not Catholic.”

In that case, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, a federal appeals court panel in Washington told the college last month that it could hold off on complying with the law while the federal government works on a promised exemption for religiously-affiliated institutions. The court told the government that it wanted an update by mid-February.

Defenders of the provision say employers may not be permitted to impose their views on employees, especially when something so central as health care is concerned.

“Ninety-nine percent of women use contraceptives at some time in their lives,” said Judy Waxman, a vice president of the National Women’s Law Center, which filed a brief supporting the government in one of the cases. “There is a strong and legitimate government interest because it affects the health of women and babies.”

She added, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Contraception was declared by the C.D.C. to be one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.”

Officials at the Justice Department and the Health and Human Services Department declined to comment, saying the cases were pending.

A compromise for religious institutions may be worked out. The government hopes that by placing the burden on insurance companies rather than on the organizations, the objections will be overcome. Even more challenging cases involve private companies run by people who reject all or many forms of contraception.

The Alliance Defending Freedom — like Becket, a conservative group — has brought a case on behalf of Hercules Industries, a company based in Denver that makes sheet metal products. It was granted an injunction by a judge in Colorado who said the religious values of the family owners were infringed by the law.

“Two-thirds of the cases have had injunctions against Obamacare, and most are headed to courts of appeals,” said Matt Bowman, senior legal counsel for the alliance. “It is clear that a substantial number of these cases will vindicate religious freedom over Obamacare. But it seems likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately resolve the dispute.”

The timing of these cases remains in flux. Half a dozen will probably be argued by this summer, perhaps in time for inclusion on the Supreme Court’s docket next term. So far, two- and three-judge panels on four federal appeals courts have weighed in, granting some injunctions while denying others.

One of the biggest cases involves Hobby Lobby, which started as a picture framing shop in an Oklahoma City garage with $600 and is now one of the country’s largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 stores in 41 states.

David Green, the company’s founder, is an evangelical Christian who says he runs his company on biblical principles, including closing on Sunday so employees can be with their families, paying nearly double the minimum wage and providing employees with comprehensive health insurance.

Mr. Green does not object to covering contraception but considers morning-after pills to be abortion-inducing and therefore wrong.

“Our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and have supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families,” Mr. Green said in a statement. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit last month turned down his family’s request for a preliminary injunction, but the company has found a legal way to delay compliance for some months.

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Diner’s Journal Blog: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

PepsiCo announced on Friday that it would no longer use an ingredient in Gatorade after consumers complained.

The ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, which was used in citrus versions of the sports drink to prevent the flavorings from separating, was the object of a petition started on Change.org by Sarah Kavanagh, a 15-year-old from Hattiesburg, Miss., who became concerned about the ingredient after reading about it online. Studies have suggested there are possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones.

The petition attracted more than 200,000 signatures, and this week, Ms. Kavanagh was in New York City to tape a segment for “The Dr. Oz Show.” She visited The New York Times on Wednesday and while there said, “I just don’t understand why they can’t use something else instead of B.V.O.”

“I was in algebra class and one of my friends kicked me and said, ‘Have you seen this on Twitter?’ ” Ms. Kavanagh said in a phone interview on Friday evening. “I asked the teacher if I could slip out to the bathroom, and I called my mom and said, ‘Mom, we won.’ ”

Molly Carter, a spokeswoman for Gatorade, said the company had been testing alternatives to the chemical for roughly a year “due to customer feedback.” She said Gatorade initially was not going to make an announcement, “since we don’t find a health and safety risk with B.V.O.”

Because of the petition, though, Ms. Carter said the company had changed its mind, and an unidentified executive there gave Beverage Digest, a trade publication, the news for its Jan. 25 issue.

Previously, a spokesman for PepsiCo had said in an e-mail, “We appreciate Sarah as a fan of Gatorade, and her concern has been heard.”

Brominated vegetable oil will be replaced by sucrose acetate isobutyrate, an emulsifier that is “generally recognized as safe” as a food additive by the Food and Drug Administration. The new ingredient will be added to orange, citrus cooler and lemonade Gatorade, as well Gatorade X-Factor orange, Gatorade Xtremo citrus cooler and a powdered form of the drink called “glacier freeze.”

Ms. Carter said consumers would start seeing the new ingredient over the next few months as existing supplies of Gatorade sell out and are replaced.

Health advocates applauded the company’s move. “Kudos to PepsiCo for doing the responsible thing on its own and not waiting for the F.D.A. to force it to,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Mr. Jacobson has championed the removal of brominated vegetable oil from foods and beverages for the last several decades, but the F.D.A. has left it in a sort of limbo, citing budgetary constraints that it says keep it from going through the process needed to formally ban the chemical or declare it safe once and for all.

Brominated vegetable oil is banned as a food ingredient in Japan and the European Union. About 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain it, including Mountain Dew, which is also made by PepsiCo; some flavors of Powerade and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

PepsiCo said it had no plans to remove the ingredient from Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew, both of which generate more than $1 billion in annual sales.

Heather White, executive director at the Environmental Working Group, said of PepsiCo’s decision, “We can only hope that other companies will follow suit.” She added, “We need to overhaul how F.D.A. keeps up with the latest science on food additives to better protect public health.”

Ms. Kavanagh agreed. “I’ve been thinking about ways to take this to the next level, and I’m thinking about taking it to the F.D.A. and asking them why they aren’t doing something about it,” she said. “I’m not sure yet, but I think that’s where I’d like to go with this.”

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 26, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the 15-year-old who started a petition on Change.org to end the use of brominated vegetable oil in Gatorade. She is Sarah Kavanagh, not Kavanaugh.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/26/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: PepsiCo Will Halt Additive Use In Gatorade.

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