Crowd reacts after robbery suspect shot to death by police

A man suspected of robbing a truck driver Saturday was shot to death by police a short time later following what Chicago police called a “very violent encounter” in the Back of the Yards neighborhood that later sparked a mob reaction at the scene.

The shooting happened just before 11:30 a.m. Saturday in the 1600 block of West Garfield Boulevard near a gas station, police said.

A melee ensued when a crowd gathered after the shooting, with relatives of the dead man — identified as Jamaal Moore, 23 — accosting police officers and throwing bottles, bricks and rocks, said Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. One family member assaulted an officer and was arrested, McCarthy said at an unrelated news conference.

Another eight people also were arrested at the scene, McCarthy said, adding that he had no information about how many officers were injured in the confrontation.

The chain of events began when robbers with guns held up a truck driver near 38th Street and Kedzie Avenue between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., authorities said, citing preliminary information.

Several suspects in an SUV were reported to have broken into a stopped truck. The driver had gotten out of his truck and confronted the thieves, and they pulled out a weapon, said Patrick Camden, spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7.

The driver called 911 and told a police dispatcher that the robbers were probably armed, Camden said.

Police chased the silver SUV until the vehicle lost control near Garfield Boulevard Ashland Avenue, striking a light pole, authorities said.

About five suspects then ran from the crashed SUV, McCarthy said, adding that four of them remain at large. One police car responding to the scene skidded onto the pavement and may have hit Moore as he tried to get away, McCarthy said.

A male and a female officer from that police car jumped out to confront Moore, who then got into a violent struggle with the male officer, throwing the officer to the ground twice, McCarthy said. Moore is listed in court records as 6-foot-1 and 205 pounds.

While still struggling with Moore, the male officer then yelled that the suspect had a gun, after seeing Moore reach for something in his pocket, McCarthy said.

“It was reported as a gunpoint robbery so the officers had good reason to believe that there was a gun there,” McCarthy said.

After throwing the male officer to the ground a second time, Moore charged at the female officer, McCarthy said.

“Based on the male officer saying that he had a gun, she was in fear and she fired twice, striking him,” McCarthy said. Police later determined that Moore was holding a flashlight, McCarthy said.

Both officers were taken to Mercy Hospital and Medical Center, but officials said they did not know their conditions. Moore was taken to Saint Bernard Hospital and Health Care Center, where he was declared dead at 12:13 p.m.

Court records show that Moore had been charged with crimes about a dozen times since 2006. In a 2007 case, he was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 6 years in prison.

On Nov. 26 of this year, he pleaded guilty to a felony aggravated fleeing charge, a crime related to attempting to escape arrest. Details of that incident were not available Saturday, but Moore had been given 24 months probation and was sentenced to 60 hours of community service plus fines, court records show.

At the scene of the shooting, the crowd that gathered afterward included some who identified themselves as relatives of Moore. Word spread quickly that Moore had been already handcuffed when he was shot, an account bystanders heard from others who said they witnessed the shooting and that was shared by two people who called the Tribune.

McCarthy said he had no information about whether that was the case.

“To my knowledge, it's nothing about handcuffs,” McCarthy said. “There is in-car video that is going to support this detailed story.”

Said Camden: “If he were handcuffed, we wouldn’t have a reason to shoot him.”

Chicago Police Sgt. Michael Martin, speaking near where the shooting took place, said people there were reacting with anger.

“People were throwing bricks and bottles at cop cars,” Martin said. “A few squad cars are damaged.”

Police responded by sending in several brigades of officers and closing off the area to traffic until the tensions eased and the damaged SUV was towed from the crash scene.

Tribune reporters Dawn Rhodes and Jeremy Gorner contributed. 

dawilliams@tribune.com

Twitter: @neacynewslady 

bdoyle@tribune.com

lford@tribune.com

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It’s OK to crank up the music, Florida Supreme Court rules

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) – Motorist Richard Catalano‘s five-year quest to crank up Justin Timberlake tunes on his way to work won the blessing of the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday.

In a unanimous ruling, the state’s highest court affirmed a pair of lower-court opinions that a 2007 state law prohibiting loud music while driving violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of expression.

Catalano received a $ 73 ticket in 2007 for violating the newly enacted law that prohibited motorists from playing music that is “plainly audible” 25 feet away. Motorists traveling by hospitals, schools and churches were subjected to even stricter standards.

Catalano, a Clearwater lawyer, challenged the law as subjective, arguing that determining whether music was too loud was in the ears of the beholder.

Further, the law provides listeners with fewer protections than drivers of vehicles emitting political or commercial speech, who have more explicit protections under the U.S. Constitution.

Calling the law overly broad, Justice Jorge Labarga wrote that noncommercial speech was also protected. Though rejecting the notion that the law was too vague, Labarga said the state showed no compelling interest in muzzling audiophiles who also prefer to feel their favorite music.

“The right to play music, including amplified music, in public fora is protected under the First Amendment,” Labarga wrote.

A message left with Catalano was not immediately returned Thursday.

(Editing by Jane Sutton; Editing by Will Dunham)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

Miriam Ruiz during a yoga class last week at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, Calif. A few dozen parents are protesting that the program amounts to religious indoctrination. More Photos »

ENCINITAS, Calif. — By 9:30 a.m. at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, tiny feet were shifting from downward dog pose to chair pose to warrior pose in surprisingly swift, accurate movements. A circle of 6- and 7-year-olds contorted their frames, making monkey noises and repeating confidence-boosting mantras.

Jackie Bergeron’s first-grade yoga class was in full swing.

“Inhale. Exhale. Peekaboo!” Ms. Bergeron said from the front of the class. “Now, warrior pose. I am strong! I am brave!”

Though the yoga class had a notably calming effect on the children, things were far from placid outside the gymnasium.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination. They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

Mary Eady, the parent of a first grader, said the classes were rooted in the deeply religious practice of Ashtanga yoga, in which physical actions are inextricable from the spiritual beliefs underlying them.

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort. They’re using this as a tool for many things beyond just stretching.”

Ms. Eady and a few dozen other parents say a public school system should not be leading students down any particular religious path. Teaching children how to engage in spiritual exercises like meditation familiarizes young minds with certain religious viewpoints and practices, they say, and a public classroom is no place for that.

Underlying the controversy is the source of the program’s financing. The pilot project is supported by the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who is considered the father of Ashtanga yoga.

Dean Broyles, the president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit law firm that champions religious freedom and traditional marriage, according to its Web site, has dug up quotes from Jois Foundation leaders, who talk about the inseparability of the physical act of yoga from a broader spiritual quest. Mr. Broyles argued that such quotes betrayed the group’s broader evangelistic purpose.

“There is a transparent promotion of Hindu religious beliefs and practices in the public schools through this Ashtanga yoga program,” he said.

“The analog would be if we substituted for this program a charismatic Christian praise and worship physical education program,” he said.

The battle over yoga in schools has been raging for years across the country but has typically focused on charter schools, which receive public financing but set their own curriculums.

The move by the Encinitas Union School District to mandate yoga classes for all students who do not opt out has elevated the discussion. And it has split an already divided community.

The district serves the liberal beach neighborhoods of Encinitas, including Leucadia, where Paul Ecke Central Elementary is, as well as more conservative inland communities. On the coast, bumper stickers reading “Keep Leucadia Funky” are borne proudly. Farther inland, cars are more likely to feature the Christian fish symbol, and large evangelical congregations play an important role in shaping local philosophy.

Opponents of the yoga classes have started an online petition to remove the course from the district’s curriculum. They have shown up at school board meetings to denounce the program, and Mr. Broyles has threatened to sue if the board does not address their concerns.

The district has stood firm. Tim Baird, the schools superintendent, has defended the yoga classes as merely another element of a broader program designed to promote children’s physical and mental well-being. The notion that yoga teachers have designs on converting tender young minds to Hinduism is incorrect, he said.

“That’s why we have an opt-out clause,” Mr. Baird said. “If your faith is such that you believe that simply by doing the gorilla pose, you’re invoking the Hindu gods, then by all means your child can be doing something else.”

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

“Yoga poses are representative of Hindu deities and Hindu stories about the actions and interactions of those deities with humans,” she said. “There’s content even in the movement, just as with baptism there’s content in the movement.”

Russell Case, a representative of the Jois Foundation, said the parents’ fears were misguided.

“They’re concerned that we’re putting our God before their God,” Mr. Case said. “They’re worried about competition. But we’re much closer to them than they think. We’re good Christians that just like to do yoga because it helps us to be better people.”

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Greener planet is goal for 3 startups

If the glut of companies billing themselves as "solutions" providers is any indication, the world has no shortage of problems.

Green tech companies take on some of the most complicated, difficult problems to solve. They tend to be problems created by our mere existence, chief among them our massive demand for energy. The more we rely on energy to power our electronics, our vehicles and our lives, the more pollution we churn into our land, water and air.

The Tribune checked in with three local green tech startups at various stages of development. They haven't changed the world yet, but they're working on it.

COMPANY: LanzaTech

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: Global warming, a huge challenge as energy demand is expected to double within 40 years.

FUNDS RAISED: $100 million

It may sound like sci-fi, but LanzaTech produces gas-eating "bugs" that don't require oxygen to survive.

In April, the company's microscopic bacteria began ingesting carbon monoxide from a steel mill in China. Carbon monoxide goes in one end of the bacteria and ethanol comes out the other.

With a few genetic tweaks, the bug can produce a wide range of fuels and chemicals from gases that companies spend money to get rid of. The idea, says Jennifer Holmgren, the company's chief executive, is to trap nasty gases that float from steel mills, power plants and chemical factories, turning them into products that are useful and profitable.

The company recently inked a deal with Petronas, the national oil company of Malaysia, to develop a modified version of the bug that takes in carbon dioxide and produces acetic acid, a chemical companies need to produce polymers used in plastics.

"Rather than trying to sequester carbon deep into the earth, we will 'bury' it in a chemical," Holmgren said. "In this way, companies can not only comply with emissions reduction requirements, but also generate revenue along the way."

When Holmgren talks about the technology's potential, she pulls up a map of the world, showing partnerships and agreements the company has with companies from Boeing Co. in Chicago and Kansas-based Invista, the world's largest nylon producer, to Indian Oil Co. in New Delhi and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. in Japan.

Out of the company's various projects, the carbon monoxide-eating bacteria are the furthest along in the path toward commercialization. This month, LanzaTech finished a demonstration project for China's largest steel manufacturer, Baosteel, at a plant near Shanghai.

LanzaTech successfully produced the equivalent of more than 100,000 gallons of ethanol per year from just a fraction of the carbon monoxide the company creates in the steel-making process.

"You're literally driving for miles watching this steel mill," Holmgren said, explaining its vast size — and its potential to produce hundreds of millions of gallons of ethanol per year.

The technology creates a financial incentive to trap the gas rather than flare it, a common practice that produces carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. Through a series of pipes, the gas enters a vessel filled with the organism, which is floating in water. Fuel comes out the back end and is pumped through a distiller to create pure ethanol.

Because of the success of that demonstration, the steel company has ordered the first of what will eventually be three or four units, each about $80 million, that are each expected to produce 30 million to 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. Each unit pays itself back in under five years, Holmgren said.

"We don't want it to be green for green's sake. If it is, no one is going to use it," she said.

With 140 employees worldwide, LanzaTech doesn't have any revenues to report yet. Holmgren said LanzaTech expects to grow to profitability between 2013 and 2015.

COMPANY: Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies LLC

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App of the Week: Manilla

App Name: Manilla

Price: Free

Available Platforms: Apple’s iOS ( iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone), Android

What does this app do? Manilla provides a secure way for you manage and organize your bills on your mobile device, tablet or desktop. This finance app, of which an updated version for the iPhone 5 was released this week, allows you to link to your accounts, set up reminders to pay your bills, and keep track of household finances such as utilities and services.

From your mobile device, select the “Accounts” tab to see a queue of accounts you linked to within the app. On the bottom right, tap the settings button to add an account.The new release also lets you manage your accounts with local businesses or individuals who do not have an online payment system – the landscaper or babysitter, for example.

Press the “Reminders” tab to select a business you use, such as your wireless carrier. The app will display a screen with your account and bill information as well as let you set up reminders to pay your bill, which will be delivered through email or text message. Select, “View Bill,” to see details, such as when you made your last payment, or select “Documents” and the app’s built in PDF viewer will display your bill within the application.

You cannot pay your bill directly from the app. However, select “Go to Site” and the app will direct you to a business’s website where you can pay your bill.

Is it easy to set up? Yes. Once you download Manilla, the app requires you to register with an email and password.

Should I try it? Manilla takes all of your bill information and puts into an easy-to-use interface, and with over 3,500 businesses the app makes it easy to link to a variety of accounts. If you’re interested in building and monitoring a budget, too, you will find a better solution with Mint.com’s app. Still, Manilla makes keeping track of all of your bills simple – a sure way to stay on top of your finances.

Also Read
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Conn. shooting: Witnesses say shooter didn't say a word

A man killed his mother at home and then opened fire Friday inside the elementary school where she taught, massacring 26 people, including 20 children, as youngsters cowered in fear to the sound of gunshots echoing through the building and screams coming over the intercom.

The 20-year-old killer, carrying two handguns, committed suicide at the school, bringing the death toll to 28, authorities said.

The rampage, coming less than two weeks before Christmas, was the nation's second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead in 2007.

"Our hearts are broken today," a tearful President Barack Obama, struggling to maintain his composure, said at the White House. He called for "meaningful action" to prevent such shootings. "As a country, we have been through this too many times," he said.

Police shed no light on the motive for the attack on two classrooms. The gunman was believed to suffer from a personality disorder and lived with his mother, said a law enforcement official who was briefed on the investigation but was not authorized to discuss it.

Panicked parents looking for their children raced to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, a prosperous community of about 27,000 people 60 miles northeast of New York City. Police told youngsters at the kindergarten-through-fourth-grade school to close their eyes as they were led from the building.

Schoolchildren -- some crying, others looking frightened -- were escorted through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other's shoulders.

Law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity said 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, and then drove to the school in her car with three guns, including a high-powered rifle that he apparently left in the back.

Authorities said he shot up two classrooms but otherwise gave no details on how the attack unfolded.

Youngsters and their parents described teachers locking doors and ordering the children to huddle in the corner or hide in closets when shots echoed through the building.

A custodian ran through the halls, warning of a gunman on the loose, and someone switched on the intercom, alerting people in the building to the attack by letting them hear the hysteria apparently going on in the school office.

State police Lt. Paul Vance said 28 people in all were killed, including the gunman, and a woman who worked at the school was wounded.

Lanza's older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., was being questioned, but the law enforcement official who said Adam Lanza had a possible personality disorder said Ryan Lanza was not believed to have had any role in the rampage.

Investigators were searching Ryan Lanza's computers and phone records, but he told law enforcement he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation.

Robert Licata said his 6-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher.

"That's when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door," he said. "He was very brave. He waited for his friends."

He said the shooter didn't utter a word.

Stephen Delgiadice said his 8-year-old daughter was in the school and heard two big bangs. Teachers told her to get in a corner, he said.

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Roll Up! “Magical Mystery Tour” gets U.S. TV debut

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Give four pop stars turned hippies a movie camera in 1967 and what do you get? The Beatles‘ “Magical Mystery Tour” film, which will receive its long-awaited U.S. broadcast television debut on Friday on PBS.

Long a curiosity in the United States, the film will be accompanied by a new documentary about its making. A restored version was released on DVD and blu-ray in October.

The third film for The Fab Four, after a “A Hard Day’s Night” in 1964 and “Help!” a year later, “Magical Mystery Tour” is a shambolic trip through the English countryside on a bus filled with odd characters, but thin on plot. It first aired on BBC television the day after Christmas 1967.

Although it was initially panned by British critics, time has delivered some justice to the project, Jonathan Clyde, the producer of the documentary, told Reuters.

“‘Magical Mystery Tour‘ has always been the black sheep of the Beatles family, but I think it’s been rehabilitated into the Beatles canon,” Clyde said. “It’s no longer the ‘mad uncle in the attic’ that nobody wants to talk about. It’s been let out.”

In the United States, little was known about the film at the time of its release.

Beatles fans only had the album of music, or saw a poor print of the film in a double-feature midnight showing with “Reefer Madness,” a 1936 anti-marijuana propaganda film often screened decades later for comedic effect.

“I first saw it in 1974 at a university,” Bill King, the longtime publisher of Beatles fanzine Beatlefan, said of “Magical Mystery Tour.” “By then, though, it had taken on mythic status. I loved it.”

At the time of its making, The Beatles were arguably at their creative peak on the heels of a seminal album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and their summer of love anthem “All You Need Is Love,” which debuted on global TV.

SCRIPT WANTED

But even before “Sgt. Pepper’s” release in June 1967, Paul McCartney had already conceived of the film project. The only thing he was missing: a script.

“Paul had drawn out a pie chart,” said Clyde, also a longtime consultant for The Beatles‘ company, Apple Corps. “It just said things like ‘Get on coach,’ ‘Dreams,’ ‘End Song.’ They really had no idea what it was going to be like.”

The group hired a bus, a film crew, and a handful of extras and set out around England, creating scenes with everything from magicians to Ringo Starr’s oversized Aunt Jessie being stuffed with spaghetti by waiter John Lennon.

McCartney did most of the directing.

“It really had something for everyone, which is something I like about it,” Clyde said. “It was really a nod not only to the younger people watching, but to their parents’ generation, as well.”

The film also was loaded with six new Beatles songs, presented as what now would be considered music videos.

The music itself, including songs “I Am the Walrus” and “The Fool on the Hill,” was as innovative as any of the band’s music that year – and mostly recorded just before filming started.

“The Beatles were driven and inspired by having a deadline,” said Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin. The younger Martin remixed the songs at the legendary Abbey Road studios for the DVD and broadcast.

“And songs like ‘Walrus’ are a brilliant mix of both The Beatles as a rock and roll band and as masters of groundbreaking experimental recording,” Martin added.

(Editing by Eric Kelsey and Nick Zieminski)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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Push for minimum wage hike intensifies

NEW YORK — Before the recession, Amie Crawford was an interior designer, earning $50,000 a year patterning baths and cabinets for architectural firms.

Now, she's a "team member" at the Protein Bar in Chicago, where she makes $8.50 an hour, slightly more than minimum wage. It was the only job she could find after months of looking. Crawford, now 56, says she needed to take the job to stop the hemorrhaging of her retirement accounts.

In her spare time, Crawford works with a Chicago group called Action Now, which is staging protests to raise the minimum wage in a state where it hasn't been raised since 2006.

"Thousands of workers in Chicago, let alone in the rest of the country, deserve to have a livable wage, and I truly believe that when someone is given a livable wage, that is going to bolster growth in communities," she said.

If it seems that workers such as Crawford are more prevalent these days, protesting outside stores including Wal-Mart, McDonald's and Wendy's to call for higher wages, it may be because there are more workers in these jobs than there were a few years ago.

Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

Of the 1.9 million jobs created during the recovery, 43% of them have been in the low-wage industries of retail, food services and employment services, whose workforces include temporary employees who often work part time and without benefits or health insurance, according to a study by Annette Bernhardt, policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project in New York.

At the same time, many workers such as Crawford who have been displaced from their jobs are experiencing significant earnings losses after getting a new job. About one-third of the 3 million workers displaced from their jobs from 2009 to 2011 and then reemployed said their earnings had dropped 20% or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"What these protests are signaling are that working families are at breaking point after three decades of rising inequality and stagnant wages," Bernhardt said.

The rise of low-paying jobs in the recovery, experts said, has cut the spending power of workers who once worked in middle-class occupations. Construction workers who made $30 an hour, for example, during the housing boom may now find themselves working on a temporary basis.

"You see workers trading down their living standards," said Joseph Brusuelas, a senior economist for Bloomberg who studies the U.S. economy.

Now, Brusuelas said, there's an oversupply of workers and they're willing to take any job in a sluggish economy, even if they're overqualified. That includes temporary jobs without benefits, and minimum wage positions such as the one Crawford took.

Although the 2012 election might have brought the idea of income inequality to the forefront of voters' minds, efforts to increase wages for these workers are sputtering in an era of austerity when businesses say they are barely hiring, much less paying workers more.

The New Jersey state legislature handed Gov. Chris Christie a bill to raise the state's minimum wage to $8.50 an hour from the federal minimum of $7.25 this month, but he hasn't signed it and has signaled he might not. An earlier effort in New Jersey to tie the minimum wage to the consumer price index was vetoed by the governor.

Democratic lawmakers in Illinois are also trying to push a bill that would increase the minimum wage — an earlier effort this year failed. The Legislature last voted to raise its minimum wage in 2006, before the recession, and the governor agreed.

"A higher minimum wage means a person has to pay more for each worker," said Ted Dabrowski, vice president of policy at the Illinois Policy Institute, which opposes raising the minimum wage. "Companies have a few choices — increase prices, reduce the number of people they hire, cut employee hours or reduce benefits. When employees become too expensive, they have no choice but to reduce the number of workers."

The Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., however, says there is little indication from economic research that increases in the minimum wage lead to lower employment, and, because higher wages mean workers have more money to spend, employment can actually increase.

A bill to raise the federal minimum wage was introduced to the U.S. Senate by Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in July and referred to committee, where it has sat ever since.

"Business lobbyists are aware of the campaign and are aggressively working to stop it," said Madeline Talbott, the former lead organizer of Chicago's Action Now. "We've had a hard time getting our legislature to approve it."

But Talbott and other advocates say that the protests that have spread throughout Illinois and the country in recent weeks might force the issue to its head.

"You saw it happening 18 months ago when Occupy started — workers are now realizing that they have rights too in the workplace," said Camille Rivera, executive director of United NY, one of the groups working to raise the minimum wage in New York. "It's a good time for us to be fighting these issues, when companies are making millions of dollars in profits."

The protests are bringing out people who might not usually participate, including Marcus Rose, 33. Rose, who has worked the grill at a Wendy's for 21/2 months, was marching outside that Wendy's in Brooklyn recently on a day of protests, responding as organizers shouted lines such as "Wendy's, Wendy's, can't you see, $7.25 is not for me."

"If you don't stand up for nothing, you can't fall for anything," he said.

Talbott, the Action Now organizer, says that people such as Rose may make a difference in whether lawmakers at the state and national level will listen to the protests. The Obama victory energized the working class to believe that they could fight against big-money interests and win, she said.

"It comes down to the traditional situation — whether the power is in the hands of organized money or of organized people," she said. "The organized money side tends to win, but it doesn't have to win. The more people you are, the more chance you have against money."

alana.semuels@latimes.com

ricardo.lopez2@latimes.com

Semuels reported from New York and Lopez from Los Angeles

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Apple falls on lower shipment forecasts, muted China debut

(Reuters) – Apple Inc shares fell 3.9 percent on Friday after the iPhone 5 debuted in China to a cool reception and two analysts cut shipment forecasts.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek trimmed his iPhone shipment estimates for the Jan-March quarter, saying that the technology company had started cutting orders to suppliers to balance excess inventory.

Shares of Apple suppliers Jabil Circuit Inc, Qualcomm Inc, Skyworks Solutions Inc, TriQuint Semiconductor Inc, Avago Technologies Ltd, and Cirrus Logic Inc also fell in early trading.

Apple shares have lost a quarter of their value since they hit a life high of $ 705.07 on September 21, as it faces increasing competition from phones using Google Inc’s Android operating system.

Misek cut his first-quarter iPhone sales estimate to 48 million from 52 million and gross margin expectations for the company by 2 percentage points to 40 percent.

UBS Investment Research cut its price target on Apple stock to $ 700 from $ 780 on lower expected iPhone and iPad shipments for the March quarter.

The brokerage said it was modeling more conservative growth for the world’s biggest technology company after making supply chain checks that revealed that fewer iPhones were being built.

“Some of our Chinese sources do not expect the iPhone 5 to do as well as the iPhone 4S,” UBS analyst Steven Milunovich wrote in a note to clients.

Apple launched the iPhone 5 in China on Friday, a move widely expected to bring the Cupertino-based company some respite from a recent slide in market share in China, but early reports indicated that demand may not be as great as expected.

“The iPhone 5 China launch has been surprisingly muted but (we) are unsure how much weather (snow) or the required pre-ordering (to prevent riots) are factors,” Misek said.

Apple shares fell as low as $ 508.50 in morning trading on the Nasdaq on Friday.

(Editing by Supriya Kurane)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Peterson: Ex-attorney had 'smorgasbord of ethical violations'

Drew Peterson continued efforts to overturn his murder conviction Thursday as his lawyers filed a biting post-trial document that accuses his former lead attorney of botching the case and threatening to reveal harmful information about the retired Bolingbrook police officer.

Peterson, 58, was convicted in September of the 2004 drowning of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. He remains the only suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy, who vanished in October 2007.

A post-trial memorandum filed in Will County placed responsibility for the conviction squarely on the shoulders of Joel Brodsky, Peterson’s former lead attorney and colorful confidant.

“Attorney Brodsky expected that Drew Peterson would be his ticket to the legal elite,” the document states. “Regrettably, he was poorly equipped to try a case of this magnitude, resulting in hornbook errors and a smorgasbord of ethical violations. Individually and cumulatively Brodsky singlehandedly deprived Drew of his right to effective assistance of and conflict-free counsel.”

Brodsky did not respond to questions about the allegations in the memorandum. A hearing on the issue is scheduled for Jan. 10.

The document suggests Brodsky “misrepresented his qualifications” to Peterson by insisting he had successfully handled other homicide cases. In reality, Brodsky had never tried a murder case before Peterson hired him – a fact reporters pointed out long before Peterson’s trial.

The memorandum also alleges Brodsky repeatedly threatened to reveal potentially damaging information about Peterson if he were removed or had his role diminished in any way. The document does not state what details Brodsky -– who withdrew from the case in October -– purportedly vowed to expose, but it suggests he made the threat as recently as last month.

“... this is of course the last thing you or I would want, but this could happen as an unintended consequence of unfounded ineffective assistance accusation, which is not fully thought through,” the memorandum quotes Brodsky saying in a Nov. 24 letter to Peterson.
 
The document alleges Brodsky had a financial interest in drawing as much publicity as possible to Peterson’s case. Brodsky’s desire to earn appearance fees prompted him to parade Peterson around the country and have him participate in “carnival-like” pranks such as a much-maligned “Win a Date with Drew” contest, the court filing alleges.

He also was paid for Peterson’s participation in an ill-received book about the case and courted constant media attention that harmed his client’s reputation, according to the memorandum.

“In the process, Brodsky accumulated large bills for hotel stays, meals, and spa treatments for he and his wife, all paid for by the respective media outlets,” the memorandum states.

To win an ineffective counsel claim, Peterson must show that Brodsky’s representation fell below acceptable standards and that the outcome might have been different because of it. It will be an uphill battle, however, given that he had five other attorneys on the trial team, and that courts rarely overturn motions based on legal strategies.

sstclair@tribune.com

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‘Homeland’ leads old favorites in Golden Globes TV race

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Cable shows got more Golden Globe nominations for television than traditional network programs on Thursday as HBO‘s political movie “Game Change” and Showtime‘s psychological thriller series “Homeland,” – one of last year’s big winners – led the race.

“Homeland” led the TV drama category with four nominations including best drama, best actor for Damian Lewis and best actress for Claire Danes in her role as a bi-polar CIA agent tracking down a home-grown Muslim extremist.

The show faces stiff competition from British aristocratic drama “Downton Abbey, which also won an acting nod for Michelle Dockery, along with “Breaking Bad,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and newcomer “The Newsroom.”

“‘Homeland’ fans seemed to be a little more split on whether creatively the second season was as successful as the first season so it’ll be curious if that ends up impacting the show’s chances in terms of taking home the awards,” James Hibberd, senior staff writer at Entertainment Weekly, told Reuters.

“Downtown Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes told Reuters: “We’re up against the big boys now, but the whole thing is very flattering and exciting.”

He added: “The themes of the show are pretty international, they’re about adjusting to change and being caught out by what life does to you…all of that is common to every country.”

HBO movie “Game Change,” about the surprise selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign, landed five nods in the miniseries/movie category, including for actors Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.

“‘Game Change’ is pure awards bait. It’s a well-done, smart political drama based on a book, with a certain amount of left-wing political slant and it’s very much the type of movie you’d expect awards voters to like,” Hibberd said.

New HBO drama “The Newsroom” bumped long-time awards favorite “Mad Men” from the best drama category, surprising many who believed the stylish advertising series was a shoo-in.

“The Globes tend to like the glamorous and sophisticated dramas with big city settings and they tend to shy away from gritty, rural Americana dramas…about sweaty guys with guns instead of charming men in suits, like ‘The Newsroom’ and ‘Boardwalk Empire,’” Hibberd said.

He noted that the only exception was “Breaking Bad,” which finally made the best drama category this year after four seasons on air.

Other notable snubs included HBO‘s epic fantasy drama “Game of Thrones,” which failed to pick up any nominations, and Ryan Murphy’s miniseries “American Horror Story: Asylum” which landed one best actress nod for Jessica Lange, who took home the award for 2012.

‘MODERN FAMILY’ LEADS COMEDY RACE

While last year’s Golden Globes picked newcomers over staple awards favorites for leading nominees, this year’s comedy categories saw the return of many old faces, including “Modern Family,” which led the comedy race with three nods.

Comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who will be hosting the awards ceremony on January 13, each landed a best comedy actress nod in the television race for their long-popular NBC comedies – Fey for “30 Rock” and Poehler for “Parks and Recreation.”

“You can be sure that the hosts are going to have fun with this during the telecast, they’re going to find ways to play off this during their presentation,” Hibberd said.

Fey and Poehler will replace Ricky Gervais at the awards gala dinner, after the British comedian helmed the Globes with his risqué dry humor for three years.

HBO‘s raunchy new comedy “Girls” earned two key nominations in the best TV comedy category and best comedy actress for Lena Dunham, while Showtime‘s new satire “House of Lies” landed the show’s lead Don Cheadle a best actor nod.

With the exception of NBC’s musical comedy “Smash” in the best comedy series category, no new network comedies managed to break into key races, which Hibberd attributed to a “disappointing” fall season.

Cable channel HBO picked up 17 nominations and Showtime garnered 7 across all major television categories. Networks ABC had 5, CBS and NBC got 4, and Fox got 2.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)

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My Story: Taking on Cancer Again, This Time With the Wisdom of Age

After I finished eight months of treatment for testicular cancer in my mid-20s, my psychologist said, “Well, that was like having five years of therapy all at once.” What he meant was that you learn a lot about yourself in weekly talk sessions, but during a life-threatening illness, the “issues” come at you nonstop. I relished the slow unfolding of myself in the first, but I resented — no, hated — every step of the second. Nearly two decades later, when confronted with the same diagnosis, I finally understood the benefits of that earlier trial by fire, much as I did the wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson when he wrote, “The years teach much which the days never knew.”

To be sure, there were benefits to being young — I was 26 — when I was first diagnosed, not the least of which was my competitive swimmer’s body. After almost dying in the I.C.U. and becoming a “patient-in-residence,” I plunged back into the pool (and my day job) just a fortnight after my release.

Ah, the determination — and denial — of youth.

But facing cancer at that young age had more drawbacks than benefits, not the least of which was losing my sense of invulnerability when confronted with the prospect of disfigurement and disability, even death.

Less obvious, but still unsettling, was the loss of my laissez-faire attitude toward life itself. I had always been the kind of guy who focused on the journey (the experience) more than the destination (winning). During backstroke events prior to falling ill I was more interested in watching the clouds race overhead than the swimmer racing in the next lane. This mindset didn’t do much for my success in the pool, but it helped define who I was.

To make matters worse, conventional wisdom says only one thing matters when it comes to cancer: Beating the hell out of it. Suddenly I had to find an emotional depth I hadn’t sought before, a passion for a fight that I didn’t want.

Am I the kind of person who can win this battle? I asked myself early on.

To ensure that I was, I did a complete about-face, saying “No way” to the journey and “Hell, yes” to the destination. Every decision began to turn on life and longevity, and for that I tolerated side effects like hair loss, neuropathy and “dry ejaculation” — because I simply had to win.

I re-read Dylan Thomas, who told me to “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” and I did. I became a rager. And it almost ruined my life.

Not in terms of my health, because in fact my treatment was effective. I was “clinically cured” and chalked up that achievement to my new “Top Gun” mentality. Then I jumped back into daily life — and managed to mess everything up. I applied my new approach to relationships (“My way or the highway”), and got dumped by my boyfriend. In graduate school, I aced my studies but lost friends.

Fortunately, my best friends didn’t hold back on telling me I had become a jerk, and that got my attention. I had upshifted at the start of my treatment, but now I needed to downshift. I struggled to find my pace, but eventually found a middle gear, more vulnerable than I cared to be but also more human.

The second time I was diagnosed, the oncologist sat me down to give me the new installment of the old bad news. I surprised myself and my friends with a very different approach.

I did not rage, which isn’t to say I was happy about this predicament. And I had moved on from my original question to a new one: How can I go through this and still be the kind of person I want to be?

In the intervening years, I had come to realize that cancer victories are not won by personality types, but by a combination of doggedness (choosing the best physician, getting the right diagnosis and treatment), responsibility (doing your own research and taking care of your overall health), and plain old luck.

From that very first day of my second time around, I challenged myself not to shift into that “win at any cost” mentality. That’s where the gift of age and experience came to my aid, even if my older body did not. Over the years I had learned that life was not a series of choices between winners and losers — I knew that way of seeing things to be oversimplified, if not dead wrong. You can be stronger than an ox, never miss a day of work, or swim your lungs out and, damn it, still die.

I could become a jerk again and focus on the end point, or I could accept that the journey is the destination – which I did.

Two months after I had been diagnosed and two days before the surgeon was scheduled to excise my remaining testicle, I had a dream so vivid — “I am cancer-free!” — that I demanded to go on a “surveillance” protocol. Reluctantly my doctor agreed, but by year’s end I had “won” the debate when my so-called tumor was reclassified as a benign nodule.

The years had taught me much — both to listen to my body and to trust in its wisdom. And, most importantly, to find the courage to speak its truth — whether in the doctor’s office or out in the world.

Steven Petrow writes the Civil Behavior column for Booming, addressing questions about gay and straight etiquette for a boomer-age audience. You can find him on Facebook and Twitter.

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Illinois foreclosures up for 11th month

Foreclosure activity in Illinois posted the 11th straight year-over-year increase in November, but compared with a month earlier, filings are trending in the right direction, according to new data released Thursday.

RealtyTrac said the 13,520 properties within the state that received a foreclosure notice last month was a decrease of 9 percent from October but up 9 percent from November 2011. last month's activity, which equated to one out of every 392 homes in the state receiving a notice, gave Illinois the nation's third-highest state foreclosure rate, surpassed by only Florida and Nevada.

In the Chicago-area counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake and Will, almost 11,000 homes received a foreclosure notice in November, a decrease of 10.5 percent from October's level of activity but up 1.6 percent from November 2011

Most of that activity was in Cook County, where about 2,299 homes received initial notices of default, another 2,651 homes were scheduled for court-ordered sales and 2,086 homes were repossessed by lenders.

Among the nation's metropolitan areas, Rockford and Chicago ranked 11th and 13th, respectively, in terms of their foreclosure rates.

Nationally, the number of homes that were repossessed by lenders and became bank-owned rose on a year-over-year basis for the first time  since October 2010, the company said. In November, more than 59,000 homes across the country were repossessed, an increase of 11 percent from October and 5 percent from November 2011.

"The drop in overall foreclosure activity in November was caused largely by a 71-month low in foreclosure starts for the month, more evidence that we are past the worst of the foreclosure problem brought about by the housing bubble bursting six years ago," said Daren Blomquist, a company vice president. "But foreclosures are continuing to hobble the U.S. housing market as lenders finally seize properties that started the process a year or two ago, and much longer in some cases."

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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Don't let city out of police 'code-of-silence' verdict, judge told

Two top civil rights attorneys argued strongly against efforts by the city to vacate the recent landmark jury verdict that a "code of silence" within the Chicago Police Department in part led to an off-duty officer's infamous video-recorded beating of a female bartender.

"The city should not be permitted to escape a finding that it covered up the misconduct of its officers by allowing it to simply erase that adjudication as if it never occurred, and then go on denying a code of silence," attorneys Locke Bowman and Craig Futterman wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief filed late Tuesday in federal court.

The video of off-duty Officer Anthony Abbate pummeling bartender Karolina Obrycka inside a Northwest Side bar in 2007 marked one of the most embarrassing chapters in recent department history. The jury decision holding Chicago police responsible because of its unofficial code of silence was a rare rebuke for the city, as such policy claims typically don't make it to trial.

The city has sought to vacate the judgment, calling the verdict "ambiguous" and likely to lead to numerous frivolous lawsuits. City attorneys also have argued that the beating happened five years ago, and reforms have been put in place since then.

In their filing, Bowman and Futterman seized on the city's pledge in court last week that the $850,000 in damages awarded to Obrycka would be paid to her regardless of whether U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve agreed to set aside the verdict.

With justice ensured for Obrycka, they wrote, there is no reason to set aside a hard-fought and important jury verdict that could prompt reform within the department given its struggles with police misconduct since the 1980s.

"If the city is allowed to sweep verdicts such as this one under the rug, it will have no incentive to change," the lawyers wrote.

asweeney@tribune.com

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Taylor Swift reclaims top spot on Billboard 200

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country-pop star Taylor Swift reclaimed the top spot on the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday with her hit album “Red,” keeping three new entries from the No.1 position.

“Red” landed back at No. 1 for the fourth time after selling 167,000 copies last week according to Nielsen SoundScan, ousting Alicia Keys‘ “Girl on Fire,” which fell to No. 7 this week.

New entries this week include rapper Wiz Khalifa‘s sophomore record “O.N.I.F.C.,” which debuted at No. 2 after selling 141,00 copies. Pop star Ke$ ha’s new album “Warrior” landed at No. 6 with sales of 85,000 while country band Florida Georgia Line‘s debut album “Here’s To the Good Times” came in at No. 10.

Ahead of the holidays, festive albums featured heavily in the top 10, with Rod Stewart‘s “Merry Christmas, Baby” at No. 3, Michael Buble‘s “Christmas” at No. 5 and Blake Shelton‘s “Cheers, It’s Christmas” at No. 8.

Bruno Mars’ latest single “Locked Out of Heaven” topped the Billboard Digital Songs chart for the first time with 197,000 copies sold, coming in ahead of Rihanna’s “Diamonds” at No. 2 and will.i.am and Britney Spears‘ “Scream & Shout” at No. 3.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Eli Lilly to Conduct Additional Study of Alzheimer’s Drug

The drug maker Eli Lilly & Company said on Wednesday that it planned an additional study of an experimental Alzheimer’s drug that failed to improve the condition of people with the disease, saying that it remained hopeful about the drug’s prospects.

The newest study is expected to get under way in the third quarter of 2013 and will focus on patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. Lilly released results of two clinical trials in August that showed the drug, called solanezumab, did not significantly improve either the cognition or the daily functioning of people with mild and moderate forms of the disease. But despite that failure, the results also gave some reason for hope: when patients with mild Alzheimer’s were separated out, the drug was shown to significantly slow their decline in cognition.

In a statement on Wednesday, the company said it decided not to pursue approval of the drug based on existing study results after it met with officials from the Food and Drug Administration. A Lilly executive said, however, that the company was still optimistic.

“We remain encouraged and excited by the solanezumab data,” David Ricks, a senior vice president at Lilly and president of Lilly Bio-Medicines, said in the statement. “We are committed to working with the F.D.A. and other regulatory authorities to bring solanezumab to the millions of patients and caregivers suffering from this devastating disease who urgently need this potential treatment.”

The Lilly drug is the second Alzheimer’s treatment to fail in clinical trials this year. Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson stopped development of a similar treatment, bapineuzumab, after it, too, was not shown to work. Both drugs target beta amyloid, a protein in the brain that is found in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Lilly shares closed at $49, down 3.2 percent.

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Fed adds another $45B per month in stimulus

The Federal Reserve ramped up its stimulus to the economy on Wednesday, expressing disappointment with the pace of recovery in employment as contentious U.S. budget talks heighten uncertainty about the outlook.

The central bank replaced a more modest stimulus program due to expire at year-end with a fresh round of Treasury purchases that will increase its balance sheet. It committed to monthly purchases of $45 billion in Treasuries on top of the $40 billion per month in mortgage-backed bonds it started buying in September.

In a surprise move, the Fed also adopted numerical thresholds for policy, a step that had not been expected until early next year. In particular, the Fed said it will likely keep official rates near zero for as long as unemployment remains above 6.5 percent, inflation between one and two years ahead is projected to be no more than 2.5 percent, and long-term inflation expectations remain contained.

The Fed noted unemployment remains elevated and that inflation is running somewhat below policymakers' 2 percent objective.

"The Committee remains concerned that, without sufficient policy accommodation, economic growth might not be strong enough to generate sustained improvement in labor market conditions," the Fed said in a statement.

Policymakers also repeated a pledge to keep buying bonds until the labor market outlook improves substantially. A drop in the jobless rate to 7.7 percent in November from 7.9 percent in October was driven by workers exiting the labor force, and therefore did not come close to satisfying that condition.

Under the "Operation Twist" program that will expire at the end of the month, the Fed was buying $45 billion in longer-term Treasuries with proceeds from the sale of short-term debt. The new round of government bond-buying it announced on Wednesday will be funded by essentially creating new money, further expanding the Fed's $2.8 trillion balance sheet.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will discuss the central bank's latest decision at a news conference at 2:15 p.m. (1915 GMT).

SWEATING A WEAK RECOVERY

The Fed cut overnight interest rates to near zero in December 2008 and has bought about $2.4 trillion in bonds in a further effort to push borrowing costs lower and spur a stronger recovery.

Despite the unconventional and aggressive efforts, U.S. economic growth remains tepid. GDP grew at a 2.7 percent annual rate in the third quarter, but it now appears to be slowing sharply. According to a Reuters poll published on Wednesday, economists expect the economy to expand at just a 1.2 percent pace in the current quarter.

Businesses have hunkered down, fearful of a tightening of fiscal policy as politicians in Washington wrangle over ways to avoid a $600 billion mix of spending reductions and expiring tax cuts set to take hold at the start of 2013.

Bernanke has warned that running over this "fiscal cliff" would lead the economy into a new recession.

Fed officials will release a new set of quarterly economic and interest rate projections at 2 p.m. (1900 GMT) that could show yet another round of downward revisions to future growth prospects.

Back in September, the Fed predicted the U.S. economy would expand 2.5 percent to 3 percent in 2013, but even that modest rate is looking potentially rosy. The Reuters poll showed a median U.S. growth estimate of 2.1 percent for next year on the same fourth quarter over fourth quarter basis.

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Facebook revises privacy controls in effort to make them more accessible, comprehensible

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is trying to make its privacy controls easier to find and understand in an effort to turn the world’s largest social network into a more discreet place.

The fine-tuning announced Wednesday will include several revisions that will start rolling out to Facebook Inc.‘s more than 1 billion users in the next few weeks.

The biggest change will be a new “privacy shortcuts” section that will appear as a tiny lock on the right-hand side at the top of people’s news feeds. This feature offers a drop-down box where users will be able to get answers to common questions such as “Who can see my stuff?”

Other updates will include a tool that will enable individuals to review all the publicly available pictures identifying them on Facebook.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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3 dead, including gunman, in Oregon mall shooting

 A gunman opened fire in a suburban Portland shopping mall Tuesday, killing two people and wounding another as people were doing their Christmas shopping, authorities said.

Witnesses described a scene of chaos and disbelief as a gunman wearing some sort of camouflage outfit and a white mask shot an initial burst of fire and then more rounds at Clackamas Town Center. Shoppers tried to find safe areas as teams of police officers began entering the mall to find the shooter.

Clackamas County sheriff's Lt. James Rhodes said later that the gunman was dead, but he wouldn't say how he died or provide any details about him.

Authorities were going store-to-store to secure the scene and to escort hiding shoppers outside, but Rhodes said there was no indication that there was more than one shooter.

Austin Patty, 20, who works at Macy's, said he saw a man in a white mask carrying a rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest.

He heard the gunman say "I am the shooter," as if announcing himself, Patty said. He then fired several shots paced seconds apart.

A series of rapid-fire shots in short succession followed. Patty said he ducked to the ground, then ran.

His Macy's co-worker, Pam Moore, told The Associated Press the gunman was short, with dark hair, dressed in camouflage. He had body armor and a rifle.

"I heard about 20 shots and everyone hit the ground," Moore said. "That's when we all just ran."

Shaun Wik, 20, from Fairview, said he was Christmas shopping with his girlfriend and opened a fortune cookie at the food court. Inside was written "live for today, remember yesterday, think of tomorrow."

As he read it, he heard three shots. He heard a man he believes was the gunman shout, "Get down!" but Wik and his girlfriend ran. He heard seven or eight more shots. He didn't turn around.

"If I had looked back, I might not be standing here," Wik said. "I might have been one of the ones who got hit."

Kira Rowland told KGW-TV that she was shopping at Macy's with her infant son when the shots started.

"All of a sudden you hear two shots, which sounded like balloons popping," Rowland told the station. "Everybody got on the ground. I grabbed the baby from the stroller and got on the ground."

Rowland said she heard people screaming and crying.

"I put the baby back in the stroller and ran like hell," Rowland said. "It was awful. It was shots after shots after shots like a massacre.

"It was just awful."

Holli Bautista, 28, said she was shopping in the Macy's for a Christmas dress for her daughter when she heard a two or three pops that sounded like firecrackers.

"I heard people running and screaming and saying 'Get out, there's somebody shooting,'" she told the AP. "It was a scene of chaos."

She said hundreds of shoppers and mall employees started running, and she and dozens of other people were trying to escape through an exit in the department store.

Bautista said the Macy's opens into the food court area, where it was reported the shootings took place. Bautista said it sounded like the shots were coming from that direction.

Tiffany Turgetto and her husband of Gladstone had exited Macy's through the first floor when they heard the gunshots coming from the second floor of the mall.

"People in front of us people were dropping, finding covering," she told the AP. "People were yelling screaming and gasping, yelling to get out. The lady next to us, she threw a chair and started running. We couldn't run because the chair was there."

Turgetto and her husband and other people were able to quickly leave through a Barnes & Noble bookstore before the police arrived and locked down the mall.

"I had left my phone at home. I was telling people to call 911. Surprisingly, people are around me, no one was calling 911. I think people were in shock."

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Mexico: Rivera’s plane hit with ‘terrible’ impact

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The plane carrying Mexican-American music superstar Jenni Rivera plunged almost vertically from more than 28,000 feet and hit the ground in a nose-dive at a speed that may have exceeded 600 miles per hour, Mexico‘s top transportation official said Tuesday.

In the first detailed account of the moments leading up to the crash that killed Rivera and six other people, Secretary of Communications and Transportation Gerardo Ruiz Esparza told Radio Formula that the twin-engine turbojet hit the ground 1.2 miles from where it began falling.

“The plane practically nose-dived,” he said. “The impact must have been terrible.”

Ruiz did not offer any explanation of what may have caused the plane to plummet, saying only that “The plane fell from an altitude of 28,000 feet … It may have hit a speed higher than 1,000 kph (621 mph).”

Ruiz said the pilot of the plane, Miguel Perez Soto, had a valid Mexican pilot’s license that would have expired in January. Photos of a temporary pilot’s certificate issued by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and found amid the wreckage said that Perez was 78.

Ruiz said there is no age limit for flying a civil aviation aircraft, though for commercial it’s 65.

Mexican authorities were performing DNA tests Tuesday on remains believed to belong to Rivera and the others killed when her plane went down in northern Mexico early Sunday morning.

Investigators said it would take days to piece together the wreckage of the plane carrying Rivera and find out why it went down.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team to help investigate the crash of the Learjet 25, which disintegrated on impact in the rugged terrain in Nuevo Leon state in northern Mexico.

Human remains found in the wreckage were moved to a hospital in Monterrey, the closest major city to the crash, and Rivera’s brother Lupillo was driven past a crowd of reporters to the area where the remains were being kept. He did not speak to the press.

A state official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, said investigators were testing DNA from the remains in order to provide families with definitive confirmation of the deaths of their loved ones.

“We’re in the process of picking up the fragments and we have to find all the parts,” Argudin told reporters on Monday. “Depending on weather conditions it would take us at least 10 days to have a first report and many more days to have a report by experts.”

In an interview on Radio Formula, Alejandro Argudin, head of Mexico’s civil aviation agency, said Mexican investigators weren’t sure yet if the Learjet had been equipped with flight data recorders. He also said there had been no emergency call from the plane before the crash.

Fans of Rivera, who sold 15 million records and was loved on both sides of the border for her down-to-earth style and songs about heartbreak and overcoming pain, put up shrines to her with burning candles, flowers and photographs in cities from Hermosillo, Mexico to Los Angeles.

Some Spanish-language radio stations played her songs nonstop.

A brother, Juan Rivera, as well as mother Rosa Saavedra, still held on to hope that she would be found alive.

“I still trust God that perhaps the body isn’t hers,” Saavedra said in a press conference Tuesday, adding that she could have been kidnapped and another woman was at the crash site. “We’re hoping it’s not true, that perhaps someone took her and left another woman there.”

The 43-year-old California-born Rivera known as the “Diva de la Banda” died as her career peaked. She was perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated Mexico regional style, and had branched out into acting and reality television.

Besides being a singer, she appeared in the indie film Filly Brown, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, and was filming the third season of “I love Jenni,” which followed her as she shared special moments with her children and as she toured through Mexico and the United States.

The Learjet 25, number N345MC, with Rivera aboard was en route from Monterrey to Toluca, outside Mexico City, when it was reported missing about 10 minutes after takeoff.

Ruiz said Mexican officials are investigating why the U.S. plane was carrying passengers between two Mexican destinations, something that’s against regulation. U.S- registered planes can only fly paying passengers internationally into Mexico. He said the plane’s owner, Starwood Management of Las Vegas, said Rivera was not renting the jet, but was receiving a free flight because Starwood thought it would promote the aircraft, which was for sale.

That would be allowed under Mexican law, Ruiz said.

“The Civil Aviation Department has instructions to investigate this point specifically,” he said, adding that he’s also asking other authorities to verify the company’s story about why one of its planes was flying between Mexican destinations.

According to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the same plane was substantially damaged in a 2005 landing mishap at Amarillo International Airport in Texas. It hit a runway distance marker after losing directional control. There were four aboard but no injuries. It was registered to a company in Houston, Texas, as the time.

Starwood has been the subject of a lawsuit and investigations, though none so far have centered on the plane that carried Rivera.

Another of its planes was seized in September by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in McAllen, Texas.

A federal lawsuit in Nevada filed by QBE Insurance Corp. alleges that a Starwood aircraft was ordered seized by the DEA when it landed in McAllen, Texas, from Mexico on Sept. 12. The New York-based insurer sued in October to rescind coverage for the Hawker 700 jet.

Starwood, in a court filing, acknowledged that the DEA was involved in the seizure of the aircraft.

QBE, based in New York, said the DEA also seized a Starwood-owned Gulfstream G-1159A — insured by another company — when it landed in Tucson from Mexico in February. Starwood said in its court filing that it didn’t have enough information to address the allegation.

Nevada secretary of state records list only one Starwood officer — Norma Gonzalez — but QBE alleges that the company is owned and managed by Ed Nunez, who, according to the lawsuit, is also known as Christian Esquino and had a long criminal history.

Starwood rejected the insurer’s description of Nunez’s role at the company.

According to QBE’s lawsuit, Esquino pleaded guilty in federal court in Orlando, Florida, in 1993 to conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine.

QBE said Esquino also served two years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud involving an aircraft in Southern California in 2004. QBE said Esquino’s attorney stated in court back then that his client had been under investigation by the DEA for more than a year.

Starwood said in its court filing that it didn’t have enough information to address either the Florida or Southern California case against Esquino.

George Crow, an attorney for Starwood, did not immediately respond to phone and email messages left after business hours Monday.

___

Ibarra reported from Monterrey, Mexico. Raquel Dillon in Los Angeles and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

At William H. Ziegler Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia, students are getting acquainted with vegetables and healthy snacks.

PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.

The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.

The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them.

Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ”

Researchers say they are not sure what is behind the declines. They may be an early sign of a national shift that is visible only in cities that routinely measure the height and weight of schoolchildren. The decline in Los Angeles, for instance, was for fifth, seventh and ninth graders — the grades that are measured each year — between 2005 and 2010. Nor is it clear whether the drops have more to do with fewer obese children entering school or currently enrolled children losing weight. But researchers note that declines occurred in cities that have had obesity reduction policies in place for a number of years.

Though obesity is now part of the national conversation, with aggressive advertising campaigns in major cities and a push by Michelle Obama, many scientists doubt that anti-obesity programs actually work. Individual efforts like one-time exercise programs have rarely produced results. Researchers say that it will take a broad set of policies applied systematically to effectively reverse the trend, a conclusion underscored by an Institute of Medicine report released in May.

Philadelphia has undertaken a broad assault on childhood obesity for years. Sugary drinks like sweetened iced tea, fruit punch and sports drinks started to disappear from school vending machines in 2004. A year later, new snack guidelines set calorie and fat limits, which reduced the size of snack foods like potato chips to single servings. By 2009, deep fryers were gone from cafeterias and whole milk had been replaced by one percent and skim.

Change has been slow. Schools made money on sugary drinks, and some set up rogue drink machines that had to be hunted down. Deep fat fryers, favored by school administrators who did not want to lose popular items like French fries, were unplugged only after Wayne T. Grasela, the head of food services for the school district, stopped buying oil to fill them.

But the message seems to be getting through, even if acting on it is daunting. Josh Monserrat, an eighth grader at John Welsh Elementary, uses words like “carbs,” and “portion size.” He is part of a student group that promotes healthy eating. He has even dressed as an orange to try to get other children to eat better. Still, he struggles with his own weight. He is 5-foot-3 but weighed nearly 200 pounds at his last doctor’s visit.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m obese for my age,’ ” said Josh, who is 13. “I set a goal for myself to lose 50 pounds.”

Nationally, about 17 percent of children under 20 are obese, or about 12.5 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines childhood obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex. That rate, which has tripled since 1980, has leveled off in recent years but has remained at historical highs, and public health experts warn that it could bring long-term health risks.

Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, creating a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Cancer Society says that being overweight or obese is the culprit in one of seven cancer deaths. Diabetes in children is up by a fifth since 2000, according to federal data.

“I’m deeply worried about it,” said Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who added that obesity is “almost certain to result in a serious downturn in longevity based on the risks people are taking on.”

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HSBC to pay record $1.9B fine

British-owned bank HSBC is paying $1.9B to settle a US money-laundering probe. The bank was investigated for involvement in the transfer of funds from Mexican drug cartels and sanctioned nations like Iran. (Dec. 11)

HSBC has agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion fine to settle a multi-year probe by U.S. prosecutors, who accused Europe's biggest bank of failing to enforce rules designed to prevent the laundering of criminal cash.

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday charged the bank with failing to maintain an effective program against money laundering and conduct due diligence on certain accounts.

In documents filed in federal court in Brooklyn, it also charged the bank with violating sanctions laws by doing business with Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba.

HSBC Holdings Plc admitted to a breakdown of controls and apologised for its conduct.

"We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again. The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organisation from the one that made those mistakes," said Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver.

"Over the last two years, under new senior leadership, we have been taking concrete steps to put right what went wrong and to participate actively with government authorities in bringing to light and addressing these matters."

The bank agreed to forfeit $1.256 billion and retain a compliance monitor to resolve the charges through a deferred-prosecution agreement.

The settlement offers new information about failures at HSBC to police transactions linked to Mexico, details of which were reported this summer in a sweeping U.S. Senate probe.

The Senate panel alleged that HSBC failed to maintain controls designed to prevent money laundering by drug cartels, terrorists and tax cheats, when acting as a financier to clients routing funds from places including Mexico, Iran and Syria.

The bank was unable to properly monitor $15 billion in bulk cash transactions between mid-2006 and mid-2009, and had inadequate staffing and high turnover in its compliance units, the Senate panel's July report said.

HSBC on Tuesday said it expected to also reach a settlement with British watchdog the Financial Services Authority. The FSA declined to comment.

U.S. and European banks have now agreed to settlements with U.S. regulators totalling some $5 billion in recent years on charges they violated U.S. sanctions and failed to police potentially illicit transactions.

No bank or bank executives, however, have been indicted, as prosecutors have instead used deferred prosecutions - under which criminal charges against a firm are set aside if it agrees to conditions such as paying fines and changing behaviour.

HSBC's settlement also includes agreements or consent orders with the Manhattan district attorney, the Federal Reserve and three U.S. Treasury Department units: the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

HSBC said it would pay $1.921 billion, continue to cooperate fully with regulatory and law enforcement authorities, and take further action to strengthen its compliance policies and procedures. U.S. prosecutors have agreed to defer or forego prosecution.

The settlement is the third time in a decade that HSBC has been penalized for lax controls and ordered by U.S. authorities to better monitor suspicious transactions. Directives by regulators to improve oversight came in 2003 and again in 2010.

Last month, HSBC told investors it had set aside $1.5 billion to cover fines or penalties stemming from the inquiry and warned that costs could be significantly higher.

Analyst Jim Antos of Mizuho Securities said the settlement costs were "trivial" in terms of the company's book value.

"But in terms of real cash terms, that's a huge fine to pay," said Antos, who rates HSBC a "buy".

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