Relatives of shooter at a loss for words

Robbie Parker, the father of six-year-old Emilie - one of the first graders slain in the Connecticut elementary school massacre - shares emotional memories of his daughter.

NEWTOWN, Conn.—

Investigators tried to figure out what led a bright but painfully awkward 20-year-old to slaughter 26 children and adults at a Connecticut elementary school, while townspeople sadly took down some of their Christmas decorations and struggled Saturday with how to go on.

The tragedy brought forth soul-searching and grief around the globe. Families as far away as Puerto Rico began to plan funerals for victims who still had their baby teeth, world leaders extended condolences, and vigils were held around the U.S.

Relatives of the shooter, whose victims included his mother, were at a loss for words.

"The whole family is traumatized by this event," said a police official who knows the family. A family statement read: "We reach out to the community of Newtown and express our heartfelt sorrow for this incomprehensible and profound loss of innocence."

Amid the sorrow, stories of heroism emerged, including an account of the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal and the school psychologist who lost their lives rushing toward the gunman, Adam Lanza, in an attempt to stop him.

Police shed no light on what triggered the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, though state police Lt. Paul Vance said investigators had found "very good evidence ... that our investigators will be able to use in painting the complete picture, the how and, more importantly, the why." He would not elaborate.

However, another law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators have found no note or manifesto from Lanza of the sort they have come to expect after murderous rampages such as the Virginia Tech bloodbath in 2007 that left 33 people dead.

The mystery deepened as Newtown education officials said they had found no link between Lanza's mother and the school, contrary to news reports that said she was a teacher there. Investigators said they believe Adam Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary many years ago, but they had no explanation for why he went there on Friday.

Lanza shot to death his mother, Nancy Lanza, at the home they shared, then drove to the school in her car with at least three of her guns, forced his way inside and opened fire in two classrooms, authorities said. Within minutes, he killed 20 children, six adults and himself.

James Champion, Nancy Lanza's brother and a retired police captain in Kingston, N.H., said through the police chief that he had not seen his nephew in eight years. Champion, who still works as a part-time officer, said he would not discuss what might have triggered the rampage since the case is under investigation.

On Saturday, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver said all the victims at the school were shot with a rifle, at least some of them up close, and all of them were apparently shot more than once. All six adults killed at the school were women. Of the 20 children, eight were boys and 12 were girls. All the children were 6 or 7 years old.

Asked how many bullets were fired, Carver said, "I'm lucky if I can tell you how many I found."

The tragedy plunged Newtown into mourning and added the picturesque New England community of handsome colonial homes, red-brick sidewalks and 27,000 people to the grim map of towns where mass shootings in recent years have periodically reignited the national debate over gun control but led to little change.

Signs around town read, "Hug a teacher today," ''Please pray for Newtown" and "Love will get us through."

"People in my neighborhood are feeling guilty about it being Christmas. They are taking down decorations," said Jeannie Pasacreta, a psychologist who was advising parents struggling with how to talk to their children.

The list of the dead was released Saturday, but in the tightly knit town, nearly everyone already seemed to know someone who died.

Among the dead: well-liked Principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, who town officials say tried to stop the rampage and paid with her life; school psychologist Mary Sherlach, 56, who probably would have helped survivors grapple with the tragedy; a teacher thrilled to have been hired this year; and a 6-year-old girl who had just moved to Newtown from Canada.

"Next week is going to be horrible," said the town's legislative council chairman, Jeff Capeci, thinking about the string of funerals the town will face. "Horrible, and the week leading into Christmas."

School board chairwoman Debbie Leidlein spent Friday night meeting with parents who lost children and shivered as she recalled those conversations. "They were asking why. They can't wrap their minds around it. Why? What's going on?" she said. "And we just don't have any answers for them."

Nancy Lanza, who was once a stockbroker for John Hancock in Boston and once lived in Kingston, N.H., was a kind, considerate and loving person, Kingston Police Chief Donald Briggs Jr. said.

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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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Obama: 'Our hearts are broken today'

A man killed his mother at their 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 reverberating through the building and screams echoing over the intercom.

The 20-year-old killer, carrying at least 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 claimed 33 lives 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. The gunman, Adam Lanza, 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 in Newtown, a prosperous New England 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 so that they wouldn't see the blood and broken glass.

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 that Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, then drove to the school in her car with at least three guns, including a high-powered rifle that he apparently left in the back of the vehicle, and shot up two classrooms. Nancy Lanza was a part-time substitute at the school, according to a parent.

Authorities gave no details on exactly how the attack unfolded. But 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 -- and perhaps saving many lives -- by letting them hear the hysteria going on in the school office, a teacher said.

Teachers locked their doors and ordered children to huddle in a corner or hide in closets as shots echoed through the building.

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 a law enforcement official said he was not believed to have had a role in the rampage. Investigators were searching his 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.

At one point, a law enforcement official mistakenly identified the gunman as Ryan Lanza. Brett Wilshe, a friend of Ryan Lanza's, said Lanza told him the gunman may have had his identification. Updates posted on Ryan Lanza's Facebook page Friday afternoon read, "It wasn't me" and "I was at work."

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 heard two big bangs. Teachers told her to get in a corner, he said. "It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America," he said. His daughter was uninjured.

Theodore Varga was in a meeting with other fourth-grade teachers when he heard the gunfire. He said someone had turned on the intercom so that "you could hear people in the office. You could hear the hysteria that was going on. I think whoever did that saved a lot of people. Everyone in the school was listening to the terror that was transpiring."

Also, a custodian ran around, warning people there was someone with a gun, Varga 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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Alvarez fires back at '60 Minutes'

After days of scathing reviews of her "60 Minutes" interview on false confessions, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez fired off a letter to the venerable news program calling its Sunday report "one-sided and extremely misleading" and vowing to set the record straight.

The segment titled "Chicago: The False Confession Capital" featured two infamous Chicago-area cases in which teenage boys allegedly confessed to brutal murders but were later exonerated when DNA excluded them as the killers.

In her letter, addressed to CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager, Alvarez called the story "an offensive display" and accused reporter Byron Pitts of using only snippets of a 6-month-old interview to distort her record and make it appear she was still trying to prosecute the cases.

"Had I known that this story would completely distort my position and intentionally omit critical facts, I would never have agreed to your interview," Alvarez wrote.

One particularly damaging portion of the interview involved the Dixmoor Five case in which five men were convicted as teens of the 1991 rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl whose body was found on a path. DNA linked a serial rapist to the crime and undermined confessions from the teens. They were cleared in 2011 after spending years in prison.

Alvarez explained in the interview that one possible explanation for the DNA was necrophilia — that the rapist had sex with the girl after she'd already been killed.

That answer — which was roundly mocked in blogs and news critiques — was misconstrued, Alvarez said in the letter. She wrote that the necrophilia theory was used at trial years before she had any involvement in the case.

"I have never advanced that theory or argument, but simply responded, when asked by Mr. Pitts, that we can't say with certainty what had occurred," Alvarez wrote. "This story was not designed to inform, it was designed to undermine me and mislead the public."

Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for Alvarez, said the reaction to the piece has been vitriolic. "She's gotten hate mail, things you couldn't even publish," Daly said.

CBS News representatives did not return phone calls seeking comment.

jmeisner@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)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil

James Edward Bates for The New York Times

Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.

Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.

But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.

“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”

She threw the product away and started a petition on Change.org, an online petition platform, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo, Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.

Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.

In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.

Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.

“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.

The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.

Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.

Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.

Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”

The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 14, 2012

An article on Thursday about new concerns over brominated vegetable oil, a common ingredient in many citrus drinks, described incorrectly Change.org, the Web site where a Mississippi teenager started a petition to persuade PepsiCo to remove the substance from Gatorade. It is a B Corporation, a sort of hybrid nonprofit/for-profit entity; it is not a nonprofit Web site. (The company’s online petition platform is supported by advertising.)

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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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Quinn, Emanuel assail court's concealed carry decision

Gov. Pat Quinn on Wednesday indicated he would like to see assault weapons banned in Illinois as lawmakers this spring revise state law to allow some form of concealed carry to comply with a court ruling that tossed aside a long-standing ban on allowing people to carry weapons.

Meanwhile, at City Hall, Mayor Rahm Emanuel blasted Tuesday's federal appellate court decision as "wrongheaded" as he offered legal help to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan as she weighs an appeal.

Judges gave the General Assembly six months to make changes, and the Democratic governor suggested the new rules will have to restrict who can get a permit to carry a gun.

"We have to have reasonable limitations so people who have clear situations where they should not be carrying a gun, for example, those with mental health challenges, those who have records of domestic violence, we cannot have those sorts of people eligible to carry weapons, loaded weapons, on their person in public places" Quinn said.

National Rifle Association lobbyist Todd Vandermyde said the governor is "being very pragmatic in his approach" on concealed carry. Though Vandermyde expected gun rights groups to hold firm on a variety of points, he said his group wanted to "work for a reasonable solution and policy on right to carry."

Quinn also pressed for an assault weapons ban, saying Illinois residents "overwhelmingly support that."

"I want to say today, and I'll say every day, we need to ban assault weapons in our state of Illinois. We aren't going to have people marching along Michigan Avenue, or any other avenue in the state of Illinois, with military-style assault weapons, weapons that are designed to kill people."

An assault weapons ban has been elusive in Springfield because of geographical differences of opinion. Opponents point to the fact that Chicago had a gun ban for decades, even as criminals obtained guns and shot people.

For his part, Emanuel noted his efforts while working for former President Bill Clinton to require background checks for gun buyers and ban semi-automatic assault weapons.

"We fought against the National Rifle Association. They had not been beaten in 30 years in the United States Congress, and we beat 'em," Emanuel said.

"I think this opinion by the 7th Circuit Court is also wrongheaded," he added.

Emanuel said he has offered to make city Law and Police department resources available to the Illinois attorney general. Meanwhile, the city is reviewing its gun registration ordinance to see if it needs modification in light of the court ruling.

Tribune reporter Ray Long contributed.

mcgarcia@tribune.com

hdardick@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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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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3 dead, including gunman, in Portland, Ore., mall shooting

Police say the man who opened fire in a suburban Portland shopping mall apparently killed himself after fatally shooting two people and wounding a third.

Clackamas County sheriff's Lt. James Rhodes says law enforcement who flooded the Clackamas Town Center in response to the afternoon shooting didn't fire any shots.

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 near the mall's food court.

Many shoppers fled and others hid in the backrooms of stores.

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California PUC Finalizing Free Cell Phone Service for the Poor

As noted by KGO, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) intends to approve a free lifeline cell phone plan that benefits California‘s poor and homeless residents. Funding for initial setup will come from the federal government.

What are the initial details of the plan?

Qualifying Californians pay an initial $ 20 fee to sign up for a monthly cell coverage plan. It offers 250 free minutes as well as 250 free text messages. From then on, the minutes and message count refill every month as long as the participant qualifies for the program. Assured Wireless — the name of the plan devised by Virgin Mobile, KERN Radio notes — has proposed this coverage to the CPUC.

Unlike the landline lifeline service, which only reduces a phone bill, this cell phone service is actually free of charge for participants. The company notes that plan participants can pay extra for international calling and for the purchase of additional minutes. The phone is free and network service is provided by Sprint. It is not known at this time if paying cell phone service customers will be charged a surcharge or fee to fund the program.

Who benefits from the free cell phone service?

The Coalition on Homelessness notes that those living on the streets will see an immediate benefit. “It’s so huge if you’re living outside you can dial 9-1-1 in the middle of the night; if you need to get in touch with your loved ones, you have a phone, if you’re trying to get in touch with a potential employer,” the Coalition on Homelessness’ Jennifer Friedenbach explained. Low-income wage earners, too, benefit since they no longer have to take money from other budget line items to afford a cell phone.

What is the wage income maximum for a qualifying program participant?

Participants cannot earn more than about $ 15,000 per year to qualify for the free cell phone program.

Is this type of program new?

This is not a new program. There are already 36 states that offer cell phone lifeline programs. The California PUC has thus far been unwilling to approve the program for the State of California.

Why does California need free cell phone service in the first place?

Although the State of California does participate in the federal lifeline landline service via local phone service providers, the number of landlines in service has decreased by 43 percent since 2000. On the flipside, the number of cell phones in use has increased by 123 percent.

What do critics say?

As noted by KERN, there is a question of taxpayer and cell phone customer cost. In other states, Sprint contributes to the program. It then has the option of charging its paying customers a fee that funds the program.

What do proponents say?

As noted by 4-Traders, Assurance Wireless has crunched the numbers for the entire nation and purports, “If all 28.5 million adults eligible for Lifeline Assistance were to take advantage of the program and earn at the same rate and level as [the study] sample, it would result in $ 3.7 billion in fresh income for the poor and near poor.”

What happens next?

As noted by the San Francisco Chronicle, the CPUC has already approved the Golden State’s participation in the program. It now needs to work out the details of Assurance Wireless’ promotional programs to advertise the free cell phone service. Program finalization is tentatively set for two weeks from now.

Sylvia Cochran is a Los Angeles area resident with a firm finger on the pulse of California politics. Talk radio junkie, community volunteer and politically independent, she scrutinizes the good and the bad from both sides of the political aisle.

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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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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Fare hikes, elimination of bus routes focus of CTA budget hearing

The second CTA fare hike in five years and a controversial plan that eliminates at least a dozen bus routes to free up money to add service on more crowded buses and trains were the focus of a public hearing Monday night on the CTA's proposed 2013 budget.

The overwhelming majority of the 191 people who attended, amid tighter than usual security at CTA headquarters, wore yellow T-shirts calling on the CTA board to reverse its earlier decision to shorten the No. 11 bus route.

The $1.39 billion CTA budget for next year erases a projected deficit by raising fares a total of $56 million and introducing $60 million in savings from labor unions and more than $50 million in management cuts and reforms, officials said.

But the price of 1-day, 3-day, 7-day and 30-day passes will increase effective Jan. 14 under the plan, while the full base fare will be frozen at $2.25 on the rail system and $2 on buses if transit cards are used to pay fares, or $2.25 for cash bus fares.

Reduced fares and passes for senior citizens and disabled people will also increase, and reduced fares for students will decline by 10 cents.

In addition, it will cost $5 instead of $2.25 to ride the Blue Line from O'Hare International Airport if a pass is not used.

No service cuts or CTA employee layoffs will be needed to balance the budget, officials said.

CTA President Forrest Claypool said the changes in next year's budget deliver fiscal stability to the agency's operating budget and prevent the need for more fare increases over perhaps a decade.

The CTA, however, faces an estimated $15.9 billion backlog in major capital improvements to bring stations, tracks, viaducts and other infrastructure as well as buses and trains to a state of good repair over the next 10 years, according to a study commissioned by the Regional Transportation Authority.

A crowding-reduction initiative that is scheduled to begin Sunday will cancel 12 bus routes and shorten two others. In addition, nine privately contractedCTAroutes would be eliminated if subsidies provided by businesses aren't increased, officials said.

More service will be added to 48 bus routes and six of the eight rail lines with the goal of speeding travel times and making the ride more comfortable by reducing crowdingby 10 percent to 15 percent during rush periods, according to the transit agency.

Pleas and demands to save the No. 11 bus route dominated the testimony.The No. 11 route is being cut between Western and Fullerton as part of a $16 million crowding-reduction plan that is slated to take effect Sunday.

Allan Mellis, a community activist in Lincoln Square, asked the CTA board to amend next year's budget to find funds to restore the No. 11, which provides 5,800 rides on an average weekday, according to the CTA.

Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th) asked for time to work out a solution, including the possibility of using excess TIF funds from his ward. The CTA should not “fix a fiscal issue only to create a social problem” in terms of the toll the loss of No. 11 service would have on senior citizens and people living on fixed incomes, Pawar said.

William Scott, a retired teacher who lives in Drexel Square, said other bus routes suffer from serious problems too. He said it's difficult to find a seat on the No. 4 Cottage Grove bus.

Claypool responded that service will be added on the No. 4 under the de-crowding plan.

Neither Claypool nor CTA board chairman Terry Peterson spoke about the possibility of altering the budget or the de-crowding plan.

Other people who testified complained about the CTA plan to more than double the fare, to $5, for trips beginning at O'Hare International Airport on the Blue Line.

Marge Demora, who works for United Airlines at the airport, said “it's discrimination to single out O'Hare fares.” She said workers at restaurants and other jobs that pay minimum wages at the airport will be the hardest hit.

On buses that typically carry 70 passengers, the new target will be 45 to 55 passengers per bus,CTAofficials said. Rail cars packed with 90 or more riders at maximum capacity are expected to have 70 to 75 passengers, officials said.

CTA officials said service will be increased on bus and rail routes used by 76 percent of the CTA's total ridership.

But the bus service cuts, which the CTA board has already approved, have sparked vocal protests from some riders, particularly those who are rallying to save the No. 145 Wilson/Michigan Express and the No. 11 Lincoln/Sedgwick bus route, which is slated to stop operating between Western and Fullerton avenues.CTA officials said the No. 11 service is redundant with the Brown Line between Fullerton and Western. A new route, the No. 37 Sedgwick, will be created.

jhilkevitch@tribune.com

Twitter @jhilkevitch

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