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Viral rapper PSY apologizes for anti-US protests

South Korean rapper and Internet sensation PSY is apologizing to Americans for participating in anti-U.S. protests several years ago.

Park Jae-sang, who performs as PSY, issued a statement Friday after reports surfaced that he had participated in concerts protesting the U.S. military presence in South Korea during the early stages of the Iraq war.

At a 2004 concert, the “Gangnam Style” rapper performs a song with lyrics about killing “Yankees” who have been torturing Iraqi captives and their families “slowly and painfully.” In another protest, he smashed a model of a U.S. tank on stage.

“While I’m grateful for the freedom to express one’s self, I’ve learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I’m deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted,” he wrote in the statement. “I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused by those words.”

The 34-year-old rapper says the protests were part of a “deeply emotional” reaction to the war and the death of two Korean school girls, who were killed when a U.S. military vehicle hit them as they walked alongside the road. He noted antiwar sentiment was high around the world at the time.

PSY attended college in the U.S. and says he understands the sacrifices U.S. military members have made to protect South Korea and other nations. He has recently performed in front of servicemen and women.

“And I hope they and all Americans can accept my apology,” he wrote. “While it’s important that we express our opinions, I deeply regret the inflammatory and inappropriate language I used to do so. In my music, I try to give people a release, a reason to smile. I have learned that thru music, our universal language we can all come together as a culture of humanity and I hope that you will accept my apology.”

His participation in the protests was no secret in South Korea, where the U.S. has had a large military presence since the Korean War, but was not generally known in America until recent news reports.

PSY did not write “Dear American,” a song by The N.E.X.T., but he does perform it. The song exhorts the listener to kill the Yankees who are torturing Iraqi captives, their superiors who ordered the torture and their families. At one point he raps: “Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers/Kill them all slowly and painfully.”

PSY launched to international acclaim based on the viral nature of his “Gangnam Style” video. It became YouTube’s most watched video, making him a millionaire who freely crossed cultural boundaries around the world. Much of that success has happened in the U.S., where the rapper has managed to weave himself into pop culture.

He recently appeared on the American Music Awards, dancing alongside MC Hammer in a melding of memorable dance moves that book-end the last two decades. And the Internet is awash with copycat versions of the song. Even former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, the 81-year-old co-chairman of President Barack Obama‘s deficit commission, got in on the fun, recently using the song in a video to urge young Americans to avoid credit card debt.

It remains to be seen how PSY’s American fans will react. Obama, the father of two pop music fans, wasn’t letting the news change his plans, though.

Earlier Friday, the White House confirmed Obama and his family will attend a Dec. 21 charity concert where PSY is among the performers. A spokesman says it’s customary for the president to attend the “Christmas in Washington” concert, which will be broadcast on TNT. The White House has no role in choosing performers for the event, which benefits the National Children’s Medical Center.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: A Son Lost, a Mother Found

My friend Yvonne was already at the front door when I woke, so at first I didn’t realize that my mother was missing.

It was less than a week after my son Spencer died. Since that day, a constant stream of friends had been coming and going, bringing casseroles and soup, love, support and chatter. Mom hated it.

My 94-year-old mother, who has vascular dementia, has been living in my home in upstate New York for the past few years. Like many with dementia, mom is courteous but, underneath, irascible. Pride defines her, especially pride in her Phi Beta Kappa intellect. She hates to be confronted with how she has become, as she calls it, “stupid.”

The parade of strangers confused her. She had to be polite, field solicitous questions, endure mundane comments. She could not remember what was going on or why people were there. It must have been stressful and annoying.

That night, like every night since the state troopers brought the news, I woke hourly, tumbling in panic. As if it were not too late to save my son. Mom knew something was wrong, but she could not remember what. As I overslept that morning, she must have decided enough was enough. She was going home.

In a cold sky, the sun blazed over tall pines. As I opened the door, the dogs raced out to greet Yvonne and her two housecleaners. Yvonne often brags about her cleaning duo. They were her gift to me. They were going to clean my house before the funeral reception, which was scheduled for later that week. This was a very big gift because, like my mother before me, I am a very bad housekeeper.

Mom’s door was shut. I cautioned the housecleaners to avoid her room as I showed them around. Yvonne went to the kitchen to listen to the 37 unheard messages on my answering machine; the housecleaners went out to their van to get their instruments of dirt removal.

I ducked into Mom’s room to warn her about the upcoming noise. The bed was unmade; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues; the room was empty.

Normally, I would have freaked out right then. I knew Mom was not in the house, because I had just shown the whole house to the cleaners. Although Mom doesn’t wander like some dementia patients, she does on occasion run away. But I could not muster a shred of anxiety.

“Yvonne,” I called, “did you see my mother outside?”

Yvonne popped her head into the living room, eyebrows raised.“Outside? No!” She was alarmed. “Is she missing?”

“Yeah,” I said wearily, “I’ll look.” I stepped out onto the front porch, tightening the belt of my bathrobe and turning up the collar. Maybe she had walked off into the woods. The dogs danced around my legs, wanting breakfast.

I had no space left in my body to care. Either we would find her, or we would not. Either she was alive, or she was not. My child was gone. How could I care about anything ever again?

Then I saw my car was missing. My mouth fell open and my eyeballs rolled up to the right, gazing blindly at the abandoned bird’s nest on top of the porch light: What had I done with the keys?

Mom likes to run away in the car when she is angry. She used to do it a lot when my father was still alive — every time they fought. Since Mom took off in my car almost a year ago, after we had had a fight, I’d kept the keys hidden. Except for this week; this week, I had forgotten.

I was reverting to old habits. I had left the doors unlocked and the keys in the cupholder next to the driver’s seat. Exactly like Mom used to do.

“Uh-oh,” I said aloud. Mom was still capable of driving, even though she did not know where she was going. I just really, really hoped that she didn’t hurt anybody on the road. I pulled out my cellphone, about to call the police.

“Celia!” Yvonne shouted from the kitchen. She hurried up behind me, excited. “They found your mother. There are two messages on your machine.”

At that very moment, Mom was holed up at the College Diner in New Paltz, a 20-minute drive over the mountain, through the fields, left over the Wallkill River and away down Main Street.

Yvonne called the diner. They promised to keep the car keys until someone arrived. By that time, Yvonne had to go to work. She drove my friend Elizabeth to the diner, and Elizabeth drove Mom home in my car.

Half an hour later, they walked in the front door. Mom’s cheeks were rouged by the chill air and her eyes sparkled, her white hair riffing with static electricity. “Hello, hello,” she sang out. “Here we are.” She was wearing the flannel nightgown and robe I had dressed her in the night before. It was covered by her oversized purple parka, and her bare feet were shoved into sneakers.

I started laughing as soon as I saw her. I couldn’t help it. Elizabeth and Mom started laughing too. “You had a big adventure,” I said, hugging them both. “How are you?”

“I’m just marvelous,” said my mother. Mom always feels great after doing something rakish. We settled her on the sofa with her feet on the ottoman. By the time I got her blanket tucked in around her shoulders, she had fallen asleep.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop laughing as she described the scene. “Your mother was holding court in this big booth. She was sitting there in her nightgown and her parka, talking to everybody, with this plate of toast and coffee and, like, three of the staff hovering around her.”

The waitress said Mom seemed “a little disoriented” when she got there. Mom said she was meeting a friend for breakfast, but since she was wearing a nightgown and didn’t know whom she was meeting or where she lived, the staff thought there might be a problem. They convinced Mom to let them look in the glove compartment of the car, where they found my name and number.

It was then that I realized I was laughing – something I’d thought I would never be able to do again. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I’m laughing,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Elizabeth, holding her belly.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, rolling on the floor.

And she who gave me life, who had suffered the death of my child and the extinction of her own intellect, snoozed on: oblivious, jubilant, still herself, still mine.

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American Airlines pilots ratify union contract

Pilots at American Airlines on Friday ratified a new union labor contract in a move that may help the airline emerge from bankruptcy protection and pave the way for a merger with US Airways, which reportedly has made a formal bid to combine two of the nation's largest carriers.

The new pilot contract, among other terms, includes pay raises and a 13.5 percent stake in the company in exchange for allowing the airline to outsource more of its flying to regional jets and airline partners.

Friday's ratification removes uncertainty created by the unresolved pilot contract, so creditors in the bankruptcy "can focus without distraction on the underlying strategic and financial merit of an AMR/US Airways merger," the pilots union said recently in a missive to members.

And the pilots' 13.5 percent stake in the company, which besides being worth at least $100,000 per pilot on average, gives the union "important influence over the restructuring process, including input in the selection of a new AMR leadership and the optimal strategic alternative," said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association.

Jamie Baker, a stock analyst with JPMorgan Securities, agreed in a research note to clients, writing "ratification helps ease the way towards a potential merger. ... A failure to ratify would have essentially stopped the clock, in our view, further dragging out an already complex process."

US Airways' merger proposal could value the combined airline at around $8.5 billion, and a deal could come as soon as January, Reuters reported Friday, citing two unnamed sources.

The union contract agreement with AMR was approved by 74 percent of Allied Pilots Association members overall and 86 percent of Chicago-based pilots, the union reported. AMR and pilots have been trying to agree on a new collective bargaining agreement since 2006. 

Thousands of American Airlines passengers in late September and early October were affected by the labor dispute between management and pilots when the airline experienced rampant delays and cancellations nationwide, which also involved hundreds of flights at O'Hare International Airport. The airline blamed pilots for the operational failures, although the Allied Pilots Association denied organizing a work slowdown.

Earlier this week, a union message to pilots said the contract is not perfect, but there was a limit to what can be achieved in bankruptcy. "It's not a 'scorched earth' bankruptcy contract," wrote APA Vice President Tony Chapman. "It's a contract that retains much of what constitutes our quality of life and eventually closes the pay gap with our brethren at United and Delta."

Denise Lynn, American Airlines senior vice president of people, said in a statement that the contract "is an important step forward in our restructuring."

"Today's ratification gives us the certainty we need for American to successfully restructure, providing opportunity and growth for all of our people and stakeholders," Lynn said.

Pilots are the last union at American to reach a deal with the airline. But even with ratification of the contract, pilots say they support an AMR merger with US Airways, with whom all AMR unions already struck labor agreements. 

American Airlines officials have said they prefer the airline to emerge from bankruptcy as a stand-alone company. 

"This ratified agreement should not in any way be viewed as support for the American stand-alone plan or for this current management team," Tajer said. "We continue to support an American Airlines-US Airways merger as the best way to strengthen our airline and enhance our pilots' long-term career prospects. ... This contract represents a bridge to a merger with US Airways."

Ray Neidl, aerospace analyst with Maxim Group, sees pros and cons to a combination with US Airways.

"Advantages of a merger would give the enlarged entity the size to compete with Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, both of which overtook American after their own mergers with other carriers in recent years," Neidl wrote in a note to investors Friday. "We believe the disadvantage would be that it would be a difficult merger to engineer and could create major disruptions over at least the next two years."

Tom Horton, AMR's chief executive, said in a letter to employees Friday that management is still evaluating a merger with US Airways. "We expect to have a conclusion on this soon," he wrote.

American Airlines, the No. 2 carrier in the Chicago region, entered bankruptcy protection in an attempt to cut labor costs, as its major competitors already have done.

The largest carrier in the Chicago region, United Continental Holdings, has also experienced contract disputes with pilots this year. But Chicago-based United Continental, parent of United Airlines, also has a tentative agreement with its pilots. Ratification voting on that contract opened Nov. 30 and runs through Dec. 15.

gkarp@tribune.com

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Preckwinkle rips Emanuel, McCarthy's handling of violence

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle today publicly blasted Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s crime-fighting strategy and the quality of the public schools he controls, then quickly walked back the remarks.

The Democratic leader said her criticism was targeted at society as a whole and not the mayor personally, much as she did last summer when she harshly criticized former President Ronald Reagan for his role in the war on drugs.

The comments about Emanuel came during a question-and-answer session during a luncheon at the Union League Club. Preckwinkle was asked how to address Chicago violence.

“Clearly, this mayor and this police chief have decided the way in which they are going to deal with the terrible violence that faces our community is just arrest everybody,” Preckwinkle said. “I don’t think in the long term that’s going to be successful.

“We’re going to have to figure out how to have interventions that are more comprehensive than just police interventions in the communities where we have the highest rates of crime. And they’re almost all in African-American and Latino communities.”

Homicides and shootings in Chicago have attracted national attention this year following a spike in the city’s murder rate and brazen incidents such as the shooting of a young man at a funeral for a gang member.

Preckwinkle said much of the problem results from a school system that has a low high school graduation rate.

“We have contented ourselves with a miserable education system that has failed many of our children,” Preckwinkle said, saying more after-school enrichment and job-training programs are needed. “I’m talking about the kids who don’t graduate, let alone the kids who graduate don’t get a very good education, even with a high school diploma.”

Emanuel aides responded with restraint, saying the mayor is taking many of the actions Preckwinkle said were needed, even as he maintained a tough stance on crime.

“Mayor Emanuel strenuously agrees that a holistic approach is necessary to successfully address crime,” Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said in a statement. “His multi-part strategy ranges from improving early childhood education, providing a longer school day and creating re-engagement centers for youth, to delivering wrap-around services, revitalizing the community policing program and working to prevent retaliatory actions by gangs.

“All of these work in tandem, but let's make no mistake, criminals deserve to be arrested,” the statement read.

At a news conference after her speech and question session, Preckwinkle said her criticism of schools wasn’t aimed at Emanuel, who as mayor appoints the Chicago Public Schools board and picks the system’s CEO.

“This was a critique of all of us, it wasn’t aimed at the mayor,” said Preckwinkle, a former CPS high school history teacher.

Preckwinkle also acknowledged that Emanuel is putting more city money into early childhood education, after-school programs and youth job programs — in part through programs coordinated with the county.

Her point, she said, was that education over the long run will do more to quell violence than arresting people and locking them up.

“You know unfortunately we live in a country in which we are much more willing to spend money on keeping people in prison than we are on educating them in our public schools,” she said. “And that’s disgraceful. It reflects badly on all of us.”

She added, “I don’t think we are going to arrest our way out of our violence problems.”

Mayor Emanuel's aides said they just learned of the remarks and are preparing a response.

Preckwinkle is a liberal who has been consistently critical of a justice system that locks up African-American and Latino men in far greater numbers than their white counterparts, particularly for drug crimes when studies show drugs are used in equal numbers across ethnic and racial boundaries

It wasn’t the first time that, while speaking without a script, she made comments that ruffled some feathers.

In August, she said former President Ronald Reagan deserved “a special place in hell” for his role in the War on Drugs, later saying she regretted the “inflammatory” remark.

hdardick@tribune.com

Twitter @ReporterHal

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No Grammy love for Justin Bieber, One Direction

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Irate fans of Justin Bieber and boy band One Direction took to social media on Thursday to voice their outrage after being snubbed by the Grammys for a chance to win the biggest honors in the music industry.

Indie-pop band fun and rapper Frank Ocean led the 2013 nominations, tying with The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z and Kanye West for six nods. But The Recording Academy overlooked some of the year’s biggest and most commercially successful artists in Wednesday’s nominations.

While Bieber, 18, who won three American Music Awards in November, stayed quiet on his omission, his manager Scooter Braun took to Twitter.

“Grammy board u blew it on this one. the hardest thing to do is transition, keep the train moving. The kid delivered. Huge successful album, sold out tour, and won people over. … This time he deserved to be recognized,” Braun posted in a series of tweets.

Many of Bieber’s 31 million Twitter fans quickly followed suit, with hashtags such as #BieberForGrammys trending on the micro-blogging service.

The Canadian singer, who has never won a Grammy, in June released album “Believe,” showcasing a more grown-up image. The album, which produced top 10 hits “Boyfriend” and “As Long As You Love Me,” has sold more than 1.1 million copies.

British boy band One Direction was also left empty-handed despite their debut album “Up All Night” having topped the Billboard 200 album chart.

The quintet has performed sold-out shows across the world and won three MTV video music awards earlier this year.

The Grammy Awards are voted on by members of The Recording Academy and recognize achievement in 81 categories.

Lady Gaga, rapper Nicki Minaj and Korea’s Psy also failed to snag any nominations.

While Gaga hasn’t released new music this year, focusing on her global tour, Minaj released “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded,” which topped the Billboard 200 chart and spawned singles such as “Starships.”

Psy may have YouTube’s most watched video ever with “Gangnam Style,” – over 897 million views – but he missed out on becoming the first Korean artist to receive a Grammy nod.

The Grammy Awards will be handed out at a live performance show and ceremony on February 10 in Los Angeles.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Jill Serjeant and Todd Eastham)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Actor Stephen Baldwin charged in NY tax case

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Actor Stephen Baldwin was charged Thursday with failing to pay New York state taxes for three years, amassing a $ 350,000 debt.

Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said Baldwin, of Upper Grandview, skipped his taxes in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

The youngest of the four acting Baldwin brothers pleaded not guilty at an arraignment and was freed without bail. His lawyer, Russell Yankwitt, said Baldwin should not have been charged.

“Mr. Baldwin did not commit any crimes, and he’s working with the district attorney‘s office and the New York State Tax Department to resolve any differences,” Yankwitt said.

The district attorney said Baldwin could face up to four years in prison if convicted. The actor is due back in court on Feb. 5.

Zugibe said Baldwin owes more than $ 350,000 in tax and penalties.

“We cannot afford to allow wealthy residents to break the law by cheating on their taxes,” the district attorney said. “The defendant’s repetitive failure to file returns and pay taxes over a period of several years contributes to the sweeping cutbacks and closures in local government and in our schools.”

Thomas Mattox, the state tax commissioner, said, “It is rare and unfortunate for a personal income tax case to require such strong enforcement measures.”

Baldwin, 46, starred in 1995′s “The Usual Suspects” and appeared in 1989′s “Born on the Fourth of July.” He is scheduled to appear in March on NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

His brothers Alec, William and Daniel are also actors.

A bankruptcy filing in 2009 said Stephen Baldwin owed $ 1.2 million on two mortgages, $ 1 million in taxes and $ 70,000 on credit cards.

In October, Baldwin pleaded guilty in Manhattan to unlicensed driving and was ordered to pay a $ 75 fine. Earlier this year, he lost a $ 17 million civil case in New Orleans after claiming that actor Kevin Costner and a business partner duped him in a deal related to the cleanup of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The actors and others had formed a company that marketed devices that separate oil from water.

Baldwin co-hosts a radio show with conservative talk figure Kevin McCullough.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Drug Makers Challenge Pill Disposal Law in California

Brand name drug makers and their generic counterparts rarely find themselves on the same side of an issue, but now they are making an exception. They have teamed up to fight a local law in California, the first in the nation, that makes them responsible for running — and paying for — a program that would allow consumers to turn in unused medicines for proper disposal.

Such so-called drug take-back programs are gaining in popularity because of a growing realization that those leftover pills in your medicine cabinet are a potential threat to public health and the environment.

Small children might accidentally swallow them and teenagers will experiment with them, advocates of the laws say. Prescription drug abusers can, and are, breaking into homes in search of them. Unused pills are sometimes flushed down the toilet, so pharmaceuticals are now polluting waterways and even drinking water. One study found the antidepressant Prozac in the brains of fish.

Most such take-back programs are run by local or other government agencies. But increasingly there are calls to make the pharmaceutical industry pay.

“We feel the industry that profits from the sales of these products should have the financial responsibility for proper management and disposal,” said Miriam Gordon, California director of Clean Water Action, an advocacy group.

In July, Alameda County, Calif., which includes Oakland and Berkeley, became the first locality to enact such a requirement. Drug companies have to submit plans for accomplishing it by July 1, 2013.

But the industry plans to file a lawsuit in United States District Court in Oakland on Friday, hoping to have the law struck down. The suit is being filed by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, which represents brand-name drug companies, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association and the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

James M. Spears, general counsel of PhRMA, said the Alameda ordinance violated the Constitution in that a local government was interfering with interstate commerce, a right reserved for Congress.

“They are telling a company in New Jersey that you have to come in and design and implement and pay for a municipal service in California,” he said in an interview.

“This program is one where the cost is shifted to companies and individuals who are not located in Alameda County and who won’t be served by it.”

Mr. Spears, who is known as Mit, said that the program would cost millions of dollars a year to run and that pharmaceutical companies were “not in the waste disposal business.” He said it would be best left to sanitation departments and law enforcement agencies, which must be involved if narcotics, like pain pills, were to be transported.

Nathan A. Miley, the president of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the champion of the legislation, said late Thursday, “It’s just unfortunate that PhRMA would fight this because it would be pennies for them.”

“We will win legally and will win in the court of public opinion as well,” Mr. Miley said.

The battle in Alameda could set the direction for other states and localities. Legislators in seven states have introduced bills to require drug companies to pay for take-back programs in the last few years, said Scott Cassel, founder and chief executive of the Product Stewardship Institute, a nonprofit group that advocates such programs. But none of the bills have passed.

Mr. Cassel said about 70 similar “extended producer responsibility” laws have been enacted in 32 states for other products, like electronic devices, mercury-containing thermometers, fluorescent lamps, paint and batteries. He said he was not aware that any had been struck down on constitutional grounds.

The pharmaceutical industry already pays for take-back programs in some other countries. The law in Alameda is modeled partly on the system in British Columbia and two other Canadian provinces. There, the industry formed the Post-Consumer Pharmaceutical Stewardship Association, which runs the programs.

Consumers can take unused drugs back to pharmacies, from which they are periodically collected. Drug companies pay for the program in proportion to their market share, said Ginette Vanasse, executive director of the association. The program for British Columbia, with a population over four million, costs about $500,000 a year, she said.

The extent of the problem of unused pills and how best to handle them are matters of debate.

The United States Geological Survey has found various drugs, including antidepressants, antibiotics, heart medicines and hormones, in waterways it has sampled. Sewage treatment plants and drinking water treatment plants are not meant to remove pharmaceuticals.

Still, it is not known what effect the chemicals might have. “It’s a hard-to-pin-down problem,” said Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group. It is thought that trace amounts in drinking water are probably not harmful. But larger amounts found in wastewater could be having an impact on wildlife.

It is also unclear whether take-back programs will help. Experts generally agree that the bigger source of pollution is urine and feces containing the remnants of drugs that are ingested, not the unused pills flushed down the toilet.

PhRMA also argues that take-back programs will not help much with the problem of drug abuse either. Mr. Spears said that it was better to have consumers tie up unused pills in a plastic bag and throw them in the trash. That is more effective, he said, because people would not have to travel to a collection point. Such collection points could become targets for thieves and drug abusers.

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Lurie Children's Hospital sees surge in patients at new Chicago building

Executives at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago expected a "bump" in patients when the $855 million hospital opened in June.

They weren't prepared for a mountain.

Since the former Children's Memorial traded its patchwork of aging buildings in Lincoln Park for a new high-rise in Streeterville on June 9, patient volume has surged, more than doubling hospital projections.

The number of patients is up about 16 percent in the first five months, according to hospital data, an increase driven by an influx of children with more acute health problems, including transplant patients, kids with heart problems and others in need of specialized care.

Revenue over that five-month period increased 12.9 percent to $222 million.

"We expected to have a new-hospital bump in (patients). We had a new-hospital mountain," said Michelle Stephenson, Lurie Children's chief patient care services officer and chief nurse executive. "We've had some months where the (number of inpatients) was 24 percent over what we expected. "

To meet the demand, the hospital hired 151 nurses to ensure full coverage, she said.

Those new hires came on top of about three dozen pediatric specialists and department heads Lurie Children's recruited in the run-up to the hospital opening.

Stephenson said the hospital has yet to determine the specific reasons behind the jump in patients, but said data shows it is drawing more children from the collar counties and downstate.

She also cited the location, adjacent to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and Prentice Women's Hospital, which is connected to Lurie via an enclosed skyway.

Moving 31/2 miles south next to Prentice, which sends Lurie about a quarter of its patients, is likely a significant factor in the patient boom, said Jay Warden, a senior vice president at The Camden Group, a consulting firm.

"It used to be a challenge for moms to have a baby transferred to Children's while they had to stay at Prentice until they're discharged," Warden said. "Now it's the best of both worlds for both hospitals."

Warden said hospitals typically get a burst of new patients when they open facilities, in part because of the accompanying marketing and publicity blitz. That's not always the case with children's hospitals, which tend to serve the sickest and smallest of patients who have few other options.

He said limitations at the old hospital likely kept some patients away.

Indeed, Children's Memorial had a listed capacity of 247 beds, but with shared rooms and other factors, executives considered the hospital full at 220 patients, Stephenson said. The Lurie hospital has a capacity of 288 beds in all-private rooms, which it has come close to filling on a few occasions.

One ward that's consistently bursting at the seams is the neonatal intensive care unit, which was built to handle 44 patients but is averaging about 50. Some of the children have been bumped into shared space in the hospital's cardiac care unit, Stephenson said.

As for patients, the new facility has been a hit, with satisfaction scores up an average of 10 percent, hospital officials said.

Tina Sneed, whose 18-year-old daughter Whitney Ballard recently underwent a liver transplant at the hospital, said she's happy with the expanded rooms and new areas for parents.

She and her daughter have made several 7-hour trips from Kentucky in the last 18 months to see specialists, including overnight stays at both facilities.

Her only complaint?

"The waiting room was kind of crowded," she said. "It was nothing too bad, they just have so many (surgeries) going on at the same time we barely had room to move in there."

pfrost@tribune.com

Twitter @peterfrost

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Top cop announces shake-up in command structure

As the Chicago Police Department tries to tamp down the city’s rise in homicides and shootings this year, Superintendent Garry McCarthy announced a shake-up in his command structure, moving seven commanders to different assignments.

The changes mean that McCarthy has replaced 19 of the city’s 23 district commanders – some because of retirement -- since he became superintendent in May 2011.

The rise in violent crime in parts of the South and West Sides played a role in the shake-up, Melissa Stratton, McCarthy’s spokeswoman, said Wednesday. She said the changes had been in the planning stages for some time. So far this year, homicides have risen 19 percent through Chicago, while shootings are up more than 11 percent.

Among the changes, Joseph Gorman, the commander of the gang investigations unit, was named commander of the South Side’s Deering police district.

Stratton said McCarthy put Gorman in charge of Deering to quell its gang violence. The department touts him as its foremost gang expert.

Deering, which includes such crime-ridden neighborhoods as Back of the Yards and Fuller Park, led all 23 districts in shootings last month, up 49 percent from a year earlier, as the Tribune reported earlier this week.So far this year in Deering, homicides there have jumped 50 percent and shootings 37 percent, according to department statistics. 

 Gorman succeeds David Jarmusz, who will head the department’s public transportation section, which oversees patrols along CTA lines. Christopher Kennedy, the commander of the Central police district, which includes downtown, succeeds Gorman as the commander the citywide gang investigations unit. John Graeber, the former head of public transportation, takes over as commander of the Central district.

In addition, Melissa Staples was moved from commander of the Northwest Side’s Albany Park District to head the new Near West District, a consolidation of the former Monroe and Wood districts. The district’s station at 1412 S. Blue Island Ave. is slated to open next week.

Lucy Moy-Bartosik will move from acting command of the North Side’s Lincoln District, which covers the Edgewater and Uptown neighborhoods, to police headquarters to become executive officer of the patrol division. Jimmy Jones, the former executive officer of the Far South Side’s Calumet District, will take Moy-Bartosik’s former post.

jgorner@tribune.com

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