Chicano rock pioneers Los Lobos marking 40 years






LOS ANGELES (AP) — They are seen as the progenitors of Chicano rock ‘n’ roll, the first band that had the boldness, and some might even say the naiveté, to fuse punk rock with Mexican folk tunes.


It was a group called Los Lobos that had the unusual idea of putting an accordion, a saxophone and something called a bajo sexto alongside drums and Fender Stratocaster guitars and then blasting a ranchera-flavored folk tune or a Conjunto inspired melody through double reverb amps at about twice the volume you’d normally expect to hear.






“They were Latinos who weren’t afraid to break the mold of what’s expected and what’s traditionally played. That made them legendary, even to people who at first weren’t that familiar with their catalog,” said Greg Gonzalez of the young, Grammy-winning Latino-funk fusion band Grupo Fantasma.


To the guys in Los Lobos, however, the band that began to take shape some 40-odd years ago in the hallways of a barrio high school is still “just another band from East LA,” the words the group has used in the title of not one but two of its more than two dozen albums.


As a yearlong celebration of Los Lobos‘ 40th anniversary gets under way, having officially begun on Thanksgiving, much is likely to be made of how the band began as a humble mariachi group, toiling anonymously for nearly a decade at East LA weddings and backyard parties before the unlikely arrival of rock stardom.


That’s, well, sort of true.


For long before there was mariachi in Los Lobos‘ life, there was power-chord rock ‘n’ roll. Before the Latin trio Las Panchos had an impact, there was Jimi Hendrix.


“I actually went to go see him when I was 14 or 15,” says drummer-guitarist and principal lyricist Louie Perez, recalling how he had badgered his widowed mother to spend some of the hard-earned money she made sewing clothes in a sweatshop on a ticket to a Hendrix show.


“I sat right down front,” he recalls, his voice rising in excitement. “That experience just sort of rearranged my brain cells.”


About the same time, he had met a guitarist named David Hidalgo in an art class at James A. Garfield High, the school made famous in the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver” that profiled Jaime Escalante’s success in teaching college-level calculus to poor barrio kids. Soon the two had recruited fellow students Conrad Lozano and Cesar Rosas, both experienced musicians.


“Cesar had played in a power trio,” Perez recalls, while Lozano had been playing electric bass guitar for years.


It was sometime in November 1973 (no one remembers the exact day so they picked Thanksgiving) when the band is believed to have been born.


And the group might have stayed just another garage band from East LA, had it not been for a Mexican tradition called Las Mananitas.


“It’s a serenade to someone on their birthday,” Perez explains, and the group members’ mothers had birthdays coming up.


“So we learned about four or five Mexican songs and we went to our parents’ homes and did a little serenade,” Hidalgo recalled separately.


They were such a hit that they began scouring pawn shops for genuine Mexican instruments and really learning to play them.


Because they were at heart a rock ‘n’ roll band, however, they always played the music a little too loud and a little too fast. That was acceptable at the Mexican restaurants that employed them, until they decided to break out the Stratocaster guitars they had so coveted as kids.


“They said, ‘Well, that’s not what we hired you for,’” Perez says, chuckling.


So they headed west down the freeway to Hollywood, where initially the reaction wasn’t much better.


Saxophonist Steve Berlin recalls seeing the hybrid group showered with garbage one night when they opened for Public Image Ltd. Two years later, however, when they opened for Berlin’s group the Blasters, the reaction was different.


“It was quite literally an overnight success kind of thing,” the saxophonist recalls. “By the next morning, everybody I knew in Hollywood, all they were talking about was this band Los Lobos.”


A few nights later, they asked Berlin if he might jam with them. They were working up some tunes melding punk rock with Norteno, a Latin music genre that uses an accordion and a saxophone, and they needed a sax player.


For his part, Berlin says, he had never heard of Norteno music.


Something clicked, however, and soon he was producing the group’s first true rock album, 1984′s “How Will the Wolf Survive?” At the end of the sessions he was in the band.


The next 28 years would be pretty much the same kind of up-and-down ride as the first 12 were.


The group became international rock stars in 1987 with their version of the Mexican folk tune “La Bamba” for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. They melded 1950s teen idol Ritchie Valens’ rock interpretation with the original Son Jarocho style and sent the song to No. 1.


A two-year tour and a couple albums that nobody bought followed, leaving the group broke and disillusioned.


So they poured their anger and disillusionment into the lyrics and power chords of “Kiko,” the 1992 album now hailed as their masterpiece. A new version, recorded live, was released earlier this year.


The influence of Los Lobos‘ cross-cultural work can be heard to this day in the music of such varied young Latino groups as the hip-hop rockers Ozomatli, the Son Jarocho-influenced alt-music band Las Cafeteras and the Latino pop-rock group La Santa Cecilia, says Josh Kun, an expert on cross-border music.


“All of these bands inherited, wittingly or not, the experimental and style crossing instincts that Los Lobos proved were possible while hanging onto and developing your roots as a Mexican-American group,” said Kun, who curated the Grammy Museum’s recent “Trouble in Paradise” exhibition that chronicled the modern history of LA music.


For Los Lobos, winner of three Grammys, that was just the natural way of doing things for guys, Perez says, who learned early on that they didn’t fit in completely on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.


“As Mexican-Americans in the U.S. we’re not completely accepted on this side of the border. And then on the other side of the border it’s like, ‘Well, what are you?’” he mused.


“So if that’s the case,” he added brightly, “then, hey, we belong everywhere.”


Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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California home for developmentally disabled faces abuse inquiry






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California health officials have threatened to shut down part of the state’s oldest home for developmentally disabled adults due to evidence of physical abuse and neglect, in a move that could displace nearly 300 of its residents.


The state-run Sonoma Developmental Center could lose its license to run one unit if it does not fix the problems, according to a letter the state health department sent this week to the director of the sprawling facility in Eldridge.






Monitors this month and last “documented incidents of abuse constituting immediate jeopardy, as well as actual serious threats to the physical safety of female clients in certain units,” the California Department of Public Health letter said.


Among the incidents were physical abuse, a staff member exposing himself to a female client and inadequate monitoring of a patient who had propensity to swallow inedible items, leading to surgery, said Pam Dickfoss, assistant deputy director of the California Center for Health Care Quality.


The threat of sanctions against the board-and-care center in the heart of wine country represents a significant blow to a historic facility that opened at its current site in 1891 next to the bucolic town of Sonoma.


The center is northern California‘s only state-run residential facility for developmentally disabled adults and sits on 1,000 acres of land, including a petting zoo and sports fields.


Closure of the unit under scrutiny, the Intermediate Care Facility, could require moving 290 of the center’s more than 500 residents, officials said. It is unclear where they would be sent and officials say they hope that will not be necessary.


Administrators have vowed to correct deficiencies and said they plan to appeal the move to potentially strip them of federal funding and a state license for the unit under scrutiny.


“We are moving quickly to fix this center and protect our residents,” said Terri Delgadillo, director of the state Department of Developmental Services, which oversees the center.


She said the problems forced the removal of the center’s executive and clinical directors as well as other staff changes.


State monitors identified 57 deficiencies during a July visit, including four that posed an immediate danger to residents, and dozens of other threats to residents in more recent visits, the letter said.


The facility gets $ 117,000 a day in federal funding, said Nancy Lungren, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Developmental Services.


Most of the center’s residents suffer from cerebral palsy, epilepsy, autism, or a combination of those conditions. Many have lived their entire adult lives at the center.


Leslie Morrison, director of the investigations unit of Disability Rights California, a watchdog group, said she was troubled by reports from the facility over the past year.


“This has been developing for a long period,” Morrison said. “They have been trying to correct things, but it’s going to take a long time.”


(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Eric Walsh)


Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Nigeria governor, 5 others die in helicopter crash






LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A navy helicopter crashed Saturday in the country’s oil-rich southern delta, killing a state governor and five other people, in the latest air disaster to hit Africa’s most populous nation, officials said.


Nigeria‘s ruling party said in a statement that the governor of the central Nigerian state of Kaduna, Patrick Yakowa, died in the helicopter crash in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta. The People’s Democratic Party’s statement described Yakowa’s death as a “colossal loss.”






The statement said the former national security adviser, General Andrew Azazi, also died in the crash. Azazi was fired in June amid growing sectarian violence in Nigeria, but maintained close ties with the government.


Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency, said four other bodies had been found, but he could not immediately give their identities.


The crash occurred at about 3:30 p.m. after the navy helicopter took off from the village of Okoroba in Bayelsa state where officials had gathered to attend the burial of the father of a presidential aide, said Commodore Kabir Aliyu. He said that the helicopter was headed for Nigeria’s oil capital of Port Harcourt when it crashed in the Nembe area of Bayelsa state.


Aviation disasters remain common in Nigeria, despite efforts in recent years to improve air safety.


In October, a plane made a crash landing in central Nigeria. A state governor and five others sustained injuries but survived.


In June, a Dana Air MD-83 passenger plane crashed into a neighborhood in the commercial capital of Lagos, killing 153 people onboard and at least 10 people on the ground. It was Nigeria’s worst air crash in nearly two decades.


In March, a police helicopter carrying a high-ranking police official crashed in the central Nigerian city of Jos, killing four people.


Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Police hope motive emerges from evidence in shooter's home


Conn. State police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance at Saturday morning's news conference. (Jason Sickles/Yahoo News)


NEWTOWN, CT - The Sandy Hook school principal and another staffer were killed after lunging at a gunman who forced his way inside to begin a deadly shooting spree, the regional school superintendent said Saturday.


The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, 47, and school psychologist Mary Sherlach, 56, died along with 4 other adults and 20 children in the second deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. The alleged shooter, 20-year old Adam Lanza, was found dead at the scene, and his mother, Nancy Lanza, was discovered dead at their home.


Newtown school superintendent Janet Robinson told reporters that the two educators and other staff members had put themselves in harms way to protect children once it became clear the school was under siege.


"The teachers were really, really focused on saving their students," Robinson said.


Police on Saturday said evidence recovered at gunman Lanza's home may provide a motive for the massacre.


State police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance declined to provide specifics about the evidence but said, "we're hopeful it will paint a complete picture."


Authorities say Lanza  killed his mother at their home Friday morning before driving to Sandy Hook.


[Related: Follow the latest updates from our reporters in Newtown]


Armed with two semi-automatic pistols, Lanza rapidly sprayed bullets in hallways and classrooms. Lanza killed himself before police officers could reach him.


Lt. Vance said all the bodies were removed from the school overnight. A medical examiner is expected to release the names of the victims later today.


Police have assigned a trooper to support each victim's family in the days ahead. Vance asked reporters to respect the families' grief and privacy.


"This is an extremely heartbreaking thing for them to endure," Lt. Vance said.


Police were expected to release the names of the victims Saturday afternoon. Some names were already being disclosed by family members, including teachers Lauren Rousseau, 30, and Vicki Soto, 27.


It will likely take investigators two more days to process the school crime scene where it is believed Lanza fired as many as 100 rounds from his guns.


"It's going to be a slow, painstaking process," Lt. Vance said.



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Google+ app for Android updated with new photo-sharing features, emoticons, GIFs and more






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Singer-songwriter Carole King to receive U.S. Gershwin prize






(Reuters) – American singer-songwriter Carole King will be awarded the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the U.S. national library said on Thursday.


The multiple Grammy Award winner co-wrote her first No. 1 hit at age 17 with then-husband Gerry Goffin and was the first female solo artist to sell more than 10 million copies of a single album, with her 1971 release “Tapestry.”






The prize honors individuals for lifetime achievement in popular music, the library said. It is named after songwriting brothers George and Ira Gershwin.


King, now 70, topped the charts with the song “It’s Too Late” in 1971, but is best known for her work performed by others, including “You’ve Got a Friend” by James Taylor and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” by Aretha Franklin.


“I was so pleased when the venerable Library of Congress began honoring writers of popular songs with the Gershwin Prize,” King said in a statement. “I’m proud to be the fifth such honoree and the first woman among such distinguished company.”


King and Goffin wrote some the biggest hits of the 1960s before their nine-year marriage ended in 1968. They rose to prominence in 1960 writing “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for the Shirelles.


The duo also scored hits with “Take Good Care of My Baby,” performed by Bobby Vee in 1961, “The Loco-Motion,” performed by Little Eva in 1962 and “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” performed by The Monkees in 1967, among others.


New York-born King did not hit it big as a singer until 1971, when “Tapestry” topped the U.S. album charts for 15 weeks, then a record for a female solo artist.


Past recipients of the award include Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and songwriting tandem Burt Bacharach and Hal David.


(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Xavier Briand)


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Alexza agitation drug gets EU recommendation, shares jump






(Reuters) – European health regulators recommended approval of Alexza Pharmaceuticals Inc‘s experimental drug Adasuve for controlling agitation in adults with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, sending its shares up 19 percent.


Adasuve, Alexza’s most advanced drug in development, will be the first treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder that can be inhaled.






“… The beautiful part of (the drug) is that the clinician can give (patients) almost instantaneous response, whereas possibly hours of waiting for any other kind of oral medication, and that is the critical key,” WBB Securities LLC analyst Steve Brozak told Reuters.


Three injectable drugs, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Abilify, Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa and Pfizer Inc‘s Geodon, are currently approved to calm patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.


The recommendation from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will be forwarded to the European Commission, which normally endorses recommendations within two or three months.


Alexza estimates that as many as 8 million adults in the EU suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.


Adasuve is also under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, with a decision expected by December 21.


“It’s simply a question of when it will get approved,” Brozak said.


The FDA denied approval to Adasuve in May, after it found deficiencies at the company’s Mountain View, California manufacturing facility during an inspection.


Adasuve, which delivers an older antipsychotic drug called loxapine, passes through the lungs and into the bloodstream faster than a typical pill. Loxapine is available as an oral drug for schizophrenia.


Adasuve, which the EMA said should be administered only in a hospital, is delivered using Alexza’s Staccato delivery device.


Two late-stage studies were conducted, and both demonstrated statistically significant reductions in agitation compared to a placebo, the company said. The study enrolled 344 adult patients with schizophrenia and 314 adult patients with bipolar disorder.


Alexza’s shares jumped 19 percent to $ 6.25 before easing back to $ 5.75 by mid-morning on the Nasdaq on Friday.


(Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler in London; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)


Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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NKorea rocket launch shows young leader as gambler






PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — A triumphant North Korea staged a mass rally of soldiers and civilians Friday to glorify the country’s young ruler, who took a big gamble this week in sending a satellite into orbit in defiance of international warnings.


Wednesday’s rocket launch came just eight months after a similar attempt ended in an embarrassing public failure, and just under a year after Kim Jong Un inherited power following his father’s death.






The surprising success of the launch may have earned Kim global condemnation, but at home the gamble paid off, at least in the short term. To his people, it made the 20-something Kim appear powerful, capable and determined in the face of foreign adversaries.


Tens of thousands of North Koreans, packed into snowy Kim Il Sung Square, clenched their fists in a unified show of resolve as a military band tooted horns and pounded on drums.


Huge red banners positioned in the square called on North Koreans to defend Kim Jong Un with their lives. They also paid homage to Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, North Korean founder Kim Il Sung.


Pyongyang says the rocket put a crop and weather monitoring satellite into orbit. Much of the rest of the world sees it as a thinly disguised test of banned long-range missile technology. It could bring a fresh round of U.N. sanctions that would increase his country’s international isolation. At the same time, the success of the launch could strengthen North Korea’s military, the only entity that poses a potential threat to Kim’s rule.


The launch’s success, 14 years after North Korea’s first attempt, shows more than a little of the gambling spirit in the third Kim to rule North Korea since it became a country in 1948.


“North Korean officials will long be touting Kim Jong Un as a gutsy leader” who commanded the rocket launch despite being new to the job and young, said Kim Byung-ro, a North Korea specialist at Seoul National University in South Korea.


The propaganda machinery churned into action early Friday, with state media detailing how Kim Jong Un issued the order to fire off the rocket just days after scientists fretted over technical issues, ignoring the chorus of warnings from Washington to Moscow against a move likely to invite more sanctions.


Top officials followed Kim in shrugging off international condemnation.


Workers’ Party Secretary Kim Ki Nam told the crowd, bundled up against a winter chill in the heart of the capital, that “hostile forces” had dubbed the launch a missile test. He rejected the claim and called on North Koreans to stand their ground against the “cunning” critics.


North Korea called the satellite a gift to Kim Jong Il, who is said to have set the lofty goal of getting a satellite into space and then tapped his son to see it into fruition. The satellite, which North Korean scientists say is designed to send back data about crops and weather, was named Kwangmyongsong, or “Lode Star” — the nickname legendarily given to the elder Kim at birth.


Kim Jong Il died on Dec. 17, 2011, so to North Koreans, the successful launch is a tribute. State TV have been replaying video of the launch to “Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il.”


But it is the son who will bask in the glory, and face the international censure that may follow.


Even while he was being groomed to succeed his father, Kim Jong Un had been portrayed as championing science and technology as a way to lift North Korea out of decades of economic hardship.


“It makes me happy that our satellite is flying in space,” Pyongyang citizen Jong Sun Hui said as Friday’s ceremony came to a close and tens of thousands rushed into the streets, many linking arms as they went.


“The satellite launch demonstrated our strong power and the might of our science and technology once again,” she told The Associated Press. “And it also clearly testifies that a thriving nation is in our near future.”


Aside from winning him support from the people, the success of the launch helps his image as he works to consolidate power over a government crammed with elderly, old-school lieutenants of his father and grandfather, foreign analysts said.


Experts say that what is unclear, however, is whether Kim will continue to smoothly solidify power, steering clear of friction with the powerful military while dealing with the strong possibility of more crushing sanctions. The United Nations says North Korea already has a serious hunger problem.


“Certainly in the short run, this is an enormous boost to his prestige,” according to Marcus Noland, a North Korea analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.


Noland, however, also mentioned the “Machiavellian argument” that this could cause future problems for Kim by significantly boosting the power of the military — “the only real threat to his rule.”


Successfully firing a rocket was so politically crucial for Kim at the onset of his rule that he allowed an April launch to go through even though it resulted in the collapse of a nascent food-aid-for-nuclear-freeze deal with the United States, said North Korea analyst Kim Yeon-su of Korea National Defense University in Seoul.


The launch success consolidates his image as heir to his father’s legacy. But it could end up deepening North Korea’s political and economic isolation, he said.


On Friday, the section at the rally reserved for foreign diplomats was noticeably sparse. U.N. officials and some European envoys stayed away from the celebration, as they did in April after the last launch.


Despite the success, experts say North Korea is years from even having a shot at developing reliable missiles that could bombard the American mainland and other distant targets.


North Korea will need larger and more dependable missiles, and more advanced nuclear weapons, to threaten U.S. shores, though it already poses a shorter-range missile threat to its neighbors.


The next big question is how the outside world will punish Pyongyang — and try to steer North Korea from what could come next: a nuclear test. In 2009, the North conducted an atomic explosion just weeks after a rocket launch.


Scott Snyder, a Korea specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently that North Korea‘s nuclear ambitions should inspire the U.S., China, South Korea and Japan to put aside their issues and focus on dealing with Pyongyang.


If there is a common threat that should galvanize regional cooperation, “it most certainly should be the prospect of a 30-year-old leader of a terrorized population with his finger on a nuclear trigger,” Snyder said.


____


Jon Chol Jin in Pyongyang, and Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. Follow Jean H. Lee on Twitter: (at)newsjean.


Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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20 children, 6 adults killed at Conn. school shooting



Twenty children died today when a heavily armed man invaded a Newtown,
Conn., elementary school and sprayed staff and students with bullets.



The gunman, identified as Adam Lanza, 20, was found dead in the school.



Lt. Paul Vance said 18 children died in the school and two more died
later in a hospital. Six adults were also slain, bringing the total to
26.



In addition to the casualties at the school, a body was also found in the shooter's home, officials said.



Among the dead was Lanza's mother, although it's not clear where she was killed.



In the early confusion surrounding the investigation, federal sources
initially identified the suspect as Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24.
He is being questioned by police.



LIVE UPDATES: Newtown, Conn., School Shooting



Sources said the shooter was armed with a Glock semi automatic handgun
and a Sig Sauer semi automatic handgun, law enforcement sources told ABC
News. Additionally, .223 caliber shell casings--a rifle caliber--were
also found at the scene. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest when he
opened fire in the elementary school.



First grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, 29, locked her 14 students in a class
bathroom and listened to "tons of shooting" until police came to help.



"It was horrific," Roig said. "I thought we were going to die."



She said that the terrified kids were saying, "I just want Christmas…I don't want to die. I just want to have Christmas."



A tearful President Obama said there's "not a parent in America who doesn't feel the overwhelming grief that I do."



The president had to pause to compose himself after saying these were
"beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10." As he continued
with his statement, Obama wiped away tears from each eye.



He has ordered flags flown as half staff.



The alert at the school ended when Vance announced, "The shooter is deceased inside the building. The public is not in danger."



The massacre prompted the town of Newtown to lock down all its schools
and draw SWAT teams to the school, authorities said today. Authorities
initially believed that there were two gunmen and were searching cars
around the school, but authorities do not appear to be looking for
another gunman.



It's unclear how many people have been shot, but 27 people, mostly
children, are dead, multiple federal and state sources tell ABC News.
That number could rise, officials said.



CLICK HERE for more photos from the scene.



It is the second worst mass shooting in U.S. history, exceeded only by
the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 when 32 were killed before the
shooter turned the gun on himself. Today's carnage exceeds the 1999
Columbine High School shooting in which 13 died and 24 were injured.



The Newtown shooting comes three days after masked gunman Jacob Roberts
opened fire in a busy Oregon mall, killing two before turning the gun
on himself.



Today's shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, which
includes 450 students in grades K-4. The town is located about 12 miles
east of Danbury.



State Police received the first 911 call at 9:41 a.m. and immediately
began sending emergency units from the western part of the state.
Initial 911 calls stated that multiple students were trapped in a
classroom, possibly with a gunman, according to a Connecticut State
Police source.



Lt. Paul Vance said that on-duty and off-duty officers swarmed to the
school and quickly checked "every door, every crack, every crevice" in
the building looking for the gunman and evacuating children.



A photo from the scene shows a line of distressed children being led out of the school.



Three patients have been taken to Danbury Hospital, which is also on lockdown, according to the hospital's Facebook page.



"Out of abundance of caution and not because of any direct threat
Danbury Hospital is under lockdown," the statement said. "This allows us
simply to focus on the important work at hand."



Newtown Public School District secretary of superintendent Kathy June
said in a statement that the district's schools were locked down because
of the report of a shooting. "The district is taking preventive
measures by putting all schools in lockdown until we ensure the safety
of all students and staff," she said.



State police sent SWAT team units to Newtown.



All public and private schools in the town were on lockdown.



"We have increased our police presence at all Danbury Public Schools due
to the events in Newtown. Pray for the victims," Newtown Mayor Boughton
tweeted.



State emergency management officials said ambulances and other units were also en route and staging near the school.



A message on the school district website says that all afternoon
kindergarten is cancelled today and there will be no midday bus runs.




Also Read

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Sony’s PlayStation 4 could lose to the next Xbox before it’s even released






I love all game consoles equally. My Xbox 360 is used equally as much as my PlayStation 3. The Wii â€” oh, I’ll just leave it at that. The current generation of consoles is all but over — 10-year life cycle be damned — and new consoles are rumored to be coming next fall. If not next fall, then in 2014. Whatever is the case, Sony (SNE) can’t afford to lag in third place again. Sure, the Xbox 360 and PS3 are neck-in-neck in global lifetime sales, and the Xbox 360 did have a one year head start, but coming off the disappointing PS Vita, “confidence is less high” that Sony will deliver a console next year in time to compete with Microsoft (MSFT), according to Kotaku.


[More from BGR: Has the iPhone peaked? Apple’s iPhone 4S seen outselling iPhone 5]






I want a new console just as much as any other gamer. There’s a reason people are still pouncing on those Wii U consoles and flipping them on eBay. Six years is unusually long for a console to still be kicking around.


[More from BGR: Apple execs said to be ‘seething’ over Google Maps praise]


According to the well-informed Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief of Kotaku, the game blog that first broke news on the next-gen Xbox, Microsoft’s “Durango” is ”on the mark” and “Sony appears to inspire less confidence…due to the on-and-off troubles of the PlayStation 3 and the struggles of the Vita vs. how much lost confidence is due to any problems looming for PS4.“


Totilo says “confidence is high that the next Xbox will be out in time for next Christmas” and confidence is low that the PS4 will be right there on store shelves next to it.


The “on-and-off troubles of the PlayStation 3″ Totilo is referring to is the anchor that’s weighed the console down since launch: tougher development due to the Cell processor and less available RAM – 256MB vs. 512MB in the Xbox 360.


In the months before the PS3′s launch in 2006, Sony said the console would be the most powerful console ever created, and here we are six years later and multi-platform games on the console consistently end up being buggier and uglier than on the Xbox 360 in many cases. Cases in point: Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II.


Sony’s in a rut right now. It has the chops to build beautiful and powerful hardware that’s a developer’s dream (ex: PS Vita), but at the same time, it’s always launching after the competition nowadays.


If Sony’s learned any lessons in the last half a decade, it better apply them to the PS4. The console needs to offer next-level processing and graphics. It needs to be backward-compatible with PS3 games and play Blu-ray discs. It should be small and quiet. It should have a strong online platform, support a greater array of apps and most importantly be easy for developers to program for.


Game exclusives will always be important, but now that games are million-dollar productions, multi-platform will be where developers hope to reap back their costs.


With Microsoft said to be preparing an “Xbox 720″ and an “Xbox Lite,” Sony can’t make the mistake of launching late or pricing the console too high. A launch in spring of 2014 would mean Sony will miss Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the two biggest shopping days of the year that bring in massive sales. Â Ceding sales and market share to Microsoft and Nintendo by launching late would be disastrous.


The PS3 screwed up too many times. At this point, the PS4 needs to be perfect out of the door.


This article was originally published by BGR


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A Minute With: Director Peter Jackson on shooting “The Hobbit”






LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – After bringing J.R.R. Tolkien‘s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy to life, filmmaker Peter Jackson is back in the world of Middle Earth with the author’s prequel, “The Hobbit.”


The three-film series is due to open in U.S. theaters on Friday with “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.”






The Oscar-winning director, 51, told Reuters about the 3D film, including the 48 frames per second (fps) format he used, which was widely debated by fans and critics.


Q: You originally intended “The Hobbit” to only be two parts. Why stretch it out to three?


A: “Back in July, we were near the end of our shoot and we started to talk about the things that we had to leave out of the movies. There’s material at the end of ‘The Return of the King’ (the final part of ‘The Lord of the Rings‘ trilogy) in the appendices that takes place around the time of ‘The Hobbit.’


“We were thinking, this is our last chance because it’s very unlikely we’re ever going to come back to Middle Earth as filmmakers. So we talked to the studio and next year we’re going to be doing another 10 to 12 weeks of shooting because we’re now adapting more of Tolkien’s material.”


Q: At what point did you decide you would direct the film yourself after originally handing it to Guillermo del Toro?


A: “At the time (we wrote the script), I was worried about repeating myself and worried that I was competing with myself. I thought it would be interesting to have another director with a fresh eye coming in and telling the story. But after Guillermo left, having worked on script and the production for well over a year at that stage, I was very emotionally attached to it. I just thought, this is an opportunity I’m not going to say no to.”


Q: You hired Gollum actor Andy Serkis to do second unit directing on the film, something he has never done before. What made you hand the task to a novice?


A: “I know how strongly Andy has been wanting to direct. One of the problems with second unit is that you tend to have conservative footage given to you by the director. They play it safe. I knew that I wouldn’t get that from Andy because he’s got such a ferocious energy. He goes for it and doesn’t hold back. I knew that if Andy was the director I would be getting some interesting material, that it would have a life and energy to it.”


Q: What inspired you to make a film in 48 fps?


A: “Four years ago I shot a six or seven minute King Kong ride for Universal Studios’ tram ride in California. The reason we used the high frame rate was that we didn’t want people to think it’s a movie. You want that sense of reality, which you get from a high frame rate, of looking in to the real world. At the time, I thought it would be so cool to make a feature film with this process.”


Q: Not everyone has embraced “The Hobbit” in 48 fps.


A: “For the last year and a half there’s been speculation, largely negative, about it and I’m so relieved to have gotten to this point. I’ve been waiting for this moment when people can actually see it for themselves. Cinephiles and serious film critics who regard 24 fps as sacred are very negative and absolutely hate it. Anybody I’ve spoken to under the age of 20 thinks it’s fantastic. I haven’t heard a single negative thing from the young people, and these are the kids that are watching films on their iPads. These are the people I want to get back in the cinema.”


Q: Why all the hoopla over a frame rate?


A: “Somehow as humans, we have a reaction to change that’s partly fear driven. But there are so many ways to look at movies now and it’s a choice that a filmmaker has. To me as a filmmaker, you’ve got to take the technology that’s available in 2012, not the technology we’ve lived with since 1927, and say how can we enhance the experience in the cinema? How can we make it more immersive, more spectacular?”


Q: George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $ 4 billion. Do you think you will sell your New Zealand facility Weta someday?


A: “I would if I want to retire at some stage and want to have a nice easy life, which will hopefully happen one day. But in the foreseeable future, the fact that I’m an owner of my own digital effects facility is a fantastic advantage for me.”


Q: How so?


A: “When we asked the studio if we could shoot ‘The Hobbit‘ at 48 fps, we promised the budget would be the same. But it actually does have a cost implication because you’ve got to render twice as many frames and the rendering takes more time. The fact that we owned Weta and could absorb that in-house was actually part of the reason we were able to do the 48 frames.”


(Editing by Patricia Reaney)


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Researchers Find More Than 200 Genes Linked to Crohn’s Disease






British scientists have identified more than 200 gene locations associated with Crohn’s disease, an incurable digestive disorder. Their research utilized the entire human genome, the complete set of human genetic information stored in DNA.


The total is larger than the number of genes located for any other disease, according to ScienceDaily. For example, there are 66 known locations for type 2 diabetes.






The researchers, from University College London (UCL), believe that their findings will eventually lead to more personalized Crohn‘s treatment. The disorder is one of the two principal types of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The other is ulcerative colitis. The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America states that Crohn’s affects up to 700,000 Americans. It typically strikes between 15 and 35, but can occur at any age.


The exact cause of the disorder has eluded researchers for decades. Most experts believe that several factors play important roles in the development of the disease. Those cited most often are genetics, environmental factors, and an abnormal immune reaction to benign substances like bacteria in the intestines. Crohn’s is a chronic illness that can involve any part of the digestive tract from mouth to anus, according to PubMed Health.


Scientists have believed for years that understanding the genetic component of such a complex disease is critical to explaining symptoms and developing better methods of treatment. However, they have remained stymied over detailed genetic mapping for the disorder because of the large number of genes involved, complex interactions with the environment, and a wide range of symptoms.


The British team utilized data from a consortium with information on nearly 1,700 Crohn’s patients. Data provided by the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases on 813 patients led to replication of results of the British study.


Results from the UCL study appeared in the American Journal of Human Genetics. One of the factors the team believes was responsible for their success was use of highly detailed maps of the human genome. Another was their ability to subdivide Crohn’s patients by the way they presented with the disorder. The results also represent the first definite signs that certain patient sub-groups are predisposed to carry different risk genes.


Like most patients who have had this illness for decades, I often become impatient when I read about a discovery linked to the genetics of Crohn’s disease. Since about 20 percent of patients have a close family member with IBD, years ago, I asked whether I should have my daughter tested.


The doctor and I agreed that it was pointless. Her symptoms were either due to Crohn’s or not. Time would tell. From a patient’s perspective, what is strikingly different about the identification of more than 200 genes is the hope that it will lead to more personalized treatment, not just more data on a library shelf.


Vonda J. Sines has published thousands of print and online health and medical articles. She specializes in diseases and other conditions that affect the quality of life.


Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Cuban lawmakers meet to consider economy, budget






HAVANA (AP) — Cuban lawmakers are holding the second of their twice-annual sessions with a year-end report expected on the state of the country’s economy.


Legislators are also to approve next year’s budget.






Cuban leaders have sometimes used the parliamentary gatherings to make important announcements or policy statements.


Observers will be watching for word on the progress of President Raul Castro‘s economic reform plan and efforts to promote younger leaders.


The unicameral parliament will reconvene in February with a new membership following elections. It is then expected to name Castro to another five-year term.


State-run media said Castro presided over Thursday’s session.


It was not open to international journalists.


Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Rice drops out of race for top State post


Susan Rice (Stephen Lam/Reuters)Susan Rice, the embattled U.S. ambassador to the U.N., withdrew her name on Thursday from consideration to be secretary of state in the face of angry Republican opposition.


"If nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly—to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities," Rice wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama. (NBC News first reported the news.)


Obama had not formally nominated her, but Rice was the favorite for the post and spent time on Capitol Hill trying—vainly—to placate her Republican critics. The move leaves Democratic Sen. John Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the likely front-runner.


In a statement, Kerry praised Rice as "an extraordinarily capable and dedicated public servant" and underlined that "today's announcement doesn't change any of that."


"As someone who has weathered my share of political attacks and understands on a personal level just how difficult politics can be, I've felt for her throughout these last difficult weeks, but I also know that she will continue to serve with great passion and distinction," Kerry said.


Obama confirmed her withdrawal in a statement on Thursday afternoon, saying: "While I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice in recent weeks, her decision demonstrates the strength of her character, and an admirable commitment to rise above the politics of the moment to put our national interests first."


Talk of Rice being nominated to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stirred significant controversy due to Rice's role in the handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The assault claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.


Republicans accused Rice of misleading the public about intelligence that indicated the attack was premeditated. (The Obama administration has also been accused of ignoring requests for increased security at the American compound.) The White House steadfastly denied deliberately misleading the public.


Rice's withdrawal amounted to a painful postelection defeat for Obama, who had staunchly defended Rice and even vowed to nominate her over Republican objections if he concluded that she was the best person for the job. It will be viewed as a win for Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and other Republican senators who had vowed to block Rice's confirmation.


McCain spokesman Brian Rogers emailed Yahoo News to express that the senator "thanks Ambassador Rice for her service to the country and wishes her well. ... He will continue to seek all the facts about what happened before, during and after the attack on our consulate in Benghazi that killed four brave Americans."


Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another leading Rice detractor, declared in a statement on Thursday, "I respect Ambassador Rice's decision." Graham said Obama "has many talented people to choose from" to succeed Clinton.


Graham has accused the administration of stonewalling efforts to look into the Benghazi attack and vowed to keep "working diligently to get to the bottom of what happened."


If Obama picks Kerry, that could touch off a political war in Massachusetts for his Senate seat. Republican Sen. Scott Brown, defeated on Nov. 6 by Democrat Elizabeth Warren, could make a play for that spot.


Obama is expected to overhaul much of his foreign policy and national security teams for the coming term. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is departing, the position of director of the CIA is open after the David Petraeus scandal and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is rumored to be looking to replace Attorney General Eric Holder.



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Verizon Offering $5 Shared 4G Plan for Samsung Galaxy Camera






Imagine the powerful Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone, except that it can’t make phone calls and its backplate has been replaced by a digital camera — handgrip, zoom lens, and all. That’s basically the Samsung Galaxy Camera in a nutshell, and whether it’s a small, awkwardly-shaped Android tablet or a digital camera that you can play Modern Combat 3 on depends on how you look at it.


When the Galaxy Camera launched last month, it was only available in white, and cost $ 499 on AT&T’s network with a month-to-month data plan. But on Dec. 13, it launches on Verizon’s network, in both white and black. The Verizon Galaxy Camera costs $ 50 more up front, but in return it has 4G LTE instead of HSPA+, and Verizon is offering a “promotional price” for the monthly charge: Only $ 5 to add it to a Share Everything plan, instead of the usual $ 10 tablet rate.






A 4G digital camera


While it’s capable of functioning as an Android tablet (or game machine), the biggest reason for the Samsung Galaxy Camera’s 4G wireless Internet is so it can automatically upload photos it takes. Apps such as Dropbox, Photobucket, and Ubuntu One offer a limited amount of online storage space for free, where the Galaxy Camera can save photos without anyone needing to tell it to. Those photos can then be accessed at home, or on a tablet or laptop.


Most smartphones are able to do this already, but few (with the possible exception of the Windows Phone powered Nokia Lumia 920) are able to take photos as high-quality as the Galaxy Camera’s.


Not as good of a deal as it sounds


Dropbox is offering two years’ worth of 50 GB of free online storage space for photos and videos, to anyone who buys a Samsung Galaxy Camera from AT&T or Verizon. (The regular free plan is only 2 GB.)


The problem is, you may need that much space. The photos taken by the Galaxy Camera’s 16 megapixel sensor take up a lot more space, at maximum resolution, than ordinary smartphone snapshots do. Those camera uploads can eat through a shared data plan, and with Verizon charging a $ 15 per GB overage fee (plus the $ 50 extra up-front on top of what AT&T charges) it may make up for the cheaper monthly cost.


On top of that, the Galaxy Camera’s photos are basically on par with a $ 199 digital camera’s — you pay a large premium to combine that kind of point-and-shoot with the hardware equivalent of a high-end smartphone.


It does run Android, though, right?


The Galaxy Camera uses Samsung‘s custom software for its camera app, and lacks a normal phone dialer app. Beyond that, though, it runs the same Android operating system found on smartphones, and can run all the same games and apps.


Some apps don’t work the same on the Galaxy Camera as they do on a smartphone, however. Apps which only run in portrait mode, for instance, require you to hold the camera sideways to use them (especially unpleasant when they’re camera apps). And while it can make voice and even video calls over Skype, it lacks a rear-facing camera or the kind of speaker you hold up close to your ear. So you may end up making speakerphone calls and filming the palm of your hand.


Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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How “Life of Pi” animators visualized Ang Lee’s blank slate






LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Life of Pi” is a movie that has the proverbial cast of thousands… of animals, that is. In one shot set on the ocean, there are 40,000 flying fish. In another one set on a floating island, there are 60,000 meerkats. And not one of them was living and breathing, of course.


“No real meerkats were used,” senior animation supervisor Erik-Jan De Boer told the audience at an effects-themed Q&A following TheWrap’s screening of the movie at the Landmark Theatre on Monday night. “Except of course we went to meerkat sanctuaries and zoos to shoot a lot of reference footage…”






“And the two of us watched every episode of ‘Meerkat Manor,’” interrupted visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer. “We were gonna watch one, but it gets addictive.”


That was about all the time these two had to indulge in reality TV during the long gestation and post-production of Pi, which establishes a new benchmark for awe-inspiring digital trickery – particularly in 3D, or “stereo,” as Westenhofer and De Boer refer to the effects-complicating process.


“In total,” De Boer told TheWrap’s editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman, “we animated 580 animals in about 290 shots for the movie, which includes a giraffe, a fox, a fish, and of course the hyena and orangutan.” Not to mention the little matter of the tiger, “Richard Parker,” whose appearances as one of the movie’s co-leads are 15 percent real, 85 percent digital.


That’s not including the aforementioned meerkat and flying fish extras, brought to life via a software program appropriately titled Massive. (If only it had been around in Cecil B. DeMille‘s day.)


“The flying fish sequence is where we start to take some artistic liberties, since Pi’s telling you a tale,” said Westenhofer. “Maybe there were a thousand flying fish in reality, or even a hundred, but you’re seeing his mind’s eye, which saw this multitude, so we have 40,000 in one particular spot. The Massive software is almost artificial intelligence, where you write a little program that’s the brain for each individual fish, and it decides if it’s going to hop out of the water, and how long it’s going to fly; if it sees someone in its path, it does avoidance.”


But before any of that was animated, there was the live-action filming that took place on a 70 meter-by-30 meter wave tank that director Ang Lee had specially built for the film. And there, said Westenhofer, “you had (star) Suraj Sharma on a boat with two guys in rubber rafts just chucking rubber fish at him as hard as they possibly can. It’s a good mixture of the low-tech and the high-tech.”


Of course, it wasn’t fish but previous experience with big cats that got Rhythm & Hues the assignment from Lee to go from lions to tigers and Pi. “He knew we had done the lion in the first Narnia movie. He asked, ‘Does a digital character look more or less real in 3D?’ We looked at each other and thought that was a pretty good question.”


As well as a leading one, since Lee had already made the decision at that point, in 2009, to shoot in 3D. “We took one of the shots and rendered it in stereo and said ‘Yeah, it gives it a little more presence and makes it more real.’” Good answer! “That was the start of our relationship with him.”


Although “Life of Pi” doesn’t exactly go for documentary-style realism, every effort was made to keep the tiger’s actions and reactions to what experts and trainers told them a creature would really do in those situations. Not having him spout any Aslan-style aphorisms was a nice start on that de-anthropomorphizing.


“We always strive for photorealism,” said De Boer – even when they’re working on a Narnia or Cats and Dogs. “Motion-wise we strive for perfect physicality and try to get that animal to behave as characteristically as possible – and then we always have to make them talk or dance or do something really weird, and the realism goes out the window and everybody knows that we were there. For me what was really cool about this movie is not only do we stick with the real animal but we also have to intercut it with a live-action animal, so that made the challenge for us that much bigger.”


Added Westenhofer, “We told the crew we wanted to work ourselves out of any recognition by making it look as real as possible.”


It was at least as big of a challenge, as far as Westenhofer was concerned, to make the digital waves match or amplify the real tank waves – and to create the film’s skies completely from scratch. “There’s not many films where we spend this much time on the water. I think ‘Old Man and the Sea’ harkens back! But even with ‘Titanic,’ you’ll see the water and then go inside.” For much of “Life of Pi,” “inside” amounts to a few furtive peeks under a tarp.


Hence what, on a project like this, becomes a fine line where digital effects providers are also, to some extent, taking over the role of cinematography and art direction. Going to work on filling up these blue-screen shots, the Rhythm & Hues people might well have been humming Bruce Springsteen’s “Empty Sky” to themselves.


“What I’m absolutely most proud of is with these visual effects is that we were given a blank slate for a lot of these shots,” Westenhofer told the audience. “We were given a boat in front of a blue screen, and it was the visual effects team who really were a lot of the creative innovators on the movie. Certainly it was Ang’s vision we were creating. But we’d start a shot, and though Ang absolutely knows what he wants, his communication is sometimes not as specific as you want. Instead of saying ‘I want a three-quarters cloudy sky with yellow over here and some blue,’ he’d say ‘I want a pensive sky.’


Or, ‘I want it to be operatic.’ So it would be our job to go translate that, and the team did a great job of supplying that.


“And Claudio Miranda did an awesome, awesome job on the cinematography, but a lot of the cinematography on the ocean is digital effects.”


Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Aetna plans to join 15 exchanges under U.S. healthcare reform






NEW YORK (Reuters) – Aetna Inc, the third largest U.S. health insurer, said on Wednesday that by 2014 it expects to be part of about 15 healthcare exchanges being established under government reforms.


Aetna, one of the companies on the front lines of healthcare changes in the United States, told analysts and investors that it believes an increase in the number of customers from the new market places will likely contribute to its growth.






An estimated 30 million more people are expected to join the insured over the next decade because of the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Millions of those will seek their health insurance through the exchanges.


States have until December 14 to decide whether they will participate in a state-based, federal or partnership exchange. About 18 states have said they will create their own state-based exchanges and 18 others plan to default to a federal exchange, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit health policy group.


The shift to exchanges is fundamentally changing the managed care business, Aetna executives said during Wednesday’s meeting with analysts and investors.


“More and more consumers are going to be buying their healthcare, even if the employer-sponsored system survives,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Bertolini said. “A lot of things that we do today are no longer necessary to the end buyer.”


Aetna said profits will be helped by cost controls and growth of carefully managed care organizations — networks of doctors that work together — and expansion in government programs, such as Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor, and Aetna’s pending purchase of Coventry Health Care Inc..


Aetna expects earnings of $ 5.40 per share in 2013, below analyst estimates of $ 5.52 per share according to ThomsonReuters I/B/E/S. It sees revenue growth of 9 percent in 2013.


Competitors such as UnitedHealth Group Inc and Cigna Corp also gave weaker than expected 2013 earnings outlooks during their year-end meetings with analysts and investors. Aetna shares rose about $ 1.96 to $ 46.43 in midday New York Stock Exchange trading.


Aetna, whose $ 5.6 billion acquisition of regional insurer Coventry is being looked at by antitrust regulators, said that it still expects the deal to close in the middle of next year. It said it has not run into any issues that are beyond its expectations.


Aetna Chief Financial Officer Joe Zubretsky said in an interview that Aetna had not factored the possibility of the United States going over the so-called fiscal cliff into its 2013 outlook. The “fiscal cliff” is a combination of mandatory spending cuts and tax increases that will go into effect at the beginning of next year if a deficit cutting resolution is not reached by U.S. lawmakers.


Aetna’s outlook is based on a cautious view of the economy and one in which unemployment remains at about 7.5 percent and interest rate returns remain extremely low, the company said.


“We’re pretty much assuming the cliff gets solved,” Zubretsky said.


But he said the company is concerned and guarded against the possibility that it is not resolved. If that does happen, he said U.S. employees poised to lose their jobs and health insurance may increase use of medical services, or Aetna’s large employer business may decrease as companies cut back on employees, both of which would likely hurt profits.


(Editing by Bill Berkrot and Grant McCool)


Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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The Hobbit: Richard Armitage Talks Preparations For Playing Thorin Oakenshield






British actor Richard Armitage admitted it wasn’t a walk in the park to play a J.R.R. Tolkien character in Peter Jackson’s reimagining of “The Hobbit,” the first installment of which is on its way into theaters.


Upon touching down in New Zealand, where the trilogy was shot, the cast had a lot of character preparation to do.






PLAY IT NOW: Martin Freeman Discusses The Hobbit’s ‘Good Chemistry’ & Playing Bilbo Baggins


“We arrived in February 2011 and we went straight into a training program, which was called ‘Dwarf Bootcamp,’ which was literally boots — these huge boots. We learned how to walk, we wrestled with each other, we did archery together, we did sword fighting, hammer fighting, horse riding — everything you could possibly think of,” Richard, who plays Thorin Oakenshield in the film told Access Hollywood at the film’s junket.


In addition, the cast, which includes his former “Cold Feet” co-star James Nesbitt as Bofur, found ways to get to know each other better off set.


VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — New York City Premiere


“We went round to each other’s houses and we cooked food together, we went to the pub and got drunk together, so there was an incredibly great bonding time between the dwarves,” he said.


Richard had plenty of experience sword fighting and horse riding in the BBC America series “Robin Hood,” but it was something else that came in handy during the long days on set.


“I’d done a number of shows where I’d had to use sword fighting and I’d also done horse riding. I’d also pulled guns out of my pocket. That was less useful,” he laughed, likely referring to his recent role in the PBS-import series “MI-5,” where he played a British spy. “But, yeah, you draw on everything. I’d worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, so the vocal work was really useful to kind of pull that from there. I’d worked in a circus, there were… all sorts of things that were really useful, but the one thing that I do have — for lack of talent — is stamina and that’s the one thing I think everybody needed on this job.”


VIEW THE PHOTOS: Meet ‘The Hobbit’ Cast!


An imagination was useful also, but Richard said what turned out on the big screen was still wilder – and more beautiful – than he dreamed of.


“So many moments… Actually, apart from the eagles — which every single time I’ve seen this film absolutely blows my mind and I can barely keep the tears back and [it has] nothing to do with the pathos of the scene, just that feeling of flight moves me — is the throne of Aragorn, in the beginning of the prologue,” he told Access of the moment that moved him most. “When it got to [filming] that scene, I walked on and… it was just a green cross on the floor with a tiny green chair… [But in the film], they just made this incredible, almost space aged, sort of suspended seat in the middle of this stalagmite. It just blows my mind when I see that.”


VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Brit Pack: Hot Shots Of Stars From The UK!


“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” hits theaters on December 14, 2012, followed by “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” on December 13, 2013 and “The Hobbit: There and Back Again,” on July 18, 2014.


– Jolie Lash


Copyright 2012 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Police: Mall shooting 'could have been much, much worse'


PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The gunman who killed two people and himself in a shooting rampage at an Oregon mall was 22 years old and used a stolen rifle from someone he knew, authorities said Wednesday.


Jacob Tyler Roberts had armed himself with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and had several fully loaded magazines when he arrived at a Portland mall on Tuesday, said Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts.


The sheriff said the rifle jammed during the 22-year-old's attack, but he managed to get it working again. He later shot himself. Authorities don't yet have a motive but don't believe he was targeting specific people.


Two people — a 54-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man — were killed, and another, Kristina Shevchenko, 15, was wounded and in serious condition on Wednesday.


Roberts, wearing a hockey-style face mask, parked his 1996 green Volkswagen Jetta in front of the second-floor entrance to Macy's and walked briskly through the store, into the mall and began firing randomly, police said.


He fatally shot Steven Mathew Forsyth of West Linn and Cindy Ann Yuille of Portland, the sheriff said.


Roberts then fled along a mall corridor and into a back hallway, down stairs and into a corner where police found him dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot, authorities said.


People at the mall were heroic in helping get shoppers out of the building, including medical personnel who rendered aid, Roberts said.


In response to previous mass shootings elsewhere, the first arriving officers were trained to form teams and go inside instead of waiting for SWAT. Employees at the mall also received training to handle such a situation.


"This could have been much, much worse," Roberts said.


The first 911 call came at 3:29 p.m. Tuesday and officers arrived a minute later. By 3:51 p.m., all the victims and the gunman and rifle had been found. Four SWAT teams spent hours clearing the 1.4 million square-foot mall, leaving shoppers and workers to hide in fear.


Roberts rented a basement room in a modest, single-story Portland home and hadn't lived there long, said a neighbor, Bobbi Bates. Bates said she saw Roberts leave at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday wearing a dark jacket and jeans, carrying a guitar case. An occupant at the house declined to comment.


The mall Santa, Brance Wilson, was waiting for the next child's Christmas wish when shots rang out, causing the mall to erupt into chaos.


About to invite a child to hop onto his lap, Wilson instead dove for the floor and kept his head down as he heard shots being fired upstairs in the mall.


"I heard two shots and got out of the chair. I thought a red suit was a pretty good target," said Wilson, 68. Families waiting for Santa scattered. More shots followed, and Wilson crept away for better cover.


Witnesses heard the gunman saying, "I am the shooter," as he fired rounds from a semi-automatic rifle inside the Clackamas Town Center, a popular suburban mall several miles from downtown Portland.


Some were close enough to the shooter to feel the percussion of his gun.


Kayla Sprint, 18, was interviewing for a job at a clothing store when she heard shots.


"We heard people running back here screaming, yelling '911,'" she told The Associated Press.


Sprint barricaded herself in the store's back room until the coast was clear.


Jason DeCosta, a manager of a window-tinting company that has a display on the mall's ground floor, said when he arrived to relieve his co-worker, he heard shots ring out upstairs.


DeCosta ran up an escalator, past people who had dropped for cover and glass littering the floor.


"I figure if he's shooting a gun, he's gonna run out of bullets," DeCosta said, "and I'm gonna take him."


DeCosta said when he got to the food court, "I saw a gentleman face down, obviously shot in the head."


"A lot of blood," DeCosta said. "You could tell there was nothing you could do for him."


He said he also saw a woman on the floor who had been shot in the chest.


Austin Patty, 20, who works at Macy's, said he saw a man in a white mask carrying a rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest. There was a series of rapid-fire shots in short succession as Christmas music played. Patty said he dove for the floor and then ran.


His Macy's co-worker, Pam Moore, told the AP the gunman was short, with dark hair.


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


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


Rowland said she heard people screaming and crying.


"I put the baby back in the stroller and ran," Rowland said.


Kaelynn Keelin was working two stores down from Macy's when the gunfire began. She watched windows of another store get shot out. She and her co-workers ran to get customers inside their own store to take shelter.


"If we would have run out, we would have run right into it," she said.


Shaun Wik, 20, was Christmas shopping with his girlfriend and opened a fortune cookie at the food court. Inside was written: "Live for today. Remember yesterday. Think of tomorrow."


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


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


Clackamas Town Center is one of the Portland area's biggest and busiest malls, with 185 stores and a 20-screen movie theater.


Holli Bautista, 28, was shopping at Macy's for a Christmas dress for her daughter when she heard pops that sounded like firecrackers. "I heard people running and screaming and saying 'Get out, there's somebody shooting,'" she told the AP.


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


Tiffany Turgetto and her husband were leaving Macy's through the first floor when they heard gunshots coming from the second floor of the mall. They were able to leave quickly through a Barnes & Noble bookstore before the police locked down the mall.


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


___


Associated Press writers Steven DuBois, Nigel Duara, Anne M. Peterson, Tim Fought and Sarah Skidmore in Portland, Michelle Price in Phoenix, Pete Yost in Washington, Manuel Valdes in Seattle and researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.


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AP PHOTOS: Top 10 Search Trends of 2012






NEW YORK (AP) — From the tragic to the downright silly, millions of people searched the Web in 2012 to find out about a royal princess, the latest iPad, a record-breaking skydiver and the death of a pop star.


Google released its 12th annual “zeitgeist” report on Wednesday. The company calls it “an in-depth look at the spirit of the times as seen through the billions of searches on Google over the past year.”






Here’s an Associated Press photo gallery of the top ten trending searches of 2012.


Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Lawsuit claims A&E’s ‘Storage Wars’ show is rigged






LOS ANGELES (AP) — Some of the valuables found hidden in abandoned lockers on A&E’s “Storage Wars” have been added by producers to deceive viewers, a former cast member of the show claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.


David Hester‘s suit claims producers have added a BMW Mini and newspapers chronicling Elvis Presley‘s death to lockers in order to build drama for the show and that his complaints about the practices led to his firing.






Hester is seeking more than $ 750,000 in his wrongful termination, breach of contract and unfair business practices lawsuit. A&E Television Network declined comment, citing the pending lawsuit.


“Storage Wars” follows buyers who bid for abandoned storage lockers hoping to find valuables tucked inside.


“A&E regularly plants valuable items or memorabilia,” the lawsuit states. Hester’s suit claims he was fired from participating in the series’ fourth season after expressing concerns that manipulating the storage lockers for the sake of the show was illegal.


He claims that producers stopped adding items to his units after his initial complaints but continued the practice for other series participants. The lawsuit alleges entire units have been staged and the practice may violate a federal law intended to prevent viewers from being deceived when watching a show involving intellectual skills.


“Storage Wars” depicts buyers having only a few moments to look into an abandoned unit before deciding on whether to bid on it at auction. The lawsuit claims some of the auction footage on the show is staged.


Hester, known as “The Mogul” on the show, has been buying abandoned storage units and re-selling their contents for 26 years, according to the suit.


Nielsen Co. has ranked “Storage Wars” among cable television’s top-ranked shows several times since its 2010 debut.


Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Teva CEO promises to reshape, refocus company by 2017






NEW YORK (Reuters) – Teva Pharmaceutical Industries‘ new Chief Executive Jeremy Levin promised on Tuesday to reshape the company into “the most indispensable medicines company in the world” and to provide significant value to its shareholders along the way.


At a meeting in New York with investors and analysts, Levin, who took over as CEO in May, said Teva would sustain “profitable growth” through 2017 and beyond despite numerous challenges, such as the looming 2015 patent expiration of its most important branded product, the multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone. It accounts for about 20 percent of Teva sales and some 50 percent of its profits.






Teva said it would continue to return money to shareholders through its dividend and $ 3 billion share buyback program, but it did not announce increases to either.


By 2017, Levin said, “Teva will be a reshaped company,” and one that will be more transparent and accountable to Wall Street and its investors than it has been in the past. The Israel-based company provided more details about its cost-cutting plans, areas of focus going forward and new product development.


Investors were not immediately convinced and Teva shares were down 1.9 percent just ahead of the market close in New York.


Levin said that in the future he does not want Teva to be so dependent on one product for a significant portion of its profits, in part through growth of branded generics in emerging markets and through its joint venture with Procter & Gamble Co on over-the-counter consumer products.


But Levin, a former executive of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., said the world’s largest maker of generic drugs would increasingly focus on bringing new medicines to market in its core areas of expertise, such as central nervous system disorders and respiratory diseases.


He said it also would focus on what Teva is calling new therapeutic entities, or NTEs. Those could be new uses, formulations, delivery methods or combinations of existing products.


Levin said China represents an enormous opportunity for future sales of respiratory disease products. “We haven’t yet scratched the surface of how to get into that part of the world,” he said.


NEW DRUGS


Teva has 15 drugs in late-stage development and another 13 programs in mid-stage trials, but has discontinued 12 other products in its pipeline to focus on core areas of expertise.


The company has $ 10 billion available for business development over the next five years.


It took a step toward adding to its portfolio of branded medicines earlier on Tuesday by announcing a deal for worldwide rights to an experimental pain drug being developed by Xenon Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company founded by Michael Hayden, Teva’s new chief scientific officer .


Hayden said NTEs, as they come from proven effective medicines, would provide high returns with much lower risks than developing new molecules. He said the company set a goal of approving development of 10-15 NTEs in 2013 and getting them to market beginning in 2016.


Hayden was particularly enthused by the prospects for Teva’s experimental multiple sclerosis drug laquinimod, a neuroprotective medicine with potential to address progressive as well as relapsing MS. It could hit the European market next year, but U.S. regulators have asked for another Phase III study before considering the drug for the world’s largest market.


Teva also sees the possibility of combining laquinimod with Copaxone, which works through a different anti-inflammatory mechanism, to better treat MS as well as address other neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, ALS and Parkinson’s disease.


The company sees prospects for extending Copaxone use beyond the patent expiration with a new, more convenient, three-times-a-week version compared with its current daily formulation. That could reach the market in 2014.


Teva is testing the sleep disorder drug Nuvigil, which it acquired with its $ 6.5 billion purchase of Cephalon last year, for bipolar disorder – a use that could substantially boost sales. The company sees 2013 Nuvigil sales of $ 280 million to $ 320 million, with a possible bipolar approval coming in 2014.


MIS-SIZED OR SMALL DEALS


While Teva was built through a series of large acquisitions, Levin reiterated his desire for mid-sized or small transactions, whether through licensing deals, acquisitions or strategic alliances with large pharmaceutical companies.


The company, whose shares have badly underperformed those of its smaller rivals during the last two years, said on November 30 that it would streamline operations and cut costs by $ 1.5 billion to $ 2 billion during the next five years, with most of the savings realized in 2014 and 2015.


Teva provided details on Tuesday of where it would find much of the savings, including $ 400 million to $ 700 million by centralizing global purchasing power rather than local procurement of goods. It sees another $ 150 million to $ 175 million in savings from shifting away from many small production facilities and instead relying on larger, more efficient manufacturing sites.


A move to centrally controlled supply chain inventory levels could save another $ 110 million to $ 140 million, the company said.


Levin said Teva would also continue to divest non-core assets, a process it began by selling its U.S. animal health business to Bayer for up to $ 145 million.


“We have a plan that’s reasonable and achievable,” Teva Chairman Phillip Frost said.


(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Dan Grebler and Tim Dobbyn)


Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Corruption probe shrouds Quebec in new darkness






MONTREAL (Reuters) – Half a century ago, a new crop of Quebec leaders sparked the so-called Quiet Revolution to eradicate the “Great Darkness” – decades of corruption that kept Canada‘s French-speaking province under the dominance of one party and the Catholic church.


The revolution’s reforms, including cleaning up the way lawmakers were elected and secularizing the education system, seemed to work, paving the way for decades of growth, progress and prominence as Canada emerged as a model of democracy.






Fifty years later, a public inquiry into corruption and government bid-rigging suggests the province’s politics are not as clean as Quebecers had hoped or believed.


Since May, when the inquiry opened in Montreal, Canadians have been getting daily doses of revelations of fraud through live broadcasts on French-language television stations. Corruption involving the Mafia, construction bosses and politicians, the inquiry has shown, drove up the average building cost of municipal contracts by more than 30 percent in Montreal, Canada’s second-largest city.


Last month, Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay resigned as did the mayor of nearby Laval, Gilles Vaillancourt. Both denied doing anything wrong, but said they could not govern amid the accusations of corruption involving rigging of municipal contracts, kickbacks from the contracts and illegal financing of elections.


Tremblay has not been charged by police. Vaillancourt’s homes and offices have been raided several times by Quebec’s anti-corruption squad, which operates independently of the inquiry, but no charges have been filed against him either. Police said the raids were part of an investigation but they would not release further details.


“Quebecers lived for several years under the impression that they had found the right formula, that their parties were clean,” said Pierre Martin, political science professor at the University of Montreal. Now, he said, “people at all levels are fed up.”


The inquiry must submit its final report to the Quebec government by next October. It has exposed practices worthy of a Hollywood noir thriller – a mob boss stuffing his socks with money, rigged construction contracts, call girls offered as gifts, and a party fundraiser with so much cash he could not close the door of his safe.


“Even though we are in the early days, what is emerging is a pretty troubling portrait of the way public contracts were awarded,” said Antonia Maioni, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada in Montreal.


Quebec’s Liberals, the force behind the Quiet Revolution, launched the inquiry as rumors of corruption swirled. The government then called an election for September, a year ahead of schedule, in what was seen as an attempt to stop damaging testimony hurting its popularity.


The tactic did not help. Jean Charest’s Liberals lost to the Parti Quebecois, whose ultimate aim is to take the French-speaking province, the size of Western Europe, out of Canada.


‘IT WASN’T COMPLICATED’


According to allegations at the inquiry, the corruption helped three main entities: the construction bosses who colluded to bid on contracts, the Montreal Mafia dons who swooped in for their share, and the municipal politicians who received kickbacks to finance campaigns.


In Quebec, the Mafia has been dominated by the Rizzuto family, with tentacles to the rest of Canada and crime families in New York and abroad. But recently the syndicate has been facing challenges from other crime groups in Montreal, according to the Toronto-based Mafia analyst and author Antonio Nicaso.


The reputed godfather of the syndicate, Vito Rizzuto, has been subpoenaed to appear before the commission, but the date for his testimony has not been set.


The hearings have zeroed in on four construction bosses and how their companies worked with the Mafia, bribed municipal engineers and provided funds for mayoralty campaigns in Montreal, the business capital for Quebec’s 8 million people.


“It’s not good for the economy,” said Martin. “It’s not good for any kind of legitimate business that tries to enter into any kind of long-term relationship with the public sector.”


Quebec’s anti-corruption squad has arrested 35 people so far this year, staging well-publicized raids on mayoral offices and on construction and engineering companies. The squad has arrested civil servants and owners of construction companies, among others.


“I now must suffer an unbearable injustice,” Tremblay said in a somber resignation speech earlier this month after a decade as mayor of Montreal, saying he could not continue in office because the allegations of corruption were causing a paralysis at City Hall.


Some of the most explosive allegations at the inquiry, headed by Quebec Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau, came from Lino Zambito, owner of a now bankrupt construction company, and from a top worker for Tremblay’s political party, Union Montreal.


Zambito, who is seen as one of the smaller players and who also faces fraud charges, described a system of collusion between organized crime, business cartels and corrupt civil servants, with payments made according to a predetermined formula.


“The entrepreneurs made money, and there was an amount that was due to the Mafia,” Zambito told the inquiry. “It wasn’t complicated.”


Zambito said the Mafia got 2.5 percent of the value of a contract, 3 percent went to Union Montreal and 1 percent to the engineer tasked with inflating contract prices.


Tremblay did not respond to emails requesting comment on the allegations of corruption at city hall.


A former party organizer, Martin Dumont, alleged the mayor was aware of double bookkeeping used to hide illegal funding during a 2004 election.


Dumont said the mayor walked out of the room during a meeting that explained the double bookkeeping system, saying he did not want to know anything about it.


Dumont also described how he was called into the office of a fundraiser for Union Montreal to help close the door of a safe because it was too full of money.


“I think it was the largest amount I’d ever seen in my life,” Dumont said at the inquiry.


GOLF, HOCKEY, ESCORTS


The inquiry also saw videos linking construction company players with Mafia bosses. In one police surveillance video, a Mafia boss was seen stuffing cash into his socks.


A retired city of Montreal engineer, Gilles Surprenant, described how he first accepted a bribe in the late 1980s after being “intimidated” by a construction company owner. Over the years he said he accepted over $ 700,000 from the owners in return for inflating the price of the contracts.


Another retired engineer, Luc Leclerc, admitted to bagging half a million dollars for the same service. He said the system was well-known to many at city hall and simply part of the “business culture” in Montreal. He also got gifts and paid golf trips to the Caribbean with other businessmen and Mafia bosses.


Gilles Vezina, who is currently suspended from his job as a city engineer, concurred.


“It was part of our business relationships to get advantages like golf, hockey, Christmas gifts” from construction bosses, he told the inquiry in mid-November.


The gifts didn’t stop there. Vezina said he was twice offered the services of prostitutes from different construction bosses in the 1980s or early 1990s, which he said he refused.


The accusations are jarring for a country that prides itself on being one of the least corrupt places in the world, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International. But experts say corruption in Montreal was something of an open secret.


“The alarm signals have been going off here for 20 years and no one has done anything,” said Andre Cedilot, a former journalist who co-wrote a book on the Canadian Mafia.


Quebec’s new government has introduced legislation tasking the province’s securities regulator with vetting businesses vying for public contracts and allowing it to block companies that do not measure up.


Anti-corruption activist Jonathan Brun was not optimistic.


“You’ve got to use modern technology,” said Brun, a co-founder of Quebec Ouvert, a group that wants to make all information about contracts freely available rather than asking regulators to oversee individual companies. “You’ve got to change the entire system if you really want to fight corruption.”


(Writing by Russ Blinch; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Mary Milliken and Prudence Crowther)


Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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