Apple takes investors on a wild ride

SAN FRANCISCO — With only modest expectations, Robert Leitao of Santa Clarita made a decision in 1994 that would change his life. He bought Apple stock.

This was several years before Steve Jobs returned to resurrect Apple, long before the iPod, the iPhone or the iPads that would make Apple the most valuable company in the world. A $1 investment in Apple at the start of 1994 is now worth about $70.

"Even with the recent sell-off, I'm still doing very well with the stock," said Leitao, who works as director of operations at a Catholic church in Burbank. "Apple provided for a down payment on our home for our blended family of four kids."

Leitao is one of the countless people whose lives have been touched by Apple's stock, which has become a global economic force. It is now one of the most widely held stocks, and the most valuable. Even as Apple Inc.'s market value fell to $480 billion on Friday, it was still larger than the gross domestic product of Norway or Argentina, and more than the combined value of Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Yet that astonishing size and economic influence is also what, many analysts believe, contributes to the extraordinary volatility that can make owning Apple's stock a hair-raising experience.

It was inevitable, analysts say, that after Apple's stock rose 74% in the first nine months of this year, a huge wave of selling would occur as fund managers locked in their profits. And yet, in recent years, these huge dips have been followed by even bigger run-ups that led to new record highs, a dynamic that one trader refers to as the "Apple slingshot."

That pattern has some analysts betting Apple will soar above $1,000 a share in 2013, a scenario almost guaranteed to drive the global obsession with the company's stock into an even greater frenzy.

"The impact on shareholders and on the economy is incredible," said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices. "We've not seen anything like this in the modern trading era. Ever."

Even after the remarkable decade of Apple's revival, the company's stock managed to reach new milestones this year. Early in 2012, Apple became the sixth company ever to surpass $500 billion in market value. In August, it became the only company in history with a market value topping $622 billion.

That performance affects just about anyone who has a 401(k) account or a pension. According to FactSet, a research firm that tracks investment funds, 2,555 institutional investors — mutual funds, hedge funds and pension funds, among others — owned stock in Apple, just behind the 2,590 that held Microsoft stock, as of Sept. 30, the most recent date funds had to disclose their holdings. However, the value of that Apple stock held by institutional investors on that day was $427 billion, compared with $172 billion for Microsoft, according to FactSet.

Silverblatt said the only company that has come close to having such a strong influence on the broader stock markets since World War II is IBM in the early 1980s, when the PC revolution was just getting started. But not only is the value of Apple's stock remarkable, so is its volatility. Such large stocks rarely have such big, quick swings.

Apple shares peaked at $702.10 on Sept. 19, up from $401.44 at the start of the year, a run that astonished analysts. But just as remarkable has been its collapse, falling as low as $505.75 in intra-day trading Nov. 16.

"It's just amazing because it's such a large company," said Brian Colello, a senior research analyst at Morningstar. "The company lost about $35 billion in market cap in one day. That's the size of some large-cap stocks."

Yet such swings have become commonplace for Apple stock. Before its latest swoon of 23.4% since its September high, Apple had experienced three previous corrections of more than 10% over the last two years.

The value of Apple's stock and its extreme swings have made researching it and trading it almost a full-time job for some people. Jason Schwarz of Marina del Rey edits EconomicTiming.com, which sends out up to five newsletters each week to its 1,000 clients that focus in large measure on Apple. He also helps run Lone Peak Asset Management, which has about $500 million in assets.

Schwarz says that what he calls the "Apple slingshot" is actually a virtue of the shares.

"The extraordinary volatility is the result of Apple's strength," Schwarz said. "People try to blame the volatility on Apple's weaknesses."

Schwarz and many other Apple believers argue that people are making a big mistake when they try to understand the stock's behavior by focusing on various bits of bad news such as an executive shake-up, the Maps controversy or questions about market share or competition. They have almost nothing to do with the regular hits taken by Apple shares, the argument goes.

Instead, folks like Schwarz say more technical factors are at work, such as the fact that the fiscal year for many stock funds ends Oct. 31. When the stock peaked in September, many fund managers rushed to sell to lock in profits for the year. Apple stock makes so much money for so many people, then plummets when shareholders pause to reap their profits, Schwarz says.

The volatility has continued in recent weeks, the argument goes, because fears of higher taxes next year have many fund managers trying to take advantage of short-term swings to make bigger profits. That volatility offers tantalizing windows for huge, short-term profits for investors willing to take the risk.

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Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space

To a geologist, glaciers are among the most exciting features on Earth. Though they seem to creep along at impossibly slow speeds, in geologic time glaciers are relatively fast, powerful landscape artists that can carve out valleys and fjords in just a few thousand years.

Glaciers also provide an environmental record by trapping air bubbles in ice that reveal atmospheric conditions in the past. And because they are very sensitive to climate, growing and advancing when it’s cold and shrinking and retreating when its warm, they can be used as proxies for regional temperatures.

Over geologic time, they have ebbed and flowed with natural climate cycles. Today, the world’s glaciers are in retreat, sped up by relatively rapid warming of the globe. In our own Glacier National Park in Montana, only 26 named glaciers remain out of the 150 known in 1850. They are predicted to be completely gone by 2030 if current warming continues at the same rate.

Here we have collected 13 stunning images of some of the world’s most impressive and beautiful glaciers, captured from space by astronauts and satellites.

Above: Bear Glacier, Alaska

This image taken in 2005 of Bear Glacier highlights the beautiful color of many glacial lakes. The hue is caused by the silt that is finely ground away from the valley walls by the glacier and deposited in the lake. The particles in this “glacial flour” can be very reflective, turning the water into a distinctive greenish blue. The lake, eight miles up from the terminus of the glacier, was held in place by the glacier, but in 2008 it broke through and drained into Resurrection Bay in Kenai Fjords National Park.

The grey stripe down the middle of the glacier is called a medial moraine. It is formed when two glaciers flow into each other and join on their way downhill. When glaciers come together, their lateral moraines, long ridges formed along their edges as the freeze-thaw cycle of the glacier breaks off chunks of rock from the surrounding walls, meet to form a rocky ridge along the center of the joined glaciers.

Image: GeoEye/NASA, 2005.

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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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School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

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

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

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

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Connecticut shooting: 20 schoolchildren among the 28 dead

The toll in the Connecticut shooting stands at 28 dead, including 20 children and the gunman, Connecticut State Police said Friday.

Speaking at a televised news conference from Newtown, Conn., State Police spokesman Paul Vance confirmed the death toll, making this the deadliest shooting since the Virginia Tech rampage in 2007.

According to Vance, the gunman entered the school and fired at students and staff in one section – two rooms – at the school, he said.

PHOTOS: Shooting at Connecticut elementary school

Eighteen children were pronounced dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Two pupils were taken to hospitals and pronounced dead there.

Six adults were dead at the scene as was the gunman. Another person was found dead at what Vance described as “a secondary crime scene” in Connecticut, bringing the total to 28.

One person was injured.

None of the victims were identified pending identification, Vance said.

“It’s still an evolving crime scene and it’s just hours old,” Daniel Curtin, a FBI special agent in Connecticut, said. “And it’s obviously very tragic. All we’re saying is that the FBI and our agents have a presence there to assist in any way possible. Because right now it’s a Connecticut state and local investigation at this point. But in times of trial like this we work together.” A weapon was recovered at the scene.

According to sources, the event began with an argument with the principal. Some of the staffers were shot first, then the gunman advanced on a classroom, shooting.

TIMELINE: Deadliest U.S. mass shootings

The incident began at about 9:40 a.m. EST at the school in Newtown, a town of about 27,000 people.Stephen Delgiadice told reporters that his  8-year-old daughter heard two big bangs and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine.

“It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Conn., which we always thought was the safest place in America,” he said.

michael.muskal@latimes.com

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How to Talk to Your Kids About the Shooting in Connecticut

It’s a difficult day to be a parent.

This morning, a gunman entered an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 28 people, including 18 children under 10 years old. This is every parent’s nightmare. Our hearts go out to the families of everyone hurt by this tragedy, even while we fight the impulse to rush to our own children wherever they may be, and hold them close.

But past that, we’re going to have to be able to talk to our kids about this. They’re going to hear the news, either directly through reports, or passed around from child to child, and they are going to have even more trouble processing it than we will.

There is no easy way to approach a subject so frightening, but it must be approached. We found the following general suggestions from PBS.org to be a sensible place to start:

Start by Finding Out What Your Child Knows

Because the news will spread randomly, and become distorted like a game of telephone, the place to start is by asking your kids what they’ve heard, so you can evaluate how much they know, and how accurate their knowledge is.

Ask Follow-Up Questions

You are in a position to help them start processing the news by asking key questions. How do they feel about what happened? Why do they think it happened? Their answers will give you clues about how to talk about the tragedy.

Keep It Simple

Obviously you know your kids, so tailor the level of information to them as appropriate. But it’s important to state facts rather than suppositions, and while we’d like to shield our kids from all such tragedy, we can’t. The next best tactic is to make sure they are accurately informed. It may be tough, but don’t start talking about political or cultural issues you think may have caused the event, either. Your kids will take such opinions back to school with them, which could end up starting arguments with other kids.

Listen and Offer Reassurance

Pay attention to your kids, and don’t accept “I’m fine,” to your “How are you feeling?” question. As you talk through the facts and ask them questions, listen to their answers, and try to understand what may be really affecting them, even if they don’t realize it themselves yet. It’s most likely, in a case such as this, that their first worry will be that their school isn’t safe. You have to reassure them that it is (even if you’re not feeling it 100 percent at the time), and point out all the things you and the school do to keep them safe. For example, most public schools have specific security plans in place, and teachers are trained to deal with emergency situations.

The bottom line is communication. Talk to your kids, but not down to them. You don’t have to hit them with every brutal detail, but respect their intelligence, and help reinforce their possibly fragile sense of security. More than you need to know they’re safe, they need you to show them they are.

More links to good resources for helping kids through this difficult news (hat-tip to the Darien public library and @erikwecks):

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Matt Damon fracking film in Berlin festival lineup

BERLIN (Reuters) – The Berlin film festival on Thursday announced the first movies of its 2013 lineup, and among the main competition entries will be U.S. director Gus Van Sant‘s drama starring Matt Damon and centering around the controversial shale gas industry.

“Promised Land” will have its international premiere at the annual cinema showcase, although it is scheduled to be launched first in the United States.

According to online reports, “The Bourne Identity” star Damon was originally down to direct the movie tackling the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” for shale gas, which has raised concerns over its environmental impact.

The film reunites the actor and film maker after Van Sant directed Damon in the acclaimed 1997 drama “Good Will Hunting”.

Damon was nominated for a best actor Academy Award for his performance and won a screenplay Oscar along with co-writer Ben Affleck for a movie that helped launch their Hollywood careers.

Also in the main competition in Berlin is “Gloria”, directed by Chilean film maker Sebastian Lelio, Korean entry “Nobody’s Daughter Haewon” directed by Hong Sangsoo and Romanian picture “Child’s Pose” by Calin Peter Netzer.

There will be a world premiere for “Paradise: Hope”, the final installment of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy, while out of competition in Berlin is 3D animation film “The Croods”, featuring the voice of Nicolas Cage.

And under the Berlinale Special heading comes documentary “Redemption Impossible”.

The 63rd Berlin film festival runs from February 7-17.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

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

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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Wealth Matters: As End of Gift Tax Exemption Nears, Ways to Use It Proliferate

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Mark E. Haranzo, a partner at the law firm Withers Bergman, helps clients use the so-called power of substitution, by setting up a trust that allows someone to put in cash now and exchange it for other assets in the future.

HOLIDAY shoppers and tax filers are known for procrastinating. This year, they’re joined by the wealthy who have still not decided whether to make a gift under a generous gift tax exemption that may soon disappear.

Back in December 2010 President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner reached an agreement to raise the exemption levels on estate and gift taxes to $5 million a person as part of a deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts. (This year, that rate was adjusted upward for inflation to $5.12 million.)

As I have often written, this was an amazing giveaway to the superrich. But it also provoked anxiety among those at the next level down — the merely very rich — for whom giving away as much as $10 million a couple, to avoid higher taxes when they die, was not as simple a matter. The gifts represented a larger percentage of their net worth.

Now, with a little more than two weeks left in the year, tax lawyers and advisers say the wealthy are scrambling to make gifts before the exemption expires.

“We are having this come up daily,” said Mitchell A. Drossman, national director of wealth planning strategies for U.S. Trust. “One of the first things I’m asking is, ‘Why are they warming up to this idea now? Is it that they didn’t want to make the gift? They didn’t know how? They didn’t get around to it?’ ”

With so little time left, advisers have come up with quick and easy ways to get the gift done for tax purposes this year.

A simple solution is to forgive any loans made to family members. This is a fairly painless way to use up some of the gift tax exemption because most parents never expected their children to repay those loans and would have forgiven those loans at death anyway.

While giving cash outright is easy, few wealthy people want to do that. The exemption may be at a historically high level, but the wealthy still want to give assets that will continue to grow.

Leiha Macauley, a partner and head of the Boston office at Day Pitney, says one solution is to set up a trust that allows someone to put in cash now and exchange it for other assets in the future, when the person has had enough time to have the assets properly appraised. Using the so-called power of substitution means that cash can become just about anything else next year.

“The power of substitution is key when we’re so pinched for time,” she said. “Appraisals are not coming out quickly enough. And people giving right up to the limit makes us nervous, because what if the appraisal says something is worth $6.2 million and then the I.R.S. says you owe tax?”

Typical assets that people swap in later include a home, which they then rent back from the trust, or a large life insurance policy, which can be purchased with the cash. But Andy Katzenstein, a partner in the personal planning department at the law firm Proskauer Rose, said he had clients ready to swap more nontraditional assets into trusts. One has a collection of Ferrari sports cars, while another couple has art that is valuable but that they no longer like displaying in their house.

These assets also have the virtue of being relatively painless to part with. The man with the Ferraris can pay the trust rent when he drives one of the cars. (The rent further reduces the estate’s value.) The couple with the art already had it in storage.

But Mr. Katzenstein cautioned those choosing this option to know the law, particularly if they plan to keep using these assets. “The devil is in the details,” he said. “If you don’t follow the rules you get into trouble. Make sure you have a real lease, you pay the rent every month and it also has to be fair market rent.”

Mark E. Haranzo, a partner at the law firm Withers Bergman, said he had suggested to clients with private companies that they use the cash as essentially a down payment on a loan to put all or part of their company into a trust for their children. He said the general rule of thumb was to put down 10 percent of the value of the company and then use the company’s profits to pay off the loan.

For the really rushed, Mr. Katzenstein said, another option is to include the power to rewrite the terms of the trust next year if their lawyer does not have time to customize a trust for them before the end of the year. This is done by naming someone to the role of “trust protector” and allowing that person to rewrite the trust at a later date.

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Susan Rice withdraws from Secretary of State consideration

WASHINGTON – Susan Rice, who came under heavy criticism for her defense of the Obama administration after armed militants killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, withdrew her name from consideration for secretary of State on Thursday as the president began to narrow his choices for key Cabinet positions.

“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 one-page letter to President Obama. “That tradeoff is simply not worth it to our country.”

In a statement, Obama praised Rice, who is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, as a key member of his Cabinet and “an advisor and friend.”

PHOTOS: Notable moments of the 2012 presidential election

“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,” Obama said.

The decision leaves Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) as the leading contender to head the State Department after Hillary Rodham Clinton steps down early next year. That, in turn, would require a special election in Massachusetts and likely give Scott Brown, a moderate Republican who lost his Senate seat to Democrat Elizabeth Warren in November, another chance to run.  

White House aides said the president also is now likely to choose either Chuck Hagel, a Republican and former U.S. senator from Nebraska, or Michele Flournoy, formerly the highest-ranking woman at the Defense Department, to replace Leon E. Panetta as secretary of Defense. If nominated, Flournoy would be the first woman to run the Pentagon.

Rice drew flak after she appeared on several Sunday TV talk shows five days after militants stormed a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi in eastern Libya on Sept. 11, killing U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Although Rice relied on so-called talking points given to her by the CIA, a number of Republican lawmakers said she had falsely described the attacks as spontaneous protests and not a calculated act of terrorism by Libyan extremists. Critics said she had tried to downplay the nature of the attacks to protect Obama during his reelection campaign.

PHOTOS: The best shots from the 2012 campaign

Rice later agreed that her statements were incorrect, but blamed the information she was given by the intelligence community. It did little to stanch the criticism, however.

As speculation grew that Rice was a likely candidate to replace Clinton, she tried to disarm her sharpest critics by meeting senior Republicans in closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill. But Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) all said they were dissatisfied, putting her expected nomination in jeopardy.

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[For the Record, 2:27 p.m. PST  Dec. 13: This post originally referred to Michele Flournoy as the current highest-ranking woman at the Defense Department, a position she formerly held before aiding Obama's reelection campaign.]

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HP Spying Scandal Ends With a Whimper

The HP boardroom spying scandal once transfixed the national media. It sparked Congressional hearings and lawsuits, and it changed the law. But it ended on Thursday in a mostly empty San Jose, California courtroom with a three-month conviction for Bryan Wagner, the low-level foot soldier who called up telephone companies under false pretenses to obtain the telephone records of HP board members, journalists and their families.

Wagner, a one-time private investigator from Everton, Colorado, will be the only person to serve jail time in the scandal, which dates back to 2005, when former HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn launched a secret campaign, dubbed Operation Kona, to uncover boardroom leakers. Criminal charges against HP executives were eventually dropped, and the only other people to be convicted in the case, Wagner’s bosses, Joseph and Mathew DePante, were sentenced to three years probation in July.

Speaking before his sentencing, an unemotional Wagner, his hair now salted with grey, said he was guilty of “moral ineptness,” and he apologized to his victims, including former CNET reporter Dawn Kawamoto, the only victim to address the court on Thursday. “I made mistakes and I apologize for these,” he said. “I was raised differently from what this would show.”

Wagner was introduced to the concept of obtaining data using false pretenses, or pretexting, by his mother’s stepbrother, James Rapp, but he considered it to be “an unsavory but gray area,” his lawyer Cynthia Lie argued in court.

Wagner’s sentence was much less severe than it could have been. After pleading guilty to one count of aggravated identity theft back in 2007, he’d been facing a mandatory minimum of two years in prison. And his case wasn’t helped by the fact that trashed his computer’s hard drive before investigators could examine it, and was on probation for a drunk driving conviction at the time of the pretexting. But on Thursday, federal prosecutors asked the judge in the case to set aside that mandatory minimum because Wagner had been of “substantial assistance” to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. After his jail time, Wagner must serve two years of supervisory release.

After the sentencing was announced, Kawamoto told Wired that she was unsatisfied. “I’m not happy with the sentence,” she said “I think they should have gone for the maximum.” She told the judge she was “very disappointed” that no one from HP had been convicted of any crime in the matter.

Early on, Wagner’s attorney told the judge: “This case concludes not with a bang, but a whimper.”

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Documents: Prisoner plotted to kill Justin Bieber

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) — An imprisoned man whose infatuation with Justin Bieber included a tattoo of the pop star on his leg has told investigators in New Mexico he hatched a plot to kill him.

Court documents in a New Mexico district court say Dana Martin told investigators he persuaded a man he met in prison and the man’s nephew to kill Bieber, Bieber’s bodyguard and two others not connected to the pop star.

He told investigators that Mark Staake and Tanner Ruane headed east, planning to be near a Bieber concert scheduled in New York City. They missed a turn and crossed into Canada from Vermont. Staake was arrested on an outstanding warrant. Ruane was arrested later.

The two men face multiple charges stemming for the alleged plot.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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World’s Population Living Longer, New Report Suggests

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

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

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

But while developing countries made big strides – the average age of death in Brazil and Paraguay, for example, jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 28 in 1970 – the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries between 1990 and 2010. The two years of life they gained was less than in Cyprus, where women gained 2.3 years of life, and Canada, where women gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990.

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

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

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which measured disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published Thursday in the Lancet, a British health publication.

The one exception to the trend was sub-Saharan Africa, where infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternal causes of death still account for about 70 percent of all illness. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death there rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

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

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization in Geneva. “It’s not something that medical services can address as easily.”

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European Leaders Hail Accord on Banking Supervision

BRUSSELS — European Union leaders gathering here Thursday for their year-end summit meeting hailed an agreement to place euro zone banks under a single supervisor, calling it a concrete measure to maintain the viability of the currency as well as a step in laying the groundwork for a broader economic union.

Pool photograph by Michael Euler

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and François Hollande, the French president, conferring on Thursday at a summit meeting of European leaders. "It's a good day for Europe," Mr. Hollande said.

The pact was hashed out in an all-night session of finance ministers that ended Thursday morning after France and Germany made significant compromises. Under the agreement, between 100 and 200 large banks in the euro zone will fall under the direct supervision of the European Central Bank.

A round of talks a week earlier broke up amid French-German discord over how many banks in the currency union should be covered by the new system.

In a concession to Germany, the finance ministers agreed that thousands of smaller banks would be primarily overseen by national regulators. But to satisfy the French, who wanted all euro zone banks to be held accountable, the E.C.B. would be able to take over supervision of any bank in the region at any time.

The agreement by the finance ministers, which still requires the approval of the European Parliament and some national parliaments including the German Bundestag, made it possible for E.U. leaders arriving here later Thursday to gather in a spirit unity.

“It’s a good day for Europe,” said François Hollande, the French president. “The crisis came from the banks, and mechanisms have been put in place that will mean nothing is as it was before.”

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the agreement was “a big step toward more trust and confidence in the euro zone.” The summit meeting could now focus “on strengthening economic coordination” and “set out a road map for the coming months,” she added.

In another measure to shore up the euro, the finance ministers approved the release of nearly €50 billion, or $65 billion, in further aid to Greece, including long-delayed payments, support that is crucial for the government to avoid defaulting on its debts.

“Today is not only a new day for Greece, it is indeed a new day for Europe,” Antonis Samaras, the Greek prime minister, said ahead of the summit meeting.

But threatening to spoil the upbeat atmosphere were questions over the future leadership of Italy, where the economy is contracting, debt levels are rising, and Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister, has threatened to try to reclaim the office in an election next year.

It remained unclear Thursday whether Mr. Berlusconi would run and, if that were to happen, whether he would campaign on promises to reverse reforms put in place by Mario Monti, the current prime minister. Even so, the re-emergence of Mr. Berlusconi — who attended a summit meeting of center-right parties in Brussels on Thursday — could destabilize markets and even rekindle the financial crisis.

The bank supervision plan was first discussed in June and wrapped up in a matter of months — record time by the glacial standards of E.U. rulemaking. The agreement should serve as a springboard for leaders to weigh further steps toward economic integration during their meeting.

Such measures could include a unified system, and perhaps shared euro area resources, to ensure failing banks are closed in an orderly fashion. This could be followed, in time, by measures intended to reinforce economic and monetary union, including, possibly, the creation of a shared fund that could be used to shore up the economies of vulnerable members of the euro zone.

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said the agreement on banking supervision “marks an important step towards a stable economic and monetary union, and toward further European integration.” But he noted that governments and the European Commission still had to work on the details of the supervision mechanism.

The new system should be fully operational by March 2014, but ministers left the door open for the E.C.B. to push that date back if the central bank would “not be ready for exercising in full its tasks.”

A series of compromises were needed for finance ministers to reach agreement on banking supervision.

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U.S. official: Syrian government fired Scud missiles at rebels

WASHINGTON -- The Syrian government has fired half a dozen Scud missiles at insurgents in recent days, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

The missiles were launched from near Damascus into rebel-held areas of northern Syria, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing intelligence information.

Although recent rebel advances have raised fears that Syrian President Bashar Assad might turn to chemical weapons, the official said there was no sign that the missiles carried chemical agents.

The use of Scud missiles would mark an escalation in the Syrian conflict, which has lasted more more than a year and a half.

Scuds, first developed by the Soviet Union, are hefty, notoriously inaccurate ballistic missiles. They are often labeled as “terror weapons.”

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he could not confirm the reports that Scud missiles had been used, but said that, “if true, this would be the latest desperate act from a regime that has shown utter disregard for innocent life.”

“The idea that the Syrian regime would launch missiles within its borders at its own people is stunning, desperate and a completely disproportionate military escalation,” Carney said.

He said Syrian government efforts to defeat the opposition with military force were failing as the rebels became more unified and organized. More than 100 countries reportedly recognized a Syrian opposition coalition Wednesday, shortly after President Obama stated that the group formed in November was the “legitimate representative” of the Syrian people.

“We are working with our international partners to help strengthen the opposition and to further isolate and sanction the Assad regime,” Carney said. “Again, if this -- if this proves to be true, it's just another identification of the depravity of Assad and his cronies.”

ALSO:

Syrian rebels gaining ground against Assad's air power

Egypt's opposition urges followers to vote 'no' on referendum

North Korea still a long way from a reliable weapon, experts say

Emily Alpert in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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Chinese Phone Packs All the Best Specs Into a Sexy Package

Oppo, the Chinese company making the best Blu-ray players you’ve never heard of, is making an Android smartphone that, well, it hopes you’ll hear about early next year.

The Oppo Find 5, unveiled Wednesday in Beijing, looks like a helluva phone, with damn near every awesome spec you can pack into a handset nowadays. It is the company’s first official foray into the U.S. phone market after years of making Blu-ray players praised by videophiles and audiophiles alike.

As the name suggests, the Find 5 has a 5-inch display with a 1080p display, something we saw on the impressive HTC Droid DNA. Inside of the Find 5′s sharply designed chassis, you’ll find Qualcomm’s speedy quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2GB of RAM, 16 gigs of storage and an NFC chip. Yes, the Droid DNA has the same internals. But Oppo one-ups that handset by giving the Find 5 a 13-megapixel rear shooter. There’s a 1.9-megapixel camera up front.

The phone uses Google’s Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system and, like Google’s Nexus 4, will run on HSPA+ and GSM networks but not LTE.

Although the Find 5, which will sell for $500 unlocked, will be capable of running on AT&T and T-Mobile networks, Oppo didn’t say whether the phone will actually be offered by those carriers. AT&T officials couldn’t be reached for comment, and T-Mobile had nothing to say. Still, the two companies’ logos appear on Oppo’s bare-bones U.S. website.

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“Lincoln,” “Les Miserables,” “Playbook” lead acting nominations

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Hollywood‘s actors cast their net wide on Wednesday, nominating performers from big awards contenders “Lincoln” and musical “Les Miserables” for Screen Actors Guild honors while also singling out the likes of Denzel Washington and Javier Bardem.

“Lincoln,” “Les Miserables” and comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” led the nominations for the SAG awards with four apiece, including the top prize of best movie ensemble cast.

Joining them with two nominations each were the cast of Iranian hostage drama “Argo” and, in a surprise choice, British comedy “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”

The awards from the Screen Actors Guild are among the most-watched honors during Hollywood film awards season leading up to the Academy Awards because actors make up the largest voting group when the Oscars come around in February.

SAG voters focus on performances rather than directing and writing, meaning that action and effects-heavy films like “The Hobbit” are usually sidelined.

Consequently, SAG largely shunned the expected Oscar contender “Zero Dark Thirty” about the U.S. hunt for Osama bin Laden, giving it just one nomination for Jessica Chastain’s performance as a CIA agent.

But the latest James Bond blockbuster “Skyfall” made it onto SAG‘s list, with nominations for its stunt ensemble and Spanish actor Bardem’s supporting turn as blond-haired villain Silva.

Other perceived Oscar-worthy movies, including slavery era Western “Django Unchained,” went unmentioned, while cult drama “The Master” had just one nomination – for actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Nicole Kidman made the best supporting actress list for her turn in the steamy but little-seen independent movie “The Paperboy,” while Britain’s Helen Mirren was recognized for her portrayal of Alfred Hitchcock’s long-suffering wife in “Hitchcock.”

The SAG awards will be given out in Los Angeles on January 27 in a live telecast on the TBS and TNT networks.

Golden Globe nominations are announced on Thursday and Oscar nominations will be revealed on January 10.

‘LINCOLN’ PICKS UP STEAM

“Lincoln,” director Steven Spielberg’s well-reviewed film about U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s battle to outlaw slavery, has been picking up multiple accolades from U.S. critics in the busy Hollywood awards season.

On Wednesday, it brought SAG nominations for lead actor Daniel Day-Lewis and supporting actors Sally Field as his wife, and Tommy Lee Jones as powerful Congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

Hugh Jackman was nominated for best actor while Anne Hathaway is in the race for her supporting role in the movie adaptation of hit stage musical “Les Miserables.”

Other actors nominated on Wednesday included the stars of quirky comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” – Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert DeNiro. John Hawkes and Helen Hunt also have a stake, for playing a disabled man and his sex therapist in heart-warming independent movie “The Sessions.”

“Being recognized by your peers is something I could only dream of happening and to be included in this group of actors is not only humbling but quite frankly, surreal,” Cooper, a first-time SAG nominees, said in a statement.

Washington, a two-time Oscar winner, was nominated for playing an alcoholic pilot in “Flight,” a role that has been largely overlooked in early critics award.

Perhaps the biggest surprise on Wednesday was “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” the story of a group of elderly Britons who retire to a ramshackle Indian hotel.

The film, which boasts a strong British cast including Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson and Bill Nighy, had two nominations – best ensemble and best supporting actress for Maggie Smith.

Smith also was nominated in SAG‘s television category for her role as a sarcastic countess in period drama “Downton Abbey.”

The popular British show was among the picks for ensemble acting in the TV category.

Other TV drama nominations went to the casts of “Boardwalk Empire,” “Homeland,” “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.”

In TV comedy, old favorites “30 Rock,” “Glee,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Modern Family,” “Nurse Jackie” and “The Office” were nominated for their ensemble casts.

(Editing by Xavier Briand and Bill Trott)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Police Commission eases LAPD's illegal immigrant policy

The Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday approved a plan from Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck to no longer turn over illegal immigrants arrested in low-level crimes to federal authorities for deportation.

The new rules, which are expected to go into effect early next month and affect about 400 people arrested each year, mark a significant move by the state's most influential local police agency to distance itself from federal immigration policies that Beck has said unfairly affects undocumented immigrants who are caught committing petty offenses.

For years, police departments have sent fingerprint information on every person arrested to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. Federal officials, in turn, use the fingerprints to identify people suspected of being in the country illegally and often ask local agencies to put a 48-hour hold -- a detainer in law enforcement jargon -- on people.

These detainers authorized police to keep suspected illegal immigrants in custody for 48 hours longer than they otherwise would have been held in order to give ICE officials time to take them into federal custody.

Until now, the LAPD honored all ICE detainer requests, regardless of what offense the person was suspected of committing. When Beck announced the outline of his plan in October, he said he supported the basic idea of cooperating with federal officials, but believed ICE officials had failed to distinguish between violent criminals and those accused of low-level offenses.

Under the terms of the new policy, the LAPD will continue to honor detainer requests for anyone arrested on suspicion of a felony offense, a misdemeanor charge with a bail above $5,000, or a vehicle violation with a bail of more than $2,500, according to a report presented to the commission at a meeting Tuesday. Documented gang members and people with previous felony convictions will also be detained regardless of their offense.

Otherwise, unless ICE officials can spell out special circumstances that require someone be held, the department will release people after they have been booked and ordered to appear in court for the alleged crime.

Several immigrant-rights advocates spoke out against the plan, claiming it did not do enough to protect illegal immigrants.

Commissioner John Mack called the plan "an enlightened first step," telling the critics that the policy "was not set in stone" and may be revised again in the future if police officials believe it is warranted.

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Getting Your DNA Scanned Now Costs Less Than an iPhone 5

The price of unlocking the secrets of your DNA has dropped to stocking-stuffer range as Google-backed 23andMe said today that a major new investment was allowing them to offer their personal gene scans for $99.

The company co-founded and run by Anne Wojcicki, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, announced Tuesday that it had raised $50 million in its latest round of venture capital funding. Wojcicki told WIRED the money was a “game-changer” because it allows the company to bring the scans down to $99 from the previous regular price of $299, effective today.

The goal, she said, was to reach 1 million customers by the end of 2013, up from 180,000 now. The point isn’t just to expand the customer base, but to expand the 80-person company’s database of genetic information. The more DNA data, the company hopes, the better the chances of making discoveries that reveal new connections between human genetics and human health.

“With a million individuals actively engaged, it really sets the stage for an era of molecular medicine,” says Wojcicki — an era that she and others who believe in the promise of personal genomics hope will mean medical decisions tailored to individuals based on their specific genetic makeup.

The scanning service offered by 23andMe doesn’t sequence a person’s entire 3 billion-letter genome. Instead, the scans look at one million sections along the length of a person’s DNA where research has located genetic variations that contribute to specific health risks and physical traits. The company analyzes those variations and reports back more than 200 findings, from whether you have a genetic predisposition to flush red when you drink alcohol to whether you carry the mutation that can cause cystic fibrosis in your children.

You also have the option to allow those findings — stripped of personally identifying information — to become part of 23andMe’s database. Though your genes are by definition personal information, Wojcicki says about 90 percent of customers opt in to share their results. This is good for 23andMe, since the profit potential of selling personal gene scans pales next to the possibility of fishing a major medical breakthrough out of that sea of DNA data.

But predicting the likelihood of such a breakthrough remains more art than science. When it launched five years ago, 23andMe made a splash both because of the Google family ties and because of the excitement surrounding then then-new field of personal genomics made possible by the radical drop in price of DNA sequencing. Since then, the cost of reading the As, Cs, Ts and Gs that encode life’s instructions has only gotten cheaper. But understanding what those instructions mean has proven more complicated than originally hoped.

Along with setbacks in the science, 23andMe itself has endured its share of troubles. From the outset, some critics complained the company overpromised how much insight its results really offered. The company has always made the disclaimer that its results were meant for “informational purposes” only and that no one should make any medical decisions without consulting a doctor. But such warnings weren’t enough for members of Congress, or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which warned 23andMe and several other companies in 2010 that its products qualified as medical tests and were therefore subject to the agency’s approval process.

Since then, however, 23andMe’s scans have remained for sale, even as the company has sometimes struggled not just with outside forces but to define its relevance as the promise of gene-based personalized medicine has been slower to materialize than some had hoped. Wojcicki says the company is still in discussions with the FDA and that she’s pleased with the agency’s willingness to stay engaged with the issues.

Her optimism also shows in the money that she and her husband both put up as part of the $50 million. Other backers behind this latest funding include New Enterprise Associates, Google Ventures and MPM Capital, all of which were already investors in 23andMe. The company also welcomed a new believer this round: Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, a major investor in Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Twitter, among other companies.

It will be interesting to track how 23andMe tries to convince more than 800,000 consumers that $now is the right time to get their DNA scanned, especially when so many shinier tech baubles beckon for about the same amount of money. But with $50 million and some of the heaviest heavyweights in Silicon Valley behind it, the company has a whole new chance to make the case that the future of medicine is not only here but available for the low, low price of 99 bucks.

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“Hobbit” actor McKellen has prostate cancer

LONDON (Reuters) – “The Hobbit” actor Ian McKellen said in an interview published on Tuesday that he had had prostate cancer for the last six or seven years, but added that the disease was not life-threatening.

McKellen, 73, played Gandalf in the hit “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy, and reprises the role in three prequels based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel “The Hobbit”.

The first of those, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”, recently had its world premiere in New Zealand, where it was shot under the directorship of Peter Jackson.

“I’ve had prostate cancer for six or seven years,” McKellen told the Daily Mirror tabloid. “When you have got it you monitor it and you have to be careful it doesn’t spread. But if it is contained in the prostate it’s no big deal.”

His representatives in London were not immediately available to comment on the interview.

“Many, many men die from it but it’s one of the cancers that is totally treatable,” added McKellen, one of Britain’s most respected actors who is also well known in Hollywood for appearances in the X-Men franchise.

“I am examined regularly and it’s just contained, it’s not spreading. I’ve not had any treatment.”

He admitted he feared the worst when he heard he had the disease.

“You do gulp when you hear the news. It’s like when you go for an HIV test, you go ‘arghhh is this the end of the road?’

“I have heard of people dying from prostate cancer, and they are the unlucky ones, the people who didn’t know they had got it and it went on the rampage. But at my age if it is diagnosed it’s not life threatening.”

“The Hobbit” opens in cinemas later this week.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Health Centers Find Opportunity in Brownfields

PHILADELPHIA — The community health center rising on a derelict corner here in West Philadelphia never would have broken ground if not for the asbestos inside the building that was demolished to make way for it. Because of the contamination, Spectrum Health Services received a $2 million federal cleanup grant, the first piece of a $14 million construction financing puzzle.

When complete, the 36,000-square-foot building will provide a new home for a health center that has been squeezed into a deteriorating strip mall nearby for decades. It will also be the latest in a nationwide trend to replace contaminated tracts in distressed neighborhoods with health centers, in essence taking a potential source of health problems for a community and turning it into a place for health care. In recent years, health care facilities have been built on cleaned-up sites in Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Oregon and California.

“These health care providers are getting good at it,” said Elizabeth Schilling, policy manager for Smart Growth America, an advocacy group. “They have internalized the idea that this is an opportunity for them.”

Because these sites are contaminated, many qualify for government tax credits and grants, providing health centers with vital seed money to build. Community health centers, by design, exist to serve populations in poor neighborhoods, where there also tend to be available but contaminated properties like old gas stations, repair shops and industrial sites.

In fact, many of the country’s 450,000 contaminated sites, known as brownfields, are in poor neighborhoods, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. These tracts are disproportionately concentrated in poor communities because contaminated sites are more difficult to redevelop if property values are depressed. Banks are often reluctant to finance construction on a property that might require a costly cleanup.

“In communities where the real estate market isn’t working that well, you end up with a brownfield,” said Jody Kass, executive director of New Partners for Community Revitalization, a brownfield advocacy group.

“It’s a Catch-22,” said Phyllis B. Cater, chief executive of Spectrum Health Services. “The environmental issues are significant and yet there are scarce resources for communities to do the cleanup and remediation that’s required.”

But if the state or federal government provides the first piece of financing, other funders are more likely to fall into step.

Community health centers, in particular, are under pressure to grow. By 2015, the number of Americans who rely on community health centers for care is expected to double to 40 million from the 20 million who relied on the centers in 2010, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers. The Affordable Care Act allocated $11 billion to expand these centers. Of that, $1.5 billion was allotted to construction.

But finding a viable site is not always easy. It took Spectrum 15 years to find its new home on Haverford Avenue. The original building, an aging medical office, went up for auction in 2007 after the owner was arrested on a tax evasion charge. Spectrum bought the property for $650,000. Ms. Cater speculated that if Spectrum hadn’t bought the site, it most likely would have fallen into disrepair like the decaying row houses and the dilapidated bodega across the street that Spectrum hopes to redevelop eventually.

Spectrum currently occupies 10,000 square feet in a rundown strip mall four blocks away. The center is divided among three crowded spaces, so employees must walk outside to get from the medical offices to the billing department. The treatment rooms are dreary and cramped, with holes in the drywall and collapsing ceiling panels.

“I’ve seen better centers in rural Mississippi. This is not how you support a community,” Ms. Cater said.

When it opens next summer, the new, three-story center will have 34 exam rooms, eight dental rooms, a spacious community center and a full-service laboratory. It will also employ twice as many people as the current facility, adding 66 jobs to Spectrum’s payroll.

The 50-year-old building was in poor shape, but it was the presence of asbestos that allowed Spectrum to qualify for the critical first piece of financing: a $2 million brownfield redevelopment grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The organization also received an additional $2 million H.U.D. loan that was tied to the brownfield grant, a $1.7 million redevelopment grant from Pennsylvania and $3.45 million in other loans.

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Latin music star Jenni Rivera believed dead in plane crash

Fans of Mexican-American singing star Jenni Rivera held a vigil Sunday night in Lynwood

MEXICO CITY — Mexican American singer Jenni Rivera, the "diva de la banda" whose commanding voice burst through the limits of regional Latin music and made her a cross-border sensation and the queen of a business empire, was believed to have died Sunday when the small jet carrying her and members of her entourage crashed in mountainous terrain.

Rivera, a native of Long Beach, was 43. Mexico's ministry of transportation did not confirm her death outright, but it said that she had been aboard the plane and that no one had survived the crash. Six others, including two pilots, also were on board.

"Everything suggests, with the evidence that's been found, that it was the airplane that the singer Jenni Rivera was traveling in," said Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, Mexico's secretary of communications and transportation. Of the crash site, Ruiz said: "Everything is destroyed. Nothing is recognizable."

Word of the accident ricocheted around the entertainment industry, with performer after performer expressing shock and grief. Fans gathered outside Rivera's four-acre estate in Encino.

"She was the Diana Ross of Mexican music," said Gustavo Lopez, an executive vice president at Universal Music Latin Entertainment, an umbrella group that includes Rivera's label. Lopez called Rivera "larger than life" and said that based on ticket sales, she was by far the top-grossing female artist in Mexico.

"Remember her with your heart the way she was," her father, Don Pedro Rivera, told reporters in Spanish on Sunday evening. "She never looked back. She was a beautiful person with the whole world."

Rivera had performed a concert in Monterrey, Mexico, on Saturday night — her standard fare of knee-buckling power ballads, pop-infused interpretations of traditional banda music and dizzying rhinestone costume changes.

At a news conference after the show, Rivera appeared happy and tranquil, pausing at one point to take a call on her cellphone that turned out to be a wrong number. She fielded questions about struggles in her personal life, including her recent separation from husband Esteban Loaiza, a professional baseball player.

"I can't focus on the negative," she said in Spanish. "Because that will defeat you. That will destroy you.... The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up."

Hours later, shortly after 3 a.m., Rivera is believed to have boarded a Learjet 25, which took off under clear skies. The jet headed south, toward Toluca, west of Mexico City; there, Rivera had been scheduled to tape the television show "La Voz" — Mexico's version of "The Voice" — on which she was a judge.

The plane, built in 1969 and registered to a Las Vegas talent management firm, reached 11,000 feet. But 10 minutes and 62 miles into the flight, air traffic controllers lost contact with its pilots, according to Mexican authorities. The jet crashed outside Iturbide, a remote city that straddles one of the few roads bisecting Mexico's Sierra de Arteaga national park.

Wreckage was scattered across several football fields' worth of terrain. An investigation into the cause of the crash was underway, and attempts to identify the remains of the victims had begun.

Rivera, a mother of five and grandmother of two, was believed to have been traveling with her publicist Arturo Rivera, who was not related to her, as well as with her lawyer, hairstylist and makeup artist; reports of their names were not consistent. Their identities were not confirmed by authorities. The pilots were identified as Miguel Perez and Alejandro Torres.

In the world of regional Latin music — norteño, cumbia and ranchera are among the popular niches — Rivera was practically royalty.

Her father was a noted singer of the Mexican storytelling ballads known as corridos. In the 1980s he launched the record label Cintas Acuario. It began as a swap-meet booth and grew into an influential and taste-making independent outfit, fueling the careers of artists such as the late Chalino Sanchez. Jenni Rivera's four brothers were associated with the music industry; her brother Lupillo, in particular, is a huge star in his own right.

Born on July 2, 1969, Rivera initially showed little inclination to join the family business. She worked for a time in real estate. But after a pregnancy and a divorce, she went to work for her father's record label and found her voice, literally and figuratively.

She released her first studio album in 2003, when she was 34.

Her path had not been easy, but rather than running from it, she wrote it into her music — domestic violence; struggles with weight; raising her children alone, or "sin capitan," without a captain. She was known for marathon live shows that left audiences exhilarated and exhausted; by the fifth hour of one recent performance, she was drinking straight from a tequila bottle and launching into a cover of "I Will Survive."

In a witty and sometimes baffling stew of Spanish and English, she sang about her three husbands, about drug traffickers, in tribute to her father, in tribute to her gynecologist.

She became, in a most unlikely way, a feminist hero among Latin women in Mexico and the United States and a powerful player in a genre of music dominated by men and machismo. Regional Mexican music styles had long been seen as limiting to artists, but Rivera shrugged off the labels and brought traditional-laced music — some of which sounded perilously close to polka — to a massive pop audience.

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