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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School shooting postpones Cruise premiere in Pa.


NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. premiere of the Tom Cruise action movie "Jack Reacher" is being postponed following the deadly Connecticut school shooting.


Paramount Pictures says "out of honor and respect for the families of the victims" the premiere won't take place Saturday in Pittsburgh, where "Jack Reacher" was filmed.


The premiere would've been Cruise's first U.S. media appearance since his split from Katie Holmes over the summer. It was to be more contained with select outlets covering and a location away from Hollywood or New York.


A proclamation ceremony for Cruise had been planned with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.


No new date for the premiere has been set. The movie opens Dec. 21.


Friday's massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school killed 20 children and several adults.


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The Neediest Cases: Disabled Young Man and His Protective Mother Deal With Life’s Challenges





Though he would prefer to put his socks on without his mother’s help, Zaquan West, 25, does not have a choice.







Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Joann West is a constant caretaker for her son, Zaquan. Though Ms. West works as a receptionist, the family fell behind on rent.




The Neediest CasesFor the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.


Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.








2012-13 Campaign


Previously recorded:

$3,104,694



Recorded Thursday:

$137,451



*Total:

$3,242,145



Last year to date:

$2,862,836




*Includes $596,609 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.


The Youngest Donors


If your child or family is using creative techniques to raise money for this year’s campaign, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line on Facebook or talk to us on Twitter.





A genetic disorder has encumbered Mr. West all his life, but he has needed assistance with this particular task since only last year. In November 2011, he had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on his left thigh that was as big as a football, but he was left less flexible.


“He doesn’t do well with disability, with the label,” his mother, Joann West, 55, said. “He doesn’t tell people that he has a disability. If they can’t see it, they just can’t see it.”


When her son was 13 months old, Ms. West learned he had neurofibromatosis, a disorder that causes tumors to grow on the nerves and, in some cases, to infringe on vital organs, or as was the case last year, to become malignant. It also creates large bumps on the skin known as nodules.


At ages 5 and 8, Zaquan had operations to remove neurofibromatosis clusters that were eating away at his left hip bone. The disease has left his left leg a few inches shorter than his right. After each operation, he had to relearn how to walk.


Because of his physical disability, he was placed in a special-education class at school and given the same homework every night, his mother said.


“I advocated for him,” Ms. West said. “I kept fighting, because he was no dummy. He was physically impaired, not mentally. I went out of my way to try to give him a better life. The system would have failed him more than it did if I hadn’t stepped in.” Her efforts led to his being moved from a special-education classroom to a regular one in second grade.


Ms. West, a single mother, acknowledges that her protective instincts made her a very controlling parent, and she did not allow Zaquan out of the house much, which limited his friendships.


“I was afraid for him,” she said. “The streets, they don’t care about your disability.”


When Mr. West entered high school, it was the first time he had truly been away from his mother’s watchful eyes. He began skipping class, often going to the park or wandering their Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, neighborhood with truant friends. He eventually dropped out of school.


“It was just me being out on my own and making my own choices,” Mr. West recalled.


Though she did not agree with her son’s decisions, Ms. West said that his need to explore was in some ways a result of her actions. “At a point, I stepped back,” she said, “to allow him to do certain things on his own and do what he wanted to do.”


In 2007, a couple of years after he dropped out, Mr. West joined the Door, an organization focused on empowering young people to reach their potential. There, he obtained his high school equivalency diploma.


Today, Mr. West is job hunting so that he can help pay his and his mother’s expenses.


But paying the monthly bills has become a struggle, Ms. West said, in part because of a recent change in her budget. In August, after an increase in income, they stopped receiving $324 a month in food stamps. The additional income did not cover all their expenses, however, and Ms. West eventually fell behind in the rent on their apartment.


Ms. West, who has been employed in various administrative jobs, currently works as a receptionist for Howie the Harp Advocacy Center, an agency that provides employment help to people with psychiatric disabilities. Her annual salary is about $25,000 before taxes. Her son receives $646 in Social Security disability benefits. After the family’s food stamps were cut off, Mr. West applied individually, and he now receives $200 in food stamps each month.


With the addition of Mr. West’s disability benefits and food stamps, their net monthly income is $2,213. Their contribution for the Section 8-subsidized apartment Ms. West has lived in for the past 30 years is $969.


Knowing she was in need of help, Ms. West’s boss told her about the Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. And the society drew $1,598 from the fund to cover her debt.


Ms. West remains a constant caretaker for her independent-minded son, who, she says, has come to accept her help grudgingly. She says that even if they are not on speaking terms after a disagreement, she is there to lend him a hand.


Both are continuing to deal with the inevitable challenges: Mr. West is awaiting word from doctors on whether a new growth in his lungs is cancerous. But one of his greatest assets, given all that he has overcome, is that he is comfortable in his own skin.


“I’m just always going to be me,” he said, “so why deal with somebody else?”


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Halle Berry joining the ranks of secretive home sellers

Hot Property columnist Lauren Beale talks with Bret Parsons of the John Aaroe Group.









Actress Halle Berry is trying to sell her Hollywood Hills West house. The home's motor court was the site of a Thanksgiving Day altercation between her former boyfriend, model Gabriel Aubry, and her fiance, actor Olivier Martinez, that landed both men in the hospital.


The property is being shown and marketed off the Multiple Listing Service in what is known as a pocket listing for $15 million. The five-bedroom house has 5,900 square feet of living space and sits on more than half an acre with a 1,400-square-foot guesthouse, a swimming pool and spa.


Berry bought the home in 2005 from former "Malcolm in the Middle" star Frankie Muniz for $5.995 million. She and Aubry had been involved in a custody battle.








Berry, 46, has starred in the "X-Men" movies and "Die Another Day" (2002). She won an Oscar for best actress for "Monster's Ball" (2001). The former model and Martinez starred this year in the film "Dark Tide." Berry also starred with Tom Hanks this year in "Cloud Atlas."


Billy Rose of the Agency in Beverly Hills has the pocket listing, according to area real estate agents. He should be familiar with the property. He is also a onetime owner of the house, property records show.


Malibu pad is celebrity magnet


A beachfront house in Malibu that was rented at different times this summer to Usher and Sean Combs is for sale at $16.75 million. The house was listed at $100,000 a month but the amount each singer paid was not disclosed.


The Cape Cod-inspired two story, built in 1994 and sitting on more than half an acre, has 80 feet of beach frontage, a front lawn and gardens. Features include skylights, an office, a bar, a wine room, four fireplaces, a sauna, two master suites, four additional bedrooms and a total of six bathrooms in 5,653 square feet of living space.


The property last changed hands in 1985 for $1.3 million, public records show.


Wendy Carroll of Westside Estate Agency in Malibu is the listing agent.


Another notch in his beach belt


Oracle Corp. head Larry Ellison is buying yet another house along Malibu's Carbon Beach. This will be his 10th residential purchase along the coveted stretch of sand called Billionaires' Beach for its wealthy homeowners.


The seller is film and TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer.


The beachfront house, which was not listed for sale, has 70 feet of ocean frontage, three bedrooms, three bathrooms and 2,239 square feet of living space, public records show. The sale price is not known at this time. The assessed value of the property is more than $3.65 million.


Ellison already owns the houses on either side of Bruckheimer's home. Nearby neighbors include entertainment mogul David Geffen, former Dodgers Chief Executive Jamie McCourt and business magnate and former junk bond king Michael Milken.


In addition to the Carbon Beach houses, Ellison owns commercial property along the sand that includes the Nobu Malibu restaurant as well as other Malibu properties.


Ellison, 68, is ranked the third-wealthiest person in the U.S. by Forbes, with a net worth of $41 billion. Known as a real estate trophy hunter, he made an estimated $500-million deal this year to buy 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai.


Bruckheimer, 67, is executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning reality competition show "The Amazing Race" (2001-present) and multiple "CSI" series. His film work includes the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.


The one-third-acre property previously sold in 1987 for $2.4 million.


No real estate agents are involved in the sale.





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U.S. will send 400 troops to Turkey









INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey—





The U.S. will send two batteries of Patriot missiles and 400 troops to Turkey as part of a NATO force meant to protect Turkish territory from potential Syrian missile attack, the Pentagon said Friday.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signed a deployment order en route to Turkey from Afghanistan calling for 400 U.S. soldiers to operate two batteries of Patriots at undisclosed locations in Turkey, Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters flying with Panetta.

Germany and the Netherlands have already agreed to provide two batteries of the U.S.-built defense systems and send up to 400 German and 360 Dutch troops to man them, bringing the total number of Patriot batteries slated for Turkey to six. The German Parliament is expected to formally agree to the deployment on Friday. NATO foreign ministers endorsed Turkey's request for the Patriots on Nov. 30.

A number of Syrian shells have landed in Turkish territory since the conflict in the Arab state began in March 2011. Turkey has condemned the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad, supported Syrian rebels and provided shelter to Syrian refugees. Ankara is particularly worried that Assad may get desperate enough to use chemical weapons.

During a brief stop at Incirlik Air Base, Panetta told U.S. troops that Turkey might need the Patriots, which are capable of shooting down shorter-range ballistic missiles as well as aircraft.

He said he approved the deployment “so that we can help Turkey have the kind of missile defense it may very well need to deal with the threats coming out of Syria,” he said.

Panetta did not mention how soon the two Patriot batteries will head to Turkey or how long they might stay.

Earlier this week in Berlin, German Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Link told lawmakers that current plans call for the missile sites to be stationed at Kahramanmaras, about 60 miles north of Turkey's border with Syria. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Thursday that the Netherlands, Germany and the U.S. are working closely with Turkey “to ensure that the Patriots are deployed as soon as possible.” But he predicted they would not become operational before the end of January. Turkey is a founding member of NATO.

At Incirlik Air Base, about 60 miles north of the Syrian border, an Air Force member asked Panetta what the U.S. would do if Syria used chemical or biological weapons against the rebels. Panetta said he could not be specific in a public setting, but added, “we have drawn up plans” that give President Barack Obama a set of options in the event that U.S. intelligence shows that Syria intends to use such weapons.

Asked by another Air Force member whether he thought Syria would “react negatively” to the Patriot deployments, Panetta said, “I don't think they have the damn time to worry” about the Patriots since the regime's leaders are struggling to stay in power.

He indicated that Syria's reaction to the Patriots was not a major concern to him.

Separately, NATO will deploy its Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft, or AWACS, to Turkey on a training exercise this month, said a NATO official who spoke on condition of anonymity because alliance rules do not allow him to speak on the record.

He said the exercise was not connected to the deployment of the Patriots.

The aircraft, which can detect launches of ground-to-ground missiles, will exercise command and control procedures as well as test the connectivity of various NATO and Turkish communications and data sharing systems, the official said.

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Sweet and Lowe: How a captivating Twitter feed sealed Rob Lowe’s comeback






By Virginia Heffernan


@RobLowe follows 135 people on Twitter. Among them is not @HilaryASwank, the Oscar-winning ex-wife of his brother, @ichadlowe.






@RobLowe does, however, follow @ikimlowe, the new wife of his brother, who helpfully identifies herself on the site as “wife of @ichadlowe.” Would @HilaryASwank, a formidable actor who does not use Twitter very often, have consented to live in her lesser-known husband’s Twitter shadow? Perhaps not. Perhaps that’s why they div—


But what am I doing? This is where Twitter can lead a person: to deranged, speculative pointless nosiness. To mindlessly customizing a version of Us Weekly magazine by reading between the Twitter lines of who follows whom, who tags whom, who seeks whose attention with tags and hashtags.


So forget that. I’m just going to keep following @RobLowe. His Twitter feed is one for the ages, and he’s on a tear, having just hit half a million followers. And I swear I follow Rob Lowe for the epigrams and jokes—why else?—though, yes, I once had a poster of the matinee idol from “St. Elmo’s Fire” on my wall. (But only because I learned that science had proven that he and Jaclyn Smith were the most perfectly symmetrical, beautiful humans ever to exist—and who ever would exist. It was a duty of citizenship in the human race to have a poster!)


Not long after “St. Elmo’s Fire,” @RobLowe, the record reflects, had a speedy fall after an early-adopter DIY sex tape (1988! Paris Hilton’s was not ’til 2003!). As Lowe’s first-rate autobiography reports, this was part of a bigger personal unraveling into promiscuity and dissipation on an NBA/Lohan scale. Eventually Lowe found deliverance in sobriety (which he names as one of his interests on Twitter) and the love of a good woman, @Sheryl_Lowe (business) or @Sheryllowe61 (personal).


Lowe also evidently found something in Twitter. As his career has done more than rebound—it has fully realized itself, with his comic-stilted-earnest-inimitable performances on “The West Wing,” “Brothers & Sisters” and, now, “Parks and Recreation”—he has built a sturdy and complementary Twitter feed.


Lowe’s Twitter presence seals his comeback. It is freewheeling, wide-ranging and among his best work. The onetime incorrigible gadfly, who might have died outside the Viper Room like River Phoenix or been left howling at the moon like Charlie Sheen, now knows who he is, has a gift for observational humor and lives his life with something that looks like joy.


Lowe recently retweeted this observation from the Telegraph’s Damian Thompson:


More:


Another Lowe tweet:


Which of us–especially those of us who were born in the 1960s–doesn’t feel like saying that aloud every year?


And speaking of Lowe’s vintage, it’s appealing that he’s not afraid to use our generation’s corny locutions on young-skewing Twitter. As he put it recently:


The merciless “pumped” kills me. Do people never leave the slang (or bands?) of their 20s? Lowe is big on “dude,” too.


At the same time, Lowe seems to enjoy aging:


He wrote this last month, referring to Chris Traeger, his character on “Parks and Recreation,” who exercises without cease, gunning for eternal life. In Traeger’s intense specificity—his needs in beverages, for example, are so idiosyncratic as to require paragraphs of instructions—he is a perfect new-sitcom archetype. One thing he is not is cool.


And neither is Lowe cool in his Twitter feed. Often he is sending out blessings to his followers or his family, or reveling in mere existence, with the hashtag #LoveLife. Lowe’s autobiography makes clear that the Handsome Man, a cultural slot in which he found himself early on, invites way too much resentment if he doesn’t start spoofing himself with gusto. It’s imperative he find the joke in life, and the dignity in himself, or he’ll yield to prettiness and silliness, as well as drugs and sex tapes.


Look on that @RobLowe Twitter feed, and learn from it, ye handsome millennials!


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Tolkien class at Wis. university proves popular


MILWAUKEE (AP) — The vast collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts initially sold senior Joe Kirchoff on Marquette University, so when the school offered its first course devoted exclusively to the English author, Kirchoff wanted in. The only problem: It was full and he wasn't on the literature track.


Undaunted, the 22-year-old political science and history major lobbied the English department and others starting last spring and through the summer and "kind of just made myself a problem," he said. His persistence paid off.


"It's a fantastic course," said Kirchoff, a Chicago native. "It's a great way to look at something that's such a creative work of genius in such a way you really come to understand the man behind it."


He and the 31 other students can now boast of their authority about the author who influenced much of today's high fantasy writing. The course was taught for the first time this fall as part of the university's celebration of the 75th anniversary of "The Hobbit" being published. And class wrapped up just before the film, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," was released Friday.


The class, which filled up fast with mostly seniors who had first dibs, looked at Tolkien as a whole, not just the popular "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit." Students took their final exam this week, and the course was so well received, Marquette is considering more in the future.


"It's the best class I've had in 27 years here ... for student preparation, interest and enthusiasm," said English professor Tim Machan. "And I can throw out any topic and they will have read the material and they want to talk about the material."


Marquette is one of the main repositories of Tolkien's drafts, drawings and other writings — more than 11,000 pages. It has the manuscripts for "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit," as well as his lesser-known "Farmer Giles of Ham" and his children's book "Mr. Bliss." Marquette was the first institution to ask Tolkien for the manuscripts in 1956 and paid him about $5,000. He died in 1973.


Other significant collections are at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in England and Wheaton College in Illinois.


Though Tolkien classes aren't unusual nationwide, Marquette students had the added bonus of being able to visit Tolkien's revisions, notes, detailed calendars, maps and watercolors on site at the school's archive. And they got a lesson from the school's archivist Bill Fliss.


"One of the things we wanted to impress upon the students was the fact that Tolkien was a fanatical reviser," said Fliss said. "He never really did anything once and was finished with it."


Chrissy Wabiszewski, a senior English major, described Tolkien's manuscripts as art.


"When you get down and look at just his script and his artwork in general, it all kind of flows together in this really beautiful, like, cumulative form," Wabiszewski said. "It's cool. It is just really cool to have it here."


The class also looked at Tolkien's poetry, academic articles and translations of medieval poems; talked about the importance of his writers' group, the Inklings; and explored what it meant to be a writer at that time.


"We've ... tried to think about continuities that ran through everything he did," Machan said. His students were also required to go to three lectures that were part of Marquette's commemoration.


"The Hobbit," a tale of homebody Bilbo Baggins' journey, is set in Tolkien's fictional realm of Middle-earth and takes place 60 years before "The Lord of the Rings." The movie released Friday is the first of the trilogy, with "The Hobbit: There and Back Again" set for release on Dec. 13, 2013, and a third film to come out in the summer of 2014.


Most of the students were just finishing elementary school when the first "Lord of the Rings" film was released 11 years ago.


Kirchoff said he started reading "The Hobbit" and the "Lord of the Rings" when he was in fourth grade, before the movies came out. He said the movies have introduced others to Tolkien's ideas, making his love for Tolkien's fantasy worlds more socially acceptable.


"The movies were fantastic enough and engaging enough to coexist in my mind with the literature I really do love," he said.


Wabiszewski said it's clear her classmates weren't just taking the class as a filler.


"I definitely expected the enthusiasm from everybody but just the knowledge that everybody brought into the class, it's cool," she said. "We really have a smart group of people in that class who have a lot to offer."


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The New Old Age Blog: Hospital Alarms Fail to Prevent Injury, Study Finds

When it comes to protecting older people from falls, it can take a long time to figure out what helps and sometimes an even longer time to take action against things that were supposed to help but don’t.

A case in point: the so-called safety rails on hospital and nursing home beds. Their hazards, as The New Old Age reported more than two years ago, are well documented. They are intended to keep sick, drugged or confused people from climbing or falling out of bed. What they actually do is make falls more dangerous; they also trap patients between the rails and the mattress until they asphyxiate, causing hundreds of deaths annually.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is finally investigating these hazards, with findings due soon.

Alarms — sensors that alert aides or nurses when someone at risk of falling attempts to get out of bed or up from a chair or toilet — sound better, right? Lots of health care facilities thought so.

Use of these alarms has increased “over the past 10 or 15 years as the problems of physical restraints and bed rails became better known,” said Ronald Shorr, who directs geriatric research at the V.A. Medical Center in Gainesville, Fla. “This was the next wave in fall prevention.”

The trouble is, hospital bed alarms don’t appear to reduce falls, according to the study that Dr. Shorr just published in The Annals of Internal Medicine.

Lots of patients, of all ages, fall in hospitals, and about a quarter of those falls cause injuries. They also cost hospitals money, because Medicare will no longer reimburse facilities for treating injuries from falls that in theory shouldn’t have happened.

Though there aren’t statistics on the number of systems, it is rare these days to find a large hospital that doesn’t use alarms, in some cases built right into the beds.

Yet “their efficacy hadn’t been established,” Dr. Shorr told me in an interview. The few studies that reported reduced falls from alarms were small, lacked control groups, or didn’t continue for very long. Dr. Shorr and his colleagues set out to remedy those shortcomings.

Over 18 months, they documented falls among patients in 16 medical and surgical units, with a combined 349 beds, at Methodist Healthcare-University Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. Half those units were randomly designated “usual care.” In the other eight, the “intervention” units, Dr. Shorr and study coordinator Michelle Chandler held repeated education sessions to explain the alarms — in this case, flexible pads made by Bed-Ex and widely-used — and demonstrate their use in beds and on chairs and commode seats.

Ms. Chandler visited the intervention units daily — the staff started calling her “Mrs. Falls” — and even brought fresh alarm pads and help set them up to encourage their use.

The intervention worked, in that those units used the alarms far more often. But when the researchers tallied up the falls among the 27,672 patients (half of them over age 63) in these units — controlling for many variables, including not only demographic factors but staffing levels and psychotropic drug regimens — they found the alarms had no significant effect.

Patients in the units that used alarms more heavily fell just as often as patients in the control units that used alarms much less frequently. (The numbers: 5.62 falls per 1,000 patient-days, a measure of how many people spent how long in the hospital, versus 4.56 falls in the control units, not a statistically significant difference.)

There were no fewer injuries in the more-alarmed units, nor any less use of physical restraints.

There were likely higher costs, though. A Bed-Ex monitor and cables cost about $350 at the time, and each disposable sensor pad cost $23.

Why didn’t the alarms help? Dr. Shorr hypothesized that the staff developed what he called alarm fatigue. “How many times a week do you hear a car alarm go off?” he asked. “You become desensitized.”

But it is also possible, he said, that when the alarms sounded and the nurses scampered, “the patients who weren’t alarmed fell more often.”

My own 2 cents: If an alarm sounds when someone stirs, is any hospital or nursing home so well-staffed that someone can materialize within seconds? Does a staff become less vigilant when patients have alarms and are presumed – wrongly, it seems – to be safer?

Nursing homes also frequently use alarms, and while this hospital data might not apply in another setting, Dr. Shorr said his findings made him skeptical about their effectiveness there, too.

So we probably shouldn’t feel reassured about our elders’ safety when they are in a hospital, alarms or no alarms. Even younger people, recovering from surgery and feeling the effects of anesthesia or sedatives, can and do fall.

“The more eyes on your loved one, the better,” said Dr. Shorr. “And it’s best if they’re your eyes.”


Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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Retailers scramble to woo shoppers in final days before Christmas









The holiday crunch is on at the mall, and Toys R Us is opening all its stores for 88 straight hours until Christmas Eve. And, for the first time, Macy's is staying open at most stores for 48 hours nonstop the final weekend before Christmas.


In the rush to woo shoppers, merchants this year are upping the ante. Banana Republic is giving away six Fiat cars. Kohl's is picking up the tab for a shopper in each of its stores every day until Christmas Eve. And Sport Chalet will have a scuba-diving Santa at some of its stores Saturday.


Across the nation, retailers are scrambling to draw customers into stores and online in the last days leading up to Christmas, in the hope that shoppers will deliver a last-minute cash infusion at a crucial time for merchants. After a successful Black Friday weekend that netted a record $59.1 billion in sales, stores have seen an unwelcome drop-off in business.





What happens in the next two weeks may be vital not only for merchants but also for the nation's fragile economic recovery, because consumer spending of all kinds makes up about 70% of the U.S. economy.


This weekend and next hold the key to boom or bust. "This holiday, the highs have been higher and the lows lower for retailers," industry analyst Marshal Cohen said. "That means we need a good, strong finish to come out even."


The National Retail Federation is sticking to its prediction of $586.1 billion this year, up 4.1% from last year.


With an extra weekend this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, many stores say that traffic has plummeted in the last few weeks as shoppers gave their credit cards a rest after splurging on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Independent boutiques and national retailers alike are anxiously waiting for a surge of shoppers at the very end.


Liz Williamson and last-minute shoppers like her may dictate the outcome. With a dozen family members and friends on her holiday list, "I have to get started now or I'm going to end up running through the malls on Christmas Eve," said the Los Angeles accountant, who was hunting at the Americana at Brand shopping center. "It's get-it-done time."


Shopper Colleen Chang, 26, hasn't started shopping either. "I've started feeling a little crazy," said the Los Angeles leasing agent, who has budgeted $400. "You have to know exactly what you want because pretty soon there's just nothing left and you have to take what you can get."


"Procrastinators will be the secret weapon for either a ho-ho holiday or a ho-hum one," Cohen said.


With 11 days to go, shipping deadlines loom for online orders. Christmas parties are in full swing. Advertising blares. Last-minute sales scream for attention. Holiday music won't let you alone. Time is running out.


Retailers have plenty of shoppers to win over. Nearly a fifth of consumers have yet to start holiday shopping, while 21% plan to drop into stores again after taking a break from post-Thanksgiving splurging, the research firm NPD Group estimated Thursday.


"Every day feels like a sprint. Across the board we see a lot of traffic right now both online and in store," said Brian Hanover, a spokesman at Sears, which is rolling out another round of door-busters Friday and Saturday.


Despite the looming fiscal cliff in Washington and the prospect of higher taxes next year, retailers expect that people will open their wallets for last-minute gifts.


Kevin Jewelers in the Glendale Galleria is hoping for the traditional surge of procrastinators after a disappointing two weeks, diamond consultant Grace Figues said.


"We're still waiting for the rush," she said. "Lately it's been high-low, high-low just like a normal month. We would welcome the craziness."


At the Best Buy store in Westfield Culver City, general manager Margie Kenney said this weekend is "tremendously important" and will be "one of our busiest weekends after Black Friday."


Both bricks-and-mortar and Web merchants will probably enjoy a boost during the next two Saturdays, which typically hold the No. 3 and No. 2 spots for top shopping days of the year after Black Friday, said Bill Martin of retail technology firm ShopperTrak.


"There's still plenty of shopping left," he said. "Some people are just willing to outlast the retailer and wait for the next wave of serious discounts."


At the Americana at Brand, Stella Yu of Glendale had just begun searching for gifts for her family and close friends. But the 25-year-old graduate student, a veteran last-minute shopper, is already mentally preparing herself for the thick crowds, jammed parking lots and general mall madness as the clock ticks down to Christmas.


"I hate humans during holiday shopping," Yu sighed, "especially the ones with kids."


shan.li@latimes.com





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Fed to tie interest rate to job gains









WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve said it will continue aggressive measures to stimulate the economy and made a major policy shift to focus more directly on boosting the job market.


Fed policymakers said they would keep interest rates at historically low levels until unemployment drops below 6.5%.


It's likely to keep the Fed's short-term interest rates at historically low levels well into 2015.





The move marked the first time that Fed policymakers have tied themselves to an explicit unemployment goal. It appeared to end the long-running debate within the central bank over how aggressively to target the nation's lagging job market.


The jobless figure was 7.7% in November, and the Fed's new forecast doesn't see that dropping below 6.5% for about three years.


The decision was made easier by the slow pace of inflation, which remains below 2% on an annual basis. Critics of the Fed's policies have argued that efforts to stimulate the economy would lead to inflation, but so far, that has not happened, and Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has argued that the risk is much smaller than the dangers posed by high unemployment.


"The conditions now prevailing in the job market represent an enormous waste of human and economic potential," Bernanke said Wednesday during a news conference after the central bank's last policy meeting of the year.


Under its new policy, the Fed would let its inflation outlook rise to 2.5% before taking action to curtail it — giving the nation's employers more time to create jobs.


The move to link interest rate policies directly to the jobless rate is meant to give the public and businesses greater confidence about how long interest rates will remain exceptionally low, and that by itself could act as a kind of stimulus to the economy.


The new push got a warm welcome from both economists and Wall Street.


Economist Bernard Baumohl at the Economic Outlook Group said the previous time frame for action was "self-defeating because it provided no incentive for employers to start spending any time soon to avoid higher interest rates. It just didn't create any sense of urgency to accelerate investments or increase the rate of hiring."


The Fed has kept its federal funds rate, which influences rates for credit cards, mortgages and business and other loans, near zero since December 2008. Unemployment has been near 8% or above since early 2009.


Bernanke and his colleagues also decided Wednesday to continue the controversial large-scale bond-buying programs in the new year. Specifically, the Fed will buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities and $45 billion of long-term Treasury bonds a month.


The purchases are intended to drive down long-term interest rates to spur spending, investment and lending, boosting economic activity as well as hiring.


The central bank launched the purchase of mortgage-backed securities in September to give a lift especially to the housing market, which Fed policymakers said Wednesday "has shown further signs of improvement." They said they would continue to buy bonds until the job market "improved substantially."


The Fed, which has a dual mandate to maximize employment and keep inflation in check, also forecast a somewhat stronger growth for next year.


Its policy statement Wednesday noted a slowing in U.S. business investment and "significant downside risks" in the global economy, but made no mention of the so-called fiscal cliff, the automatic federal budget cuts and tax hikes scheduled to take effect beginning Jan. 1.


In a 75-minute news conference, however, Bernanke said it was clearly evident that concerns about the fiscal impasse already had hurt the economy, weakening business investments and consumer confidence.


He said that whatever the Fed did, it was not enough to offset the full effects of a U.S. economy failing to resolve fiscal issues. But he was cautiously optimistic: "I actually believe that Congress will come up with a solution, and I certainly hope they will."


For years, the Fed didn't give any indication of its future interest-rate path and only in recent years signaled what it might do by using somewhat vague language. In June 2011, the Fed said that it would keep rates exceptionally low for an "extended period." In August 2011, policymakers said no change was likely until at least mid-2013. And that date has since been extended twice, to late 2014 and then mid-2015.





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Familiar names line up for Golden Globe noms


BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — A familiar lineup of Hollywood awards contenders are expected among Golden Globe nominations, whose prospects include past Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis, Helen Mirren, Robert De Niro and Sally Field.


Nominations come out Thursday morning for the 70th Globes ceremony, Hollywood's second-biggest film honors after the Academy Awards.


Among potential contenders are two-time Oscar winners Day-Lewis and Field for Steven Spielberg's Civil War saga "Lincoln," whose Globe possibilities also include past Oscar recipient Tommy Lee Jones.


Two-time Oscar winner De Niro is in the running for the lost-soul romance "Silver Linings Playbook," along with the film's lead performers, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.


The field of contenders is loaded with other Oscar recipients such as Mirren and Anthony Hopkins for "Hitchcock," Philip Seymour Hoffman for "The Master," Helen Hunt for "The Sessions," Marion Cotillard for "Rust and Bone," Russell Crowe for "Les Miserables" and Alan Arkin for "Argo."


One of the year's big action hits, the James Bond adventure "Skyfall," could bring the latest Globe nomination for past Oscar winner Javier Bardem, who elevates his super-villain role into one of the year's most entertaining performances.


Presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a relatively small group of about 90 reporters covering Hollywood for overseas outlets, the Globes sometimes single out newcomers to Hollywood's awards scene. Hilary Swank's Globe win for 1999's "Boys Don't Cry" helped put her on the map on the way to winning her first Oscar.


The possibilities this time include veteran French performers Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, who star as an elderly couple in "Amour," and first-time actors Quvenzhane Wallis and Dwight Henry for the low-budget critical darling "Beasts of the Southern Wild."


Globe acting winners often go on to receive the same prizes at the Oscars. All four Oscar winners last season — lead performers Meryl Streep of "The Iron Lady" and Jean Dujardin of "The Artist" and supporting players Octavia Spencer of "The Help" and Christopher Plummer of "Beginners" — won Globes first.


The Globes have a spotty record predicting which films might go on to earn the best-picture prize at the Academy Awards, however.


The Globes feature two best-film categories, one for drama and one for musical or comedy. Last year's Oscar best-picture winner, "The Artist," preceded that honor with a Globe win for best musical or comedy.


But in the seven years before that, only one winner in the Globe best-picture categories — 2008's "Slumdog Millionaire" — followed up with an Oscar best-picture win.


Along with 14 film prizes, the Globes hand out awards in 11 television categories.


Jodie Foster, a two-time Oscar and Globe winner for "The Accused" and "The Silence of the Lambs," will receive the group's Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the Jan. 13 ceremony.


Tina Fey, a two-time Globe TV winner for "30 Rock," and Amy Poehler, a past nominee for "Parks and Recreation," will host the show, which airs live on NBC.


Fey and Poehler follow Ricky Gervais, who was host the last three years and rubbed some Hollywood egos the wrong way with sharp wisecracks about A-list stars and the foreign press association itself.


With stars sharing drinks and dinner, the Globes have a reputation as one of Hollywood's loose and unpredictable awards gatherings. Winners occasionally have been off in the restroom when their names were announced, and there have been moments of onstage spontaneity such as Jack Nicholson mooning the crowd or Ving Rhames handing over his trophy to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon.


___


Online:


http://www.goldenglobes.org


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Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil


James Edward Bates for The New York Times


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







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




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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


About 10,000 chemicals are allowed to be added to foods, about 3,000 of which have never been reviewed for safety by the F.D.A., according to Pew’s research. Of those, about 1,000 never come before the F.D.A. unless someone has a problem with them; they are declared safe by a company and its handpicked advisers.


“I worked on the industrial and consumer products side of things in the past, and if you take a new chemical and put it into, say, a tennis racket, you have to notify the E.P.A. before you put it in,” Mr. Neltner said, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency. “But if you put it into food and can document it as recognized as safe by someone expert, you don’t have to tell the F.D.A.”


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Software pioneer John McAfee returns to U.S.









Anti-virus software company founder John McAfee arrived in the U.S. late Wednesday after being deported from Guatemala, where he had sought to evade police questioning in the killing of a man in neighboring Belize.


The American Airlines commercial jet carrying McAfee landed in Miami shortly before 4 p.m. Pacific time, said Miami International Airport spokesman Greg Chin.


A short time later, a posting on McAfee's website announced that he was at a hotel in Miami's upscale South Beach neighborhood. He said he arrived by taxi after a group of customs or immigration agents, he didn't know which, escorted him to an airport taxi stand. McAfee has frequently communicated through the website.





"I have no phone, no money, no contact information," the post said. Reached by telephone at the hotel, the 67-year-old McAfee told the Associated Press that he couldn't talk because he was waiting for a call from his girlfriend, 20-year-old Belizean Samantha Vanegas.


Vanegas had accompanied him when he was on the run, but did not go with him to the U.S.


On a blog he has been posting for the last two weeks, McAfee wrote, "I have been forcibly separated from Sam," but he said she would be coming to the United States later.


McAfee sat in a coach-class seat on the flight, which took off at midafternoon from Guatemala City, according to the airline.


An FBI spokesman in Miami, James Marshall, told the AP in an email that the agency was not involved with McAfee's return to the U.S.


Authorities from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals office and the U.S. attorney's office did not immediately respond to questions about whether McAfee would be questioned or detained in the U.S. They said there was no active arrest warrant for McAfee that would justify taking him into custody.


His expulsion from Guatemala marked the last chapter in a strange, monthlong odyssey to avoid police questioning about the November killing of American expatriate Gregory Viant Faull, who lived a couple of houses away from McAfee's compound on Ambergris Caye, off Belize's Caribbean coast.


McAfee has acknowledged that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them days before some of the dogs were poisoned, but denies killing Faull.


He was in hiding in Belize for weeks after police pronounced him a person of interest in the killing. Belizean authorities have urged him to show up for questioning, but have not lodged any formal charges against him. McAfee has said he feared he would be killed if he turned himself in to Belizean authorities.





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Ravi Shankar, sitar master, dies at 92









Ravi Shankar was already revered as a master of the sitar in 1966 when he met George Harrison, the Beatle who became his most famous disciple and gave the Indian musician-composer unexpected pop-culture cachet.


Suddenly the classically trained Shankar was a darling of the hippie movement, gaining widespread attention through memorable performances at the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock and the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.


Harrison called him "the godfather of world music," and the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin once compared the sitarist's genius to Mozart's. Shankar continued to give virtuoso performances into his 90s, including one in 2011 at Walt Disney Concert Hall.





PHOTOS: Ravi Shankar | 1920 - 2010


Shankar, 92, who introduced Indian music to much of the Western world, died Tuesday at a hospital near his home in Encinitas. Stuart Wolferman, a publicist for his record label Unfinished Side Productions, said Shankar had undergone heart valve replacement surgery last week.


Well-established in the classical music of his native India since the 1940s, he remained a vital figure on the global music stage for six decades. Shankar is the father of pop music star Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar, his protege and a sitar star in her own right.


Before the 1950s, Indian classical music — with its improvised melodic excursions and complex percussion rhythms — was virtually unknown in America. If Shankar had done nothing more than compose the movie scores for Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray's "Apu" trilogy in the 1950s, he "would be remembered and revered," Times music critic Mark Swed wrote last fall.


PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012


Shankar was on a path to international stardom during the 1950s, playing the sitar in the Soviet Union and debuting as a soloist in Western Europe and the United States. Two early albums also had considerable impact, "Three Classical Ragas" and "India's Master Musician."


During his musical emergence in the West, his first important association was with violinist Menuhin, whose passion for Indian music was ignited by Shankar in 1952. Their creative partnership peaked with their "West Meets East" release, which earned a Grammy Award in 1967. The recording also showed Shankar's versatility — and the capacity of Indian music to inspire artists from different creative disciplines.


He presented a new form of classical music to Western audiences that was based on improvisation instead of written compositions. Shankar typically played in the Hindustani classical style, in which he was accompanied by a player of two tablas, or small hand drums. Concerts in India that often lasted through the night were generally shortened to a few hours for American venues as Shankar played the sitar, a long-necked lute-like stringed instrument.


At first, he especially appealed to fans of jazz music drawn to improvisation. He recorded "Improvisations" (1962) with saxophonist Bud Shank and "Portrait of a Genius" (1964) with flutist Paul Horn, gave lessons to saxophonist John Coltrane (who named his saxophone-playing son Ravi), and wrote a percussion piece for drummer Buddy Rich and Alla Rakha.


On the Beatles' 1965 recording "Norwegian Wood," Harrison had played the sitar and met Shankar the next year in London.


Shankar was "the first person to impress me," among the impressive people the Beatles met, "because he didn't try to impress me," Harrison later said. The pair became close and their friendship lasted until Harrison's death in 2001.


Harrison was instrumental in getting Shankar booked at the now legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. They partnered in organizing the Concert for Bangladesh and were among the producers who won a Grammy in 1972 for the subsequent album. They toured together in 1974, and Harrison produced Shankar's career-spanning mid-1990s boxed set, "In Celebration."


But Shankar came away from his festival appearances with mixed feelings about his rock generation followers. He expressed hope that his performances might help young people better understand Indian music and philosophy but later said "they weren't ready for it."


"All the young people got interested … but it was so mixed up with superficiality and the fad and the drugs," Shankar told The Times in 1996. "I had to go through several years to make them understand that this is a disciplined music, needing a fresh mind."


When Shankar was criticized in India as a sellout for spreading his music in the West, he responded in the early 1970s by lowering his profile and reaffirming his classical roots. He followed his first concerto for sitar and orchestra in 1971 with another a decade later.


"Our music has gone through so much development," Shankar told The Times in 1997. "But its roots — which have something to do with its feelings, the depth from where you bring out the music when you perform — touch the listeners even without their knowing it."


In the 1980s and '90s, Shankar maintained a busy performing schedule despite heart problems. He recorded "Tana Mana," an unusual synthesis of Indian music, electronics and jazz; oversaw the American premiere of his ballet, "Ghyanshyam: The Broken Branch"; and collaborated with composer Philip Glass on the album "Passages."





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Pope Benedict offers blessings with his first tweet






VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – After weeks of anticipation, Pope Benedict sent his first tweet on Wednesday.


“Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.”






The tweet was sent when the 85-year-old pope tapped on a touch screen at the end of his weekly general audience in the Vatican before thousands of people.


(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar dies at 92


NEW DELHI (AP) — With an instrument perplexing to most Westerners, Ravi Shankar helped connect the world through music. The sitar virtuoso hobnobbed with the Beatles, became a hippie musical icon and spearheaded the first rock benefit concert as he introduced traditional Indian ragas to Western audiences over nearly a century.


From George Harrison to John Coltrane, from Yehudi Menuhin to David Crosby, his connections reflected music's universality, though a gap persisted between Shankar and many Western fans. Sometimes they mistook tuning for tunes, while he stood aghast at displays like Jimi Hendrix's burning guitar.


Shankar died Tuesday at age 92. A statement on his website said he died in San Diego, near his Southern California home with his wife and a daughter by his side. The musician's foundation issued a statement saying that he had suffered upper respiratory and heart problems and had undergone heart-valve replacement surgery last week.


Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also confirmed Shankar's death and called him a "national treasure."


Labeled "the godfather of world music" by Harrison, Shankar helped millions of classical, jazz and rock lovers discover the centuries-old traditions of Indian music.


"He was legend of legends," Shivkumar Sharma, a noted santoor player who performed with Shankar, told Indian media. "Indian classical was not at all known in the Western world. He was the musician who had that training ... the ability to communicate with the Western audience."


He also pioneered the concept of the rock benefit with the 1971 Concert For Bangladesh. To later generations, he was known as the estranged father of popular American singer Norah Jones.


His last musical performance was with his other daughter, sitarist Anoushka Shankar Wright, on Nov. 4 in Long Beach, California; his foundation said it was to celebrate his 10th decade of creating music. The multiple Grammy winner learned that he had again been nominated for the award the night before his surgery.


"It's one of the biggest losses for the music world," said Kartic Seshadri, a Shankar protege, sitar virtuoso and music professor at the University of California, San Diego. "There's nothing more to be said."


As early as the 1950s, Shankar began collaborating with and teaching some of the greats of Western music, including violinist Menuhin and jazz saxophonist Coltrane. He played well-received shows in concert halls in Europe and the United States, but faced a constant struggle to bridge the musical gap between the West and the East.


Describing an early Shankar tour in 1957, Time magazine said. "U.S. audiences were receptive but occasionally puzzled."


His close relationship with Harrison, the Beatles lead guitarist, shot Shankar to global stardom in the 1960s.


Harrison had grown fascinated with the sitar, a long-necked string instrument that uses a bulbous gourd for its resonating chamber and resembles a giant lute. He played the instrument, with a Western tuning, on the song "Norwegian Wood," but soon sought out Shankar, already a musical icon in India, to teach him to play it properly.


The pair spent weeks together, starting the lessons at Harrison's house in England and then moving to a houseboat in Kashmir and later to California.


Gaining confidence with the complex instrument, Harrison recorded the Indian-inspired song "Within You Without You" on the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," helping spark the raga-rock phase of 60s music and drawing increasing attention to Shankar and his work.


Shankar's popularity exploded, and he soon found himself playing on bills with some of the top rock musicians of the era. He played a four-hour set at the Monterey Pop Festival and the opening day of Woodstock.


Though the audience for his music had hugely expanded, Shankar, a serious, disciplined traditionalist who had played Carnegie Hall, chafed against the drug use and rebelliousness of the hippie culture.


"I was shocked to see people dressing so flamboyantly. They were all stoned. To me, it was a new world," Shankar told Rolling Stone of the Monterey festival.


While he enjoyed Otis Redding and the Mamas and the Papas at the festival, he was horrified when Hendrix lit his guitar on fire.


"That was too much for me. In our culture, we have such respect for musical instruments, they are like part of God," he said.


In 1971, moved by the plight of millions of refugees fleeing into India to escape the war in Bangladesh, Shankar reached out to Harrison to see what they could do to help.


In what Shankar later described as "one of the most moving and intense musical experiences of the century," the pair organized two benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden that included Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr.


The concert, which spawned an album and a film, raised millions of dollars for UNICEF and inspired other rock benefits, including the 1985 Live Aid concert to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia and the 2010 Hope For Haiti Now telethon.


Ravindra Shankar Chowdhury was born April 7, 1920, in the Indian city of Varanasi.


At the age of 10, he moved to Paris to join the world famous dance troupe of his brother Uday. Over the next eight years, Shankar traveled with the troupe across Europe, America and Asia, and later credited his early immersion in foreign cultures with making him such an effective ambassador for Indian music.


During one tour, renowned musician Baba Allaudin Khan joined the troupe, took Shankar under his wing and eventually became his teacher through 7 1/2 years of isolated, rigorous study of the sitar.


"Khan told me you have to leave everything else and do one thing properly," Shankar told The Associated Press.


In the 1950s, Shankar began gaining fame throughout India. He held the influential position of music director for All India Radio in New Delhi and wrote the scores for several popular films. He began writing compositions for orchestras, blending clarinets and other foreign instruments into traditional Indian music.


And he became a de facto tutor for Westerners fascinated by India's musical traditions.


He gave lessons to Coltrane, who named his son Ravi in Shankar's honor, and became close friends with Menuhin, recording the acclaimed "West Meets East" album with him. He also collaborated with flutist Jean Pierre Rampal, composer Philip Glass and conductors Andre Previn and Zubin Mehta.


"Any player on any instrument with any ears would be deeply moved by Ravi Shankar. If you love music, it would be impossible not to be," singer Crosby, whose band The Byrds was inspired by Shankar's music, said in the book "The Dawn of Indian Music in the West: Bhairavi."


Shankar's personal life, however, was more complex.


His 1941 marriage to Baba Allaudin Khan's daughter, Annapurna Devi, ended in divorce. Though he had a decades-long relationship with dancer Kamala Shastri that ended in 1981, he had relationships with several other women in the 1970s.


In 1979, he fathered Norah Jones with New York concert promoter Sue Jones, and in 1981, Sukanya Rajan, who played the tanpura at his concerts, gave birth to his daughter Anoushka.


He grew estranged from Sue Jones in the 80s and didn't see Norah for a decade, though they later re-established contact.


He married Rajan in 1989 and trained young Anoushka as his heir on the sitar. In recent years, father and daughter toured the world together.


The statement she and her mother released said, "Although it is a time for sorrow and sadness, it is also a time for all of us to give thanks and to be grateful that we were able to have him as part of our lives."


When Jones shot to stardom and won five Grammy awards in 2003, Anoushka Shankar was nominated for a Grammy of her own.


Shankar himself won three Grammy awards and was nominated for an Oscar for his musical score for the movie "Gandhi." His album "The Living Room Sessions, Part 1" earned him his latest Grammy nomination, for best world music album.


Despite his fame, numerous albums and decades of world tours, Shankar's music remained a riddle to many Western ears.


Shankar was amused after he and colleague Ustad Ali Akbar Khan were greeted with admiring applause when they opened the Concert for Bangladesh by twanging their sitar and sarod for a minute and a half.


"If you like our tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing more," he told the confused crowd, and then launched into his set.


___


Nessman reported from Bangkok. Associated Press writer Julie Watson in San Diego contributed to this report.


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The New Old Age Blog: The Gift of Reading

This is the year of the tablet, David Pogue of The Times has told us, and that may be good news for seniors who open holiday wrappings to find one tucked inside. They see better with tablets’ adjustable type size, new research shows. Reading becomes easier again.

This may seem obvious — find me someone over 40 who doesn’t see better when fonts are larger — but it’s the business of science to test our assumptions.

Dr. Daniel Roth, an eye specialist and clinical associate professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., offered new evidence of tablets’ potential benefits last month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

His findings, based on tests conducted with 66 adults age 50 and over: older people read faster (a mean reading speed of 128 words per minute) when using an iPad, compared to a newspaper with the same 10-point font size (114 words per minute).

When the font was increased to 18 points — easy to do on an iPad — reading speed increased to 137 words per minute.

“If you read more slowly, it’s tedious,” Dr. Roth said, explaining why reading speed is important. “If you can read more fluidly, it’s more comfortable.”

What makes the real difference, Dr. Roth theorizes, is tablets’ illuminated screen, which heightens contrast between words and the background on which they sit.

Contrast sensitivity — the visual ability to differentiate between foreground and background information — becomes poorer as we age, as does the ability to discriminate fine visual detail, notes Dr. Kevin Paterson, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, who recently published a separate study on why older people struggle to read fine print.

“There are several explanations for the loss of sensitivity to fine detail that occurs with older age,” Dr. Paterson explained in an e-mail. “This may be due to greater opacity of the fluid in the eye, which will scatter incoming light and reduce the quality of the projection of light onto the retina. It’s also hypothesized that changes in neural transmission affect the processing of fine visual detail.”

Combine these changes with a greater prevalence of eye conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy in older adults, and you get millions of people who cannot easily do what they have done all their lives — read and stay connected to the world of ideas, imagination and human experience.

“The No. 1 complaint I get from older patients is that they love to read but can’t, and this really bothers them,” Dr. Roth said. The main option has been magnifying glasses, which many people find cumbersome and inconvenient.

Some words of caution are in order. First, Dr. Roth’s study has not been published yet; it was presented as a poster at the scientific meeting and publicized by the academy, but it has not yet gone through comprehensive, rigorous peer review.

Second, Dr. Roth’s study was completed before the newest wave of tablets from Microsoft, Google, Samsung and others became available. The doctor made no attempt to compare different products, with one exception. In the second part of his study, he compared results for the iPad with those for a Kindle. But it was not an apples to apples comparison, because the Kindle did not have a back-lit screen.

This section of his study involved 100 adults age 50 and older who read materials in a book, on an iPad and on the Kindle. Book readers recorded a mean reading speed of 187 words per minute when the font size was set at 12; Kindle readers clocked in at 196 words per minute and iPad readers at 224 words per minute at the same type size. Reading speed improved even more drastically for a subset of adults with the poorest vision.

Again, Apple’s product came out on top, but that should not be taken as evidence that it is superior to other tablets with back-lit screens and adjustable font sizes. Both the eye academy and Dr. Roth assert that they have no financial relationship with Apple. My attempts to get in touch with the company were not successful.

A final cautionary note should be sounded. Some older adults find digital technology baffling and simply do not feel comfortable using it. For them, a tablet may sit on a shelf and get little if any use.

Others, however, find the technology fascinating. If you want to see an example that went viral on YouTube, watch this video from 2010 of Virginia Campbell, then 99 years old, and today still going strong at the Mary’s Woods Retirement Community in Lake Oswego, Ore.

Ms. Campbell’s glaucoma made it difficult for her to read, and for her the iPad was a blessing, as she wrote in this tribute quoted in an article in The Oregonian newspaper:

To this technology-ninny it’s clear
In my compromised 100th year,
That to read and to write
Are again within sight
Of this Apple iPad pioneer

Caregivers might be delighted — as Ms. Campbell’s daughter was — by older relatives’ response to this new technology, a potential source of entertainment and engagement for those who can negotiate its demands. Or, they might find that old habits die hard and that their relatives continue to prefer a book or newspaper they can hold in their hands to one that appears on a screen.

Which reading enhancement products have you used, and what experiences have you had?

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Michigan puts limits on unions









NEW YORK —- Labor relations in the Midwest reached a new level of acrimony as Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder abruptly signed legislation placing limits on unions, setting up a bitter political battle that could resonate nationwide.


It's a stunning development for a blue state that's been known as a place friendly to labor, where autoworkers and their families from Detroit to Saginaw have benefited from generous union contracts. An estimated 15,000 workers descended on the state Capitol in Lansing on Tuesday to protest against the bills, scuffling at times with police and conservatives who also set up shop at the Capitol.


House members passed two bills that would make Michigan a "right to work" state, essentially prohibiting union security agreements, which make union membership or fees a condition of employment. The bills, which covered private sector and public sector employees, had passed the state Senate last week.





Snyder, a Republican, signed both bills in private Tuesday afternoon, hailing the legislation as a victory for Michigan workers and a way to bring more jobs to the state.


"This is a major day in Michigan's history," he said at a news conference. "This is an opportunity for unions to step up and say how they can provide the best value to workers in our state."


The legislation comes as workplace tensions grow across the country.


While employees making low wages at companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and McDonald's Corp. are protesting to demand higher wages, businesses are increasing the number of lockouts they impose on workers. And in the last two years, union supporters have converged on state capitols in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio to oppose bills that restricted their power.


Now, labor groups from around the country are watching what happens in Michigan, where labor groups have vowed to overturn the law and vote Snyder out of office by 2014. If Michigan, which voted for President Obama over native son Mitt Romney by 8 percentage points, becomes a right-to-work state permanently, others could follow suit.


"Michigan could prove defining," said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at UC Berkeley. "What happens here, given the role of unions historically in Michigan, and the larger political implications of right-to-work, could mean a lot."


The bills came as a surprise to many in labor, especially after recent victories at the ballot box. Gov. Snyder had initially said he was not interested in pursuing right-to-work laws, because they affected a relatively small number of Michiganders.


But he said that Proposal 2, a labor-backed referendum on the November ballot, "triggered the dialogue" about labor issues and led him to ultimately support anti-union legislation. The proposal would have enshrined collective bargaining rights in the state's constitution, but it was rejected by voters by a large margin.


"I asked labor leaders not to move forward with the ballot proposal because I knew it could trigger a discussion that could lead to right-to-work being a divisive issue," he said. "Unfortunately, they moved forward, it became divisive, and it was time to step up and take a leadership position."


It's unlikely the Legislature would have had enough votes to pass the bills in January, when the Legislature will still be in Republican control but more moderate, said Roland Zullo, a research scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Labor and Industrial Relations. The legislative approval, and Snyder's backing, signal that the partisan discord paralyzing the federal government is present on a local level too.


"There's retribution on many levels here," Zullo said. "It would have been easy for the current political party to walk away and say it is done, but instead, during this lame duck session when they feel they have the votes, they're pushing through a right-to-work law, allowing no debates."


Even before the legislation passed Tuesday, labor leaders were brainstorming ways to reverse the bills. The right-to-work legislation is attached to appropriations bills, so it can't simply be reversed in a referendum. But it could be reversed in a citizen's initiative in 2014, the same year that Snyder would be running for reelection.


"While it was disappointing that Snyder rammed this divisive 'tea party' legislation through we are considering all options that are on the table," said Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the labor-funded Workers' Voice. "Whether it is the available ballot initiative option, or Snyder's reelection itself, he will strongly hear the voices of Michiganders in 2014."


Unions have had mixed results overturning the slate of anti-labor laws that have been passed in the last two years. In Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill limiting collective bargaining for public sector employees, the law is still being challenged in various courts. An effort to recall Walker failed.


Labor had more success in Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich signed a bill in early 2011 that restricted collective bargaining rights for public employees. Unions were able to repeal the bill through a referendum in November 2011.


Anger against Kasich and Ohio Republicans may have helped President Obama win in Ohio in November.


Unions are popular in some parts of Michigan, where they had guaranteed pensions, benefits and high wages for decades in the auto industry. Although they were blamed by some for bankrupting the auto industry during the recession, they have regained trust by agreeing to a number of concessions with the Big Three automakers, said Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor and industry group for the Center for Automotive Research.


"A lot of people are currently benefiting from the United Auto Workers' bargaining, or have in the past," Dziczek said.


Conservative groups hailed the passage of the bills as an economic boon for Michigan, which was plagued by some of the highest unemployment rates in the nation during the recession.


"In addition to greater freedom for Michigan's workers, the right-to-work law will provide significant economic benefits for the state's workers and small businesses," Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, said in a statement.


Michigan probably won't see the repercussions of the bills for a few years. That's because the right-to-work legislation only goes into effect when unions renegotiate contracts with management. For many autoworkers, that won't happen until 2015.


alana.semuels@latimes.com





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Eastern Congo rebels thrive on fear, chaos









Los Angeles Times

RUTSHURU, Democratic Republic of Congo — The rebels materialized out of the moist, heavy air, startling the woman as she tended her crops in the lush volcanic hills near the Rwandan border.


They wanted a bag of salt. No salt, and they'd kill her.








"You just do what they say," said Solange, a widow struggling to support a family in the midst of war.


To people like her who live in eastern Congo's North Kivu province, the M23 fighters who have taken control of their region are bandits, not rebels. After they seized Solange's village of Rutshuru in July and plundered all her beans, she fled south to the provincial capital, Goma.


It would prove to be no refuge. The rebels and the violence followed her.


The awesome serenity of the cloud-swathed emerald hills, twittering with bird life, home to mountain gorillas, is almost deep enough to erase, for a moment, successive waves of gruesome violence.


The region, an important source of minerals used in laptops and cellphones, was swept up in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Since then, it has become the scene of one of the great tragedies of the last century: Wars fueled by a toxic blend of resource riches, ethnic hatred and interfering neighbors have killed 5 million people.


In recent years, the area settled into a fragile peace. But militias still drain the country's wealth. There now are fears that eastern Congo could spiral into another long and bloody conflict.


United Nations experts say Rwanda armed and commanded M23, which rebelled against the Congolese army in April, and directly supported the rebels' attack on Goma.


Rwanda has been accused of backing militias and fueling conflict in the region for years, but it denies interfering. It has a security interest because Hutu militias responsible for the 1994 genocide fled into eastern Congo, where they continue to mount attacks. And with few mineral resources of its own, Rwanda has a strong economic interest in the region.


Among M23's reputed leaders is Bosco Ntaganda, a commander nicknamed the Terminator who was indicted in July by the International Criminal Court on suspicion of atrocities including murder, rape, sexual slavery and pillaging.


The M23 political leaders wear shiny silk suits, with labels like "High Class" left ostentatiously on the sleeve. They made Rutshuru their base, imposed compulsory weekend cleanup brigades for the entire population, planted grass around the administrative building and put up signs condemning corruption. They made the town look like a miniature copy of Rwanda, a country so tidy that all plastic bags are banned and seized at the border.


They also looted villages and killed an undetermined number of people.


Solange is 35 and belongs to the Nande tribe, the main ethnic group in North Kivu. Her husband was a government soldier who earned $55 a month before his death three years ago from malaria. They had no children.


On the farm, she grew cassava and beans to sell in the local market and always had plenty to eat. "Life was good," she said. After her husband's death, she had to support not only her family, including her parents and a younger sister with children, but her late husband's family too. In all, there were 15 mouths to feed.


M23 disrupted all that.


After fleeing to Goma, she stayed at a friend's house. She registered with an aid agency, hoping to get food assistance, but never received any.


"It's very difficult. Sometimes we don't have enough food," said Solange, who preferred not to use her last name out of concern for her safety.


Goma's idyllic lakeside setting could be a tourist haven in a parallel universe. But in this one, teenage boys and grimy men push heavy loads of water, wooden poles or potatoes. Women pound cassava leaves or fry tennis-ball-size lumps of dough in bubbling oil.





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