In Brazil's cracolandias , roving hordes of lost souls









SAO PAULO, Brazil — Between the high-rises in the dark center of this megacity, a swarm of people covers an entire block. They are in constant, aimless motion, glazed eyes and dirty faces illuminated repeatedly by small flashes of fire.


This is cracolandia, or crack land, and the horde is one of many moving settlements of homeless drug addicts that dominate this part of town. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, live here, sleeping and sometimes dying on the streets as other Paulistanos, residents of the fast-moving and gritty city, step past and over them on the way to work or Christmas shopping.


The men beg, hustle or recycle trash, while many of the women sell their bodies. Some shelters are available, but many of the addicts prefer not to go. Police might claim a nearby corner, then stand by and watch without making arrests.





"I had always heard about cracolandia, that you could always get high there, you could live your life and get whatever you wanted," says Tiago Bussulom Moraes, 23, who gave up on treating his addiction two years ago and took a bus here from his nearby hometown of Campinas.


"I could go back to treatment, or home, but I'm staying here," he says. "Crack, it takes hold of you. It makes you do things you don't want to do. And I regret it. But this is the life I've chosen."


Brazil is dealing with what officials call a crack epidemic, affecting Brazilians of all ages and confounding government efforts to deal with it. Almost a year after a high-profile police effort to clean up Sao Paulo's cracolandia as part of a revitalization program for the historic center, the outposts remain, but in a number of shifting locations rather than one large one.


"I've seen no improvements and some things are getting worse," said William Damiao Quirino, who has been working as a doorman and security guard downtown for six years. "Trying to clean up this or that corner isn't working. The only thing I think can work is a concerted community effort, involving residents too, to try to get these people treatment."


Crack is cheap and readily available in Brazil, as is cocaine, the drug from which it is made. Compared with other parts of the world, homeless addicts here can meet their basic needs relatively easily. Some restaurants provide food and water. There is community. And it's rarely so cold that sleeping outside is intolerable.


As crack has taken hold in Brazil over the last decade, cracolandias have popped up all around the country, from the Amazon jungle in the distant northwest to nearby Rio de Janeiro.


The best estimates are that there were about 1.5 million crack users in Brazil in 2005 and many more now.


Like cocaine and marijuana, crack is illegal in Brazil, but authorities are dealing with it more as a public health crisis than a criminal matter. Health specialists look to treatment techniques developed abroad, including in the United States, but have also learned that a "war on drugs" approach can be expensive and ineffective, said Telmo Ronzani, a specialist in drugs and public health at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora.


In 2011, President Dilma Rousseff announced a $1.9-billion plan to battle crack, largely through expanded treatment and education. The local government in Rio de Janeiro has forced underage users into treatment, and some drug traffickers there even halted crack sales, claiming to be concerned about the effect on the community. But addicted children and adults remain on the streets.


"This is a serious and difficult public problem, and could never be solved quickly. At best, it can be attacked in the medium and long term," Ronzani said. "But if we actually want the situation to improve, authorities need to enact an immediate and effective public solution that involves expanding availability to treatment and improving it."


Free treatment does exist. Adelson Pereira, 48, spends most of his nights in a public shelter a few miles from the city center that offers Narcotics Anonymous-type treatment. But tonight he is in cracolandia, going through trash looking for cans to sell, his eyes yellow and bulging.


"I made a mistake," he says sadly, referring to his decision to ditch the shelter for a few days and slip back into drugs. "It's good there, there's food, there's a bed, there's classes, and you can't use drugs inside. But it's 2,500 men, and a lot of people don't want to spend time in a place like that."


He worked as a welder and took his first hit of crack eight years ago, he says. "I passed out. It was too much. And after that" — he pronounces his words slowly — "it started to dominate me." He no longer speaks to his ex-wife but sometimes gets to see his daughters, ages 5 and 7, no younger than some residents of cracolandia.


"I've seen 6-year-olds, 8-year-olds, many of whom are forced to beg by their parents, and then there are the runaway teens that may have been beaten at home," he says.


The life is ugly, and cheap. A rock of crack, which can weigh about a quarter of a gram, costs less than $2.50; a prostitute can be had for as little as $5.


Though cracolandia has some of the city's most beautiful architecture, and sits alongside up-and-coming neighborhoods downtown, the persistence of a community of addicts, as well as access to relatively valuable trash, keeps the area attractive to the homeless.


Police have started arriving at certain corners from time to time, shifting the groups around, but life goes on largely as usual.


"When I see a 15-year-old girl, pregnant, and smoking crack, as a doctor I just can't say that's OK," said Dr. Arthur Guerra at the University of Sao Paulo. "In that kind of case, implementing involuntary internment might be the best option … but the population shouldn't expect magical solutions from the government. This also has to involve the city, families, NGOs, schools and companies. And we need prevention and education programs for the long term."


Locals live in tense harmony with the homeless, as the area fills up during the business day and then empties out to grim scenes at night. Feet from where Pereira rifles for cans, commuters coming out of the subway station step around a barefoot man on his knees, hands outstretched, wailing in despair.


"It's horrible. It's really difficult, because we see these people going through this and there's nothing we can do," says Dalva Assis, who runs a construction and electricity company downtown and spends her days walking between work sites. "They've taken over a plaza in front of one of my projects, and so I'm waiting to hear back on a request we've filed for the police to set up a base there."


Moraes says a friend who moved here with him was killed for robbing the wrong people in an attempt to get a fix. He agrees that if treatment were better, more people might accept it.


"But you're never going to solve the problem of those of us who want to keep using drugs. Crack is too powerful," Moraes says.


"What they should do is take us and just put us all in one area and let us be, so the population doesn't have to watch us using. People shouldn't have to see us living like this."


Bevins is a special correspondent.





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Facebook releases ‘Poke’ for the iPhone to compete with Snapchat









Title Post: Facebook releases ‘Poke’ for the iPhone to compete with Snapchat
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Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ashton Kutcher filed court papers Friday to end his seven-year marriage to actress Demi Moore.


The actor's divorce petition cites irreconcilable differences and does not list a date that the couple separated. Moore announced last year that she was ending her marriage to the actor 15 years her junior, but she never filed a petition.


Kutcher's filing does not indicate that the couple has a prenuptial agreement. The filing states Kutcher signed the document Friday, hours before it was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.


Kutcher and Moore married in September 2005 and until recently kept their relationship very public, communicating with each other and fans on the social networking site Twitter. After their breakup, Moore changed her name on the site from (at)mrskutcher to (at)justdemi.


Kutcher currently stars on CBS' "Two and a Half Men."


Messages sent to Kutcher's and Moore's publicists were not immediately returned Friday.


Moore, 50, and Kutcher, 34, created the DNA Foundation, also known as the Demi and Ashton Foundation, in 2010 to combat the organized sexual exploitation of girls around the globe. They later lent their support to the United Nations' efforts to fight human trafficking, a scourge the international organization estimates affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.


Moore was previously married to actor Bruce Willis for 13 years. They had three daughters together — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle — before divorcing in 2000. Willis later married model-actress Emma Heming in an intimate 2009 ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands that attended by their children, as well as Moore and Kutcher.


Kutcher has been dating former "That '70s Show" co-star Mila Kunis.


The divorce filing was first reported Friday by People magazine.


___


Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP.


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Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct


C.J. Gunther for The New York Times


Dr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct.







For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs go after an aberration involving a cancer gene fundamental to tumor growth. Many scientists see this as the beginning of a new genetic age in cancer research.




Great uncertainties remain, but such drugs could mean new treatments for rare, neglected cancers, as well as common ones. Merck, Roche and Sanofi are racing to develop their own versions of a drug they hope will restore a mechanism that normally makes badly damaged cells self-destruct and could potentially be used against half of all cancers.


No pharmaceutical company has ever conducted a major clinical trial of a drug in patients who have many different kinds of cancer, researchers and federal regulators say. “This is a taste of the future in cancer drug development,” said Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. “I expect the organ from which the cancer came from will be less important in the future and the molecular target more important,” he added.


And this has major implications for cancer philanthropy, experts say. Advocacy groups should shift from fund-raising for particular cancers to pushing for research aimed at many kinds of cancer at once, Dr. Brawley said. John Walter, the chief executive officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, concurred, saying that by pooling forces “our strength can be leveraged.”


At the heart of this search for new cancer drugs are patients like Joe Bellino, who was a post office clerk until his cancer made him too sick to work. Seven years ago, he went into the hospital for hernia surgery, only to learn he had liposarcoma, a rare cancer of fat cells. A large tumor was wrapped around a cord that connects the testicle to the abdomen. “I was shocked,” he said in an interview this summer.


Companies have long ignored liposarcoma, seeing no market for drugs to treat a cancer that strikes so few. But it is ideal for testing Sanofi’s drug because the tumors nearly always have the exact genetic problem the drug was meant to attack — a fusion of two large proteins. If the drug works, it should bring these raging cancers to a halt. Then Sanofi would test the drug on a broad range of cancers with a similar genetic alteration. But if the drug fails against liposarcoma, Sanofi will reluctantly admit defeat.


“For us, this is a go/no-go situation,” said Laurent Debussche, a Sanofi scientist who leads the company’s research on the drug.


The genetic alteration the drug targets has tantalized researchers for decades. Normal healthy cells have a mechanism that tells them to die if their DNA is too badly damaged to repair. Cancer cells have grotesquely damaged DNA, so ordinarily they would self-destruct. A protein known as p53 that Dr. Gary Gilliland of Merck calls the cell’s angel of death normally sets things in motion. But cancer cells disable p53, either directly, with a mutation, or indirectly, by attaching the p53 protein to another cellular protein that blocks it. The dream of cancer researchers has long been to reanimate p53 in cancer cells so they will die on their own.


The p53 story began in earnest about 20 years ago. Excitement ran so high that, in 1993, Science magazine anointed it Molecule of the Year and put it on the cover. An editorial held out the possibility of “a cure of a terrible killer in the not too distant future.”


Companies began chasing a drug to restore p53 in cells where it was disabled by mutations. But while scientists know how to block genes, they have not figured out how to add or restore them. Researchers tried gene therapy, adding good copies of the p53 gene to cancer cells. That did not work.


Then, instead of going after mutated p53 genes, they went after half of cancers that used the alternative route to disable p53, blocking it by attaching it to a protein known as MDM2. When the two proteins stick together, the p53 protein no longer functions. Maybe, researchers thought, they could find a molecule to wedge itself between the two proteins and pry them apart.


The problem was that both proteins are huge and cling tightly to each other. Drug molecules are typically tiny. How could they find one that could separate these two bruisers, like a referee at a boxing match?


In 1996, researchers at Roche noticed a small pocket between the behemoths where a tiny molecule might slip in and pry them apart. It took six years, but Roche found such a molecule and named it Nutlin because the lab was in Nutley, N.J.


But Nutlins did not work as drugs because they were not absorbed into the body.


Roche, Merck and Sanofi persevered, testing thousands of molecules.


At Sanofi, the stubborn scientist leading the way, Dr. Debussche, maintained an obsession with p53 for two decades. Finally, in 2009, his team, together with Shaomeng Wang at the University of Michigan and a biotech company, Ascenta Therapeutics, found a promising compound.


The company tested the drug by pumping it each day into the stomachs of mice with sarcoma.


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Naomi Gleit helps keep Facebook growing









The gig: As senior director of Facebook Inc.'s growth, engagement and mobile team, Naomi Gleit helps grow the social network's 1-billion-plus user base.


Facebook employee No. 29: Few people outside Facebook have heard of Gleit, but she's the second-longest-serving Facebook employee, after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Gleit, 29, talked her way into a job at Facebook on July 18, 2005 — her birthday. She was Facebook's 29th employee, coming on board shortly after the company hit 1 million users and before anyone had an inkling of the colossus it would become.


Dogged spirit: Unlike most other early employees who eventually dispersed to seek new fortunes, Gleit says she has no intention of leaving Facebook. She gets that tenacity from her "tiger mom," a computer programmer who ferried her to ballet, piano, karate and Chinese lessons, and her Jewish father, an immigration lawyer who took her to Hebrew school, she said. "I know it sounds completely irrational, but I had no doubt in 2005 that Facebook would be something incredible in the future," she said.





Rival social networks: Her passion for Facebook began before she was hired, when she was a Stanford undergraduate studying science, technology and society, an interdisciplinary major. She wrote her senior thesis on why Facebook beat out rival college social networking site Club Nexus at Stanford. (Club Nexus was started by Stanford student and Turkish software engineer Orkut Büyükkökten, who went on to create Orkut, Google's first attempt at a social network.) Getting in on the ground floor at Facebook made her feel like she was taking part in something bigger than herself, the same feeling she got volunteering for six months in a refugee camp in Botswana, she said.


Growing with Facebook: Gleit helped Facebook push beyond colleges to high schools and eventually to everyone. In late 2007, when the torrid growth pace temporarily cooled, Zuckerberg tapped a team of five to reignite it and asked Gleit to lead product management. It fell to the growth team to identify the obstacles to the company's momentum. In a company ruled by engineers, Gleit, who never studied programming, earned respect with her analytical approach and intuitive understanding of people. "I always believed that growth was the most important thing, the most important way to impact the company," she said. There are now more than 150 people on the team. "It's been an incredible learning experience," she said. "Each year is different."


That magic moment: Those who work closely with Gleit say part of her success early on was her ability to seize on the "magic moment" that makes users fall in love with Facebook. She made it simpler to sign up, and she helped people find friends as soon as they joined. She also helped Facebook spread quickly to new countries by enlisting users to translate the service into more than 80 languages. Gleit helps her team parachute into new markets and traverse less-familiar languages and cultures. It's something that comes from her own passion to see the world and have new experiences. She has taught on a Navajo reservation and lived in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.


One billion users: Around noon Sept. 14, Zuckerberg gathered with Gleit and dozens of employees in front of a big screen as the number of Facebook users crossed 1 billion. "The scale was insane," she said. "But that is not the goal. When Mark talks about his vision for Facebook, he talks about being able to connect everyone in the world to the people that they care about and provide some value for them every single day."


A problem solver: Zuckerberg calls on Gleit for high-profile projects. In May 2010, when Facebook was under siege because of how it was handling users' personal information, he put Gleit in charge of simplifying privacy settings. Last year she worked on a popular feature that lets users subscribe to a News Feed without having to become Facebook friends.


Betting on mobile: Now Gleit is focused on the future: mobile devices and how they can unlock emerging markets. Gleit knew back in 2011 that people would begin to log on to Facebook from mobile devices in greater numbers than from desktops, particularly in the developing world. So she traveled to Tel Aviv to buy Snaptu, which makes software that helps people on low-tech phones access Facebook, and she brought the whole team back to Silicon Valley with her. Now Facebook is surging in popularity on mobile devices in Tokyo and Nairobi, Kenya. "I have always been interested in technology and how it can be used to improve lives," Gleit said.


jessica.guynn@latimes.com





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Prime Minister Mario Monti of Italy steps down









LONDON — Prime Minister Mario Monti, the technocrat who guided Italy through economic turbulence for 13 months after scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi left office, resigned Friday to make way for new elections.


Monti, a former economics professor and European Union commissioner, was appointed to the office, with a Cabinet of academics and economists and broad support to bring the country back from the brink of financial disaster.


"A year ago this government was launched, and today — not because of a Maya prophecy — we must bring it to an end," Monti quipped as he spoke to colleagues at an annual reception.





His resignation was provoked in part by Berlusconi's announcements this month that he was withdrawing his center-right Freedom Party's support for Monti's budget reforms and would return to the political arena, leading the party into elections.


Berlusconi's attempt to regain the prime minister's post comes despite his conviction in a corruption case and his ongoing trial on charges of paying for sex with a 17-year-old girl.


Monti's resignation followed Parliament's final approval of the last of his budgetary measures. He and his Cabinet will remain in power as caretakers until the elections, expected in mid-February.


The short run-up to the elections is fraught with questions. Monti, now a senator for life, could seek an active role in the coming government, though he has said that he has no such ambition.


He has not shown his hand yet but recently met with a new group of centrist and pro-European parties. However, such an alliance is expected to command no more than about 15% of an electorate fast losing faith in Monti's austerity cuts, seeing only Italy's rising unemployment and lack of growth.


He is expected to announce his decision Sunday.


The probable favorite in the upcoming election is a left-wing coalition under former communist politician Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the Democratic Party, who is not opposed to Monti's reforms but must answer to powerful labor unions. According to recent polls, Bersani's coalition could attract support from about 30% of the voters.


The dwindling but still strong center-right vote is largely divided between the maverick anti-austerity Five Star Alliance movement led by TV comedian Beppe Grillo and Berlusconi's Freedom Party.


In a meeting with ambassadors Friday morning, Monti said that he thought Italy's standing had improved both economically and internationally in the last year and that he saw "an increase in Italy's authority and credibility on the international scene."


Stobart is a news assistant in The Times' London bureau.





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Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ashton Kutcher filed court papers Friday to end his seven-year marriage to actress Demi Moore.


The actor's divorce petition cites irreconcilable differences and does not list a date that the couple separated. Moore announced last year that she was ending her marriage to the actor 15 years her junior, but she never filed a petition.


Kutcher's filing does not indicate that the couple has a prenuptial agreement. The filing states Kutcher signed the document Friday, hours before it was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.


Kutcher and Moore married in September 2005 and until recently kept their relationship very public, communicating with each other and fans on the social networking site Twitter. After their breakup, Moore changed her name on the site from (at)mrskutcher to (at)justdemi.


Kutcher currently stars on CBS' "Two and a Half Men."


Messages sent to Kutcher's and Moore's publicists were not immediately returned Friday.


Moore, 50, and Kutcher, 34, created the DNA Foundation, also known as the Demi and Ashton Foundation, in 2010 to combat the organized sexual exploitation of girls around the globe. They later lent their support to the United Nations' efforts to fight human trafficking, a scourge the international organization estimates affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.


Moore was previously married to actor Bruce Willis for 13 years. They had three daughters together — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle — before divorcing in 2000. Willis later married model-actress Emma Heming in an intimate 2009 ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands that attended by their children, as well as Moore and Kutcher.


Kutcher has been dating former "That '70s Show" co-star Mila Kunis.


The divorce filing was first reported Friday by People magazine.


___


Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP.


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The New Old Age Blog: The Ex-Wives Club

Weather permitting, Kappy Lundy and Barbara Thompson are heading out to Vancouver, Wash., on Saturday night to have a holiday dinner with the parents of their daughter’s husband.

Yes, these women both mothered the same children — now grown and with children of their own. Ms. Lundy is their biological parent; Ms. Thompson is the stepmother who married their father after he and Ms. Lundy divorced.

But that doesn’t really begin to describe their relationship. Over more than 40 years, these two have been friends and what they call “wife-in-laws,” in addition to moms-in-tandem. Now, they’re so close they feel like sisters, they say.

There’s yet another dimension to this relationship that makes it so unusual: Ms. Lundy, who is 71, has become a caregiver for Ms. Thompson, who’s 67 and was given a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment in 2009.

One wife caring for another, through thick and through thin – think about that. It’s another example of how the new old age is spawning unusual — and creative — alliances.

Ms. Lundy went with Ms. Thompson to eight months of classes on memory loss offered by the Alzheimer’s Association chapter in Portland, Ore., where the two women live. And now they go together to monthly meetings of the Wild Bunch, a group of people with dementia and their caregivers who’ve come together to provide each other emotional support. (More on that group to come in a future post.)

Ms. Lundy talks to Ms. Thompson every day and tries to get together with her once a week.

“We’re just really good friends, and we want to know what’s going on, what are you doing, like everybody else,” said Ms. Thompson, who moved into an independent living facility in Portland nearly a year ago, after Ms. Lundy helped pack up her previous apartment.

Ms. Lundy, who lives across town, about 20 minutes away, said: “We’ll go to happy hour together and have a little toddy and maybe a nice meal. And crack up – she makes me laugh.”

Both women grew up in Eugene, Ore., but became friends later, after they moved to Portland in their 20s. Their favorite haunt was the Goose Hollow Inn, a tavern where artists, architects and writers would congregate. Ms. Lundy and her husband began to socialize regularly with Ms. Thompson and her first husband.

“She’s full of life and fun – a gypsy at heart,” is how Ms. Thompson describes Ms. Lundy.

“She’s funny and smart and a really good listener,” is how Ms. Lundy describes Ms. Thompson.

When Ms. Lundy’s marriage to Phil Thompson — a handsome bear of a man, with a charismatic personality and an artistic sensibility — began falling apart, both members of the couple turned to their friend Barbara for support. “She listened to me and my anger, and she listened to him about how he was hurting,” says Ms. Lundy, who was separated from her husband for a year before the divorce was official.

There were no hard feelings when Phil’s feelings toward Barbara turned romantic, Ms. Lundy says. But she didn’t see the couple much during subsequent years of work and travel abroad. During those years, her children, Jessica and David, stayed with their father in Portland.

Eventually, Ms. Lundy came home and was invited to holidays at the Thompson house. She grew close to Barbara again and let go of negative feelings toward her former husband, she said. Over time, they became bound together as family.

“It’s incredible,” their daughter said. “They’re just really caring for each other and not threatened by each other.

“My dad got a big kick out of it and would always introduce them as ‘my wives.’”

When Phil Thompson died in August 2008, both women were at his bedside. And when Ms. Thompson started having memory problems months later, Ms. Lundy was one of the first to notice. “We could see she wasn’t remembering things, but she said, ‘This is my grief,’” Ms. Lundy recalled. It became clear something else might be going on as problems persisted and a doctor’s evaluation yielded the mild cognitive impairment diagnosis.

Ms. Thompson described her reaction to that information: “It was scary. Very scary. I didn’t know if it meant the end of my freedom, of my ability to just live my own life.”

For her part, Ms. Lundy said: “The hardest thing for me from the very beginning was to see my party pal and my dear, dear friend changing. It was very frustrating to me. And very hurtful. I wanted to support her. But sometimes I didn’t have the patience. Because, you know, she wasn’t acting like Barbara. It’s taken a while, but slowly, slowly, slowly and surely, I’ve accepted that this is who Barbara is.”

Ms. Lundy isn’t the only caregiver for Ms. Thompson: Jessica and David, her stepchildren, and two close friends also help out, as needed.

For Ms. Lundy, the uncertainty associated with her friend’s mild cognitive impairment diagnosis is hard to live with. Will it progress to dementia? Will it stay stable, or even get better? The doctor can’t say, and “all that not-knowing business is unsettling,” she said.

Becoming a caregiver has “made our friendship even stronger, I think,” Ms. Lundy says. “We’re closer now. Even though we’ve been friends for years and years, I never felt responsible for her before.”

For Ms. Thompson, what’s hardest is living alone after nearly 30 years of being married to Phil and worrying about losing her independence — notably, her ability to continue driving.

“I feel isolated with the disease,” she said. “And being alone in a new apartment with lots of strangers here has been a little difficult.”

“I’m very grateful to Kappy,” Ms. Thompson said. “I didn’t used to feel that she would be this way. She was always doing her own thing. But she has definitely reached out, beyond what most people would do.”

On Christmas the two women will be at Jessica’s house, arriving at around noon, after the grandchildren have opened their presents, and staying through the late afternoon. After the holidays, Ms. Lundy says she plans to take Ms. Thompson out more often and “have a couple of beers and a laugh and be happy and just be Barbie and Kappy,” two old friends, enjoying each other’s company.

This is the one of the most unusual caregiving relationships I know of. It reaffirms what I’ve been told several times: You never know who will end up being there for you when you need help. Sometimes the people we expect will care for us don’t, and others step forward. Has that been your experience?

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Stocks sink after Republicans cancel budget vote












Stocks are closing sharply lower after House Republicans called off a vote on tax rates.

That left federal budget talks in disarray 10 days before sweeping tax increases and government spending cuts are set to take effect.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 120 points to close at 13,191 Friday. It had been down as much as 189.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 13 points to 1,430. The Nasdaq composite index fell 29 to 3,021.

The House bill would have raised taxes on Americans making at least $1 million per year and locked in decade-old tax cuts for Americans making less.

Two stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was 4.7 billion shares, higher than the recent average.

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Boehner rejects Democrats' push for immediate vote on gun bill









WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John A. Boehner rejected calls from Democrats to schedule a vote on new gun restrictions before the end of the year, saying he wants to wait for recommendations from a newly formed White House task force before committing to a legislative response to the mass shooting at a Connecticut school.

“When the vice president's recommendations come forward, we'll certainly take them into consideration,’’ Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday in his first public comments on calls for new gun legislation since the slaying of 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “But at this point I think our hearts and souls ought to be to think about those victims in this horrible tragedy.”


President Obama on Wednesday said he had asked Vice President Joe Biden to lead a task force to come up with initiatives to stem gun violence by the end of next month. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and fellow Democrats have pressed for an immediate vote on a long-stalled bill that would ban ammunition magazines containing more than 10 rounds.





Obama has outlined a slightly slower pace for action, urging Congress to hold a vote “in a timely manner” in the new year.


Both Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill say they are trying to seize on what appears to be a burst of momentum behind gun legislation in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., tragedy. Similar efforts initiated after other high-profile shootings faltered after national attention veered elsewhere.


Biden held the first meeting of the task force Thursday, gathering several cabinet members and White House officials with a group of local law enforcement leaders. In remarks before the meeting, the vice president noted his work on the 1994 crime bill, which banned the sale of some assault weapons, and said he would again be working closely with police groups to craft proposals.


“What I think the public has learned about you is you have a much more holistic view of how to deal with violence on our streets and in our country that you’re ever given credit for,” Biden told the law enforcement officials. “I want to hear your views because, for anything to get done, we’re going to need your advocacy.”


richard.simon@latimes.com


Twitter: @richardsimon11


kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com


Twitter: @khennessey





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Video game shares down in wake of shooting






LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shares of video game makers and sellers fell Thursday in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, which has renewed debate about violent games and their potential influence on crime.


Shares of GameStop Corp., whose stores sell video games as well as systems like the Xbox and Wii, fell 5 percent in afternoon trading.






Investors are seen as being increasingly concerned that the government may impose tougher rules on the sales of games rated for “mature” and older audiences.


Investors may be worried that parents will also avoid buying first-person shooter games like “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2″ after the tragedy Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary, in which 20 children and six adults were shot and killed by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.


“Maybe there will be more stringent efforts to make sure youth are not playing games that they’re not old enough to play,” said Mike Hickey, an analyst with National Alliance Securities. “Maybe there will be a greater effort by parents in managing the content their kids are playing.”


Shares of companies involved in the video game industry, many of which had been dropping since the shooting, declined further Thursday.


GameStop stock lost $ 1.37, or 5 percent, to $ 26.18. Shares have barely changed since last Thursday’s close, the day before the shooting, to Wednesday’s close.


— Shares of Activision Blizzard Inc., the publisher of “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2,” fell 9 cents to $ 10.70. The stock had already dropped 5.6 percent.


Electronic Arts Inc. shares fell 41 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $ 13.99. Shares had dropped 5.6 percent.


— Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. shares slipped 29 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $ 11.69. The stock had dropped 8 percent.


The declines came as broader markets rose. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.3 percent at 13,295.


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Twitter post offers clue to The Civil Wars' future


NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — While there still remain questions about the future of The Civil Wars, there's new music on the way.


Joy Williams, one half of the Grammy Award-winning duo with John Paul White, said Thursday during a Twitter chat that she was in the studio listening to new Civil Wars songs.


It's a tantalizing clue to the future of the group, which appeared in doubt when a European tour unraveled last month due to "irreconcilable differences."


At the time, the duo said it hoped to release an album in 2013. It's not clear if Williams was referring Thursday to music for a new album or for a documentary score they have composed with T Bone Burnett. They're also set to release an "Unplugged" session on iTunes on Jan. 15.


Nate Yetton, the group's manager and Williams' husband, had no comment — though he has supplied a few hints of his own by posting pictures of recording sessions on his Instagram account recently. The duo announced last summer it would be working with Charlie Peacock, who produced its gold-selling debut "Barton Hollow." The photos do not show Williams or White, but one includes violin player Odessa Rose.


Rose says in an Instagram post: "Playing on the new Civil Wars record... Beautiful sounds."


Even with its future in doubt, the duo continues to gather accolades. Williams and White are up for a Golden Globe on Jan. 13, and two Grammy Awards on Feb. 10, for their "The Hunger Games" soundtrack collaboration "Safe & Sound" with Taylor Swift.


Williams' comments came during an installment of an artist interview series with Alison Sudol of A Fine Frenzy sponsored by The Recording Academy.


___


Online:


http://thecivilwars.com


___


Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.


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German Health Care Attracts Foreign Patients





BERLIN — When Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq, needed advanced medical care for a stroke suffered this week, he flew not to the United States or Britain but to Germany, for treatment here in the capital.




For many Americans, Germany is known as a way station where soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan received immediate medical care on United States military bases. But it is also a popular destination for wealthy and prominent patients from the Middle East, Russia and beyond, experts say.


Before the Arab Spring uprisings, the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak traveled to Munich in 2004 for back treatment and to Heidelberg in 2010 to have his gallbladder removed. Last year, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan reportedly had a surgical procedure on his prostate at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.


According to German government statistics, the number of hospital patients from the United Arab Emirates rose to 1,754 from 339 between 2000 and 2010, the most recent year available. From Saudi Arabia, the figure climbed to 712 from 143. The numbers from Iraq were smaller but still rose to 176 from 95. Over the same period, the number of Russians jumped to 4,873 from 842.


“We have one of the worldwide best health care systems and people from abroad know that,” said Isabella Beyer, research associate in medical tourism at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. Mr. Talabani, 79, is among them; he was treated in Germany before for back trouble.


Mr. Talabani is now being cared for at Berlin’s Charité hospital, which is more than 300 years old and is one of Europe’s largest university hospitals. The storied institution was home to several Nobel Prize winners, including Robert Koch and Paul Ehrlich. A spokeswoman for Charité, Manuela Zingl, confirmed that Mr. Talabani was being treated there but said that she could not disclose any information on his condition because of rules on medical privacy.


Mr. Talabani was said to be in “stable” condition after suffering a stroke this week, though there were unconfirmed reports that he was in a coma. He was rushed to the Baghdad Medical City on Monday.


He was treated there by medical experts from Iran, Germany and Britain, according to Iraqi staff members. Barazan Sheik Othman, the head of the presidential media office, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Talabani left for Germany accompanied by doctors after they established that he was well enough to be transferred.


Hospitals and clinics here have increasingly sought to market themselves as a destination for international patients. Ms. Beyer said that Germany benefited from a combination of lower prices than the United States but still provided high-quality care. Shorter waiting times and the proximity to the Middle East also helped.


“Before, a lot flew to Geneva,” said Salah Atamna, 44, whose business, Europe Health, seeks to link up patients from abroad with German hospitals and clinics.


Many wealthy Arabs would fly to Germany in the summer to escape the blistering heat at home, Mr. Atamna said, scheduling their vacation to coincide with an operation or other treatment. They often traveled with family members and large entourages. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it became harder to acquire visas to the United States, and medical travelers began searching for alternatives.


Duraid Adnan contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Victor Homola from Berlin.



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Stocks gain as traders hope for a budget deal









Stocks closed higher as traders hope that lawmakers and the White House can agree on a budget deal in time to avoid steep tax hikes and cuts in government spending at the beginning of the year.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 60 points to end at 13,312 Thursday. The Dow waffled between small gains and losses early in the day and moved higher in the afternoon.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose eight points to 1,444. The Nasdaq composite rose six to 3,050.

The Republican-controlled House passed a plan to avert the “fiscal cliff,” but President Barack Obama has threatened to veto it.

Rising stocks outnumbered falling ones two-to-one on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was lighter than usual at 3.6 billion shares.

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Russia bill to ban U.S. adoptions of Russian children advances









MOSCOW — Russia's parliament took a first step Wednesday toward banning the adoption of Russian children by American parents, a move intended as retaliation for an anti-corruption law recently passed by Congress.


The State Duma, the lower house of parliament, voted 399 to 17 in favor of a bill that included the ban and also would annul an adoption agreement between the two countries that Russia ratified in July. The measure still has to be approved by the upper house and signed by President Vladimir Putin, who has sent mixed signals about his support.


The Dima Yakovlev law is named after a Russian boy who died of heatstroke in 2008 after being left in a parked car by his adoptive American father. If approved, the legislation would cut off adoptions as of Jan. 1.





American parents have adopted more than 60,000 Russian children over the last two decades. Americans adopt 1,000 to 3,000 Russian children a year, said Boris Altshuler, who heads Right of the Child, a Moscow-based advocacy group. Russian families adopt about 7,000 children a year, far from enough to meet the country's needs.


The ban is intended to punish the United States for the so-called Magnitsky law, passed by Congress this month and named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and whistle-blower who died in pretrial custody in Moscow in 2009. The Magnitsky law imposed visa restrictions on a group of Russian officials connected to the lawyer's prosecution and death.


Calling the Magnitsky law unfriendly and provocative, Russian legislators initially retaliated with a bill that included visa bans on an unspecified number of U.S. officials as well as on American parents who mistreat adopted Russian children and judges who are deemed lenient with such parents. The State Duma later added the adoption restrictions, accusing U.S. parents of mistreating and killing adopted Russian children and blaming unspecified middlemen of turning adoption into a corrupt and lucrative business.


"More than 80% of Russian children [adopted abroad] are adopted by the United States, and it is no secret for anyone in Russia today that this is a dirty business," Svetlana Goryacheva, a lawmaker with the Just Russia party, told reporters after the vote. "So today we in Russia are notorious for selling our children, and it is high time to stop it."


Ilya Ponomaryov, the only Duma member to speak out against the adoption ban, said there are 1,500 Russian children, including 49 with serious disabilities, whose adoptions by U.S. parents are awaiting approval in Russian courts.


"Today the State Duma for all practical purposes issued a grave verdict for these seriously sick children, who, I am sure, will languish in Russian orphanages for the rest of their lives without proper love and care," Ponomaryov said in an interview after the vote. "Their last chance is Putin's veto."


Putin warned lawmakers last week against "an excessive response" to the Magnitsky law, but gave his blessing to Wednesday's vote, according to his press secretary, Dmitry Peskov.


In an interview with the Russia-24 television network, Peskov called the U.S. law "an unfriendly act" and said the president understands the Russian lawmakers' tough stance.


The measure faces opposition from human rights groups and some Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Kremlin's human rights envoy, Vladimir Lukin.


Besides adding the adoption ban, the measure was amended to suspend the activities of Russian nongovernmental organizations funded by the United States.


Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch, denounced both amendments. The U.S. law is designed to protect Russian citizens from corrupt officials, she said, so a symmetrical Russian response would be a measure aimed at corrupt American officials.


"Instead the Russian lawmakers decided to hit where it hurts more," she said in an interview. "They hit U.S. people who want to adopt Russian children and they hit U.S. organizations and activists who want to promote democracy in Russia."


"I am having a hard time believing that the prohibition of the adoption of Russian children by U.S. families can be in the best interests of Russian orphans," she added.


In the last 15 years, 19 adopted Russian children have died in accidents in the United States, while more than 1,200 adopted children have died in Russian families during the same period, according to Altshuler of Right of the Child.


"Our lawmakers thus sacrifice thousands of Russian orphans by locking them up in institutions instead of letting them have a chance to be adopted in the United States and have a real future," he added.


Altshuler said nearly 300,000 Russian children are in orphanages, about two-thirds of whom have parents who can't or won't support them. He called the situation critical and said that adoptions by Russian families aren't sufficient to resolve it.


Earlier Wednesday, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev urged Russians to adopt more children.


"Foreign adoption stems from the weak attention of the state and the society toward orphans," Medvedev said at a gathering of the ruling United Russia party.


sergei.loiko@latimes.com





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Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy welcome a baby boy


NEW YORK (AP) — Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy's "Homeland" just got bigger.


Danes' rep confirms the couple welcomed a baby boy named Cyrus Michael Christopher.


People.com first reported Monday's birth.


It's the first child for 33-year old Danes and 37-year-old Dancy. They were married in 2009.


There's no word yet whether the new mom will attend the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 13. She's nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series for her work on Showtime's "Homeland."


Up next, Dancy stars in NBC's "Hannibal," an adaptation of Thomas Harris' novel "Red Dragon."


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F.D.A. and States Meet About Regulation of Drug Compounders


Mary Calvert/Reuters


Margaret Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, testified on the meningitis outbreak before Congress in November. She addressed the need for greater federal oversight of large compounding pharmacies, which mix batches of drugs on their own, often for much lower prices than major manufacturers charge.







SILVER SPRING, Md. – The Food and Drug Administration conferred with public health officials from 50 states on Wednesday about how best to strengthen rules governing compounding pharmacies in the wake of a national meningitis outbreak caused by a tainted pain medication produced by a Massachusetts pharmacy.




It was the first public discussion of what should be done about the practice of compounding, or tailor-making medicine for individual patients, since the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, testified in Congress last month about the need for greater federal oversight of large compounding pharmacies. So far, 620 people in 19 states have been sickened in the outbreak, and 39 of them have died.


Pharmacies fall primarily under state law, and the F.D.A. convened the meeting to get specifics from states on gaps in the regulatory net and how the states see the federal role. Some states said they would prefer to see the F.D.A. handle large-scale compounders like the New England Compounding Center, or N.E.C.C., the Massachusetts pharmacy that was the source of the outbreak.


“The consensus in our group was that there is a role for the F.D.A. to be involved in facilities like N.E.C.C.,” said Cody Wiberg, the executive director of the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy. “If you’re talking about compounding, most states have the authority and resources to handle that. If you’re talking about nontraditional compounding,” he said, referring to large-scale enterprises like N.E.C.C., “fewer states may have the resources to do that.”


Large-scale compounding has expanded drastically since the early 1990s, driven by changes in the health care system, including the rise of hospital outsourcing.


“It is very clear that the health care system has evolved and the role of the compounding pharmacies has really shifted,” Dr. Hamburg said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. She said the laws had not kept pace.


“We need legislation that reflects the current environment and the known gaps in our state and federal oversight systems,” Dr. Hamburg said.


Under current law, compounders are not required to give the F.D.A. access to their books, and about half of all the court orders the agency obtained over the past decade were for pharmacy compounders, although compounders are only a small part of the agency’s regulatory responsibilities.


The F.D.A.'s critics argue that the agency already has all the legal authority it needs to police compounders. They say that many compounders have been operating as major manufacturers, shipping to states across the country, and that the F.D.A. should be using its jurisdiction over manufacturers to regulate those companies’ activities.


“There should be one uniform federal standard that is enforced by one agency – the F.D.A.,” said Michael Carome, deputy director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, a nonprofit consumer organization, who has been a critic of the agency’s approach. “They have been lax in enforcing that standard.”


But Dr. Hamburg contends that the distinction is not so simple. Lumping large compounders in with manufacturers would mean they would have to file new drug applications for every product they make, a costly and time-consuming process that is not always necessary for the products they make, like IV feeding tube bags, for example. Dr. Hamburg has proposed creating a new federal oversight category for large-scale compounders, separate from manufacturers.


“What concerns me is the idea that we could assert full authority over some of these facilities as though they were manufacturers, as though there were an on-off, black-white option,” Dr. Hamburg said. “That is a heavy-handed way to regulate a set of activities that can make a huge positive difference in providing necessary health care to people.”


The central problem, state representatives said, is how to define large-scale compounding. Should companies be measured by how much they produce, whether they ship across state lines, the types of products they produce, or some combination of those factors?


“It’s easy to stand at a distance and ask why can’t there be a bright line?” said Jay Campbell, executive director of the North Carolina Board of Pharmacy. “Let’s not let the perfect get in the way of the good. We won’t be able to make a distinction that is razor sharp.”


Large-scale compounders play an important role in the health care supply chain when they produce high-quality products, F.D.A. officials say. They fill gaps during shortages and supply hospitals with products that can be made more safely and cost-effectively in bulk than in individual hospitals.


Officials said they wanted to make sure the products made by such suppliers were safe, but were also concerned about disrupting that supply.


Carmen Catizone, head of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, said that states were not equipped to regulate the large-scale compounders and that the F.D.A. needed to find a middle path for regulating them.


“Either hospitals are not going to like the solution, or the manufacturers aren’t going to like the fact that these guys get a shorter path,” he said. “But something’s got to give.”


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Federal regulators take steps to strengthen kids' online privacy [Google+ Hangout]

Columnist David Lazarus talks with Mark Blafkin, spokesman for an organization of app developers, and Alan Simpson of Common Sense Media, an advocacy group for parents.









SAN FRANCISCO -- Federal regulators have taken the first major step in nearly 15 years to strengthen the protection of kids’ online privacy.


The Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday that it has given parents greater control over the information that online services collect from kids 12 and under.


The changes don't go as far as originally proposed after heavy lobbying from the technology and media industry that said the changes would hamper economic growth, stifle innovation and limit the scope and number of online games and educational programs for kids.








Live video chat at 3 p.m.


The FTC began a review of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in 2010. It said the law needed to catch up with the advances in technology and the explosion of mobile devices.


“The Commission takes seriously its mandate to protect children’s online privacy in this ever-changing technological landscape,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement. “I am confident that the amendments to the COPPA Rule strike the right balance between protecting innovation that will provide rich and engaging content for children, and ensuring that parents are informed and involved in their children’s online activities.”


Among the steps it has taken, the FTC has made it clear that a child’s location, photographs and videos cannot be collected without a parent’s permission. It also closed a loophole that allowed mobile apps and websites to permit third parties to collect personal information from kids without notifying or obtaining the consent of parents.


It also extended kids’ privacy rules to cover IP addresses, mobile device IDs and other means of identifying a user, requiring services to take “reasonable steps” to release kids’ information only to companies that can keep it “secure and confidential.”


Privacy watchdogs issued statements of support for the rule changes.


 “We are at a critical moment in the growth of the children’s digital marketplace as social networks, mobile phones and gaming platforms become an increasingly powerful presence in the lives of young people,” said Kathryn Montgomery, professor of communications  at American University. “The new rules should help ensure that companies targeting children throughout the rapidly expanding digital media landscape will be required to engage in fair marketing and data collection practices.”


Join us for a live video chat at 3 p.m. on the issue with consumer columnist David Lazarus and Mark Blafkin, a spokesman for ACT, an organization representing app developers, and Alan Simpson, vice president of policy at Common Sense Media, an advocacy group representing families.


ALSO:


FTC investigates mobile apps makers on children's privacy


Giant social network Facebook may give access to children under 13


Parents want more online privacy protections for kids, privacy groups say


Follow me on Twitter @jguynn






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Two more funerals in Newtown; NRA responds to school massacre









NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Two more of the children killed by a gunman who invaded a Connecticut elementary school were buried on Tuesday as officials released new details of the deadly spree that has reshaped the debate over gun control.

The National Rifle Assn., which has been under pressure to comment on the Newtown shootings, broke its silence and issued a statement saying it was ready to offer its plans at a Friday news conference.


“We were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown,” said the pro-gun rights lobbying group, which has repeatedly fought gun-control legislation on the national, state and local levels. “The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.”





PHOTOS: Mourning after the massacre


Both funerals were held at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, which has been one of the centers for consoling the bereaved and for memorial services that began Friday evening, hours after Adam Lanza opened fire inside Sandy Hook Elementary School.


Primarily using a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle, Lanza killed 20 children and six adults in the school before turning a handgun on himself, authorities said. The rampage began Friday morning when Lanza killed his mother, Nancy, in the home they shared.


Dr. H. Wayne Carver, the state’s chief medical examiner, told reporters on Tuesday that Nancy Lanza was shot four times in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. She was most likely asleep when she was killed, Carver said, according to the Hartford Courant.


After shooting his mother, Adam Lanza took her car and several of her guns and went to the school, where he forcibly entered and opened fire. The Bushmaster and two handguns were later recovered from the building and a shotgun was found in the car, officials said.


Sandy Hook Elementary remains closed, most likely for months, as investigators continue their work seeking to understand why Lanza did what he did. The hundreds of students at the school are being relocated to a school in nearby Monroe, Conn.


In the rain and cold Tuesday, other Newtown students returned to their schools where teachers were prepared to help them cope with the massacre. Campuses also had a sizable police presence to reassure parents.


One Newtown school, Head O'Meadow Elementary, was locked down Tuesday due to an unspecified threat. The principal told parents to keep their children home, according to a letter from the principal published by WFSB-TV. Police have said they will deal harshly with hoaxes and threats, including two directed over the weekend at St. Rose.


The first funeral Tuesday morning was for James Mattioli, 6. In what has become an ongoing sight, mourners kept their heads down and walked quickly into the building, and refused to comment. The families have repeatedly asked for privacy for their grief, a position backed by local police.


James' funeral was the first of eight to be held at the church. By noon, flowers for the second service, for Jessica Rekos, also 6, had begun to arrive.


James has been described by family members as a budding “numbers guy.” Jessica was a horse enthusiast who wanted cowgirl boots for Christmas, relatives told reporters.


A wake was scheduled Tuesday night for slain teacher Victoria Soto. Police were to be part of an honor guard for Soto, who died trying to protect her students by getting them into a closet and putting her body between the gunman and her charges.


The shootings have reopened the debate on gun-control laws, specifically whether to renew the expired national ban on assault weapons. President Obama has asked his staff to come up with proposals, though no time frame for action has been given. Even staunch pro-gun rights lawmakers have also called for reopening discussion on some bans.


ALSO:

'Puppies for Rent' business in Utah sparks criticism


L.A. girls pay tribute in visit, but Newtown is a day of hearses


'No, no, no': Harrowing 911 call, then 4 dead near Longmont, Colo.


Susman reported from Newtown, Conn., and Muskal from Los Angeles.






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Google Music adds free iTunes-like song-matching feature









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NY appeals court takes up Cameron Douglas case


NEW YORK (AP) — A lawyer for the son of actor Michael Douglas hopes to convince a New York appeals court that he shouldn't have to spend a decade in prison for drug crimes.


Attorney Paul Shechtman says a 4½-year sentence given to Cameron Douglas that was added to a 5-year prison term he was already serving is "shockingly long." The sentence was added after a drug infraction in prison. But prosecutors say the sentence is reasonable, given the many times Douglas has broken his word to feed a drug and alcohol abuse addiction that stretches to when he was 13.


Shechtman says Cameron Douglas began selling drugs after his father sharply limited his access to family money because he wouldn't enter a drug rehabilitation program.


Arguments on the case are set for Wednesday.


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Samsung set to overtake Nokia as No. 1 cellphone brand worldwide









For the first time in 14 years, Nokia will not be the No. 1 cellphone brand in the world.


Samsung is set to claim the top spot in the mobile handset market, accounting for 29% of worldwide cellphone shipments this year, according to market research firm IHS. That's up from 24% last year.


Nokia, meanwhile, will see its market share this year drop to 24% from 30% in 2011.





This year will mark the first time Samsung will occupy the top position on a yearly basis. The South Korean's rise was helped by strong sales of its smartphones, IHS said.


Global smartphone shipments are projected to rise 35.5% this year, while overall cellphone shipments will increase by about 1%. This rapid growth will propel 2012 smartphone penetration among consumers to 47%, up from 35% last year.


“The competitive reality of the cellphone market in 2012 was ‘live by the smartphone, die by the smartphone,’” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst for wireless communications at IHS. “Smartphones represent the fastest-growing segment of the cellphone market and will account for nearly half of all wireless handset shipments for all of 2012. Samsung’s successes and Nokia’s struggles in the cellphone market this year were determined entirely by the two companies’ divergent fortunes in the smartphone sector.”


Samsung's success has been built on its “fast follower” strategy for design and manufacturing, IHS said. The electronics giant produces dozens of new smartphone models every year that address all segments of the market, from the high end to the low end.


Meanwhile, Finnish-based Nokia is "mired in transitioning its smartphone line to the Windows operating system," resulting in declining shipments for the company, IHS said. Sales of the company’s older phones have plunged, while its new Microsoft Windows 7-based handsets haven’t been able to make up for the loss so far.


Samsung is also pulling ahead of rival Apple in the smartphone market: Samsung and Apple ended 2011 in a neck-and-neck battle for leadership in the smartphone market, with only 1 percentage point of market share separating them. However, entering 2012, Samsung "moved ahead decisively" of Apple with a wide range of Android smartphone offerings at multiple price points, IHS said.


Together, Samsung and Apple smartphones accounted for nearly half of shipments in 2012, up from 39% last year.


IHS said it expects that the smartphone penetration rate in 2013 will elevate smartphones into the majority among all phone segments, at 56%. The change will mark a significant tipping point in the mobile handset market.


ALSO:


Amazon readying smartphone for mid-2013 launch?


Samsung unveils Galaxy Grand smartphone with a 5-inch screen


Instagram says it will respond to terms-of-service uproar 'very soon'






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Hawaii's nine-term senator, Daniel Inouye, dies at 88









WASHINGTON – Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the second-longest-serving senator in U.S. history and winner of the Medal of Honor for combat heroics in World War II, has died, his office announced in a statement. He was 88.


"His last words were, 'Aloha,'" his office said.


Inouye died at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, with his wife, Irene, and his son, Ken, at his side. Last rites were performed by Senate Chaplain Dr. Barry Black, his office said.





A senator since 1963, Inouye in 2009 became chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he continued a long record of helping fund projects in his home state. From 1998 to 2003, he steered $1.4 billion to military projects in Hawaii, according to The Almanac of American Politics.


The son of Japanese immigrants, Inouye grew up in Honolulu, where he was teaching a first aid course at age 17 when Pearl Harbor was attacked.  He enlisted in the Army in 1943, when it dropped its ban on Japanese Americans.


PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012


Promoted to sergeant, he fought in Italy and France. On April 21, 1945, while leading an assault in Italy against the Germans, Inouye was shot in the stomach. He nonetheless attacked and destroyed two machine gun nests before being even more severely wounded, losing his right arm.


“By his gallant, aggressive tactics and by his indomitable leadership, Second Lieutenant Inouye enabled his platoon to advance through formidable resistance, and was instrumental in the capture of the ridge,” says his citation for the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award. “Second Lieutenant Inouye's extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.”


When asked in recent days how he wanted to be remembered, Inouye said, according to his office, "I represented the people of Hawaii and this nation honestly and to the best of my ability. I think I did OK."


Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook


ken.dilanian@latimes.com





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Charlie Brown’s Christmas Reunion Will Ruin Your Childhood






We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:


RELATED: A ‘Straight’ Protest Against Chick-Fil-A; Mark Hamill’s ‘Star Wars’ Audition






Sometimes we don’t get art. Sometimes we really, really, don’t get it: 


RELATED: Proof Ceiling Cat Exists; 295 Movies Bring You ‘Baby Got Back’


RELATED: When Hot Wheels Become a Reality and the Other Pitt


We love A Charlie Brown Christmas. We love Louie. We’re not quite if we love the two mixed together, but we’ll let you know right after we tell kids that Santa doesn’t exist: 


RELATED: The Only ‘Kiss From a Rose’ Cover You’ll Ever Need


RELATED: Let’s Get Honest with ‘The Avengers’


Meet Basse Andersen of Arendal, Norway. He’s the biggest chicken/scaredy cat in the entire world. And on the bright side, he probably never has any bouts with the hiccups. 


Shifting gears from scaredy cats to actual cats, here’s the latest chapter in the eternal battle between printers and cats:


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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'The Hobbit' tops box office with record $84.6M


NEW YORK (AP) — Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" led the box office over the weekend with $84.6 million, a record-setting opening better than the three previous "Lord of the Rings" films.


The 3-D Middle Earth epic, the first of three planned films adapted from J.R.R. Tolkien's novel, was the biggest December opening ever, surpassing Will Smith's "I Am Legend," which opened with $77.2 million in 2007.


The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:


1. "The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey," Warner Bros., $84,617,303, 4,045 locations, $20,919 average, $84,617,303, one week.


2. "Rise of the Guardians," Paramount, $7,143,445, 3,387 locations, $2,109 average, $71,085,268, four weeks.


3. "Lincoln," Disney, $7,033,132, 2,285 locations, $3,078 average, $107,687,319, six weeks.


4. "Skyfall," Sony, $6,555,732, 2,924 locations, $2,242 average, $271,921,795, six weeks.


5. "Life of Pi," Fox, $5,413,066, 2,548 locations, $2,124 average, $69,572,472, four weeks.


6. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2," Summit, $5,136,074, 3,042 locations, $1,688 average, $276,826,143, five weeks.


7. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $3,216,043, 2,249 locations, $1,430 average, $168,721,592, seven weeks.


8. "Playing For Keeps," FilmDistrict, $3,146,443, 2,840 locations, $1,108 average, $10,737,535, two weeks.


9. "Red Dawn," FilmDistrict, $2,408,882, 2,250 locations, $1,071 average, $40,904,305, four weeks.


10. "Silver Linings Playbook," Weinstein Co., $2,109,274, 371 locations, $5,685 average, $16,979,323, five weeks.


11. "Flight," Paramount, $1,910,666, 1,823 locations, $1,048 average, $89,418,704, seven weeks.


12. "Argo," Warner Bros., $1,170,175, 667 locations, $1,754 average, $104,955,079, 10 weeks.


13. "Hitchcock," Fox Searchlight, $1,107,659, 561 locations, $1,974 average, $3,071,871, four weeks.


14. "Anna Karenina," Focus, $1,022,214, 409 locations, $2,499 average, $8,380,517, five weeks.


15. "Killing Them Softly," Weinstein Co., $1,008,127, 1,427 locations, $706 average, $14,140,432, three weeks.


16. "The Collection," LD Entertainment, $529,158, 621 locations, $852 average, $6,520,794, three weeks.


17. "Hyde Park On Hudson," Focus, $292,796, 36 locations, $8,133 average, $404,816, two weeks.


18. "Taken 2," Fox, $288,772, 339 locations, $852 average, $138,132,493, 11 weeks.


19. "Pitch Perfect," Universal, $245,680, 332 locations, $740 average, $63,869,423, 12 weeks.


20. "Talaash," Reliance Big Pictures, $168,828, 113 locations, $1,494 average, $2,706,375, three weeks.


___


Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.


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A Conversation With S. Matthew Liao: Studying Ethical Questions as We Unlock the Black Box of the Brain


Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times


CAUTION S. Matthew Liao urges advance thinking about new technologies.







In a world of proliferating professions, S. Matthew Liao has a singular title: neuroethicist. Dr. Liao, 40, the director of the bioethics program at New York University, deploys the tools of philosophy, history, psychology, religion and ethics to understand the impact of neuroscientific breakthroughs.




We spoke over four hours in two sessions. A condensed and edited version of the conversations follows.


You’re a philosopher by training. How did philosophy lead to neuroethics?


Mine’s the typical immigrant’s story. My family moved to Cincinnati from Taiwan in the early 1980s. Once here, my siblings gravitated towards the sciences. I was the black sheep. I was in love with the humanities. So I didn’t go to M.I.T. — I went to Princeton, where I got a degree in philosophy. This, of course, worried my parents. They’d never met a philosopher with a job.


Do you have any insight on why scientific careers are so attractive to new Americans?


You don’t need to speak perfect English to do science. And there are job opportunities.


Define neuroethics.


It’s a kind of subspecialty of bioethics. Until very recently, the human mind was a black box. But here we are in the 21st century, and now we have all these new technologies with opportunities to look inside that black box — a little.


With functional magnetic imaging, f.M.R.I., you can get pictures of what the brain is doing during cognition. You see which parts light up during brain activity. Scientists are trying to match those lights with specific behaviors.


At the same time this is moving forward, there are all kinds of drugs being developed and tested to modify behavior and the mind. So the question is: Are these new technologies ethical?


A neuroethicist can look at the downstream implications of these new possibilities. We help map the conflicting arguments, which will, hopefully, lead to more informed decisions. What we want is for citizens and policy makers to be thinking in advance about how new technologies will affect them. As a society, we don’t do enough of that.


Give us an example of a technology that entered our lives without forethought.


The Internet. It has made us more connected to the world’s knowledge. But it’s also reduced our actual human contacts with one another.


So what would be an issue you might look at through a neuroethics lens?


New drugs to alter memory. Right now, the government is quite interested in propranolol. They are testing it on soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. The good part is that the drug helps traumatized veterans by removing the bad memories causing them such distress. A neuroethicist must ask, “Is this good for society, to have warriors have their memories wiped out chemically? Will we start getting conscienceless soldiers?”


What do you think?


It is a serious business removing memories, because memories can affect your personal identity. They can impact who you think you are. I’d differentiate between offering such a drug to every distressed soldier and giving it only to certain individuals with a specific need.


Let’s say you have a situation like that in “Sophie’s Choice,” where the memories are so bad that the person is suicidal. Even if the drug causes them to live in falsehood, that would have been preferable to suicide.


But should we give it to every soldier who goes into battle? No! You need memory for a conscience. Doing this routinely might create super-immoral soldiers. As humans we have natural moral reactions to the beings around us — sympathy for other people and animals. When you start to tinker with those neurosystems, we’re not going to react to our fellow humans in the right way anymore. One wonders about the wrong people giving propranolol routinely to genocidal gangs in places like Rwanda or Syria.


Some researchers claim to be near to using f.M.R.I.’s to read thoughts. Is this really happening?


The technology, though still crude, appears to be getting closer. For instance, there’s one research group that asks subjects to watch movies. When they look at the subject’s visual cortex while the subject is watching, they can sort of recreate what they are seeing — or a semblance of it.


Similarly, there’s another experiment where they can tell in advance whether you’re going to push the right or the left button. On the basis of these experiments some people claim they’ll soon be able to read minds. Before we go further with this, I’d like to think more about what it could mean. The technology has the potential to destroy any concept of inner privacy.


What about using f.M.R.I. to replace lie detectors?


The fact is we don’t really know if f.M.R.I.’s will be any more reliable or predictive. Nonetheless, in India, a woman was convicted of poisoning her boyfriend on the basis of f.M.R.I. evidence. The authorities said that based on the pictures of blood flow in her brain, she was lying to them.


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