NORAD Santa trackers draw record number of phone calls, social media followers






PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo.NORAD says it drew a record number of phone calls and social media followers during its NORAD Tracks Santa operation on Christmas Eve.


The North American Aerospace Defence Command said Friday volunteers answered more than 114,000 calls, up 12,000 from 2011.






NORAD’s Santa Facebook page had more than 1.2 million followers, up from about 1 million last year. More than 129,000 people followed on Twitter, up from 101,000 last year.


NORAD got 11,000 emails, up from 7,700 in 2011.


More than 1,250 volunteers answered phone calls, including first lady Michelle Obama.


NORAD Tracks Santa began in 1955 when a newspaper listed the wrong number for children to call Santa. They wound up calling the Continental Air Defence Command, NORAD’s predecessor.


The operation is based at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo.


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Matt Damon tackles “fracking” issue in the “Promised Land”






LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The hot-button topic of “fracking” has finally made its way to Hollywood in the new movie “Promised Land,” out in U.S. theaters on Friday, with actors Matt Damon and John Krasinski teaming up to further the debate on the energy drilling technique.


The film explores the social impact of hydraulic fracturing drilling technique, or “fracking,” which has sparked nation-wide environmental and political battles over its impact on drinking water, U.S. energy use, seismic activity and other areas.






“Promised Land” will see Damon, 42, reunite with director Gus Van Sant for the third time, following their success with 1997 film “Good Will Hunting and 2002′s “Gerry.”


In their latest film, Damon plays a corporate salesman who goes to a rural U.S. town to buy or lease land on behalf of a gas company looking to drill for oil. He soon faces opposition from a slick environmentalist, played by Krasinski.


In real life, Damon hasn’t shied away from getting involved in political and social issues, working with charities and organizations to eradicate AIDS in developing countries, bringing attention to atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region, providing safe drinking water and stopping trees from being chopped and used for junk mail.


Yet “Promised Land,” which Damon also co-wrote and produced, doesn’t take a noticeable stance on “fracking.” The actor would not publicly state his own views, telling Reuters that he didn’t think his opinion had “any bearing” on the film.


“The point is that the movie should start a conversation. It’s certainly not a pro-fracking movie, but we didn’t want to tell people what to think,” Damon said.


The actor said he and Krasinski never set out to make a socially conscious film, and “fracking” was added in later, as a backdrop to the story.


“It wasn’t that we said we wanted to make a movie about ‘fracking’ as much as we wanted to make a movie about American identity, about real people. We wanted to make a movie about the country today, where we came from, where we are and where we are headed,” Damon said.


“‘Fracking’ was perfect because the stakes are so incredibly high and people are so divided. It asks all the questions about short-term thinking versus long-term thinking.”


Hydraulic fracturing entails pumping water laced with chemicals and sand at high pressure into shale rock formations to break them up and unleash hydrocarbons. Critics worry that “fracking” fluids or hydrocarbons can still leak into water tables from wells, or above ground.


FROM ‘ADJUSTMENT BUREAU’ TO ‘PROMISED LAND’


At first glance, the pairing of Damon with Krasinski may not come across as the perfect fit, as Damon has primarily been associated with longtime friend and collaborator Ben Affleck, both of whom won Oscars for writing “Good Will Hunting.”


Damon later become a colleague and friend to a number of key Hollywood players, including George Clooney and Brad Pitt, with whom he co-starred in the “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise.


Krasinski, 33, is best known for playing sardonic Jim Halpert on NBC’s long-running television series, “The Office,” and has had occasional supporting roles in films such as 2008′s “Leatherheads.”


Damon and Krasinski came together after meeting through Krasinski’s wife, Emily Blunt, who co-starred with Damon in the 2011 film “The Adjustment Bureau.” Damon said he and his wife started double-dating with Krasinski and Blunt, through which their collaboration on “Promised Land” came about.


The duo’s busy work schedules forced them to moonlight on weekends to make “Promised Land.”


“John showed up at my house every Saturday at breakfast and we would write all day until dinner,” Damon said. “Then we’d do it again on Sunday. I have four kids so he would come to me.”


But Damon’s determination to make the film his feature directorial debut fell through when his acting schedule changed, making it impossible to direct “Promised Land,” so he turned to Van Sant.


“My first inclination was to send the script to somebody I’d worked with before,” he said. “Gus seemed like the most obvious choice and I realized later that I’d never written anything that anyone else had directed, except Gus. I have a real comfort level with him.”


Damon said he has not given up on his dream of directing movies and has his eye on a project at movie studio Warner Bros., which has a deal with Damon and Affleck’s joint production company, Pearl Street Films.


With Affleck’s third directorial effort “Argo” becoming an awards contender, Damon joked that the film’s success can only be a good thing for his own budding directing career.


“I now happen to be partnered with the hottest director in Hollywood!” he said, laughing.


(Reporting By Zorianna Kit, Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Paul Simao)


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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center


Chang W. Lee/The New York Times


Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.







NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.




While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.


The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.


“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.


Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.


“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.


The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.


The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.


In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.


Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.


The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.


The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.


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Wall Street ends sour week with 5th straight decline










NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell for a fifth straight day on Friday, dropping 1 percent and marking the S&P 500's longest losing streak in three months as the federal government edged closer to the "fiscal cliff" with no solution in sight.

President Barack Obama and top congressional leaders met at the White House to work on a solution for the draconian debt-reduction measures set to take effect beginning next week. Stocks, which have been influenced by little else than the flood of fiscal cliff headlines from Washington in recent days, extended losses going into the close with the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 each losing 1 percent, after reports that Obama would not offer a new plan to Republicans. The Dow closed below 13,000 for the first time since December 4.

"I was stunned Obama didn't have another plan, and that's absolutely why we sold off," said Mike Shea, managing partner at Direct Access Partners LLC in New York. "He's going to force the House to come to him with something different. I think that's a surprise. The entire market is disappointed in a lack of leadership in Washington."

In a sign of investor anxiety, the CBOE Volatility Index , known as the VIX, jumped 16.69 percent to 22.72, closing at its highest level since June. Wall Street's favorite fear barometer has risen for five straight weeks, surging more than 40 percent over that time.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 158.20 points, or 1.21 percent, to 12,938.11 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost 15.67 points, or 1.11 percent, to 1,402.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 25.59 points, or 0.86 percent, to end at 2,960.31.

For the week, the Dow fell 1.9 percent. The S&P 500 also lost 1.9 percent for the week, marking its worst weekly performance since mid-November. The Nasdaq finished the week down 2 percent. In contrast, the VIX jumped 22 percent for the week.

Pessimism continued after the market closed, with stock futures indicating even steeper losses. S&P 500 futures dropped 26.7 points, or 1.9 percent, eclipsing the decline seen in the regular session.

All 10 S&P 500 sectors fell during Friday's regular trading, with most posting declines of 1 percent, but energy and material shares were among the weakest of the day, with both groups closely tied to the pace of growth.

An S&P energy sector index slid 1.8 percent, with Exxon Mobil down 2 percent at $85.10, and Chevron Corp off 1.9 percent at $106.45. The S&P material sector index fell 1.3 percent, with U.S. Steel Corp down 2.6 percent at $23.03.

Decliners outnumbered advancers by a ratio of slightly more than 2 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, while on the Nasdaq, two stocks fell for every one that rose.

"We've been whipsawing around on low volume and rumors that come out on the cliff," said Eric Green, senior portfolio manager at Penn Capital Management in Philadelphia, who helps oversee $7 billion in assets.

With time running short, lawmakers may opt to allow the higher taxes and across-the-board federal spending cuts to go into effect and attempt to pass a retroactive fix soon after the new year. Standard & Poor's said an impasse on the cliff wouldn't affect the sovereign credit rating of the United States.

"We're not as concerned with January 1 as the market seems to be," said Richard Weiss, senior money manager at American Century Investments, in Mountain View, California. "Things will be resolved, just maybe not on a good timetable, and any deal can easily be retroactive."

Trading volume was light throughout the holiday-shortened week, with just 4.46 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT on Friday, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares. On Monday, the U.S. stock market closed early for Christmas Eve, and the market was shut on Tuesday for Christmas. Many senior traders were absent this week for the holidays.

Highlighting Wall Street's sensitivity to developments in Washington, stocks tumbled more than 1 percent on Thursday after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned that a deal was unlikely before the deadline. But late in the day, stocks nearly bounced back when the House said it would hold an unusual Sunday session to work on a fiscal solution.

Positive economic data failed to alter the market's mood.

The National Association of Realtors said contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose in November to their highest level in 2-1/2 years, while a report from the Institute for Supply Management-Chicago showed business activity in the U.S. Midwest expanded in December.

"Economic reports have been very favorable, and once Congress comes to a resolution, the market should resume an upward trend, based on the data," said Weiss, who helps oversee about $125 billion in assets. "All else being equal, we see any further decline as a buying opportunity."

Barnes & Noble Inc rose 4.3 percent to $14.97 after the top U.S. bookstore chain said British publisher Pearson Plc had agreed to make a strategic investment in its Nook Media subsidiary. But Barnes & Noble also said its Nook business will not meet its previous projection for fiscal year 2013.

Shares of magicJack VocalTec Ltd jumped 10.3 percent to $17.95 after the company gave a strong fourth-quarter outlook and named Gerald Vento president and chief executive, effective January 1.

The U.S.-listed shares of Canadian drugmaker Aeterna Zentaris Inc surged 13.8 percent to $2.47 after the company said it had reached an agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on a special protocol assessment by the FDA for a Phase 3 registration trial in endometrial cancer with AEZS-108 treatment.

(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Snow buries parts of Northeast, flights canceled










BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) - A powerful winter storm pushed through the U.S. Northeast on Thursday, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of airline flights while bringing some holiday cheer to families hoping for snow and lifting spirits at ski resorts in the region.

The storm dumped a foot of snow on parts of the United States with the heaviest snow falling across northern New York and New England, the National Weather Service reported.






"It feels lovely to have wonderful snow for the kids to play in, and I think it's the kind of snow that's good for making forts and snowmen," said Katryna Nields, a musician in Conway, Massachusetts, who was outside her home shoveling snow.

"It's just the kind of snow you want for between Christmas and New Year's," she added.

The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England and coastal flood advisories from New York's Long Island to southern Maine.

Airlines canceled more than 800 flights on Thursday, according to FlightAware.com, a website that tracks flights.

Some flights into and out of the three major New York City area airports - Newark Liberty International, John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia - were delayed due to the weather, the Federal Aviation Administration reported.

The weather service forecast 12 to 18 inches of snow for northern New England, accompanied by freezing rain and sleet, creating hazards on the highways and at airports.

More snow is headed east, said Alex Sosnowski, senior meteorologist at Accuweather.com.

"A new storm is in the works for portions of New England, the mid-Atlantic and the Ohio Valley," he said.

The new storm "will bring more snow to areas that received snow from the post-Christmas storm and will bring snow to some areas that got rain or mostly rain," he said, adding that it has the potential to strengthen to a strong nor'easter or blizzard in parts of New England.

Tom Olney, a 50-year-old stay-at-home father of two, was making plans to go sledding with his children in their hometown of Wayland, Massachusetts.

"We love snow," Olney said. "What else are you going to do when it's this wet and cold out?"

Western Massachusetts, like much of the Northeast, had an uncharacteristically mild winter last year, but residents such as Olney say they are ready for a more typical cold season.

"Mother Nature doesn't usually give you two in a row," he said. "We've still got a lot of supplies from last year, so I guess we're ready for it now."

Heavy snow was falling in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.

Eleven inches of snow was forecast for Buffalo, where some 8 to 12 inches of snow fell overnight into Thursday. Prior to that, Buffalo was 23 inches below average for this time of year, the weather service said.

"It's just a reminder, winter is here," said Tom Paone of the National Weather Service in Buffalo.

Daniel Ivancic, of the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda, said he bought a snowmobile last winter that has sat largely idle with snow totals well below average.

"I waited and waited and, no snow. This winter it seemed like the same thing was going to happen until the storm hit," Ivancic said. "I'm just going to take advantage of every minute of it."

Police patrolling the New York State Thruway from Buffalo to Albany reported dozens of accidents, mostly involving cars that slipped off snowy roads overnight.

Freezing rain - making for treacherous travel conditions - was predicted for parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia while significant rain was likely along the New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland coasts, the weather service said.

The storm system dumped record snow in north Texas and Arkansas before sweeping through the South on Christmas Day and then veering north.

The system triggered tornadoes and left almost 200,000 people in Arkansas and Alabama without power on Wednesday.

Authorities said an 81-year-old man died in Georgiana, Alabama after a tree fell on his home.

(Additional reporting by Betsy Pisik in Wayland, Massachusetts, Zach Howard in Conway, Massachusetts, Kaija Wilkinson in Mobile, Alabama, Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Dan Burns in New York; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Claudia Parsons)

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iOS apps see Christmas sales spike shrink in 2012






Distimo just released its statistics on Christmas Day app downloads and revenue growth… and the download spike is far smaller than it was last year. Back in 2011, Christmas Day iOS app download volume spiked 230% above the December average. This year, the increase was just 87% — far below industry expectations. The revenue spike came in at 70%.


[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]






Interestingly, iPad downloads increased by 140% this Christmas, implying that the iPhone download bounce was really modest.


[More from BGR: New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera]


A few weeks ago, AppAnnie released statistics showing that iOS app revenue growth had stalled over the summer of 2012, whereas Android app revenue growth was relatively strong at 48% over a five month period. Both Distimo and Appannie are respected companies and their analytics are closely followed by app industry professionals. Could it be that the pace of iPhone app revenue growth has slowed down sharply from 2011 levels, even if Distimo and AppAnnie numbers aren’t entirely accurate?


This article was originally published by BGR


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“Rescue Me” singer Fontella Bass dies aged 72






(Reuters) – American soul singer Fontella Bass, who topped the R&B chart in 1965 with the song “Rescue Me,” died in St. Louis. She was 72.


Bass died in hospice care on Wednesday night from complications of a heart attack she suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, told Reuters. Bass had also suffered from strokes in recent years.






“She’s going to be missed,” Mitchell said. “Her big personality. Her love for family. Her big, giving heart and her cooking.”


She was known as the “queen of soul food” to her family, Mitchell said.


Bass was born into a singing family in St. Louis. Her mother, Martha Bass, was a singer in the Clara Ward Singers gospel group. Her brother, the late R&B singer David Peaston, scored a handful of hits in the 1980s and 1990s.


Bass first achieved success dueting with Bobby McClure in 1965 on songs such as “Don’t Mess Up A Good Thing” and “You’ll Miss Me (When I’m Gone),” both of which were hits on the pop and R&B charts.


Bass’ biggest hit came with “Rescue Me,” which shot up the Billboard pop charts in the fall of 1965, becoming one of the most popular soul hits of all time.


“It held a special place in her heart,” Mitchell said of the song. “She sang it every time she performed.”


The song has been covered and sampled numerous times over the years, including by pop stars Linda Ronstadt and Cher, and more recently in 2000 by UK group Nu Generation, who remixed the song into a dance track.


Nu Generation’s remix, “In Your Arms (Rescue Me)” hit the top 10 of the UK singles chart.


Bass had moderate success in later years with a gospel album in the 1990s, but was unable to emulate the popularity set by “Rescue Me.”


She was married to jazz trumpeter and composer Lester Bowie. The two spent time living in Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s before moving back to the United States.


Funeral arrangements for Bass have not been finalized. The singer is survived by her four children.


(Reporting by Eric Kelsey and Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Doina Chiacu)


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Well: Too Young to Have a Heart Attack

The foreshadowing escaped me: The night before we left for our summer vacation in Michigan, I accidentally stepped on my Kindle — which, like my heart, I cannot live without — and broke it. Reduced to reading novels on my iPhone, I made the best of it several days later, sitting in a sunroom overlooking Eight Point Lake, where my family gathers each year with friends.

The day before, proving to my teenage sons that 48 isn’t too old for fun, I had hung on for dear life as I zoomed behind a speedboat on a ski tube. The next day, I was enjoying a few moments of solitude in those blissful minutes before the sun goes down, finger-swiping to turn the page of my novel on my phone’s tiny screen, when my left arm started hurting.

You know that childhood feeling when your mother is mad at you, grabs your arm and squeezes it as she drags you away from whatever grief you’ve been causing? It felt like that, times 10, from shoulder to wrist. My chest got slightly uncomfortable, and I started sweating profusely. For the next four or five minutes, I kept to myself. I was incredibly antsy — up, down, sitting, standing, leaning, lying; my arm and I simply couldn’t get comfortable.

I instinctively knew what was happening but wasn’t ready to say it out loud, trying to reassure myself. There was no elephant on my chest; I’m too young – no one in my family has had heart trouble before age 55; I’m 50 pounds overweight but carry it well. Nevertheless, I motioned my husband up from the dock and, cradling my arm, told him something was really wrong.

He rushed to get some baby aspirin he’d seen earlier in the bathroom, which I chewed. I noticed him quietly doing a Google search for “heart attack symptoms” on his phone as family and friends gathered around us, but I was otherwise inside my head, no longer able to focus on what anyone else was doing or saying.

Our friend drove us to the E.R., where my EKG looked normal and the first nitroglycerin pill had no effect. But 10 minutes later, about the time the second and third nitro pill were making the pain dissipate, the doctor showed up with the result of my cardiac enzyme blood test. It’s supposed to be 0, but mine was much higher. And, he said, that weird somersault feeling I was having right at that moment at the base of my throat was actually tachycardia, a rapid heart rate. Before he was even done talking, an ambulance crew was waiting to take me to a bigger hospital 30 minutes away for a cardiac catheterization.

A little balloon angioplasty through the groin? I could deal with that, and maybe I could convince them to let me go back to the cottage in time for dessert. Instead, I woke up the next day, struggling to breathe, wrists strapped to the rails of a hospital bed, hearing the word “surgery.” I was extremely agitated, confused and unable to ask questions because of the breathing tube running down my throat.

This was not the summer vacation I had planned.

It turned out my “tortuous” left anterior descending artery was 95 percent clogged, and the angioplasty effort tore the inner artery wall, making a stent impossible and creating an even more critical situation. While I was still anesthetized, a surgical team was rounded up at 3 a.m. for an emergency heart bypass. In the span of a couple of hours, I went from expecting a teeny balloon in my artery and a little puncture in my groin to having open heart surgery and an eight-inch scar bisecting my chest.

Did I ever expect this? Not really. I’d read enough to know that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, that our heart attack symptoms often are radically different from men’s (just ask Rosie O’Donnell, whose heart attack symptoms the same week as mine seemed more like the flu), and that a third of cardiovascular-disease deaths happen to people younger than 65. But this stuff doesn’t happen to us, right?

Not only did it happen to me; it happened to me twice. I was lucky enough to arrange a flight home on a small plane — larger planes have pressure issues, and the doctors wouldn’t let us drive — but 30 minutes into the flight, my left arm started hurting and I started sweating, not to mention crying at the thought of going through this all over again.

We made an emergency landing. Later, after five hours of tests and discussion, a doctor told me it was stress-induced angina: the symptoms of a heart attack without the life-threatening blockage. He wanted me to stay overnight for observation, but finally agreed to let me continue my trip home.

I’d been relatively pain-free in the hospital, but once I was home, the agony of my titanium-twist-tied sternum was startling. I’ve had to take everything — shifting positions, showering, even breathing — slowly. I’m more aware of my heartbeat, which can be a little freaky. And while I won’t be running marathons any time soon, it’s heartening to hear from friends that I look “terrific,” nothing like a person who had a heart attack five months ago.

I’ve learned many things throughout all of this. Among them, that doctors now try to use a mammary artery, from the chest, for the bypass instead of grafting one from the leg because the mammary bypasses tend to last longer. And it’s likely that a lot of my previous complaints over the past few years — extreme fatigue, lack of endurance, poor circulation, jaw pain (not T.M.J., after all), and so many other vague symptoms — were due to this growing accumulation of plaque in my artery, not perimenopause. Even though I’m far from healed yet, I feel amazingly more alert and less muddled than I did before the surgery, and many of those other symptoms suddenly disappeared.

I also quickly learned I have more friends than I realized, as people brought dinners and well wishes for weeks on end (not to mention commiseration about trying to read a book on an iPhone, a heart-attack-inducing event if ever there was one). However, I’m still coming to terms with the idea of a heart-healthy diet here in Wisconsin, the land of aged and artisan cheeses.

Perhaps most important, I’ve learned to relinquish some control. Even if your doctor says you don’t need help walking up the stairs, let your husband or children escort you anyway. When you’ve been this close to death, the recovery is as much theirs as yours.

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Toyota to pay big to settle suits









Toyota Motor Corp., moving to put years of legal problems behind it, has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle dozens of lawsuits relating to sudden acceleration.


The proposed deal, filed Wednesday in federal court, would be among the largest ever paid out by an automaker. It applies to numerous suits claiming economic damages caused by safety defects in the automaker's vehicles, but does not cover dozens of personal injury and wrongful-death suits that are still pending around the nation.


The suits were filed over the last three years by Toyota and Lexus owners who claimed that the value of their vehicles had been hurt by the potential for defects, including floor mats that could cause the vehicles to surge out of control.





ROAD TO RECALL: Read The Times' award winning coverage


In addition, Toyota said it is close to settling suits filed by the Orange County district attorney and a coalition of state attorneys general who had accused the automaker of deceptive business practices. The costs of those agreements would be included in a $1.1-billion charge the Japanese automaker said it will take against earnings to cover the actions.


"We concluded that turning the page on this legacy legal issue through the positive steps we are taking is in the best interests of the company, our employees, our dealers and, most of all, our customers," Christopher Reynolds, Toyota's chief counsel in the U.S., said in a statement.


Toyota's lengthy history of sudden acceleration was the subject of a series of Los Angeles Times articles in 2009, after a horrific crash outside San Diego that took the life of an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer and his family.


Under terms of the agreement, which has not yet been approved in court, Toyota would install brake override systems in numerous models and provide cash payments from a $250-million fund to owners whose vehicles cannot be modified to incorporate that safety measure.


In addition, the automaker plans to offer extended repair coverage on throttle systems in 16 million vehicles and offer cash payments from a separate $250-million fund to Toyota and Lexus owners who sold their vehicles or turned them in at the end of a lease in 2009 or 2010. The total value of the settlement could reach $1.4 billion, according to Steve Berman, the lead plaintiff attorney in the case.


The lawsuits, filed over the last several years, had been seeking class certification.


News of the agreement comes scarcely a week after Toyota agreed to pay a record $17.35-million fine to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for failing to report a potential floor mat defect in a Lexus SUV. Those come on top of almost $50 million in fines paid by Toyota for other violations related to sudden acceleration since 2010.


The massive settlement does not, however, put Toyota's legal woes to rest. The automaker still faces numerous injury and wrongful death claims around the country, including a group of cases that have been consolidated in federal court in Santa Ana, and other cases awaiting trial in Los Angeles County.


The first of the federal cases, involving a Utah man who was killed in a Camry that slammed into a wall in 2010, is slated for trial in mid-February.


The California cases are set to begin in April, among them a suit involving a 66-year-old Upland woman who was killed after her vehicle allegedly reached 100 miles per hour and slammed into a tree.


Edgar Heiskell III, a West Virginia attorney who has a dozen pending suits against Toyota, said he is preparing to go to trial this summer in a case that involved a Flint, Mich., woman who was killed when her 2005 Camry suddenly accelerated near her home.


"We are proceeding with absolute confidence that we can get our cases heard on the merits and that we expect to prove defects in Toyota's electronic control system," he said.


Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said the settlement would have no bearing on the personal injury cases.


"All carmakers face these kinds of suits," he said. "We'll defend those as we normally would."


The giant automaker's sudden acceleration problems first gained widespread attention after the August 2009 crash of a Lexus ES outside San Diego.


That accident set off a string of recalls, an unprecedented decision to temporarily stop sales of all Toyota vehicles and a string of investigations, including a highly unusual apology by Toyota President Akio Toyoda before a congressional committee. Eventually Toyota recalled more than 10 million vehicles worldwide and has since spent huge sums — estimated at more than $2 billion, not including Wednesday's proposed settlement — to repair both its automobiles and public image.





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One of Chicago's most feared mobsters dies in prison

Frank Calabrese Jr., ex-mobster and author of the book Family Secrets, speaks to the Chicago Tribune's John Kass on March 14, 2011, at Bella Luna cafe in Chicago. (Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune, March 14, 2011)









Convicted mob hitman Frank Calabrese Sr. has died in a federal prison in North Carolina.

Calabrese died on Christmas at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, where he had been serving a life sentence, according to a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons. He was 75.

Calabrese, one of Chicago’s most feared mobsters, was convicted in 2007 during the Operation Family Secrets trial.


A federal jury held Calabrese and two other aging mobsters -- Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo and James Marcello -- responsible for 10 murders after a trial that exposed the seedy inner workings of organized crime in Chicago.

Calabrese,  a portly, bearded loan shark who according to witnesses doubled as a hit man, was found responsible for seven mob murders. Witnesses, including his brother Nicholas Calabrese, said he strangled victims with a rope, then cut their throats to make sure they were dead.







Marcello, described by prosecutors as a top leader of the Chicago Outfit, was held responsible for the June 1986 murder of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, the Chicago mob's longtime man in Las Vegas and the inspiration for the Joe Pesci character in the movie "Casino."

The Family Secrets trial was the biggest organized crime case in Chicago in years. The defendants were convicted of operating the Chicago Outfit as a racketeering enterprise.

They allegedly squeezed "street tax," similar to protection money, out of businesses, ran sports bookmaking and video poker operations as well as engaged in loan sharking. And they allegedly killed many of those who they feared might spill mob secrets to the government -- or already were doing so.

The cases went unsolved for decades.


Calabrese’s attorney in the Family Secrets trial, Joseph “Shark” Lopez, said Calabrese had been in ill health.

“Last I spoke with him a little over a year ago, he was a sick man,” Lopez said. “He was on about 17 different medications. But always a strong-willed individual.”

After spending hundreds of hours together while Calabrese was on trial, Lopez said the two developed a relationship.

“Sure he was difficult at times because he was used to getting his way, but I only saw one side of him and that was the good side,” Lopez said. “He was a pleasure to deal with and a pleasure to talk to. We’d talk about cooking, restaurants, history, you name it.”

“He was quick-witted, smart and street-savvy,” Lopez said. “Always very upbeat; nothing could keep Frank down.”

Lopez said Calabrese was very religious, making his Christmas day death feel “odd.”

“He always talked about how much he loved spending Christmas with his family. It was his favorite holiday of the year,” he said.

Lopez said he thinks there will be mixed feelings in Chicago about Calabrese’s death.

“I’m sure there are some people really sad and some people really happy,” Lopez said. “I’m sad for his family.”


Frank Coconate, a friend of the family, said he heard about the death through Calabrese's wife.

"I’m a little shook up about it,’’ said Coconate, 54, who took vacations to Florida with his wife and Calabrese and often dined with him.  “It’s a family tragedy."

Coconate said Calabrese had heart problems, and had broken his hip in the shower about a month ago.

Coconate remembered Calabrese as a “unique individual’’ with a temper that would flare up unexpectedly, even during dinners out with his family.

"If he heard something, if you shot your mouth off, you’d be having dinner and he’d ask you to come outside and he’d crack you in the head," Coconate said. "He was a throwback gangster. He would fight with his fists and was strong as a bull. But that’s the business they’re are in.

"He was a great manipulator," he said, recalling recent allegations that Calabrese persuaded a priest to act as a messenger for him. "He was very charming. That’s what made him dangerous.’’

He said the last real communication he’d received from Calabrese was a 19-page letter from prison. In recent years, there were just brief messages through other people. “He’d say, 'How's it going? How’s your wife?' He’d say keep an eye on his son. He didn’t want him him to get hurt."

Coconate said Calabrese was in isolation in prison, and only Calabrese's wife and his lawyer were allowed to see him about every month. “It’s pretty sad. But whatever he was, nobody should be treated like that. An animal should not be treated that way."

Coconate was in the news himself in 2005 when he was fired from his city job in Chicago. He was later reinstated after contending he was dismissed because of his frequent criticism of the Daley administration.


Calabrese's body was taken to the medical examiner's office, where it was to be examined, according to Kevin Gerity, autopsy manager for the office. 





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Samsung expects to ship more than half a billion phones in 2013









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Q & A: Should Older Adults Be Vaccinated Against Chickenpox?





Q. Should a 65-year-old who has never had chickenpox be vaccinated against it?




A. In someone who has never had chickenpox, the vaccine would protect against a disease that is far more serious in adults than it is in children, said Dr. Mark S. Lachs, director of geriatrics for the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System and professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.


After childhood chickenpox, the varicella virus is never eliminated from the body but lies dormant in nerve roots. Decades later, it may reactivate along the nerve pathway and cause the very painful rash called shingles, and later, in many cases, a persistent pain called postherpetic neuralgia, or PHN.


Therefore, for most people over 60, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the shingles vaccine. It safely reduces (but does not eliminate) the risk of both shingles and PHN in those who have had chickenpox, Dr. Lachs said.


In someone who never had chickenpox, he said, the concern is not shingles but adult chickenpox, which has “fatality rates 25 times higher than in children.”


Such a person should instead be vaccinated against a primary infection with the varicella virus, Dr. Lachs said. The vaccine differs in strength from the one for shingles and is given in two injections, a month apart.


C. CLAIBORNE RAY


Readers may submit questions by mail to Question, Science Times, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018, or by e-mail to question@nytimes.com.



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Toyota agrees to settle acceleration cases for over $1 billion













A Toyota Logo is pictured on a Prius car at a Toyota dealership in west London


A Toyota Logo is pictured on a Prius car at a Toyota dealership in west London
(Toby Melville Reuters, REUTERS / February 9, 2010)



























































DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp has agreed to pay as much as $1.4 billion to settle U.S. litigation claims that its vehicles suddenly and unintentionally accelerated, according to court filings made public Wednesday.

Toyota said it will take a one-time pre-tax charge of $1.1 billion to cover the estimated costs of the settlement.

Hagens Berman, the law firm representing Toyota owners who brought the case in 2010, said in a press release the settlement was valued between $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion. In a plaintiff memo filed in court, the firm estimated that the total package was "conservatively valued" at more than $1.3 billion.

The deal amounts to "a landmark, if not a record, settlement in automobile defect class action litigation in the United States," according to the plaintiff memo. Toyota described the settlement as a "significant step forward" for the Japanese automaker, which has seen its image take a hit from the controversy.

The settlement, which must be approved by a California federal judge, includes direct payments to customers as well as the installation of a brake override system in about 3.25 million vehicles, plaintiff attorneys said.

The terms include a $250 million fund for former Toyota owners who sold vehicles at reduced prices because of bad publicity, and a separate $250 million fund for owners not eligible for the brake override system.

Plaintiff attorneys are slated to receive up to $200 million in fees and $27 million in costs, according to court documents.

(Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman and Bernie Woodall; additional reporting by Dan Levine and Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Dan Grebler and Cynthia Osterman)


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NY man who shot firefighters: Killing 'what I like doing best'










NEW YORK (Reuters) - A gunman who killed two volunteer firefighters and wounded two others in a Christmas Eve ambush in upstate New York left a typewritten note saying he planned to burn down his neighborhood and start "killing people," authorities said on Tuesday.

The gunman, William Spengler, 62, opened fire on volunteer firefighters who responded to a house fire he deliberately set early on Monday morning in Webster, New York, a suburb of Rochester, authorities said.






Spengler shot and killed himself in an ensuing gunfight with police. He had spent 17 years in prison for beating his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer in 1981, authorities said.

Police said Spengler set the fire, laying a trap for the firefighters, and began shooting when they arrived.

He left a typewritten note describing his intent, Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said at a televised news conference.

"I still have to get ready to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down and do what I like doing best, killing people," Pickering read from the gunman's statement.

Investigators had found human remains in Spengler's burned-out house, where he lived with his sister, Cheryl Spengler, 67, Pickering said. The remains are assumed to be the sister's and a medical examiner will determine the cause of death.

"A CLEAR AMBUSH"

Spengler started shooting at the arriving firefighters before they got out of their fire truck, Pickering said. He shot out the truck's windshield as they tried to drive away, he said.

"This was a clear ambush on first responders," Pickering said. Police fired back at the gunman, he said. "It was a combat condition. They were shooting at muzzle flash," Pickering said.

Spengler was in a natural depression in an embankment near a tree when he opened fire, he said.

His motive for attacking firefighters remained unknown, Pickering said. It may have been related to contributions his mother had made to the local fire department, he said.

Pickering said he was not sure what the victims were shot with, but said Spengler had an "arsenal of ammunition" and three weapons - a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, a pump-action Mossberg shotgun, and a .223 Bushmaster rifle with a flash suppressor.

The same model Bushmaster rifle was used in the killing of 20 students and six teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14.

Authorities with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were checking on the origin of the weapons, he said.

As a convicted felon, Spengler could not legally own guns. Pickering said authorities were examining potential links between the weapons and thefts of guns in the county.

The firefighters killed in the attack were Lieutenant Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka, authorities said.

The injured firefighters were identified as Joseph Hofsetter and Theodore Scardino. Both men were listed in guarded condition at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester.

An off-duty police officer was wounded by shrapnel as he drove past the scene. The officer was treated at a hospital and released.

Seven homes in the neighborhood were destroyed by the fire, and two were uninhabitable, Pickering said.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst, Dan Grebler, Steve Orlofsky and Leslie Gevirtz)

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Netflix suffers Christmas Eve outage, points to Amazon






NEW YORK (Reuters) – An outage at one of Amazon‘s web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc.’s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.


The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies and television shows from home, Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said. Such devices range from gaming consoles such as Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 to Blu-ray players.






Evers said that the issue was the result of an outage at an Amazon Web Services‘ cloud computing center in Virginia, and started at about 12:30 p.m. PST (2030 GMT) on Monday and was fully restored Tuesday morning, although streaming was available for most users late on Monday.


“We are investigating exactly what happened and how it could have been prevented,” Evers said.


“We are happy that people opening gifts of Netflix or Netflix capable devices can watch TV shows and movies and apologize for any inconvenience caused last night,” he added.


An outage at Amazon Web Services, or AWS, knocked out such sites as Reddit and Foursquare in April of last year.


Amazon Web Services was not immediately available for comment. Evers, the Netflix spokesman, declined to comment on the company’s contracts with Amazon.


(Reporting by Sam Forgione; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)


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Queen delivers 1st Christmas message in 3D






LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II has hailed the holidays in a new dimension, delivering her Christmas message for the first time in 3D.


In the annual, prerecorded broadcast, the monarch paid tribute to the armed forces, “whose sense of duty takes them away from family and friends” over the holidays, and expressed gratitude for the outpouring of enthusiasm for her Diamond Jubilee celebrations.






The queen said she was struck by the “strength of fellowship and friendship” shown by well-wishers to mark her 60 years on the throne.


“It was humbling that so many chose to mark the anniversary of a duty which passed to me 60 years ago,” she said as footage showed crowds lining the Thames River in the rain earlier this year for a boat pageant. “People of all ages took the trouble to take part in various ways and in many nations.”


The queen also reflected on Britain’s hosting of the Olympic games in 2012, praising the “skill, dedication, training and teamwork of our athletes” and singling out the volunteers who devoted themselves “to keeping others safe, supported and comforted.”


Elizabeth’s message aired shortly after she attended a traditional church service at St. Mary Magdelene Church on her sprawling Sandringham estate in Norfolk.


Wearing a turquoise coat and matching hat, the monarch rode to church in a Bentley, accompanied by granddaughters Beatrice and Eugenie. Her husband, Prince Philip, walked from the house to the church with other members of the royal family.


Three familiar faces were missing from the family outing. Prince William is spending the holiday with his pregnant wife Kate and his in-laws in the southern England village of Bucklebury. Prince Harry is serving with British troops in Afghanistan.


After the church service, the royals usually gather to watch the queen’s prerecorded television broadcast, a tradition that began with a radio address by King George V in 1932.


The queen has made a prerecorded Christmas broadcast on radio since 1952 and on television since 1957. She writes the speeches herself and the broadcasts mark the rare occasion on which the queen voices her own opinion without government consultation.


Her switch to 3D was not the only technological leap for prominent British figures this Christmas.


The Archbishops of Canterbury and York chose to tweet their sermons for the first time, in order to bring Christmas to a new digital audience.


In his speech, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said he has been inspired by meeting victims of suffering over the past decade while leading the world’s 80 million-strong Anglican Communion.


Delivering his final Christmas Day sermon from Canterbury Cathedral, Williams also acknowledged how a vote against allowing women to become bishops has damaged the credibility of the church.


Still, he said, it was “startling” to see after the vote how many people “turned out to have a sort of investment in the church, a desire to see the church looking credible and a real sense of loss when — as they saw it — the church failed to sort its business out.”


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Rumored iPad 5 to be thinner















































That iPad 3 you got last March? Forget it. It's like the eight-track tape  of tablets. (Kids: Ask your parents what that means.) Even that iPad 4 you're about to unwrap Christmas morning that you think is so darn new is about to become yesterday's news. 


At least, that is, if the latest iPad rumors are true. According to the Japanese blog Macotakara, the next iPad is due to hit in March. At which time, all previous versions of the iPad will feel like bricks.


QUIZ: What set the Internet on fire in 2012? 








The site reports that the fifth version of the iPad will be thinner and lighter than the last iPad. For those of you hoping that Apple's next version of the iPad would be heavier and clunkier, this is no doubt crushing news.


For the rest of the planet, however, this is pretty much what you'd expect from Apple. Macotakara says its sources say the next iPad will be 2 millimeters thinner and 17 millimeters narrower. 


If true, it marks a continuation of the accelerated product update cycle that kicked into gear this past year under Apple CEO Tim Cook. 


According to 9to5Mac.com, if the dimensions are correct, "The new supposed thinness would mean the next iPad is nearly as thin as the 7.2mm thin iPad mini."


Speaking of the Mini, Macotakara reports that Apple is cooking up a retina screen for the next iPad mini. 


Here's the real thing iPad owners need to fear: How long will Apple continue to support those older iPads? It already doesn't let owners of the first iPad download new versions of iOS. 


ALSO: 


Yelp's new weapon against fake reviews: User alerts


Google Maps returns to iPhone; iPad app coming soon


Scam watch: Fake news sites, smartphone viruses, BBB scam stopper


Follow me on Twitter @obrien.






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Police: NY gunman set 'trap' for firefighters












An ex-con gunned down two firefighters after luring them to his neighborhood by setting a car and a house ablaze early Monday, then took shots at police and committed suicide while several homes burned.


Authorities used an armored vehicle to help residents flee dozens of homes on the shore of Lake Ontario a day before Christmas. Police restricted access to the neighborhood, and officials said it was not clear whether there were other bodies in the seven houses left to burn.











The sister of the gunman, who lived with him, was unaccounted for. The gunman's motive was unknown.


The gunman fired at the four firefighters when they arrived shortly after 5:30 a.m. at the blaze in Webster, a suburb of Rochester, town Police Chief Gerald Pickering said. The first police officer who arrived chased the suspect and exchanged gunfire.


He lay in wait outdoors for the firefighters' arrival, then opened fire probably with a rifle and from atop an earthen berm, Pickering said.


"It does appear it was a trap," he said.


The gunman, William Spengler, had served more than 17 years in prison for beating his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer in 1980 at the house next to where Monday's attack happened, Pickering said at afternoon news conference. Spengler, 62, was paroled in 1998 and had led a quiet life since, authorities said. Convicted felons are not allowed to possess weapons.


Two firefighters, one of whom was also a town police lieutenant, died at the scene, and two others were hospitalized. An off-duty officer who was passing by was also injured.


Another police officer, the one who exchanged gunfire with Spengler, "in all likelihood saved many lives," Pickering said.


Emergency radio communications capture someone saying he "could see the muzzle flash coming at me" as Spengler carried out his ambush. The audio posted on the website RadioReference.com has someone reporting "firefighters are down" and saying "got to be rifle or shotgun — high powered ... semi or fully auto."


Spengler lived in the house with his sister and mother, Arline, who died in October. He had originally been charged with second-degree murder in connection with grandmother Rose Spengler's death but pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter.


The West Webster Fire District learned of the fire early Monday after a report of a car and house on fire on Lake Road, on a narrow peninsula where Irondequoit Bay meets Lake Ontario, Monroe County Sheriff Patrick O'Flynn said.


The fire appeared from a distance as a pulsating ball of flame glowing against the early morning sky, flames licking into treetops and reflecting on the water, with huge bursts of smoke billowing away in a brisk wind.


Two of the firefighters arrived on a fire engine and two in their own vehicles, Pickering said. After Spengler fired, one of the wounded men managed to flee, but the other three couldn't because of flying gunfire.


A police armored vehicle was used to recover two men, and eventually it evacuated 33 people from nearby homes, the police chief said. The gunfire initially kept firefighters from battling the blazes.


The dead men were identified as Police Lt. Michael Chiapperini, 43, the Webster Police Department's public information officer; and Tomasz Kaczowka, also a 911 dispatcher, whose age was not released.


Pickering described Chiapperini as a "lifetime firefighter" with nearly 20 years in the department, and called Kaczowka a "tremendous young man."


The two wounded firefighters, Joseph Hofstetter and Theodore Scardino, were in guarded condition in the intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital, authorities said. Both were awake and alert and are expected to recover.


Hofstetter, also a full-timer with the Rochester Fire Department, was hit once in the pelvis, and the bullet lodged in his spine, authorities said. Scardino was hit in the chest and knee.


At West Webster Fire Station 1, there were at least 20 bouquets on a bench in front and a bouquet of roses with three gold-and-white ribbons saying, "May they rest in peace," ''In the line of duty" and "In memory of our fallen brothers."





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Thousands sign US petition to deport Piers Morgan






LONDON (AP) — Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for British CNN host Piers Morgan to be deported from the U.S. over his gun control views.


Morgan has taken an aggressive stand for tighter U.S. gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting. Last week, he called a gun advocate appearing on his “Piers Morgan Tonight” show an “unbelievably stupid man.”






Now, gun rights activists are fighting back. A petition created Dec. 21 on the White House e-petition website by a user in Texas accuses Morgan of engaging in a “hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution” by targeting the Second Amendment. It demands he be deported immediately for “exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens.”


The petition has already hit the 25,000 signature threshold to get a White House response. By Monday, it had 31,813 signatures.


Morgan seemed unfazed — and even amused — by the movement.


In a series of Twitter messages, he alternately urged his followers to sign the petition and in response to one article about the petition said “bring it on” as he appeared to track the petition’s progress.


“If I do get deported from America for wanting fewer gun murders, are there any other countries that will have me?” he wrote.


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Measles: Measles Epidemic Is Spreading in Central Africa


Jehad Nga for The New York Times


An internally displaced persons camp in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In addition to recent violence in the country, a spreading measles epidemic is further endangering the lives of thousands of children there.







A large measles epidemic is spreading in Central Africa, endangering the lives of thousands of children, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders warned last week.




Since October, the charity has vaccinated more than 226,000 children in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The organization has also treated nearly 13,000 Congolese for the effects of the disease.


Measles is very contagious. In places where many children are malnourished and vitamin-deficient, it kills 1 percent to15 percent of those who don’t receive medical care, Doctors Without Borders estimated. (Even in the United States in the 1990s, although cases were rare, the fatality rate was 0.3 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In AIDS patients, the rate is 30 percent.)


The eastern Congo basin has serious shortages of medical workers and of drugs. While there is no treatment for measles itself, antibiotics can save those who develop pneumonia, meningitis or other secondary infections. Measles can also cause blindness by scarring the eyeball.


The outbreak is taking place despite enormous success against the disease worldwide. According to a study released earlier this year, deaths from measles have dropped by almost 75 percent since 2000.


Most of the lives saved were in Africa and India. Measles shots are often cited as one of the chief reasons that deaths of children under age 5 around the world have fallen steadily.


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Kraft targets men, millennials









The pot pie kit comes with pouches of Velveeta cheese, biscuit topping, vegetables and seasoning. The cook sautes chicken until done, then adds milk, vegetables and seasoning, and cooks for another minute. The chicken mixture goes into a baking dish and gets topped with the cheese. Finally, the biscuit mix, to which more milk has been added, goes on the very top. The Velveeta Cheesy Casserole is ready in about 18 minutes at 425 degrees.


Then there's Oscar Mayer's pulled pork that's sold in a clear plastic tub. It's precooked, shredded and seasoned. Kraft is selling the meat without the sauce so cooks can choose their own and add as much as desired.


These and other new products are part of Kraft Foods Group's efforts to attract new customers: millennials and men. The recession disproportionately affected men, who are now doing about 40 percent of the cooking, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.





Northfield-based Kraft has found that both groups are cooking more and looking for flexible recipes, ways to customize their food and have fun in the kitchen. So Kraft is updating its stable of mature brands in ways that appeal to them.


Millennials, age 18 to early 30s, are beginning to cook and don't want to do things like their parents did. So Kraft is offering more products that require some effort. Just not too much effort.


A Kraft study showed younger men cooking even more than their older counterparts — 42 percent of millennial men do all the cooking in the household, while 76 percent do at least some cooking. They also like to experiment with their dishes.


"Now they'll talk about cooking like guys would talk about a hobby 20 years ago," said Barry Calpino, vice president of breakthrough innovation at Kraft. "It's an adventure, it's an experience, it's fun, they talk about 'their signature.'"


Men feel they have more latitude as cooks, according to Robin Ross, associate director of culinary at Kraft. "Women want to please their families and for everyone to like what they make,'' she said. Men, she said, tend not to feel the same pressure. "Men have more of a free hand."


Kraft Foods, a $19 billion a year packaged North American grocery business, was spun off in October from Deerfield-based Mondelez International. Kraft CEO Tony Vernon promised mid-single-digit operating income growth rates for the company, and acknowledged it needs to develop new, more modern products for its brands and increase advertising support to make customers aware of them.


While Vernon hasn't released targets for his ad budget, Kraft has lagged competitors, investing the equivalent of 3 percent of sales toward advertising and marketing, compared with 4.5 percent of sales at competitors, according to the company.


During the company's most recent earnings call, Vernon underscored double-digit sales growth for Lunchables, Velveeta, and MiO, a liquid concentrate used to flavor water, citing new products and subsequent advertising. However, he acknowledged work to do with Jell-O, to capitalize on "yogurt's explosive growth," and with Planters "to re-establish category leadership and profitable growth."


On Friday, Kraft shares closed at $45.53, up 2 percent from the Oct. 1 spinoff.


Simply being a smaller company, Calpino said, means Kraft can lavish attention on brands like Velveeta, which hadn't seen much attention in decades.


"Five or six years ago, I'm not sure we'd do innovation reviews" on Velveeta, Calpino said. "It wasn't even on the list."


Phil Lempert, a supermarket industry expert, said the millennial generation poses challenges for big food companies, which are not known for rapid change. Companies like Kraft, he said, have to "keep it fresh, keep it changing." Young people, he said, "never want to wake up and have the same meal in an entire lifetime.'' He also said that unlike their predecessors, millennials are more interested in "ethnic foods and adventure than ever before."


Lempert said a lot of millennials' tastes are "being driven by food trucks,'' serving products like tacos with a few different meats with a level of high quality and bold flavors. In turn, that has raised millennials' expectations on everything from a restaurant meal to a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.


Lynn Dornblaser, director of innovation and insight at Mintel International, said the fact that Kraft offers some of its new products like easy-to-use, three-pack sauce packets should be a hit because millennials love to cook, but hate to clean.


"Cleaning is a barrier to cooking from scratch," she said. It's the same for male cooks. Even making a white sauce for pasta, Dornblaser said, "you've got dishes to wash, measuring to do, steps to follow."


So products like Kraft's new Velveeta casseroles, pulled pork, Fresh Take cheese and bread crumb mixtures and Velveeta Toppers cheese sauce pouches "offer the ability for consumer to be a little creative with what they're cooking but without too much bother," she said.


Last year, Velveeta launched Cheesy Skillets dinner kits, the brand's biggest launch in more than 20 years. It's a stark departure for a brand best known for Shells & Cheese and its ability to melt over nachos. Consumers saute beef, add cheese sauce from a pouch, cook the pasta, mix, and add hamburger toppings such as shredded lettuce and diced tomato.





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Sri Lanka arrests 100 Chinese for cyber fraud, police say






COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka on Saturday arrested at least 100 Chinese nationals accused of an internet fraud scheme targeting people in their home country, a police spokesman said.


The accused, all in Sri Lanka on tourist visas, are suspected of hacking into computers in China and then demanding their owners transfer them money, police spokesman Prishantha Jayakodi told Reuters.






Chinese police requested help from Sri Lanka, he said.


Officials at the Chinese embassy in Colombo were not available for comment.


China has been the top lender to Sri Lanka since the end of a 25-year war in May 2009 and thousands of Chinese are working in the country on Chinese-funded infrastructure projects.


(Reporting by Shihar Aneez; editing by Jason Webb)


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CBS’ ”The Job” Gets Premiere Date






LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Survivor” maestro Mark Burnett‘s latest reality TV venture, “The Job,” will premiere February 8 at 8 p.m. on CBS, the network said Thursday.


The series, executive produced by Burnett and Michael Davies (of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” renown) and Jay Bienstock, will give contestants the chance to score jobs at prestigious American companies through several rounds of elimination challenges that will be observed by a panel of executives. As representatives from companies offer the competitors positions, the candidates will have to decide if they’ll take the jobs or continue on in pursuit of the big gig.






Former “The View” co-host Lisa Ling will host “The Job,” which is produced by Sony Pictures Television and Embassy Row.


CBS will announce the featured companies participating in the series early next year.


“The Job” will air in the time period of the network’s other work-related reality series, “Undercover Boss,” which returns April 19.


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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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