Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher kills girlfriend, self

Chiefs Player Involved in Murder-Suicide (Posted Dec. 1st, 2012)

KANSAS CITY, Missouri -- The NFL was left reeling in horror on Saturday after Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend and committed suicide.

The 25-year-old Belcher shot Kassandra Perkins at their home on Saturday morning then drove his car to the team's training facility near Arrowhead Stadium and turned the gun on himself just as police arrived.

"As officers pulled up and were getting ready to get out of their car, they heard a gunshot," Kansas City police spokesman Darin Snapp said.

"The individual, it appears, took his own life."

Snapp said Belcher shot himself in the head in front of Chiefs' head coach Romeo Crennel and general manager Scott Pioli.

"He was not threatening the employees at all," Snapp said. "He was just talking to them and thanking them for everything they had done for him."

Snapp said police had earlier been called to a nearby house after reports that a woman, identified as Belcher's 22-year-old girlfriend Perkins, had been shot multiple times. She was later pronounced dead at hospital.

Local media reported that Belcher and Perkins had a three-month-old daughter and Perkins' mother witnessed the killing and called police.

"This is part of the tragedy of urban living in this country," Kansas City Mayor Sly James told reporters outside the practice facility.

"Handguns all over the place, people blowing themselves away, and others. At some point we have to get a handle on this kind of stuff. We are not doing a good job of it."

The Chiefs' chairman Clark Hunt issued a statement.

"The entire Chiefs family is deeply saddened by today's events, and our collective hearts are heavy with sympathy, thoughts and prayers for the families and friends affected by this unthinkable tragedy," Hunt wrote.

"We will continue to fully cooperate with the authorities and work to ensure that the appropriate counseling resources are available to all members of the organization."

The Chiefs have won just one of 11 games this season, the worst record in the NFL. They were due to host the Carolina Panthers at Arrowhead on Sunday.

The Chiefs confirmed to the NFL that the game would go ahead.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Chiefs and the families and friends of those who lost their lives in this terrible tragedy," an NFL spokesman said.

"We have connected the Chiefs with our national team of professional counselors to support both the team and the families of those affected. We will continue to provide assistance in any way that we can."

Belcher was signed by the Chiefs in 2009 after he was overlooked in the NFL draft and established himself as a regular starter in his second season.

Earlier this year, he signed a one-year deal worth just under $2 million. This season Belcher started 10 of 11 games, making 38 tackles.

Belcher is just the latest NFL player to commit suicide in recent years, amid increasing concerns about the long term dangers of head injuries from repeated concussions in the sport.

The tight-knit NFL community was stunned by the latest news.

"There is nothing profound or comforting to say that can help us understand or explain a situation like this," tweeted NFL Players Association assistant executive George Atallah.

Defensive end Justin Tuck, a two-time Super Bowl winner with the New York Giants, also passed on his condolences to the Chiefs on his Twitter account.

"Man prayers go out to the KC Chiefs community and families after this mornings tragic incident," he wrote.

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“Walking Dead” midseason finale preview: attack of the bloodthirsty killers, aka our heroes

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – (Spoiler warning: Don’t read this if you don’t want to know what happened this season on “The Walking Dead” or in the comics. We’re also giving some general details about Sunday’s midseason finale.)

As eventful as this season of “The Walking Dead” has been, they’re just getting to the best stuff.

Showrunner Glen Mazzara tells TheWrap that Sunday’s midseason finale will include several intense faceoffs, including one between Michonne and The Governor’s zombified daughter, Penny. It will also introduce Tyreese (“The Wire” star Chad Coleman), one of the most beloved characters in the Robert Kirkman comics that inspired the series. And Daryl will try desperately to reunite with his brother Merle, who has moved to Woodbury and become one of The Governor’s chief lieutenants.

The episode also features an attack on Woodbury by some “bloodthirsty killers” – also known as Rick, Daryl, and the other survivors we’ve been rooting for throughout the show.

Mazzara also talked with us about the season so far, including a horrific encounter between Maggie and the Governor, and how much we should empathize with zombies.

TheWrap: What can you say about the midseason finale?

Mazzara: It all comes to a head. We’ve spent this season introducing all these new characters into the world, introducing the governor and re-introducing Merle and Michonne, and getting these two groups face to face.

The Governor does despicable things, but in his mind, he’s the good guy.

I think you’ll see that in this midseason finale. The Governor is able to say that they’re attacked by bloodthirsty killers. He can certainly make the case that Rick and his group are killers. And if you look at it objectively, they are. They took over the prison, most of those prisoners are now dead, and the people of Woodbury are just peace-loving survivors. The Governor is definitely able to pain Rick as a villain. And in doing that, he can hopefully mobilize the people of Woodbury to war.

He’s spared the people of Woodbury from seeing some ugly stuff. Is he doing it for a noble reason – to preserve their innocence – or is it so he can exploit them?

I think it’s so he can better exploit them. He feels that the people of Woodbury are sheep. He’s not interested in what they think. He just wants them to speak well of him. They are there to be ruled and he’s there to rule by any means necessary.

I feel like Glen and Maggie are our audience surrogates at this point, our pals, and they were both horribly abused. You’ve gotten a lot of feedback from fans relieved that The Governor stopped short of raping Maggie in the last episode.

He’s killed National Guardsmen. Think of all the stuff that he’s done. And the line he’s crossed and the act from which he cannot be redeemed is that he made our beloved Maggie take off her shirt and bra.

It’s very interesting, and I don’t think that would be the case if people did not care about that character as much as they do.

Why did he stop short of raping Maggie?

He didn’t rape Maggie because she wouldn’t have been broken by it. She says ‘Do what you’re gonna do, and then go to hell.’ So then to do that would have been torture for torture’s sake. It wouldn’t have gotten him the information he wanted. So he thinks about that and thinks, this isn’t going to achieve my agenda. He moves on. He brings her in, topless, implying that she was raped, to Glen, and he puts the gun to Glen’s head. … And she gives up that information.

One change you made is that in the comics, Michonne is horribly raped and tortured by the governor.

She still may be. But I think it’s important to say that this is a character who is willing to do whatever he wants or thinks it takes to achieve his goals. … We know he’s capable of rape. We know he’s capable of murder. He knows where the prison is, and he is coming for them. He collects heads. He’s the most dangerous character in this world and he is furious.

Also last episode, we saw an effort to see how much human memory remains with walkers when they transform. How much should we empathize with walkers?

I think the show has always been in a sense compassionate to zombies. The first zombie that we met was bicycle girl and Rick says ‘I’m sorry this happened to you.’ … So I do think there’s something in the DNA of this TV show in which the frightening creatures – our worst fears, walking the earth – are also individuals and people. In a way, they’re the damned. They’ve lost their souls. They’re like a ghost that doesn’t realize that they’ve passed on and can’t make it to the light. They’re dead but they’re not dead and it’s a type of curse. It comes out of a long history of horror movie. There is some type of compassion even though there can’t be.

Does it seem like people who care about the zombies are suckers?

That’s the question. What is the right way within this world? You have people who retain their humanity, like Dale, end up eaten. People who lose their humanity, like Shane, end up dead too. So in a way it’s irrelevant. It’s like a state of war in which anyone can be killed at any time. But there’s a random quality to life and death and that’s what makes it so frightening. No matter what you do, you can still suffer a horrific fate. Who would ever assume that Carol would still be alive at this point? And she is.

She’s a survivor, but she’s not Michonne. And Carol is just as likely to live or die as Michonne.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Jewel parent says sale talks proceeding

Exterior of Jewel-Osco's first "Green Store" located at 370 N. Desplaines in Chicago. (Antonio Perez / November 29, 2012)

By Emily Bryson York




Chicago Tribune reporter

6:51 a.m. CST, November 30, 2012

Supervalu, the Minneapolis-based parent of Jewel-Osco said sale talks are proceeding after stock closed down more than 18 percent Thursday, to $2.28.

The beleaguered grocery chain was likely moving to combat reports that sale talks with suitor Cerberus Capital Management had stalled over funding.

"The company continues to be in active discussion with several parties," according to the statement. "There can be no assurance that this process will result in any transaction or any change in the Company's overall structure or its business model."

Supervalu, the third-largest U.S. grocery chain, has acknowledged sale talks since the spring. The company has been closing stores and cutting jobs as it has underperformed competitors like Dominick's parent Safeway and Kroger.

If Supervalu does not sell to Cerberus, it may have to restructure on its own or sell off individual assets, which could have big tax consequences, Bloomberg said.

Reuters reported last month that buyout firm Cerberus was preparing a takeover bid for Supervalu, the third-largest U.S. supermarket chain.

Cerberus officials could not be reached immediately for comment.

-- Reuters contributed to this report

In addition to Jewel, Supervalu owns Albertsons, Cub and other regional grocery chains.

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Cutler fined $10K for flipping ball at Viking

Jay Cutler was fined $10,000 for taunting, according to a league source. He flipped the ball at Vikings cornerback A.J. Jefferson and was flagged late in the first quarter.

Culter joined the list of players fined following last Sunday’s Bears-Vikings game.

Eric Weems told the Tribune he was fined $7,875 for striking Jefferson late on the play immediately before Cutler taunted Jefferson.

Jefferson was flagged for unnecessary roughness on the play, but Weems wasn’t. Weems plans to appeal the fine.

"Heck yeah, I’m going to appeal it,’’ he said Friday. "I can’t just give it to them. I’ve got to appeal. They said I hit the guy late, which it was during the play.

"Of course I’m going to contest that once I get the video from them. I don’t see how I hit the guy late. And I didn’t get a penalty, either. So I don’t see how that works.’’

On Monday, Cutler addressed the flipping incident on WMVP-AM 1000. "I've got to be smarter than that," he said. "If anyone else on offense had done that I would have probably yelled at him like it can't happen here. I can't do it again obviously."

Besides Cutler and Weems, linebacker Brian Urlacher was fined $15,750 for a horse-collar tackle on Adrian Peterson while Henry Melton was fined $7,875 for grabbing Peterson’s facemask. Both players said they intend to appeal.

Vikings defensive end Jared Allen was fined $21,000 for his vicious hit on Bears right guard Lance Louis.  The end result was Louis tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, ending his season.

vxmcclure@tribune.com

Twitter@vxmcclure23

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Katy Perry, Carly Rae Jepsen get Billboard honors

NEW YORK (AP) — Billboard named Katy Perry its woman of the year, but the pop star thought her year was 2011.

Perry was interviewed by Jon Stewart at Billboard’s Women in Music event Friday in New York City. The singer said she thought her moment had passed. Perry released “Teenage Dream” in 2010, and it sparked five No. 1 hits on the Billboard charts that spilled over to 2011. This year, she rereleased the album, which launched two more hits and a top-grossing 3-D film.

She thanked her mom at the event, which honored women who work in the music industry.

Newcomer Carly Rae Jepsen also thanked her mom — and stepmom — when accepting the rising star honor. The “Call Me Maybe” singer said she’s happy and surprised by her success.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Hockey Coaches Defy Doctors on Concussions, Study Finds

Despite several years of intensive research, coverage and discussion about the dangers of concussions, the idea of playing through head injuries is so deeply rooted in hockey culture that two university teams kept concussed players on the ice even though they were taking part in a major concussion study.

The study, which was published Friday in a series of articles in the journal Neurosurgical Focus, was conducted during the 2011-12 hockey season by researchers from the University of Western Ontario, the University of Montreal, Harvard and other institutions.

“This culture is entrenched at all levels of hockey, from peewee to university,” said Dr. Paul S. Echlin, a concussion specialist and researcher in Burlington, Ontario, and the lead author of the study. “Concussion is a significant public health issue that requires a generational shift. As with smoking or seat belts, it doesn’t just happen overnight — it takes a massive effort and collective movement.”

The study is believed to be among the most comprehensive analyses of concussions in hockey, which has a rate of head trauma approaching that of football. Researchers followed two Canadian university teams — a men’s team and a women’s team — and scanned every player’s brain before and after the season. Players who sustained head injuries also received scans at three intervals after the injuries, with researchers using advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques.

The teams were not named in the study, in which an independent specialist physician was present at each game and was empowered to pull any player off the ice for examination if a potential concussion was observed.

The men’s team, with 25 players and an average age of 22, played a 28-game regular season and a 3-game postseason. The women’s team, with 20 players and an average age of 20, played 24 regular-season games and no playoff games. Over the course of the season, there were five observed or self-reported concussions on the men’s team and six on the women’s team.

Researchers noted several instances of coaches, trainers and players avoiding examinations, ignoring medical advice or otherwise obstructing the study, even though the players had signed consent forms to participate and university ethics officials had given institutional consent.

“Unless something is broken, I want them out playing,” one coach said, according to the study.

In one incident, a neurologist observing the men’s team pulled a defenseman during the first period of a game after the player took two hits and was skating slowly. During the intermission the player reported dizziness and was advised to sit out, but the coach suggested he play the second period and “skate it off.” The defenseman stumbled through the rest of the game.

“At the end of the third period, I spoke with the player and the trainer and said that he should not play until he was formally evaluated and underwent the formal return-to-play protocol,” the neurologist said, as reported in the study. “I was dismayed to see that he played the next evening.”

After the team returned from its trip, the neurologist questioned the trainer about overruling his advice and placing the defenseman at risk.

“The trainer responded that he and the player did not understand the decision and that most of the team did not trust the neurologist,” according to the study. “He requested that the physician no longer be used to cover any more games.”

In another episode, a physician observer assessed a minor concussion in a female player and recommended that she miss the next night’s game. Even though the coach’s own playing career had ended because of concussions, she overrode the medical advice and inserted the player the next evening.

According to the report, the coach refused to speak to another physician observer on the second evening. The trainer was reluctant to press the issue with the coach because, the trainer said, the coach did not want the study to interfere with the team.

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Jewel parent says sale talks proceeding

Exterior of Jewel-Osco's first "Green Store" located at 370 N. Desplaines in Chicago. (Antonio Perez / November 29, 2012)

By Emily Bryson York




Chicago Tribune reporter

6:51 a.m. CST, November 30, 2012

Supervalu, the Minneapolis-based parent of Jewel-Osco said sale talks are proceeding after stock closed down more than 18 percent Thursday, to $2.28.

The beleaguered grocery chain was likely moving to combat reports that sale talks with suitor Cerberus Capital Management had stalled over funding.

"The company continues to be in active discussion with several parties," according to the statement. "There can be no assurance that this process will result in any transaction or any change in the Company's overall structure or its business model."

Supervalu, the third-largest U.S. grocery chain, has acknowledged sale talks since the spring. The company has been closing stores and cutting jobs as it has underperformed competitors like Dominick's parent Safeway and Kroger.

If Supervalu does not sell to Cerberus, it may have to restructure on its own or sell off individual assets, which could have big tax consequences, Bloomberg said.

Reuters reported last month that buyout firm Cerberus was preparing a takeover bid for Supervalu, the third-largest U.S. supermarket chain.

Cerberus officials could not be reached immediately for comment.

-- Reuters contributed to this report

In addition to Jewel, Supervalu owns Albertsons, Cub and other regional grocery chains.

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Lawmaker from Chicago indicted on bank fraud charges

State Rep. LaShawn Ford, D-Chicago, shares a laugh with a colleague on the House Chamber floor at the Capitol Building in Springfield, Ill. on Feb. 7, 2012. (Michael Tercha, Chicago Tribune / February 7, 2012)

Staff report

3:04 p.m. CST, November 29, 2012

A state legislator from Chicago was indicted Thursday on federal charges he made false statements to a bank to obtain a $500,000 increase on a line of credit.

LaShawn K. Ford, 40, was charged with using the money to pay for personal expenses rather than to rehab properties in the city as he had claimed he would to the bank, prosecutors said.

Ford was first elected in 2006 to represent the 8^th House District on Chicago’s West Side and several western suburbs.

The charges allege that Ford fraudulently obtained $373,500 in advances from the line of credit to rehabilitate six real estate properties on the West Side. But he used part of that money to pay off car loans, credit cards, mortgages, casino debts and expenses for his 2006 campaign, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, Ford submitted false tax returns that inflated his personal and business income to increase the line of credit to $1.5 million at ShoreBank.

Ford’s state biography lists him as a real estate entrepreneur and founder of Ford Desired Realty Inc.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

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Lohan arrested in NY, charged also for California car smash

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actress Lindsay Lohan was arrested outside a New York nightclub on an assault charge early Thursday, police said, while in California, she was charged with reckless driving and lying to police over a car crash in June.

Lohan, 26, was arrested shortly after 4:00 a.m. (0900 GMT) on a third-degree misdemeanor assault charge after punching another woman in the face at a club in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, New York police said.

The charges in California were more serious, and could result in the “Mean Girls” actress having her probation revoked and being sent back to jail.

Lohan’s publicist and attorney did not return calls for comment on Thursday.

Lohan, who has been to rehab, jail and court numerous times since a 2007 arrest for drunk driving and cocaine possession, is currently on informal probation, following her January 2011 conviction for stealing a gold necklace from a California jewelry store.

A Los Angeles judge had lifted her formal probation in March but told her to comply with all laws and stay out of trouble.

Police in the beach city of Santa Monica said Lohan was formally charged on Thursday with reckless driving and lying to police after telling them she was not driving the Porsche that smashed into a truck on a busy highway. No one was seriously injured in the collision.

Lohan was also charged with obstructing an officer in his duty. A court date has not been set, Santa Monica police said in a statement.

In New York, Lohan was accused of punching a 28-year-old unidentified woman multiple times in the face, said New York Police Sergeant John Buthorn. The victim sustained “minor, minor injuries,” he said.

The actress was released from police custody later on Thursday morning.

The two incidents come during a rough week for the former child star, once one of the most promising young actresses in Hollywood.

Her most recent performance, as screen legend Elizabeth Taylor in the TV movie “Liz & Dick,” was panned by critics. Cable TV channel Lifetime said Monday that a modest 3.5 million Americans watched the film, which premiered last weekend.

Lohan’s recent visits to New York have been peppered with run-ins with police and public spats.

Last month, police were called to the Long Island home of Lohan’s mother, Dina Lohan, after a loud argument, though no arrests were made. In September, Lohan was arrested in Manhattan after a pedestrian told police her car had struck him in an alley, but charges were not filed.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins in New York and Jill Serjeant in Los Angeles; Editing by Xavier Briand and Bernadette Baum)

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Clearing the Fog Around Personality Disorders

For years they have lived as orphans and outliers, a colony of misfit characters on their own island: the bizarre one and the needy one, the untrusting and the crooked, the grandiose and the cowardly.

Their customs and rituals are as captivating as any tribe’s, and at least as mystifying. Every mental anthropologist who has visited their world seems to walk away with a different story, a new model to explain those strange behaviors.

This weekend the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association will vote on whether to adopt a new diagnostic system for some of the most serious, and striking, syndromes in medicine: personality disorders.

Personality disorders occupy a troublesome niche in psychiatry. The 10 recognized syndromes are fairly well represented on the self-help shelves of bookstores and include such well-known types as narcissistic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, as well as dependent and histrionic personalities.

But when full-blown, the disorders are difficult to characterize and treat, and doctors seldom do careful evaluations, missing or downplaying behavior patterns that underlie problems like depression and anxiety in millions of people.

The new proposal — part of the psychiatric association’s effort of many years to update its influential diagnostic manual — is intended to clarify these diagnoses and better integrate them into clinical practice, to extend and improve treatment. But the effort has run into so much opposition that it will probably be relegated to the back of the manual, if it’s allowed in at all.

Dr. David J. Kupfer, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and chairman of the task force updating the manual, would not speculate on which way the vote might go: “All I can say is that personality disorders were one of the first things we tackled, but that doesn’t make it the easiest.”

The entire exercise has forced psychiatrists to confront one of the field’s most elementary, yet still unresolved, questions: What, exactly, is a personality problem?

Habits of Thought

It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult.

Personality problems aren’t exactly new or hidden. They play out in Greek mythology, from Narcissus to the sadistic Ares. They percolate through biblical stories of madmen, compulsives and charismatics. They are writ large across the 20th century, with its rogues’ gallery of vainglorious, murderous dictators.

Yet it turns out that producing precise, lasting definitions of extreme behavior patterns is exhausting work. It took more than a decade of observing patients before the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin could draw a clear line between psychotic disorders, like schizophrenia, and mood problems, like depression or bipolar disorder.

Likewise, Freud spent years formulating his theories on the origins of neurotic syndromes. And Freudian analysts were largely the ones who, in the early decades of the last century, described people with the sort of “confounded identities” that are now considered personality disorders.

Their problems were not periodic symptoms, like moodiness or panic attacks, but issues rooted in longstanding habits of thought and feeling — in who they were.

“These therapists saw people coming into treatment who looked well put-together on the surface but on the couch became very disorganized, very impaired,” said Mark F. Lenzenweger, a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. “They had problems that were neither psychotic nor neurotic. They represented something else altogether.”

Several prototypes soon began to emerge. “A pedantic sense of order is typical of the compulsive character,” wrote the Freudian analyst Wilhelm Reich in his 1933 book, “Character Analysis,” a groundbreaking text. “In both big and small things, he lives his life according to a preconceived, irrevocable pattern.”

Others coalesced too, most recognizable as extreme forms of everyday types: the narcissist, with his fragile, grandiose self-approval; the dependent, with her smothering clinginess; the histrionic, always in the thick of some drama, desperate to be the center of attention.

In the late 1970s, Ted Millon, scientific director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Personology and Psychopathology, pulled together the bulk of the work on personality disorders, most of it descriptive, and turned it into a set of 10 standardized types for the American Psychiatric Association’s third diagnostic manual. Published in 1980, it is a best seller among mental health workers worldwide.

These diagnostic criteria held up well for years and led to improved treatments for some people, like those with borderline personality disorder. Borderline is characterized by an extreme neediness and urges to harm oneself, often including thoughts of suicide. Many who seek help for depression also turn out to have borderline patterns, making their mood problems resistant to the usual therapies, like antidepressant drugs.

Today there are several approaches that can relieve borderline symptoms and one that, in numerous studies, has reduced hospitalizations and helped aid recovery: dialectical behavior therapy.

This progress notwithstanding, many in the field began to argue that the diagnostic catalog needed a rewrite. For one thing, some of the categories overlapped, and troubled people often got two or more personality diagnoses. “Personality Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified,” a catchall label meaning little more than “this person has problems” became the most common of the diagnoses.

It’s a murky area, and in recent years many therapists didn’t have the time or training to evaluate personality on top of everything else. The assessment interviews can last hours, and treatments for most of the disorders involve longer-term, specialized talk therapy.

Psychiatry was failing the sort of patients that no other field could possibly help, many experts said.

“The diagnoses simply weren’t being used very much, and there was a real need to make the whole system much more accessible,” Dr. Lenzenweger said.

Resisting Simplification 

It was easier said than done.

The most central, memorable, and knowable element of any person — personality — still defies any consensus.

A team of experts appointed by the psychiatric association has worked for more than five years to find some unifying system of diagnosis for personality problems.

The panel proposed a system based in part on a failure to “develop a coherent sense of self or identity.” Not good enough, some psychiatric theorists said.

Later, the experts tied elements of the disorders to distortions in basic traits.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 29, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of traits included in the proposed criteria for narcissistic personality disorder.   The final proposal relies on two personality traits, not four.

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