“30 Rock” closes its doors with a sentimental farewell

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Emmy-winning TV comedy “30 Rock” bowed out after seven seasons on Thursday with bittersweet farewells but giving all its zany characters a happy ending.

The satirical show-within-a-show about the inside workings of a fictional television sketch series saw Tina Fey‘s hapless writer Liz Lemon try to round up her unruly cast for a last hurrah.

Along the way, unpredictable sketch star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) causes chaos, self-centered actress Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) attempts to find her true calling on Broadway, and producer Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit) finally achieves his dream to disappear without a trace.

The show’s simpleton page-turned-janitor Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer) finds himself in his element with his sudden promotion to head of television network NBC.

But under the jokes, the cast showed some real emotion in Thursday’s hour-long series finale.

“There’s a reason people don’t say honest goodbyes. It’s because when stuff is coming to an end, people freak out and they act crazy,” Liz tells Tracy.

Despite small audiences, “30 Rock” became a cult favorite, while Liz has been a hero for single geeky women as she tackled the male-dominated world of network television, with phrases such as “what the what,” “blerg” and “I want to go to there” becoming popular.

The show’s finale comes after perpetual unlucky-in-love Liz finally got her happy ending earlier in the season with her marriage to hot dog vendor Criss Chross (James Marsden) and they adopt two children.

But after grappling with the trials of being a stay-at-home mother, Liz and Criss agree to swap roles and she returns to work.

Liz also finds peace in her dysfunctional relationship with suave, egotistical network executive Jack Donaghy (played by Alec Baldwin).

Thursday’s show also saw the return of guest stars Julianne Moore and Salma Hayek as Jack’s ex-girlfriends, Conan O’Brien as one of Liz’s ex-boyfriends, along with appearances from “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” stars Ice-T and Richard Belzer and Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, as herself.

“30 Rock” was inspired by Fey’s stint as head writer for “Saturday Night Live.” It has won multiple Emmys since its 2006 premiere but has always suffered from low audience ratings.

In the show’s prime in 2008-2009, an average of 7.5 million viewers tuned in each week, but the final season has garnered an average of 4 million viewers per episode.

In honor of the show’s finale, ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s announced a new flavor, the “Liz Lemon Greek Frozen Yogurt,” which will be available this spring.

“30 Rock,” which is aired in more than 20 countries around the world, has skyrocketed Fey’s career, and she has appeared in films including “Baby Mama,” “Date Night” and the upcoming “Admission.”

Both Fey and Baldwin won the best TV comedy actor and actress accolades at the Screen Actor’s Guild awards last Sunday, with Baldwin tweeting, “What a nice note for @nbc30rock to end on.”

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Lisa Shumaker)

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Well: Gluten-Free Muffin Recipes

For people who need to eliminate gluten from their diet, baking becomes a challenge. Beginners often find gluten-free baked goods too dense. Even the Recipes for Health columnist Martha Rose Shulman didn’t like the flavor of a commercial gluten-free flour mix, which left her gluten-free cookies and tart-shells with a strong taste of bean flour. As a result, she created her own gluten-free mix for baking muffins. She writes:

My son Liam still doesn’t know that the muffins he has been devouring all week are gluten-free.

I put together my own gluten-free flour mix, one without bean flour, and turned to America’s favorite Gluten-Free Girl, Shauna James Ahem, for guidance. I was already thinking about making muffins, and I wanted a mix that could replace the whole wheat flour I usually use in conjunction with other grains or flours. Her formula for a whole-grain flour mix is simple – 70 percent ground gluten-free grain like rice flour, millet flour, buckwheat flour or teff (the list on her site is a long one) and 30 percent starch like potato starch, cornstarch or arrowroot.

For this week’s recipes, I used what I had, which was brown rice flour, potato starch and cornstarch – 20 percent potato starch and 10 percent cornstarch — and that’s the basis for the nutritional analyses of this week’s recipes. I used this mix in conjunction with a gluten-free meal or flour, so the amount of pure starch in the batters is much less than 30 percent.

When you bake anything it is much simpler and results are more consistent if you use grams and scale your ingredients. This is especially true with gluten-free baking, since you are working with grain and starch formulas. Digital scales are not expensive and I urge you to switch over to this method if you like to bake. I have given approximate cup measures so the recipes will work both ways, but scaling is more accurate.

Here are five ways to bake gluten-free muffins:

Gluten-Free Banana Chocolate Muffins: These dark chocolate muffins taste more extravagant than they are.

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Gluten-Free Cornmeal, Fig and Orange Muffins: A sweet and grainy cornmeal mixture makes for a delicious muffin.

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Gluten-Free Whole Grain Cheese and Mustard Muffins: A savory muffin with a delicious strong flavor.

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Gluten-Free Buckwheat, Poppy Seed and Blueberry Muffins: The buckwheat flour is high-fiber and makes a dark, richly-flavored muffin.

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Gluten-Free Cornmeal Molasses Muffins: Strong molasses provides a good source of iron in an easy-to-make muffin.

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Apple phones outsell Samsung in the U.S. in the fourth quarter

Bolstered by sales of its iPhone 5, Apple sold more mobile phones in the U.S. in the fourth quarter than any other maker, including its rival Samsung.

It marks the first time since 2008 that Samsung was not the top phone seller in a quarter.

Still, Samsung retained its crown for all of 2012, selling 53 million devices. Apple was second with 43.7 million phones sold.

For the fourth quarter, Apple sold 17.7 million units, or 34% of the phones sold in the quarter, according to a report released Friday morning by Strategy Analytics. That was up from 12.8 million devices sold in the year-earlier period.

Samsung was next with 16.8 million phones, or 32% of all phones sold in the quarter. Total sales  represented an increase for Samsung, which sold 13.5 million phones a year earlier. 

QUIZ: Test your Apple knowledge

"This was a good performance from Samsung, as its market share (of phones sold in the fourth quarter) rose 5 points from 27% a year earlier, but it was not enough to hold off a surging Apple," the report says.

Samsung "will surely be keen to recapture that title in 2013 by launching improved new models such as the rumored Galaxy S4," the report says. 

Third place in the U.S. was LG, which sold 6.9 million phones, 9% of all phones sold during the fourth quarter.

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Hadiya Pendleton: Slain girl made anti-gang video

Four years ago Hadiya Pendleton, then in sixth grade at Carter G. Woodson Elementary School, made an anti-gang video with fellow students. She was fatally shot this week.

The sixth-grader can barely keep from smiling, self-conscious in front of the camera as she delivers a very serious message.

"Hi, my name is Hadiya. This commercial is informational for you and your future children," she begins. "So many children out there are in gangs and it's your job as students to say no to gangs and yes to a great future."

The video then shows shots of a boy slumped in a stairwell, another boy sprawled against a locker, a girl lying on the floor against a wall as a classmate next to Hadiya says, "So many children in the world have died from gang violence. More than 500 children have died from being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Four years after Hadiya Pendleton made that public service video at Carter G. Woodson Elementary School, police are saying the same thing about her.

Hadiya had just finished her final exams at King Prep High School, where she was a sophomore, and was hanging out with friends from the school's volleyball team when she was gunned down in a park in the 4400 block of South Oakenwald Avenue. Thursday afternoon, police announced the reward for information leading to an arrest in the shooting had increased to $24,000, up from $11,000 announced Wednesday.

Hadiya and the others had sought shelter from a rainstorm under a canopy at the park around 2:20 p.m. Tuesday when a gunman jumped a fence, ran toward them and opened fire, police said.

As the teens scattered, Hadiya and two teenage boys were shot. Hadiya was hit in the back and pronounced dead at Comer Children's Hospital less than an hour after the shooting. The wounds suffered by the boys were not life-threatening.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy stressed that neither Hadiya nor anyone in the group she was with were involved with gangs. But it appears the gunman mistook the students for members of a rival gang, he said. The shooter was last seen fleeing in a white Nissan.

“These were good kids by everything that I learned," McCarthy said at a Wednesday news conference, where a reward of $11,000 was announced. "Wrong place at the wrong time.”

Hadiya was shot a little more than a week after performing with the King College Prep band in Washington during President Barack Obama's inauguration festivities. The shooting occurred in a park about a mile north of Obama's Kenwood home.

The shooting has drawn the attention of both the White House, which is pushing for national gun control, and City Hall as Chicago closes on a violent January. Hadiya was the 42nd homicide victim this year in the city, where killings last year climbed above 500.

Hadiya's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, pleaded for someone to step forward and bring the 15-year-old's killer to justice.

"She was destined for great things," he said.

Hadiya was a majorette with the band at King, one of the city's elite selective-enrollment schools. She dreamed of going to Northwestern University and talked about becoming a pharmacist or a journalist, maybe a lawyer.

Police have reported no arrests.

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OpenStack at Linux.conf.au 2013

I’m writing this blog post from Canberra Australia, while attending the Linux.conf.au (LCA) open source conference. Among the people who do these sorts of things, LCA has a well deserved reputation as one of the very best open source conferences in the world.

Geeks from across Australia and New Zealand, and from across the rest of the world, come together for a week in January (summer in this part of the world) to talk about everything from the intricate technical details of Linux kernel design to pushing the state of the art in file systems and issues deploying practical wireless cryptography. Softer but equally important topics such as Open Government, gender balance in technology, and international legal issues are also discussed. Read more about OpenStack at Linux.conf.au 2013 »

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A Minute With: Rapper T.I. dips into comedy in “Identity Thief”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Rapper Tip “T.I.” Harris has seen and done it all – three Grammy Awards, a novel, time in jail, a fashion line, TV reality show, businessman and several movies.

Now the Atlanta-based singer is dipping into comedy, appearing in the film “Identity Thief” as an armed enforcer on the trail of a character played by Melissa McCarthy who is on the run from many of those she’s swindled.

T.I., 32, sat down with Reuters ahead of the movie’s February 8 release to talk about the film, what’s left on his to-do list, and his personal views on gun control.

Q: How did you wind up in a comedic film?

A: “I met with (director) Seth (Gordon) and learned he was the director of one of my favorite comedies, ‘Horrible Bosses.’ I asked him how would this movie compare to ‘Horrible Bosses’ and he said it’s going to be better. I said, ‘I’m in.’”

Q: Were you OK taking a supporting role rather than a lead?

A: “I actually enjoyed the fact that all of the heavy lifting was not on my shoulders. It was Jason (Bateman) and Melissa’s show, so the stage was set for me to not screw it up, you know what I mean?”

Q: Last year you appeared on television’s “Hawaii Five-O” and “Boss.” Do you have role models of hip-hop stars who have successfully crossed over to acting?

A: “Will Smith and Ice Cube. Looking at the roles Cube has been able to acquire, he created those opportunities for himself. So I think I could take that approach.”

Q: Is there a certain perception of you out there that might hinder you from being taken seriously as an actor?

A: “I think people might wonder whether or not T.I. can be anything other than T.I., so it’s constantly having to reassure people that I’m able to do what I already know I can do.”

Q: For some, T.I. is a successful recording artist and for others he’s someone who had several stints in jail on drugs and weapons charges. Can you confidently say that the past is the past?

A: “I’m not gonna say anything. It’s day by day, you know what I’m saying? I’m saying today this is how I am, this is where I am. And tomorrow hopefully will be better than today.”

Q: In 2011 after your last prison term, you showed a softer side by starring in the VH1 reality series “T.I. and Tiny: The Family Hustle,” with your wife and six kids. Was that an attempt to right your past transgressions?

A: “Nah. I think it’s a showcasing of who I am today. I don’t think that it any way diminishes the mistakes of yesterday. It just makes a correction if people assume that the mistakes of yesterday are ever-present today. It gives people a stage of truth and knowledge to judge from. So if you must judge, at least you can judge from fact.”

Q: You’ve just released your eighth album, “Trouble Man II: He Who Wears the Crown.” You also have a your own urban fashion line, A.K.O.O. What else do you need to check off your to-do list?

A: “Just to remain relevant and meaningful to the cool young consumer of today. The cool kids are out there being admired by others in their peer group, so you want to find ways to continue to put yourself on their minds.”

Q: How do you do that?

A: “(Social media) is a big aspect for those kids. … So with Instagram, if you take pictures it has to be a picture worthy of showing. If you say something on Twitter, it has to be something that’s worthy of listening to.”

Q: With gun control being a hot-button topic today, and with your own experiences with firearms, what are your thoughts on gun ownership?

A: “I can’t possess a firearm (due to previous convictions), so whether they make them illegal or not is gonna be the same thing for me. But I see a need for them. I’ve been in circumstances where I’ve had them every day and nothing happened. I’ve been in circumstances where I didn’t have them, and I needed them. In certain areas of society, having a firearm is just as common as having bottled water.”

Q: In what way?

A: “If you’re a shopkeeper, a barbershop owner, a convenience store owner and you handle cash in and out of this area, if everyone knows that you don’t have a firearm, then you are basically prey. In these areas, bullets are just as common as sticks of gum, you know what I’m saying? So I think I speak for those people.”

(Reporting by Zorianna Kit; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Will Dunham)

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

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Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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Slot maker WMS Ind. to be sold for $1.5B

Gaming machines maker WMS Industries Inc. is being swallowed up by larger rival Scientific Games Corp. for $1.42 billion in cash and debt.

The deal announced Thursday values WMS at $26 a share -- nearly 60 percent higher than the stock's closing price on Wednesday. Shares shot up in early trading Thursday after the deal was announced, rising 54 percent to reach $25.14, just under its 12-month high.

Scientific Games primarily makes instant lottery tickets and software. Executives said on a conference call that grabbing WMS will allow it to quickly expand its offerings in arcade-type games, slots and video poker.

While Scientific Games executives on a conference call rejected the characterization that WMS is in the midst of a "turnaround," business has certainly been improving in recent months for the Waukegan-based game maker.

WMS, formerly Williams, said in November is fiscal 2013 first-quarter profit tripled on a combination of higher revenue and lower costs. 

The revenue was driven by new initiatives, including social gaming on Facebook and mobile phones, that's paid off.

Those new ventures have compounded the growth WMS has seen as it gambled on some other new outposts for its business.

In September, it received one of the first licenses to operate online poker games in Nevada, the only state other than Delaware to legalize some form of Internet gambling.                       

Online sites in Nevada are expected to go live in early 2013, but only people physically within that state's borders will be able to play. For everyone else, there's WMS's Facebook app, "Jackpot Party Social Casino."

The companies plan to save about $90 million through operating efficiencies by the third year they're combined. They expect the deal to close by the end of the year, pending regulatory and other approvals.

Executives say they are still working out the details on how the combined company will be run, so there's no word yet on whether the company's headquarters will remain in Illinois or if there will be any layoffs. A spokeswoman for WMS didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

sbomkamp@tribune.com | Twitter: @SamWillTravel

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Schaumburg officers in drug case resign, more tainted cases dropped

Three Schaumburg police officers accused of dealing drugs have resigned from the northwest suburban department as fallout from the case continued in Cook County court Wednesday.

Officers Terrance O’Brien and John Cichy officially resigned their positions Tuesday following their Jan. 16 arrest by federal agents, Schaumburg spokesman Dave Bayless said. The third officer, Matthew Hudak, resigned Jan. 22, Bayless confirmed.

The three were put on paid administrative leave until last week, when the village took them off the payroll, Bayless said. According to a release to the media, Schaumburg sought and accepted the trio’s resignations.

Meanwhile, in Rolling Meadows branch court Wednesday, more drug cases were dropped in relation to the officers’ involvement. Weapons and drug charges against two South Beloit, Ill., men were dismissed. 

Cichy arrested Christopher Nelson, 27, and Ceasar A. Hernandez, 22, in August after they sold 2.5 grams of cocaine for $1,300, prosecutors said.

The two were facing Class X felony charges of delivery of a controlled substance and armed violence after officers found 25 grams of cocaine in their car and a handgun on Hernandez, prosecutors said.

Nelson has been in custody and was to be released from Cook County jail later in the day, authorities said.

Hernandez was on parole for a separate conviction at the time of his August arrest and has been sent back to prison, authorities said.

That brings to seven the number of dismissals this week following a review of the officers’ pending cases by the state’s attorney’s office.  Prosecutors expect a total of 15 cases to be dropped as a result of the review.

The officers remain in custody on $750,000 bail. Prosecutors allege they set up their own drug business by stealing cash and narcotics from dealers they encountered in their undercover operations.

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TSX closes lower as RIM, Fed decision weigh

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada’s main stock index closed lower on Wednesday, hurt by a fall in Research In Motion Ltd after it released its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 devices, and broad market weakness after the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to leave its stimulus program intact.

The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> closed 36.12 points, or 0.28 percent, lower at 12,794.44. Nine of the 10 main sectors on the index declined.</.gsptse>

(Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by Peter Galloway)

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