Maker's Mark lowering proof to meet demand

Maker's Mark announced it is reducing the amount of alcohol in the spirit to keep pace with rapidly increasing consumer demand.

In an email to its fans, representatives of the brand said the entire bourbon category is "exploding" and demand for Maker's Mark is growing even faster. Some customers have even reported empty shelves in their local stores, it said.

After looking at "all possible solutions," the total alcohol by volume of Maker's Mark is being reduced by 3 percent. Representatives said the change will allow it to maintain the same taste while making sure there's "enough Maker's Mark to go around." It's working to expand its distillery and production capacity, too.

Maker's Mark, made by Deerfield-based Beam Inc., said it's done extensive testing to ensure the same taste. It says bourbon drinkers couldn't tell the difference. It also underscored the fact that nothing else in the production process has changed.

"In other words, we've made sure we didn't screw up your whisky," the note said.

Rob Samuels, chief operating officer and grandson of Maker's Mark Founder Bill Samuels, Sr., said this is a permanent decision that won’t be reversed when demand for bourbon slows down. Samuels said that bourbon has gone from the slowest growing spirits category to the fastest over the last 18 months, driven by growth overseas and demand from younger drinkers. An average bottle of Maker’s Mark takes six and half years to produce from start to finish, and since the company doesn’t buy or trade whiskey, it’s been impossible to keep up. 

The first bottle of Maker's Mark, with its signature red wax closure, was produced in 1958.

Beam is the country's second-largest spirits company by volume. It also makes Jim Beam, Sauza tequila and Pinnacle vodka. It's still dwarfed by industry-leading Diageo, the London-based maker of Smirnoff, Tanqueray, Captain Morgan and Johnnie Walker.

It's a tough time to take a risk with one of its oldest and most popular brands. Beam has promised that 25 percent of sales will come from new products, a difficult goal to attain but a critical one for investor confidence.The move met some backlash on social media sites, where some said they would boycott the bourbon if the company went ahead with its plans.

Many also complained that they'd rather see an increase in its price than a decrease in the alcohol. But observers say that by raising the price, Beam would have hurt itself by positioning Maker's Mark to compete against its own higher end brands like Basil Hayden's.

sbomkamp@tribune.com | Twitter: @SamWillTravel

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2 persons of interest questioned in Hadiya Pendleton's death

Police are questioning two persons of interest in the slaying of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, a day after first lady Michelle Obama attended the funeral for the teen whose death has become a symbol of escalating violence in Chicago, according to police sources.

The two men, 19 and 20, were pulled over around 67th Street and South Chicago Avenue early this morning after detectives heavily canvassed the area of Harsh Park and tracked down witnesses to the shooting Jan. 29, the sources said. No charges have been filed.

Hadiya was fatally shot in the park about a mile north of President Barack Obama's Kenwood home, a little more than a week after the honor student performed with the King College Prep band in Washington during inauguration festivities. Two other teens were wounded.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel personally called Hadiya's parents, Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton and Nathanial Pendleton, to inform them of the developement, according to a source.

A relative of Hadiya said the development is a "good response" and better information than the family had Saturday. 

Arrests and charges "will bring a small level of closure to the family, although (the shooter) still will be allowed to eat, drink, mingle," said Shatira Wilks, a cousin and family spokesperson. "The thing about that is, Hadiya is no longer to do so."

On how Hadiya’s family is doing, Wilks said, "Everyone keeps asking that. I don’t know if you’ll ever get an answer that we’re feeling good or we’re feeling fine."

Hadiya's death occurred during the deadliest January for Chicago in a decade, and it came on the heels of a homicide total last year that was the highest since 2008.

The first lady's attendance at Hadiya's funeral placed Chicago even further into the spotlight of a national debate over gun violence that has polarized Congress and forced the president to take his gun control initiatives on the road to garner more public support.

Neither the first lady nor elected officials gave remarks during the funeral. Only the friends and relatives who knew Hadiya best were allowed to speak.

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For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help?

Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

In her 20s, after a more serious suicide attempt, her parents sent her to a residential psychiatric treatment center, and from there to another. It was the treatment of last resort. When she was discharged from the second center last August after slapping another resident, her mother, Elisa Klump, was beside herself.

“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ”

That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”

Carolyn Reinach Wolf is not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but a lawyer who has carved out what she says is a unique niche, working with families like the Klumps.

One in 17 American adults suffers from a severe mental illness, and the systems into which they are plunged — hospitals, insurance companies, courts, social services — can be fragmented and overwhelming for families to manage. The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., have brought attention to the need for intervention to prevent such extreme acts of violence, which are rare. But for the great majority of families watching their loved ones suffer, and often suffering themselves, the struggle can be boundless, with little guidance along the way.

“If you Google ‘mental health lawyer,’ ” said Ms. Wolf, a partner with Abrams & Fensterman, “I’m kinda the only game in town.”

On a recent afternoon, she described in her Midtown office the range of her practice.

“We have been known to pull people out of crack dens,” she said. “I have chased people around hotels all over the city with the N.Y.P.D. and my team to get them to a hospital. I had a case years ago where the person was on his way back from Europe, and the family was very concerned that he was symptomatic. I had security people meet him at J.F.K.”

Many lawyers work with mentally ill people or their families, but Ron Honberg, the national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he did not know of another lawyer who did what Ms. Wolf does: providing families with a team of psychiatrists, social workers, case managers, life coaches, security guards and others, and then coordinating their services. It can be a lifeline — for people who can afford it, Mr. Honberg said. “Otherwise, families have to do this on their own,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job, and for some families it never ends.”

Many of Ms. Wolf’s clients declined to be interviewed for this article, but the few who spoke offered an unusual window on the arcane twists and turns of the mental health care system, even for families with money. Their stories illustrate how fraught and sometimes blind such a journey can be.

One rainy morning last month, Lance Sheena, 29, sat with his mother in the spacious family room of her Long Island home. Mr. Sheena was puffy-eyed and sporadically inattentive; the previous night, at the group home where he has been living since late last summer, another resident had been screaming incoherently and was taken away by the police. His mother, Susan Sheena, eased delicately into the family story.

“I don’t talk to a lot of people because they don’t get it,” Ms. Sheena said. “They mean well, but they don’t get it unless they’ve been through a similar experience. And anytime something comes up, like the shooting in Newtown, right away it goes to the mentally ill. And you think, maybe we shouldn’t be so public about this, because people are going to be afraid of us and Lance. It’s a big concern.”

Her son cut her off. “Are you comparing me to the guy that shot those people?”

“No, I’m saying that anytime there’s a shooting, like in Aurora, that’s when these things come out in the news.”

“Did you really just compare me to that guy?”

“No, I didn’t compare you.”

“Then what did you say?”

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The fine line between legitimate businesses and pyramid schemes

Controversy is again casting a shadow over the multilevel marketing industry, as nutritional supplement company Herbalife Inc., which has thousands of distributors in the Chicago region, has been publicly called a pyramid scheme by a prominent investor — an allegation the company vigorously denies.

Meanwhile, a different multilevel marketer, Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing, was shut down in recent weeks after a lawsuit was brought by regulators and several states, including Illinois, alleging the company scammed consumers out of $169 million. The scheme affected an estimated 100,000 Americans, including some in Chicago, where it targeted Spanish-speaking consumers, the Federal Trade Commission alleged.

Most people outside the industry might have only a vague notion about multilevel marketing, also called network marketing and direct selling. It often involves personal sales of cosmetics, wellness products or home decor items — or as critics flippantly call it, "pills, potions and lotions" — usually sold through product parties hosted by friends or relatives.

For sellers, the companies offer the appeal of starting a business on the cheap with little training, working from home and being their own boss, if only for part-time money. Some might recruit friends and family to become sellers, which augments their own commissions and gives them a shot at the six-figure compensation many such marketing companies tout but few distributors attain.

The largest multilevel marketing companies, often known as MLMs, are household names: Avon, Mary Kay, Pampered Chef and Amway. MLMs have annual sales of about $30 billion, with about 16 million people in the United States selling their products, according to the industry group Direct Selling Association, which represents these firms and others.

The recent controversies might raise the question: What's the difference between a legitimate multilevel marketing company and an illegal pyramid scheme, in which only people who get in first — at the top of the pyramid-like structure — make money and everyone else is a dupe?

The harshest critics maintain there is no difference, that there's no such thing as a legitimate MLM and that the industry's secrets stay safe because of a cultlike mentality and a blind eye of regulators.

Jon M. Taylor, who was once a seller for an MLM company, said he has studied the industry for 18 years and analyzed more than 500 MLM companies. He maintains the website MLM-thetruth.com and offers a free e-book there.

"I have not yet found a good MLM — a good MLM is an oxymoron," Taylor said.

He said all MLM companies have the same flaw: They depend on endless chains of recruiting new members.  "There is no more unfair and deceptive practice than multilevel marketing," Taylor said.

Tracy Coenen, a forensic accountant and fraud investigator with Sequence Inc. in Chicago and Milwaukee, is author of the Fraud Files Blog. She is also a critic.

"Multilevel marketing companies are pyramid schemes that the government allows to operate," said Coenen. "The only difference is that Herbalife, or any multilevel marketing company, has a tangible product that they use to make their pyramid appear legitimate."

The Direct Selling Association says MLMs are legitimate businesses, and that the group has about 200 members carefully screened by the organization to ensure they are not pyramid schemes and don't use deceptive practices.

The Federal Trade Commission agrees there are legitimate MLMs. The difference between a legitimate business and pyramid scheme comes down to products.

If the company and its distributors make money primarily from the sale of products to end-users (and not boxes of product accumulating in a distributor's garage), it's OK.

By contrast, a pyramid scheme compensates those at the top of the pyramid with participation fees paid by those recruited at the bottom. It eventually collapses when the scheme can't recruit more people.

But identifying a pyramid scheme can be difficult because MLMs typically have product sales, along with recruitment fees and recruitment incentives.

"It gets cloudy when you have a situation where you have fees being paid for both," said Monica Vaca, assistant director of the FTC's division of marketing practices. "It's very nuanced."

While prosecuting an MLM can seem somewhat of a judgment call, cases have a common factor: deceptive promises about how much money distributors will earn, Vaca said.

In the Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing case filed last month, C. Steven Baker, director of the FTC's Midwest region, said, "These defendants were promising people that if they worked hard they could make lots of money. But it was a rigged game, and the vast majority of people lost money."

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Sheriff: Jail inmate sought hit man to kill accuser, family

A 28-year-old man awaiting trial on charges of having sex with an 11-year-old girl tried to hire someone to kill the child and her family, the Cook County sheriff's office announced today.

Brian Thurman, of the 2400 block of North Mannheim Road near Melrose Park, was charged Jan. 13 with predatory criminal sexual assault and is being held at Cook County Jail in lieu of $480,000 bond, according to a sheriff's release.

While in jail, on Jan. 29 Thurman asked another inmate with street gang connections to find someone to kill the victim and her family, and the next day he was given the phone number of a sheriff's undercover investigator posing as a hit man, authorities said.

Over the phone Thurman offered his SUV and $8,000 for the slayings, and during a jail visit on Feb. 4 he met with the fake hit man and repeated the contract, police said.

In return for his Mercury Mountaineer and $8,000, Thurman wanted his 11-year-old victim, her 16-year-old sister and their mother murdered "as soon as possible," the sheriff's office said.

Thurman now faces additional charges of murder for hire and solicitation of murder for hire, both Class X felonies, and is scheduled to appear in Bond Court on Sunday, police said.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com
Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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Mary J. Blige honored by Vibe at pre-Grammy party

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Babyface called her an icon; Diddy said she was like a sister; and Anita Baker credited her for helping secure her latest Grammy nomination.

There was no shortage of superlatives bestowed on Mary J. Blige on Friday night as Vibe magazine celebrated the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul’s career, which has now spanned for more than two decades.

“She’s a musical soulmate, she’s my sister, she’s one of my best friends in the world,” said Diddy, who has worked with Blige since the beginning of her career. “Mary is our queen. … There is no one to come after her.”

Blige was feted during Vibe’s first Impact Awards, which coincided with the magazine’s 20th anniversary. The event included guests like MC Lyte, Jermaine Dupri and Queen Latifah. Blige appeared to wipe away tears at moments as she was lauded by one guest after another.

Babyface, who wrote one of Blige’s biggest hits, “Not Gon’ Cry,” recalled being a little intimidated by the idea of working with Blige, whom he saw as a tough New Yorker.

“Mary walked in and she was so sweet … and so respectful and totally melted me right there,” he said.

Diddy recalled how Blige worked with him after he got fired from one of his first high-profile jobs in the industry and when no else one would, and also said she was one of his best friends.

One of the more emotional tributes came from Baker, who was a childhood idol of Blige’s. Baker thanked Blige for seeking her out for collaborations and helping a new generation discover her music.

“That kind of generosity is non-existent in our business,” said Baker, who is nominated for a Grammy at Sunday’s awards. “This Grammy nomination that I have is in great part because you spoke my name into the 21st century.”

Latifah noted the personal transformation of Blige, who overcame substance abuse and other obstacles to become one of music’s leading role models.

“For me when I look back at you and the journey you’ve taken, I find you to be extremely inspirational and aspirational, especially to young women,” Latifah said.

When Blige got up to accept her honor, she thanked everyone for embracing her throughout her career, even during her very public missteps. She also thanked people for accepting her imperfections. She recounted a story about being sent to charm school early in her career by handlers who thought she needed to smooth over her rough edges. But Blige was not a good student.

“I just walked out and I never went back,” Blige said. “I’m glad I didn’t go back because I don’t think that I would have had an impact on anyone’s life had I lived someone else’s life.”

Blige recently starred as Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, in the Lifetime movie “Betty & Coretta” co-starring Angela Bassett.

___

Online:

http://www.maryjblige.com

___

Follow Nekesa Mumbi Moody on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/nekesamumbi

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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Rosenthal: Chevrolet restores style to Impala name

Because a brand embedded in our subconsciousness can find a space in our garage, the Impala endures.

About 16 million Chevys named for an African antelope have hit the road since 1958. And even though the one you recently returned to the airport rental lot bore little resemblance the one whose "giddy-up" the Beach Boys sang of a half-century ago, General Motors is betting the bloodline still can claim hearts.

A revamped 10th-generation 2014 model is now on display at the just-opened 105th Chicago Auto Show as a prelude to its dealership debut in a few weeks, a bid to re-establish its good name.

"It's always been a great brand name," Russ Clark, director of Chevrolet marketing, said alongside one of the made-over Impalas on the Auto Show floor at McCormick Place. "In fact, when we did research on the name, we found Impala is one of the strongest in terms of consideration and favorable opinion of any name in the industry. A lot of that is heritage. A lot of it is the fact that people say, 'I know people who have had them, and everybody loved them.'"

The brand has been ubiquitous for decades, even if you don't remember the Beach Boys immortalizing the vintage growl of a "four-speed dual-quad Posi-Traction 409" or how Robert Blake's 1970s TV tough guy Baretta drove a rusted-out Impala from '66, the era when Chevrolet could move about 1 million Impala sedans and station wagons a year. My own first car was a four-door V-8 '72 Impala, a powerful and roomy hand-me-down whose weather-beaten body — like the brand's identity — clearly had seen better days by the late '70s and early '80s.

More recent Impalas have hardly been the stuff of song, and it's hard to imagine them inspiring nostalgia. They've been too dully utilitarian to be iconic.

Nonetheless, although sales have slowed, it has been the overall best-seller among big sedans. Three-quarters of those sales have been as fleet vehicles for corporate salespeople, government agencies and rental companies. That means the premium has been on space, reliability and keeping costs down rather than the kind of panache and extras that might foster pride of ownership.

The goal of this Impala overhaul in both four- and six-cylinder iterations — drafting on similar nameplate revivals for models such as Ford's Taurus, Dodge's Charger and Chrysler's 300 — is to flip that 75-25 ratio of fleet sales to retail on its head.

"It makes perfectly good sense on General Motors' part to finally put some style back in the Impala," auto industry analyst Art Spinella, president of CNW Research, explained. "If you have a great brand name, to almost toss it off, treat it as an orphan and send it off to the fleet sales department with bland styling and cheap interiors, that's a disgrace. What they've done is kind of salvage themselves with this.

"It's finally dawned on General Motors that you can sell a consumer car to fleets, but you can't sell a fleet car to consumers. You always keep fleet cars (looking) relatively obscure and you keep the price way down, and that's what General Motors had been doing for years to keep the (Impala sales) volume up. Now they're taking another look. I don't think they've necessarily gone far enough, but it's a step in the right direction."

To wander through the vast Auto Show, which runs through Feb. 18, is to be reminded of how deeply many of us connect to vehicles, starting as children playing with toy trucks and cars. There's a teenage rite of passage when car keys and a license expand the world. Certain makes and models mesh with what played on their radios, the places traveled in them, the stage of life they marked.

That emotional bond doesn't form so easily with a mere box with wheels.

"What was it that made us fall in love with cars in the first place?" Henrik Fisker, executive chairman and co-founder of high-end hybrid carmaker Fisker Automotive, asked the crowd at Thursday's Economic Club of Chicago luncheon. "It struck me that most of us, when we really start to get our heart pumping about cars, it's usually not the cars of today. It's usually the cars of the '50s and '60s."

Road salt, slush and rain were my old '72 Impala's kryptonite. In time, its front bench seat reclined like a La-Z-Boy whenever I hit the gas because the floor beneath had rusted through. Whatever my affection for the vehicle, I could see the road we were on — literally and figuratively — both looking ahead and glancing down.

Thirty years after I traded it in for a sporty red Pontiac with seats that reclined only how and when I wanted, I would not have expected my old flame to generate much heat.

Carmakers, like most marketers, know that even when a brand is disconnected from what it once represented, it still can resonate. The new Impala is neither the muscular car of old nor the generic conveyance of late. Yet Impala means something to would-be buyers, and good or bad, it gives them something to measure this latest version against.

"They have equity in the name and you never get rid of a brand that has a good reputation," Spinella said. "Some people will buy it because it's an Impala. Some people won't. But they'll look at it because it's an Impala and they remember the Impala. It's easier to reintroduce a name than to introduce a name nobody knows."

I can still remember driving around with my friends with no particular place to go, a song on the radio about a horse with no name. If there was a tune about a nameless car, I don't recall it.

philrosenthal@tribune.com

Twitter @phil_rosenthal

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City dropping red-light camera firm as investigation heats up

Chicago Tribune reporter David Kidwell discusses the recent changes at Redflex Holdings Ltd., the Australian company responsible for Chicago's red-light program. (Posted on: Feb. 8, 2013)

Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced today he will axe the city’s embattled red-light camera vendor when its contract expires in July, citing new investigative findings that the company gave thousands of dollars in free trips to the former city official who oversaw the decade-long program.

Emanuel announced the action against Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. following the Chicago Tribune’s report today that the chairman of Redflex’s Australian parent company resigned this week and trading in the company's stock was suspended amid an intensifying investigation into allegations of corruption in its Chicago contract.

Redflex Holdings Ltd. announced the extraordinary actions just days after board members were briefed by an outside legal team hired to examine ties between the company's U.S. subsidiary and the city official who oversaw its contract, a relationship first disclosed in October by the Tribune. The company also revealed for the first time that it is sharing information with law enforcement authorities.

The internal probe found that company executives systematically courted former city transportation official John Bills with thousands of dollars in free trips to the Super Bowl and other sporting events, sources familiar with the investigation told the Tribune. The company also hid the extent of the improper relationship from City Hall after the newspaper's reporting last year forced Redflex to partially reveal its ties to Bills, sources said.

Emanuel, who inherited the red-light contract when he took office in 2011, had already disqualified Redflex from bidding on his new speed camera initiative after the October disclosures. The new announcement means Redflex will lose what it has described as its largest North American contract. The mayor’s office gave the company a six-month extension last month while it opened the contract to bids, but at that time did not announce whether Redflex could compete to keep the business.

“Given these more serious allegations, we are declaring Redflex not responsible to bid on the new red light RFP when it is issued,” Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said in an email to the Tribune.

“The City is also engaging an independent firm immediately to audit the Redflex contract for all past and ongoing activities to ensure Chicago taxpayers are not cheated in any way.  If there are any findings of illegal conduct or improprieties that show Chicago taxpayers were defrauded, the City will seek penalties to the fullest extent of the law.”

The Redflex internal probe and a parallel investigation by city Inspector General Joseph Ferguson are also raising more questions about the company's hiring of a longtime Bills friend who received more than $570,000 in company commissions as a customer service representative in Chicago, the sources said.

Bills did not return calls, but has adamantly denied any wrongdoing. "I would never have intentionally accepted a dime from Redflex, I wouldn't do that," he told the Tribune in October.

The latest developments run counter to the company's previous contentions that a whistle-blower concocted widespread accusations of internal wrongdoing and that a single company executive had mistakenly violated procedures by paying a one-time hotel tab for Bills. The reversal was acknowledged in a statement to the newspaper Thursday from the Australian company's CEO, who took over in September.

"Although the investigation is not over, we learned that some Redflex employees did not meet our own code of conduct and the standards that the people of the city of Chicago deserve," said Robert DeVincenzi, CEO of Redflex Holdings, the parent company of Phoenix-based Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.

"We are sharing information with law enforcement authorities, will take corrective action and I will do everything in my power to regain the trust of the Chicago community," DeVincenzi said.

Until the allegations were published by the Tribune, Redflex was positioned as a leading contender for Emanuel's new program to sprinkle the city with automatic cameras to tag speeders in school and park "safety zones." Emanuel's administration accused the company of covering up the wrongdoing allegations and disqualified it from bidding on the speed camera contract. Now the company faces the potential loss of its long-standing red-light program in Chicago, which has generated about $100 million for the company and more than $300 million in ticket revenue for the city.

The internal allegations were first made by a former Redflex vice president who wrote of the company's close relationship to Bills in a five-page internal memo emailed in 2010 to the Australian board of directors and obtained by the Tribune. In addition to making allegations about commissions to Bills' friend, the executive complained of "nonreported lavish hotel accommodations" for Bills.

The memo was addressed to Redflex Holdings board Chairman Max Findlay and sent overseas via email. Findlay and another board director, Ian Davis, were atop the list of recipients of the 2010 email.

The company announced both men's resignations in filings Wednesday to the Australian Securities Exchange, where Redflex is publicly traded.

Redflex did not indicate why the men were resigning. But on Thursday the company asked for and was granted by the exchange a four-day suspension of trading "until the earlier of 10 a.m. on Monday 11 February 2013 or an announcement being made."

"The trading halt relates to an update regarding financial aspects and the ongoing investigation in the USA," wrote company secretary Marilyn Stephens. The company did not elaborate on the trading action.

Redflex lawyers told the Tribune in October that a previous company-sponsored investigation by an outside law firm in 2010 found no wrongdoing but for a single hotel stay one top executive paid for Bills. Redflex Traffic Systems sent the executive vice president in question to "anti-bribery" training and revamped its expense accounting system, according to General Counsel Andrejs Bunkse.

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Dame Shirley Bassey to appear at the Academy Awards

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dame Shirley Bassey, who recorded the theme songs for the James Bond films “Goldfinger,” “Diamonds Are Forever” and “Moonraker,” will make her first appearance at the Academy Awards this month, the show’s producers said on Friday.

Bassey, whose career has spanned more than six decades, will perform at the awards show on February 24 in Los Angeles, along with others including Adele, Norah Jones and Barbra Streisand.

“Her association with film music is world renowned and we are proud that she will be making her first Oscar appearance on our telecast,” Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the producers of the show, said in a statement.

The 76-year-old British singer has recorded more than 44 albums, has sold more than 135 million records and has performed in concert halls across the world. Last June, she sang at Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee concert in London.

The Academy Awards will be broadcast live on ABC television and in more than 225 countries worldwide.

(Reporting by Doreen O’Donnell; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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