Crowd reacts after robbery suspect shot to death by police

A man suspected of robbing a truck driver Saturday was shot to death by police a short time later following what Chicago police called a “very violent encounter” in the Back of the Yards neighborhood that later sparked a mob reaction at the scene.

The shooting happened just before 11:30 a.m. Saturday in the 1600 block of West Garfield Boulevard near a gas station, police said.

A melee ensued when a crowd gathered after the shooting, with relatives of the dead man — identified as Jamaal Moore, 23 — accosting police officers and throwing bottles, bricks and rocks, said Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. One family member assaulted an officer and was arrested, McCarthy said at an unrelated news conference.

Another eight people also were arrested at the scene, McCarthy said, adding that he had no information about how many officers were injured in the confrontation.

The chain of events began when robbers with guns held up a truck driver near 38th Street and Kedzie Avenue between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., authorities said, citing preliminary information.

Several suspects in an SUV were reported to have broken into a stopped truck. The driver had gotten out of his truck and confronted the thieves, and they pulled out a weapon, said Patrick Camden, spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7.

The driver called 911 and told a police dispatcher that the robbers were probably armed, Camden said.

Police chased the silver SUV until the vehicle lost control near Garfield Boulevard Ashland Avenue, striking a light pole, authorities said.

About five suspects then ran from the crashed SUV, McCarthy said, adding that four of them remain at large. One police car responding to the scene skidded onto the pavement and may have hit Moore as he tried to get away, McCarthy said.

A male and a female officer from that police car jumped out to confront Moore, who then got into a violent struggle with the male officer, throwing the officer to the ground twice, McCarthy said. Moore is listed in court records as 6-foot-1 and 205 pounds.

While still struggling with Moore, the male officer then yelled that the suspect had a gun, after seeing Moore reach for something in his pocket, McCarthy said.

“It was reported as a gunpoint robbery so the officers had good reason to believe that there was a gun there,” McCarthy said.

After throwing the male officer to the ground a second time, Moore charged at the female officer, McCarthy said.

“Based on the male officer saying that he had a gun, she was in fear and she fired twice, striking him,” McCarthy said. Police later determined that Moore was holding a flashlight, McCarthy said.

Both officers were taken to Mercy Hospital and Medical Center, but officials said they did not know their conditions. Moore was taken to Saint Bernard Hospital and Health Care Center, where he was declared dead at 12:13 p.m.

Court records show that Moore had been charged with crimes about a dozen times since 2006. In a 2007 case, he was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 6 years in prison.

On Nov. 26 of this year, he pleaded guilty to a felony aggravated fleeing charge, a crime related to attempting to escape arrest. Details of that incident were not available Saturday, but Moore had been given 24 months probation and was sentenced to 60 hours of community service plus fines, court records show.

At the scene of the shooting, the crowd that gathered afterward included some who identified themselves as relatives of Moore. Word spread quickly that Moore had been already handcuffed when he was shot, an account bystanders heard from others who said they witnessed the shooting and that was shared by two people who called the Tribune.

McCarthy said he had no information about whether that was the case.

“To my knowledge, it's nothing about handcuffs,” McCarthy said. “There is in-car video that is going to support this detailed story.”

Said Camden: “If he were handcuffed, we wouldn’t have a reason to shoot him.”

Chicago Police Sgt. Michael Martin, speaking near where the shooting took place, said people there were reacting with anger.

“People were throwing bricks and bottles at cop cars,” Martin said. “A few squad cars are damaged.”

Police responded by sending in several brigades of officers and closing off the area to traffic until the tensions eased and the damaged SUV was towed from the crash scene.

Tribune reporters Dawn Rhodes and Jeremy Gorner contributed. 

dawilliams@tribune.com

Twitter: @neacynewslady 

bdoyle@tribune.com

lford@tribune.com

Read More..

Apple falls on lower shipment forecasts, muted China debut

(Reuters) - Apple Inc shares fell 3.9 percent on Friday after the iPhone 5 debuted in China to a cool reception and two analysts cut shipment forecasts.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek trimmed his iPhone shipment estimates for the Jan-March quarter, saying that the technology company had started cutting orders to suppliers to balance excess inventory.

Shares of Apple suppliers Jabil Circuit Inc, Qualcomm Inc, Skyworks Solutions Inc, TriQuint Semiconductor Inc, Avago Technologies Ltd, and Cirrus Logic Inc also fell in early trading.

Apple shares have lost a quarter of their value since they hit a life high of $705.07 on September 21, as it faces increasing competition from phones using Google Inc's Android operating system.

Misek cut his first-quarter iPhone sales estimate to 48 million from 52 million and gross margin expectations for the company by 2 percentage points to 40 percent.

UBS Investment Research cut its price target on Apple stock to $700 from $780 on lower expected iPhone and iPad shipments for the March quarter.

The brokerage said it was modeling more conservative growth for the world's biggest technology company after making supply chain checks that revealed that fewer iPhones were being built.

"Some of our Chinese sources do not expect the iPhone 5 to do as well as the iPhone 4S," UBS analyst Steven Milunovich wrote in a note to clients.

Apple launched the iPhone 5 in China on Friday, a move widely expected to bring the Cupertino-based company some respite from a recent slide in market share in China, but early reports indicated that demand may not be as great as expected.

"The iPhone 5 China launch has been surprisingly muted but (we) are unsure how much weather (snow) or the required pre-ordering (to prevent riots) are factors," Misek said.

Apple shares fell as low as $508.50 in morning trading on the Nasdaq on Friday.

(Editing by Supriya Kurane)

Read More..

Butler upsets No. 1 Indiana 88-86 in OT

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — All Butler guard Alex Barlow saw Saturday was space and an opportunity to make a play.

So the unlikeliest player on the floor took a chance and made the biggest shot of the game.

When Indiana's defenders failed to converge on the 5-foot-11 walk-on, Barlow kept right on going through the lane, drove to the basket and hit a spinning 6-foot jumper with 2.4 seconds left in overtime Saturday to give the Bulldogs another stunning upset — 88-86 over No. 1 Indiana in the Crossroads Classic.

"The floater is a shot I work on a lot and I happened to get a lucky bounce," Barlow said. "It was a good feeling."

Luckily for the Bulldogs (8-2), Barlow was on the floor.

The kid who spurned college scholarship offers to play his best sport, baseball, and opted to come to Butler for only one reason — to learn how to coach basketball from Brad Stevens — showed everyone he can hoop it up, too.

Stevens didn't hesitate to constantly keep the ball in Barlow's hands after three key Butler players had already fouled out. The sophomore who had scored only 12 points in nine games this season and 18 in his college career delivered with a series of key plays.

Barlow finished with a career-high six points, came up with a big steal that led to a go-ahead 3-pointer late in overtime and finally won it with a shot that bounced off the back of the rim, straight into the air and finally through the net.

Indiana (9-1) immediately called timeout to set up a play but could only muster Jordan Hulls' heave from near half-court, a shot that faded to the left of the basket and suddenly the first college in Indiana to go to back-to-back Final Fours had another school first — its first win in five tries over a No. 1 ranked team.

The sold-out arena roared as the game ended, and the Bulldogs rushed to midcourt where they celebrated with Barlow.

"I thought he just rose up over Hulls and it looked good," Stevens said. "Don't use this as an excuse to get down on Indiana. I still think they're the team to beat in April. Our guys just played really hard and when it really mattered, they figured out a way."

Butler (8-2) has now won six straight at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, better known as the home to the NBA's Pacers, and four of the last five when this series been played in Indianapolis. The Bulldogs have wins over Marquette of the Big East, North Carolina of the ACC and back-to-back victories over Northwestern and Indiana of the Big Ten.

And Barlow, the surprising star, overshadowed a supporting cast that had strong games, too.

Roosevelt Jones scored 16 points and matched his career-highs with 12 rebounds and six assists before fouling out with 2:03 left in regulation.

Andrew Smith finished with 12 points and nine rebounds and held national player of the year candidate Cody Zeller in check until fouling out just 17 seconds after Jones.

Rotnei Clarke, who transferred to Butler from Arkansas, scored 13 of his 19 points and made three of his five 3-pointers in the second half.

In all, five Bulldogs players finished in double figures while the defense held one of America's most proficient offenses to just 42.9 percent shooting from the field.

"We cost ourselves at the end of the game defensively," coach Tom Crean said after waiting more than an hour to take questions. "They made the plays, there's no question about that. But we made the mistakes on how we guarded them."

The Hoosiers were led by Cody Zeller, who had 18 points, including a layup to tie the score at 86 with 19.3 seconds left in overtime. Victor Oladipo also had 18 points and Will Sheehey scored 13 points off the bench.

But the Bulldogs grabbed 19 offensive rebounds and outrebounded Indiana — the first team to do that this season.

Clearly, this was not the same Indiana team that won its first nine games by an average of nearly 32 points while shooting 51.5 percent from the field.

"There's a lot of things," said Zeller, who had only five rebounds and four baskets. "We got outrebounded. There's a lot of little things that we have to figure, but we'll get back to work and figure them out."

The difference Saturday was that Butler never let the Hoosiers get away from them — even when Smith and Jones went to the bench with four fouls midway through the second half.

Stevens reinserted both players with 9 minutes to go in regulation, trailing 57-50, and the Bulldogs responded with a 12-0 run that gave them a 66-59 lead with 4:31 left in regulation.

Butler still led 71-64 when Jones fouled out, and the Hoosiers answered with five straight points from the free-throw line. They finally tied the score on Yogi Ferrell's 3-pointer from the right wing with 6.1 seconds to go, and Butler's Chase Stigall missed a 3-pointer off the front of the rim as time expired.

In overtime, Indiana looked like it would take control when Zeller's layup made it 84-80 with 2:12 to play.

But the Bulldogs again rallied, getting a 3 from Clarke, a steal from Barlow that led Stigall's 3-pointer, and Barlow's improbable winning shot.

"I just figured I would throw it up to the rim," Barlow said. "If I missed it, I knew they wouldn't get a shot off. Luckily, it bounced in."

Read More..

Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

Read More..

'Family Guy,' 'American Dad' pulled after rampage

NEW YORK (AP) — Hollywood has responded to the rampage at a Connecticut elementary school by pulling back on its offerings, and one star says the entertainment industry should take some responsibility for such violence.

Fox pulled new episodes of "Family Guy" and "American Dad" that were to air Sunday to avoid potentially sensitive content. The originally scheduled episode of "Family Guy" had Peter telling his own version of the nativity story. The "American Dad" episode told the story of a demon who punished naughty children at Christmas. Both series plan to substitute reruns.

In addition, Fox confirmed that a schedule repeat of "The Cleveland Show" for Sunday was swapped for another rerun of that series out of the same concern, and premieres for Tom Cruise's "Jack Reacher" and the family comedy "Parental Guidance" were postponed after Friday's shooting rampage in Newtown, Conn., that ended with 28 people dead, including 20 children as well as the gunman.

Hollywood should take some responsibility for such violence, Jamie Foxx, one of the industry's biggest stars, said Saturday as he promoted Quentin Tarantino's upcoming, ultra-violent, spaghetti Western-style film about slavery, "Django Unchained."

In an interview, Jamie Foxx said actors cannot "turn their back" on that fact that movie violence can influence people.

The film's press junket was continuing in New York as scheduled. Tarantino said he was tired of defending his films each time the nation is shocked by gun violence, saying "tragedies happen" and blame should fall on those guilty of the crimes.

_____

Online:

"Django Unchained": http://www.unchainedmovie.com

_____

Follow Nicole Evatt on Twitter at http://twitter.com/NicoleEvatt

Read More..

Greener planet is goal for 3 startups

If the glut of companies billing themselves as "solutions" providers is any indication, the world has no shortage of problems.

Green tech companies take on some of the most complicated, difficult problems to solve. They tend to be problems created by our mere existence, chief among them our massive demand for energy. The more we rely on energy to power our electronics, our vehicles and our lives, the more pollution we churn into our land, water and air.

The Tribune checked in with three local green tech startups at various stages of development. They haven't changed the world yet, but they're working on it.

COMPANY: LanzaTech

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: Global warming, a huge challenge as energy demand is expected to double within 40 years.

FUNDS RAISED: $100 million

It may sound like sci-fi, but LanzaTech produces gas-eating "bugs" that don't require oxygen to survive.

In April, the company's microscopic bacteria began ingesting carbon monoxide from a steel mill in China. Carbon monoxide goes in one end of the bacteria and ethanol comes out the other.

With a few genetic tweaks, the bug can produce a wide range of fuels and chemicals from gases that companies spend money to get rid of. The idea, says Jennifer Holmgren, the company's chief executive, is to trap nasty gases that float from steel mills, power plants and chemical factories, turning them into products that are useful and profitable.

The company recently inked a deal with Petronas, the national oil company of Malaysia, to develop a modified version of the bug that takes in carbon dioxide and produces acetic acid, a chemical companies need to produce polymers used in plastics.

"Rather than trying to sequester carbon deep into the earth, we will 'bury' it in a chemical," Holmgren said. "In this way, companies can not only comply with emissions reduction requirements, but also generate revenue along the way."

When Holmgren talks about the technology's potential, she pulls up a map of the world, showing partnerships and agreements the company has with companies from Boeing Co. in Chicago and Kansas-based Invista, the world's largest nylon producer, to Indian Oil Co. in New Delhi and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. in Japan.

Out of the company's various projects, the carbon monoxide-eating bacteria are the furthest along in the path toward commercialization. This month, LanzaTech finished a demonstration project for China's largest steel manufacturer, Baosteel, at a plant near Shanghai.

LanzaTech successfully produced the equivalent of more than 100,000 gallons of ethanol per year from just a fraction of the carbon monoxide the company creates in the steel-making process.

"You're literally driving for miles watching this steel mill," Holmgren said, explaining its vast size — and its potential to produce hundreds of millions of gallons of ethanol per year.

The technology creates a financial incentive to trap the gas rather than flare it, a common practice that produces carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. Through a series of pipes, the gas enters a vessel filled with the organism, which is floating in water. Fuel comes out the back end and is pumped through a distiller to create pure ethanol.

Because of the success of that demonstration, the steel company has ordered the first of what will eventually be three or four units, each about $80 million, that are each expected to produce 30 million to 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. Each unit pays itself back in under five years, Holmgren said.

"We don't want it to be green for green's sake. If it is, no one is going to use it," she said.

With 140 employees worldwide, LanzaTech doesn't have any revenues to report yet. Holmgren said LanzaTech expects to grow to profitability between 2013 and 2015.

COMPANY: Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies LLC

Read More..

Conn. shooting: Witnesses say shooter didn't say a word

A man killed his mother at home and then opened fire Friday inside the elementary school where she taught, massacring 26 people, including 20 children, as youngsters cowered in fear to the sound of gunshots echoing through the building and screams coming over the intercom.

The 20-year-old killer, carrying two handguns, committed suicide at the school, bringing the death toll to 28, authorities said.

The rampage, coming less than two weeks before Christmas, was the nation's second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead in 2007.

"Our hearts are broken today," a tearful President Barack Obama, struggling to maintain his composure, said at the White House. He called for "meaningful action" to prevent such shootings. "As a country, we have been through this too many times," he said.

Police shed no light on the motive for the attack on two classrooms. The gunman was believed to suffer from a personality disorder and lived with his mother, said a law enforcement official who was briefed on the investigation but was not authorized to discuss it.

Panicked parents looking for their children raced to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, a prosperous community of about 27,000 people 60 miles northeast of New York City. Police told youngsters at the kindergarten-through-fourth-grade school to close their eyes as they were led from the building.

Schoolchildren -- some crying, others looking frightened -- were escorted through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other's shoulders.

Law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity said 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, and then drove to the school in her car with three guns, including a high-powered rifle that he apparently left in the back.

Authorities said he shot up two classrooms but otherwise gave no details on how the attack unfolded.

Youngsters and their parents described teachers locking doors and ordering the children to huddle in the corner or hide in closets when shots echoed through the building.

A custodian ran through the halls, warning of a gunman on the loose, and someone switched on the intercom, alerting people in the building to the attack by letting them hear the hysteria apparently going on in the school office.

State police Lt. Paul Vance said 28 people in all were killed, including the gunman, and a woman who worked at the school was wounded.

Lanza's older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., was being questioned, but the law enforcement official who said Adam Lanza had a possible personality disorder said Ryan Lanza was not believed to have had any role in the rampage.

Investigators were searching Ryan Lanza's computers and phone records, but he told law enforcement he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation.

Robert Licata said his 6-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher.

"That's when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door," he said. "He was very brave. He waited for his friends."

He said the shooter didn't utter a word.

Stephen Delgiadice said his 8-year-old daughter was in the school and heard two big bangs. Teachers told her to get in a corner, he said.

Read More..

AP NewsBreak: Yankees hit with $18.9M luxury tax

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Yankees were hit with an $18.9 million luxury tax by Major League Baseball, the 10th consecutive year they will pay a penalty for their spending.

The team finished with a $222.5 million payroll for purposes of the tax, according to figures sent to teams Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press.

Following its payroll-shedding trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers last summer, Boston finished just $47,177 under the $178 million threshold. The Los Angeles Angels wound up at $176.7 million and Philadelphia at $174.5 million.

Figures include average annual values of contracts for players on 40-man rosters, earned bonuses and escalators, adjustments for cash in trades and $10.8 million per team in benefits.

New York has run up a luxury tax bill of $224.2 million over the past decade, with the fee increasing from $13.9 million last year. The Yankees' tax rate rose from 40 percent to 42.5 percent this year and figures to climb to 50 percent next season. But they hope to get under the threshold in 2014, when it rises to $189 million. Dropping under the threshold would lower their potential tax rate in 2015 to 17.5 percent.

"It affects my decision-making process, my communication about the pressure points we have," Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said, adding that market rates for free agents also impact his choices.

For the regular payroll calculation — 2012 income plus prorated shares of signing bonuses — spending by the 30 big league teams broke $3 billion for the first time at $3.15 billion after falling $43,000 short of the milestone last year.

The Yankees finished at a record $223.3 million, their 14th consecutive year as the biggest spender and topping their previous mark of $222.5 million in 2008.

However, the Dodgers could break that mark next year following a summer and autumn of acquisitions. Los Angeles currently is at $207.9 million for 21 signed players, including adjustments for the August trade with Boston that brought Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett to the Dodgers. The Yankees are at $182 million for 14 players, including a deal with Ichiro Suzuki that hasn't been finalized.

"You don't get a trophy for having the highest payroll," Cashman said. "I'm not going to feel weird either way, if we're the highest or we're not the highest. That's not the issue. Just want to be the best."

Philadelphia was second at $169.7 million, followed by Boston ($168.6 million), the Angels ($160.1 million), AL champion Detroit ($140.7 million) and World Series champion San Francisco ($138.1 million).

Even while shedding some stars during the season, Miami rose from $61.9 million to $89.9 million. The Marlins figure to drop to the bottom of spending next year after trading nearly all their veterans.

Among the big slashers were the New York Mets (from $142.2 million in 2011 to $103.7 million) and the Chicago Cubs (from $140.6 million to $107.7 million).

Oakland won the AL West despite the lowest payroll in the major leagues at $59.5 million. The division rival Angels rose from $143.1 million to $160.1 million yet still missed the playoffs. They added slugger Josh Hamilton this week with a $125 million, five-year deal set to be announced Saturday.

The Dodgers, sold during the season to a group headed by Mark Walter, Stan Kasten and Magic Johnson, climbed from $109.9 million in 2011 to $129.1 million. In the last week they added pitchers Zack Greinke ($147 million over six years) and Ryu Hyun-jin ($36 million over six years).

The commissioner's office computed the average salary at a record 3,104,563, up 2.2 percent from last year's $3,039,161, The players' association, which uses a slightly different method, pegged the average at $3,213,479, up 3.8 percent.

Payroll figures are for 40-man rosters and include salaries and prorated shares of signing bonuses, earned incentive bonuses, non-cash compensation, buyouts of unexercised options and cash transactions, such as money included in trades. In some cases, parts of salaries that are deferred are discounted to reflect present-day values.

According to the collective bargaining agreement, checks to pay the luxury tax must be sent to the commissioner's office by Jan. 21.

Read More..

Roll Up! “Magical Mystery Tour” gets U.S. TV debut

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Give four pop stars turned hippies a movie camera in 1967 and what do you get? The Beatles‘ “Magical Mystery Tour” film, which will receive its long-awaited U.S. broadcast television debut on Friday on PBS.

Long a curiosity in the United States, the film will be accompanied by a new documentary about its making. A restored version was released on DVD and blu-ray in October.

The third film for The Fab Four, after a “A Hard Day’s Night” in 1964 and “Help!” a year later, “Magical Mystery Tour” is a shambolic trip through the English countryside on a bus filled with odd characters, but thin on plot. It first aired on BBC television the day after Christmas 1967.

Although it was initially panned by British critics, time has delivered some justice to the project, Jonathan Clyde, the producer of the documentary, told Reuters.

“‘Magical Mystery Tour‘ has always been the black sheep of the Beatles family, but I think it’s been rehabilitated into the Beatles canon,” Clyde said. “It’s no longer the ‘mad uncle in the attic’ that nobody wants to talk about. It’s been let out.”

In the United States, little was known about the film at the time of its release.

Beatles fans only had the album of music, or saw a poor print of the film in a double-feature midnight showing with “Reefer Madness,” a 1936 anti-marijuana propaganda film often screened decades later for comedic effect.

“I first saw it in 1974 at a university,” Bill King, the longtime publisher of Beatles fanzine Beatlefan, said of “Magical Mystery Tour.” “By then, though, it had taken on mythic status. I loved it.”

At the time of its making, The Beatles were arguably at their creative peak on the heels of a seminal album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and their summer of love anthem “All You Need Is Love,” which debuted on global TV.

SCRIPT WANTED

But even before “Sgt. Pepper’s” release in June 1967, Paul McCartney had already conceived of the film project. The only thing he was missing: a script.

“Paul had drawn out a pie chart,” said Clyde, also a longtime consultant for The Beatles‘ company, Apple Corps. “It just said things like ‘Get on coach,’ ‘Dreams,’ ‘End Song.’ They really had no idea what it was going to be like.”

The group hired a bus, a film crew, and a handful of extras and set out around England, creating scenes with everything from magicians to Ringo Starr’s oversized Aunt Jessie being stuffed with spaghetti by waiter John Lennon.

McCartney did most of the directing.

“It really had something for everyone, which is something I like about it,” Clyde said. “It was really a nod not only to the younger people watching, but to their parents’ generation, as well.”

The film also was loaded with six new Beatles songs, presented as what now would be considered music videos.

The music itself, including songs “I Am the Walrus” and “The Fool on the Hill,” was as innovative as any of the band’s music that year – and mostly recorded just before filming started.

“The Beatles were driven and inspired by having a deadline,” said Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin. The younger Martin remixed the songs at the legendary Abbey Road studios for the DVD and broadcast.

“And songs like ‘Walrus’ are a brilliant mix of both The Beatles as a rock and roll band and as masters of groundbreaking experimental recording,” Martin added.

(Editing by Eric Kelsey and Nick Zieminski)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

Read More..

Owner of Rivera plane being investigated by DEA

PHOENIX (AP) — The company that owns a luxury jet that crashed and killed Latin music star Jenni Rivera is under investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the agency seized two of its planes earlier this year as part of the ongoing probe.

DEA spokeswoman Lisa Webb Johnson confirmed Thursday the planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized in Texas and Arizona, but she declined to discuss details of the case. The agency also has subpoenaed all the company's records, including any correspondence it has had with a former Tijuana mayor who U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected has ties to organized crime.

The man widely believed to be behind the aviation company is an ex-convict named Christian Esquino, 50, who has a long and checkered legal past. Corporate records list his sister-in-law as the company's only officer, but insurance companies that cover some of the firm's planes say in court documents that the woman is merely a front and that Esquino is the one in charge.

Esquino's legal woes date back decades. He pleaded guilty to a fraud charge that stemmed from a major drug investigation in Florida in the early 1990s and most recently was sentenced to two years in federal prison in a California aviation fraud case. Esquino, a Mexican citizen, was deported upon his release. Esquino and various other companies he has either been involved with or owns have also been sued for failing to pay millions of dollars in loans, according to court records.

The 43-year-old California-born Rivera died at the peak of her career when the plane she was traveling in nose-dived into the ground while flying from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey to the central city of Toluca early Sunday morning. She was perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated Mexico regional style, and had branched out into acting and reality television.

It remained unclear Thursday exactly what caused the crash and why Rivera was on Esquino's plane. The 78-year-old pilot and five other people were also killed. Esquino was not on the plane.

The late singer's brother, Pedro Rivera Jr., said that he didn't know anything about the owner or why or how she ended up in his plane.

Esquino told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview from Mexico City earlier this week that the singer was considering buying the aircraft from Starwood for $250,000 and the flight was offered as a test ride. He disputed reports that he owns Starwood, maintaining that he is merely the company's operations manager "with the expertise."

In response to an email from The Associated Press, Esquino said he did not want to comment. Calls to various phone numbers associated with him rang unanswered.

Esquino is no stranger to tangles with the law. He was indicted in the early 1990s along with 12 other defendants in a major federal drug investigation that claimed the suspects planned to sell more than 480 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records. He eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal money from the IRS and was sentenced to five years in prison, but much of the term was suspended for reasons that weren't immediately clear.

He served about five months in prison before being released.

Cynthia Hawkins, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case and is now in private practice in Orlando, remembered the investigation well.

"It was huge," Hawkins said Thursday. "This was an international smuggling group."

She said the case began with the arrest of Robert Castoro, who was at the time considered one of the most prolific smugglers of marijuana and cocaine into Florida from direct ties to Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s. Castoro was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to life in prison, but he then began cooperating with authorities, leading to his sentence being reduced to just 10 years, Hawkins said.

"Castoro cooperated for years," she said. "We put hundreds of people in jail."

He eventually gave up another smuggler, Damian Tedone, who was indicted in the early 1990s along with Esquino and 11 others in a conspiracy involving drug smuggling in Florida in the 1980s at a time when the state was the epicenter of the nation's cocaine trade.

Tedone also cooperated with authorities and has since been released from prison. Telephone messages left Thursday for both Tedone and Castoro were not returned.

Esquino eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of concealing money from the IRS.

Joseph Milchen, Esquino's attorney at the time, said Thursday the case eventually revolved around his client "bringing money into the United States without declaring it."

However, Milchen acknowledged that a plane purchased by Esquino was "used to smuggle drugs."

He denied his former client has ever had anything to do with illegal narcotics.

"The only thing he has ever done is with airplanes," Milchen said.

Court filings also indicate Esquino was sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to committing fraud involving aircraft he purchased in Mexico, then falsified the planes' log books and re-sold them in the United States.

Also in 2004, a federal judge ordered him and one of his companies to pay a creditor $6.2 million after being accused of failing to pay debts to a bank.

As the years passed, Esquino's troubles only grew.

In February this year, a Gulfstream G-1159A plane the government valued at $500,000 was seized by the U.S. Marshals Service on behalf of the DEA after landing in Tucson on a flight that originated in Mexico

Four months later, the DEA subpoenaed all of Starwood's records dating to Dec. 13, 2007, including federal and state income tax documents, bank deposit information, records on all company assets and sales, and the entity's relationship with Esquino and more than a dozen companies and individuals, including former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank-Rhon, a gambling mogul and a member of one of Mexico's most powerful families. U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected Hank-Rhon is tied to organized crime but no allegations have been proven. He has consistently denied any criminal involvement.

He was arrested in Mexico last year on weapons charges and on suspicion of ordering the murder of his son's former girlfriend. He was later freed for lack of evidence.

The subpoena was obtained by the U-T San Diego newspaper.

A Starwood attorney listed on the subpoena, Jeremy Schuster, declined Thursday to provide details.

"We don't comment on matters involving clients," he said.

In September, the DEA seized another Starwood plane — a 1977 Hawker 700 with an insured value of $1 million — after it landed in McAllen, Texas, from a flight from Mexico.

Insurers of both aircraft have since filed complaints in federal court in Nevada seeking to have the Starwood policies nullified, in part, because they say Esquino lied in the application process when he noted he had never been indicted on drug-related criminal charges. Both companies said they would not have issued the policies had he been truthful.

Another attorney for Starwood has not responded to phone and email messages seeking comment, and no one was at the address listed at its Las Vegas headquarters. The address is a post office box in a shipping and mailing store located between a tuxedo rental shop and a supermarket in a shopping center several miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.

___

Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Read More..

Push for minimum wage hike intensifies

NEW YORK — Before the recession, Amie Crawford was an interior designer, earning $50,000 a year patterning baths and cabinets for architectural firms.

Now, she's a "team member" at the Protein Bar in Chicago, where she makes $8.50 an hour, slightly more than minimum wage. It was the only job she could find after months of looking. Crawford, now 56, says she needed to take the job to stop the hemorrhaging of her retirement accounts.

In her spare time, Crawford works with a Chicago group called Action Now, which is staging protests to raise the minimum wage in a state where it hasn't been raised since 2006.

"Thousands of workers in Chicago, let alone in the rest of the country, deserve to have a livable wage, and I truly believe that when someone is given a livable wage, that is going to bolster growth in communities," she said.

If it seems that workers such as Crawford are more prevalent these days, protesting outside stores including Wal-Mart, McDonald's and Wendy's to call for higher wages, it may be because there are more workers in these jobs than there were a few years ago.

Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

Of the 1.9 million jobs created during the recovery, 43% of them have been in the low-wage industries of retail, food services and employment services, whose workforces include temporary employees who often work part time and without benefits or health insurance, according to a study by Annette Bernhardt, policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project in New York.

At the same time, many workers such as Crawford who have been displaced from their jobs are experiencing significant earnings losses after getting a new job. About one-third of the 3 million workers displaced from their jobs from 2009 to 2011 and then reemployed said their earnings had dropped 20% or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"What these protests are signaling are that working families are at breaking point after three decades of rising inequality and stagnant wages," Bernhardt said.

The rise of low-paying jobs in the recovery, experts said, has cut the spending power of workers who once worked in middle-class occupations. Construction workers who made $30 an hour, for example, during the housing boom may now find themselves working on a temporary basis.

"You see workers trading down their living standards," said Joseph Brusuelas, a senior economist for Bloomberg who studies the U.S. economy.

Now, Brusuelas said, there's an oversupply of workers and they're willing to take any job in a sluggish economy, even if they're overqualified. That includes temporary jobs without benefits, and minimum wage positions such as the one Crawford took.

Although the 2012 election might have brought the idea of income inequality to the forefront of voters' minds, efforts to increase wages for these workers are sputtering in an era of austerity when businesses say they are barely hiring, much less paying workers more.

The New Jersey state legislature handed Gov. Chris Christie a bill to raise the state's minimum wage to $8.50 an hour from the federal minimum of $7.25 this month, but he hasn't signed it and has signaled he might not. An earlier effort in New Jersey to tie the minimum wage to the consumer price index was vetoed by the governor.

Democratic lawmakers in Illinois are also trying to push a bill that would increase the minimum wage — an earlier effort this year failed. The Legislature last voted to raise its minimum wage in 2006, before the recession, and the governor agreed.

"A higher minimum wage means a person has to pay more for each worker," said Ted Dabrowski, vice president of policy at the Illinois Policy Institute, which opposes raising the minimum wage. "Companies have a few choices — increase prices, reduce the number of people they hire, cut employee hours or reduce benefits. When employees become too expensive, they have no choice but to reduce the number of workers."

The Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., however, says there is little indication from economic research that increases in the minimum wage lead to lower employment, and, because higher wages mean workers have more money to spend, employment can actually increase.

A bill to raise the federal minimum wage was introduced to the U.S. Senate by Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in July and referred to committee, where it has sat ever since.

"Business lobbyists are aware of the campaign and are aggressively working to stop it," said Madeline Talbott, the former lead organizer of Chicago's Action Now. "We've had a hard time getting our legislature to approve it."

But Talbott and other advocates say that the protests that have spread throughout Illinois and the country in recent weeks might force the issue to its head.

"You saw it happening 18 months ago when Occupy started — workers are now realizing that they have rights too in the workplace," said Camille Rivera, executive director of United NY, one of the groups working to raise the minimum wage in New York. "It's a good time for us to be fighting these issues, when companies are making millions of dollars in profits."

The protests are bringing out people who might not usually participate, including Marcus Rose, 33. Rose, who has worked the grill at a Wendy's for 21/2 months, was marching outside that Wendy's in Brooklyn recently on a day of protests, responding as organizers shouted lines such as "Wendy's, Wendy's, can't you see, $7.25 is not for me."

"If you don't stand up for nothing, you can't fall for anything," he said.

Talbott, the Action Now organizer, says that people such as Rose may make a difference in whether lawmakers at the state and national level will listen to the protests. The Obama victory energized the working class to believe that they could fight against big-money interests and win, she said.

"It comes down to the traditional situation — whether the power is in the hands of organized money or of organized people," she said. "The organized money side tends to win, but it doesn't have to win. The more people you are, the more chance you have against money."

alana.semuels@latimes.com

ricardo.lopez2@latimes.com

Semuels reported from New York and Lopez from Los Angeles

Read More..

Peterson: Ex-attorney had 'smorgasbord of ethical violations'

Drew Peterson continued efforts to overturn his murder conviction Thursday as his lawyers filed a biting post-trial document that accuses his former lead attorney of botching the case and threatening to reveal harmful information about the retired Bolingbrook police officer.

Peterson, 58, was convicted in September of the 2004 drowning of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. He remains the only suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy, who vanished in October 2007.

A post-trial memorandum filed in Will County placed responsibility for the conviction squarely on the shoulders of Joel Brodsky, Peterson’s former lead attorney and colorful confidant.

“Attorney Brodsky expected that Drew Peterson would be his ticket to the legal elite,” the document states. “Regrettably, he was poorly equipped to try a case of this magnitude, resulting in hornbook errors and a smorgasbord of ethical violations. Individually and cumulatively Brodsky singlehandedly deprived Drew of his right to effective assistance of and conflict-free counsel.”

Brodsky did not respond to questions about the allegations in the memorandum. A hearing on the issue is scheduled for Jan. 10.

The document suggests Brodsky “misrepresented his qualifications” to Peterson by insisting he had successfully handled other homicide cases. In reality, Brodsky had never tried a murder case before Peterson hired him – a fact reporters pointed out long before Peterson’s trial.

The memorandum also alleges Brodsky repeatedly threatened to reveal potentially damaging information about Peterson if he were removed or had his role diminished in any way. The document does not state what details Brodsky -– who withdrew from the case in October -– purportedly vowed to expose, but it suggests he made the threat as recently as last month.

“... this is of course the last thing you or I would want, but this could happen as an unintended consequence of unfounded ineffective assistance accusation, which is not fully thought through,” the memorandum quotes Brodsky saying in a Nov. 24 letter to Peterson.
 
The document alleges Brodsky had a financial interest in drawing as much publicity as possible to Peterson’s case. Brodsky’s desire to earn appearance fees prompted him to parade Peterson around the country and have him participate in “carnival-like” pranks such as a much-maligned “Win a Date with Drew” contest, the court filing alleges.

He also was paid for Peterson’s participation in an ill-received book about the case and courted constant media attention that harmed his client’s reputation, according to the memorandum.

“In the process, Brodsky accumulated large bills for hotel stays, meals, and spa treatments for he and his wife, all paid for by the respective media outlets,” the memorandum states.

To win an ineffective counsel claim, Peterson must show that Brodsky’s representation fell below acceptable standards and that the outcome might have been different because of it. It will be an uphill battle, however, given that he had five other attorneys on the trial team, and that courts rarely overturn motions based on legal strategies.

sstclair@tribune.com

Read More..

iPhone 5 hits China as Apple market share slips

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The China release of its iPhone 5 on Friday should win Apple Inc some respite from a recent slide in its share of what is likely already the world's biggest smartphone market, but its longer-term hopes may depend on new technology being tested by China's top telecoms carrier.

Cupertino, California-based Apple has been in talks about a tie-up with China Mobile for four years. A deal with China's biggest carrier is seen as crucial to improve Apple's distribution in a market of 290 million users - which is forecast to double this year.

China is Apple's second-largest and fastest-growing market - it brings in around 15 percent of total revenue - but the company's failure to strike a deal with China Mobile means it is missing out on a large number of phone users. As the China pie grows, Apple's sales increase, but without China Mobile, it's losing ground at a faster rate compared to other brands.

"In absolute terms, this (iPhone 5) launch will certainly result in strong sales for Apple in China. However, in relative terms, I don't believe it will move the needle enough in market share," said Shiv Putcha, a Mumbai-based analyst at Ovum, a global technology consultant.

China Mobile and Apple initially said they were separated only by a technical issue - as the Chinese carrier runs a different 3G network from most of the world - but that has evolved into a broader and more complex issue of revenue-sharing.

"China Mobile and Apple still have to solve many issues, such as the business model, articles of cooperation and revenue division, but I believe we will reach an agreement eventually," China Mobile CEO Li Yue was reported by Chinese media as saying in Guangzhou last week.

Apple China declined to comment. China Mobile said it had no update to the Apple discussions.

STRONG PRE-ORDERS

Apple's ranking in China's smartphone market slipped to sixth in July-September, according to research firm IDC, [ID:nL4N09G1QK] but investors, primed to look to China product launches for an uptick in Apple's quarterly sales, have good headline numbers to digest - more than 300,000 iPhones pre-ordered on one carrier alone. But it's the lack of a deal with the No.1 carrier that prevents those numbers being stronger.

The iPhone is currently sold through Apple's seven stores, resellers and through China Unicom and China Telecom - which together have fewer than half the mobile subscribers of bigger rival China Mobile.

"Apple's market share declined because of the transition between the iPhone 4S and 5. Their market share will recover (with the iPhone 5), but if you don't have China Mobile, the significant market share gains will be very difficult," said Huang Leping, an analyst at Nomura in Hong Kong.

TD-LTE: STILL DISTANT

Cutting a deal with a Chinese state-owned carrier may be less optimal than the deals Apple is used to in other markets, and analysts note that China Mobile wouldn't necessarily open the flood gates for Apple.

Ovum's Putcha believes Apple and China Mobile will eventually strike a deal - though this would be for an iPhone running on China Mobile's next-generation network rather than its current 3G network.

Of China Mobile's 704 million subscribers, only 79 million are on its 3G network, and Apple has been reluctant to sign up to China Mobile's under-utilized, homegrown TD-SCDMA technology. "Apple likely doesn't see the return-on-investment in extending themselves for TD-SCDMA," Putcha said.

China Mobile is currently trialling its next-generation network, TD-LTE, which could be of more interest to Apple, but full-scale commercial use - and an iPhone tie-up - could still be years away.

ANDROID THREAT

Meanwhile, rivals are circling, eating away at Apple's smartphone market share. Samsung Electronics, Lenovo Group and little-known Chinese brand Coolpad held the top three slots in the third quarter, according to IDC.

All three have relationships with China Mobile and offer smartphone models at different price points. Apple competes exclusively at the high-end, and even there, rivals are rolling out models with China Mobile. Last week, Nokia said it planned to release its latest Lumia smartphone with China's top carrier, which is also expected to launch Research in Motion's new Blackberry 10, analysts predict.

"The threat will still come more from the Android camp where they have many vendors already working with China Mobile and offering high-end phones," said TZ Wong, a Singapore-based IDC analyst.

While these smartphones don't generate the buzz of a new iPhone, Chinese buyers are not known for their brand loyalty, and this could siphon away users considering an Apple upgrade.

"I've used a Blackberry, Android and iOS and, personally, I want to try the Windows 8," said Andy Huang, a 37-year-old fund manager, who owns most iPad models, an iPhone 4 and a 4S. "I think the Windows 8 is very innovative."

With a China Mobile deal looking some way off, Apple could always boost market share by offering cheaper models - the basic iPhone 5 will cost 5288 yuan ($850) without a contract - though this appears an unlikely route for a high-end brand.

"If they want to expand market share, probably the only way to do it here dramatically would be to put out a lower cost phone," said Michael Clendenin, managing director at RedTech Advisors. "It's really uncertain if they'd decide to go that route ... Apple's a mystery in that regard."

($1 = 6.2518 Chinese yuan)

(Additional reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom and Jane Lee; Editing by Kazunori Takada and Ian Geoghegan)

Read More..

Saints coach: Witnesses lied in NFL investigation

METAIRIE, La. (AP) — Saints assistant head coach Joe Vitt said Thursday witnesses in the NFL's bounty investigation of the New Orleans Saints have lied about him and the organization, and that their stories might change in federal court.

Alluding to a defamation lawsuit filed by Saints linebacker Jon Vilma against NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Vitt angrily said he feels the truth about the pay-for-pain system will come out before U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan, who is presiding over the pending case in New Orleans.

"If anybody's keeping a scorecard here, let's take a look at this," Vitt said. He referred back to his first meeting with reporters after the NFL released its bounty probe findings last March, in which he said, "At no point in time did our players ever cross the white line with the intention of injuring, maiming or ending the career of another player. That never took place."

Then, recounting his witness appearance in Vilma's case last summer, he added, "I've testified before a federal judge with my hand on the Bible."

"What's going to happen now is all participants, all these accusations, are going to go to federal court," Vitt continued. "They're going to go to a judge, and from top to bottom, she's going to hear testimony, and the penalty for perjury with her is going to be jail time."

Vitt's comments came a day after The Associated Press reported that former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams testified in recent NFL appeal hearings that he tried to stop the Saints' bounty program, only to be overruled by Vitt. The AP obtained transcripts from the closed-door hearings, which were held for Vilma and three other players who had been punished in the bounty probe.

Those same transcripts show Vitt later denied Williams' allegation and offered to take a lie detector test, adding, "There's a lot of lying going on right now."

Vitt called Williams a liar repeatedly during his appeal hearing testimony, even saying Williams "has lost his mind in some situations."

Saints quarterback Drew Brees has been defending the integrity of his coaches, saying Wednesday it was hard to believe the NFL based its case on the testimony of Williams and former defensive assistant Mike Cerullo, "two disgruntled employees that were fired here because they did not fit the mold of what we are about."

Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was appointed by Goodell to handle the players' appeals, and on Tuesday overturned their suspensions. However, he affirmed many of the findings of the bounty probe and found that three players, with the exception of former Saints linebacker Scott Fujita, committed "conduct detrimental" to the league.

Vitt has been serving as the Saints' interim head coach this season, except for six games when he was suspended. Saints head coach Sean Payton was suspended the entire season and general manager Mickey Loomis eight games.

The players had fought their bounty punishment with the help of their union, through the NFL's collective bargaining agreement and in federal court.

"Myself, Sean and Mickey didn't have that right," Vitt said, referring to the fact they did not have union representation. "I've already served my time. Mickey has already served his time. And to be quite frank with you, I don't know what door to knock on Park Avenue (where NFL headquarters are located) to get my reputation back. But again, I'm going to defend our players, I'm going to defend this organization and I'm going to defend our ownership."

Vitt declined to say on Thursday whether he expects to bring any legal action of his own, though he had testified before Tagliabue that he will sue Cerullo.

Although Vilma's case is pending, the judge denied the linebacker's request this week to begin the discovery process that includes the gathering of evidence and deposing of witnesses, and she is still considering an NFL motion to dismiss the case.

When asked if he could take action against Goodell or the league, Vitt responded, "There's nothing. It's history," but then added, "We'll all be before a federal judge. That's coming. We'll all be before the federal judge. And the one great thing about this country — the truth is going to prevail."

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Read More..

‘Homeland’ leads old favorites in Golden Globes TV race

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Cable shows got more Golden Globe nominations for television than traditional network programs on Thursday as HBO‘s political movie “Game Change” and Showtime‘s psychological thriller series “Homeland,” – one of last year’s big winners – led the race.

“Homeland” led the TV drama category with four nominations including best drama, best actor for Damian Lewis and best actress for Claire Danes in her role as a bi-polar CIA agent tracking down a home-grown Muslim extremist.

The show faces stiff competition from British aristocratic drama “Downton Abbey, which also won an acting nod for Michelle Dockery, along with “Breaking Bad,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and newcomer “The Newsroom.”

“‘Homeland’ fans seemed to be a little more split on whether creatively the second season was as successful as the first season so it’ll be curious if that ends up impacting the show’s chances in terms of taking home the awards,” James Hibberd, senior staff writer at Entertainment Weekly, told Reuters.

“Downtown Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes told Reuters: “We’re up against the big boys now, but the whole thing is very flattering and exciting.”

He added: “The themes of the show are pretty international, they’re about adjusting to change and being caught out by what life does to you…all of that is common to every country.”

HBO movie “Game Change,” about the surprise selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign, landed five nods in the miniseries/movie category, including for actors Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.

“‘Game Change’ is pure awards bait. It’s a well-done, smart political drama based on a book, with a certain amount of left-wing political slant and it’s very much the type of movie you’d expect awards voters to like,” Hibberd said.

New HBO drama “The Newsroom” bumped long-time awards favorite “Mad Men” from the best drama category, surprising many who believed the stylish advertising series was a shoo-in.

“The Globes tend to like the glamorous and sophisticated dramas with big city settings and they tend to shy away from gritty, rural Americana dramas…about sweaty guys with guns instead of charming men in suits, like ‘The Newsroom’ and ‘Boardwalk Empire,’” Hibberd said.

He noted that the only exception was “Breaking Bad,” which finally made the best drama category this year after four seasons on air.

Other notable snubs included HBO‘s epic fantasy drama “Game of Thrones,” which failed to pick up any nominations, and Ryan Murphy’s miniseries “American Horror Story: Asylum” which landed one best actress nod for Jessica Lange, who took home the award for 2012.

‘MODERN FAMILY’ LEADS COMEDY RACE

While last year’s Golden Globes picked newcomers over staple awards favorites for leading nominees, this year’s comedy categories saw the return of many old faces, including “Modern Family,” which led the comedy race with three nods.

Comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who will be hosting the awards ceremony on January 13, each landed a best comedy actress nod in the television race for their long-popular NBC comedies – Fey for “30 Rock” and Poehler for “Parks and Recreation.”

“You can be sure that the hosts are going to have fun with this during the telecast, they’re going to find ways to play off this during their presentation,” Hibberd said.

Fey and Poehler will replace Ricky Gervais at the awards gala dinner, after the British comedian helmed the Globes with his risqué dry humor for three years.

HBO‘s raunchy new comedy “Girls” earned two key nominations in the best TV comedy category and best comedy actress for Lena Dunham, while Showtime‘s new satire “House of Lies” landed the show’s lead Don Cheadle a best actor nod.

With the exception of NBC’s musical comedy “Smash” in the best comedy series category, no new network comedies managed to break into key races, which Hibberd attributed to a “disappointing” fall season.

Cable channel HBO picked up 17 nominations and Showtime garnered 7 across all major television categories. Networks ABC had 5, CBS and NBC got 4, and Fox got 2.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Study: People worldwide living longer, but sicker

LONDON (AP) — Nearly everywhere around the world, people are living longer and fewer children are dying. But increasingly, people are grappling with the diseases and disabilities of modern life, according to the most expansive global look so far at life expectancy and the biggest health threats.

The last comprehensive study was in 1990 and the top health problem then was the death of children under 5 — more than 10 million each year. Since then, campaigns to vaccinate kids against diseases like polio and measles have reduced the number of children dying to about 7 million.

Malnutrition was once the main health threat for children. Now, everywhere except Africa, they are much more likely to overeat than to starve.

With more children surviving, chronic illnesses and disabilities that strike later in life are taking a bigger toll, the research said. High blood pressure has become the leading health risk worldwide, followed by smoking and alcohol.

"The biggest contributor to the global health burden isn't premature (deaths), but chronic diseases, injuries, mental health conditions and all the bone and joint diseases," said one of the study leaders, Christopher Murray, director of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

In developed countries, such conditions now account for more than half of the health problems, fueled by an aging population. While life expectancy is climbing nearly everywhere, so too are the number of years people will live with things like vision or hearing loss and mental health issues like depression.

The research appears in seven papers published online Thursday by the journal Lancet. More than 480 researchers in 50 countries gathered data up to 2010 from surveys, censuses and past studies. They used statistical modeling to fill in the gaps for countries with little information. The series was mainly paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As in 1990, Japan topped the life expectancy list in 2010, with 79 for men and 86 for women. In the U.S. that year, life expectancy for men was 76 and for women, 81.

The research found wide variations in what's killing people around the world. Some of the most striking findings highlighted by the researchers: — Homicide is the No. 3 killer of men in Latin America; it ranks 20th worldwide. In the U.S., it is the 21st cause of death in men, and in Western Europe, 57th.

— While suicide ranks globally as the 21st leading killer, it is as high as the ninth top cause of death in women across Asia's "suicide belt," from India to China. Suicide ranks 14th in North America and 15th in Western Europe.

— In people aged 15-49, diabetes is a bigger killer in Africa than in Western Europe (8.8 deaths versus 1 death per 100,000).

— Central and Southeast Asia have the highest rates of fatal stroke in young adults at about 15 cases per 100,000 deaths. In North America, the rate is about 3 per 100,000.

Globally, heart disease and stroke remain the top killers. Reflecting an older population, lung cancer moved to the 5th cause of death globally, while other cancers including those of the liver, stomach and colon are also in the top 20. AIDS jumped from the 35th cause of death in 1990 to the sixth leading cause two decades later.

While chronic diseases are killing more people nearly everywhere, the overall trend is the opposite in Africa, where illnesses like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are still major threats. And experts warn again shifting too much of the focus away from those ailments.

"It's the nature of infectious disease epidemics that if you turn away from them, they will crop right back up," said Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders.

Still, she acknowledged the need to address the surge of other health problems across Africa. Cohn said the agency was considering ways to treat things like heart disease and diabetes. "The way we treat HIV could be a good model for chronic care," she said.

Others said more concrete information is needed before making any big changes to public health policies.

"We have to take this data with some grains of salt," said Sandy Cairncross, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He said the information in some of the Lancet research was too thin and didn't fully consider all the relevant health risk factors.

"We're getting a better picture, but it's still incomplete," he said.

___

Online:

www.lancet.com

http://healthmetricsandevaluation.org

Read More..

One Direction named MTV's 2012 Artist of the Year

NEW YORK (AP) — They're platinum. They're fascinating. And now One Direction is MTV's 2012 Artist of the Year.

MTV says the fivesome is "the clear choice for the top spot" after a year that included two No. 1 albums, hits such as "What Makes You Beautiful" and a sold-out world tour.

One Direction's Louis (LOO'-ee) Tomlinson calls Thursday's honor "the icing on the cake."

MTV's team of music staffers chose Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" as song as the year.

One Direction placed third on the U.K. version of "The X Factor" in 2010 and made their U.S. debut in March with the No. 1 album "Up All Night." Their sophomore album, "Take Me Home," was the year's third-highest debut.

The group also made Barbara Walters' most fascinating people of 2012 list.

Read More..

Illinois foreclosures up for 11th month

Foreclosure activity in Illinois posted the 11th straight year-over-year increase in November, but compared with a month earlier, filings are trending in the right direction, according to new data released Thursday.

RealtyTrac said the 13,520 properties within the state that received a foreclosure notice last month was a decrease of 9 percent from October but up 9 percent from November 2011. last month's activity, which equated to one out of every 392 homes in the state receiving a notice, gave Illinois the nation's third-highest state foreclosure rate, surpassed by only Florida and Nevada.

In the Chicago-area counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake and Will, almost 11,000 homes received a foreclosure notice in November, a decrease of 10.5 percent from October's level of activity but up 1.6 percent from November 2011

Most of that activity was in Cook County, where about 2,299 homes received initial notices of default, another 2,651 homes were scheduled for court-ordered sales and 2,086 homes were repossessed by lenders.

Among the nation's metropolitan areas, Rockford and Chicago ranked 11th and 13th, respectively, in terms of their foreclosure rates.

Nationally, the number of homes that were repossessed by lenders and became bank-owned rose on a year-over-year basis for the first time  since October 2010, the company said. In November, more than 59,000 homes across the country were repossessed, an increase of 11 percent from October and 5 percent from November 2011.

"The drop in overall foreclosure activity in November was caused largely by a 71-month low in foreclosure starts for the month, more evidence that we are past the worst of the foreclosure problem brought about by the housing bubble bursting six years ago," said Daren Blomquist, a company vice president. "But foreclosures are continuing to hobble the U.S. housing market as lenders finally seize properties that started the process a year or two ago, and much longer in some cases."

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

Read More..

Don't let city out of police 'code-of-silence' verdict, judge told

Two top civil rights attorneys argued strongly against efforts by the city to vacate the recent landmark jury verdict that a "code of silence" within the Chicago Police Department in part led to an off-duty officer's infamous video-recorded beating of a female bartender.

"The city should not be permitted to escape a finding that it covered up the misconduct of its officers by allowing it to simply erase that adjudication as if it never occurred, and then go on denying a code of silence," attorneys Locke Bowman and Craig Futterman wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief filed late Tuesday in federal court.

The video of off-duty Officer Anthony Abbate pummeling bartender Karolina Obrycka inside a Northwest Side bar in 2007 marked one of the most embarrassing chapters in recent department history. The jury decision holding Chicago police responsible because of its unofficial code of silence was a rare rebuke for the city, as such policy claims typically don't make it to trial.

The city has sought to vacate the judgment, calling the verdict "ambiguous" and likely to lead to numerous frivolous lawsuits. City attorneys also have argued that the beating happened five years ago, and reforms have been put in place since then.

In their filing, Bowman and Futterman seized on the city's pledge in court last week that the $850,000 in damages awarded to Obrycka would be paid to her regardless of whether U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve agreed to set aside the verdict.

With justice ensured for Obrycka, they wrote, there is no reason to set aside a hard-fought and important jury verdict that could prompt reform within the department given its struggles with police misconduct since the 1980s.

"If the city is allowed to sweep verdicts such as this one under the rug, it will have no incentive to change," the lawyers wrote.

asweeney@tribune.com

Read More..

As global consumers shop mobile, Apple outshines rivals

PARIS/PALO ALTO, Calif (Reuters) - Apple's stock may be sliding as investors fret about growing competition, but store visits and interviews with smartphone and tablet shoppers in 10 cities around the world suggest consumers share little of that negativity.

With tablets and other mobile devices the gadgets of choice this holiday season, Reuters canvassed over 70 shoppers and store employees across Sydney, Seattle, Palo Alto, Shanghai, Bangalore, Singapore, Paris, London, Mexico City and Boston for insight into what does and doesn't beckon.

Apple stores and electronics retailers were bustling last week, in contrast to the Microsoft pop-up stores in the United States promoting Windows 8 and Surface tablets, which were far less crowded.

Samsung appeared to be marketing aggressively, blanketing stores across major cities with signs for its Galaxy products and other devices, and large displays in many stores. Customers noticed, but only in Singapore and Bangalore did most of those spoken to by Reuters see it as a top choice.

Nokia, meanwhile, seems to have all but vanished from the front lines of the retail wars. Amazon's Kindle devices were also little in evidence, though that likely reflects its greater online sales focus.

Apple and its rivals are duking it out in displays, buying advertising and mobilizing armies of employees to try to win over the swarm of shoppers who will hit malls across the globe in coming weeks.

Loyalty to Apple's compelling orchard of products seemed to be a first line of defense for the Cupertino, California, company as shoppers in Europe, Asia and the United States weighed the pros and cons of switching to rival offerings.

Customers cited existing iTunes music and video libraries plus the traditional Apple virtues of simplicity and ease of use as reasons to stick with the iPhone and the iPad.

"I just taught my Persian grandmother how to use her new iPhone. She's 77 and speaks no English," said Soheil Arzang, a 27-year-old law student in Palo Alto, California. "With a Windows PC there are so many buttons, it's confusing. I converted my parents officially to Apple iPhones, Macs and iPads."

His father "used to go to Best Buy, but now he just says ‘let's go to the Apple store,'" Arzang said at a store near company headquarters.

In Paris, Max Cevenne, a 62-year-old photographer whose iPad was recently stolen, grilled a sales clerk about how Samsung's 10-inch Galaxy tablet would work with his PC at home.

"The Samsung appeals to me because it has an SD (digital memory) card and is more flexible in terms of software and hardware you can use with it," he said at the FNAC electronics store near St Lazare train station. "But I may end up going back to the iPad since I already use other Apple products, and it might be simpler."

Across the English Channel at a John Lewis department store in London, Joanna Sargent cast her eye over Amazon's Kindle Fire, but since she's bought three iPad Minis for her sons, she said she would probably stay with what's familiar.

"I looked at going for another tablet, but although they are cheaper, you have to re-buy everything," she said. "We'd have to buy all the music again, and you have to take that into account."

Train engineer John Owen from Didcot, Oxfordshire, echoed: "Apple's got me in now."

WHAT'S HOT, AND WHAT'S NOT

Just three years after their inception, tablet computers are the indispensable item. In a U.S. Ipsos poll conducted for Thomson Reuters from December 8 to December 11, one in three of 1,330 people surveyed were thinking of buying one of the slim gadgets.

Of those predisposed, 42 percent were leaning toward an iPad or iPad Mini, 16 percent were considering the Kindle Fire, and 14 percent a Samsung Galaxy. A mere 4 percent of respondents were drawn to Microsoft's Surface.

Apple has led the mobile industry since it launched its first iPhone in 2007 and then the iPad in 2010. But rivals including Samsung, Google, Amazon and Microsoft are making gradual inroads. IPads accounted for 54 percent of the tablet market this year but are expected to dip to 50 percent by 2016 as competing tablets gain ground, according to market research firm IDC.

Apple has lost a quarter of its value since September as fears grow about its ability to fend off challengers.

Samsung in particular appears to have launched a global marketing blitz at stores and malls around the world.

In Mexico City, its logo was plastered on signs on roads and outside retailers such as Sanborns and Iusacell. Despite that high visibility, an employee at one shop said he's selling about 15 iPads a week.

"The iPad mini is selling out as soon as we receive the shipments. Last week we got 42 and this week 32, and they sold almost immediately. ... A lot of people buy them as gifts," he said.

There are 88.5 million mobile phone users in Mexico, out of which just 15 million have smartphones, according to industry data, an example of the sizeable potential market that Apple, Samsung and others are fighting for.

In India, where mobile phone sales grew at a 47 percent clip in the third quarter, according to Gartner research, iPhones are still the gold standard, and many models were sold out.

But Androids are steadily attracting consumers. In tech-savvy Bangalore, the affordable smartphones are pervasive, replacing many of the Nokia feature phones popular in the past.

IPhones and iPads are too expensive for many Indians, but that didn't discourage a steady stream of keen window shoppers at an electronics market plastered with Samsung advertising.

"You have to pay the Apple premium, but when you consider the ease-of-use and the whole Apple ecosystem, it's well worth the money," said 29-year-old Karthik Venkataraman.

That same stickiness was also a deterrent for many.

"I want to be able to sync to different devices," said Chenelle Brandford, a 17-year-old student from North London.

In Singapore, the Samsung kiosk at a StarHub store was crowded, with customers testing out the South Korean manufacturer's Note 2 phone-tablets.

"I didn't want to get stuck in the Apple ecosystem," said one customer who recently bought an Android phone made by LG.

At a major electronics retailer in downtown Shanghai, most tablet shoppers said their first choice would be an iPad, but Samsung also had its share of fans.

"I don't like the iPad because it is too inconvenient to use. You cannot drag files directly into it but only by using iTunes," said Wang Daliu, 26 and unemployed. "The iPad has a closed system, limiting its capability."

THE LAGGARDS

Since Amazon, Google and Microsoft sell most of their tablets online, their devices came up less often than Samsung's and Apple's in Reuters interviews with shoppers.

Those companies are building their own ecosystems, but none have neared Apple's success at creating a simple-to-use, closed market of apps, music and content.

Microsoft, worried about declining PC sales, launched its foray into hardware with the Surface tablet in October to compete with the iPad.

The world's largest software company has not revealed sales figures for the tablet, which has won mixed reviews and is only available in its own stores and online in certain countries. On Tuesday, Microsoft said it would sell the Surface through more retailers starting this month.

At a mall in Boston, one person wandered into a Microsoft store for every nine who visited a nearby Apple store on a weekday last week. In Palo Alto, 40-year-old Javier Sanchez returned his Surface.

"With the iPad, it's one step, and with this (Surface), it's two or three steps to do the same thing," said Sanchez, who also uses a Mac and an iPhone. "You open (the iPad) and it's ready for you."

Things looked not much brighter on Microsoft's home turf, in the greater Seattle area. A sales assistant at a Best Buy said he had been quizzed about sales of the Windows 8 device.

"A whole bunch of Microsoft guys basically interviewed me, asking me how well things were selling," he said, without going into details.

Another assistant, asked if the same store had 32GB or 64GB Surface tablets in stock, said, laughing: "We got plenty of both!"

Apple is likely to reveal holiday sales only in January, alongside results. For now, the loyalists have spoken.

"We're far more familiar with Apple," said Linda Jenkins at the Carphone Warehouse in London. Her husband, Vaughan, chimed in: "But they haven't taken us over yet!"

(Reporting by Tomas Sarmiento and Cyntia Barrera in Mexico City, Himank Sharma in Bangalore, Paul Sandle and Isla Binnie in London, Leila Abboud in Paris, Alistair Barr in Palo Alto, Bill Rigby in Seattle, Aaron Pressman in Boston, Ananthalakshmi A in Singapore, Thuy Ong in Sydney and Shanghai newsroom. Writing by Noel Randewich, editing by Edwin Chan and Prudence Crowther)

Read More..