United pilots ratify new labor deal

After years of divisive negotiations between United Airlines and its pilots, union members on Saturday ratified a new labor agreement, shedding a bankruptcy-era contract for pilots and marking an important step toward fully integrating United and Continental airlines, which officially merged in 2010.

The Air Line Pilots Association, which over the past couple of years has staged pickets in Chicago and elsewhere about its lack of a contract and had taken a preliminary strike vote, said 67 percent of its 10,000 members voted over the past several weeks to ratify the deal, with nearly 98 percent casting votes. Voting closed Saturday morning.

The four-year contract will go into effect immediately and provides gains in pay, job protections, retirement and benefits compensation, and work rules.

“The era of bankruptcy and concessionary contracts is now over,” union leaders said in a statement. “For too long, the pilots of United and Continental have had to shoulder more than their share of the burden as our respective airlines struggled through the difficult economic times of the past decade. We now stand ready to embark on a fresh start for the pilots and the airline.”

With help from federal mediators, the two sides agreed in principle to a deal in August and took until mid-November to work out language for a contract and send the proposal onto the union membership for a vote.

"The ratification of this agreement is an important step forward for our pilots and the company," Fred Abbott, United senior vice president of flight operations, said in a statement.

The finished contract is a bit of good news in what has otherwise been a rocky merger process for Chicago-based United Continental Holdings. Most notable to passengers were rampant flight delays and cancellations following a conversion to a combined passenger reservation system in March. Those operational woes were severe over the summer, and customers started to flee to other airlines. But the problems have subsided in recent months, with United hitting its goal of an 80 percent on-time rate.

A joint contract with United and former Continental pilots is an important step in allowing the airline to integrate its crews and aircraft, a part of efficiency savings envisioned when the carriers merged. The next step is for former United and Continental pilots to integrate seniority lists, which determine flight duties and, thus, pay rates. The union said that process could take “several months to complete.”

"We look forward to the efficiencies and teamwork we will achieve as our pilots become one group once they complete their seniority integration," Abbott said.

United has other union contracts to finish. It is still in joint negotiations with other major unions, including flight attendants, passenger service agents, dispatchers and ramp and fleet workers, among others. However, pilot contracts are traditionally done first and tend to be the most contentious.

United’s top competitor in the Chicago market, American Airlines, also recently settled a significant contract with its pilots. The deal, ratified Dec. 7, paves the way for American to emerge from bankruptcy protection and, potentially, merge with US Airways, which has made a formal bid to combine two of the nation’s largest carriers.

gkarp@tribune.com

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“Bennifer” buried as Ben Affleck’s star soars

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – It has taken 10 years of hard work and indie movies, but Ben Affleck finally has moved past his “Bennifer” nightmare.

Affleck, 40, once a tabloid staple who risked becoming a laughingstock during his romance with Jennifer Lopez and their movie flop “Gigli,” is back on top in Hollywood, winning accolades for his work both in front of and behind the camera.

Fifteen years after Affleck shared an Oscar with Matt Damon for their first screenplay, “Good Will Hunting,” buzz is building over a likely second Academy Award nomination next month. It would be Affleck’s first since 1997.

“Finally, people now are ready to go, ‘Wow! He’s at the very top of the food chain,’” Damon told Reuters.

Affleck’s latest film “Argo,” a part-thriller, part-comedic tale of the real-life rescue of six American diplomats from Iran in 1980, this week picked up five Golden Globe nominations and a nod from the Screen Actors Guild for its top prize of best ensemble cast.

The film, which Affleck directed, produced and stars in, has also delighted critics and brought in some $ 160 million at the worldwide box office.

In “Argo,” Affleck’s clean-cut looks are hidden under a long, shaggy 1970s hair cut and beard as he plays CIA officer Tony Mendez, who devised a fake film project to spirit six hostages out of Tehran after the Islamic revolution.

The kudos Affleck is now receiving follows the embarrassing headlines he attracted over his 2002-2004 romance with Lopez.

“It was tough to watch him get kicked in the teeth for all those years because the perception of him was so not who he actually was,” Damon said.

“It was upsetting for a lot of his friends because he’s the smartest, funnest, nicest, kindest, incredibly talented guy. … So that was tough. Now I’m just thrilled. … He deserves everything that he’s going to get,” he added.

With a huge, pink diamond engagement ring for Lopez and gossip about matching Rolls Royces, the pair dubbed “Bennifer” starred in the 2003 comedy romance “Gigli,” which earned multiple Razzie awards for the worst comedy of the year.

SELLING MAGAZINES NOT MOVIES

Damon, by contrast, was seeing his career surge with “The Bourne Identity,” “Syriana” and “The Departed.” But he recalls Affleck’s pain.

“He said (to me), ‘I am in the absolute worst place you can be. I sell magazines, not movie tickets.’ I remember our agent called up the editor of Us Weekly, begging her not to put him on the cover any more. Please stop. Just stop,” Damon said.

About a year after splitting with Lopez, Affleck married actress Jennifer Garner, had the first of three children with her, and started writing and directing small but admired movies like “Gone Baby Gone” in 2007 and 2010′s gritty crime film “The Town.”

Last month, Affleck was named Entertainment Weekly’s entertainer of the year, largely on the back of “Argo.”

The actor-turned-director said that managing the various tones of the film was his hardest challenge.

“I had to synthesize comedic elements and the political stuff and this true-life drama thriller story. … It was scary and it was daunting,” Affleck told Reuters, saying he powered through by “overworking it by a multiple of ten.”

A trip to the Oscars ceremony in February is now considered a shoo-in by awards pundits, but Affleck is not convinced that success is sweeter the second time around.

“It’s harder. On the one hand, coming from obscurity, you have a neutral starting place. Because of the tabloid press and over exposure, I was starting from a deficit,” he said.

“It can be very unpleasant to be in the midst of a lot of ugliness. But I just put my head down and decided … I was going to work as hard as I could, and I never let the possibility enter my mind that I might fail – at least consciously. Subconsciously, I knew I could fail and I was really scared, so it made me work harder.”

(Additional reporting by Zorianna Kit; Editing by Will Dunham)

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School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

Miriam Ruiz during a yoga class last week at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, Calif. A few dozen parents are protesting that the program amounts to religious indoctrination.

ENCINITAS, Calif. — By 9:30 a.m. at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, tiny feet were shifting from downward dog pose to chair pose to warrior pose in surprisingly swift, accurate movements. A circle of 6- and 7-year-olds contorted their frames, making monkey noises and repeating confidence-boosting mantras.

Jackie Bergeron’s first-grade yoga class was in full swing.

“Inhale. Exhale. Peekaboo!” Ms. Bergeron said from the front of the class. “Now, warrior pose. I am strong! I am brave!”

Though the yoga class had a notably calming effect on the children, things were far from placid outside the gymnasium.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination. They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

Mary Eady, the parent of a first grader, said the classes were rooted in the deeply religious practice of Ashtanga yoga, in which physical actions are inextricable from the spiritual beliefs underlying them.

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort. They’re using this as a tool for many things beyond just stretching.”

Ms. Eady and a few dozen other parents say a public school system should not be leading students down any particular religious path. Teaching children how to engage in spiritual exercises like meditation familiarizes young minds with certain religious viewpoints and practices, they say, and a public classroom is no place for that.

Underlying the controversy is the source of the program’s financing. The pilot project is supported by the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who is considered the father of Ashtanga yoga.

Dean Broyles, the president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit law firm that champions religious freedom and traditional marriage, according to its Web site, has dug up quotes from Jois Foundation leaders, who talk about the inseparability of the physical act of yoga from a broader spiritual quest. Mr. Broyles argued that such quotes betrayed the group’s broader evangelistic purpose.

“There is a transparent promotion of Hindu religious beliefs and practices in the public schools through this Ashtanga yoga program,” he said.

“The analog would be if we substituted for this program a charismatic Christian praise and worship physical education program,” he said.

The battle over yoga in schools has been raging for years across the country but has typically focused on charter schools, which receive public financing but set their own curriculums.

The move by the Encinitas Union School District to mandate yoga classes for all students who do not opt out has elevated the discussion. And it has split an already divided community.

The district serves the liberal beach neighborhoods of Encinitas, including Leucadia, where Paul Ecke Central Elementary is, as well as more conservative inland communities. On the coast, bumper stickers reading “Keep Leucadia Funky” are borne proudly. Farther inland, cars are more likely to feature the Christian fish symbol, and large evangelical congregations play an important role in shaping local philosophy.

Opponents of the yoga classes have started an online petition to remove the course from the district’s curriculum. They have shown up at school board meetings to denounce the program, and Mr. Broyles has threatened to sue if the board does not address their concerns.

The district has stood firm. Tim Baird, the schools superintendent, has defended the yoga classes as merely another element of a broader program designed to promote children’s physical and mental well-being. The notion that yoga teachers have designs on converting tender young minds to Hinduism is incorrect, he said.

“That’s why we have an opt-out clause,” Mr. Baird said. “If your faith is such that you believe that simply by doing the gorilla pose, you’re invoking the Hindu gods, then by all means your child can be doing something else.”

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

“Yoga poses are representative of Hindu deities and Hindu stories about the actions and interactions of those deities with humans,” she said. “There’s content even in the movement, just as with baptism there’s content in the movement.”

Russell Case, a representative of the Jois Foundation, said the parents’ fears were misguided.

“They’re concerned that we’re putting our God before their God,” Mr. Case said. “They’re worried about competition. But we’re much closer to them than they think. We’re good Christians that just like to do yoga because it helps us to be better people.”

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Retailers hope shoppers pick up the pace

Debbie Scarlati experienced a bit of anxiety when she realized that Christmas Day was just 11 days away.

"Truly, I was a whole week off," she said, holding three bags at Oakbrook Center on Friday. "I had a little bit of a panic attack, and now, I'm done."

The Downers Grove mom planned to cut her holiday spending this year but had trouble reining in herself.

"I really should be spending less," she said, "but I have this real fault that if I see it, and sometimes because you're under the gun and you have to get it, you just get it. You just buy it."

Scarlati's late start and weakness for shopping is what stores are counting on. Sales over Black Friday weekend soared to a record $59.1 billion, but they tapered off in the following weeks.

The number of shoppers and sales in stores during the first week of December lagged last year's, according to ShopperTrak. Consumers postponed their purchases and mild temperatures slowed sales of cold-weather gear.

Now, with 10 days to Christmas, businesses must get shoppers like Scarlati to spend.

On Friday, Wal-Mart took the rare step of slashing prices on some iPads and the latest iPhones. Kohl's has promised to pick up the tab for one shopper a day.

This weekend, Sears is rolling out another round of door-buster sales. And next weekend — just days before Christmas — Macy's will stay open for 48 hours straight and Toys R Us for 88 hours.

Experts expect prices to fall even further as Christmas approaches. Retailers, desperate to unload inventory, will offer steep percentage discounts. "This year, 40 percent is standard fare," said Wendy Liebmann, CEO of WSL Strategic Retail.

Discounts are likely to creep to 50 percent, she said, in part due to fierce competition with online merchants.

The sales not only appeal to frugal shoppers, but to people who probably shouldn't still be shopping at all. "Promotions at this late in the game are geared to get people to spend more than they intended," said Tom Compernolle, principal in Deloitte's retail practice.

Stores are also trying fancy promotions to gain shoppers' attention. Clothing store Banana Republic has touted airline tickets and Fiat car giveaways in an effort to grab market share.

Other big-name retailers such as Amazon, Target and Wal-Mart have engaged in price-matching wars. "No retailer wants to be outflanked, and when they see a competitor doing something, they want to match it," Compernolle said.

Retailers have plenty of people to win over. Nearly a fifth of consumers have yet to start holiday shopping, while another fifth plan to drop into stores again after taking a break, research firm NPD Group estimated.

With Christmas on a Tuesday, this year's shopping season has five weekends, not the typical four. There are two left.

"We might see the rush this weekend," said Suzanne Cook-Beres, Oakbrook Center's marketing manager.

This year, the mall is trying social media to reel in customers. People who take photos and post them on photo-sharing site Instagram are eligible to win a $20 gift card. "We looked at this to be a great opportunity to say … what will this do?" Cook-Beres said. To beat last week's lull, Oakbrook promised shoppers who spent $250 or more a $20 mall gift card that can be used at most stores.

At Northbrook Court, mall executives are focusing on entertainment, offering "pet night" on Monday evenings and a day at the "elf academy" for children, marketing manager Stacy Kolios said.

The question is whether shoppers will give in to special perks and lower prices.

Compernolle predicts they will, despite the looming "fiscal cliff," because "consumer confidence has climbed since September," he said.

But retail consultant Jeff Green isn't convinced.

Discounts will likely draw shoppers, but promotions, like Kohl's plan to pick up one shopper's tab every day until Christmas Eve, are a "little obscure for most people," Green said.

"If you're a power shopper you'll care, but the general public probably won't," he said.

Corilyn Shropshire is a Tribune reporter; Erin Chan Ding is a freelance writer. Tribune Newspapers' Shan Li contributed.

crshropshire@tribune.com

Twitter @corilyns

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Connecticut elementary school shooting: Multiple deaths reported

Multiple people have been killed in a shooting at an elementary school. Children are among the dead, the Hartford Courant reports. Sources told the newspaper that many of the shootings took place in a kindergarten classroom. An official with knowledge of the situation says a gunman is dead.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way, says the man apparently had two guns.

The shooting was reported at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, in western Connecticut. State police say Newtown police called them at about 9:40 a.m. about the reports.

Newtown is in northern Fairfield County, about 45 miles southwest of Hartford and 80 miles northeast of New York City.

Eight-year-old Alexis Wasik, a third-grader at the school, said police were checking everybody inside the school before they were escorted to the firehouse.

"We had to walk with a partner," she said.

One child leaving the school said that there was shattered glass everywhere. A police officer ran into the classroom and told them to run outside and keep going until the reach the firehouse.

Earlier reports of a second shooter are unconfirmed.

Associated Press, Reuters and the Hartford Courant contributed

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Home invasion victim gets help over Xbox headset

NORTH APOLLO, Pa. (AP) — Police say a Pennsylvania man used his Xbox headphones to call for help after being bound with duct tape and menaced with a gun during a home invasion.

Investigators say the 22-year-old suburban Pittsburgh man was playing video games in an upstairs bedroom when he heard his front door open. The man initially thought it was a family member but saw an armed man wearing a ski mask when he looked downstairs.

Authorities say the intruder bound Derick Shaffer and led him around the North Apollo home to locate valuables, then fled in Shaffer’s car. Shaffer reached a friend over his Xbox Live headset and had him call police.

The missing car was located about an hour later. Police questioned three people but are still trying to identify a suspect.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps signs new first look deal with Fox

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Fox has signed a new three-year first look deal with director/producer Shawn Levy‘s 21 Laps, the production company behind “Night at the Museum” and “The Watch,” the companies announced on Wednesday.

21 Laps is already based at Fox, having supplied the studio with several comedy titles over the past few years. While its most recent, “The Watch,” disappointed at the box office, the company has otherwise provided a steady supply of hits.

The original “Night at the Museum leads the pack with $ 570 million at the global box office, while the sequel surpassed $ 400 million.

“Shawn’s boundless energy, ambition and effortless creativity make him the perfect partner,” Emma Watts, Fox’s president of production, said in a statement. “We are lucky he continues to call Fox his home.”

21 Laps has a couple of projects due for release in 2013 – “The Internship,” starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, and “The Spectacular Now,” starring Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley.

Levy directed “The Internship,” his first job since “Real Steel,” which Disney released. That film debuts June 7.

21 Laps also has several projects in development, including a third installment of “Night at the Museum” and “Project Aloha,” which Levy plans to direct from a script by Nick Stoller. It is also at work on projects beyond Fox, such as “Story of Your Life,” a sci-fi thriller that Nic Mathieu will direct.

In signing a new deal with Fox, 21 Laps also announced a series of promotions. Billy Rosenberg moves up to the Senior Vice President level from Vice President while Dan Cohen rejoins the company from Mandeville as VP.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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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

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23-year-old dies after falling down smokestack of Mag Mile hotel

A man who fell down the smoke-stack at a downtown hotel has died.The man, 23, was trying to take a photo from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel on Michigan Avenue. (WGN - Chicago)

A man trying to take a photo from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel on Michigan Avenue died after falling 22 feet down a smokestack, authorities said.

It took rescue crews four hours to remove Nicholas Wieme, 23, at one point cutting through a wall and wedging boards in the chute to keep him from falling farther down.

Covered in a white sheet, Wieme was wheeled into an ambulance inside the hotel's basement garage around 5:05 a.m. and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the Fire Department and the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Rescue crews responded to the hotel at 505 N. Michigan Ave. around 1:10 a.m. after someone called and reported that a person threatening to jump from the roof. Firefighters later learned Wieme had fallen down the smokestack, according to Fire Department spokeswoman Meg Ahlheim.

A "confined space rescue" was called, bringing 30 companies and about 125 firefighters and paramedics to the scene.

They discovered Wieme had fallen 22 feet down a 6-foot wide smokestack and was wedged where the chute angled before dropping 42 floors, Ahlheim said. Crews cut into the wall and used wood boards to block him from falling any farther, she said.

"We had to send members from the top down on ropes to assess his condition. The whole time we’re monitoring the situation for toxic gases," said Special Operations Chief Michael Fox. "We found the best way to get out him was to go about two floors below, and we had to cut the duct work for the chimney, which was made out of steel. And eventually we ended up sliding the victim down into the hole and removing him from the building."

Wieme was able to communicate with his girlfriend, either with phone calls or text messages, Ahlheim said, but firefighters lost contact with him around 3:15 a.m.

Wieme and his girlfriend had dined on Michigan Avenue Wednesday evening and then decided to "explore" the hotel, according to a source. They took the elevator up and somehow were able to get on the roof, authorities said.

Wieme grew up in Minnesota but recently lived on the North Side. He was an aspiring comedian who posted several of his routines online. On Wednesday night, he posted a message to his Facebook page that he was eating at Michael Jordan's restaurant with his girlfriend.

Raymond Vermolen, general manager of the hotel, released a statement saying Intercontinental "holds the safety, comfort and well-being of our guests and employees as our top priority and concern. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the guest at this difficult time. The hotel staff will continue to cooperate fully with authorities in their investigation. All further questions should be directed to the Chicago Police Department."

pnickeas@tribune.com
Twitter: @peternickeas

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Lidl Christmas dinner offer goes viral on Twitter

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Discount retailer Lidl faces a 200,000-euro ($ 260,000) Christmas dinner bill after an offer of chicken vol-au-vents and ice cream cake for the poor went viral.

The supermarket launched a Twitter campaign in Belgium on Monday, saying it would hand out five four-course Christmas dinners to food banks for each tweet on a hash tag.

Lidl had expected to hand out about 1,000 of the 20-euro dinner packs, consisting of tomato soup, vol-au-vents with chips, an ice-cream cake and chocolates, a spokesman for the German-based company’s Belgium unit said on Wednesday.

But local newspapers wrote about the offer and people retweeted using the hash tag – #luxevooriedereen, Dutch for “luxury for everyone”.

By the end of the 24-hour campaign, 1,500 people had tweeted, meaning Lidl has to deliver 7,500 dinners. That sparked reports the supermarket had been caught out by its campaign.

To quash such talk, Lidl rounded up the number of dinners to 10,000, and branded the campaign a success.

Lidl said it had not yet decided whether to repeat the exercise next year.

“We’ve learnt quite a few lessons over the past 48 hours, to say the least,” the spokesman said.

($ 1 = 0.7693 euros)

(Reporting By Ben Deighton. Editing By Sebastian Moffett.)

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Britney Spears, Taylor Swift are top-earning women in music

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Pop star Britney Spears edged past Taylor Swift to claim the title of top-earning woman in music after bringing in an estimated $ 58 million from her album, endorsements and a perfume in the past year, Forbes said on Wednesday.

Country-pop singer Swift, 22, was a close second with an estimated $ 57 million paycheck thanks to her tour – which made more than $ 1 million each night – a contract with CoverGirl cosmetics, her own line of fragrances and her new album “Red.”

R&B star Rihanna, 24, earned an estimated $ 53 million to put her at No. 3, two places up from last year, followed by Lady Gaga, 26, who slipped from No. 1 in 2011 to fourth place with $ 52 million.

Katy Perry, 28, the only musician other than Michael Jackson to produce five No. 1 hit singles from one album, rounded out the top five with about $ 45 million in earnings.

“I think people love the comeback story – Britney never really finished her run as a superstar,” Steve Stoute, marketing expert and author of “The Tanning of America” told Forbes.

Spears, 31, who was No. 10 last year, earned most of her money from her latest album “Femme Fatale” and her tour, according to Forbes, which compiled the list with estimated earnings from May 2011 to May 2012.

In September, Spears became a judge on the reality TV singing show “The X Factor,” reportedly for $ 15 million.

Despite their huge incomes, only eight of the top women music earners were among the 25 best-paid musicians, which Forbes attributes in part to career breaks to have children.

Madonna made the list in ninth place with an estimated $ 30 million in earnings, which did not include profits from her latest tour because it was outside the time period considered for the ranking.

Forbes compiled the list after estimating pretax income based on record sales, touring information merchandise sales and interviews with concert promoters, lawyers and managers.

The full list can be found at http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2012/12/12/the-top-earning-women-in-music-2012/

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Maureen Bavdek)

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Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil

James Edward Bates for The New York Times

Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.

Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.

But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.

“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”

She threw the product away and started a petition on Change.org, a nonprofit Web site, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo, Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.

Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.

In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.

Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.

“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.

The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.

Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.

Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.

Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”

The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.

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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

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3 dead in medical copter crash

Three people were killed when a medical helicopter crashed Monday night near the city of Rochelle.

A witness says the medical helicopter that crashed in a field near Rochelle, killing the pilot and two nurses, flew close to his house before diving into the ground.

“I thought it didn’t sound right. It sounded like it was going to hit the house,’’ said Michael Bernardin, a Viola Township highway commissioner who lives near U.S. Route 30 and Illlinois Route 251. "All of a sudden I saw this red light come out of the sky and nosedive right into the ground out here.

"I thought it was going to hit the house, but evidently the guy steered her clear of everything," he added.

Bernardin said he and his wife jumped into their pickup truck and spotted the wreckage in their headlights around 8:30 p.m. Monday. "It was unbelievable, unbelievable," he said. "Oh my God, three people died."

The helicopter was registered to Rockford Memorial Hospital and was enroute to pick up a patient at Mendota Community Hospital, officials said. The Rockford hospital identified the pilot as Andy Olesen and the two flight nurses as Jim Dillow and Karen Hollis.

Lee County Sheriff John Varga said it did not appear that the helicopter hit any power lines or other structures. "The phone calls and witnesses we got last night said something didn't sound right, it was flying low," he said.

Varga said his office received a call from the Rockford hospital at about 8:15 p.m. saying they had lost contact with the helicopter.

This morning, an Illinois State Police crime scene investigator and representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were on the scene as a plane flew overhead taking photographs of the crash site.

The NTSB will lead the investigation into what caused the crash, according to the FAA.

The Rockford hospital released a statement saying "our hearts are heavy. We grieve the loss of three heroes who dedicated their careers to serving others."

On the hospital's Facebook page, hundreds of people, many of them paramedics and other emergency responders, offered their condolences to the victims' families.

The nurses and pilots who work in air ambulances are among the best trained in their fields, said Stephen Richey, a former flight respiratory therapist who lives in Indianapolis.

Pilots must be able to land on improvised landing sites on short notice, and the flight nurses on board often must deliver advance medical care to critically injured trauma patients.

The work draws those with years of experience and a deep commitment to helping patients, Richey said.

"You’ll never find a more dedicated group of professionals in your entire life," Richey said.

Medical flight crews also face daily risks. Richey became an aviation safety researcher after losing several friends in crashes, he said.

In October 2008, a medical helicopter crashed after striking a wire attached to a radio tower in Aurora, killing three crew members and a 1-year-old girl.

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WebMD to cut 14 percent of workforce to reduce expenses

(Reuters) – Health information website WebMD Health Corp said it will cut around 250 jobs, or 14 percent of its workforce, to reduce costs.

The company, which had about 1700 employees according to Thomson Reuters data, said it would take a charge of about $ 6 million to $ 8 million in the fourth quarter, primarily on severance and other restructuring-related costs.

WebMD, which is a popular and long-trusted destination for checking health and disease related information, has lost its sheen for investors in recent times as it struggled to convert its growing user base into a steady revenue stream.

The company named a former Pfizer Inc executive Cavan Redmond as CEO earlier this year, entrusting the industry veteran with the task of reviving the website’s flagging business.

Its previous CEO, Wayne Gattinella, resigned after the company took itself off the auction block in January.

WebMD also said on Tuesday that it plans to streamline its operations and focus resources on increasing user engagement, customer satisfaction and innovation, and expects these efforts to reduce annualized operating expenses by about $ 45 million.

While most of the job cuts will be effective at the end of the year, other cost saving actions will be implemented in the first quarter of 2013, the company said in a statement.

The company reported a third-quarter loss in November, compared with a profit in the year-ago quarter, and said revenue fell 13 percent.

WebMD’s shares, which have lost nearly 40 percent of their value over the past six months, were down about 2 percent in premarket trade. They closed at $ 13.85 on Monday on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)

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World Chefs: Keller shares memories, spotlight in latest book

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Thomas Keller, one of America‘s most respected chefs, shares the food memories of his childhood and his time in France in his new book “Bouchon Bakery,” which is also the name of his chain of pastry shops in the United States.

Keller is the only American chef who owns two three-Michelin-star restaurants – Per Se in New York City and The French Laundry in the Napa Valley wine region in California.

Earlier this year, Britain’s Restaurant Magazine named Per Se, which opened in 2004, the world’s sixth best restaurant. Keller also earned the magazine’s lifetime achievement award.

Like his four other books, his latest effort is a collaboration. He co-wrote it with his top pastry chefs Sebastien Rouxel and Matthew McDonald along with food writers Susie Heller, Michael Ruhlman and Amy Vogler.

The 57-year-old spoke to Reuters about the book, his pastry chefs and his place in the culinary world.

Q: Why did you collaborate with the leaders of your pastry team with this book?

A: “If you look at my other cookbooks, it’s always been a point with me to share these opportunities with those who share their skills and expertise with the general public. That was the reason why I did the book. Sebastien is one of the best pastry chefs in America. His techniques are unparalleled. I’m not trying to pretend that I’m a pastry chef by writing a book about baking and pastries. Nor am I trying to be a bread baker. I have Matthew McDonald, who is one of the best bakers in America. To be able to highlight his skills in the bread section was very important as well.”

Q: How did your time in France change your view about pastry and bread-making?

A: “When you are in France, especially in Paris, there were three or four boulangeries of different significance just on the block where I lived because they had pastry chefs with different levels of skills. You went to different ones for different things. To have a fresh baked baguette everyday was extraordinary. Anyone who lived in Paris for any length of time would say eating a fresh baguette is pretty special. Bread plays a real important part in the experience of the diners. To make sure we have the opportunity to significantly impact the experience by controlling the production and style of the bread was very important to me.”

Q: Do you have a favorite dessert?

A: “It depends on the day … There are so many things I love. I think anything that’s done really, really well. For me, that’s really something I really appreciate. I think one of the things that really resonate with the individual is that idea that eating, and eating through that experience, they have a memory. We are always trying to do something that’s good. Why put something on the menu that’s not very good?”

Q: The book emphasizes weighing ingredients over measuring with cups and spoons. Could that be difficult for home cooks?

A: “One of the things about pastry … it’s such an exact process. The most exact thing you practice is with weighing. There is an exactness to the execution, which gives you every opportunity to be successful.”

Q: French Laundry and Per Se are among two of the best restaurants in the country. Bouchon Bakery is a success. What more would you like to accomplish in the culinary world?

A: “I have accomplished today everything I wanted to accomplish, more than I ever dreamed was possible. Right now, I’m just focused on the restaurants we have and the book I just wrote. Let me enjoy this moment before you ask me what I’ll be doing tomorrow.”

Pecan Sandies for my mom (Makes 1-1/2 dozen cookies)

1 ¾ cups + 1 ½ teaspoons all-purpose flour (250 grams)

¾ cup coarsely chopped pecans (80 grams)

4 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature (170 grams)

¾ cup + 1 ¾ teaspoons powdered sugar (90 grams)

Additional powdered sugar for dusting (optional)

1. Position the racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F (convection) or 350°F (standard). Line two sheet pans with Silpats or parchment paper.

2. Toss the flour and pecans together in a medium bowl.

3. Place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix on medium-low speed until smooth. Add the 90 grams/¾ cup plus 1¾ teaspoons powdered sugar and mix for about 2 minutes, until fluffy. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the flour mixture and mix on low speed for about 30 seconds, until just combined. Scrape the bottom of the bowl to incorporate any dry ingredients that have settled there.

4. Divide the dough into 30-gram/1½-tablespoon portions, roll into balls, and arrange on the sheet pans, leaving about 1½ inches between them. Press the cookies into 2-inch disks.

5. Bake until pale golden brown, 15 to 18 minutes if using a convection oven, 22 to 25 minutes if using a standard oven, reversing the positions of the pans halfway through. (Sandies baked in a convection oven will not spread as much as those baked in a standard oven and will have a more even color.)

6. Set the pans on a cooling rack and cool for 5 to 10 minutes. Using a metal spatula, transfer the cookies to the rack to cool completely. If desired, dust with powdered sugar.

Note: The cookies can be stored in a covered container for up to 3 days.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Patricia Reaney and James Dalgleish)

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Concussion Liability Issues Could Stretch Beyond N.F.L.

Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee, via Associated Press

Insurers could raise premiums with a higher risk of lawsuits for concussions, like the one 49ers quarterback Alex Smith sustained a month ago.

As the N.F.L. confronts a raft of lawsuits brought by thousands of former players who accuse the league of hiding information about the dangers of concussions, a less visible battle that may have a more widespread effect in the sport is unfolding between the league and 32 of its current and former insurers.

The dispute revolves around how much money, if any, the insurers are obliged to pay for the league’s mounting legal bills and the hundreds of millions of dollars in potential damages that might stem from the cases brought by the retired players.

Regardless of how it is resolved, the dispute could hurt teams, leagues and schools at all levels if insurers raise premiums to compensate for the increased risk of lawsuits from the families of people who play hockey, lacrosse and other contact sports.

The N.F.L., which generates about $9 billion a year, may be equipped to handle these legal challenges. But colleges, high schools and club teams may be forced to consider severe measures in the face of liability issues, like raising fees to offset higher premiums; capping potential damages; and requiring players to sign away their right to sue coaches and schools. Some schools and leagues may even shut down teams because the expense and legal risk are too high.

“Insurers will be tightening up their own coverage and make sports more expensive,” said Robert Boland, who teaches sports law at New York University. “It could make the sustainability of certain sports a real issue.”

The N.F.L. contends that the insurers, some of whom wrote policies in the 1960s, have a duty to defend the league, which has paid them millions of dollars in premiums. The question for the N.F.L. is not whether the insurers are required to help the league, but rather what percent of the league’s expenses each insurer is obliged to cover.

The 32 insurance companies have varying arguments against the league. Some wrote policies for a limited number of years and contend their obligations should also be limited. Others contend they wrote policies for the N.F.L.’s marketing arm — for licensing disputes, for example — not the league itself.

A few of the companies went bankrupt or merged with rivals. Some insurers wrote primary policies that covered up to the first $1 million of claims; the rest insured obligations in excess of that amount.

Creating a formula for how to apportion liability will in some cases depend on the broader case between the league and its players now in federal court in Pennsylvania. If the N.F.L. persuades the judge to dismiss the case, the league will be left trying to recoup its legal costs from the insurers. If the judge allows the players’ case to proceed, the definitions of when, how and whether a player’s concussions led to his illness will become critical in shaping the insurers’ exposure, and could take years to sort out.

“This is baby step 1 in the process for everyone figuring how deep in the soup they are,” said Christopher Fusco, a lawyer who has worked on similar insurance cases but is not involved in the N.F.L. litigation. “Baby step 2 will be to figure out the facts.”

Fusco and other lawyers said the facts would largely come from the underlying suit between the league and the more than 3,000 retired players, including determining when the players sustained the head trauma and their injuries. This will probably be a long process because many of the retired players in the underlying suit, some of whom are now having memory loss, played decades ago, when concussions were often undiagnosed or not recorded.

Many of the insurance companies named in the suits declined to comment, citing the continuing litigation. The N.F.L. also did not comment.

The two-tiered battle between the league and its former players and insurers echoes the litigation stemming from asbestos claims because both cases center on long-tail claims, or injuries that could take years to manifest themselves.

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HSBC to pay record $1.9B fine

HSBC has agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion fine to settle a multi-year probe by U.S. prosecutors, who accused Europe's biggest bank of failing to enforce rules designed to prevent the laundering of criminal cash.

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday charged the bank with failing to maintain an effective program against money laundering and conduct due diligence on certain accounts.

In documents filed in federal court in Brooklyn, it also charged the bank with violating sanctions laws by doing business with Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba.

HSBC Holdings Plc admitted to a breakdown of controls and apologised for its conduct.

"We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again. The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organisation from the one that made those mistakes," said Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver.

"Over the last two years, under new senior leadership, we have been taking concrete steps to put right what went wrong and to participate actively with government authorities in bringing to light and addressing these matters."

The bank agreed to forfeit $1.256 billion and retain a compliance monitor to resolve the charges through a deferred-prosecution agreement.

The settlement offers new information about failures at HSBC to police transactions linked to Mexico, details of which were reported this summer in a sweeping U.S. Senate probe.

The Senate panel alleged that HSBC failed to maintain controls designed to prevent money laundering by drug cartels, terrorists and tax cheats, when acting as a financier to clients routing funds from places including Mexico, Iran and Syria.

The bank was unable to properly monitor $15 billion in bulk cash transactions between mid-2006 and mid-2009, and had inadequate staffing and high turnover in its compliance units, the Senate panel's July report said.

HSBC on Tuesday said it expected to also reach a settlement with British watchdog the Financial Services Authority. The FSA declined to comment.

U.S. and European banks have now agreed to settlements with U.S. regulators totalling some $5 billion in recent years on charges they violated U.S. sanctions and failed to police potentially illicit transactions.

No bank or bank executives, however, have been indicted, as prosecutors have instead used deferred prosecutions - under which criminal charges against a firm are set aside if it agrees to conditions such as paying fines and changing behaviour.

HSBC's settlement also includes agreements or consent orders with the Manhattan district attorney, the Federal Reserve and three U.S. Treasury Department units: the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

HSBC said it would pay $1.921 billion, continue to cooperate fully with regulatory and law enforcement authorities, and take further action to strengthen its compliance policies and procedures. U.S. prosecutors have agreed to defer or forego prosecution.

The settlement is the third time in a decade that HSBC has been penalized for lax controls and ordered by U.S. authorities to better monitor suspicious transactions. Directives by regulators to improve oversight came in 2003 and again in 2010.

Last month, HSBC told investors it had set aside $1.5 billion to cover fines or penalties stemming from the inquiry and warned that costs could be significantly higher.

Analyst Jim Antos of Mizuho Securities said the settlement costs were "trivial" in terms of the company's book value.

"But in terms of real cash terms, that's a huge fine to pay," said Antos, who rates HSBC a "buy".

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Daley nephew pleads not guilty in Koschman death

Richard Daley's nephew will be arraigned Monday in connection with a deadly street brawl eight years ago. Prosecutors say Richard Vanecko threw the punch that killed David Koschman outside a club on Division St.

Richard Vanecko, the nephew of former Mayor Richard Daley, pleaded not guilty this morning to a charge of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2004 death of David Koschman.

The case was randomly assigned today to Judge Arthur Hill, a former prosecutor when Daley was state’s attorney.

When Vanecko appeared before the judge this morning, Hill noted he had also been appointed to the board of the Chicago Transit Authority by Daley when he was mayor. He also held the No. 2 post under State’s Attorney Dick Devine, who has strong ties to Daley.

Hill told lawyers in the case that he won’t voluntarily remove himself from presiding over the case but would understood if Vanecko’s legal team asked for another judge.

“This court believes I can be fair and impartial in this case,” Hill said.

The case will be back in court next Monday to give time to Vanecko’s lawyers to weigh whether they will seek another judge other than Hill.

Earlier, Vanecko strode into the Leighton Criminal Court Building at 26^th Street and California just after 9 a.m. dressed in a gray suit and tie and charcoal overcoat accompanied by three of his attorneys.

A crowd of TV cameramen, photographers and reporters followed him inside, shouting questions that Vanecko did not answer.

Vanecko went through the security line and into presiding Judge Paul Biebel's first-floor courtroom.

Both sides have the option to ask for a different judge if there are conflicts of interest, something that could arise since Vanecko is such a high-profile defendant and there have been allegations of police and prosecutorial misconduct surrounding the case.

Vanecko, who currently resides in Costa Mesa, Calif., turned himself in to authorities in Chicago on Friday afternoon and later posed for a mug shot in a jacket and tie.

Last week, a special grand jury found that Vanecko, who is the son of former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s sister, Mary, “recklessly performed acts which were likely to cause great bodily harm to another.”

Koschman, 21, of Mount Prospect, had been drinking in the Rush Street nightlife district early on April 24, 2004, when he and his friends quarreled with a group that included Vanecko. During the altercation, Koschman was knocked to the street, hitting the back of his head on the pavement. He died 11 days later.

Police at the time said Koschman was the aggressor and closed the case without charges. In announcing the indictment, Webb, a former U.S. attorney, noted that at 6-foot-3 and 230 pounds, Vanecko towered over Koschman, who was 5-foot-5 and 125 pounds.

Webb also said the grand jury is still probing how the original investigation was conducted.

Vanecko’s attorneys issued a statement last week saying they were disappointed by the indictment and noted that at the time of the confrontation, Koschman’s blood-alcohol content was three times the legal limit for a motorist.

Koschman “was clearly acting in an unprovoked, physically aggressive manner,” Vanecko’s legal team said. “We are confident that when all the facts are aired in a court of law, the trier of fact will find Mr. Vanecko not guilty.”

If convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Vanecko faces from probation up to 5 years in prison. 

jmeisner@tribune.com

gknue@tribune.com

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Springsteen, Lady Gaga join Stones concert in NJ

NEW YORK (AP) — Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga and The Black Keys will join the Rolling Stones on Saturday for the final concert marking the band’s 50th anniversary.

The concert will be held at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.

The band said Monday the concert will be telecast live on pay-per-view.

The Stones have played in London and New York on their “50 and Counting” tour. They will also play in Newark on Thursday.

The Stones will perform Wednesday at the “12-12-12″ concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City to raise money for victims of Superstorm Sandy.

___

Online:

http://www.rollingstones.com/

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A Breakthrough Against Leukemia Using Altered T-Cells

PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.

It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.

Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.

The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free, and about seven months later is still in complete remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.

Emma had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010, when she was 5, said her parents, Kari and Tom. She is their only child.

She is among just a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment, which was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Similar approaches are also being tried at other centers, including the National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June, who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania. He hopes the new treatment will eventually replace bone-marrow transplantation, an even more arduous, risky and expensive procedure that is now the last hope when other treatments fail in leukemia and related diseases.

Three adults with chronic leukemia treated at the University of Pennsylvania have also had complete remissions, with no signs of disease; two of them have been well for more than two years, said Dr. David Porter. Four adults improved but did not have full remissions, and one was treated too recently to evaluate. A child improved and then relapsed. In two adults, the treatment did not work at all. The Pennsylvania researchers were presenting their results on Sunday and Monday in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Despite the mixed results, cancer experts not involved with the research say it has tremendous promise, because even in this early phase of testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases. “I think this is a major breakthrough,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello, a cancer expert and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. John Wagner, the director of pediatric blood and marrow transplantation at the University of Minnesota, called the Pennsylvania results “phenomenal” and said they were “what we’ve all been working and hoping for but not seeing to this extent.”

A major drug company, Novartis, is betting on the Pennsylvania team and has committed $20 million to building a research center on the university’s campus to bring the treatment to market.

Hervé Hoppenot, the president of Novartis Oncology, called the research “fantastic” and said it had the potential — if the early results held up — to revolutionize the treatment of leukemia and related blood cancers. Researchers say the same approach, reprogramming the patient’s immune system, may also eventually be used against tumors like breast and prostate cancer.

To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s T-cells — a type of white blood cell — and insert new genes that enable the T-cells to kill cancer cells. The technique employs a disabled form of H.I.V. because it is very good at carrying genetic material into T-cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turn malignant in leukemia.

The altered T-cells — called chimeric antigen receptor cells — are then dripped back into the patient’s veins, and if all goes well they multiply and start destroying the cancer.

The T-cells home in on a protein called CD-19 that is found on the surface of most B-cells, whether they are healthy or malignant.

A sign that the treatment is working is that the patient becomes terribly ill, with raging fevers and chills — a reaction that oncologists call “shake and bake,” Dr. June said. Its medical name is cytokine-release syndrome, or cytokine storm, referring to the natural chemicals that pour out of cells in the immune system as they are being activated, causing fevers and other symptoms. The storm can also flood the lungs and cause perilous drops in blood pressure — effects that nearly killed Emma.

Steroids sometimes ease the reaction, but they did not help Emma. Her temperature hit 105. She wound up on a ventilator, unconscious and swollen almost beyond recognition, surrounded by friends and family who had come to say goodbye.

But at the 11th hour, a battery of blood tests gave the researchers a clue as to what might help save Emma: her level of one of the cytokines, interleukin-6 or IL-6, had shot up a thousandfold. Doctors had never seen such a spike before and thought it might be what was making her so sick.

Dr. June knew that a drug could lower IL-6 — his daughter takes it for rheumatoid arthritis. It had never been used for a crisis like Emma’s, but there was little to lose. Her oncologist, Dr. Stephan A. Grupp, ordered the drug. The response, he said, was “amazing.”

Within hours, Emma began to stabilize. She woke up a week later, on May 2, the day she turned 7; the intensive-care staff sang “Happy Birthday.”

Since then, the research team has used the same drug, tocilizumab, in several other patients.

In patients with lasting remissions after the treatment, the altered T-cells persist in the bloodstream, though in smaller numbers than when they were fighting the disease. Some patients have had the cells for years.

Dr. Michel Sadelain, who conducts similar studies at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, said: “These T-cells are living drugs. With a pill, you take it, it’s eliminated from your body and you have to take it again.” But T-cells, he said, “could potentially be given only once, maybe only once or twice or three times.”

The Pennsylvania researchers said they were surprised to find any big drug company interested in their work, because a new batch of T-cells must be created for each patient — a far cry from the familiar commercial strategy of developing products like Viagra or cholesterol medicines, in which millions of people take the same drug.

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McDonald's sales rebound in November

McDonald’s took Wall Street by surprise Monday morning, with a November same store sales report that beat expectations and showed particular strength in the U.S. business.

The news follows a weak performance in October that had some investors speculating about the future of the world’s largest restaurant company.

The Oak Brook-based burger giant reported U.S. same store sales up 2.5 percent on the strength of its breakfast business, value offerings, beverages and limited-time offers like the cheddar bacon onion sandwich. In Europe, same store sales grew 1.4 percent, and 0.6 percent in the chain’s Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa division.

Overall, same store sales increased 2.4 percent, beating expectations of a roughly flat performance. Company stock rose nearly 1 percent in early morning trading, to $89.35.

"We are strengthening our focus on the global priorities that are most impactful to our customers -- optimizing our menu, modernizing the customer experience and broadening accessibility to our brand to move our business forward," McDonald's CEO Don Thompson said in a statement.

While the sales report is likely to be a boon for the burger giant, investors don’t expect company performance to return to normal levels until early 2013. Winter is typically the slow period for fast food chains, with summer typically being the busiest season.

Baird analyst David Tarantino raised his fourth quarter earnings estimate by a penny Monday morning following the sales announcement. He wrote that while company performance "could remain soft" through the first quarter of 2013, "the November sales report supports our thesis that McDonald's can achieve better performance in 2013 as a whole, with results aided by planned initiatives (including increased emphasis on value plus premium offerings across markets), fewer cost pressures, and less negative currency translation."

The chain has taken a tough stance on slipping U.S. sales. The company’s October sales, which slipped 2.2 percent, marked the first decline in more than nine years. Days later, McDonald’s said U.S. president Jan Fields had resigned and would be replaced by Jeff Stratton.

eyork@tribune.com | Twitter: @emilyyork

MCD data by YCharts

MCD data by YCharts

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Man arrested after stabbing in Wrigleyville

(Tribune illustration / March 16, 2012)

By Rosemary Regina Sobol




Tribune reporter

9:25 a.m. CST, December 9, 2012

A man is under arrest after allegedly jumping out of a bathroom stall at a Wrigleyville bar and stabbing a man in the neck early this morning, police said.

At 12:26 a.m., officers were called to the Red Ivy sports bar at 3525 N. Clark St., where the victim told officers a man jumped out of a bathroom stall and attacked him with a broken beer bottle, cutting him in the neck, according to a police report.

The victim also suffered cuts on his chin, hands  and neck while pushing the assailant away. At some point, another man entered the bathroom and helped hold the attacker until police got there, the report stated.

The victim was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was treated and released, the report said.

No charges have been filed yet against the alleged assailant, a 23-year-old Uptown neighborhood man who refused to wear his pants while being processed at a police station. Also, while being processed, the man defecated and threw the matter onto the floor of the station, the report stated.

rsobol@tribune.com

Twitter: @RosemarySobol1

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