IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Dec. 31

NEWS Indian women poured their anger into public demonstrations last week, reacting to news of the gang rape of a young woman who had moved to the city from a small village, with a new life in front of her. Many women in India say they are still subject to regular harassment and assault during the day and are fearful of leaving their homes alone after dark. Now they are demanding that the government, and a police force that they say offers women little or no protection, do something about it. Heather Timmons and Sruthi Gottipati report from New Delhi.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on Sunday distributed emergency cold-weather supplies to families in a refugee camp where two days earlier a 3-year-old died of exposure to the freezing temperatures. But camp leaders and Afghan government officials criticized the aid delivery as inadequate to protect residents from the weather and to prevent more deaths. Last winter, more than 100 children died of the cold in refugee camps around Kabul. Rod Nordland reports from Kabul, Afghanistan.

Say what you will about the euro zone’s quarreling policy makers. They can claim at least one achievement during 2012: Their common currency still has a heartbeat. On the threshold of 2013, the debate is less about whether the euro will exist and more about how long it will take for the euro zone economy to recover and what must be changed to avoid future crises. Jack Ewing writes from Frankfurt.

A year ago, many people seriously doubted whether the euro would still exist by now. On the threshold of 2013, the debate is more about how long it will take for the euro zone economy to recover and what must be changed to avoid future crises.

In Germany, the Social Democrats’ candidate for chancellor, Peer Steinbrück, finds himself facing questions about speaking fees and a comment that Angela Merkel has the advantage of a “women’s bonus.” Nicholas Kulish reports from Berlin.

EDUCATION A ratings system that gives lesser-known universities the chance to highlight their qualities by paying a fee creates potential for conflicts of interest, detractors say. D.D. Guttenplan writes from London.

ARTS The year ahead: Experiments in rapidly evolving areas of design for personal use, like 3-D printing and other digital production technologies, could eventually benefit millions of people. Alice Rawsthorn on design.

SPORTS Tony Greig, who died Saturday at age 66, did enough as a player to have been the most notable death in the cricket world in 2012.Yet his greater significance lay in the birth of World Series Cricket. Huw Richards writes from Bridgnorth, England.

When Thierry Henry was at Arsenal, he displayed almost feline speed of movement with impeccable ball skills. Theo Walcott is hoping to evolve into his successor. Rob Hughes on soccer.

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Ms. Mac: ‘Cute, Awkwardly Dressed’






Designer: PabloDeLaRocha.com, BlueStacks


She has freckles, a normal-sized head, wears t-shirts and jeans. She is also “awkwardly dressed” and “pretty cute.” She is the average female Mac user, according to an infographic complied and released by software start-up BlueStacks.






The company, which makes software that allows Android apps to run on computers, just released a new version of its Mac app. Install the program and you can access Android apps right from Apple’s OS X operating system – Angry Birds, Instagram, all your favorites.


But the company didn’t want to just release the software. In honor of the announcement, it created an infographic based on data from its Facebook users about what Ms. Mac looks like.


According to the graphic, which you can view below, 27 percent of female Mac users have long hair, 48 percent wear glasses and 52 percent are under 20. Forty percent use Mac OS X Lion, 14 percent OS X Mountain Lion, 20 percent OS X Leopard, and 8 percent Snow Leopard.


However, you should take these findings with a grain of salt; they are based primarily on responses from BlueStacks’ 1.1 million Facebook fans. Some of it is based on data from Nielsen, but BlueStacks confirmed that the majority of the information was pulled from its own users and its social media fans.


“We have a lot of early adopter fans who were into helping,” BlueStacks VP of marketing, John Gargiulo, told ABC News. “We also hired a data scientist who has been parsing through the data and talking with people who use BlueStacks. We like to do things that are a bit fun and different.”


BlueStacks created a similar infographic about Android users last year. Not surprisingly, 70 percent of male Android users wear t-shits and 62 percent wear jeans. (It’s like that line from that ’90s movie “Can’t Hardly Wait”: “He is sort of tall, with hair and wears t-shirts sometimes.”)


Regardless, if you’re looking for a fun infographic / full body image of the alleged Ms. Mac 2012, you can click the image below.


Also Read
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Kim Kardashian and Kanye West Expecting a Child















12/31/2012 at 03:45 AM EST







Kim Kardashian and Kanye West


Splash News Online


Talk about onstage pyrotechnics!

Kanye West dropped a bombshell during an Atlantic City concert on Sunday night, revealing that he and girlfriend Kim Kardashian are expecting a child.

The news of the reality starlet's pregnancy was quickly followed by an outpouring of congratulatory Twitter messages from family members.

"Oh BABY BABY BABY!!" shouts Kim's mom Kris Jenner.

Adds sister Kourtney: "Been wanting to shout from the rooftops with joy and now I can! Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!

More to Come …

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Police search for man who stabbed 2 teens at mall









A teenage boy and girl stabbed inside the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach remain in stable condition after surgery, police said Sunday.


The 13-year-old victims, who have not been identified, talked briefly with police about Saturday night's attack by a stranger outside the movie theaters at the mall, said Sgt. Shawn Freeman of the Redondo Beach Police Department.


The man stabbed them in the chest, though other details of their wounds were not released. The two victims are in intensive care.








The attacker is described as African American, between 40 and 50 years old, tall with a medium build, police said. He may have been wearing prescription glasses and had both a beard and mustache, possibly graying.


He was dressed in a camouflage jacket, perhaps green and brown; a black T-shirt; jeans; and a dark beanie, police said. Police said he used a kitchen knife with a black handle as a weapon.


The stabbing occurred in the public area of the mall's third level, which contains a food court and the theaters. By late Sunday, no witness had come forward, Freeman said, though bystanders did see the children collapsing and yelling for medical help.


The victims, who are friends, had arrived at the mall with friends and family, but they were alone without adult supervision when the stabbing occurred, Freeman said. The attack "was completely unprovoked," he said.


A mall security officer discovered the injured pair and alerted officers who already were in the shopping center area. Before the boy fainted, he provided an initial description of the attacker, police Sgt. David Christian said.


Many stores were in the process of closing as the investigation began, and officers did not order a lockdown, but they did stop vehicles leaving the building.


"We did not have a lot to go on," Christian said. "We basically blocked all the exits for the parking area. We just stopped every car that went by and looked inside with a flashlight and talked to the people inside. It was a lot of cars."


Police are reviewing surveillance video from every store at the mall to see "if, maybe, the suspect was at another place on another level a minute before," Freeman said. "We're doing our best to come up with a complete picture."


When Redondo Beach officers first responded to the attack, police from Torrance, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach came to help them.


A manager at the movie complex told The Times that the mall administration had directed her to close the theaters.


"We don't know anything about it," said the woman, who did not give her name. "I don't know what happened. The mall said, 'You need to close down.'"


Christian said he was not aware of any order from police to close the cinemas, but he said he thought that after the attack, the theaters were allowing no further admissions.


Anyone with information is asked to call the Redondo Beach police tip line at (310) 937-6685 or send a text message to (310) 339-2362.


anh.do@latimes.com


howard.blume@latimes.com





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Gérard Depardieu Stirs Belgian Border Town


Benoit Tessier/Reuters


French actor Gérard Depardieu is accused by the French government of trying to dodge taxes by moving to Belgium.







NÉCHIN, Belgium — The last time a big star lit up this sleepy village of potato fields and rain-drenched pastures was in 1667, when the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, stopped by for the day. But even he may not have created quite the commotion caused by Gérard Depardieu, the celebrated actor, turbulent bon vivant and, since a visit to the mayor’s office here on Dec. 7 to register as a resident, France’s most reviled tax exile.




“I thought it was a joke,” said the mayor, Daniel Senesael, recalling his disbelief when he was first told that Mr. Depardieu intended to leave his mansion in Paris and move to Néchin, a rural settlement in Belgium with just 2,200 people, two cafes, a fast-food fry shop, a ruined chateau and no cinema.


“Let’s be honest, this is not Las Vegas,” Mr. Senesael said. “There are no lights and no discos. I get flooded with complaints when anyone suggests opening even a wind farm.”


Michel Sardou, a veteran French singer who has joined a frenzy of criticism directed at Mr. Depardieu in France, mocked the actor’s flight to Néchin, predicting that he would be “as bored as a rat” here. “So, there is some divine justice after all,” the singer joked on French television.


For Mr. Depardieu, and scores of wealthy French citizens who already live here, however, Néchin does have one seductive asset: it is beyond the reach of the French tax authorities but so close to France that an unmarked border running through the village puts the gardens of some properties in France and adjoining houses in Belgium.


“Our geographic situation makes us very attractive,” said Mr. Senesael, noting that Néchin is an easy place to get into and out of, with a nearby airport, a major highway and a railway station just a few miles away in the French city of Lille with regular high-speed trains to Paris, Brussels and London.


“Nobody should be astonished that big fortunes have found a certain fiscal advantage” in moving to this side of the border, said the mayor, whose domain covers Néchin and a cluster of other hamlets that form what is known as the Entity of Estaimpuis. Mr. Depardieu’s critics, he said, should direct their ire not at the actor but at the failure of European governments to harmonize tax rates across the 27 nations of the European Union.


A customs post and border guards disappeared decades ago from the end of Néchin’s main street, swept away by Europe’s effort after World War II to break down barriers that led to past conflicts and to allow for the free flow of goods, services and people.


Still firmly in place, however, are rigidly defined tax frontiers that mean that people living just a few yards from one another can pay vastly different levels of tax, particularly if they happen to be wealthy.


Belgium has higher income taxes for most people than in much of Europe, but the country is much easier on the rich than France, where the government of President François Hollande has announced a “temporary supertax” of 75 percent on annual incomes of more than 1 million euros, or about $1.3 million. France’s Constitutional Council on Saturday declared the tax unconstitutional, prompting the government to announce that it would introduce a revised version next year. France also has a “wealth tax” on assets worth more than $1.7 million, something that does not exist in Belgium, as well as far higher taxes on capital gains and inheritance.


“We’ve abolished border controls but not all the other stupidities,” said Philippe Vandenhemel, the owner of a garage just outside Néchin that sells and repairs imported American cars and was visited several times by Mr. Depardieu. (The actor apparently likes old American cars.)


Mr. Vandenhemel scoffed at attacks on the movie star by French politicians and commentators. “If I were in his shoes, I would do exactly the same thing and leave,” he said. Mr. Depardieu, he added, will benefit not only from lower taxes in Belgium but also from the fact that “we Belgians are not jealous and don’t mind people getting rich.”


“Jealousy is France’s national disease,” he said.


Mr. Hollande, who made a pledge to squeeze the rich to help reduce the government’s budget deficit a cornerstone of his successful election campaign this year, once said on television, “I don’t like the rich.” His right-wing predecessor and rival and in the May election, Nicolas Sarkozy, lost in part because he flaunted a liking for expensive watches and other accessories and the company of rich friends, a habit that earned him mockery as “Le Président Bling-Bling.”


Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.



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Top Comments: The Problems with Facebook, Windows and Apple






The Problem with Windows 8


In the op-ed “The Problem with Windows 8″ Mashable editor Pete Pachal elaborated on the problems he has with Windows 8. Reader Xuanlong pointed out that Windows 8 had a tough act to follow in Windows 7, and that Windows 8 represents a necessary risk for Microsoft.


Click here to view this gallery.






[More from Mashable: Apple Spares Samsung Galaxy S III Mini From Patent Infringement Case]


As the holiday season and the year itself drew to a close this week, Mashable readers were reflective about the innovations and complications we’ve seen in the tech world in 2012. The top comments this week showcase the excitement and frustration that surround top products and services like Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.


The most commented upon story this week was was the op-ed “The Problem with Windows 8,” in which Mashable editor Pete Pachal elaborated on the problems he has with the new OS. Our readers largely agreed with Pachal’s assessment of Windows 8′s shortcomings, though several readers provided well-reasoned rebuttals of some of his points. The second-hottest story was about the rumored “smartphone watch” that Apple may be developing. Our community was split over whether or not this watch was something they wanted, or that anyone needed.


[More from Mashable: 3 Apple Computer Designs That You’ve Never Seen]


Readers also flocked to stories this week that looked at the intersection of human interaction and technology. Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi was outraged when a picture she posted on Facebook was reposted to Twitter, inciting a global online conversation about Facebook‘s privacy settings. Our commenters sounded off on everything from Randi Zuckerberg‘s reaction to Facebook’s settings themselves.


What was the topic on Mashable that you were most excited about this week? Don’t forget to let your voice be heard in the comment sections and next week you could be featured in the top comments.


It’s been a wonderful year for the Mashable community, and we want to thank all of our readers for making it fantastic. See you in 2013!


Image courtesy of Flickr, Nandor Fejer


This story originally published on Mashable here.


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Matthew & Camila McConaughey Name Their Son Livingston















12/29/2012 at 09:15 PM EST







Camila and Matthew McConaughey


Gary Miller/FilmMagic


Matthew McConaughey has spilled the beans about his new baby!

"Camila gave birth to our third child yesterday morning. Our son, Livingston Alves McConaughey, was born at 7:43 a.m. on 12.28.12," he wrote on his Whosay page Saturday night.

"He greeted the world at 9 lbs., and 21 inches. Bless up and thank you for your well wishes."

Camila, 29, and her actor husband, 43, welcomed their third child in Austin, Texas, Friday, PEOPLE previously confirmed.

The couple – also parents to Vida, almost 3, and Levi, 4 – announced the pregnancy in July, just one month after they wed in Texas.

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money


NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.


Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.


Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.


"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."


"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."


The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.


Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.


"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.


She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.


A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.


"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.


Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.


One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.


Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.


___


Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.


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Officials warn holiday revelers against firing weapons















































Los Angeles officials are warning that anyone discharging a firearm into the air to celebrate the new year not only risks killing someone but could also face a lengthy prison sentence.


"Firing into the air weapons in celebration puts innocent lives at risk," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said last week. "Nothing ruins the holiday season like an errant bullet coming down and killing an innocent."


Villaraigosa said the misuse of firearms is on everyone's mind in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting that left six adults and 20 children dead. The mayor vowed that authorities will pursue criminal charges for anyone caught in possession of a weapon in public.








For more than a decade, city and county leaders have tried to quell celebratory gunfire.


Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said a bullet discharged into the air falls at a rate of 300 to 700 mph, depending on the weapon — "easily enough to crack the human skull."


"Please celebrate New Year's with your family, not in [Sheriff] Lee Baca's jail or my jail," Beck said, pledging to capture anyone firing a weapon. "Firing a gun in the air isn't only dangerous and a crime but socially unacceptable."


L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey said that anyone caught firing a weapon — even if they don't hit someone — will face a felony charge and a fine of up to $10,000 and a possible three-year sentence. A conviction would be considered a strike offense and the suspect would lose the right to own a firearm.


Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said that in some county areas, special equipment has been deployed to spot shots within seconds and track their locations.


"The madness of gun violence has to stop," he said. "This is a matter of physics. What goes up must come down."


richard.winton@latimes.com






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India Ink: Protests Organized Across India Over Death of Gang Rape Victim

Bring white roses, some suggested. Get angry, some said. Don’t resort to violence, others begged.

Let’s not let her die in vain, they said.

As India awoke Saturday to the death of a 23-year-old woman who has become a symbol of what many say all that is wrong with the way women are treated here, the country’s young, social-network-savvy population sprang into action, organizing and advertising protests, candlelight vigils and marches from Cochin, Kerala, to India’s outsourcing headquarters of Bangalore to Mumbai’s Juhu Beach.

India’s Internet penetration rates are still low, and the percentage of people who have computers is miniscule. Still, the country has 60 million Facebook subscribers, a fast-growing presence on Twitter and a student population that seems to be quickly awakening to activism. The rape that occurred Dec. 16, and what is seen as the government’s tin-eared response to the incident, had already galvanized this small sliver of India’s 1.3 billion people to action. The victim’s death Saturday morning in Singapore, of organ failure related to her injuries, seems to have pushed them further.

The victim, a 23-year old physiotherapy student, was attacked by six men on a moving bus on Dec. 16 and left to die on the side of a Delhi highway. When thousands of protesters gathered in India Gate days after the attack, they were arrested, beaten with sticks and tear-gassed without, many claim, any provocation.

Hoping to avoid a repeat of those incidents, the Delhi government shut all roads leading in to the area early Saturday morning, closed nearby Metro stations and deployed hundreds of police officers. Protesters began massing instead at Jantar Mantar, an ancient observatory and popular demonstration site. Despite the limits to transportation, which also included cutting down buses plying nearby routes, protesters claimed that their numbers had reached more than 500 by early afternoon, and new attendees continued to stream into the area.

Here’s what a few of them had to say:

Kavita Krishnan, activist, All India Progressive Women’s Association, who is leading protests at Jantar Mantar:

“It’s time to call for mourning and for serious reflection,” in India, and to ask “What’s wrong with our society that produces this?”

“The government’s response until now has been abysmal,” she said, adding that top members of Parliament have made sexist remarks. “There are no persuasive voices in government,” she said.

Although a judicial commission has been formed as a response to the crisis, and is accepting recommendations about changes in the legal system, they are not engaging with women’s groups, she said. “There are no members with experience in gender jurisprudence” in the commission, she said.

Upamanyu Raju, 21, a student at Delhi University, who was protesting at Jantar Mantar:

He has been protesting since a day after the rape victim was admitted to hospital because of “utter atrocity” of what happened to her. “We have to make sure we come out, and this doesn’t happen again,” he said.

He wants judicial and police reforms and a stringent sexual harassment law. “We will not leave the protests until the government takes action,” he said. He was shocked to hear news of victim’s death this morning. “She’s been our driving force for the last so many days, so it was a shock to lose her,” he said.

It will take time before society changes its attitudes towards women, he said. He added that a car full of men tried to abduct a female friend of his 6 p.m. at a busy intersection in central Delhi. “People have become bold,” he said.

He is worried about his sister, who is 17. He’s given her a Swiss Army knife and pepper spray, but worries that won’t protect her, and neither can he. “Even if she’s accompanied, it doesn’t help,” he said. “It’s wrong to stop girls from going out” he said, but says there’s little choice.

The government and the police appear out of touch with citizens, he said. “They’re not allowing us to protest, which is bringing out violent instincts in people,” he said.
“The police don’t seem to understand the emotions of the people.”

Neha Sharma, 24, a Delhi University student from Krishna Nagar in East Delhi, who was protesting in Jantar Mantar:

“We want justice,” she said. “There are so many rape cases pending.” Capital punishment is not the way forward, she said. Instead, “we need to fix the system,” she said, but the government and police are not taking any steps to do so.

She has been coming to protests over the Delhi rape case since they started. “I come with the hope that things will change,” she said.

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Android-powered Ouya console now shipping to 1,200 developers [video]









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Matthew McConaughey & Wife Camila Welcome Baby No. 3















12/28/2012 at 06:10 PM EST







Camila and Matthew McConaughey


Gary Miller/FilmMagic


It's a very merry holiday week for Matthew McConaughey and his wife Camila.

The couple welcomed their third child together in Austin, Texas, on Friday, sources confirm to PEOPLE.

The pair, who are also parents to Vida, who turns 3 next month, and Levi, 4, announced the pregnancy just one month after their June nuptials in Texas.

Camila, 29, joked that even as she put on pregnancy pounds, her actor husband, 43, was losing weight – dramatically – for The Dallas Buyers Club, in which he plays the real-life Ron Woodruff, who contracted HIV.

"We have gone the complete opposite direction eating wise, but we're navigating it," she said last summer. "But I don't really have cravings yet."

McConaughey's latest movie, Mud, will be released April. 26,

Read More..

Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money


NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.


Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.


Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.


"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."


"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."


The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.


Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.


"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.


She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.


A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.


"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.


Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.


One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.


Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.


___


Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.


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Army Corps of Engineers clear-cuts lush habitat in Valley









An area that just a week ago was lush habitat on the Sepulveda Basin's wild side, home to one of the most diverse bird populations in Southern California, has been reduced to dirt and broken limbs — by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.


Audubon Society members stumbled upon the barren landscape last weekend during their annual Christmas bird count. Now, they are calling for an investigation into the loss of about 43 acres of cottonwood and willow groves, undergrowth and marshes that had maintained a rich inventory of mammals, reptiles and 250 species of birds.


Much of the area's vegetation had been planted in the 1980s, part of an Army Corps project that turned that portion of the Los Angeles River flood plain into a designated wildlife preserve.





Tramping through the mud Friday, botanist Ellen Zunino — who was among hundreds of volunteers who planted willows, coyote brush, mule fat and elderberry trees in the area — was engulfed by anger, sadness and disbelief.


"I'm heartbroken. I was so proud of our work," the 66-year-old said, taking a deep breath. "I don't see any of the usual signs of preparation for a job like this, such as marked trees or colored flags," Zunino added. "It seems haphazard and mean-spirited, almost as though someone was taking revenge on the habitat."


In 2010, the preserve had been reclassified as a "vegetation management area" — with a new five-year mission of replacing trees and shrubs with native grasses to improve access for Army Corps staffers, increase public safety and discourage crime in an area plagued by sex-for-drugs encampments.


The Army Corps declared that an environmental impact report on the effort was not necessary because it would not significantly disturb wildlife and habitat.


By Friday, however, nearly all of the vegetation — native and non-native — had been removed. Decomposed granite trails, signs, stone structures and other improvements bought and installed with public money had been plowed under.


In an interview, Army Corps Deputy District Cmdr. Alexander Deraney acknowledged that "somehow, we did not clearly communicate" to environmentalists and community groups the revised plan for the area 17 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. He added that the corps would "make the process more transparent in the future."


But Kris Ohlenkamp, conservation chairman of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society, asserted that the corps had misrepresented its intent all along.


Walking Friday through what once had been a migratory stop for some of the rarest birds in the state — scissor-tailed flycatchers, yellow-billed cuckoos, least Bell's vireos, rose-breasted grosbeaks — Ohlenkamp said: "We knew that the corps had a new vision for this area, but we never thought it would ever come to this."


Frequent catastrophic floods prompted civic leaders in the 1930s to transform the river into a flood-control channel. Nearly the entire 51-mile river bottom was sheathed in concrete, except in a few spots such as the Sepulveda Basin.


Over the decades, awareness of the river's recreational potential grew. And with pressure from environmental groups, Los Angeles County and corps officials in the 1980s made major changes. The waterway and surrounding flood plain were slowly transformed into a greenbelt of parks, trees and bike paths, courtesy of bond measures approved by voters.


Then in 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency deemed the entire river to be navigable and therefore subject to protections under of the Clean Water Act.


A year ago, Army Corps of Engineers District Cmdr. Col. Mark Toy issued a license allowing the Los Angeles Conservation Corps to operate a paddle-boat program in the Sepulveda Basin, along a 1.5-mile stretch of river shaded by trees teeming with herons, egrets and cormorants.


This summer, paying customers will disembark a hundred yards from the corps' recent clear-cuts.


"Environmental stewardship is critical for us," Deraney said. "But assuring public safety and access to infrastructure designed to deal with flooding are paramount."


As he spoke, a Cooper's hawk swooped down and landed on a nearby tree stump.


louis.sahagun@latimes.com





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Guangzhou Journal | Changing of the Guard: With Focus on Unity, China Looks to Nationalist Past


Shiho Fukada for The New York Times


Tourists at the Whampoa Military Academy, on Changzhou Island in Guangzhou.







GUANGZHOU, China — It was 1926, not long after the fall of the Qing dynasty, and much of China had been divided among warlords. In the south, leaders of the young Kuomintang mustered an army. At its head rode Chiang Kai-shek, who called to his side officers he had helped train, and together they marched north to take down the warlords, one by one.




The Northern Expedition was one of the first major tests for graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy, founded just two years earlier on quiet Changzhou Island, about 10 miles east of central Guangzhou, then known to the West as Canton. Mr. Chiang was the academy’s first commandant, appointed by Sun Yat-sen, the idealistic firebrand who wanted to build an army that would unite China.


The academy, now a collection of two-story white buildings near an active naval yard, stands as one of the most potent symbols of the nationalist movement led by Mr. Sun, which has strong contemporary echoes in the rallying cry that Xi Jinping made to his fellow Chinese after taking over in November as general secretary of the Communist Party.


Mr. Xi has spoken of a “great revival of the Chinese nation,” apparently to be accomplished through further opening the economy, tackling official corruption and building up the military. This month, on his first trip outside Beijing, Mr. Xi traveled to several cities here in Guangdong Province; the tour included visits with senior officers of the People’s Liberation Army and a photo opportunity on a naval destroyer. Though he did not visit the Whampoa academy, the message Mr. Xi was telegraphing was the same one Mr. Sun had relayed a century ago.


“When Sun Yat-sen founded the Whampoa academy, his goal was to unite China and to revive China as a nation, which is exactly the same mission that Secretary Xi is on,” said Zeng Qingliu, a historian with the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences who wrote a television script for a drama series on Whampoa. “Under that goal and that mission, Chinese people from all over the world and across the country were attracted to Whampoa.”


In fits and starts since the end of the Mao era, the Communists and the Kuomintang, who decamped to Taiwan after losing the civil war in 1949, have been engaging in rapprochement. The Whampoa academy represents an era when the two sides cooperated for a greater good, and recent exhibitions organized there by a museum portray the Kuomintang in a relatively conciliatory light. That, too, has resonance with Mr. Xi’s clarion call, which is meant to inspire all Chinese, even those outside the mainland, including in Taiwan, to take part in the Communist-led project of reviving the motherland.


The first class at Whampoa had 600 students, 100 Communists among them, Mr. Zeng said. Prominent Russian advisers worked at the school. Zhou Enlai was the political director, and other famous Communists held posts or trained there. But the school was never under the party’s control.


The Kuomintang moved it to the city of Nanjing in 1927, after a split with the Communists, and then to the southwestern city of Chengdu, after the Japanese occupied Nanjing, then known as Nanking. After the Kuomintang moved to Taiwan, they established a military academy there that they called the successor to Whampoa. But when historians speak of Whampoa, they mean the original incarnation of the school, before it moved from Guangzhou, Mr. Zeng said.


Japanese bombs decimated the campus in 1938; it was not rebuilt until after 1984, when plans were made to establish a museum. The white buildings interlaced with thick wooden beams are recreations of the originals. A statue of Mr. Sun overlooks the site from a hill. Military enthusiasts, history buffs and other tourists reach the museum by a 10-minute ferry ride from a quiet pier on the east side of Guangzhou.


On a recent afternoon, a young woman guided a handful of soldiers. They walked along a balcony on the second floor and peered into the recreated rooms, including a dormitory with dozens of simple beds on wooden floorboards, a dining room and Mr. Sun’s office.


Outside the main gate, not far from a black wall inscribed with the names of fallen soldiers, tour groups posed for photographs. Then they walked slowly through the gallery rooms to gaze at the black-and-white photos and paintings that showed, from a party-approved perspective, the history of China’s 20th-century wars.


This year, there was a special exhibition on Chinese soldiers who had fought the Japanese in southwest China, along the Burma Road. The exhibition included photographs of Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault, the American aviator who led the “Flying Tigers” unit in that theater. One showed him with Mr. Chiang.


Mia Li contributed research.



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Leaked BlackBerry 10 slides show video calling and screen sharing for BBM









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Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander in Persian Gulf War, Dies at 78















12/27/2012 at 08:10 PM EST



H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the Army general who commanded coalition forces in the Persian Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, died Thursday in Tampa, Fla., at age 78.

The cause of death was not immediately known. His death was confirmed to the Associated Press by a source.

Known as "Stormin' Norman" for his volcanic temper, the decorated Vietnam War combat soldier became a familiar face from his many press conferences during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

Under his leadership during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, coalition forces drove Hussein's troops out of Kuwait, which Iraq had invaded, with relatively few coalition casualties, but the Iraqi leader remained in power.

Hussein would ultimately be left for Bush's presidential son, George W. Bush, to contend with.

After the Gulf War, Schwarzkopf became a television military analyst and went into a quiet retirement in Florida to write his memoirs.

The elder Bush, now hospitalized in intensive care, said in a statement that Schwarzkopf was a "true American patriot and one of the great military leaders of his generation."

"More than that, he was a good and decent man – and a dear friend," says Bush. "Barbara and I send our condolences to his wife Brenda and his wonderful family."

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money


NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.


Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.


Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.


"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."


"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."


The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.


Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.


"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.


She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.


A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.


"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.


Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.


One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.


Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.


___


Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.


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Media may argue against redactions in church files, judge rules









Media organizations will be allowed to argue against redactions in secret church files that are due to be made public as part of a historic $660-million settlement between the Los Angeles Archdiocese and alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday.


Pursuant to Judge Emilie Elias' order, The Times and the Associated Press will be allowed to intervene in the case, in which attorneys are gearing up for the release of internal church personnel documents more than five years after the July 2007 settlement. The judge's ruling came after attorneys for the church and the plaintiffs agreed to the news organizations' involvement in the case.


The Times and the AP object to a portion of a 2011 decision by a retired judge overseeing the file-release process. Judge Dickran Tevrizian had ruled that all names of church employees, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other top archdiocese officials, should be blacked out in the documents before they were made public. In a hearing, Tevrizian said he did not believe the documents should be used to "embarrass or to ridicule the church."





Attorneys for the news organizations argued in court filings that the redactions would "deny the public information that is necessary to fully understand the church's knowledge about the serial molestation of children by priests over a period of decades." The personnel files of priests accused of molestation, which a church attorney has said were five or six banker's boxes of documents, could include internal memos about abuse claims, Vatican correspondence and psychiatric reports.


Contending that the secrecy was motivated by "a desire to avoid further embarrassment" for the church rather than privacy concerns, the media attorneys wrote: "That kind of self-interest is not even remotely the kind of 'overriding interest' that is needed to overcome the public's presumptive right of access, nor does it establish 'good cause' for ongoing secrecy."


An archdiocese attorney said Thursday that the church had spent a "great deal of effort" in redacting the files to comply with Tevrizian's order, and said the media attorneys misunderstand the legal process that both parties in the settlement agreed would be binding.


"We agree with Judge Tevrizian that enough time has passed and enough reforms have been made that it's time to get off this and move onto another subject," attorney J. Michael Hennigan said.


An attorney representing the victims also filed papers Thursday arguing that the church was "too broadly construing" Tevrizian's redaction orders, and asking Elias to release the files with church officials' names unredacted.


"Each of the higher-ups in the Los Angeles Archdiocese who recklessly endangered generations of this community's children by protecting pedophile priests will themselves be protected," wrote Ray Boucher, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.


A hearing on the release of church documents is scheduled for Jan. 7. At the hearing, Elias will also hear objections from an attorney representing individual priests, who contend that their constitutional privacy rights will be violated if the files are made public. In a court filing this month, the priests' attorney, Donald Steier, said Tevrizian was "dead wrong" to rule that the documents can be disclosed because the public interest outweighs the clerics' rights.


"Under California law, it is the employees who own the information in the files, and the Archdiocese is merely the custodian who has a legal duty to defend the contents of the files and has no legal right to agree to disclose them," Steier wrote.


victoria.kim@latimes.com





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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Dec. 27

NEWS China began service Wednesday morning on the world’s longest high-speed rail line, from Beijing to Guangzhou — covering a distance in eight hours that is about equal to that from New York to Key West, Florida, or from London across Europe to Belgrade, Serbia. Keith Bradsher reports from Hong Kong.

Syria’s embattled leadership suffered a new setback Wednesday with the defection of its military police chief, the highest-ranking officer to abandon President Bashar al-Assad since the uprising against him began nearly two years ago. Kareem Fahim and Rick Gladstone report.

On the outskirts of Rome is an abandoned building colloquially known as the Salaam Palace, once a sparsely populated shelter where new arrivals from Africa squatted to create their own refuge. Today more than 800 refugees live there, a vivid reminder of what many say is Italy’s failure to assist and integrate those who have qualified for asylum under its laws. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Rome.

Japan’s Parliament formally chose the nationalist ex-prime minister Shinzo Abe to lead the country again, ending a three-year break from decades of near-constant rule by his conservative Liberal Democratic Party. Martin Fackler reports from Tokyo.

ARTS On Indian television, mothers-in-law are not a joke — they’re the law. In soap operas as in life, the extended family is still the bedrock of Indian society, where modernization meets its match. Alessandra Stanley reports from Mumbai.

The new Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam — shaped like a bathtub, of all things — arrives years behind schedule at the tail end of the money-fueled, headline-hungry, erratically ingenious era of indulgent museum design that began to peter out with the global economy. Why a tub? That, says Michael Kimmelman, is the $170 million (well over budget) question.

SPORTS The resurgence of German soccer began, like the country’s economic comeback, after a long slide toward stagnation amid dire prophecies of impending irrelevance. Since then Germany has invested nearly $1 billion in its youth soccer programs, and the products of the new factory system were exhibited in striking fashion this season. Nicholas Kulish reports.

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Kate Winslet Marries in Secret















12/26/2012 at 09:10 PM EST



Talk about a Titanic secret.

Kate Winslet has tied the knot with Richard Branson's nephew, Ned Rocknroll, her rep tells PEOPLE.

"I can confirm that Kate Winslet married Ned Rock'nRoll in NY earlier this month in a private ceremony attended by her two children and a very few friends and family," the rep says. "The couple had been engaged since the summer."

According to British media reports, Leonardo DiCaprio gave away the bride in a ceremony so secret that the bride and groom's parents didn't know about it.

The Oscar-, Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning actress, 37, has been dating Rocknroll, 34, (his legal name) since fall of 2011.

In August 2011, she and Rocknroll were on the same Caribbean island owned by Branson when a fire broke out and Winslet rescued Branson's 90-year-old mother.

Winslet previously was married to Sam Mendes and Jim Threapleton.

Reporting by JULIE JORDAN

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Predicting who's at risk for violence isn't easy


CHICAGO (AP) — It happened after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colo., and now Sandy Hook: People figure there surely were signs of impending violence. But experts say predicting who will be the next mass shooter is virtually impossible — partly because as commonplace as these calamities seem, they are relatively rare crimes.


Still, a combination of risk factors in troubled kids or adults including drug use and easy access to guns can increase the likelihood of violence, experts say.


But warning signs "only become crystal clear in the aftermath, said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminology professor who has studied and written about mass killings.


"They're yellow flags. They only become red flags once the blood is spilled," he said.


Whether 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who used his mother's guns to kill her and then 20 children and six adults at their Connecticut school, made any hints about his plans isn't publicly known.


Fox said that sometimes, in the days, weeks or months preceding their crimes, mass murderers voice threats, or hints, either verbally or in writing, things like "'don't come to school tomorrow,'" or "'they're going to be sorry for mistreating me.'" Some prepare by target practicing, and plan their clothing "as well as their arsenal." (Police said Lanza went to shooting ranges with his mother in the past but not in the last six months.)


Although words might indicate a grudge, they don't necessarily mean violence will follow. And, of course, most who threaten never act, Fox said.


Even so, experts say threats of violence from troubled teens and young adults should be taken seriously and parents should attempt to get them a mental health evaluation and treatment if needed.


"In general, the police are unlikely to be able to do anything unless and until a crime has been committed," said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a Columbia University professor of psychiatry, medicine and law. "Calling the police to confront a troubled teen has often led to tragedy."


The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry says violent behavior should not be dismissed as "just a phase they're going through."


In a guidelines for families, the academy lists several risk factors for violence, including:


—Previous violent or aggressive behavior


—Being a victim of physical or sexual abuse


—Guns in the home


—Use of drugs or alcohol


—Brain damage from a head injury


Those with several of these risk factors should be evaluated by a mental health expert if they also show certain behaviors, including intense anger, frequent temper outbursts, extreme irritability or impulsiveness, the academy says. They may be more likely than others to become violent, although that doesn't mean they're at risk for the kind of violence that happened in Newtown, Conn.


Lanza, the Connecticut shooter, was socially withdrawn and awkward, and has been said to have had Asperger's disorder, a mild form of autism that has no clear connection with violence.


Autism experts and advocacy groups have complained that Asperger's is being unfairly blamed for the shootings, and say people with the disorder are much more likely to be victims of bullying and violence by others.


According to a research review published this year in Annals of General Psychiatry, most people with Asperger's who commit violent crimes have serious, often undiagnosed mental problems. That includes bipolar disorder, depression and personality disorders. It's not publicly known if Lanza had any of these, which in severe cases can include delusions and other psychotic symptoms.


Young adulthood is when psychotic illnesses typically emerge, and Appelbaum said there are several signs that a troubled teen or young adult might be heading in that direction: isolating themselves from friends and peers, spending long periods alone in their rooms, plummeting grades if they're still in school and expressing disturbing thoughts or fears that others are trying to hurt them.


Appelbaum said the most agonizing calls he gets are from parents whose children are descending into severe mental illness but who deny they are sick and refuse to go for treatment.


And in the case of adults, forcing them into treatment is difficult and dependent on laws that vary by state.


All states have laws that allow some form of court-ordered treatment, typically in a hospital for people considered a danger to themselves or others. Connecticut is among a handful with no option for court-ordered treatment in a less restrictive community setting, said Kristina Ragosta, an attorney with the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national group that advocates better access to mental health treatment.


Lanza's medical records haven't been publicly disclosed and authorities haven't said if it is known what type of treatment his family may have sought for him. Lanza killed himself at the school.


Jennifer Hoff of Mission Viejo, Calif. has a 19-year-old bipolar son who has had hallucinations, delusions and violent behavior for years. When he was younger and threatened to harm himself, she'd call 911 and leave the door unlocked for paramedics, who'd take him to a hospital for inpatient mental care.


Now that he's an adult, she said he has refused medication, left home, and authorities have indicated he can't be forced into treatment unless he harms himself — or commits a violent crime and is imprisoned. Hoff thinks prison is where he's headed — he's in jail, charged in an unarmed bank robbery.


___


Online:


American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry: http://www.aacap.org


___


AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner


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Getting the Rose Bowl ready for game time









College football coaches won't be the only ones calling the shots at the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1.


Dozens of Tournament of Roses Assn. workers are now planning every game detail, including the timing of the traditional B-2 flyover and the toss of a specially minted silver coin to determine who will receive the kickoff. The busiest invisible hands belong to Tournament of Roses senior game manager Edward Corey and game manager Ted Tompkins.


Corey, prepping for his 35th Rose Bowl, coordinates each moment from the sidelines. When the college bands start to play, it's because Corey said go.





TIMELINE: College football 2012-13 bowl schedule


Tompkins, 59, must have everyone and everything in place for Corey. Praised by Rose Bowl Game Chief Administrative Officer Kevin Ash as the organization's top playmaker on the fly, Tompkins stands ready with spare coins for the toss and contingency plans in mind for potential miscues. This will be his 40th Rose Bowl.


"Our goal is not to be seen," said Corey, 51. "Our jobs are done best if no one knows we're here."


The Rose Bowl Game is traditionally played between the champions of what are now the Pac-12 and Big Ten conferences, based on an agreement brokered for the 1948 matchup.


Planning starts in August, when Tournament of Roses leaders meet with conference officials. Efforts kick into high gear after the participating teams are announced in early December. Only then can workers design stadium banners, create and distribute tickets, order merchandise, coordinate team itineraries and obtain stencils and paint for field decals.


Even the Rose Bowl grass is grown anew. The playing field the UCLA Bruins used for their last game of the season Nov. 24 has been replaced as the Wisconsin Badgers and Stanford Cardinal prepare for their showdown.


"The first time this turf's played on is Jan. 1. The Tournament wants the first impression to be 'Wow,'" said Corey, who lives in South Pasadena.


Workers began painting the end zones and marking lines on Wednesday. Artwork gets two coats of paint and a final touch-up a few days before the game, said field assistant Miguel Yepez.


Tompkins, a La Crescenta resident, is responsible for herding players and coaches to news conferences and driving the Rose Queen, the grand marshal and the Tournament president from a Rose Parade tailgate tent to the stadium.


All the while, Corey is marking the time until the 2:04 p.m. flyover and 2:10 p.m. kickoff.


"I'm on a headset with [announcer Chuck White], and if I see we have more time, he'll read slower or put a video on the board. We're basically playing with the script the entire time," Corey said.


joe.piasecki@latimes.com





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Egypt’s Hamdeen Sabahi vs. Islamists and Free Markets





CAIRO — Hamdeen Sabahi was the most popular leader in the fight against Egypt’s new Islamist-backed constitution. Now he is preparing for his next battle: against Islamist leaders’ plans for Western-style free-market reforms.




Do not listen to your allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Sabahi said he warned President Mohamed Morsi, of the Brotherhood’s political arm, in a private meeting a few weeks ago. “Because the Brotherhood’s economic and social thought is the same as Mubarak’s: the law of the markets,” Mr. Sabahi said he had told Mr. Morsi, referring to Hosni Mubarak, the former president. “You will just make the poor poorer, and they will be angry with you just as they were with Mubarak.”


Mr. Sabahi, a leftist in the style of another former president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, frightens most economists. He is an outspoken opponent of free-market economic moves in general as well as of a pending $4.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund that economists say is urgently needed to avert a catastrophic currency collapse.


But to the dismay of some Western diplomats, Mr. Sabahi is emerging as an increasingly salient voice in Egyptian politics, in part because of the bruising race to ratify the Islamist-backed charter. Both sides now expect the anti-Islamist opposition to reap big gains in the coming parliamentary vote, set to be held in two months against the backdrop of a simultaneous debate over the I.M.F. loan.


Among Egypt’s opposition figures, Mr. Sabahi has the biggest base of support in the streets. After campaigning as a dark horse in the spring’s presidential election, he missed the runoff by fewer than a million votes, finishing the first round almost neck and neck with Mr. Morsi.


Economic overhaul now poses a critical test of Egypt’s fragile democracy. Without enough trust in government, the changes to the systems of taxes or subsidies needed to reduce the deficit could easily stir new unrest in the streets, just as such moves have in the past. But if Mr. Morsi expects his opponents to hold their fire just because economists say the need is dire, Mr. Sabahi said, the president should think again.


“Why support him, for what?” Mr. Sabahi said in an interview in the borrowed offices of an Egyptian film director, decorated with pictures of President Nasser but also of Che Guevara. “Is he a democratic ruler, is he a revolutionary? Is he a model of a president, so I want him to succeed?”


Mr. Sabahi, 58, known for writing poetry and quoting Arab literature and for his blow-dried hair, was one of the few non-Islamist politicians willing to endure imprisonment alongside the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the struggle against Egypt’s autocracy, giving him a unique credibility among more secular leaders.


But after missing the presidential runoff this year, Mr. Sabahi declined to endorse either Mr. Morsi or his opponent, Ahmed Shafik, a former Mubarak prime minister. It was a choice between “tyranny in the name of the state” and “tyranny in the name of religion,” Mr. Sabahi said at the time in a television interview.


Mr. Sabahi argued in the interview that although Mr. Morsi won election democratically, he has failed to govern as a democrat. “He is kicking away the ladder he climbed,” Mr. Sabahi said, arguing that Mr. Morsi’s decree setting his authority above the courts, if only for a month, ended his credibility as a democrat.


The resulting discord between the Islamists and their opponents has postponed the I.M.F. loan and helped bring Egypt closer than ever to economic collapse. State media on Tuesday described a “dollarization frenzy” gripping the country as people raced to sell Egyptian pounds. The currency is at its lowest level in the past eight years.


Since Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, Egypt’s hard currency reserves have fallen to $15 billion from $43 billion as it has struggled to prop up the pound, and economists say the government now urgently needs a cash infusion of about $14 billion in order to stay afloat. The $4.5 billion I.M.F. loan is expected to act as a seal of approval for others, after the I.M.F. concludes Egypt is at least on a path to greater balance.


If that loan does not come through soon, “the risk is a disaster,” said Heba Handoussa of the Economic Research Forum. “We can’t afford to wait.”


There are other more Western-friendly faces of the opposition, like Mohamed ElBaradei, the former United Nations diplomat, and Amr Moussa, the former foreign minister. But neither has Mr. Sabahi’s following at the grass roots, and he speaks for a segment of the Egyptian public deeply suspicious of free markets and, especially, the I.M.F. A popular singer, El Manawahly, has even recorded a song and music video opposing the loan. “Oh monetary fund / Show me how to industrialize, plant and kneel.”


Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.



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Huawei shows off 6.1-inch Android phablet ahead of CES [video]









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Giada De Laurentiis: My Daughter Still Believes in Santa

Giada De Laurentiis Jade Still Believes in Santa
Courtesy Giada De Laurentiis


The tree’s done. The stockings are hung. Giada De Laurentiis and her family — husband Todd Thompson and their daughter Jade Marie — are officially ready to host the holidays.


“Christmas Eve is the big tradition in an Italian family. It’s when my entire family gets together,” the newest face of Clairol tells PEOPLE exclusively.


“This year, for the first time, it will be held at my house … so Jade and I and my husband are very excited.”


On the menu for the family festivities is “a big fish dinner,” one that no doubt Jade will help her mother to prepare. After all, adds the celebrity chef, she is the unofficial taste tester.


“My daughter loves to cook. We have a lot of laughs together. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and she loves hanging out with me,” De Laurentiis, 42, shares. “The reason she loves it so much is because she can stick her finger in everything and taste it as she goes along.”

Once the big dinner is done with, and the evening starts to wind down, De Laurentiis and Jade will start to prepare for the night’s biggest guest to arrive: Santa Claus. At 4½-years-old, her little girl is still a strong believer in the magic of it all, notes her proud mama.


“She leaves him little treats — for the reindeer and for him too — and she’s very much a believer in Santa,” De Laurentiis says. “I hope she’ll be a believer for a long time, I think it’s really fun for kids to be able to do that.”


Recently, the pair sat down to write out Jade’s wish list, but after much pleading on Jade’s part over the past few weeks, it’s no surprise as to what she hopes to find under the tree this year.


“The one thing she keeps asking me for over and over again is clip-on earrings. She must have seen them on somebody else, but she has asked me for clip-on earrings for the past month,” De Laurentiis notes. “I am on a mission to find clip-on earrings for her because I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me if I don’t.”


But based on her newly transformed play space, the “girly girl’s” specific accessory request should come as no surprise.


“She’s opened up her own little salon in her playroom. She gives free makeovers, she curls people’s hair and gives them little manicures as well,” De Laurentiis says. “I’ve always been a girly girl my whole life — maybe she will, maybe she won’t — but it’s a lot of fun to play with her right now.”


– Anya Leon with reporting by Kate Hogan


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Predicting who's at risk for violence isn't easy


CHICAGO (AP) — It happened after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colo., and now Sandy Hook: People figure there surely were signs of impending violence. But experts say predicting who will be the next mass shooter is virtually impossible — partly because as commonplace as these calamities seem, they are relatively rare crimes.


Still, a combination of risk factors in troubled kids or adults including drug use and easy access to guns can increase the likelihood of violence, experts say.


But warning signs "only become crystal clear in the aftermath, said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminology professor who has studied and written about mass killings.


"They're yellow flags. They only become red flags once the blood is spilled," he said.


Whether 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who used his mother's guns to kill her and then 20 children and six adults at their Connecticut school, made any hints about his plans isn't publicly known.


Fox said that sometimes, in the days, weeks or months preceding their crimes, mass murderers voice threats, or hints, either verbally or in writing, things like "'don't come to school tomorrow,'" or "'they're going to be sorry for mistreating me.'" Some prepare by target practicing, and plan their clothing "as well as their arsenal." (Police said Lanza went to shooting ranges with his mother in the past but not in the last six months.)


Although words might indicate a grudge, they don't necessarily mean violence will follow. And, of course, most who threaten never act, Fox said.


Even so, experts say threats of violence from troubled teens and young adults should be taken seriously and parents should attempt to get them a mental health evaluation and treatment if needed.


"In general, the police are unlikely to be able to do anything unless and until a crime has been committed," said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a Columbia University professor of psychiatry, medicine and law. "Calling the police to confront a troubled teen has often led to tragedy."


The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry says violent behavior should not be dismissed as "just a phase they're going through."


In a guidelines for families, the academy lists several risk factors for violence, including:


—Previous violent or aggressive behavior


—Being a victim of physical or sexual abuse


—Guns in the home


—Use of drugs or alcohol


—Brain damage from a head injury


Those with several of these risk factors should be evaluated by a mental health expert if they also show certain behaviors, including intense anger, frequent temper outbursts, extreme irritability or impulsiveness, the academy says. They may be more likely than others to become violent, although that doesn't mean they're at risk for the kind of violence that happened in Newtown, Conn.


Lanza, the Connecticut shooter, was socially withdrawn and awkward, and has been said to have had Asperger's disorder, a mild form of autism that has no clear connection with violence.


Autism experts and advocacy groups have complained that Asperger's is being unfairly blamed for the shootings, and say people with the disorder are much more likely to be victims of bullying and violence by others.


According to a research review published this year in Annals of General Psychiatry, most people with Asperger's who commit violent crimes have serious, often undiagnosed mental problems. That includes bipolar disorder, depression and personality disorders. It's not publicly known if Lanza had any of these, which in severe cases can include delusions and other psychotic symptoms.


Young adulthood is when psychotic illnesses typically emerge, and Appelbaum said there are several signs that a troubled teen or young adult might be heading in that direction: isolating themselves from friends and peers, spending long periods alone in their rooms, plummeting grades if they're still in school and expressing disturbing thoughts or fears that others are trying to hurt them.


Appelbaum said the most agonizing calls he gets are from parents whose children are descending into severe mental illness but who deny they are sick and refuse to go for treatment.


And in the case of adults, forcing them into treatment is difficult and dependent on laws that vary by state.


All states have laws that allow some form of court-ordered treatment, typically in a hospital for people considered a danger to themselves or others. Connecticut is among a handful with no option for court-ordered treatment in a less restrictive community setting, said Kristina Ragosta, an attorney with the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national group that advocates better access to mental health treatment.


Lanza's medical records haven't been publicly disclosed and authorities haven't said if it is known what type of treatment his family may have sought for him. Lanza killed himself at the school.


Jennifer Hoff of Mission Viejo, Calif. has a 19-year-old bipolar son who has had hallucinations, delusions and violent behavior for years. When he was younger and threatened to harm himself, she'd call 911 and leave the door unlocked for paramedics, who'd take him to a hospital for inpatient mental care.


Now that he's an adult, she said he has refused medication, left home, and authorities have indicated he can't be forced into treatment unless he harms himself — or commits a violent crime and is imprisoned. Hoff thinks prison is where he's headed — he's in jail, charged in an unarmed bank robbery.


___


Online:


American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry: http://www.aacap.org


___


AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner


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Roots of pot cultivation in national forests are hard to trace









WELDON, Calif. — A few minutes after 4 a.m., agents in camouflage cluster in a dusty field in Kern County. "Movement needs to be slow, deliberate and quiet," the team leader whispers. "Lock and load now."


They check their ammunition and assault rifles, not exactly sure whom they might meet in the dark: heavily armed Mexican drug traffickers, or just poorly paid fieldworkers camping miserably in the brush.


Twenty minutes later, after a lights-off drive for a mile, the agents climb out of two pickup trucks and sift into the high desert brush.





The granite faces of the Southern Sierra are washed in the light of a full moon. Two spotters with night-vision scopes take positions on the ridge to monitor the marijuana grow, tucked deep in a cleft of the canyon.


The rest of the agents hunker down in some sumac waiting for the call to move in. The action has to be precisely timed with raids in Bakersfield, where they hope to capture the leaders of the organization.


They have no idea how many people are up here. Thermal imaging aircraft circling high above was not detecting anyone on the ground. And trail cameras hadn't captured images of men delivering supplies for more than a week. Maybe the growers have already harvested and cleared out.


Word comes on the radio to go into the site.


The agents fan out in the gray of dawn. A U.S. Forest Service agent unleashes a German shepherd and follows it up a piney slope. After several minutes, the dog begins barking furiously.


"We have movement," shouts the Forest Service officer. "Hands up."


::


Such raids have become commonplace in California, part of a costly, frustrating campaign to eradicate ever-bigger, more destructive marijuana farms and dismantle the shadowy groups that are creating them.


Pot cultivated on public lands surged in the last decade, a side effect of the medical cannabis boom. In 2001, several hundred thousand plants were seized in the state. By 2010, authorities pulled up a record 7.4 million plants, mostly on public land.


Law enforcement long called these grows on public land "cartel grows," and hoped to work from the busts in the forest up the drug hierarchy, maybe all the way to the Sinaloa Cartel or the Zetas.


But after years of raids and work with informants and wiretaps, agents realize the operations seemed to be run by independent groups of Mexican nationals, often using undocumented fieldworkers from their home regions.


Tommy Lanier, director of the National Marijuana Initiative, part of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said there was scant evidence that the cartels exerted much control over marijuana growing in the national forests.


"Based on our intelligence, which includes thousands of cellphone numbers and wiretaps, we haven't been able to connect anyone to a major cartel," he said.


Lanier said authorities have long mislabeled marijuana grown on public land as "cartel grows" because Mexican nationals are arrested in the majority of cases, and the narrative of fighting drug cartels helps them secure federal funding.


He doesn't rule out that some of the cash flowing south of the border makes its way to members of those groups. He just doesn't believe they are actively directing activities up here.


"We've had undercover agents at the highest level of these groups, breaking bread and drinking tequila," says Roy Giorgi, commander of the Mountain and Valley Marijuana Investigation Team, a multi-agency organization headquartered in Sacramento. "Even at their most comfortable, the leaders never said, 'Hey, we're working for the Zetas.' "


In Giorgi's jurisdiction, the majority of the people arrested or investigated are originally from the state of Michoacan, where marijuana growing and immigration to the U.S. are entrenched.





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