Hector 'Macho' Camacho dies at age 50

Former boxing champ Hector "Macho" Camacho, who was shot in the face this week, died on Saturday after being removed from life support, Rio Piedras Medical Director Ernesto Torres told reporters. He was 50.

Camacho had been declared brain dead on Thursday after being struck in the face in a drive-by shooting earlier in the week.

Two gunmen opened fire on Camacho and a friend, Adrian Mojica Moreno, 49, on Tuesday as they sat in a car outside a liquor store in the San Juan suburb of Bayamon, Camacho's birthplace.

Police are investigating the shooting and no arrests have been made.

Mojica Moreno, the driver of the car, was killed and Camacho was shot in the jaw. The bullet fractured two vertebrae and lodged in his shoulder, damaging the arteries that carried blood to the brain, doctors said.

Police found nine small bags of cocaine in the driver's pockets and one open in the car.

Camacho, a left-handed fighter who grew up in New York's Spanish Harlem neighborhood, had a record of 79-6-3 with 38 knockouts. His three-decade career featured fights with a "who's who" of boxing and a flamboyant style that included entering the ring in an outfit based on the Puerto Rican flag.

Camacho's body was taken to the hospital's pathology section and brought to the Institute of Forensic Sciences as required by law, Torres told reporters.

El Nuevo Dia newspaper reported the family was planning a funeral in New York, where Camacho grew up, and possibly a public wake in Puerto Rico.

(Reporting by Reuters in San Juan, Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Sandra Maler)

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China’s ‘Beijing Blues’ wins at Taiwan film fest

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China‘s “Beijing Blues” has won the best film award at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Film Festival, an event considered the Chinese-language Oscars. Hong Kong‘s Johnnie To is taking home the best director’s award

“Beijing Blues” portrays the lives of the ordinary urban dwellers through the work of a squad of plainclothes crime-hunters.

At Saturday’s ceremony, To won the award for directing “Life Without Principle,” a movie about ordinary citizens’ struggles in hard economic times.

The film has also won veteran Hong Kong actor Lau Ching Wan the best actor’s award. Lau portrays a triad thug seeking to recover money lost in a loan shark scheme.

Taiwan’s Gwei Lun-mei won the best actress award for portraying a woman involved in a romantic triangle in “GF-BF” or “Girlfriend-Boyfriend.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Scientists See Advances in Deep Learning, a Part of Artificial Intelligence

Hao Zhang/The New York Times

A voice recognition program translated a speech given by Richard F. Rashid, Microsoft’s top scientist, into Mandarin Chinese.

Using an artificial intelligence technique inspired by theories about how the brain recognizes patterns, technology companies are reporting startling gains in fields as diverse as computer vision, speech recognition and the identification of promising new molecules for designing drugs.

The advances have led to widespread enthusiasm among researchers who design software to perform human activities like seeing, listening and thinking. They offer the promise of machines that converse with humans and perform tasks like driving cars and working in factories, raising the specter of automated robots that could replace human workers.

The technology, called deep learning, has already been put to use in services like Apple’s Siri virtual personal assistant, which is based on Nuance Communications’ speech recognition service, and in Google’s Street View, which uses machine vision to identify specific addresses.

But what is new in recent months is the growing speed and accuracy of deep-learning programs, often called artificial neural networks or just “neural nets” for their resemblance to the neural connections in the brain.

“There has been a number of stunning new results with deep-learning methods,” said Yann LeCun, a computer scientist at New York University who did pioneering research in handwriting recognition at Bell Laboratories. “The kind of jump we are seeing in the accuracy of these systems is very rare indeed.”

Artificial intelligence researchers are acutely aware of the dangers of being overly optimistic. Their field has long been plagued by outbursts of misplaced enthusiasm followed by equally striking declines.

In the 1960s, some computer scientists believed that a workable artificial intelligence system was just 10 years away. In the 1980s, a wave of commercial start-ups collapsed, leading to what some people called the “A.I. winter.”

But recent achievements have impressed a wide spectrum of computer experts. In October, for example, a team of graduate students studying with the University of Toronto computer scientist Geoffrey E. Hinton won the top prize in a contest sponsored by Merck to design software to help find molecules that might lead to new drugs.

From a data set describing the chemical structure of 15 different molecules, they used deep-learning software to determine which molecule was most likely to be an effective drug agent.

The achievement was particularly impressive because the team decided to enter the contest at the last minute and designed its software with no specific knowledge about how the molecules bind to their targets. The students were also working with a relatively small set of data; neural nets typically perform well only with very large ones.

“This is a really breathtaking result because it is the first time that deep learning won, and more significantly it won on a data set that it wouldn’t have been expected to win at,” said Anthony Goldbloom, chief executive and founder of Kaggle, a company that organizes data science competitions, including the Merck contest.

Advances in pattern recognition hold implications not just for drug development but for an array of applications, including marketing and law enforcement. With greater accuracy, for example, marketers can comb large databases of consumer behavior to get more precise information on buying habits. And improvements in facial recognition are likely to make surveillance technology cheaper and more commonplace.

Artificial neural networks, an idea going back to the 1950s, seek to mimic the way the brain absorbs information and learns from it. In recent decades, Dr. Hinton, 64 (a great-great-grandson of the 19th-century mathematician George Boole, whose work in logic is the foundation for modern digital computers), has pioneered powerful new techniques for helping the artificial networks recognize patterns.

Modern artificial neural networks are composed of an array of software components, divided into inputs, hidden layers and outputs. The arrays can be “trained” by repeated exposures to recognize patterns like images or sounds.

These techniques, aided by the growing speed and power of modern computers, have led to rapid improvements in speech recognition, drug discovery and computer vision.

Deep-learning systems have recently outperformed humans in certain limited recognition tests.

Last year, for example, a program created by scientists at the Swiss A. I. Lab at the University of Lugano won a pattern recognition contest by outperforming both competing software systems and a human expert in identifying images in a database of German traffic signs.

The winning program accurately identified 99.46 percent of the images in a set of 50,000; the top score in a group of 32 human participants was 99.22 percent, and the average for the humans was 98.84 percent.

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Walmart protests draw crowds, shoppers largely unfazed

Dozens of local workers, and hundreds nationally, took advantage of Black Friday crowds and camera crews at major retailers like Walmart to call for wage increases.

But there was little evidence that the chanting disrupted holiday shoppers.

Steven Restivo, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores, said the chain had done its "best Black Friday event ever" despite protests organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union in Chicago and other cities.

At a Walmart in Chicago's Chatham neighborhood on the south side, only one of the store's 500 employees took part in the demonstration, the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said. "Almost all the folks you'll see protesting today are not Walmart associates," Restivo said. "I guess you can't believe everything you read in a union press release."

According to the union, protests took place in Miami and Washington, D.C., with additional events planned at Midwestern and Southern stores.

Walmart has so far avoided a union presence, which has become cumbersome for competitors like Jewel-Osco and Dominick's Finer Foods. Those chains have been closing stores as Walmart has expanded locally.

Separately Friday, dozens of members of the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago and its supporters marched from the Loop to the Magnificent Mile to demand a $15 minimum wage and union contracts for downtown workers. Organized on November 15, the union has about 150 members and has received financial support from Service Employees International Union, Action Now and Stand Up Chicago.

Deborah Sims, marching Friday, said she worked at Macy's for 12 years, eventually making $13 an hour, before losing her job during the recession. She was rehired last holiday season, but at $8.50 an hour, with no benefits.

Sims said she expects retailers to turn to younger, less-experienced workers because "$8.25 an hour is going to look good to them."

Macy's did not respond to a request for comment.

Peter Gill, a spokesman for the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, called the demand for a $15 minimum wage dangerous "because people are out looking for jobs and it's tough in this economy."

He explained that if retailers were forced to nearly double the starting hourly wage, "you're going to have to cut the number of employees."

Reuters contributed to this story.

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For early Black Friday shoppers, mission accomplished

Ambitious holiday shoppers skipped dessert on Thanksgiving to get a good spot in line for this Black Friday. (Posted Nov. 23rd, 2012)

Just before 7 a.m. the door busters and the crowds had dwindled at the Target in Schaumburg. Store leader Aaron Stephenson said that while the store was still busy, the crowd had died down a bit. "This is what I consider normal busy for a weekend," said Stephenson.

This is the Minneapolis-based Target's first year offering staggered door busters, the first at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving, when the store opened and the second, at 4 a.m. Friday. Beyond consumer electronics, housewares had been popular according to Stephenson and by early morning some had also disappeared, including a Dyson Vacuum, a Farberware 18-piece cook set and a Pyrex 20-piece set.

The stack of PlayStation 3 and XBox 360's also were gone and toys, including Legos, he said, flew off the shelves. There are plenty of still good deals, Stephenson added. "We still have quite a few big TVs," he said.

In a form of subtle protest, several people who roamed Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard as early as 4 a.m. started buying when they usually did -- on Friday morning -- and refused to give into retailers that opened their doors on Thursday evening.

"I boycotted anything midnight or earlier," said Chrissy Wojdyla, 29, of Downers Grove. "I will not shop there. I think it's ruining Thanksgiving tradition and infringing on my family." Moving Black Friday hours up to Thanksgiving, she added, "takes people away from their families." 

Instead, Wojdyla, her sister, Mary Steele, 26, and their mother, Patti Wojdyla, 54, dedicated their Thanksgiving Day to family and food, withholding themselves from any kind of shopping until they met at Yorktown at 4 a.m. Friday.

"Four a.m. is early enough!," said Patti, of Glen Ellyn. "Why would anyone want to do it on Thanksgiving evening? You're full. You're tired."

Steele, also of Glen Ellyn, said that caring for her young kids all day had made Thanksgiving too tiring to shop. 

Plus, she said, "when you start on Thanksgiving Day, it's not even Black Friday. We enjoy our 4 a.m. Friday tradition."

So they all got sleep on Thursday, ranging from 1 to 6 hours , and woke up to glam themselves out with glitter, tiaras and garland necklaces for their early morning of shopping. Steele wore a paper crown that read "Happy Holidays." |

For their efforts to keep with Yorktown's "bling" theme, Lynette Steinhauser, the assistant marketing director at the mall, rewarded them with $10 gift cards to Von Maur, which prompted a profusion of delighted thank-yous. 

Outside of J.C. Penney, Ramiro Carrizales, 44, waited with his wife, Lorena Carrizales, 40, in a seven-people-deep crowd for the store to open at 6 a.m.

They were looking for good clothing deals for their kids, specifically Mickey Mouse-themed items, but the couple, who lives in Forest Park, adamantly stuck to early Friday morning shopping hours instead of venturing out on Thursday evening. 

On Thanksgiving, said Ramiro, "I wanted to spend time with family. I didn't want to go out."

Post-Thanksgiving shopping also is a ritual for Elk Grove's Krys Slattery, Chris Duncker and Gina Wirth -- a decade-long tradition among friends.

Each year, they finish Thanksgiving dinner with their families and embark upon a 12-hour pilgrimage to knock-out the bulk of the Christmas shopping by visiting several stores in and around Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg. They power-up with coffee and breakfast at Panera and then wind-down the spree at Olive Garden for lunch. 

"We're constantly laughing," said Duncker.  "It's not just about the deals for us really, It's all about the experience, we love it," added Wirth. 

On Thanksgiving night they were in the Target on Higgins Road in Schaumburg.  Each with carts, a list and Target's "door buster" circular holding folded in their hands. All three giggled and called out to each other, squealing with delight when they spied a good deal.

After picking-up some blue sequined slippers for her teenage daughter, Slattery held them up for Wirth and Duncker to inspect.  "Do you think she'll like these?" she said.

This year Slattery was lucky. Target was opening earlier than ever -- at 9 p.m. so her mother cooked Thanksgiving dinner.

The trio weren't alone, the Target on Higgins Road in Schaumburg was swarmed, many pushing carts piled high with merchandise, from 50-inch televisions, to game consoles, tablet computers, MP3 players, apparel and cameras, which manager Brett Thiele said sold out in an hour.

The scene was similar at Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard. 

Laura Maxey and six of her closest friends shrieked when they saw the black bags. They had carved out a spot in front of the information booth at Yorktown, standing for 5 1/2 hours at the head of a 250-person line, until the mall officially opened at 5 a.m. Friday and the staff began handing out goodie bags filled with multicolored totes and $10 gift cards to stores throughout the mall.

"We pretty much just slept over at the mall," said Laura, 14, of Lombard. "We wanted to be first."

Their parents had dropped the friends, plus two older brothers, off at the mall shortly before midnight, and they rushed to the booth to claim their spots -- only the first 200 people in line would receive gift bags, with another 50 turned away -- before taking turns to embark on a shopping rotation that included Victoria's Secret, American Eagle and PacSun. At Charlotte Russe, they picked up $15 jeans.

The friends said they were at the mall for the joy, the deals and the once-a-year feel of Black Friday, and they were hardly the only ones caught up in the retail frenzy.

"I got a suitcase thrown at my head!" said Melanie Malczewski, 14, of Lombard, recalling her experience at Victoria's Secret, though she was smiling broadly at the memory later that morning.

Lynette Steinhauser, assistant marketing director at Yorktown, said that this, her 14th Black Friday at the mall, "is the busiest it's ever been." About half of the stores had been open since midnight, she said, with nearly all the rest the turning on their lights when the mall officially opened at 5 a.m. Steinhauser compared the foot traffic at 5: 30 a.m. on Black Friday to what it feels like on a Saturday afternoon.

"Everyone is in a really happy mood," she said. "And festive!"

Black Friday, which for years kicked-off the holiday shopping season for retailers and consumers, has bled into Thanksgiving, with retailers including Target, Sears and Toys R US opening on Thursday night aiming to boost their bottom lines by enticing consumers to shop early and often.  

Holiday shopping is crucial for retailers -- it accounts for up to 40 percent of their yearly sales. That's why it's called "Black Friday" as for years they've used the day to go from red to black -- or turn a profit.  

This year, retail watchers are expecting holiday shoppers to oblige.  Consumers are expected to spend, on average, $586.1 billion this year on gifts for friends and family, just over a 4 percent increase from last year. Experts are saying this pick-up in spending is conservative, but a glimpse at popular hotspots for early Black Friday shopping, it wasn't apparent.  

This year a handful opened earlier than ever, Walmart set an 8 p.m. opening and Sears followed suit.  Target opted for an opening scheduled an hour later at 9 pm.

Despite some criticism around the increasingly early open times, shoppers in Schaumburg were out in full-force last night.  A Deloitte survey found that 60 percent of consumers plan to shop over Thanksgiving weekend, aiming to take part in sales that offer merchandise at prices the dip below 50 percent off. 

Experts said that this year, as in most years, low-priced flat screen televisions would move fast.  So would deeply discounted Android-powered tablet computers. 

The line to get into the Sears at Woodfield Mall stretched along the building by 7 p.m., an hour before opening time.  

Manager April Buehler said the line outside the store looked larger than last year, and about a mile away at Target, Thiele said this year the store was filled with more families, instead of the hardcore, deal-hunter that typically shows up when the store opens early on Friday morning.  "It's a lot more casual shopper, which I'm excited about," said Thiele. "It's not necessarily people that had to get up super early and be dedicated, just people going out with families. Grandparents and grandkids," he said. 

Carol and Russel Freitas fall into the deal-hunter category.  It's date night for the Palatine couple of 26 years when they head out to shop each year after dinner, leaving their two teenaged sons behind to tackle the stores.  They said they love it.

They waited patiently in line for more than an hour, hoping to snag one of Sears' hot door busters, a 32-inch flat screen for less than $100. 

As it turns out, they waited in vain.  By the time the store opened, they were in the first third of the line, but the Sears employee had run out of TV vouchers when she got to the Freitas' in line.  "It's okay," said Carol Freitas, "There's other stuff on our list, we're going to head to the boys' department to get shirts for my son."

Shortly before Sears opened, about 12 feet away from the Freitas, there was a small, but growing crowd of suspected "line jumpers,"  who stood about 12 feet away staring at the line.

At close to 9:30 at Target, some shoppers could be seen pushing carts stockpiled with 32 inch flat screen for $147.  Alex Gackle  from Fargo, N.D., left his grandmother's dinner with his dad and brother-in-law to buy  another of the Minneapolis-based retailer's most sought-after deals: They bought  four televisions. One for himself, another for his grandmother, one for her caretaker and the fourth for his father.  They waited in line for more than an hour and things were calm, said Gackle.  That changed when Target's doors opened, said Gackle. "That's when people started getting crazy and rushing toward things."

By 10:30 a long line of shoppers were still waiting to get inside the Toys R Us in Schaumburg.  Customers said they were told that shoppers would be allowed in the store every 10 minutes in increments of 50.

After 10 p.m. the temperature had dropped and Laura Saul stood in a sweater with her two daughters and their cousin to get into Toys R Us.  The item of the evening -- "Monster High" dolls for her 10-year-old daughter, Emily.  She pointed to Emily and said, giggling, "She conned us to do this."  Saul's old daughter, Lauren, who stood nearby, was not in such good spirits, "I could be sleeping," she said.

The trio from Elk Grove shopping at Target said over the years they've seen it all -- fights and shoving matches.  As the 10 p.m. hour approached at Target, they thought things were pretty calm.  At Target People get angry, but this is fun for us," said Wirth.  "Even if we don't get what we want, we don't care."

Erin Chan Ding contributed to this story.

crshropshire@tribune.com | Twitter: @corilyns

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Documents Show F.D.A.’s Failures in Meningitis Outbreak

Newly released documents add vivid detail to the emerging portrait of the Food and Drug Administration’s ineffective and halting efforts to regulate a Massachusetts company implicated in a national meningitis outbreak that has sickened nearly 500 people and killed 34.

In the documents, released on Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the agency would threaten to bring the full force of its authority down on the company, only to back away, citing lack of jurisdiction.

The company, the New England Compounding Center, at times cooperated with F.D.A. inspectors and promised to improve its procedures, and at other times challenged the agency’s legal authority to regulate it, refused to provide records and continued to ship a drug in defiance of the agency’s concerns.

Some of the documents were summarized last week by Congressional committees that held hearings on the meningitis outbreak. Republicans and Democrats criticized the F.D.A. for failing to act on information about unsafe practices at the company as far back as March 2002.

By law, compounding pharmacies are regulated primarily by the states, but the pharmacies have grown over the years into major suppliers of some of the country’s biggest hospitals. The F.D.A. is asking Congress for stronger, clearer authority to police them, but Republicans have said the agency already has enough power.

Records show that the agency was sometimes slow in pursuing its own inspection findings. In one case involving the labeling and marketing of drugs, the agency issued a warning letter to New England Compounding 684 days after an inspection, a delay that the company’s chief pharmacist complained was so long that some of the letter’s assertions no longer applied to its operations.

The agency said in a statement Wednesday that it “was not the timeline we strive for,” but that much of the delay was because of “our limited, unclear and contested authority in this area.” Because of litigation, it said, there was “significant internal discussion about how to regulate compounders.”

The agency first inspected the company in April 2002 after reports that two patients had become dizzy and short of breath after being injected with a steroid made by the company.

 On the first day of the inspection, Barry Cadden, the chief pharmacist, was cooperative, but the next day, the agency inspectors wrote, Mr. Cadden “had a complete change in attitude & basically would not provide any additional information either by responding to questions or providing records,” adding that he challenged their legal authority to be at his pharmacy at all.

The F.D.A. was back at New England Compounding in October 2002 because of possible contamination of another of its products, methylprednisolone acetate, the same drug involved in the current meningitis outbreak.

 While the F.D.A. had the right to seize an adulterated steroid, officials at the time said that action alone would not resolve the company’s poor compounding practices. In a meeting with Massachusetts regulators, F.D.A. officials left authority in the hands of the state, which “would be in a better position to gain compliance or take regulatory action,” according to a memo by an F.D.A. official summarizing the meeting.

 David Elder, compliance branch director for the F.D.A.’s New England District, warned at the meeting that there was the “potential for serious public health consequences if N.E.C.C.’s compounding practices, in particular those relating to sterile products, are not improved.”

 The company fought back hard, repeatedly questioning the F.D.A.’s jurisdiction. In a September 2004 inspection over concerns that the company was dispensing trypan blue, a dye used for some eye surgeries that had not been approved by the F.D.A., Mr. Cadden told the agency inspector that he had none in stock.

But in the clean room, the inspector noticed a drawer labeled “Trypan Blue,” which contained 189 vials of the medicine.

A few days later, Mr. Cadden was defiant. He told the agency that he was continuing to dispense trypan blue and that there was nothing in the law saying a compounder could not dispense unapproved products.

 The conversation turned testy. “Don’t answer any more questions!” Mr. Cadden told another pharmacy executive, according to the F.D.A.’s report.

Mr. Cadden rejected many of the assertions in the warning letter that finally came in December 2006. The next correspondence from the agency did not come until almost two years later, in October 2008, saying that the agency still had “serious concerns” about the company’s practices, and that failing to correct them could result in seizure of products and an injunction against the company and its principals.

It is not known whether any corrective actions were taken. The agency did not conduct another inspection until the recent meningitis outbreak.

Denise Grady contributed reporting.

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Chicago shopping frenzy gets early start

Ambitious holiday shoppers skipped dessert on Thanksgiving to get a good spot in line for this Black Friday. (Posted Nov. 23rd, 2012)

Just before 7 a.m. the door busters and the crowds had dwindled at the Target in Schaumburg. Store leader Aaron Stephenson said that while the store was still busy, the crowd had died down a bit. "This is what I consider normal busy for a weekend," said Stephenson.

This is the Minneapolis-based Target's first year offering staggered door busters, the first at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving, when the store opened and the second, at 4 a.m. Friday. Beyond consumer electronics, housewares had been popular according to Stephenson and by early morning some had also disappeared, including a Dyson Vacuum, a Farberware 18-piece cook set and a Pyrex 20-piece set.

The stack of PlayStation 3 and XBox 360's also were gone and toys, including Legos, he said, flew off the shelves. There are plenty of still good deals, Stephenson added. "We still have quite a few big TVs," he said.

In a form of subtle protest, several people who roamed Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard as early as 4 a.m. started buying when they usually did -- on Friday morning -- and refused to give into retailers that opened their doors on Thursday evening.

"I boycotted anything midnight or earlier," said Chrissy Wojdyla, 29, of Downers Grove. "I will not shop there. I think it's ruining Thanksgiving tradition and infringing on my family." Moving Black Friday hours up to Thanksgiving, she added, "takes people away from their families." 

Instead, Wojdyla, her sister, Mary Steele, 26, and their mother, Patti Wojdyla, 54, dedicated their Thanksgiving Day to family and food, withholding themselves from any kind of shopping until they met at Yorktown at 4 a.m. Friday.

"Four a.m. is early enough!," said Patti, of Glen Ellyn. "Why would anyone want to do it on Thanksgiving evening? You're full. You're tired."

Steele, also of Glen Ellyn, said that caring for her young kids all day had made Thanksgiving too tiring to shop. 

Plus, she said, "when you start on Thanksgiving Day, it's not even Black Friday. We enjoy our 4 a.m. Friday tradition."

So they all got sleep on Thursday, ranging from 1 to 6 hours , and woke up to glam themselves out with glitter, tiaras and garland necklaces for their early morning of shopping. Steele wore a paper crown that read "Happy Holidays." |

For their efforts to keep with Yorktown's "bling" theme, Lynette Steinhauser, the assistant marketing director at the mall, rewarded them with $10 gift cards to Von Maur, which prompted a profusion of delighted thank-yous. 

Outside of J.C. Penney, Ramiro Carrizales, 44, waited with his wife, Lorena Carrizales, 40, in a seven-people-deep crowd for the store to open at 6 a.m.

They were looking for good clothing deals for their kids, specifically Mickey Mouse-themed items, but the couple, who lives in Forest Park, adamantly stuck to early Friday morning shopping hours instead of venturing out on Thursday evening. 

On Thanksgiving, said Ramiro, "I wanted to spend time with family. I didn't want to go out."

Post-Thanksgiving shopping also is a ritual for Elk Grove's Krys Slattery, Chris Duncker and Gina Wirth -- a decade-long tradition among friends.

Each year, they finish Thanksgiving dinner with their families and embark upon a 12-hour pilgrimage to knock-out the bulk of the Christmas shopping by visiting several stores in and around Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg. They power-up with coffee and breakfast at Panera and then wind-down the spree at Olive Garden for lunch. 

"We're constantly laughing," said Duncker.  "It's not just about the deals for us really, It's all about the experience, we love it," added Wirth. 

On Thanksgiving night they were in the Target on Higgins Road in Schaumburg.  Each with carts, a list and Target's "door buster" circular holding folded in their hands. All three giggled and called out to each other, squealing with delight when they spied a good deal.

After picking-up some blue sequined slippers for her teenage daughter, Slattery held them up for Wirth and Duncker to inspect.  "Do you think she'll like these?" she said.

This year Slattery was lucky. Target was opening earlier than ever -- at 9 p.m. so her mother cooked Thanksgiving dinner.

The trio weren't alone, the Target on Higgins Road in Schaumburg was swarmed, many pushing carts piled high with merchandise, from 50-inch televisions, to game consoles, tablet computers, MP3 players, apparel and cameras, which manager Brett Thiele said sold out in an hour.

The scene was similar at Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard. 

Laura Maxey and six of her closest friends shrieked when they saw the black bags. They had carved out a spot in front of the information booth at Yorktown, standing for 5 1/2 hours at the head of a 250-person line, until the mall officially opened at 5 a.m. Friday and the staff began handing out goodie bags filled with multicolored totes and $10 gift cards to stores throughout the mall.

"We pretty much just slept over at the mall," said Laura, 14, of Lombard. "We wanted to be first."

Their parents had dropped the friends, plus two older brothers, off at the mall shortly before midnight, and they rushed to the booth to claim their spots -- only the first 200 people in line would receive gift bags, with another 50 turned away -- before taking turns to embark on a shopping rotation that included Victoria's Secret, American Eagle and PacSun. At Charlotte Russe, they picked up $15 jeans.

The friends said they were at the mall for the joy, the deals and the once-a-year feel of Black Friday, and they were hardly the only ones caught up in the retail frenzy.

"I got a suitcase thrown at my head!" said Melanie Malczewski, 14, of Lombard, recalling her experience at Victoria's Secret, though she was smiling broadly at the memory later that morning.

Lynette Steinhauser, assistant marketing director at Yorktown, said that this, her 14th Black Friday at the mall, "is the busiest it's ever been." About half of the stores had been open since midnight, she said, with nearly all the rest the turning on their lights when the mall officially opened at 5 a.m. Steinhauser compared the foot traffic at 5: 30 a.m. on Black Friday to what it feels like on a Saturday afternoon.

"Everyone is in a really happy mood," she said. "And festive!"

Black Friday, which for years kicked-off the holiday shopping season for retailers and consumers, has bled into Thanksgiving, with retailers including Target, Sears and Toys R US opening on Thursday night aiming to boost their bottom lines by enticing consumers to shop early and often.  

Holiday shopping is crucial for retailers -- it accounts for up to 40 percent of their yearly sales. That's why it's called "Black Friday" as for years they've used the day to go from red to black -- or turn a profit.  

This year, retail watchers are expecting holiday shoppers to oblige.  Consumers are expected to spend, on average, $586.1 billion this year on gifts for friends and family, just over a 4 percent increase from last year. Experts are saying this pick-up in spending is conservative, but a glimpse at popular hotspots for early Black Friday shopping, it wasn't apparent.  

This year a handful opened earlier than ever, Walmart set an 8 p.m. opening and Sears followed suit.  Target opted for an opening scheduled an hour later at 9 pm.

Despite some criticism around the increasingly early open times, shoppers in Schaumburg were out in full-force last night.  A Deloitte survey found that 60 percent of consumers plan to shop over Thanksgiving weekend, aiming to take part in sales that offer merchandise at prices the dip below 50 percent off. 

Experts said that this year, as in most years, low-priced flat screen televisions would move fast.  So would deeply discounted Android-powered tablet computers. 

The line to get into the Sears at Woodfield Mall stretched along the building by 7 p.m., an hour before opening time.  

Manager April Buehler said the line outside the store looked larger than last year, and about a mile away at Target, Thiele said this year the store was filled with more families, instead of the hardcore, deal-hunter that typically shows up when the store opens early on Friday morning.  "It's a lot more casual shopper, which I'm excited about," said Thiele. "It's not necessarily people that had to get up super early and be dedicated, just people going out with families. Grandparents and grandkids," he said. 

Carol and Russel Freitas fall into the deal-hunter category.  It's date night for the Palatine couple of 26 years when they head out to shop each year after dinner, leaving their two teenaged sons behind to tackle the stores.  They said they love it.

They waited patiently in line for more than an hour, hoping to snag one of Sears' hot door busters, a 32-inch flat screen for less than $100. 

As it turns out, they waited in vain.  By the time the store opened, they were in the first third of the line, but the Sears employee had run out of TV vouchers when she got to the Freitas' in line.  "It's okay," said Carol Freitas, "There's other stuff on our list, we're going to head to the boys' department to get shirts for my son."

Shortly before Sears opened, about 12 feet away from the Freitas, there was a small, but growing crowd of suspected "line jumpers,"  who stood about 12 feet away staring at the line.

At close to 9:30 at Target, some shoppers could be seen pushing carts stockpiled with 32 inch flat screen for $147.  Alex Gackle  from Fargo, N.D., left his grandmother's dinner with his dad and brother-in-law to buy  another of the Minneapolis-based retailer's most sought-after deals: They bought  four televisions. One for himself, another for his grandmother, one for her caretaker and the fourth for his father.  They waited in line for more than an hour and things were calm, said Gackle.  That changed when Target's doors opened, said Gackle. "That's when people started getting crazy and rushing toward things."

By 10:30 a long line of shoppers were still waiting to get inside the Toys R Us in Schaumburg.  Customers said they were told that shoppers would be allowed in the store every 10 minutes in increments of 50.

After 10 p.m. the temperature had dropped and Laura Saul stood in a sweater with her two daughters and their cousin to get into Toys R Us.  The item of the evening -- "Monster High" dolls for her 10-year-old daughter, Emily.  She pointed to Emily and said, giggling, "She conned us to do this."  Saul's old daughter, Lauren, who stood nearby, was not in such good spirits, "I could be sleeping," she said.

The trio from Elk Grove shopping at Target said over the years they've seen it all -- fights and shoving matches.  As the 10 p.m. hour approached at Target, they thought things were pretty calm.  At Target People get angry, but this is fun for us," said Wirth.  "Even if we don't get what we want, we don't care."

Erin Chan Ding contributed to this story.

crshropshire@tribune.com | Twitter: @corilyns

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Jackson resigns, cites 'shortcomings,' 'human frailties'

Chicago Tribune reporter Rick Pearson discusses the resignation of Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.). (Posted on: Nov. 21, 2012.)

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., the ambitious political heir to a powerful Chicago family whose once promising future collapsed amid federal ethics investigations and a diagnosis of mental illness, resigned Wednesday from the South Side congressional seat he held for 17 years.

Jackson's downfall represents perhaps the last major political casualty in the long-running corruption scandal that sent former Gov. Rod Blagojevich to prison in March on charges he tried to sell the Senate seat of President Barack Obama.

Jackson's political star was on the rise until allegations surfaced in late 2008 that his supporters offered to raise as much as $6 million for Blagojevich in return for the governor appointing him to the Senate seat vacated by the president-elect. Though Jackson was never charged in that case, a House ethics panel investigation into his actions was ultimately eclipsed by a federal criminal probe based in Washington, D.C., into alleged misuse of campaign dollars.

Jackson's resignation letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was Jackson's first acknowledgment of the ongoing federal corruption investigation.

"I am doing my best to address the situation responsibly, cooperate with the investigators, and accept responsibility for my mistakes, for they are my mistakes and mine alone," Jackson said in the two-page letter. "None of us is immune from our share of shortcomings or human frailties, and I pray that I will be remembered for what I did right."

Jackson's Washington legal team, which recently added former federal prosecutor Dan Webb, a Chicago partner at Winston & Strawn LLP, indicated that while Jackson's political fate has been settled, there's more to come in a court of law.

"We hope to negotiate a fair resolution of the matter but the process could take several months," they said in the statement.

Despite admitting "my share of mistakes," Jackson said his deteriorating health — and treatment for bipolar depression — kept him from serving as a "full-time legislator" and was the reason for his resignation.

Jackson's decision to step down came little more than two weeks after his re-election to another two-year term despite a lack of campaigning. He disappeared from the public eye in June after taking a medical leave from the House for what aides had initially described as exhaustion.

Jackson formed a political tag-team with his wife, Ald. Sandi Jackson, 7th, who over the years has received hundreds of thousands of dollars as a paid political consultant to her husband. Despite her role on the City Council, the couple maintained an upscale home in Washington and sent their children to school there. Sandi Jackson has refused to discuss her husband's political future or the investigation into his campaign spending. She could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

Jackson's resignation immediately launched a field of possible successors —to be nominated and elected in special elections early next year — that could involve more than a dozen Democratic contenders, some of them political has-beens and others up-and-comers representing a new generation of leadership.

Under state law, Gov. Pat Quinn has five days to set dates for primary and general elections, which must be held by mid-March.

Some Democrats quickly offered to broker a nominee to avoid several African-American contenders splitting the vote in the heavily Democratic and majority black 2nd Congressional District, which could allow a white candidate to win. The district stretches from the South Side through the suburbs and as far as Kankakee.

Jackson's decision to leave office brought to an end a monthslong, consuming political game over the 47-year-old congressman's ability to serve his constituents.

In the congressman's public absence during the re-election campaign, both his father, civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., and Sandi Jackson sought to maintain the family's political power by offering generic statements about his health, thanking voters for their prayers and promising a return to Congress when his health permitted.

Ald. Carrie Austin, 34th, whose far South Side ward is in Jackson's district, said she wasn't surprised Jackson stepped down but was disappointed with him for misleading his constituents.

"He's lost the love and concern of the residents in his district," Austin said. "We gave him the benefit of the doubt because of his sickness, and it didn't have anything to do with that."

Jackson was first elected to Congress in 1995 in a special election to replace former Rep. Mel Reynolds, who was convicted on charges including sexual misconduct with a 16-year-old campaign aide and federal bank fraud.

In Washington, Jackson steadily moved up the ladder in a legislative chamber where seniority is a valued commodity to become Illinois' lone representative on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

At home, he began building a local political organization in the South Side and south suburbs, an operation which successful supplanted the once powerful Shaw brothers, twins Bill and Bob, who held various posts.

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Fitch cuts Sony, Panasonic debt ratings to “junk” status

TOKYO (Reuters) – Ratings agency Fitch downgraded the debt ratings of Japan’s Sony Corp and Panasonic Corp to “junk” status citing weakness in their consumer electronics and TV operations, further diminishing the luster of the once-great Japanese brands.

The cut to below investment grade, the first by a ratings firm, comes as the floundering Japanese tech giants face weak demand and fierce competition from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.

A strong yen and bumps in China, where growth has slowed and Japanese goods have been targeted in sometimes violent protests recently, have also weighed on their earnings.

The two companies, along with Sharp Corp, racked up combined losses of $ 20 billion last year, leading them to axe jobs, sell assets and close facilities.

“Both Sony and Panasonic are struggling to generate operating profits, but each is restructuring and I don’t envision the current situation continuing,” said Masahi Oda, Chief Investment Officer at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.

“A collapse of their core business would be a problem, but we are not at the point yet, and to me Fitch looks too negative,” Oda added.

Fitch downgraded Sony by three notches to BB-minus from BBB- minus, saying meaningful recovery will be slow. The move came after Sony, the maker of PlayStation game consoles and Vaio laptops, last week announced plans to raise 150 billion yen ($ 1.82 billion) through the sale of convertible bonds.

“Fitch believes that continuing weakness in the home entertainment and sound and mobile products and communications segments will offset the relatively stable music and pictures segments and improvement in the devices segment which makes semiconductors and components,” it said in statement.

In a separate statement, Fitch cut Panasonic to BB from BBB-minus, a two-notch downgrade, citing weakened competitiveness in its TVs and display panels as well as weak cash generation from its operations. It has a negative outlook on both the companies.

The downgrade sent Sony’s five-year credit default swaps (CDS), insurance-like contracts against debt default or restructuring, 5 basis points wider to 382.5/402.5 basis points.

Panasonic’s CDS for the same maturity were quoted at 295/315 basis points, 15 basis points wider than in Thursday morning Asian trade.

Standard & Poor’s rates the two consumer electronics makers at BBB, the second lowest of the investment grade, while Moody’s Investors Service has Baa3 on them, the lowest of the high-grade category.

With two of the three major ratings agencies still having the two companies as investment grade, institutional investors won’t face too great a pressure to cut their debt holdings in them, analysts said.

SONY SHARES TUMBLE

Sony shares shed 4.4 percent in Frankfurt on Thursday. The shares ended 1.8 percent higher at 834 yen in Tokyo before the Fitch announcement, trading not too far from their 32-year closing low of 793 yen hit on November 15. Sony stock is down 40 percent so far this year.

Panasonic shares were down 0.6 percent in Frankfurt in low volume. The stock inched up 0.7 percent to close at 407 yen in Tokyo trading, near its 34-year closing low of 385 yen reached on November 13.

Last month, Panasonic cut its forecast and warned it will lose close to $ 10 billion in the year to March, as it writes off billions of yen in tax-deferred assets and goodwill related to its mobile phone, solar panel and small lithium battery businesses.

Ahead of its earnings revision, Panasonic won $ 7.6 billion in loan commitments in October from banks including Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, a funding backstop it says will help it avoid having to seek capital from credit markets.

Sony made a small operating profit in the July-September quarter, helped by the sale of a non-core chemicals business, and kept its forecast for a full-year profit of $ 1.63 billion.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Lau in Tokyo and Umesh Desai in Hong Kong; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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SpongeBob Christmas special goes stop-motion

LOS ANGELES (AP) — How does “It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!” squeeze even more fun out of our porous little hero and the Bikini Bottom gang? By turning the animated characters three-dimensional for their holiday special.

In a tribute to classic fare such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the “SpongeBob SquarePants” crew has been re-imagined as puppets and put through their comedy paces for stop-motion photography.

The story line as dreamed up by Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob, and his musical collaborator Andy Paley: The denizens of Bikini Bottom are suddenly rude because of exposure to jerktonium, a plot by naughty Plankton to get on Santa’s (voiced by guest star John Goodman) nice list.

Plankton “wants to put everyone on their worst behavior when they should be on their best behavior, and zany mayhem ensues,” Kenny said.

“It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!” debuts 9:30 p.m. EST Friday on CBS, followed by an encore on the show’s home network, Nickelodeon, at 7:30 p.m. EST Sunday, Dec. 9.

The first-time foray into stop-motion is a welcome change for the 13-year-old “SpongeBob,” Kenny said.

“It’s fun that after all these years we can still do stuff that’s a little different. It’s like reinventing the wheel a little bit — if you can refer to a square character as a wheel,” he added, unable to resist the quip.

The actor looks back fondly on childhood memories of “Rudolph” from the Rankin-Bass studio and other stop-action projects. Even the TV commercial that put Santa on an electric razor subbing for a sleigh gets a Kenny shoutout.

Asked if young viewers might be fazed by seeing the familiar characters in a new guise, Kenny mulled the question before rebutting it.

“The characters act the same, the recording process is exactly the same. Our job is exactly the same. … There’s still plenty of the animated mayhem and anarchy that happens in the 2-D version of the show.”

Screen Novelties, the Los Angeles studio that produced the Christmas special, made a feast out of the job. In just one of their inventive approaches, filmmakers used fruit-flavored cereal to create a coral reef.

“I came to the studio and they had hundreds of boxes of cereal open and were hot-gluing it together,” Kenny recalled.

The Patrick Star puppet was covered in wool-like material and SpongeBob “wasn’t a sponge but some kind of weird material they found somewhere,” he said. “They’re like ‘MacGyver,’ always repurposing something.”

The TV special has a small element of recycling. Kenny calls it a testament to “a goofy little song” he and Paley wrote three years ago — “Don’t Be a Jerk, (It’s Christmas).”

“Bring joy to the world, it’s the thing to do. But the world does not revolve around you. Don’t be a jerk, it’s Christmas” is among its bouncy yet cautionary verses.

The tune is among a dozen included on the digital release “It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! Album,” most written by Kenny and Paley (a songwriter-producer who’s worked with artists including Brian Wilson and Blondie). Four songs are part of the special.

Music fans might want to check out the album for its craftsmanship. The veterans who play on it include harpist Corky Hale and harmonica player Tommy Morgan, both of whom have backed a roster of big stars, including Billie Holliday and Frank Sinatra.

The recording sessions proved an early holiday gift for Kenny.

“We’d spend a half-hour working and then make the musicians tell stories about who they played with,” he said.

___

Online:

http://spongebob.nick.com/

http://www.cbs.com/

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Recipes for Health: Apple Pear Strudel — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

This strudel is made with phyllo dough. When I tested it the first time, I found that I had enough filling for two strudels. Rather than cut the amount of filling, I increased the number of strudels to 2, as this is a dessert you can assemble and keep, unbaked, in the freezer.

Filling for 2 strudels:

1/2 pound mixed dried fruit, like raisins, currants, chopped dried figs, chopped dried apricots, dried cranberries

1 1/2 pounds apples (3 large) (I recommend Braeburns), peeled, cored and cut in 1/2-inch dice

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons unsalted butter for cooking the apples

1/4 cup (50 grams) brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup (30 grams) chopped or slivered almonds

3/4 pound (1 large or 2 small) ripe but firm pears, peeled, cored and cut in 1/2-inch dice

For each strudel:

8 sheets phyllo dough

7/8 cup (100 grams) almond powder, divided

1 1/2 ounces butter, melted, for brushing the phyllo

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment.

2. Place the dried fruit in a bowl and pour on hot or boiling water to cover. Let sit 5 minutes, and drain. Toss the apples with the lemon juice.

3. Heat a large, heavy frying pan over high heat and add 2 tablespoons butter. Wait until it becomes light brown and carefully add the apples and the sugar. Do not add the apples until the pan and the butter are hot enough, or they won’t sear properly and retain their juice. But be careful when you add them so that the hot butter doesn’t splatter. When the apples are brown on one side, add the vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and almonds, flip the apples and continue to sauté until golden brown, about 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the pears and dried fruit, then scrape out onto one of the lined sheet pans and allow to cool completely. Divide into two equal portions (easiest to do this if you weigh it).

4. Place 8 sheets of phyllo dough on your work surface. Cover with a dish towel and place another, damp dish towel on top of the first towel. Place a sheet of parchment on your work surface horizontally, with the long edge close to you. Lay a sheet of phyllo dough on the parchment. Brush lightly with butter and top with the next sheet. Continue to layer all eight sheets, brushing each one with butter before topping with the next one.

5. Brush the top sheet of phyllo dough with butter. Sprinkle on half of the almond powder (50 grams). With the other half, create a line 3 inches from the base of the dough, leaving a 2 1/2-inch margin on the sides. Top this line with one portion of the fruit mixture. Fold the bottom edge of the phyllo up over the filling, then fold the ends over and roll up like a burrito. Using the parchment paper to help you, lift the strudel and place it on the other parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush with butter and make 3 or 4 slits on the diagonal along the length of the strudel. Repeat with the other sheets of phyllo to make a second strudel. If you are freezing one of them, double-wrap tightly in plastic.

6. Place the strudel in the oven and bake 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, brush again with butter, rotate the pan and return to the oven. Continue to bake for another 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve warm or room temperature.

Yield: 2 strudels, each serving 8

Advance preparation: The fruit filling will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator. The strudel can be baked a few hours before serving it. Recrisp in a medium oven for 10 minutes. It can also be frozen before baking, double-wrapped in plastic. Transfer directly from the freezer to the oven and add 10 minutes to the baking time.

Nutritional information per serving: 259 calories; 13 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 15 milligrams cholesterol; 34 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 91 milligrams sodium; 4 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Judge to let Hostess liquidation proceed

Hostess Brands Inc. on Wednesday won permission from a U.S. bankruptcy judge to begin shutting down, and expressed optimism it will find new homes for many of its iconic brands, which include Twinkies, Drake's cakes and Wonder Bread.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York authorized management, led by restructuring specialist Gregory Rayburn, to immediately begin efforts to wind down the 82-year-old company, a process expected to take one year.

"It appears clear to me that the debtors have taken the right course in seeking to implement the wind-down plan as promptly as possible," Drain said near the end of a four-hour hearing.

The judge authorized Hostess to begin the liquidation process one day after his last-ditch mediation effort between the Irving, Texas-based company and its striking bakers' union broke down.

Roughly 15,000 workers were expected to lose their jobs immediately, and most of the remaining 3,200 would be let go within four months.

"This is a tragedy, and we're well aware of it," Heather Lennox, a lawyer for Hostess, told the judge. "We are trying to be as sensitive as we can possibly be under the circumstances to the human cost of this."

Lennox said Hostess has received a "flood of inquiries" from potential buyers for several brands that could be sold at auction, and expects initial bidders within a few weeks.

Joshua Scherer, a partner at Perella Weinberg Partners, which is advising Hostess, said the company was in "active dialogue" over its Drake's brand with one "very interested" party that had toured a New Jersey plant on Tuesday.

He said that regional bakeries, national rivals, private equity firms and others have also expressed interest in various brands and that more than 50 nondisclosure agreements have been signed.

"These are iconic brands that people love," Scherer said.

While prospective buyers were not identified at the hearing, bankers have said rivals including Flowers Foods Inc. and Mexico's Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV were likely to be interested in some of the brands.

Representatives of neither company responded on Wednesday to requests for comment.

Scherer said Hostess could be worth $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion in a normal bankruptcy, an amount equal to its annual revenue. It also has about $900 million of secured debt and faces up to about $150 million of administrative claims.

Scherer expects a discount in this case because plants have already been closed and Hostess' value could fall further if the liquidation were dragged out.

"I've had buyers tell me, 'Josh, the longer it takes, the less value I'm going to be able to pay you,' " he said.

Hostess decided to liquidate on Nov. 16, saying it was losing about $1 million per day after the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco and Grain Millers Union, representing close to one-third of its workers, went on strike a week earlier.

The bakers union walked out after Drain authorized Hostess to impose pay and benefit cuts, which the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Hostess' largest union, had accepted.

Hostess has about 33 plants, plus three it decided to close after the strike began, as well as 565 distribution centers and 570 bakery outlet stores.

Many of the 3,200 workers expected to stay on will help shut these properties and prepare them for sale. Hostess expects to need only about 200 employees by late March.

Rayburn, a former chief restructuring officer for the bankrupt phone company WorldCom Inc., said that letting 15,000 workers go now helps preserve their ability to obtain unemployment benefits.

"I need to maximize the value of the estate, but I need to do the best I can for my employees," he said.

Hostess filed for Chapter 11 protection on Jan. 11, its second bankruptcy filing in less than three years.

The case is In re: Hostess Brands Inc. et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-22052.

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'It's going to be an absolutely awful morning': forecaster

Dense fog caused nearly 200 flights to be canceled and more than 500 others to be delayed at O'Hare and Midway airports this morning, tying up plans of holiday travelers.

As of 9:15 a.m., 158 flights had been canceled at O'Hare International Airport and 25 at Midway Airport, according to flightstats.com, which draws on data from airports and the Federal Aviation Administration. More than 300 flights were reporting delays at O'Hare and more than 200 at Midway.

“Both (airports) are reporting visibility near zero,” Gino Izzi, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, said at 6 a.m. today.  “It’s going to be an absolutely awful morning, and will probably go into the afternoon at most airports.”

Lines were slow but moving at O'Hare this morning.

“Right now it’s OK, right now it’s not too crowded, but I bet later on this afternoon or whatever it will be a lot more crowded,” said Casey Tristano, who was waiting for a flight out of O'Hare.

The Chicago Department of Aviation says it expects 1.8 million passengers to move through the two airports in the week between Nov. 20 and Nov. 27. Sunday is expected to be the busiest day, when O'Hare alone could see more than a quarter million travelers.

Chicago and state police were reporting no serious accidents this morning, though longer-than-usual delays were being reported on expressways.

“I think the fog is going to have some effect on either people's decisions on when they’re going to leave or certainly, if they're out, in getting to where they want to go today," said Beth Mosher, spokeswoman for the AAA Motor Club.

 “You know here in Illinois, we’re going to see about 2 million people take to the roads and almost 40 million people take to the roads nationwide," she said. "Fog certainly is going to have an affect, and all those people on the roads at the same time, getting to where they want to go.”

A dense fog advisory is in effect for northern and central Illinois. The advisory is also in effect for most of Missouri and Wisconsin, as well as eastern Iowa and northwest Indiana.

“If it does improve, it probably won’t be fast,” Izzi said. “We’ll probably be sitting in the pea soup through most of the morning hours. It probably won’t be something where it’s going to be dense fog at 10 a.m. and sunny at 11 a.m.”

The fog is blanketing the area as temperatures headed toward 60 today. Izzi said temperatures on Thanksgiving should reach well into the 60s.

WGN-TV contributed

chicagobreaking@tribune.com
Twitter: @chicagobreaking

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NJ jury convicts NY man in iPad data breach case

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A federal jury on Tuesday convicted a man of illegally gaining access to AT&T‘s servers and stealing more than 120,000 email addresses of iPad users including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and film mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Andrew Auernheimer, of New York, was convicted of identity theft and conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers. Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.

Prosecutors said the former Fayetteville, Ark., resident was part of an online group that tricked AT&T’s website into divulging email addresses including those of Bloomberg, Weinstein, then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who’s now Chicago’s mayor, and other celebrities.

The group then shared the addresses with the website Gawker, which published them in redacted form accompanying a news article about the breach, prosecutors said.

A second man arrested with Auernheimer early last year, Daniel Spitler, of San Francisco, pleaded guilty that June.

At the time of the arrests, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said there was no evidence the men used the swiped information for criminal purposes. But authorities cautioned that it could have wound up in the hands of spammers and scam artists.

According to court papers, the men used a computer script they called the iPad3G Account Slurper to fool AT&T’s servers into thinking they were communicating with an iPad. The theft of the email addresses occurred in June 2010.

Prosecutors said at the time of Auernheimer’s arrest that he had bragged about the operation in a blog posting and in an interview with CNET published online after the Gawker article. Court papers also quoted him declaring in a New York Times article: “I hack, I ruin, I make piles of money. I make people afraid for their lives.”

Auernheimer, after he was charged and released on bail, had declined to comment.

iPad maker Apple Inc., based in Cupertino, Calif., referred questions to AT&T, which acknowledged a security weak spot on a website that exposed the email addresses. AT&T said the vulnerability affected only iPad users who signed up for its 3G wireless Internet service and said it had fixed the problem.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Academy Sues Over “Deer Hunter” Oscar Statuette

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – A possibly counterfeit Oscars trophy for the 1978 film has sparked a very real lawsuit.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington state over an Oscar statuette that “was either a genuine statuette or a very convincing counterfeit.”

If it’s real, the trophy was the one awarded to Aaron Rochin for his sound work on the 1978 film “The Deer Hunter.”

The Academy is suing Washington resident James Dunne, who sold the statue, and Edgard G. Francisco, who purchased it.

Dunne initially offered the statuette for sale on eBay in September but deleted the listing for fear that the Academy might discover it, according to the suit, which was filed last week. He later privately sold the statue of Florida resident Francisco for $ 25,000, the suit says.

The suit goes on to allege that after an appraisal, Francisco decided the statuette was fake and demanded a $ 15,000 refund. Dunne claims he provided a full refund. He also claims that he told Francisco that the trophy might not be authentic before he bought it.

Dunne told the Academy that he had either picked up the statuette at a moving sale or obtained it from a third party who got it at an estate sale.

After getting the refund, the suit says, Francisco threw the statuette away.

The Academy’s suit is two-fold: If the trophy was real, the Academy is seeking restitution for the loss of its property; if it was fake, the Academy claims that the pair infringed on the organization’s Oscars copyright.

The latter would seem to be the more probable scenario in this case. For one thing, the Academy says that the identification number for the statuette would place its manufacture in 1979, while the eBay auction billed it as a “Rare Pre-1950 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences OSCAR Statue Award!”

The Academy is asking for unspecified damages, plus suit costs and attorneys’ fees.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this report)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well’s Vegetarian Thanksgiving 2012

Every fall, Well goes vegetarian for Thanksgiving, taking the meaty bird off the table to make room for a spectacular array of vegetarian soups, sides, main courses, salads and desserts. So get ready to save a turkey and savor the flavors of the fall harvest.
Every day until Thanksgiving, we will add more vegetarian recipes for your holiday table. Click on a photo to learn more about each recipe.

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Hostess, union fail to reach deal

Hostess Brands Inc, the bankrupt maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, said on Tuesday that it failed to reach a deal in mediation with the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco and Grain Millers Union.

The company, which operates three facilities in Illinois, including in Schiller Park and Hodgkins, said it will have no further comment until a hearing scheduled for Wednesday before the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

A representative of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) did not immediately respond for comment.

The ailing company, which also makes Wonder Bread and Drake's cakes, went to bankruptcy court on Monday to seek permission to liquidate its business, claiming that its operations were crippled by the bakers' strike and that winding down was the best way to preserve its dwindling cash.

But Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain of the Southern District of New York urged the sides into a private mediation, prompted by a desire to protect the more than 18,000 jobs at stake.

The 82-year-old Hostess runs 33 bakeries, 553 distribution centers, about 5,500 delivery routes and 527 bakery outlet stores throughout the United States. Bakery operations ceased last week, though product deliveries to stores continued in order to sell already-made products.

The company has blamed union wages and pension costs for contributing to its unprofitably. Hostess Chief Executive Gregory Rayburn has also said the company's labor contracts have deterred would-be bidders for the company and its assets.

Aside from its unionized workforce, analysts, bankers and restructuring experts have said that a fleet of inefficient and out-of-date factories has also eaten up costs. They have said the brand names were likely to be more valuable once they were separated from the factories and sold to non-union competitors.

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Deadly Indiana home explosion investigated as homicide

The house explosion that killed two people and destroyed several homes in an Indianapolis neighborhood is now being investigated as a homicide, authorities said, though no suspects have been named.

Indianapolis Homeland Security Director Gary Coons announced the criminal investigation Monday evening, shortly after a funeral was held for the husband and wife who had lived next door to the house where investigators believe the blast occurred.

"We are turning this into a criminal homicide investigation," Coons said after meeting with residents, the first public acknowledgement by investigators of a possible criminal element to the Nov. 10 explosion.

Search warrants have been executed and officials are now looking for a white van that was seen in the subdivision on the day of the blast, Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry said. Federal authorities are offering a $10,000 reward for information in the case.

Curry said the investigation is aimed at "determining if there are individuals who may be responsible for this explosion and fire," but neither he nor Coons took questions or indicated if investigators had any suspects. No arrests have been made.

A lawyer representing Monserrate Shirley and Mark Leonard, who lived in that home that is believed to have exploded, said Tuesday that the couple was bewildered by the new direction of the investigation.

Randall Cable said in a statement that Shirley and Leonard have "cooperated fully" with investigators and that they want the cause "of this horrific and saddening tragedy to be determined."

Officials say they believe natural gas was involved in the explosion, which destroyed five homes and left dozens damaged. Investigators have focused on appliances in their search for a cause. The explosion caused an estimated $4.4 million in damage.

"We thought something like this was not just an accident," said Doug Aldridge, who heads the neighborhood Crime Watch.

Aldridge said he and other residents frequently saw a white van parked outside the home, though he didn't know who owned it. He said residents are angry and upset but that he expects most of them to stay in the neighborhood.

Hundreds of people attended the funeral Monday for John Dion Longworth, 34, and his 36-year-old wife Jennifer Longworth.

She was a second-grade teacher remembered for knitting gifts for her students, while her husband, an electronics expert, was known as a gardener and nature lover. The school where Jennifer Longworth taught was closed Monday so teachers and students could attend the funeral.

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard told reporters after attending the Longworths' funeral Monday that he had been having a hard time coming to terms with what happened.

"There is a search for truth and there is a search for justice," Ballard said.

John Shirley, who co-owns the house with his ex-wife, Monserrate, has told The Associated Press that he had recently received a text message from his 12-year-old daughter saying the furnace in the home had gone out.

Monserrate Shirley said Leonard had replaced the thermostat and that the furnace was working. Cable has said the daughter told her mother she had smelled an odd odor in recent weeks, but they hadn't reported it.

Shirley and Leonard were away at a casino at the time of the blast, Cable said. The daughter was staying with a friend, and the family's cat was being boarded.

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Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne to reprise roles for “Insidious” sequel

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – FilmDistrict, Alliance Films and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions will bring “Insidious Chapter 2,” the sequel to last year’s hit film “Insidious,” to U.S. theaters on August 30, 2013, the companies announced Monday.

Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye and Ty Simpkins will reprise their roles in the film, which “Insidious” director James Wan will direct from a script written by Leigh Whannell who also wrote the first film.

Jason Blum, who produced “Insidious,” is producing the low-budget sequel through his Blumhouse Productions. Brian Kavanaugh Jones, Oren Peli, Steven Schneider, and Charles Layton are executive producing. Production on the sequel is set to begin on January 15 in Los Angeles.

Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions acquired the U.S. rights to the film in conjunction with FilmDistrict. The film is being financed by Alliance Films. FilmDistrict will distribute the film theatrically in the United States, with Sony handling the majority of ancillary rights in the U.S.

Alliance Films will distribute in Canada, the U.K. (via its Momentum Pictures subsidiary) and Spain (via Aurum), and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions will distribute in all other international territories.

Peter Schlessel, FilmDistrict’s CEO, said: “We are all very excited to see the next chapter of James and Leigh’s vision of the Further. It’s great to be in business again with Blumhouse, Alliance and Sony.”

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Responding to Illnesses Manifesting Amid Recovery From Storm

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Dr. Aaron Gardener, center, attended to a patient at an ad hoc medical unit in Long Beach, N.Y. Many people have coughs, rashes and other ailments.

Day and night, victims of Hurricane Sandy have been streaming into ad hoc emergency rooms and relief centers, like the MASH-type medical unit on an athletic field in Long Beach, and the warming tent in the Rockaways the size of a small high school gym.

They complain of rashes, asthma and coughing. They need tetanus shots because — house-proud and armed with survivalist instincts — they have been ripping out waterlogged boards and getting poked by rusty nails. Those with back pain from sifting through debris receive muscle relaxants; those with chest pain from overexertion are hooked up to cardiac monitors.

“I’ve been coughing,” said Gabriel McAuley, 46, who has been working 16-hour days gutting homes and hauling debris in the Rockaways since the storm hit. “I’ve never felt a cough like that before. It’s deeper down.”

It is impossible to say how many people have been sickened by what Hurricane Sandy left behind: mold from damp drywall; spills from oil tanks; sewage from floodwater and unflushable toilets; tons upon tons of debris and dust. But interviews with hurricane victims, recovery workers, health officials and medical experts over the last week reveal that some of the illnesses that they feared would occur, based on the toxic substances unleashed by the storm and the experience of other disasters, notably Hurricane Katrina, have begun to manifest themselves.

Emergency rooms and poison control centers have reported cases of carbon monoxide exposure — and in New Jersey, several deaths have been attributed to it — from the misuse of generators to provide power and stoves to provide heat.

In Livingston, N.J., the Burn Center at St. Barnabas Medical Center had 16 burn cases over about six days, three times as many as usual, from people trying to dispel the cold and darkness with boiling water, gasoline, candles and lighter fluid.

Raw sewage spilled into homes in Baldwin and East Rockaway, in Nassau County, when a sewage plant shut down because of the surge and the system could not handle the backup. Sewage also spilled from a huge plant in Newark. “We tried to limit our presence in the house because the stink was horrible,” said Jennifer Ayres, 34, of Baldwin, who has been staying temporarily in West Hempstead. She said that she felt ill for several days, that her son had a scratchy throat, and that her mother, who lives in the house, had difficulty breathing, all problems she attributed to the two days they spent inside their house cleaning up last week. “I had stomach problems. I felt itchy beyond itchy on my face.”

Coughing — locally known as the Rockaway cough — is a common symptom that health officials said could come from mold, or from the haze of dust and sand kicked up by the storm and demolitions. The air in the Rockaways is so full of particles that the traffic police wear masks — though many recovery workers do not, worrying people who recall the fallout of another disaster.

“It’s just like 9/11,” said Kathy Smilardi, sitting inside the skeleton of her gutted home in Broad Channel, wrapped in a white puffy jacket, her breath visible in the afternoon cold. “Everyone runs in to clean up, and they’re not wearing masks. Are we going to wait 20 years to figure out that people are dying?”

Health officials and experts say the risks are real, but are cautioning against hysteria. Some coughing could be due to cold, damp weather. Lasting health effects from mold, dust and other environmental hazards generally require long-term, continuous exposure, they said. And the short-term effects can be mitigated by taking precautions like wearing masks, gloves and boots and removing mold-infested wallboard. “The reality is that cleaning up both muck and sewage and spills and removing walls and reconstruction and dealing with debris all do in fact pose concerns,” Daniel Kass, New York City’s deputy commissioner for environmental health, said Friday. “Are they vast or uncontrollable? No. But they depend on people doing work correctly and taking basic precautions.”

The Katrina cough was found to be temporary, said Roy J. Rando, a professor at Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Felicia Rabito, an epidemiologist at the school, said that healthy children exposed to mold after Hurricane Katrina showed no lasting respiratory symptoms when they moved back to new or renovated homes.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, lead levels in New Orleans’s soil dropped after the top layers of dirt, where lead from paint and gasoline can accumulate, were washed away. But in the two years afterward, soil testing found extremely high lead levels, Dr. Rabito said, which she theorized came from renovating old homes. “That’s a cautionary tale,” she said. Lead in soil can be tracked into homes and pose a health hazard to children playing inside or outside.

Though at least one outbreak of norovirus, a contagious gastrointestinal virus, occurred in a Brooklyn high school that was used as a shelter, New York and New Jersey health officials said they had not seen any significant spike in respiratory or gastrointestinal diseases related to the storm.

In Broad Channel, most homes on Noel Road, where Ms. Smilardi lives, have outdoor oil tanks that were overturned by the storm. The innards of many homes, built when asbestos was used, lie spilled among major and minor roads.

Ominous red spots covered both sides of Paul Nowinski’s burly torso. After the storm, Mr. Nowinski, a musician, waded into the basement of his childhood home on Beach 146th Street in the Rockaways to try to salvage records, books and instruments. He was up to his chest in water, which he thinks might have been contaminated with sewage. He said that he did not know the cause of the red marks; and that he had been too busy “schlepping” to go to the doctor.

Angela Macropoulos contributed reporting.

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