Man dies after falling from Mag Mile hotel while taking photos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A representative of the hotel was not available for comment.

pnickeas@tribune.com
Twitter: @peternickeas

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Lidl Christmas dinner offer goes viral on Twitter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

($ 1 = 0.7693 euros)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil

James Edward Bates for The New York Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Illinois foreclosures up for 11th month

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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'Lincoln,' 'Les Miserables,' 'Playbook' lead SAG nominees

Steven Spielberg’s historical biography “Lincoln,” the musical epic “Les Miserables” and the quirky romantic comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” dominated the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations Wednesday morning, receiving four nominations apiece.

“Lincoln” scored nominations in the lead actor category for Daniel Day-Lewis, supporting actress for Sally Field, supporting actor for Tommy Lee Jones and best ensemble in a motion picture. “Les Miserables,” which opens Christmas Day, earned nominations for lead actor Hugh Jackman, supporting actress Anne Hathaway, for best acting ensemble and best stunt ensemble.

And “Silver Linings Playbook” picked up nominations for lead actor Bradley Cooper, actress Jennifer Lawrence, supporting actor Robert De Niro, and best ensemble.

Arguably the biggest winner of the day, however, was 77-year-old Maggie Smith. The two-time Oscar-winning British actress scored the most SAG nominations Wednesday -- four in all. She picked up two nods – best supporting actress and ensemble -- for the feature film “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” a dramedy about a group of British retirees who move to a hotel in India. She also picked up best supporting and ensemble nods for playing the officious dowager in “Downton Abbey.”

The nominations come during one of the mostly closely watched weeks of the awards season: It’s literally make-or-break for Hollywood and the films and performers who are jockeying for recognition – and possibly Oscar gold.

Monday kicked off with the announcement of nominations for the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, followed quickly by Wednesday’s SAG nominations. In just 24 hours, the Golden Globe nominations are to be announced.

PHOTOS: 2013 SAG Award nominees

When the dust settles, those films and performers that emerge are instantly catapulted to front-runner status leading up to the Academy Award nominations, which are to be announced Jan. 10.

Although SAG winners often go on to win the Academy Award, it’s not a given. Just this year, Viola Davis won the SAG Award for best actress for “The Help” but Meryl Streep took home her third Oscar for “The Iron Lady.”

In other film nominations announced Wednesday, “Argo” rounded out the ensemble nominations, with Alan Arkin also scoring a supporting actor nod.

SAG AWARDS: TV nominees

Joining Day-Lewis, Cooper and Jackman in the lead actor category are John Hawkes for “The Sessions” and Denzel Washington for “Flight.” Notably missing from the list of nominees was Joaquin Phoenix for “The Master.” (Just earlier this week, Phoenix had won the L.A. Film Critics Assn. best actor honors.)

Vying with Lawrence in lead actress field are Marion Cotillard for “Rust and Bone,” Jessica Chastain for “Zero Dark Thirty,” Helen Mirren for “Hitchcock” and Naomi Watts for “The Impossible.”

Rounding out the supporting categories are Javier Bardem for “Skyfall,” Philip Seymour Hoffman in “The Master,” Helen Hunt in “The Sessions” and Nicole Kidman for “The Paperboy.” Not making the list: Amy Adams for “The Master,” a role that earned her a supporting actress honor from the L.A. Film Critics.

Unlike other honors, the Screen Actors Guild Awards are strictly for the performers -- there are no nominations for directors or screenwriters, for example.

The SAG Awards also honor performances in TV dramatic and comedy series, as well as movies and miniseries. There were very few surprises in the TV nominations.

The casts of the dramas “Boardwalk Empire,” “Breaking Bad,” “Downton Abbey,” “Homeland” and “Mad Men” were honored with nominations. On the comedy side, there were six nominees due to a tie: “30 Rock,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Glee,” “Modern Family,” “Nurse Jackie” and “The Office.”

FULL COVERAGE: SAG AWARDS 2013

Competing for lead actor in a drama series are Steve Buscemi for “Boardwalk Empire,” Bryan Cranston for “Breaking Bad,” Jeff Daniels for “The Newsroom,” Jon Hamm for “Mad Men” and Damien Lewis for “Homeland.” Lead actress nominations went to Claire Danes for “Homeland,” Michelle Dockery for “Downton Abbey,” Jessica Lange for “American Horror Story: Asylum,” Julianna Margulies for “The Good Wife,” and Smith for “Downton Abbey.”

Vying for lead actor in a comedy series are Alec Baldwin for “30 Rock,” Ty Burrell and Eric Stonestreet for “Modern Family,” Louis C.K. for “Louie” and Jim Parsons for “The Big Bang Theory.”

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Top 2012 searches include Whitney, PSY, Sandy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The world’s attention wavered between the tragic and the silly in 2012, and along the way, Web surfers searched in huge numbers to find out about a royal princess, the latest iPad, and a record-breaking skydiver.

Whitney Houston was the “top trending” search of the year, according to Google Inc.’s year-end “zeitgeist” report. Google‘s 12th annual roundup is “an in-depth look at the spirit of the times as seen through the billions of searches on Google over the past year,” the company said in a blog post Wednesday.

People around the globe searched en masse for news about Houston‘s accidental drowning in a bathtub just before she was to perform at a pre-Grammy Awards party in February.

Google defines topics as “trending” when they garner a high amount of traffic over a sustained period of time.

Korean rapper PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video trotted into second spot, a testament to his self-deprecating giddy-up dance move. The video is approaching a billion views on YouTube.

Superstorm Sandy, the damaging storm that knocked out power and flooded parts of the East Coast in the midst of a U.S. presidential campaign, was third.

The next biggest trending searches globally were a pair of threes: the iPad 3 tablet from Apple Inc. and Diablo 3, a popular video game.

Rounding out the Top 10 were Kate Middleton, who made news with scandalous photos and a royal pregnancy; the 2012 Olympics in London; Amanda Todd, a Canadian teen who was found dead of an apparent suicide in October after being bullied online; Michael Clarke Duncan, the “Green Mile” actor who died of a heart attack in September at age 54; and “BBB12,” the 12th edition of “Big Brother Brasil,” a reality show featuring scantily clad men and women living together.

Some trending people, according to Google, were:

— Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver who became the first to break the sound barrier without a vehicle with a 24-mile plummet from Earth’s stratosphere;

— Jeremy Lin, the undrafted NBA star who exploded off the New York Knicks bench and sparked a wave of “Linsanity”;

— Morgan Freeman, the actor whose untimely death turned out not to be true.

The Internet also continued its rise as a popular tool for spreading addictive ideas and phrases known as “memes.” Remember LOL? If you don’t know what it means by now, someone may “Laugh Out Loud” at you.

This year, Facebook said its top memes included “TBH (To Be Honest),” ”YOLO (You Only Live Once),” ”SMH (Shake My Head).” Thanks to an endlessly fascinating U.S. presidential campaign, “Big Bird” made the list after Republican candidate Mitt Romney said he might consider cutting some funds for public broadcasting.

Yahoo said its own top-searched memes for the year included “Kony 2012,” a reference to the short film and campaign against Ugandan militia leader Joseph Kony; “stingray photobomb” for an unusual vacation snapshot that went viral; and “binders full of women,” another nod to Romney for his awkward description of his search for women cabinet members as Massachusetts’ governor.

And people were happy to pass on popular Twitter posts by retweeting them. According to Twitter, the year’s most popular retweets were President Barack Obama‘s “Four more years,” and Justin Bieber’s farewell to six-year-old fan Avalanna Routh, who died of a rare form of brain cancer: “RIP Avalanna. i love you”.

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TV’s “Storage Wars” is rigged, fired cast member charges

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The popular TV show “Storage Wars” – in which treasure hunters bid to buy unseen items in abandoned units – is rigged, with producers sometimes planting valuable items among the junk, a former contestant said in a lawsuit on Tuesday.

David Hester, one of the reality TV show‘s longest-serving cast members, said producers buried a BMW Mini under trash in one unit featured in the A&E cable series, and a pile of newspapers announcing the death of Elvis Presley in another.

“A&E regularly plants valuable items or memorabilia,” Hester charged in his lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday against the cable channel and the show’s producers.

When he complained, Hester was fired from the show. He is claiming fraud, wrongful dismissal, breach of contract and unfair business practices, and asking for at least $ 750,000 in damages.

A&E declined to comment on the lawsuit on Tuesday, saying it did not comment on pending litigation.

“Storage Wars,” which made its debut in 2010, is the highest-rated non-fiction program on U.S. cable television, and draws about 5 million viewers per episode. It is also broadcast in Canada, Australia, Britain and other countries.

The show follows a group of modern treasure-hunters who compete at public auctions of abandoned storage lockers in the hope of finding valuable items which they can re-sell for a profit.

Hester said that “nearly every aspect of the show is faked.” He said producers regularly place in the lockers “valuable or unusual effects to add dramatic effect” and sometimes stage entire units, according to the lawsuit.

Hester, who lives in Orange County, California, has been featured on the show since 2010. He was fired in October 2012 shortly after a meeting in which he complained about rigging in a meeting with producers, the lawsuit says.

A&E Television Networks is a joint venture of the Hearst Corporation and Disney-ABC Television – a unit of Walt Disney Co.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Chicago best housing market -- for buyers

A sign stands outside a house for sale in the 4400 block of North Mozart Avenue in Chicago. (Chris Sweda/ Chicago Tribune / December 12, 2012)

Tribune staff reporter

5:58 a.m. CST, December 12, 2012

The Chicago area again took the top spot in Zillow's ranking of the best real estate markets for homebuyers, an accolade that is unwelcome news to homeowners trying to sell their properties.

The real estate web site also tapped Chicago in July as the best buyer's market among the nation's 30 largest metropolitan areas.

To calculate its rankings, Zillow looked at selling prices versus list prices, the number of days a listing was on Zillow and the percentage of homes in a market with a price cut. Its ranking as the top buyer's market means properties in the Chicago area stay on the market longer, with more frequent price cuts and sell for less than their listing price, all factors that give prospective buyers more power at the negotiating table.

Among the local municipalities, Inverness, Lansing, Rolling Meadows, Winnetka and Darien were ranked as the top five markets for homebuyers. Sellers had the most negotiating power in Plano, Sycamore, Carpentersville, Elgin and Matteson, according to Zillow.

In November, Zillow identified Chicago as the only market of 30 it follows that experienced month-over-month home value declines in October.

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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Pilot, 2 nurses killed in medical helicopter crash

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

A medical helicopter crashed Monday night on its way to a hospital in Mendota, killing the pilot and two nurses on board, officials said.

The helicopter was registered to Rockford Memorial Hospital and was enroute to pick up a patient at Mendota Community Hospital, officials said.

The helicopter crashed about 8:30 p.m. in a field in the small town of Compton, near the city of Rochelle. The helicopter was destroyed in the crash, according to the FAA.

The Rockford hospital identified the helicopter's occupants as pilot Andy Olesen and flight nurses Jim Dillow and Karen Hollis.

"At Rockford Health System, our hearts are heavy," hospital spokesman Wester Wuori said in a statement. "We grieve the loss of three heroes who dedicated their careers to serving others."

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

Authorities established a staging area near the intersection of U.S. Route 30 and Illinois Route 251, a dispatcher with the Lee County Sheriff's Office said. The intersection lies between Rochelle and Mendota.

The National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation into what caused the crash, according to the FAA.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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