Chicano rock pioneers Los Lobos marking 40 years

LOS ANGELES (AP) — They are seen as the progenitors of Chicano rock ‘n’ roll, the first band that had the boldness, and some might even say the naiveté, to fuse punk rock with Mexican folk tunes.

It was a group called Los Lobos that had the unusual idea of putting an accordion, a saxophone and something called a bajo sexto alongside drums and Fender Stratocaster guitars and then blasting a ranchera-flavored folk tune or a Conjunto inspired melody through double reverb amps at about twice the volume you’d normally expect to hear.

“They were Latinos who weren’t afraid to break the mold of what’s expected and what’s traditionally played. That made them legendary, even to people who at first weren’t that familiar with their catalog,” said Greg Gonzalez of the young, Grammy-winning Latino-funk fusion band Grupo Fantasma.

To the guys in Los Lobos, however, the band that began to take shape some 40-odd years ago in the hallways of a barrio high school is still “just another band from East LA,” the words the group has used in the title of not one but two of its more than two dozen albums.

As a yearlong celebration of Los Lobos‘ 40th anniversary gets under way, having officially begun on Thanksgiving, much is likely to be made of how the band began as a humble mariachi group, toiling anonymously for nearly a decade at East LA weddings and backyard parties before the unlikely arrival of rock stardom.

That’s, well, sort of true.

For long before there was mariachi in Los Lobos‘ life, there was power-chord rock ‘n’ roll. Before the Latin trio Las Panchos had an impact, there was Jimi Hendrix.

“I actually went to go see him when I was 14 or 15,” says drummer-guitarist and principal lyricist Louie Perez, recalling how he had badgered his widowed mother to spend some of the hard-earned money she made sewing clothes in a sweatshop on a ticket to a Hendrix show.

“I sat right down front,” he recalls, his voice rising in excitement. “That experience just sort of rearranged my brain cells.”

About the same time, he had met a guitarist named David Hidalgo in an art class at James A. Garfield High, the school made famous in the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver” that profiled Jaime Escalante’s success in teaching college-level calculus to poor barrio kids. Soon the two had recruited fellow students Conrad Lozano and Cesar Rosas, both experienced musicians.

“Cesar had played in a power trio,” Perez recalls, while Lozano had been playing electric bass guitar for years.

It was sometime in November 1973 (no one remembers the exact day so they picked Thanksgiving) when the band is believed to have been born.

And the group might have stayed just another garage band from East LA, had it not been for a Mexican tradition called Las Mananitas.

“It’s a serenade to someone on their birthday,” Perez explains, and the group members’ mothers had birthdays coming up.

“So we learned about four or five Mexican songs and we went to our parents’ homes and did a little serenade,” Hidalgo recalled separately.

They were such a hit that they began scouring pawn shops for genuine Mexican instruments and really learning to play them.

Because they were at heart a rock ‘n’ roll band, however, they always played the music a little too loud and a little too fast. That was acceptable at the Mexican restaurants that employed them, until they decided to break out the Stratocaster guitars they had so coveted as kids.

“They said, ‘Well, that’s not what we hired you for,’” Perez says, chuckling.

So they headed west down the freeway to Hollywood, where initially the reaction wasn’t much better.

Saxophonist Steve Berlin recalls seeing the hybrid group showered with garbage one night when they opened for Public Image Ltd. Two years later, however, when they opened for Berlin’s group the Blasters, the reaction was different.

“It was quite literally an overnight success kind of thing,” the saxophonist recalls. “By the next morning, everybody I knew in Hollywood, all they were talking about was this band Los Lobos.”

A few nights later, they asked Berlin if he might jam with them. They were working up some tunes melding punk rock with Norteno, a Latin music genre that uses an accordion and a saxophone, and they needed a sax player.

For his part, Berlin says, he had never heard of Norteno music.

Something clicked, however, and soon he was producing the group’s first true rock album, 1984′s “How Will the Wolf Survive?” At the end of the sessions he was in the band.

The next 28 years would be pretty much the same kind of up-and-down ride as the first 12 were.

The group became international rock stars in 1987 with their version of the Mexican folk tune “La Bamba” for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. They melded 1950s teen idol Ritchie Valens’ rock interpretation with the original Son Jarocho style and sent the song to No. 1.

A two-year tour and a couple albums that nobody bought followed, leaving the group broke and disillusioned.

So they poured their anger and disillusionment into the lyrics and power chords of “Kiko,” the 1992 album now hailed as their masterpiece. A new version, recorded live, was released earlier this year.

The influence of Los Lobos‘ cross-cultural work can be heard to this day in the music of such varied young Latino groups as the hip-hop rockers Ozomatli, the Son Jarocho-influenced alt-music band Las Cafeteras and the Latino pop-rock group La Santa Cecilia, says Josh Kun, an expert on cross-border music.

“All of these bands inherited, wittingly or not, the experimental and style crossing instincts that Los Lobos proved were possible while hanging onto and developing your roots as a Mexican-American group,” said Kun, who curated the Grammy Museum’s recent “Trouble in Paradise” exhibition that chronicled the modern history of LA music.

For Los Lobos, winner of three Grammys, that was just the natural way of doing things for guys, Perez says, who learned early on that they didn’t fit in completely on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“As Mexican-Americans in the U.S. we’re not completely accepted on this side of the border. And then on the other side of the border it’s like, ‘Well, what are you?’” he mused.

“So if that’s the case,” he added brightly, “then, hey, we belong everywhere.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

California home for developmentally disabled faces abuse inquiry

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California health officials have threatened to shut down part of the state’s oldest home for developmentally disabled adults due to evidence of physical abuse and neglect, in a move that could displace nearly 300 of its residents.

The state-run Sonoma Developmental Center could lose its license to run one unit if it does not fix the problems, according to a letter the state health department sent this week to the director of the sprawling facility in Eldridge.

Monitors this month and last “documented incidents of abuse constituting immediate jeopardy, as well as actual serious threats to the physical safety of female clients in certain units,” the California Department of Public Health letter said.

Among the incidents were physical abuse, a staff member exposing himself to a female client and inadequate monitoring of a patient who had propensity to swallow inedible items, leading to surgery, said Pam Dickfoss, assistant deputy director of the California Center for Health Care Quality.

The threat of sanctions against the board-and-care center in the heart of wine country represents a significant blow to a historic facility that opened at its current site in 1891 next to the bucolic town of Sonoma.

The center is northern California‘s only state-run residential facility for developmentally disabled adults and sits on 1,000 acres of land, including a petting zoo and sports fields.

Closure of the unit under scrutiny, the Intermediate Care Facility, could require moving 290 of the center’s more than 500 residents, officials said. It is unclear where they would be sent and officials say they hope that will not be necessary.

Administrators have vowed to correct deficiencies and said they plan to appeal the move to potentially strip them of federal funding and a state license for the unit under scrutiny.

“We are moving quickly to fix this center and protect our residents,” said Terri Delgadillo, director of the state Department of Developmental Services, which oversees the center.

She said the problems forced the removal of the center’s executive and clinical directors as well as other staff changes.

State monitors identified 57 deficiencies during a July visit, including four that posed an immediate danger to residents, and dozens of other threats to residents in more recent visits, the letter said.

The facility gets $ 117,000 a day in federal funding, said Nancy Lungren, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Developmental Services.

Most of the center’s residents suffer from cerebral palsy, epilepsy, autism, or a combination of those conditions. Many have lived their entire adult lives at the center.

Leslie Morrison, director of the investigations unit of Disability Rights California, a watchdog group, said she was troubled by reports from the facility over the past year.

“This has been developing for a long period,” Morrison said. “They have been trying to correct things, but it’s going to take a long time.”

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Eric Walsh)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

The VIPs of Ironman Misery

On the Thursday before the 2012 Ironman World Championship in Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii, Troy Ford stood in the lobby of the King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel. Around him were several gaunt men with shaved legs, hands steadying their composite bicycles costing upwards of $ 10,000 each. Ford is the director of the Ironman Executive Challenge program, or XC, as everyone calls it. For $ 9,000, or about 10 times the regular registration price, XC provides a way to VIP the Ironman, which, for the uninitiated, is a 2.4-mile open-water swim followed by a scorching 112-mile bike ride and a full 26.2-mile marathon run. It’s the hardest major endurance race in the world and the ultimate status bauble for a certain set of high-earning, high-achieving, high-VO2-max CEOs.

Finisherpix

Ford, a sinewy 43-year-old with a shaved head, was waiting for two of his client-athletes: Jim Callerame, regional general manager of International Paper (IP), and Luis Alvarez, chief executive officer of Mexican fuel tank manufacturer SAG-Mecasa. Both needed their bikes tuned. For non-XC athletes, a bike tune-up requires a sweaty, anxious wait at an overburdened cycling shop and lost sleep over whether a year of training will be lost to some stoner bike mechanic who fails to true a wheel. Not so for Ford’s guys. Expected wait time: zero. “We’re going to walk right in,” Ford said, smiling.

XC provides its 25 athletes with what it refers to as “high-touch” service: breakfast with the pros, a seat up front at the welcome banquet, Ford at your disposal. He books your travel. He’ll find out your favorite snack is Oreos and have a pack waiting in your suite. When your kids get bored in the hotel restaurant, he’ll improvise with an entire box of Coffeemate creamers that they can use as building blocks.

Ford found his men and set out walking down Ali’i Drive. Callerame said he’d been to West Point, then flight school, then made a tidy pile in the paper industry. “It’s not that flight school is fun,” he said. “You just feel compelled to do these things, you know?”

The stated rationale for XC is that CEOs with demanding jobs have less time to deal with logistics. That fails to account for the fact that most entrants in Ironman races have demanding jobs (the average income is $ 160,000 per year), and to nab a spot in the XC program you have to have a demanding job that’s of interest to race organizers. Half of the XC athletes hold the title of president or CEO. (“The CEO of a lawn mower shop is not really a CEO, in my opinion,” Ford said.) “Once you reach a certain level of success,” said Callerame, “you become a brat. You don’t want to wait in the line anymore.”

Photograph by John Segesta… a 26.2-mile marathon, here at the turnaround on Makako Bay Drive

Callerame was in Kona to clear an item from his bucket list. Just getting to the start line had been a feat. World Triathlon Corp. (WTC), which controls the Ironman brand, metes out slots for its events on a scarcity model. The 2,500 spots for the 2013 Ironman in Arizona sold out in less than a minute. The 2,500 slots for the 2013 Ironman Asia-Pacific Championship Melbourne sold out in five. There are 30 such events each year. Most Ironman customers hate to be denied. Andrew Messick, the CEO of WTC, describes them this way: “When you tell them about the hardest one-day endurance event in the world, they think, ‘I could do that!’ ” What makes getting a bib number for Kona even sweeter is that no berths are openly for sale. This year 84 of the nearly 2,000 spots went to pros, 1,668 to people who qualified by placing at the top of their age groups at earlier Ironman events, 205 were doled out through a lottery, and six were auctioned on EBay (EBAY). The top bidder paid $ 45,605.

Alvarez, 50, a regular in the XC program, wore a red and black Timex race kit, and his gait was lightly pigeon-toed from his Vibram five-finger shoes. He stopped frequently to kiss people hello. The Mexican fuel tank executive prides himself on living his entire life as an endurance event. This was his 91st Ironman, his 10th out of 11 in 2012 alone. Ironman—and mountaineering and skydiving—are constants in his life. “If you think Ironman is tough, try running a business in the global automotive industry,” he said. The day after the race he was going to fly home to Mexico City, where his driver would be waiting at the airport with one of the three suitcases he’d packed before this trip. He’d then fly to Detroit. After Detroit he’d fly home again and retrieve his second suitcase for Munich and Australia. Finally, home again for the third suitcase and his sister’s wedding.

“Ironman takes the stress away from working, and work takes the stress away from Ironman,” Alvarez explained between his warm greetings. “I do business with these people. They’re my family. Ironman is the new golf!” To succeed at both, he said, you need stamina, discipline, grit, and a plan. “If you know someone through Ironman, you know they have commitment, you know they are for real. They are not just talking, not a hot-air balloon.”

Finisherpix

Ford guided Callerame and Alvarez through the deafening beat of the Ironman expo—a carnival of metal-tube and tarpaulin tents hawking everything a triathlete could want—to a backroom with a mechanic, who immediately put Callerame’s bike on a stand. Given that nobody at the expo or on Ali’i Drive wears much clothing, one of the few ways to decipher status between Ironman aspirants is by the color-coded security bracelets on everybody’s wrists. These look like little hospital bands, and they’re in the registration packets. Orange means racer, yellow means family member, purple volunteer, and blue VIP. None of the athletes swarming around the mechanic seemed to notice Ford’s high-touch service, which is just how he likes it. Lots of big egos; best not to ruffle feathers.

Later, back at the King Kamehameha, Ford confessed that there was one perk he couldn’t guarantee: a VIP port-a-potty at the race start. “It would start a riot,” he said. “We’d need a full-time security person.” Not that all XC Ironmen wait in line for the loo. “We did have one XC guy a few years ago who was staying down the road at the Four Seasons. He rented a room at the King Kam, too, for the full three-day minimum, just in case he needed to poop.”
 
 
Considering the race’s origins, it’s odd that Ironman now involves $ 1,000 pit stops. Early on, the archetypical triathlete was not a rich, Spandex-wearing Master of the Universe but a seaside bar owner named Tom Warren, who in 1974 rode a beach cruiser from Canada to San Diego wearing surf trunks.

The first Ironman was proposed in 1977 by U.S. Navy Commander John Collins to figure out who was the fittest among his friends: the swimmers, the bikers, or the runners. Twelve guys competed in the race, which consisted of the 2.4-mile Waikiki Rough Water swim, the 115-mile Around-Oahu Bike Race course, and the Honolulu Marathon. The runners-ups’ crew drained its water supply early in the marathon; they rehydrated their athlete with beer.

The first race directors, too, lacked a killer instinct. In 1979, Collins tried to sell the Ironman to a gym owner named Valerie Silk, who bought it despite initial misgivings. “Frankly, I hated the event,” she later said. “It made no sense to me why anyone would care if a small contingent of men wanted to abuse themselves in that way.” But Silk grew to love the Ironman—for many years she sent all finishers birthday cards. In 1990, with aging parents to care for, she sold the race for $ 3 million to James Gills, a God-fearing, fitness-obsessed ophthalmologist. Gills created the ominous-sounding World Triathlon Corp. In 2008 he sold it to Providence Equity Partners, a private equity firm, for an undisclosed sum. Since then WTC has kicked into moneymaking gear, raising registration prices, refusing refunds or transfers (even when an athlete’s father died suddenly and he needed to attend the funeral the day of the race), and buying up companies around the globe that hold Ironman-distance events.

Along the way, the triathlon transformed from being a pastime for peripatetic endurance freaks into the consummate spreadsheet sport. Even the pros present themselves as dispassionate data-crunchers, talking at the pre-race press conference at the King Kamehameha not about strength, power, or psychological edge but hitting their numbers perfectly to execute their race plans. (Jordan Rapp, the 32-year-old American favorite, who graduated from Princeton with a degree in engineering, was expected to spend the entirety of the 112-mile bike ride staring at his power meter to make sure his output, measured in watts, never wavered.)

“It’s a never-ending optimization problem,” said Sami Inkinen, 36, who two weeks earlier had made $ 49.5 million (based on the value of his remaining shares) in the initial public offering of the real estate company Trulia (TRLA). He regularly finishes as the top amateur in Ironman and Half Ironman races. “There are so many little details that you can influence. It’s a system with many little levers to pull.”

Finisherpix

In addition to measuring his success in dollars, Inkinen is completely caught up in the quantified-self movement. Each day he records on a spreadsheet and in his diary nearly everything in his life: how long he sleeps, his mood, the number of minutes he does core exercises each morning, his resting heart rate, the duration and the paces in his workouts, the number of push-ups he can do, what he eats, and major life events. Then he looks for patterns. “Triathlons appeal to people who like puzzles,” Inkinen said. “Running a race is easy. It’s very, very simple. An Ironman is complicated.”

Given all the opportunities for geeking out in triathlon, it’s little wonder that cycling shoes have replaced wingtips and golf cleats in the tech world. One XC athlete, Mark Watt, a managing director of San Francisco-based investment bank William Blair, said, “You can do more business in Silicon Valley on the bike than anywhere else.” (Pro tip: Because deals can’t be done if you’ve dropped your riding partner, the best way to show dominance up, say, Old La Honda Road is by taking long, hard pulls pedaling in front, reducing wind drag for the others.) Masters swim practice in 50-meter pools at Stanford or UCLA isn’t bad for networking, either. According to Wesley Hein, management consultant for Idea Den in Los Angeles, “You have 15, 20 seconds between intervals. A lot gets covered.”

In 2011 WTC hired Messick, then president of AEG, a company that put on events ranging from the Amgen Tour of California to the Grammys, to be its CEO. Ironman had already achieved the pinnacle in brand loyalty: racers having the M-dot logo, the equivalent of the Nike (NKE) swoosh, tattooed on themselves. But the company wanted to grow. So Messick, now 50, focused even more on overachieving execs. He added Ironman races in North America and overseas. He expanded the Half Ironman, or 70.3, program. Although the WTC won’t release financials, the company, based on its growth, sellouts, and raised prices, appears as healthy as its clients.

Right now it’s keeping an eye on a new class of races, obstacle-based events that require far less conditioning than Ironman. Joe DeSana, a former Wall Streeter and serial Ironman himself, grew fed up with WTC’s super-controlled ethos and started Spartan Race, which features cold-water dunks, crawls under barbed wire, and climbs up greased walls. His idea is that endurance tests get interesting when you hit the wall or freak out. “In a Spartan Race, we fast-forward, we rush that moment,” DeSana said. That doesn’t mean Spartan aspirants need to train longer and harder. “Ironmen, they’re very self-consumed; they spend all their time biking, swimming, and running. It’s a serious commitment to yourself, and your family suffers. For a Spartan Race, you’re not putting in 40 hours a week of training. You’re not buying a $ 5,000 bike, all kinds of heart-monitoring equipment. You’re not screaming at the competitor next to you because he got in the way when you’re trying to eat your Gu.” Races put on by Tough Mudder, the fastest-growing of the obstacle-event companies, aren’t even timed.

For the most part, Ironman has kept itself novelty-free, although last year some thought it was growing too fast. WTC that year planned the first New York-based Ironman U.S. Championship, for August 2012. The idea of a New York Ironman sounded promising: The inaugural event sold out in 11 minutes with an $ 895 price tag. Then, two days before the race, 3.4 million gallons of raw sewage spilled into the swim course, the Hudson River. WTC assured athletes the river was safe, but a 43-year-old man died during the swim portion. Still, Messick opened registration for the 2013 Ironman U.S. Championship the following day, this time with a $ 1,200 fee. Racers balked. The event did not sell out. Messick pulled down the registration website. A month later he called the race off.
 
 
As the sun rose on race day in Kona, an emcee worked the crowd to a backdrop of trance music and Hawaiian drumming. Callerame, Alvarez, and the rest of the XC athletes wore purple swim caps. Inkinen wore blue, along with the rest of the male amateurs. The women wore pink. The race starts at 7 a.m. Pros finish the course in a little over eight hours; stragglers sometimes come in 17 hours later.

Photograph by Kramon… and a 112-mile bike ride, here on the Queen Kaahumanu Highway

Ironman forbids coaching along the course. Ford can’t swim out from Dig Me Beach to pace his athletes. Yet on race days, the high-touch service really kicks in. Earlier, Ford distributed frozen water bottles, to leave with their bikes in what’s known as the transition zone, for athletes who asked for them. He also arranged for XC families to head out from Kailua-Kona Pier in Zodiacs. While the masses squinted to see from Ali’i Drive, out on the water the XC spouses and children at least made confirmed sightings of their racers, though they quickly grew bored. A minute after the Zodiac captain tracked down a purple-capped XC swimmer, his wife had snapped 10 frames and was done. “There’s only so many photos you can take with one arm up,” she said. The next wife, after finding her spouse, said, “Whatever. We saw him, so …”

For everyone, VIP families included, the rest of the race was nearly unwatchable. For the bike and the run, you can stand on what’s known as “hot corner,” the intersection of Palani Drive and the Kuakini Highway, where athletes pass six times. For your commitment to roasting in the sun all day, you’ll see your racer for a combined total of two or three minutes. By 11 a.m., the poolside bar was full of spouses drinking and watching The Price Is Right. Kids were spun out on sugar and heat exhaustion, ordering second rounds of milkshakes.

Deep into the race, near hot corner, at mile six of the run, Ford handed Callerame a yellow sheet cake. He jogged it over to his grandmother, who was just about to turn 100 and was sitting in a wheelchair on the median of Palani Drive. Everybody sang Happy Birthday. Callerame continued on the course.

Out on the Queen K Highway, Pete Jacobs, an Australian marathoning machine, took the lead, going on to win with ease. Finish line crossed, victor’s garland on his head, he finally cracked. “Those last two miles, I was just repeating to myself, ‘Love. Love. Love. I’m in love with the sport. I’m in love with my family. I’m running home to my beautiful wife, Jamie.’ ” Other pro finishers were less coherent. Just after Dirk Bockel, who came in fourth in 2009, crossed the finish line, his body became rigid and he crumpled to the ground. Caitlin Snow, an American, reached the end and kept running, finally stopped by a volunteer.

Inkinen didn’t have his day. He was the first amateur to finish the bike and head out on the run, but he’d been sick, and his heart rate was higher than he expected for much of the race. Ten miles into the run he was still leading the amateurs, but, he said, he “knew things were falling apart and felt extreme fatigue and discomfort.” He dropped out at mile 13 and walked home.

Alvarez took an opposite approach, optimizing the race for pleasure, setting a pace several hours slower than his “PR,” or personal record. Still, his XC coup de grâce awaited him. If you’re just a regular Ironman at the finish line you receive a lei from a volunteer “catcher” and an escort to a tent for pizza, ice cream, and flat Coke. About 10 hours into the race, one such athlete crossed, clinging proudly to his newborn son. It was a beautiful scene, the triumph of tenderness over exhaustion. But his wife didn’t have a blue bracelet, so she and the baby couldn’t join her husband in the reception tent. He had to find her in the crowd and return the child before he could get a drink.

A few minutes later, the first XC athlete crossed: Dan Foehner, Facebook’s (FB) vice president of sales operations. Waiting for him, positioned by Ford across the threshold, were his freshly bathed children and pretty wife. For $ 9,000, the Ironman fell into their arms.

Weil is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

Businessweek.com — Top News

Read More..

NKorea rocket launch shows young leader as gambler

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — A triumphant North Korea staged a mass rally of soldiers and civilians Friday to glorify the country’s young ruler, who took a big gamble this week in sending a satellite into orbit in defiance of international warnings.

Wednesday’s rocket launch came just eight months after a similar attempt ended in an embarrassing public failure, and just under a year after Kim Jong Un inherited power following his father’s death.

The surprising success of the launch may have earned Kim global condemnation, but at home the gamble paid off, at least in the short term. To his people, it made the 20-something Kim appear powerful, capable and determined in the face of foreign adversaries.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans, packed into snowy Kim Il Sung Square, clenched their fists in a unified show of resolve as a military band tooted horns and pounded on drums.

Huge red banners positioned in the square called on North Koreans to defend Kim Jong Un with their lives. They also paid homage to Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, North Korean founder Kim Il Sung.

Pyongyang says the rocket put a crop and weather monitoring satellite into orbit. Much of the rest of the world sees it as a thinly disguised test of banned long-range missile technology. It could bring a fresh round of U.N. sanctions that would increase his country’s international isolation. At the same time, the success of the launch could strengthen North Korea’s military, the only entity that poses a potential threat to Kim’s rule.

The launch’s success, 14 years after North Korea’s first attempt, shows more than a little of the gambling spirit in the third Kim to rule North Korea since it became a country in 1948.

“North Korean officials will long be touting Kim Jong Un as a gutsy leader” who commanded the rocket launch despite being new to the job and young, said Kim Byung-ro, a North Korea specialist at Seoul National University in South Korea.

The propaganda machinery churned into action early Friday, with state media detailing how Kim Jong Un issued the order to fire off the rocket just days after scientists fretted over technical issues, ignoring the chorus of warnings from Washington to Moscow against a move likely to invite more sanctions.

Top officials followed Kim in shrugging off international condemnation.

Workers’ Party Secretary Kim Ki Nam told the crowd, bundled up against a winter chill in the heart of the capital, that “hostile forces” had dubbed the launch a missile test. He rejected the claim and called on North Koreans to stand their ground against the “cunning” critics.

North Korea called the satellite a gift to Kim Jong Il, who is said to have set the lofty goal of getting a satellite into space and then tapped his son to see it into fruition. The satellite, which North Korean scientists say is designed to send back data about crops and weather, was named Kwangmyongsong, or “Lode Star” — the nickname legendarily given to the elder Kim at birth.

Kim Jong Il died on Dec. 17, 2011, so to North Koreans, the successful launch is a tribute. State TV have been replaying video of the launch to “Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il.”

But it is the son who will bask in the glory, and face the international censure that may follow.

Even while he was being groomed to succeed his father, Kim Jong Un had been portrayed as championing science and technology as a way to lift North Korea out of decades of economic hardship.

“It makes me happy that our satellite is flying in space,” Pyongyang citizen Jong Sun Hui said as Friday’s ceremony came to a close and tens of thousands rushed into the streets, many linking arms as they went.

“The satellite launch demonstrated our strong power and the might of our science and technology once again,” she told The Associated Press. “And it also clearly testifies that a thriving nation is in our near future.”

Aside from winning him support from the people, the success of the launch helps his image as he works to consolidate power over a government crammed with elderly, old-school lieutenants of his father and grandfather, foreign analysts said.

Experts say that what is unclear, however, is whether Kim will continue to smoothly solidify power, steering clear of friction with the powerful military while dealing with the strong possibility of more crushing sanctions. The United Nations says North Korea already has a serious hunger problem.

“Certainly in the short run, this is an enormous boost to his prestige,” according to Marcus Noland, a North Korea analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Noland, however, also mentioned the “Machiavellian argument” that this could cause future problems for Kim by significantly boosting the power of the military — “the only real threat to his rule.”

Successfully firing a rocket was so politically crucial for Kim at the onset of his rule that he allowed an April launch to go through even though it resulted in the collapse of a nascent food-aid-for-nuclear-freeze deal with the United States, said North Korea analyst Kim Yeon-su of Korea National Defense University in Seoul.

The launch success consolidates his image as heir to his father’s legacy. But it could end up deepening North Korea’s political and economic isolation, he said.

On Friday, the section at the rally reserved for foreign diplomats was noticeably sparse. U.N. officials and some European envoys stayed away from the celebration, as they did in April after the last launch.

Despite the success, experts say North Korea is years from even having a shot at developing reliable missiles that could bombard the American mainland and other distant targets.

North Korea will need larger and more dependable missiles, and more advanced nuclear weapons, to threaten U.S. shores, though it already poses a shorter-range missile threat to its neighbors.

The next big question is how the outside world will punish Pyongyang — and try to steer North Korea from what could come next: a nuclear test. In 2009, the North conducted an atomic explosion just weeks after a rocket launch.

Scott Snyder, a Korea specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently that North Korea‘s nuclear ambitions should inspire the U.S., China, South Korea and Japan to put aside their issues and focus on dealing with Pyongyang.

If there is a common threat that should galvanize regional cooperation, “it most certainly should be the prospect of a 30-year-old leader of a terrorized population with his finger on a nuclear trigger,” Snyder said.

____

Jon Chol Jin in Pyongyang, and Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. Follow Jean H. Lee on Twitter: (at)newsjean.

Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

McAfee says will not return to Belize, willing to talk to police

(Reuters) – U.S. software pioneer John McAfee said that he will not return to Belize where police want to question him about a murder case, but that he is willing to let authorities from the Central American nation interview him in a “neutral country.”

McAfee, 67, went into hiding after his American neighbor Gregory Faull was fatally shot in November. He made his way secretly to neighboring Guatemala, but the authorities there deported him to Miami on Wednesday.

“I will not go back to Belize. I had nothing to do with the murder,” a relaxed-looking McAfee said in an interview on CNBC.

Police in Belize want to question McAfee as a “person of interest” in Faull’s killing, though authorities there say he is not a prime suspect. McAfee said he barely knew Faull and had “absolutely nothing” to do with his death.

Belize police say their country’s extradition treaty with the United States extends only to suspected criminals, a designation that does not apply to McAfee.

McAfee, an eccentric tech pioneer, made a fortune from the anti-virus software bearing his name and had lived in Belize for four years.

He has charged that authorities have persecuted him because he refused to pay $ 2 million in bribes, and that the extortion attempt occurred after armed soldiers shot one of his dogs, smashed up his property and falsely accused him of running a methamphetamine laboratory.

Belize’s prime minister has rejected the allegations, calling McAfee paranoid and “bonkers.”

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Singer-songwriter Carole King to receive U.S. Gershwin prize

(Reuters) – American singer-songwriter Carole King will be awarded the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the U.S. national library said on Thursday.

The multiple Grammy Award winner co-wrote her first No. 1 hit at age 17 with then-husband Gerry Goffin and was the first female solo artist to sell more than 10 million copies of a single album, with her 1971 release “Tapestry.”

The prize honors individuals for lifetime achievement in popular music, the library said. It is named after songwriting brothers George and Ira Gershwin.

King, now 70, topped the charts with the song “It’s Too Late” in 1971, but is best known for her work performed by others, including “You’ve Got a Friend” by James Taylor and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” by Aretha Franklin.

“I was so pleased when the venerable Library of Congress began honoring writers of popular songs with the Gershwin Prize,” King said in a statement. “I’m proud to be the fifth such honoree and the first woman among such distinguished company.”

King and Goffin wrote some the biggest hits of the 1960s before their nine-year marriage ended in 1968. They rose to prominence in 1960 writing “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for the Shirelles.

The duo also scored hits with “Take Good Care of My Baby,” performed by Bobby Vee in 1961, “The Loco-Motion,” performed by Little Eva in 1962 and “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” performed by The Monkees in 1967, among others.

New York-born King did not hit it big as a singer until 1971, when “Tapestry” topped the U.S. album charts for 15 weeks, then a record for a female solo artist.

Past recipients of the award include Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and songwriting tandem Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Xavier Briand)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Newtown Shooting: Young Kids Cope With Horror

Witnesses at Sandy Hook Elementary School reported horrific scenes as a shooter took 27 lives today — the shattering sounds of gunshots, children locked in the bathrooms and parents crying outside in the parking lot.

Experts say that the young children who saw events first-hand can have lasting psychological scars, but those whose home lives are stable and supportive will have fewer long-term scars.

“It was horrific,” said Kaitlin Roig, a 29-year-old teacher, who was in a morning meeting when the gunman entered the school.

“Suddenly, I heard rapid fire, like an assault weapon,” the first grade teacher told ABC. She rounded up her 14 students and locked them and herself in the bathroom. “I helped kids climb on the toilet dispenser [so they could all fit in].

“I thought we were going to die.”

CLICK HERE for more on the Newtown, Conn., School Shooting.

Children in such a situation “are terrified, and they don’t have the cognitive or emotional capacities to make sense of this,” said Dr. Nadine Kaslow, professor and vice chair of the department of psychiatry at Emory School of Medicine.

“Not that any of us can make any sense of this,” said Kaslow. “It’s truly inconceivable.”

At least 27 people, mostly children under the age of 10, were shot and killed at the K-to-4 school this morning, federal and state sources tell ABC News.

The massacre drew SWAT teams to the school and the town of Newtown locked down all its schools, authorities said today.

According to federal sources, the gunman was identified as Adam Lanza, 20. His mother, who worked at the elementary school, was one of the victims.

CLICK HERE for more photos from the scene.

One mother named Christine who has a child at Sandy Hook told ABC about the chaos that ensued when she arrived at the school this morning.

“When I got there, there were just parents running into the firehouse because they were directing us there. That’s where children had been evacuating to, and we went in and people were just grabbing their children and hugging and crying. There were lots of children crying.”

She said another parent who had been at the school at the time was “pretty broken up.” Many parents didn’t know where their children were.

In 1996 in Dunblane, Scotland, 15 children and a teacher were killed in a similar massacre.

Parents and caregivers play the most important role in a child’s recovery from a traumatic event, according to Dr. Gene Beresin, director of training in child and adolescent psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“Children need to know that they are safe,” he said. “Are people taking care of me? How is this going to affect my life? They need to be reassured.”

“Thinking about kids in all disasters, you think about the airlines — when the oxygen mask drops, you put your mask on first and then help the child next,” said Beresin.

“Parents need to take care of themselves first. [The children] need to know you are calm and in control,” he said.

Adults and community support is critical, according to Beresin.

Young children who witness violence can have acute or post-traumatic stress disorder. “The immediate reaction is shock and horror,” he said.

After events like this, communities typically set up crisis centers in a church or other public place where people can seek professional and spiritual help.

Turn the television off, say experts, but answer your children’s questions. Don’t disregard an older sibling who is watching the news unfold and is worried. They need assurance, too, he said.

According to Beresin, young children may not have “discreet memories” of the event, but they can still have an emotional reaction, experiencing nightmares or, conversely, emotional numbing, said Beresin.

“Some kids shut down,” he said. “They may actually turn off and not want to be hugged or cuddled — that’s a normal response. Some kids are clingy, and others will withdraw.”

Kids can also regress in the aftermath of a traumatic event.

Parents should not force a child to open up, but “don’t let them be alone,” he said.

One way young children can work out problems are through reenactment. “They may be playing a game about shooting and dying, and parents should not stop that,” said Beresin. “Let them do it.”

Young children can also ask questions that don’t directly relate to the event, according to Rahill Briggs, assistant professor of pediatrics at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

“They can ask directly or less directly about guns, or heaven or death or about a pet that died,” she said.

In studies of 9/11 one of the findings — not a surprising one — after the terrorist attacks was that those who were most directly affected “suffered the most,” according to Briggs. Coping with grief long-term depended on the cohesion of the child’s family — “how well the caregiving system responds to distress. When it is proactive, by definition the children do better.”

“What was the most incredibly predictive five years out was how everyone was doing before the incident,” said Briggs. “It is the same for mental health in general, those who are coping well in their lives before a trauma are the most likely to cope well afterwards — even if they saw the towers fall.”

Also Read
Parenting/Kids News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Man City losses halve in 2011-12

14 December 2012 Last updated at 11:49 ET

Manchester City has revealed that its financial losses for 2011-12 have halved from a year earlier.

The Premier League champions announced a pre-tax loss of £93.4m, down from £189.6m in 2010-11.

Revenues increased 51% to £231.1m, with the club’s first appearance in the Uefa Champions League contributing more than £22m in new revenue.

The club’s sponsorship deal with Etihad Airways helped commercial partnership revenue double from £48.5m to £97m.

City’s operating loss also improved from a record £194.9m to £104.1m.

Uefa’s Financial Fair Play rules, which say clubs must break even over three years, come into full effect in 2013-14.

Investment impact

City was acquired by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi in 2008. In its annual report, the club said it had undergone a “significant period of investment” since then. Over that time, it has spent about half a billion pounds on new players.

“The club’s performance in the 2011-12 reporting period demonstrates the tangible and positive impacts of that investment across many areas of our operations,” it said.

It added that its player recruitment strategy had transitioned from one of rebuilding to one of refinement.

“With a relatively young squad that has won an FA Cup and a Barclays Premier League in consecutive seasons, our recruitment needs have been reduced.

“As a result, the amortisation of player contracts and the net impact of player trading on the club’s bottom line has decreased by 27% (£30.3m) over the previous year, consistent with our belief that the peak of the club’s investment in its playing squad has passed.”

The club’s wage bill increased to £178.2m from £153.7m the previous year.

That covered 237 football players and staff and 239 commercial and administration staff.

BBC News – Business

Read More..

Cuban lawmakers meet to consider economy, budget

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban lawmakers are holding the second of their twice-annual sessions with a year-end report expected on the state of the country’s economy.

Legislators are also to approve next year’s budget.

Cuban leaders have sometimes used the parliamentary gatherings to make important announcements or policy statements.

Observers will be watching for word on the progress of President Raul Castro‘s economic reform plan and efforts to promote younger leaders.

The unicameral parliament will reconvene in February with a new membership following elections. It is then expected to name Castro to another five-year term.

State-run media said Castro presided over Thursday’s session.

It was not open to international journalists.

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

A Minute With: Director Peter Jackson on shooting “The Hobbit”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – After bringing J.R.R. Tolkien‘s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy to life, filmmaker Peter Jackson is back in the world of Middle Earth with the author’s prequel, “The Hobbit.”

The three-film series is due to open in U.S. theaters on Friday with “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.”

The Oscar-winning director, 51, told Reuters about the 3D film, including the 48 frames per second (fps) format he used, which was widely debated by fans and critics.

Q: You originally intended “The Hobbit” to only be two parts. Why stretch it out to three?

A: “Back in July, we were near the end of our shoot and we started to talk about the things that we had to leave out of the movies. There’s material at the end of ‘The Return of the King’ (the final part of ‘The Lord of the Rings‘ trilogy) in the appendices that takes place around the time of ‘The Hobbit.’

“We were thinking, this is our last chance because it’s very unlikely we’re ever going to come back to Middle Earth as filmmakers. So we talked to the studio and next year we’re going to be doing another 10 to 12 weeks of shooting because we’re now adapting more of Tolkien’s material.”

Q: At what point did you decide you would direct the film yourself after originally handing it to Guillermo del Toro?

A: “At the time (we wrote the script), I was worried about repeating myself and worried that I was competing with myself. I thought it would be interesting to have another director with a fresh eye coming in and telling the story. But after Guillermo left, having worked on script and the production for well over a year at that stage, I was very emotionally attached to it. I just thought, this is an opportunity I’m not going to say no to.”

Q: You hired Gollum actor Andy Serkis to do second unit directing on the film, something he has never done before. What made you hand the task to a novice?

A: “I know how strongly Andy has been wanting to direct. One of the problems with second unit is that you tend to have conservative footage given to you by the director. They play it safe. I knew that I wouldn’t get that from Andy because he’s got such a ferocious energy. He goes for it and doesn’t hold back. I knew that if Andy was the director I would be getting some interesting material, that it would have a life and energy to it.”

Q: What inspired you to make a film in 48 fps?

A: “Four years ago I shot a six or seven minute King Kong ride for Universal Studios’ tram ride in California. The reason we used the high frame rate was that we didn’t want people to think it’s a movie. You want that sense of reality, which you get from a high frame rate, of looking in to the real world. At the time, I thought it would be so cool to make a feature film with this process.”

Q: Not everyone has embraced “The Hobbit” in 48 fps.

A: “For the last year and a half there’s been speculation, largely negative, about it and I’m so relieved to have gotten to this point. I’ve been waiting for this moment when people can actually see it for themselves. Cinephiles and serious film critics who regard 24 fps as sacred are very negative and absolutely hate it. Anybody I’ve spoken to under the age of 20 thinks it’s fantastic. I haven’t heard a single negative thing from the young people, and these are the kids that are watching films on their iPads. These are the people I want to get back in the cinema.”

Q: Why all the hoopla over a frame rate?

A: “Somehow as humans, we have a reaction to change that’s partly fear driven. But there are so many ways to look at movies now and it’s a choice that a filmmaker has. To me as a filmmaker, you’ve got to take the technology that’s available in 2012, not the technology we’ve lived with since 1927, and say how can we enhance the experience in the cinema? How can we make it more immersive, more spectacular?”

Q: George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $ 4 billion. Do you think you will sell your New Zealand facility Weta someday?

A: “I would if I want to retire at some stage and want to have a nice easy life, which will hopefully happen one day. But in the foreseeable future, the fact that I’m an owner of my own digital effects facility is a fantastic advantage for me.”

Q: How so?

A: “When we asked the studio if we could shoot ‘The Hobbit‘ at 48 fps, we promised the budget would be the same. But it actually does have a cost implication because you’ve got to render twice as many frames and the rendering takes more time. The fact that we owned Weta and could absorb that in-house was actually part of the reason we were able to do the 48 frames.”

(Editing by Patricia Reaney)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..