After a billion, what next for Facebook?

MENLO PARK — In just eight years, Facebook signed up more than half the world's Internet population.

Now it's going after the rest.

Facebook wants to reach every single person on the Internet whether they are logging on from a laptop in Santa Monica, an iPhone in Tokyo or a low-tech phone with a tiny screen in Nairobi.

It's parachuting into market after market to take on homegrown social networks by currying favor with the locals and venturing where many people have spotty — if any — access to the Internet.

In Japan, it lets users list their blood types, which the Japanese believe — like astrological signs in the Western world — give insight into personality and temperament. In Africa, Facebook markets a stripped-down, text-only version of its service that works on low-tech mobile phones.

International growth is crucial to maintain its dominance as the world's largest social network. The company's scorching pace of growth has cooled especially in the United States. Facebook must coax users to sign up — and make sure it remains popular with the users it already has — or risk being knocked from its lofty perch.

"We're not a company that is just trying to add more people," said Chris Cox, Facebook's vice president of product. "What we are trying to do is build a service that everyone in the world can use."

But overseas growth that once seemed to come so easily is slower now. Facebook has already saturated most major markets around the globe. Eight out of 10 Facebook users are outside of the U.S.

"I don't think that Facebook has a chance of attracting another billion users," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said.

Inside Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters is a small army out to prove naysayers wrong. Above their desks they have hung flags from around the world that represent their nationalities. They obsessively scan screens that track user growth around the world.

They cheered and popped open champagne in September when the number of active Facebook users crossed 1 billion. But the moment of jubilation quickly passed as they redoubled their efforts to spread Facebook around the globe.

Naomi Gleit is the soft-spoken, headstrong 29-year-old product manager in charge of growth at Facebook. She says Facebook's future is on mobile devices, the medium by which most people will experience the Web in coming years. Facebook now works on more than 2,500 different phones, helping it gain a foothold in emerging markets. And it is forging relationships with mobile phone operators around the world.

Gleit's 150-member team has boots on the ground in far-flung places armed with low-tech phones and cheap data plans. Even team members here carry Nokia phones alongside their iPhones to update their status or check their News Feed.

"We originally built a product for ourselves," Gleit said. "This is different. Now we need to understand the experience of users who are not like us."

Analysts say Facebook already has established an impressive track record of uprooting entrenched competitors. In Britain, it displaced the dominant social network Bebo, forcing AOL to sell it at a huge loss. In Germany, Facebook overtook the homegrown StudiVZ. Facebook even broke Google social network Orkut's stranglehold on Brazil and India.

In 2009, it launched a clever tool to help Facebook users find their Orkut friends on Facebook and instantly send them friend requests. Two years later it swiped Google's top executive in Latin America, Alexandre Hohagen. Facebook sprinted ahead of Orkut one year ago, and now has 61 million active users in Latin America's largest country.

Facebook is treating India as a test lab for how it can spread in other emerging markets such as Indonesia. Facebook, which has offices in Hyderabad, India, has grown from 8 million users in 2010 to 65 million users today. It is aggressively targeting India's youth. A few hundred young Indian programmers recently jammed a Facebook hackathon at a Bangalore convention center to chug chai and brainstorm new apps that would appeal to their friends.

But Facebook has its eyes on a much bigger prize beyond the country's 100 million Internet users: the 900 million-plus Indians on mobile phones. Some analysts predict India will have more Facebook users than any other country including the United States by 2015.

The company also faces significant challenges in India. It must make the service captivating on low-tech mobile phones with unreliable Internet connections and it must gingerly navigate demands from the Indian government to remove objectionable content without alienating users.

Facebook is making some of its biggest moves in Russia, South Korea and Japan, the only major markets where it operates but has penetration of less than 50%, according to research firm ComScore.

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Katzenberg, Spielberg attend Governors Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Stars such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are arriving at the Hollywood and Highland Center in Los Angeles to pay homage to four industry heavyweights.

The film academy's fourth annual Governors Awards are being presented Saturday to honorary Oscar winners Jeffrey Katzenberg, stuntman Hal Needham, documentarian D.A. Pennebaker and American Film Institute founding director George Stevens Jr.

The four men will accept their Oscar statuettes during the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' private dinner program in the Ray Dolby Ballroom. Portions of the untelevised event may be included in the Feb. 24 Academy Awards telecast.

Other guests expected at Saturday's ceremony include Quentin Tarantino, Bradley Cooper, Kristen Stewart, Bryan Cranston and Oscar host Seth MacFarlane.

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Adderall, a Drug of Increased Focus for N.F.L. Players

The first time Anthony Becht heard about Adderall, he was in the Tampa Bay locker room in 2006. A teammate who had a prescription for the drug shook his pill bottle at Becht.

“ ‘You’ve got to get some of these,’ ” Becht recalled the player saying. “I was like, ‘What the heck is that?’ He definitely needed it. He said it just locks you in, hones you in. He said, ‘When I have to take them, my focus is just raised up to another level.’ ”

Becht said he did not give Adderall another thought until 2009, when he was playing in Arizona and his fellow tight end Ben Patrick was suspended for testing positive for amphetamines. The drug he took, Patrick said, was Adderall. Becht asked Patrick why he took it, and Patrick told Becht, and reporters, that he had needed to stay awake for a long drive.

Those two conversations gave Becht, now a free agent, an early glimpse at a problem that is confounding the N.F.L. this season. Players are taking Adderall, a medication widely prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, whether they need it or not, and are failing drug tests because of it. And that is almost certainly contributing to a most-troubling result: a record-setting year for N.F.L. drug suspensions.

According to N.F.L. figures, 21 suspensions were announced this calendar year because of failed tests for performance-enhancing drugs, including amphetamines like Adderall. That is a 75 percent increase over the 12 suspensions announced in 2011 and, with a month to go in 2012, it is the most in a year since suspensions for performance-enhancing drugs began in 1989.

At least seven of the players suspended this year have been linked in news media reports to Adderall or have publicly blamed the drug, which acts as a strong stimulant in those without A.D.H.D. The most recent examples were Tampa Bay cornerback Eric Wright and New England defensive lineman Jermaine Cunningham last week.

The N.F.L. is forbidden under the terms of the drug-testing agreement with the players union from announcing what substance players have tested positive for — the urine test does not distinguish among types of amphetamines — and there is some suspicion that at least a few players may claim they took Adderall instead of admitting to steroid use, which carries a far greater stigma. But Adolpho Birch, who oversees drug testing as the N.F.L.’s senior vice president for law and labor, said last week that failed tests for amphetamines were up this year, although he did not provide any specifics. The increase in Adderall use probably accounts for a large part of the overall increase in failed tests.

“If nothing else it probably reflects an uptick in the use of amphetamine and amphetamine-related substances throughout society,” Birch said. “It’s not a secret that it’s a societal trend, and I think we’re starting to see some of the effects of that trend throughout our league.”

Amphetamines have long been used by athletes to provide a boost — think of the stories of “greenies” in baseball clubhouses decades ago. That Adderall use and abuse has made its way to the N.F.L. surprises few, because A.D.H.D. diagnoses and the use of medication to control it have sharply increased in recent years.

According to Dr. Lenard Adler, who runs the adult A.D.H.D. program at New York University Langone Medical Center, 4.4 percent of adults in the general population have the disorder, of which an estimated two-thirds are men. Birch said the number of exemptions the N.F.L. has granted for players who need treatment for A.D.H.D. is “almost certainly fewer” than 4.4 percent of those in the league.

The rates of those with the disorder fall as people get older; it is far more prevalent in children and adolescents. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using input from parents, found that as of 2007, about 9.5 percent or 5.4 million children from ages 4 to 17 had A.D.H.D. at some point. That was an increase of 22 percent from 2003. Boys (13.2 percent) were more likely to have the disorder than girls (5.6 percent).

Of children who currently have A.D.H.D., 66.3 percent are receiving medication, with boys 2.8 times more likely to receive medication. Those 11 to 17 years old are more likely to receive medication than younger children.

But Adderall, categorized by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule II controlled substance because it is particularly addictive, is also used by college students and even some high school students to provide extra energy and concentration for studying or as a party drug to ward off fatigue.

Dr. Leah Lagos, a New York sports psychologist who has worked with college and professional athletes, said she had seen patients who have used Adderall. She said she believed the rise in its use by professional athletes mimicked the use by college students. Just a few years ago, she said, it was estimated that 1 in 10 college students was abusing stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin. That estimate, Lagos said, has almost doubled.

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After a billion, what next for Facebook?

MENLO PARK — In just eight years, Facebook signed up more than half the world's Internet population.

Now it's going after the rest.

Facebook wants to reach every single person on the Internet whether they are logging on from a laptop in Santa Monica, an iPhone in Tokyo or a low-tech phone with a tiny screen in Nairobi.

It's parachuting into market after market to take on homegrown social networks by currying favor with the locals and venturing where many people have spotty — if any — access to the Internet.

In Japan, it lets users list their blood types, which the Japanese believe — like astrological signs in the Western world — give insight into personality and temperament. In Africa, Facebook markets a stripped-down, text-only version of its service that works on low-tech mobile phones.

International growth is crucial to maintain its dominance as the world's largest social network. The company's scorching pace of growth has cooled especially in the United States. Facebook must coax users to sign up — and make sure it remains popular with the users it already has — or risk being knocked from its lofty perch.

"We're not a company that is just trying to add more people," said Chris Cox, Facebook's vice president of product. "What we are trying to do is build a service that everyone in the world can use."

But overseas growth that once seemed to come so easily is slower now. Facebook has already saturated most major markets around the globe. Eight out of 10 Facebook users are outside of the U.S.

"I don't think that Facebook has a chance of attracting another billion users," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said.

Inside Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters is a small army out to prove naysayers wrong. Above their desks they have hung flags from around the world that represent their nationalities. They obsessively scan screens that track user growth around the world.

They cheered and popped open champagne in September when the number of active Facebook users crossed 1 billion. But the moment of jubilation quickly passed as they redoubled their efforts to spread Facebook around the globe.

Naomi Gleit is the soft-spoken, headstrong 29-year-old product manager in charge of growth at Facebook. She says Facebook's future is on mobile devices, the medium by which most people will experience the Web in coming years. Facebook now works on more than 2,500 different phones, helping it gain a foothold in emerging markets. And it is forging relationships with mobile phone operators around the world.

Gleit's 150-member team has boots on the ground in far-flung places armed with low-tech phones and cheap data plans. Even team members here carry Nokia phones alongside their iPhones to update their status or check their News Feed.

"We originally built a product for ourselves," Gleit said. "This is different. Now we need to understand the experience of users who are not like us."

Analysts say Facebook already has established an impressive track record of uprooting entrenched competitors. In Britain, it displaced the dominant social network Bebo, forcing AOL to sell it at a huge loss. In Germany, Facebook overtook the homegrown StudiVZ. Facebook even broke Google social network Orkut's stranglehold on Brazil and India.

In 2009, it launched a clever tool to help Facebook users find their Orkut friends on Facebook and instantly send them friend requests. Two years later it swiped Google's top executive in Latin America, Alexandre Hohagen. Facebook sprinted ahead of Orkut one year ago, and now has 61 million active users in Latin America's largest country.

Facebook is treating India as a test lab for how it can spread in other emerging markets such as Indonesia. Facebook, which has offices in Hyderabad, India, has grown from 8 million users in 2010 to 65 million users today. It is aggressively targeting India's youth. A few hundred young Indian programmers recently jammed a Facebook hackathon at a Bangalore convention center to chug chai and brainstorm new apps that would appeal to their friends.

But Facebook has its eyes on a much bigger prize beyond the country's 100 million Internet users: the 900 million-plus Indians on mobile phones. Some analysts predict India will have more Facebook users than any other country including the United States by 2015.

The company also faces significant challenges in India. It must make the service captivating on low-tech mobile phones with unreliable Internet connections and it must gingerly navigate demands from the Indian government to remove objectionable content without alienating users.

Facebook is making some of its biggest moves in Russia, South Korea and Japan, the only major markets where it operates but has penetration of less than 50%, according to research firm ComScore.

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South L.A. frustrated by delays in building new King hospital

Earlier this year, Joane Austin rushed her elderly mother to the emergency room for fear she was having a heart attack.

Austin normally would have made the short trip to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, the landmark hospital in South Los Angeles. But King/Drew has been closed for five years, so Austin drove several miles to the emergency room at Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood.

"I prayed all the lights would stay green," she said. "It was scary."

Once they arrived, doctors determined that Austin's mother needed emergency surgery to remove scar tissue around her intestines.

For years, King/Drew provided emergency, trauma and inpatient care to residents from throughout South Los Angeles. After a series of medical errors resulted in patient deaths, Los Angeles County closed it in 2007. County officials promised the community a better, safer new medical center in a few years.

But the opening has been repeatedly delayed, and the community is still waiting. Originally, officials hoped to have the new facility ready by 2010. Then it was pushed to 2012. Now, officials say they plan to have construction completed next year and the hospital opening its doors in 2014.

Without a nearby hospital, patients have had to travel to such places as Bellflower, Inglewood and Long Beach for emergency room and inpatient care.

Several local hospitals — California Hospital Medical Center, L.A. County/USC Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center — received an influx of former King patients after the closure. The closest hospital, St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, reported an increase of 20% to 30% in emergency room visits since King/Drew closed, though other factors also may have contributed to the rise.

Getting to other hospitals has presented a challenge for many in the low-income neighborhood, said William Hobson, president and chief executive of the Watts Healthcare Corp. "Just the fact that it is a long way away may discourage them from going," he said.

The closure of King/Drew, which was born out of the Watts riots and opened in 1972, created a healthcare gap in a community where rates of chronic disease are high and vast swaths of the population lack insurance, said David Carlisle, president of the adjacent Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. South Los Angeles has a shortage of doctors, inpatient beds and outpatient services, according to both experts and research.

Despite King/Drew's many medical lapses, which earned it the nickname "Killer King," many in the community remained fiercely loyal to the hospital and the services it provided.

Studies examining the impact of King/Drew's closure found that it led to delays in care for elderly blacks and Latinos and a dramatic increase in patient admissions at other trauma centers. Physicians throughout the county also reported more overcrowding in other emergency rooms and said they saw sicker patients who didn't know where to go or couldn't afford transportation elsewhere.

"It is fearful to think about how many lives may have been saved had this thing been opened by now," said Lark Galloway-Gilliam, executive director of the advocacy group Community Health Councils. "It shouldn't take five years to build a facility."

Patrick Wooten, 49, went to St. Francis when he had a dislocated kneecap a few years ago. Wooten, who is uninsured, said he received good care at the private hospital but then got a $3,200 bill. Wooten said he is frustrated that the new King hospital still hasn't opened and won't until 2014. "What you do until then, God only knows," he said. "Hopefully we can wait it out."

Last year, Sandira Gonzalez, 29, took her 5-year-old son to the Martin Luther King urgent care center when he had a fever. But when the center closed for the night, her son had to be taken by ambulance to Harbor-UCLA near Torrance, where he was treated for an infection.

Community members and advocates said they are disappointed by the long wait, caused by a combination of bureaucratic delays and the complexity of the project. But when it does open, they said, they are hopeful that it will be a better, and safer, hospital.

The county is building the hospital and will help support it financially but will not be responsible for day-to-day operations. Instead, an independent, nonprofit organization will run the facility, to be known as Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, and the University of California will help staff it and ensure the quality of patient care. Construction is progressing, but the grand opening may still be nearly two years away.

"It will be a significantly different kind of institution, with the right kind of accountability," said Robert K. Ross, president and chief executive of the California Endowment. "Now we just need the institution to open up on budget and on time."

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said it takes time to create a state-of-the-art hospital — and a whole medical complex — that could become a model for others around the nation. "A lot of eyes are on this," he said. "We want to do this well and we want to do it right.... Nothing else is acceptable."

The nonprofit's board recognizes how critical the facility is to the area, said board President Manny Abascal. "Every day this hospital is not open, people are suffering," he said. At the same time, he added, the board is committed to ensuring that the new hospital is a high-quality institution. "If you open it … and there are some of the same problems you had before, then it's going to be devastating," he said.

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“Guardians of the Galaxy” director sorry for blog post seen as sexist, homophobic

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – James Gunn, the man entrusted with steering Marvel‘s “Guardians of the Galaxy” to the big screen, apologized publicly for a 2011 blog post that was criticized as sexist and homophobic.

Gunn, who is best known for directing the 2006 horror-comedy “Slither,” found himself under fire this week after reports about a blog post titled “The 50 Superheroes You Most Want to Have Sex With.” In it, he called the superhero Gambit a “Cajun fruit” and suggested that Iron Man could “turn” the lesbian Batwoman into a straight woman. He went on to joke that Batgirl, a masked avenger who happens to be a teen mother, was “easy.” The list was voted on by Twitter and Facebook users, but has since been removed from his site.

In a statement to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Gunn said his attempt at irreverence was misguided and stressed that he is a proponent of gay rights and women’s rights.

“A couple of years ago I wrote a blog that was meant to be satirical and funny,” Gunn said. “In rereading it over the past day I don’t think it’s funny. The attempted humor in the blog does not represent my actual feelings. However, I can see where statements were poorly worded and offensive to many. I’m sorry and regret making them at all.”

The post is an unwanted distraction from his efforts to give Marvel and its corporate owner the Walt Disney Company another hit. He plans to co-write the script for “Guardians of the Galaxy” in addition to directing. The film will be released in 2014.

“It kills me that some other outsider like myself, despite his or her gender or sexuality, might feel hurt or attacked by something I said,” he added in his apology. “We’re all in the same camp, and I want to do my best to make this world a better place for all of us. I’m learning all the time. I promise to be more careful with my words in the future. And I will do my best to be funnier as well. Much love to all.”

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Glen Campbell considering more live shows in 2013

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Glen Campbell may be wrapping up a goodbye tour but that doesn't mean he's done with the stage.

Campbell is considering scheduling more shows next year after playing more than 120 dates in 2012.

The 76-year-old singer has Alzheimer's disease and has begun to lose his memory. He put out his final studio album, "Ghost on the Canvas," in 2011 and embarked on the tour with family members and close friends serving in his band and staffing the tour.

Campbell's longtime manager Stan Schneider said in a phone interview from Napa, Calif., where the tour wrapped for the year Friday night, that recent West Coast shows have been some of the singer's strongest. Campbell will break for the holidays and if he still feels strong he'll begin scheduling more shows.

___

Online:

http://glencampbellmusic.com

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Doctors Who Work for Hospitals Face a New Bottom Line

For decades, doctors in picturesque Boise, Idaho, were part of a tight-knit community, freely referring patients to the specialists or hospitals of their choice and exchanging information about the latest medical treatments.

But that began to change a few years ago, when the city’s largest hospital, St. Luke’s Health System, began rapidly buying physician practices all over town, from general practitioners to cardiologists to orthopedic surgeons.

Today, Boise is a medical battleground.

A little over half of the 1,400 doctors in southwestern Idaho are employed by St. Luke’s or its smaller competitor, St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center.

Many of the independent doctors complain that both hospitals, but especially St. Luke’s, have too much power over every aspect of the medical pipeline, dictating which tests and procedures to perform, how much to charge and which patients to admit.

In interviews, they said their referrals from doctors now employed by St. Luke’s had dropped sharply, while patients, in many cases, were paying more there for the same level of treatment.

Boise’s experience reflects a growing national trend toward consolidation. Across the country, doctors who sold their practices and signed on as employees have similar criticisms. In lawsuits and interviews, they describe growing pressure to meet the financial goals of their new employers — often by performing unnecessary tests and procedures or by admitting patients who do not need a hospital stay.

In Boise, just a few weeks ago, even the hospitals were at war. St. Alphonsus went to court seeking an injunction to stop St. Luke’s from buying another physician practice group, arguing that the hospital’s dominance in the market was enabling it to drive up prices and to demand exclusive or preferential agreements with insurers. The price of a colonoscopy has quadrupled in some instances, and in other cases St. Luke’s charges nearly three times as much for laboratory work as nearby facilities, according to the St. Alphonsus complaint.

Federal and state officials have also joined the fray. In one of a handful of similar cases, the Federal Trade Commission and the Idaho attorney general are investigating whether St. Luke’s has become too powerful in Boise, using its newfound leverage to stifle competition.

Dr. David C. Pate, chief executive of St. Luke’s, denied the assertions by St. Alphonsus that the hospital’s acquisitions had limited patient choice or always resulted in higher prices. In some cases, Dr. Pate said, services that had been underpriced were raised to reflect market value. St. Luke’s, he argued, is simply embracing the new model of health care, which he predicted would lead over the long term to lower overall costs as fewer unnecessary tests and procedures were performed.

Regulators expressed some skepticism about the results, for patients, of rapid consolidation, although the trend is still too new to know for sure. “We’re seeing a lot more consolidation than we did 10 years ago,” said Jeffrey Perry, an assistant director in the F.T.C.’s Bureau of Competition. “Historically, what we’ve seen with the consolidation in the health care industry is that prices go up, but quality does not improve.”

A Drive to Consolidate

An array of new economic realities, from reduced Medicare reimbursements to higher technology costs, is driving consolidation in health care and transforming the practice of medicine in Boise and other communities large and small. In one manifestation of the trend, hospitals, private equity firms and even health insurance companies are acquiring physician practices at a rapid rate.

Today, about 39 percent of doctors nationwide are independent, down from 57 percent in 2000, according to estimates by Accenture, a consulting firm.

Many policy experts praise the shift away from independent practices as a way of making health care less fragmented and expensive. Systems that employ doctors, modeled after well-known organizations like Kaiser Permanente, are better able to coordinate patient care and to find ways to deliver improved services at lower costs, these advocates say. Indeed, consolidation is encouraged by some aspects of the Obama administration’s health care law.

“If you’re going to be paid for value, for performance, you’ve got to perform together,” said Dr. Ricardo Martinez, chief medical officer for North Highland, an Atlanta-based consultant that works with hospitals.

The recent trend is reminiscent of the consolidation that swept the industry in the 1990s in response to the creation of health maintenance organizations, or H.M.O.’s — but there is one major difference. Then, hospitals had difficulty managing the practices, contending that doctors did not work as hard when they were employees as they had as private operators. Now, hospitals are writing contracts more in their own favor.

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Cut Medicare and Social Security? What's the rush?

The question that normally comes to mind when someone claims to know the future is why he's out hustling rubes for pennies with his purported clairvoyance, instead of using it to make a fortune and retiring to the South Seas.

Of course, the answer is that nobody ever does know the future. And that leads to the question of why so much of the "fiscal cliff" debate in Washington is based on supposedly perfect knowledge of conditions that are 20, or even 70, years away.

We're talking about projections of the cost of "entitlements" — a noxious way of referring to Medicare and Social Security, excellent programs that most workers have paid for during their careers and that have kept millions of Americans healthy and out of poverty.

The customary talking point by the anti-deficit lobby is that the rising cost of these programs will eat us alive. That future, the argument continues, is coming at us like an onrushing train, so to avoid having to cut benefits when it arrives, we best cut benefits now.

The element of haste is a crucial element in this debate. That's because as real estate brokers and late-night TV hucksters know, pressure to Act Now! is what leads their marks to overlook that the basic premise is bogus.

Consider the prevailing assumptions about the future of Social Security and Medicare. One is that Social Security's trust fund will run dry in 2033, at which point the money coming in from payroll taxes will be enough to cover only about 75% of currently scheduled benefits. Will this happen? It might, but it might not:

The program's trustees, who are the source of the projection, don't bet the farm on it. They also project that under certain conditions of economic and employment growth — all of them perfectly plausible — it might never run dry. You don't hear much about that projection because it doesn't fit into the narrative that Social Security is "going broke."

Healthcare costs, with Medicare and Mediaid as big components, have been projected to rise to as much as 40% of gross domestic product by 2082 if not restrained. That's a fearsome prospect, but it's based on a long-outdated forecast by the Congressional Budget Office, which doesn't use the same methodology anymore. It was highly implausible, if not impossible, in the first place.

That CBO projection, like others employed by the anti-"entitlement" lobby to push for gutting the program, relied on projecting past experience into the future without adjusting for changes in behavior or policy.

This is a common fallacy well understood by pollsters. They know that if you ask people what the future will look like, they'll describe something that looks like today, except more so. If street crime is in the news, for example, they'll posit a future in which every community looks like Deadwood.

Investment experts try to moderate this tendency by reminding clients that trees don't grow to the stratosphere. To put it another way, just because your son is 4 feet tall at age 6 doesn't mean he'll be 12 feet tall at age 18. And just because the average American born today will live to the age of 78 doesn't mean that a baby born in 2032 will live to 100.

These questionable forecasts result in the nauseating spectacle of corporate CEOs such as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs lecturing Americans that the retirement benefits and elder healthcare coverage they've paid for during their working lives are things we "can't afford."

Blankfein didn't worry about what the country could afford when Goldman pocketed $12.9 billion in taxpayer funds to cover its losses in the collapse of insurance giant AIG. But there he was on CBS on Nov. 19, saying, "You...have to do something to lower people's expectations — the entitlements and what people think that they're going to get, because they're not going to get it."

Blankfein proceeded to lecture his interviewer that Social Security "wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career." This is fair enough, one supposes, though it's a mystery where Blankfein gets the idea that the average retiree today has spent only 25 years in the workplace, rather than 45, and lives to the age of 95. Does Goldman Sachs do all its math this way?

The Social Security projection is probably the most misused and misunderstood statistic in the fiscal-cliff debate. The trustees warn every year that its forecast is "inherently uncertain." They warn that it's a melange of projections of at least 17 factors, including fertility and mortality rates, economic growth, unemployment, wages and life expectancy, many of which are interrelated.

No one — no business, no government agency — makes plans today based on a vision of the world 20 years from now. IBM doesn't do it. Google doesn't do it. The Department of Defense doesn't do it. You and I don't do it. Not even life insurance companies, which might be said to live in the future, do it.

The reason smart people and companies don't make bets on the distant future is precisely because it's unknowable. Try the following thought experiment: Instead of looking ahead 20 years, look back 20 years, and try to list all the events that have had immense, material effects on today's economy, but were unimaginable in 1992.

Here's my list: 9/11. The Afghan war. The Iraq war. The housing bubble. The crash of 2000. The crash of 2008. The crash of Lehman Bros. The iPod. The iPhone. The iPad. The founding of Google. Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy. Obamacare.

What are the chances that another such list will make the U.S. economy in 2033 look utterly different from what we imagine in 2012? I'd say 100%.

Forecasting healthcare costs may be even more of a mug's game. In a 2008 paper, economists Glenn Follette and Louise Sheiner of the Federal Reserve observed that the CBO unwisely projected healthcare costs into the future by assuming that the trends of the past simply would continue.

But the trends of the past had included an unprecedented expansion of public and private insurance coverage, which cut average out-of-pocket spending from 51% of total healthcare outlays in 1960 to 13% in 2005. That created an explosion in demand.

Could the trend continue? Plainly not. The Fed economists also noted that any trend pointing toward healthcare consuming 40% of GDP would have such destructive effect on the rest of the economy that personal behavior or political action would change it before reaching that point. The CBO now acknowledges that.

Healthcare reform has made such projections even more uncertain today, in part because the reform act includes numerous cost-limiting initiatives, the success of which can only be guessed at. That's an argument against taking such radical steps as raising the Medicare eligibility age, as some fiscal-cliff pundits advocate.

Leaving aside that doing so would drive up costsfor employers, states and Medicare participants themselves by more than it would save the federal government (the Kaiser Family Foundation crunched the numbers), it's far too early to know if it's even necessary.

One might argue that the uncertainty of economic forecasts means there's no point in economic planning at all. But there are good reasons for looking ahead, just not good reasons for thinking your vision of the future is 20/20.

And there's a big difference between making a congressional budget and making fundamental changes in programs as complex as Social Security and Medicare. The life span of a congressional budget is two years, max, because no Congress can bind its successors. But changes in Social Security and Medicare are forever. So when you hear that we have to do it now, stat! or we're doomed, take it for the snake oil that it is.

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.

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Away from Egypt's protests, the worries mount

CAIRO — Amid thimbles, pins and strands of silver thread, the tailor twitched his pencil-perfect mustache in disgust and said the country where he learned to sew and raised six children was edging into darkness.

"I'm worried," said Sayed Abdelwahab, leaning on a worn counter in a shop where he has mended suits for decades. "I have employees with three and four kids. I'm responsible for them. My customers are mostly foreigners, but they're leaving the country. My business is down 50%. Did you see what happened to the stock market?"

"It's Morsi," said his friend Awad Abdelhafez, a porter, referring to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. "He's taken all the power.... Who's responsible for those dying in this violence?"

Such was the talk Thursday on a shaded street in a Cairo neighborhood far from the protest banners in Tahrir Square and the political intrigue over a new constitution. After nearly two years marked by endless clashes and skies tinged with tear gas, the true Egypt is slipping deeper into its worries.

The ragged semblance of democracy that emerged from the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak is dominated by Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood. The opposition can fill the streets with demonstrators and slogans but so far lacks the momentum to unseat Islamists in the fight for the nation's character.

But on this street, where butcher knives flash quick and women sell dusty oranges stacked in pyramids, such thoughts seem strange abstractions. But then, so does the recent revelation by Morsi to Time magazine that he found the movie "Planet of the Apes" to be politically instructive. Heads shake in weary unison.

"I'm so worried and depressed I can't follow things anymore," said Dina Mohamed, a call center operator. "Morsi's been ruling us for four months but he's mixing the wrong ingredients. I'm scared we're facing a hunger revolution. The poor will rise up for bread, not politics or culture, but for their own lives."

This in a nation where the average annual income is reported to be about $4,000. More than 40% of the population lives on $2 a day. The revolution has not improved these statistics, and to many Egyptians, that is its central failing. All the promises that have echoed from mosques, political rallies and television studios have drifted past them like smoke.

The deeper worry is about prolonged civil strife between Islamists and secularists over how deeply Islam will be embedded in public life. This is the fierce debate that the country knew for generations had to come. But now that it has suddenly arrived, the sides have hardened to the point where even Mubarak loyalists have joined their onetime foes, the leftists, to take on Morsi and other Islamists.

"I respect Morsi very much," said Mahmoud Hashem, stepping out from behind the counter of a juice shop. He wears a beard and, as is customary for conservative Muslims, does not look an unveiled woman in the eye. "We elected him. He needs to make decisions as a president, and whether they're right or wrong we have to stand by him. We chose him for four years. He must be given a chance."

But then, step into the tailor's shop, a box of a place with mannequins in the window wearing half-finished jackets, pins in shoulders, strips of fabric whirling on the floor. Abdelwahab has been here since 1966. He started in the trade even before that, when he was 13, after his parents died and he quit school "because I had to look after myself."

That was a few years after Gamal Abdel Nasser, a charismatic army officer, led the 1952 revolution that won Egypt its independence, eventually leading to President Anwar Sadat's peace treaty with Israel, the rise of Mubarak and, Abdelwahab scoffed, the era of Morsi.

"It was good under Nasser and Sadat," he said. "It was good under Mubarak for the first 20 years, but the last 10, when he gave his son more power and started privatization, things started going bad."

Now?

"Worst time of all," he said. "The country is falling apart. We're going to hell."

Abdelhafez, the porter, nodded.

A man sewing upstairs, yelled down, "Half of us are slaves!"

"The people in Tahrir Square will never be slaves," said Abdelwahab. "They are fighting."

The men talked, voices rising and falling in an afternoon cool with the coming winter. Would the military step in again like it did immediately after Mubarak's fall? Would the stock market rebound? Would those killing the protesters be prosecuted? Why is it that every time U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visits Cairo, as she did last week to help seal a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, something bad happens shortly after? (The porter's eyebrows danced at the question.) Why isn't the Muslim Brotherhood open to different views, different ways of seeing things?

So many discussions. But there was work to do, even if many of Abdelwahab's clients had left the country and there were only a few bags of ruffled shirts needing a needle and thread, a steam and a pressing.

This weekend, the Brotherhood has promised a huge rally in Cairo to support Morsi and pressure the protesters in Tahrir.

The porter and the tailor glanced at each other.

"We are entering a dangerous weekend," said Abdelhafez, who left his friend's shop and crossed the street, passing a man yelling into his cellphone. "The Islamists want to pass this constitution!" the man said. "They want to make this country their own!"

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Special correspondent Reem Abdellatif contributed to this report.

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Microsoft Surface Pro battery will last roughly four hours

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Adkins explains Confederate flag earpiece

NEW YORK (AP) — Trace Adkins wore an earpiece decorated like the Confederate flag when he performed for the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting but says he meant no offense by it.

Adkins appeared with the earpiece on a nationally televised special for the lighting on Wednesday. Some regard the flag as a racist symbol and criticized Adkins in Twitter postings.

But in a statement released Thursday, the Louisiana native called himself a proud American who objects to any oppression and says the flag represents his Southern heritage.

He noted he's a descendant of Confederate soldiers and says he did not intend offense by wearing it.

Adkins — on a USO tour in Japan — also called for the preservation of America's battlefields and an "honest conversation about the country's history."

___

Online:

http://www.traceadkins.com

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Man Indicted in New Hampshire in Hepatitis Infections

A traveling medical technician who is believed to have infected at least 39 people with hepatitis C through his use of stolen hospital drugs and syringes was indicted late Wednesday in New Hampshire on 14 new charges.

The technician, David Kwiatkowski, known as the “serial infector,” was arrested in July and charged with tampering with a consumer product and illegally obtaining drugs, primarily fentanyl, a powerful anesthetic that is about 80 times more potent than morphine.

After a lengthy investigation that ranged over several states, he was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Concord, N.H., and charged with seven counts of tampering with a consumer product and seven counts of illegally obtaining drugs.

If convicted on the pending charges, Mr. Kwiatkowski, 33, faces up to 10 years in prison for each count of tampering with a consumer product and up to four years in prison for each count of obtaining controlled substances by fraud. Each offense is also punishable by a fine of $250,000.

Mr. Kwiatkowski had pleaded not guilty to the original charges and remains in federal custody in New Hampshire.

In announcing the indictment, John P. Kacavas, the United States attorney in New Hampshire, said that Mr. Kwiatkowski “used the stolen syringes to inject himself, causing them to become tainted with his infected blood, before filling them with saline and then replacing them for use in the medical procedure.”

He continued, “Consequently, instead of receiving the prescribed dose of fentanyl, patients instead received saline tainted by Kwiatkowski’s infected blood.”

The problem was discovered after several patients in the cardiac catheterization lab at Exeter Hospital, where Mr. Kwiatkowski worked, tested positive for a specific strain of hepatitis C, a chronic disease that can lead to cancer and is a major reason for liver transplants. Mr. Kwiatkowski tested positive for the same strain, leading to the testing of thousands of patients in New Hampshire this summer.

The outbreak was one of the largest in recent history. The investigation has been complicated because Mr. Kwiatkowski worked at 18 hospitals in seven other states (Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania) over the last decade. He was fired from at least two hospitals but was hired subsequently by four others.

Since Mr. Kwiatkowski’s arrest, thousands of patients in the other states have been tested for hepatitis C. More than 30 patients in New Hampshire, about a half-dozen in Kansas and one in Maryland have tested positive for the same strain.

A report in August by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said that syringes at Exeter Hospital were left unattended on medication carts by nurses in the cardiac catheterization lab.

Hospital officials have said that they received reports of concerns about Mr. Kwiatkowski but not that he was diverting drugs. A statement on the hospital’s Web site said: “We understand that this has been a difficult time for our patients and the community. Our focus remains on all of our patients and while this situation has shaken the community, we will continue to do everything we can to restore the community’s confidence by providing excellent care to the hundreds of patients who receive care within our health system each day.”

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Electricity rates to rise for Southern California Edison customers

SACRAMENTO — Almost 5 million Southern California Edison Co. customers in hundreds of cities and communities across the southern, central and coastal parts of the state will be hit with higher electric bills early next year and bigger hikes in each of the following two years.

The decision, which Edison says will add an average of $7 a month to residential bills for the first year, covers Edison's costs to provide service, which amounts to about half a ratepayer's bill. Other costs for buying fuel and contracting for power deliveries fluctuate and are passed directly to consumers.

The California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved new rates, retroactive to the beginning of this year, on Thursday as part of an every-three-years process of reviewing finances at the heavily regulated utility.

The 5% increase for 2012 — providing the Rosemead company with $5.7 billion in revenue — is less than the 16.6% the company had sought. Rates, however, are estimated to rise an additional 6.3% for 2013 and 5.9% in 2014 under the PUC order.

"This decision ensures that SCE is able to invest in smart energy systems, renewables and safety and reliability, while its ratepayers are protected," PUC Commissioner Timothy Alan Simon said.

Edison provides electricity to 13 million people, including most of Los Angeles and Orange counties as well as much of Central California and the Inland Empire. Not included are residents of Los Angeles who get their power from the municipally owned Department of Water and Power.

Edison, the decision notes, has faced "two significant challenges to operations" in the last year: a December 2011 wind storm that damaged the grid, and the extended shutdown of two nuclear power reactors at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Diego County.

Edison in a statement called the commission's action "constructive" because the decision helps it finance needed upgrades in its system.

Consumer groups said they were pleased that commissioners granted Edison, a unit of Edison International, less than what the company sought from the PUC.

"We definitely got a substantial amount shaved off, but it's still more than we think Edison really needs," said Mindy Spatt, a spokeswoman for the Utility Reform Network, which advocates for ratepayers at the state's three big investor-owned electric companies.

Business groups also complained that the jump in Edison's already steep electric rates could make it harder for them to keep operating profitably.

"California manufacturers already pay 50% higher electricity rates than the national average," said Gino Di Caro, a spokesman for the California Manufacturers & Technology Assn. "Obviously, energy costs are one of the primary budgetary items for any manufacturing operation, and this is all the more reason for California to find ways to offset these costs."

marc.lifsher@latimes.com

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Powerball's $580-million jackpot inspires wishes, dreamers

Don't bother telling Wednesday night's Powerball winners  that a lottery is just a tax on those who flunked math. With a winning ticket in hand, or even just the dream of one, who cares if the odds against them exceeded 175 million to 1? 

Last-minute ticket-buying pushed the jackpot to nearly $580 million, which is how much a single winner would get if he or she took the money in annual payments over 30 years.  

The winning numbers: 5-16-22-23-29, and the Powerball:  06. 

Hours after the 8 p.m. drawing, officials said winning tickets had been sold in Arizona and Missouri.

No one had won since Oct. 6, causing the jackpot to roll over 16 times. It  grows at least $10 million every time no one wins, lottery officials said. 

To play Powerball, one must pick five unique numbers from 1 through 59, and a Powerball number from 1 through 35. The odds of winning are 1 in 175,223,510. 

Powerball tickets aren't sold in California, but some feverish residents reportedly drove or flew to one of 42 participating states  to buy a chance at a fortune. The District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands also participate. 

Maybe the next time the jackpot soars, out-of-state travel won't be necessary. On Thursday, the California State Lottery Commission is expected to adopt regulations to join the Powerball lottery. If so, California retailers could start selling the $2 tickets in April.

[Updated, 10:45 p.m., Nov. 28: An earlier version of this post said the jackpot would exceed $550 million.  Late Wednesday, the Associated Press reported, Powerball officials said it would be nearly $580 million. And early Thursday EST, lottery officials said winning tickets had been sold in Arizona and Missouri.]

 ALSO:

Zig Ziglar dies at 86; motivational speaker inspired millions

Nanny, in hospital, pleads not guilty to murder of 2 children

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Samsung takes aim at Japanese rivals with Android camera

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co is taking aim at its Japanese rivals with an Android-powered digital camera that allows users to swiftly and wirelessly upload pictures to social networking sites.

The Galaxy camera lets users connect to a mobile network or Wi-Fi to share photographs and video without having to hook up the camera to a computer.

While it’s not the first to the market, Samsung‘s financial and marketing clout suggest it could be the biggest threat to Japanese domination of a digital camera industry which research firm Lucintel sees growing to $ 46 billion by 2017 and where big brands include Canon Inc, Sony Corp, Panasonic Corp, Nikon Corp and Olympus Corp.

“Samsung has a tough row to hoe against the likes of Canon and Nikon in the camera brand equity landscape,” said Liz Cutting, senior imaging analyst at research firm NPD Group. “Yet as a brand known more in the connected electronic device arena, Samsung has a unique opportunity to transfer strength from adjacent categories into the dedicated camera world.”

The Korean group, battling for mobile gadget supremacy against Apple Inc, is already a global market leader in televisions, smartphones and memory chips.

Samsung last year brought its camera and digital imaging business – one of its smallest – under the supervision of JK Shin, who heads a mobile business that generated 70 percent of Samsung’s $ 7.4 billion third-quarter profit.

“Our camera business is quickly evolving … and I think it will be able to set a new landmark for Samsung,” Shin said on Thursday at a launch event in Seoul. “The product will open a new chapter in communications – visual communications,” he said, noting good reviews for the Samsung Galaxy camera which went on sale in Europe and the United States earlier this month.

AIMING AT ‘PRO-SUMERS’

The Galaxy camera, which sells in the United States for $ 499.99 through AT&T with various monthly data plans, features a 4.8-inch LCD touchscreen and a 21x optical zoom lens. Users can send photos instantly to other mobile devices via a 4G network, access the Internet, email and social network sites, edit photos and play games.

The easy-to-use camera, and the quality of the pictures, is aimed at mid-market ‘pro-sumers’ – not quite professional photographers but those who don’t mind paying a premium for user options not yet available on a smartphone – such as an optical, rather than digital, zoom, better flash, and image stabilization.

The appeal of high picture quality cameras with wireless connection has grown as social media services such as Facebook Inc drive a boom in rapid shoot-and-share photos.

“At a price point higher than some entry-level interchangeable-lens cameras, the Galaxy camera should appeal to a consumer willing to pay an initial and ongoing premium for 24/7 creative interactivity,” said Cutting.

Traditional digital camera makers are responding.

Canon, considered a leader in profitability in corporate Japan with its aggressive cost cutting, saw its compact camera sales eroded in the most recent quarter by smartphones, and has just introduced its first mirrorless camera to tap into a growing market for small, interchangeable-lens cameras that rival Nikon entered last year.

Nikon has also recently introduced an Android-embedded Wi-Fi only camera.

($ 1 = 1086.4000 Korean won)

(This story fixes typing error in paragraph 9)

(Additional reporting by Dhanya Skariachan in NEW YORK; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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'That 70s Show' star arrested in North Carolina

STATESVILLE, N.C. (AP) — "That '70s Show" star Lisa Robin Kelly is free on bond after being arrested for assault.

Police in the Charlotte, N.C., suburb of Mooresville arrested the 42-year-old Kelly and 61-year-old husband Robert Joseph Gilliam after responding to a disturbance at their home Monday. Both are free on bond.

Gilliam is charged with misdemeanor assault on a female. Kelly is charged with misdemeanor assault. They were taken to the Iredell County Detention Center and released on $500 bond apiece. They have a court date of Jan. 25. It's not known if either has an attorney.

Kelly portrayed Laurie Forman, sister of Topher Grace's lead character Eric, on the FOX series, which ended in 2006. She also appeared on the TV shows "Murphy Brown" and "Married . . . With Children."

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Cost of Brand-Name Prescription Medicines Soaring

The price of brand-name prescription medicines is rising far faster than the inflation rate, while the price of generic drugs has plummeted, creating the largest gap so far between the two, according to a report published Wednesday by the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts.

The report tracked an index of commonly used drugs and found that the price of brand-name medicines increased more than 13 percent from September 2011 to this September, which it said was more than six times the overall price inflation of consumer goods. Generic drug prices dipped by nearly 22 percent.

The drop in the price of generics “represents low-hanging fruit for the country to save money on health care,” said Dr. Steve Miller, the chief medical officer of Express Scripts, which manages the drug benefits for employers and insurers and also runs a mail-order pharmacy.

The report was based on a random sample of six million Express Scripts members with prescription drug coverage.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade group representing brand-name manufacturers, criticized the report, saying it was skewed by a handful of high-priced specialty drugs that are used by a small number of patients and overlooked the crucial role of major drug makers.

“Without the development of new medicines by innovator companies, there would be neither the new treatments essential to progress against diseases nor generic copies,” Josephine Martin, executive vice president of the group, said in a statement.

The report cited the growth of specialty drugs, which treat diseases like cancer and multiple sclerosis, as a major reason for the increase in spending on branded drugs. Spending on specialty medicines increased nearly 23 percent during the first three quarters of 2012, compared with the same period in 2011. All but one of the new medicines approved in the third quarter of this year were specialty drugs, the report found, and many of them were approved to treat advanced cancers only when other drugs had failed.

Stephen W. Schondelmeyer, a professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of Minnesota, said the potential benefits of many new drugs did not always match the lofty price tags. “Increasingly it’s going to be difficult for drug-benefit programs to make decisions about coverage and payment and which drugs to include,” said Mr. Schondelmeyer, who conducts a similar price report for AARP. He also helps manage the drug benefit program for the University of Minnesota.

“We’re going to be faced with the issue that any drug at any price will not be sustainable.”

Spending on traditional medicines — which treat common ailments like high cholesterol and blood pressure — actually declined by 0.6 percent during the period, the report found. That decline was mainly because of the patent expiration of several blockbuster drugs, like Lipitor and Plavix, which opened the market for generic competitors. But even as the entry of generic alternatives pushed down spending, drug companies continued to raise prices on their branded products, in part to squeeze as much revenue as possible out of an ever-shrinking portfolio, Dr. Miller said.

Drug makers are also being pushed by from companies like Express Scripts and health insurers, which are increasingly looking for ways to cut costs, said C. Anthony Butler, a pharmaceuticals analyst at Barclays. “I think they’re pricing where they can but what they keep telling me is they’re under significant pressure” to keep prices low, he said.

Express Scripts earns higher profits from greater use of generic medicines than brand name drugs sold through their mail-order pharmacy, Mr. Butler said. “There’s no question that they would love for everybody to be on a generic,” he said.

Dr. Miller acknowledged that was true but said that ultimately, everyone wins. “When we save people money, that’s when we make money,” he said. “We don’t shy away from that.”

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Union walkout cripples ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach

A small union of maritime clerks managed to shut down most of the nation's busiest seaport complex Wednesday, raising concerns about harm to the fragile economy.

Although late November is a relatively slow time for cargo movement at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, a prolonged closure could prove costly for retailers and manufacturers who rely on the ports to get their goods as well as truckers and other businesses that depend on the docks for work.

"You are stranding goods at ports that handle 40% of the nation's import trade," said Jock O'Connell, an international trade economist who works as an advisor to Beacon Economics.

"The danger here is that this could call into question the reliability of the San Pedro Harbor ports," O'Connell said. "The Wal-Marts and the Home Depots may be forced to think twice about relying on these ports as their primary gateway."

Showing an influence that extended far beyond its numbers, the 800-member International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63's Office Clerical Unit established picket lines at seven of the eight terminals at the Port of Los Angeles, which is the largest container port in the U.S.

The union, whose members handle most of the paperwork for ships entering and leaving the ports, also struck three of the six terminals at the neighboring Port of Long Beach, which ranks second only to Los Angeles in the amount of container cargo it moves.

The union's picket lines had at least the tacit approval of the larger, 50,000-member ILWU of dockworkers, clerks and other workers who handle all of the cargo on the west coasts of the U.S. and Canada and in Hawaii.

About 10,000 of those dockworkers are employed at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, and they refused to cross the lightly manned picket lines. That left the normally bustling harbor eerily quiet for a Wednesday afternoon.

On Tuesday, with the walkout confined to the APM Terminals at the Port of Los Angeles, an arbitrator ruled that the picket lines were invalid because the union was not bargaining in good faith. The arbitrator ordered union members to return to work Tuesday night, but they refused. Union members have been working without a contract since June 30, 2010.

At the entrance to Long Beach's Total Terminals International, six members of the clerical workers union held signs that said, "On Strike ... For hours, wages & working conditions." Workers on that picket line and six others said they were under strict orders not to talk to the news media.

Officially, the union fell back on a statement released Tuesday evening and had no further comment Wednesday.

In that statement, logistics clerk Trinie Thompson said the workers were "drawing the line against corporate greed and outsourcing that's destroying the good-paying jobs that support working families in our community." The union's primary concern is that its jobs could be transferred to nonunion labor in countries with lower wages.

But the 14 employers involved in the contract negotiations — some of the largest ocean shipping lines and terminal operators in the world — said they hadn't outsourced any jobs. The management group said it had offered "absolute job security" and generous wage and pension increases.

The employers have accused the union of engaging in the practice of "feather bedding," requiring employers to call in temporary employees and hire new permanent employees even when there is no work to perform.

On Wednesday, the management group said the union's conduct "shows an irresponsible willingness to jeopardize port operations and thousands of jobs in the Los Angeles area." If a strike drags on, "the negative effects on jobs and the economy will be felt nationwide," the employers said.

The dispute was raising concerns far beyond the harbor area.

"A work stoppage at America's two busiest ports just as the holiday shopping season begins is a recipe for disaster," said Sandy Kennedy, president of the Retail Industry Leaders Assn., a trade group. "If the strike isn't resolved quickly, the effects on retailers, their customers and the economy will be enormous."

A 10-day lockout in 2002 at all West Coast ports left ships piling up offshore, unable to unload cargo. The cost of the dispute was estimated as high as $15 billion.

California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein issued a statement urging a quick resolution of the dispute "so we can protect the economy of the Los Angeles region, the West Coast and our nation, which will be adversely affected by the closures at these ports."

Rep. Janice Hahn (D-San Pedro) said she was backing the port workers.

"I stand in solidarity with the hard-working clerical workers, most of whom are women, of the ILWU Local 63's Office Clerical Unit, who are striking today to prevent their jobs from being sent overseas," Hahn said in a statement. "These workers have been bargaining in good faith for over two years, and I urge a fair resolution that keeps these good-paying jobs" at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

ron.white@latimes.com

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Regents OK raise for new UC Berkeley chief

Despite strong opposition from Gov. Jerry Brown, the UC Board of Regents on Tuesday gave the incoming chancellor of UC Berkeley a $50,000 — or 11.4% — pay raise over the current campus head. The extra money will come from private donations, not state funds, the regents said.

Nicholas B. Dirks will be paid $486,000, which officials said is $14,000 less than his current salary as a high-ranking administrator at Columbia University.

Brown, who is a regent, described Dirks as an excellent choice but said he would not vote for the salary given the austerities that the state and the 10-campus UC system still face. The university must look for more efficient ways to teach and operate and "the leaders have to demonstrate that they are also sacrificing," Brown said.

The $50,000 increase, even though it won't come from public coffers, "does not fit within the spirit of servant leadership that I think will be required over the next few years," the governor said.

Brown also cited voters' recent approval of his Proposition 30 tax increase, which spared UC from deep budget cuts. During the campaign for the measure, the governor said, he promised voters that he would "use their funds judiciously and with prudence."

Brown, who rarely attended regents meetings before the election, has since become a dramatic presence and voice against UC status quo. Since last summer, he has criticized raises for Cal State executives and suggested that all public colleges promote less expensive insiders instead of shopping for high-priced "hired guns" from across the country.

Besides noting that Dirks will take a pay cut from being Columbia's executive vice president and dean of its arts and sciences faculty, UC leaders said his UC Berkeley salary will be much lower than that of leaders at many other prestigious public and private universities.

"I try to get the very best person I can in this job to navigate the university through some very complicated times," UC system President Mark G. Yudof said.

Yudof said he and Brown do not see "exactly eye to eye" on Dirks' pay, but Yudof said he and the governor agree on nearly all other issues, including efforts to keep tuition from rising.

The regents first debated the issue privately Tuesday in a telephone conference call linking those in Oakland, Sacramento and Los Angeles. After the call went public, three regents voted against the pay increase — Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Charlene Zettel — and 11 others voted for it. All 14 voted to appoint Dirks.

State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), a frequent UC critic, issued a statement suggesting that Dirks follow the example of Timothy P. White, who recently asked for a 10% pay cut from the salary paid his Cal State predecessor. Yee said he would reintroduce legislation to limit executive pay raises in public higher education.

When he starts at the 36,000-student UC Berkeley on June 1, Dirks will receive free campus housing, along with $121,700 in relocation fees paid out in installments over four years and other benefits.

An anthropologist and historian who is an expert on India and its British colonial era, he will succeed Robert J. Birgeneau, who has been Berkeley chancellor for eight years. Dirks' wife, Columbia history professor Janaki Bakhle, is expected to receive a faculty job at UC Berkeley, but officials said her hiring and any possible salary must be reviewed by faculty panels.

After his confirmation, Dirks, who is the son of a former UC Santa Cruz administrator, said he was grateful to lead "one of the greatest universities in the world" and said he would work to boost student financial aid and encourage interdisciplinary research and studies.

He thanked Brown and California voters for passing Proposition 30, which raises the state sales tax a quarter-cent over four years and the income tax on high earners over seven years. Dirks, 61, promised that he would carefully "steward the tax dollars that are being paid by the citizens of this great state."

The regents unanimously approved an annual $245,600 salary and housing for Jane Close Conoley, who will become acting chancellor at UC Riverside next month until a permanent one is hired. That salary is below the $325,000 pay of the current Riverside campus chief, White, who is leaving to become chancellor of the Cal State system. Conoley is now dean of UC Santa Barbara's Gervitz Graduate School of Education.

larry.gordon@latimes.com

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Cyber Monday sales best ever, for Amazon’s Kindle too

(Reuters) – Internet sales jumped more than 30 percent on Cyber Monday, making it the biggest online shopping day ever, according to data released on Tuesday.

Walmart.com, the online division of Walmart U.S., had its best sales day in history, a spokeswoman said.

Cyber Monday also was a record day for sales of Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle devices, the online retailer said, without specifying the number sold.

Still, eBay Inc, operator of one of the largest online marketplaces, outperformed its arch rival Amazon.com over the crucial first five days of the holiday shopping season, according to one closely watched measure.

Cyber Monday has been the biggest online shopping day in recent years, as workers return to offices and make holiday purchases on their computers. This year, the boom in smart phone and tablet adoption has added extra fuel to online shopping.

Cyber Monday sales online jumped 30.3 percent from the same day last year, according to International Business Machines Corp, which analyzes transactions from 500 U.S. retailers.

Mobile devices accounted for 18 percent of visits to retailer websites and 13 percent of sales on Cyber Monday. That was up 70 percent and 96 percent, respectively, compared with the same day last year, IBM reported.

To that end, Walmart.com said Cyber Monday online traffic from Walmart’s mobile apps jumped 280 percent versus a year ago.

On Monday, when retailers offered big Cyber Monday online deals, web shopping peaked at 11:25 a.m. EST (1625 GMT), IBM said. That timing suggests shoppers continue to check out online offers while still at work, even though more people have high-speed Internet access at home than in previous years.

AMAZON’S KINDLE DEAL

Amazon.com cut the price of its 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet by $ 30 to $ 129 on Monday, and it was the company’s most successful Cyber Monday deal ever, the retailer said.

Nine of the top 10 best-selling products on Amazon.com have been Kindles, Kindle accessories and digital content since the company unveiled new devices on September 6, it said.

Worldwide sales of Kindle devices more than doubled during the Thanksgiving weekend from the 2011 period, Amazon said.

“Demand for Kindle Fire is stronger than expected,” said Chad Bartley, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. “This suggests Amazon is competing effectively against Apple and Google in the near term, and increased device ownership could drive sales of digital media and physical products over the long term.”

Bartley raised his estimate for fourth-quarter Kindle Fire unit sales to 8 million from 5.5 million and increased his forecast for Amazon’s fourth-quarter revenue to $ 22.75 billion from $ 22.25 billion.

Shares of Amazon closed down almost 0.1 percent at $ 243.40 on Nasdaq. Stock in Wal-Mart Stores Inc shed 0.6 percent to close at $ 69.50.

A FIRST FOR EBAY

Still, eBay sales may have outperformed Amazon during the early part of the holiday shopping season, according to ChannelAdvisor, which helps third-party merchants sell more via websites including eBay.com and Amazon.com.

ChannelAdvisor data excludes sales specifically by Amazon, so the data does not capture Kindle device revenue and many other transactions. About 60 percent of Amazon’s unit sales are generated by the company itself, while 40 percent come from third parties operating on its platform.

ChannelAdvisor said client sales – sales generated by third-party merchants using the company’s service – soared 55.2 percent on eBay.com on Cyber Monday from a year earlier. That was about five times faster than last year’s growth.

For the five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, which ChannelAdvisor calls the “Cyber Five,” client sales on eBay.com rose 38.3 percent compared with the same days in 2011.

ChannelAdvisor said client sales on Amazon.com jumped 42.4 percent on Cyber Monday compared with a year earlier. Over the “Cyber Five,” client sales on Amazon.com rose 37.7 percent, the firm said.

This is the first time since at least 2007 that client sales on eBay.com have grown faster than client sales via Amazon.com during the holiday season, according to Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor. The firm started tracking this in 2007, he noted.

EBay shares lost 0.5 percent to close at $ 51.15 on Tuesday. The stock rose almost 5 percent to a new multi-year high on Monday after ChannelAdvisor released its early Cyber Monday results.

EBay’s holiday advertising campaign, which included TV commercials, likely attracted more shoppers to its online marketplace, Wingo said.

EBay was also “aggressive” with holiday promotions and gift guides, and the company’s category-specific websites focused on things like fashion and electronics, were well integrated with the broader holiday promotions, unlike last year, Wingo explained.

However, the main driver may have been mobile shopping, an area in which eBay and its payments division PayPal invested early and heavily, Wingo added.

“With less than 10 percent of commerce coming from mobile devices and far higher levels ahead, we believe this trend will carry eBay Marketplace and PayPal for the next few years,” Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, wrote in a note to investors on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr in San Francisco and Jessica Wohl in Chicago, additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid, Lisa Von Ahn, Gunna Dickson and David Gregorio)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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'Dancing With the Stars: All Stars' champ crowned

LOS ANGELES (AP) — She was dissed on "The Bachelor" and came in third place during her first stint on "Dancing With the Stars," but Melissa Rycroft is now a winner.

The reality TV star and her professional dance partner, Tony Dovolani, were named the champions Tuesday on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars: All Stars."

The pair beat out fellow finalists (and former champs) actress Kelly Monaco and Olympian Shawn Johnson to claim the sparkly mirror-ball trophy.

Fellow contestants on the show's first "all-star" season hoisted the new winners into the air as confetti rained down inside the "Dancing With the Stars" ballroom.

On the eve of the final competition, Rycroft said she felt confident and excited.

"I want to feel like a champion," she said.

Tuesday's two-hour season finale featured performances by the three finalists and each of the returning cast members: actors Pamela Anderson, Sabrina Bryan, Kirstie Alley and Gilles Marini; singers Joey Fatone and Drew Lachey; race car driver Helio Castroneves; reality TV star Bristol Palin; Olympic skater Apolo Anton Ohno; and football star Emmitt Smith.

Six of those contestants — Johnson, Monaco, Lachey, Ohno, Smith and Castroneves — were previous "Dancing" winners.

Rycroft and Dovolani came into the final contest with a pair of perfect scores. Those points were combined with viewer votes and a last set of judges' scores for an "instant dance" for which they had less than an hour to prepare.

Rycroft was a contestant on "The Bachelor" in 2009 and first appeared on "Dancing With the Stars" that same year. The 29-year-old also starred in a reality series earlier this year, "Melissa & Tye," about her marriage to Tye Strickland and their move to Hollywood so she could pursue an entertainment career.

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Online:

http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/dancing-with-the-stars/index

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Amid Hurricane Sandy, a Race to Get a Liver Transplant

It was the best possible news, at the worst possible time.

The phone call from the hospital brought the message that Dolores and Vin Dreeland had long hoped for, ever since their daughter Natalia, 4, had been put on the waiting list for a liver transplant. The time had come.

They bundled her into the car for the 50-mile trip from their home in Long Valley, N.J., to NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan. But it soon seemed that this chance to save Natalia’s life might be just out of reach.

The date was Sunday, Oct. 28, and Hurricane Sandy, the worst storm to hit the East Coast in decades, was bearing down on New York. Airports and bridges would soon close, but the donated organ was in Nevada, five hours away. The time window in which a plane carrying the liver would be able to land in the region was rapidly closing.

In a hospital room, Natalia watched cartoons. Her parents watched the clock, and the weather. “Our anxiety was through the roof,” Mrs. Dreeland said. “It just made your stomach into knots.”

The Dreelands, who are in their 60s, became Natalia’s foster parents in 2008 when she was 7 months old, and adopted her just before she turned 2. They have another adopted daughter, Dorothy Jane, who is 17.

Natalia is a “smart little cookie” who loves school and dressing up Alice, her favorite doll, her mother said. At age 3, Natalia used the word “discombobulated” correctly, Mr. Dreeland said.

Natalia’s health problems date back several years. Her gallbladder was taken out in 2010, and about half her liver was removed in 2011. The underlying problem was a rare disease, Langerhans cell histiocytosis. It causes a tremendous overgrowth of a type of cell in the immune system and can damage organs. Drugs can sometimes keep it in check, but they did not work for Natalia.

In her case, the disease struck the bile ducts, which led to progressive liver damage. “She would have eventually gone into liver failure,” said Dr. Nadia Ovchinsky, a pediatric liver transplant specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian. “And she demonstrated some signs of early liver failure.”

The only hope was a transplant.

Dr. Tomoaki Kato, Natalia’s surgeon, knew that the liver in Nevada was a perfect match for Natalia in the two criteria that matter most: blood type and size. The deceased donor was 2 years old, and though Natalia is nearly 5, she is small for her age. Scar tissue from her previous operations would have made it very difficult to fit a larger organ into her abdomen.

Though Dr. Kato had considered transplanting part of an adult liver into Natalia, a complete organ from a child would be far better for her. But healthy organs from small children do not often become available, Dr. Kato said. This was a rare opportunity, and he was determined to seize it.

But as the day wore on, the odds for Natalia grew slimmer. The operation in Nevada to remove the liver was delayed several times.

At many hospitals, surgery to remove donor organs is done at the end of the day, after all regularly scheduled operations. The Nevada hospital had a busy surgical schedule that day, made worse by a trauma case that took priority.

At the hospital in New York, Tod Brown, an organ procurement coordinator, had alerted a charter air carrier that a flight from Nevada might be needed. That company in turn contacted West Coast carriers to pick up the donated liver and fly it to New York.

Initially, two carriers agreed, but then backed out. Several other charter companies also declined.

Mr. Brown told Dr. Kato that they might have to decline the organ. Dr. Kato, soft-spoken but relentless, said, “Find somebody who can fly.”

Dr. Kato used to work in Miami, where pilots found ways to bypass hurricanes to deliver organs. Even during Hurricane Katrina, his hospital performed transplants.

“I asked the transplant coordinators to just keep pushing,” he said.

Mr. Brown said, “Dr. Kato knew he was going to get that organ, one way or another.”

As the trajectory of the storm became clearer, one of the West Coast charter companies agreed to attempt the flight. The plan was to land at the airport in Teterboro, N.J. The backup was Newark airport, and the second backup was Albany, from where an ambulance would finish the trip.

The timing was critical: organs deteriorate outside the body, and ideally a liver should be transplanted within 12 hours of being removed.

Early Monday, as the storm whirled offshore, the plane landed at Teterboro. Soon a nurse rushed to tell the Dreelands that she had just seen an ambulance with lights and sirens screech up to the hospital. Someone had jumped out carrying a container.

At about 5 a.m., the couple kissed Natalia and saw her wheeled off to the operating room.

Three weeks later, she is back home, on the mend. The complicated regimen of drugs that transplant patients need is tough on a child, but she is getting through it, her father said.

Recently, Mr. Dreeland said, he found himself weeping uncontrollably during a church service for the family of the child who had died. “Their child gave my child life,” he said.

Though only time will tell, because the histiocytosis appeared limited to Natalia’s bile ducts and had not affected other organs, her doctors say there is a good chance that the transplant has cured her.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 28, 2012

Because of an editing error, a picture caption with an article on Tuesday about a girl who received a liver transplant during Hurricane Sandy misspelled the surname of the girl’s family. As the article correctly noted, it is Dreeland, not Vreeland.

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