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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Geek Culture's 26 Most Awesome Female Ass-Kickers

Angelina Jolie extends her reputation as filmdom’s most compelling ass-kicker, Female Division, when Salt opens Friday. Midway through a summer freighted with testosterone, Jolie’s lithe Agent Salt is a potent reminder of the power of feminine fighters.

A minority presence in sci-fi and action realms even in 2010, women warriors remain the exception to the guy-centric rule in film, TV, videogames and comic books. But that’s changing, according to Action Flick Chick blogger Katrina Hill, who moderates the "Where Are the Action Chicks?" panel Friday at San Diego’s Comic-Con International.

"Compare the original Predator to this summer’s Predators," she said in an e-mail interview with Wired.com. "The original film was a complete boy’s club, with the only woman in the movie being a hostage. Today, Predators has a kick-ass chick mixed in as an equal amongst these other badass men. So there are steps being taken in the right direction. It just takes time."

The rise of the female fighter will be addressed at no fewer than three other female-dominated panels at this year’s Comic-Con (Thursday’s “Divas and Golden Lassoes: The LGBT Obsession with Super Heroines” and Friday’s “Girls Gone Genre: Movies, TV, Comics, Web” and “Women Who Kick Ass: A New Generation of Heroines,” which features Fringe’s Anna Torv and V’s Elizabeth Mitchell.)

Here’s a look at 26 sexy-fierce female ass-kickers who’ve relied on biceps and brains to periodically kick-start geek culture.

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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.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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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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Enrique Peña Nieto Takes Office as Mexico’s President

Josh Haner/The New York Times

Enrique Peña Nieto, center, meeting with lawmakers at the national palace of Mexico on Saturday.

MEXICO CITY — With protests and little pomp, Enrique Peña Nieto on Saturday began his six-year term as president of Mexico, promising big spending and sweeping changes to bring peace and prosperity to a country troubled by drug violence and uneven economic growth.

“This is Mexico’s moment,” Mr. Peña Nieto declared in his inaugural address before a gathering of domestic and foreign leaders at the national palace, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., seated in the front row, while demonstrators kept far from the scene vandalized buildings and clashed with riot police officers outside.

Mr. Peña Nieto, 46, a lawyer who had been governor of Mexico State, has pledged to work closely with the United States to strengthen security and economic ties, which he believes would bring Mexico closer to a middle-class society and reduce the kind of drug war violence that has left tens of thousands dead in the past several years.

He made no promise to dismantle the drug-trafficking organizations, a focus of his immediate predecessor, Felipe Calderón. Instead, he unveiled a sweeping 13-point agenda focused more on domestic goals for crime prevention that would revise the penal code to attack impunity, give more attention to victims of violence, lessen poverty and hunger, improve schooling and even build new passenger train lines and expand Internet access.

“We are a nation that is growing at two speeds; some live behind and in poverty and others live in the developing part,” he said, alluding to new manufacturing plants and investments but also grinding poverty that affects half the population.

“There are a great number of Mexicans who live every day worried about the lack of employment and opportunities,” he added. “Those conditions also damage the image of Mexico abroad, and that is the Mexico that must be transformed.”

Still, his administration will be watched to see if it is propelling Mexico forward or backward.

Mr. Peña Nieto ushers in a new era for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, which ruled Mexico for more than 70 years before the more conservative National Action Party toppled it in 2000 and again in 2006.

Mr. Peña Nieto and his associates say they represent a new, chastened party bent on promoting efficiency and economic change — there were no public inaugural celebrations — and promising to fight the kind of corruption long associated with it.

“It’s a very common misconception to think that the PRI’s return to power means the return of something that is already in history,” Luis Videgaray, who led the president’s transition team and is now finance minister, said in a recent interview.

“The PRI of today is like any other party: a party that competes in a democracy, that accepts results and understands that only through good government would it be able to compete again in elections,” he said.

But Mr. Peña Nieto hardly begins with a mandate; he won 38 percent of the vote and faces a divided legislature, where his party often blocked significant changes proposed by Mr. Calderon. He recited the oath of office before Congress amid cheers and jeers, mostly from leftist legislators, and left the congressional chamber quickly.

Later, outside the national palace, scores of mostly young masked people, shouting anti-PRI slogans, clashed with the police, set fires, threw rocks and vandalized hotels and stores along several blocks. More than 90 were arrested and several were injured, and Mayor Marcelo Ebrard later blamed anarchist groups for the trouble..

When Mr. Peña Nieto announced his cabinet on Friday, it was clear that he had relied largely on PRI stalwarts, including five former governors. But he also placed several foreign-educated technocrats from his inner circle, including Mr. Videgaray, in prominent positions.

Andrew Selee, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute in Washington, said Mr. Peña Nieto seemed intent on reaffirming the power of the state, a hallmark of his party, while also hinting at taking on interest groups. He specifically promised an end to entrenched employment in the education system, seen as a jab at the powerful teachers’ union, which has stymied changes.

“After several years of decentralized government in Mexico, Peña Nieto seems intent on showing that the Mexican state is back and that all of the interest groups in the country will need to respect his authority,” Mr. Selee said. “How significant these efforts are in reality depends on what he does next, but symbolically Peña Nieto reasserted the power of the presidency after years of what many Mexicans feel has been fragmented and ineffective government.”

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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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The Cow Jumped Over the Moon (1957)

In June 1957, launch of the civilian U.S. Vanguard scientific satellite (image at top of post) was thought imminent. That month, Krafft Ehricke and George Gamow wrote in Scientific American magazine that, after Vanguard reached low-Earth orbit, the moon, 238,000 miles away, would be “the next interesting target in space.” They estimated that, with “luck and sufficient effort,” a U.S. automated probe could reach the moon by 1963.

Ehricke and Gamow proposed a design for such a probe, which they inelegantly dubbed “Cow” in tribute to the moon-jumping nursery rhyme character. Cow would have a mass of between 400 and 800 pounds. A 100-foot-tall, 120-ton rocket would boost it to a speed of 23,827 miles per hour on a path toward the moon. If the Earth existed in isolation, Cow would then enter an elliptical orbit around the Earth taking it 280,000 miles out into space – that is, about 45,000 miles beyond the moon. The gravitational attraction of the moon and Sun meant, however, that Cow would follow a “distorted” path to a point 1281 miles from the moon 75.6 hours after launch. The probe would then swing around the moon, collecting data all the while, and fall back to Earth.

Cow would strike Earth’s atmosphere moving at 25,000 miles per hour 157 hours after launch. Though high-speed reentry would drive Cow’s skin temperature to 5000° C, Ehricke and Gamow maintained that “preventing the capsule from burning up by means of insulation and a cooling system” would not be “technically prohibitive.” This would enable recovery of high-quality photographic film images and other recorded data.

Ehricke and Gamow then proposed an explosive follow-on mission that would employ two probes launched on a “Cow-type” trajectory. The lead probe would drop an atomic bomb on the moon, blasting a debris cloud far into space; then, through “a miracle of electronic guidance,” the trailing probe would “dive into the cloud, collect some of the spray and emerge from its dive by means of an auxiliary jet.” It would then fall to Earth bearing its precious cargo of lunar material. This was one of a host of U.S. and Soviet proposals to explode nuclear weapons on the lunar surface put forward in the late 1950s/early 1960s, none of which reached fruition.

On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first Earth satellite. Though the Soviets had announced two years previously that they aimed to launch a satellite, few in the West had taken them seriously. A second satellite, Sputnik 2, reached orbit with the dog Laika on board on November 3, 1957.

The first Vanguard launch attempt, designated TV3, ended in a nationally televised launch pad explosion on 6 December 1957, heaping humiliation upon humiliation. President Dwight Eisenhower, eager to calm American anxiety about Soviet technological prowess, decided not to rely solely on Vanguard. He authorized the U.S. Army rocket team under Wernher von Braun to prepare to launch a satellite as work toward the next Vanguard launch attempt proceeded. Citing technical difficulties (a fault in the Vanguard rocket’s second-stage engine), the Vanguard TV-3BU mission stood down on January 26, 1958, clearing the way for an Army Juno I rocket to launch Explorer 1, the first U.S. Earth satellite, on 31 January 1958.

The first Vanguard satellite to reach orbit left Earth on March 17, 1958. The 3.2-pound satellite, which ceased operating in 1964, remains in Earth orbit. Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2, and Explorer 1 have long since reentered the atmosphere and been destroyed, making Vanguard 1 the oldest artificial object orbiting Earth.

In August 1958, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. began to launch probes toward the moon. The Soviet Luna 2 probe became the first human-made object to strike the moon (13 September 1959) and Luna 3 imaged the moon’s hidden Farside (6 October 1959). No spacecraft would follow Ehricke and Gamow’s Cow-type trajectory until the Soviet Zond 5 (an unmanned test of a manned circumlunar spacecraft) in September 1967, and none would return samples of lunar surface material until the first manned moon landing (Apollo 11, 16-24 July 1969).

Reference:

A Rocket Around the Moon, K. Ehricke and G. Gamow, Scientific American, Volume 196, Number 6, June 1957, pp. 47-53.

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Dr. Dre ranks as Forbes’ highest-paid musician, at $100 million

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – You may be singing “Call Me Maybe” or dancing “Gangnam Style” to this year’s music, but it was veteran hip-hop artist Dr. Dre who topped Forbes‘ list of the 25 highest-paid musicians in 2012, released on Thursday.

California native Dre, 47, became one of the leading names in hip-hop and rap in the early 1990s and has worked with artists including Eminem and Snoop Dogg.

Along with his extensive back catalog, Dre‘s lucrative headphones business, Beats by Dre, helped him gross $ 100 million in pre-tax earnings according to Forbes.

The list’s top 10 was dominated by veteran musicians, with Pink Floyd‘s bassist and singer Roger Waters coming in at No. 2 with earnings of $ 88 million from his lucrative The Wall Live tour, and British singer Elton John at No. 3 with $ 80 million.

Last year’s highest-paid musicians U2 landed at No. 4 this year with combined earnings of $ 78 million from their three-year 360 tour. 1990s British boy band Take That, who reformed in 2005, rounded out the top five with $ 69 million, earned from an eight-date tour at London’s Wembley Stadium, which became the highest-grossing single stadium tour to date.

Forbes compiles its annual highest-paid musicians list by estimating artists’ earnings from music sales, live shows, endorsements and merchandising. Earlier this year, Dutch DJ Tiesto was named the highest-paid DJ in the fast-growing electronic dance music industry.

The only two artists under 30 to break the top 10 were country-pop darling Taylor Swift, 22, who tied with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney at No. 8 with earnings of $ 57 million, and Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, 18, who tied with country star Toby Keith at No. 10 with earnings of $ 55 million.

Pop star and “X Factor” judge Britney Spears entered the list at No. 7 with earnings of $ 58 million, cementing her comeback after a turbulent few years. Her earnings encompass her multi-million dollar “X Factor” deal, music sales and endorsements.

Spears led eight female artists in the top 25 list, including R&B star Rihanna at No. 12 with $ 53 million, coming ahead of Lady Gaga at No. 13 with $ 52 million. Grammy-winning British singer Adele notched No. 22 on the list, tied with Kanye West, with earnings of $ 35 million following a record year for her album “21.”

Music’s power couple, singer Beyonce and rapper Jay-Z, came in at No. 18 and No. 20, respectively, with earnings of $ 40 million and $ 38 million.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Jill Serjeant and Leslie Adler)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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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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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Nov. 30

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Attorneys say Halle Berry, ex settle dispute

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Attorneys for Halle Berry and her ex-boyfriend have settled court issues that arose after a Thanksgiving Day fight at the actress’ home.

The fisticuffs involved Berry’s ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry and her fiance, actor Olivier Martinez. Aubry was arrested after the fight, which left him with a black eye, a broken rib and other injuries.

Aubry obtained a temporary restraining order against Martinez. The model and Berry have been battling over custody of their 4-year-old daughter for months and have appeared twice in a family law court since the fight.

Blair Berk, an attorney for Berry, and Shawn Holley, who represents Aubry, released a statement after Thursday’s hearing that said the two sides had reached an amicable agreement.

No details were released, and the attorneys declined to answer questions.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Medicare Is Faulted in Electronic Medical Records Conversion

The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of the Obama administration’s plan for health care reform — is “vulnerable” to fraud and abuse because of the failure of Medicare officials to develop appropriate safeguards, according to a sharply critical report to be issued Thursday by federal investigators.

Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star-News, via Associated Press

Celeste Stephens, a nurse, leads a session on electronic records at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator for Medicare.

The use of electronic medical records has been central to the aim of overhauling health care in America. Advocates contend that electronic records systems will improve patient care and lower costs through better coordination of medical services, and the Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to encourage doctors and hospitals to switch to electronic records to track patient care.

But the report says Medicare, which is charged with managing the incentive program that encourages the adoption of electronic records, has failed to put in place adequate safeguards to ensure that information being provided by hospitals and doctors about their electronic records systems is accurate. To qualify for the incentive payments, doctors and hospitals must demonstrate that the systems lead to better patient care, meeting a so-called meaningful use standard by, for example, checking for harmful drug interactions.

Medicare “faces obstacles” in overseeing the electronic records incentive program “that leave the program vulnerable to paying incentives to professionals and hospitals that do not fully meet the meaningful use requirements,” the investigators concluded. The report was prepared by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare.

The investigators contrasted the looser management of the incentive program with the agency’s pledge to more closely monitor Medicare payments of medical claims. Medicare officials have indicated that the agency intends to move away from a “pay and chase” model, in which it tried to get back any money it has paid in error, to one in which it focuses on trying to avoid making unjustified payments in the first place.

Late Wednesday, a Medicare spokesman said in a statement: “Protecting taxpayer dollars is our top priority and we have implemented aggressive procedures to hold providers accountable. Making a false claim is a serious offense with serious consequences and we believe the overwhelming majority of doctors and hospitals take seriously their responsibility to honestly report their performance.”

The government’s investment in electronic records was authorized under the broader stimulus package passed in 2009. Medicare expects to spend nearly $7 billion over five years as a way of inducing doctors and hospitals to adopt and use electronic records. So far, the report said, the agency has paid 74, 317 health professionals and 1,333 hospitals. By attesting that they meet the criteria established under the program, a doctor can receive as much as $44,000 for adopting electronic records, while a hospital could be paid as much as $2 million in the first year of its adoption. The inspector general’s report follows earlier concerns among regulators and others over whether doctors and hospitals are using electronic records inappropriately to charge more for services, as reported by The New York Times last September, and is likely to fuel the debate over the government’s efforts to promote electronic records. Critics say the push for electronic records may be resulting in higher Medicare spending with little in the way of improvement in patients’ health. Thursday’s report did not address patient care.

Even those within the industry say the speed with which systems are being developed and adopted by hospitals and doctors has led to a lack of clarity over how the records should be used and concerns about their overall accuracy.

“We’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the Model T, and we don’t know the rules of the road. Now we’ve had a big car pileup,” said Lynne Thomas Gordon, the chief executive of the American Health Information Management Association, a trade group in Chicago. The association, which contends more study is needed to determine whether hospitals and doctors actually are abusing electronic records to increase their payments, says it supports more clarity.

Although there is little disagreement over the potential benefits of electronic records in reducing duplicative tests and avoiding medical errors, critics increasingly argue that the federal government has not devoted enough time or resources to making certain the money it is investing is being well spent.

House Republicans echoed these concerns in early October in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. Citing the Times article, they called for suspending the incentive program until concerns about standardization had been resolved. “The top House policy makers on health care are concerned that H.H.S. is squandering taxpayer dollars by asking little of providers in return for incentive payments,” said a statement issued at the same time by the Republicans, who are likely to seize on the latest inspector general report as further evidence of lax oversight. Republicans have said they will continue to monitor the program.

In her letter in response, which has not been made public, Ms. Sebelius dismissed the idea of suspending the incentive program, arguing that it “would be profoundly unfair to the hospitals and eligible professionals that have invested billions of dollars and devoted countless hours of work to purchase and install systems and educate staff.” She said Medicare was trying to determine whether electronic records had been used in any fraudulent billing but she insisted that the current efforts to certify the systems and address the concerns raised by the Republicans and others were adequate.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 30, 2012

An article on Thursday about a federal report critical of Medicare’s performance in assuring accuracy as doctors and hospitals switch to electronic medical records misstated, in some copies, the timing of a statement from a Medicare spokesman in response to the report. The statement was released late Wednesday, not late Thursday.

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Most Americans Face Lower Tax Burden Than in the 80s

What Is Fair?:
Taxes are still a hot topic after the presidential election. But as a country that spends more than it collects in taxes, are we asking the right taxpayers to pay the right amounts?

BELLEVILLE, Ill. — Alan Hicks divides long days between the insurance business he started in the late 1970s and the barbecue restaurant he opened with his sons three years ago. He earned more than $250,000 last year and said taxes took more than 40 percent. What’s worse, in his view, is that others — the wealthy, hiding in loopholes; the poor, living on government benefits — are not paying their fair share.

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

"I don't have the answer of where to pull back. I want the state parks to stay open. I want, I want, I want. I want Big Bird, I think it's beautiful. What don't I want? I don't know," said Anita Thole, a safety supervisor for a utility contractor.

“It feels like the harder we work, the more they take from us,” said Mr. Hicks, 55, as he waited for a meat truck one recent afternoon. “And it seems like there’s an awful lot of people in the United States who don’t pay any taxes.”

These are common sentiments in the eastern suburbs of St. Louis, a region of fading factory towns fringed by new subdivisions. Here, as across the country, people like Mr. Hicks are pained by the conviction that they are paying ever more to finance the expansion of government.

But in fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. More than 85 percent of households with earnings above $25,000 paid less in total taxes than comparable households in 1980.

Lower-income households, however, saved little or nothing. Many pay no federal income taxes, but they do pay a range of other levies, like federal payroll taxes, state sales taxes and local property taxes. Only about half of taxpaying households with incomes below $25,000 paid less in 2010.

The uneven decline is a result of two trends. Congress cut federal taxation at every income level over the last 30 years. State and local taxes, meanwhile, increased for most Americans. Those taxes generally take a larger share of income from those who make less, so the increases offset more and more of the federal savings at lower levels of income.

In a half-dozen states, including Connecticut, Florida and New Jersey, the increases were large enough to offset the federal savings for most households, not just the poorer ones.

Now an era of tax cuts may be reaching its end. The federal government depends increasingly on borrowed money to pay its bills, and many state and local governments are similarly confronting the reality that they are spending more money than they collect. In Washington, debates about tax cuts have yielded to debates about who should pay more.

President Obama campaigned for re-election on a promise to take a larger share of taxable income above roughly $250,000 a year. The White House is now negotiating with Congressional Republicans, who instead want to raise some money by reducing tax deductions. Federal spending cuts also are at issue.

If a deal is not struck by year’s end, a wide range of federal tax cuts passed since 2000 will expire and taxes will rise for roughly 90 percent of Americans, according to the independent Tax Policy Center. For lower-income households, taxation would spike well above 1980 levels. Upper-income households would lose some but not all of the benefits of tax cuts over the last three decades.

Public debate over taxes has typically focused on the federal income tax, but that now accounts for less than a third of the total tax revenues collected by federal, state and local governments. To analyze the total burden, The Times created a model, in consultation with experts, which estimated total tax bills for each taxpayer in each year from 1980, when the election of President Ronald Reagan opened an era of tax cutting, up to 2010, the most recent year for which relevant data is available.

The analysis shows that the overall burden of taxation declined as a share of income in the 1980s, rose to a new peak in the 1990s and fell again in the 2000s. Tax rates at most income levels were lower in 2010 than at any point during the 1980s.

Governments still collected the same share of total income in 2010 as in 1980 — 31 cents from every dollar — because people with higher incomes pay taxes at higher rates, and household incomes rose over the last three decades, particularly at the top.

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

Don't bother telling Wednesday night's Powerball winners -- if there are any -- 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

Officials couldn't say immediately after the 8 p.m. drawing whether there were any winning tickets. But beforehand, officials had said there was a 75% chance that someone would win Wednesday night. 

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, 9:53 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.]

 ALSO:

Zig Ziglar dies at 86; motivational speaker inspired millions

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

Texas moves to seize polygamist Warren Jeffs' ranch compound 

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Nov. 29

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Cate Blanchett in negotiations for evil stepmother in Disney’s Cinderella film

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Cate Blanchett is in negotiations to play the evil stepmother in Disney‘s re-imagining of the classic fairytale Cinderella, the “Untitled Cinderella Story,” an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap.

Blanchett would be the first to be cast in the live-action film. It is being directed by Mark Romanek for the studio based on a script by Chris Weitz.

The film is being produced by Simon Kinberg, who is best-known for the “X-Men” series.

The feature was first set up at Disney in May 2010 based on a pitch by Aline Brosh McKenna (“Devil Wear Prada.”), who wrote the initial draft.

Disney set the project up in the wake of its success with “Alice in Wonderland,” an adaptation of the Lewis C. Carroll book that starred Johnny Depp.

Disney representatives could not be reached for comment.

Blanchett can next be seen on screen in “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” on December 14. She was recently confirmed for George Clooney’s upcoming film “The Monuments Men.” She will also be seen in “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” and “The Hobbit: There and Back Again.”

Cinderella has been adapted for the big screen dozens of times. In Andy Tennant’s 1998 version “Ever After: A Cinderella Story,” Angelica Houston played the evil stepmother. In the TV movie “Cinderella” in 1997, the role was played by Bernadette Peters. Sigourney Weaver voiced the character in “Happily N’Ever After” in 2006. Disney‘s 1950 version featured Eleanor Audley in the voice role of Lady Tremaine, the wicked stepmother.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Phys Ed: Keeping Your Eye on the Ball

Recently, researchers in England set out to determine whether weekend golfers could improve their game through one of two approaches. Some were coached on individual swing technique, while others were instructed to gaze fixedly at the ball before putting. The researchers hoped to learn not only whether looking at the ball affects performance, but also whether where we look changes how we think and feel while in action.

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Back in elementary school gym class, virtually all of us were taught to keep our eyes on the ball during sports. But a growing body of research suggests that, as adults, most of us have forgotten how to do this. When scientists in recent years have attached sophisticated, miniature gaze-tracking devices to the heads of golfers, soccer players, basketball free throw shooters, tennis players and even competitive sharpshooters, they have found that a majority are not actually looking where they believe they are looking or for as long as they think.

It has been less clear, though, whether a slightly wandering gaze really matters that much to those of us who are decidedly recreational athletes.

Which is in part why the British researchers had half of their group of 40 duffers practice putting technique, while the other half received instruction in a gaze-focusing technique known as “Quiet Eye” training.

Quiet Eye training, as the name suggests, is an attempt to get people to stop flicking their focus around so much. But “Quiet Eye training is not just about looking at the ball,” says Mark Wilson, who led the study, published in Psychophysiology, and is a senior lecturer in human movement science at the University of Exeter in England. “It is about looking at the ball for long enough to process aiming information.” It involves reminding players to first briefly sight toward the exact spot where they wish to send the ball, and then settle their eyes onto the ball and hold them there.

This tight focus on the ball, Dr. Wilson says, blunts distracting mental chatter and allows the brain “to process the aiming information you just gathered” and direct the body in the proper motions to get the ball where you wish it to go.

A quiet, focused eye, in other words, seems to encourage a quiet, focused mind, which then makes for more accurate putting.

And in fact, after Dr. Wilson had his golfing volunteers practice for hours on either specific aspects of stroke technique or on focusing their gaze and not worrying about technique, those who had worked on their gaze were more accurate than those who had fine-tuned their technique. Those trained to focus also had lower heart rates and less muscle twitchiness, indicating less performance anxiety.

Similar results have been reported among soccer penalty kickers, who, like golfers, need to precisely place a ball but have the added distraction of a peripatetic, obstructive goalie. Many players tend to glance at the goalie as they prepare to shoot. Their eyes are not quiet, and their aim is affected.

But in a study published last year in the journal Cognitive Processing, collegiate players who were instructed to look briefly toward one of the upper, far corners of the goal and then immediately back to the ball, ignoring the goalie, significantly improved their shooting accuracy and reduced by 50 percent the number of times the goalie blocked their try, compared to teammates who didn’t quiet their gaze.

It did not seem to matter, says Greg Wood, also of the University of Exeter, who led the study, that kickers were glancing briefly toward where they planned to shoot, potentially telegraphing their intentions to the goalie. “An accurate shot kicked with typical speed will reach the goal in approximately 400 milliseconds, leaving the goalie with insufficient processing and response time,” he says. Players needn’t disguise intent if their aim is true.

Of course, merely keeping your eye on the ball won’t induce it to roll or rise to the desired location if you employ miserable technique. No amount of laser-eyed focus will get one of my putts to land. But what is interesting about Quiet Eye-style training, Dr. Wilson says, is that it can allow recreational and novice athletes with rudimentary skills to progress rapidly.

Specifically, Dr. Wilson says, after having extensively studied just how the best golfers look, he now teaches novice golfers at his lab to “keep their gaze on the back of the ball, which is the contact point for the putter, for a brief period before starting the putting action” — long enough to, for instance, “say ‘back of the cup’ to themselves,” he says. The golfers are told to hold that position throughout the putting stroke and, he says, “importantly, after contact for a split second. I often ask golfers to rate the quality of their contact on the ball from 1 to 10, before they look up to see where the ball went.”

Inexperienced putters who followed these instructions improved much more rapidly, he says, than those who merely practiced putts repeatedly.

“It seems so obvious,” Dr. Wilson says. “It is almost too simple. People assume that they are doing all of this already. ‘You mean I should look at the ball?’ Duh!”

But, he concludes, “the fact is that many people do not look at the right place at the right time.”

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The Next War: In Federal Budget Cutting, F-35 Fighter Jet Is at Risk

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

Vice Adm. David Venlet was named to lead the Joint Strike Fighter program in 2010 after problems had left it behind schedule and over budget.

LEXINGTON PARK, Md. — The Marine version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, already more than a decade in the making, was facing a crucial question: Could the jet, which can soar well past the speed of sound, land at sea like a helicopter?

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

An F-35B, the Marine Corps version of the Joint Strike Fighter.

On an October day last year, with Lt. Col. Fred Schenk at the controls, the plane glided toward a ship off the Atlantic coast and then, its engine rotating straight down, descended gently to the deck at seven feet a second.

There were cheers from the ship’s crew members, who “were all shaking my hands and smiling,” Colonel Schenk recalled.

The smooth landing helped save that model and breathed new life into the huge F-35 program, the most expensive weapons system in military history. But while Pentagon officials now say that the program is making progress, it begins its 12th year in development years behind schedule, troubled with technological flaws and facing concerns about its relatively short flight range as possible threats grow from Asia.

With a record price tag — potentially in the hundreds of billions of dollars — the jet is likely to become a target for budget cutters. Reining in military spending is on the table as President Obama and Republican leaders in Congress look for ways to avert a fiscal crisis. But no matter what kind of deal is reached in the next few weeks, military analysts expect the Pentagon budget to decline in the next decade as the war in Afghanistan ends and the military is required to do its part to reduce the federal debt.

Behind the scenes, the Pentagon and the F-35’s main contractor, Lockheed Martin, are engaged in a conflict of their own over the costs. The relationship “is the worst I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in some bad ones,” Maj. Gen. Christopher Bogdan of the Air Force, a top program official, said in September. “I guarantee you: we will not succeed on this if we do not get past that.”

In a battle that is being fought on other military programs as well, the Pentagon has been pushing Lockheed to cut costs much faster while the company is fighting to hold onto a profit. “Lockheed has seemed to be focused on short-term business goals,” Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, said this month. “And we’d like to see them focus more on execution of the program and successful delivery of the product.”

The F-35 was conceived as the Pentagon’s silver bullet in the sky — a state-of-the art aircraft that could be adapted to three branches of the military, with advances that would easily overcome the defenses of most foes. The radar-evading jets would not only dodge sophisticated antiaircraft missiles, but they would also give pilots a better picture of enemy threats while enabling allies, who want the planes, too, to fight more closely with American forces.

But the ambitious aircraft instead illustrates how the Pentagon can let huge and complex programs veer out of control and then have a hard time reining them in. The program nearly doubled in cost as Lockheed and the military’s own bureaucracy failed to deliver on the most basic promise of a three-in-one jet that would save taxpayers money and be served up speedily.

Lockheed has delivered 41 planes so far for testing and initial training, and Pentagon leaders are slowing purchases of the F-35 to fix the latest technical problems and reduce the immediate costs. A helmet for pilots that projects targeting data onto its visor is too jittery to count on. The tail-hook on the Navy jet has had trouble catching the arresting cable, meaning that version cannot yet land on carriers. And writing and testing the millions of lines of software needed by the jets is so daunting that General Bogdan said, “It scares the heck out of me.”

With all the delays — full production is not expected until 2019 — the military has spent billions to extend the lives of older fighters and buy more of them to fill the gap. At the same time, the cost to build each F-35 has risen to an average of $137 million from $69 million in 2001.

The jets would cost taxpayers $396 billion, including research and development, if the Pentagon sticks to its plan to build 2,443 by the late 2030s. That would be nearly four times as much as any other weapons system and two-thirds of the $589 billion the United States has spent on the war in Afghanistan. The military is also desperately trying to figure out how to reduce the long-term costs of operating the planes, now projected at $1.1 trillion.

“The plane is unaffordable,” said Winslow T. Wheeler, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group in Washington.

Todd Harrison, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a research group in Washington, said Pentagon officials had little choice but to push ahead, especially after already spending $65 billion on the fighter. “It is simultaneously too big to fail and too big to succeed,” he said. “The bottom line here is that they’ve crammed too much into the program. They were asking one fighter to do three different jobs, and they basically ended up with three different fighters.”

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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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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Nov. 28

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

Read More..

Robbie Williams aims to seal solo legacy with tour

LONDON (Reuters) – Still famous as the in-again/out-again member of chart-topping boyband Take That, British singer Robbie Williams says it is time to get serious as a solo artist and prove his place at the top of the pop pile.

Williams told reporters on Monday he planned a 15-date European stadium tour kicking off in Manchester on June 19, 2013 and concluding in Tallinn, Estonia on August 20.

“I’m buzzing. I’m ready to go. I haven’t done a tour of this size since 2006,” he said in London.

“I think it’s legacy time, because I’m venturing into getting my handicap down at golf and all that business.

“I’m nearly 40, that’s what I’m trying to say. I want to go and seal my place in pop history and go off and deliver a tour of great magnitude while I still can.”

The 38-year-old in fact enjoyed major success after leaving Take That in 1995, producing a string of hit albums and singles including “Angels” and “Millennium” and signing a contract with EMI in 2002 reportedly worth tens of millions.

But by the time his 2006 album “Rudebox” came out followed by “Reality Killed the Video Star” in 2009, he was seen as a dwindling force in British pop who had failed to break the key U.S. market.

Williams rejoined Take That in 2010 and they recorded the hit album “Progress” before touring together in 2011, and the singer said the experience had helped give him confidence to tour large venues again as a solo artist.

“I just ran out of ideas and ran out of a bit of creativity and ran out of energy and did the textbook ‘burnt out’,” he said of the late 2000s.

“But I’ve been working really hard and I needed to do something else, and fortunately it came in the shape of my old band. A lot of demons were vanquished from the past. A lot of wrongs were put to rights.

“That tour last summer was just absolutely incredible. It kick-started my professional career.”

Earlier this month, Williams returned to the top of the album charts with “Take the Crown”.

Asked whether he would consider rejoining Take That again, he replied: “I haven’t officially left … What I do know is that … if we all remain healthy then I will definitely be a part of Take That at some point. It’s joyful being around them.”

Williams conceded it may be too early to talk about his legacy at 38, but added he wanted to “put my stamp down.

“The fact that 40 is looming plays on my mind more than it does on anybody else’s mind. Pop stars cease to be pop stars at 40 and start being old people singing, don’t they?

“There is a forum for a male solo star to get up there in stadiums and own the place and I want that to be me, so I’ve kind of been lethargic for the last couple of albums.”

Williams recently became a father, and said his daughter would accompany him on tour. Olly Murs, who rose to fame on “The X Factor” reality TV show, will support Williams on his tour.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Personal Health: Aiding the Doctor Who Feels Cancer's Toll

The woman was terminally ill with advanced cancer, and the oncologist who had been treating her for three years thought the next step might be to deliver chemotherapy directly to her brain. It was a risky treatment that he knew would not, could not, help her.

When Dr. Diane E. Meier asked what he thought the futile therapy would accomplish, the oncologist replied, “I don’t want Judy to think I’m abandoning her.”

In a recent interview, Dr. Meier said, “Most physicians have no other strategies, no other arrows in their quiver beyond administering tests and treatments.”

“To avoid feeling that they’ve abandoned their patients, doctors throw procedures at them,” she said.

Dr. Meier, a renowned expert on palliative care at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, was the keynote speaker this month at the Buddhist Contemplative Care Symposium, organized by the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care and the Garrison Institute. She described contemplative care as “the discipline of being present, of listening before acting.”

“Counter to how the American medical system is structured, which pays for what gets done,” she said, “its approach is, ‘Don’t just do something, stand there.’ ”

But the idea is not to do just that. Rather, she said, the goal is to “restore the patient to the center of the enterprise.”

Under the Affordable Care Act, she said, unnecessary procedures may decline as more doctors are reimbursed for doing what is best for their patients over time, not just for administering tests and treatments. But more could be done if physicians were able to step away from the misperception that everything that can be done should be done.

Dr. Meier’s question prompted Judy’s oncologist to realize that what his patient needed most at the end of her life was not more chemotherapy, but for him to sit down with her, to promise to do his best to keep her comfortable and to be there for the rest of her days.

Occupational Distress

Patients and families may not realize it, but doctors who care for people with incurable illness, and especially the terminally ill, often suffer with their patients. Unable to cope with their own feelings of frustration, failure and helplessness, doctors may react with anger, abruptness and avoidance.

Visits may be reduced to a quick review of the medical chart, and phone calls may not be returned. Even though their doctors are still there, incurably ill patients may feel neglected and depressed, which can exacerbate illness and pain and even hasten death. Dr. Michael K. Kearney, a palliative care physician at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, told the Contemplative Care conference that doctors, especially those who care for terminally ill patients, are subject to two serious forms of occupational stress: burnout and compassion fatigue.

He described burnout as “the end stage of stresses between the individual and the work environment” that can result in emotional and physical exhaustion, a sense of detachment and a feeling of never being able to achieve one’s professional goals.

He likened compassion fatigue to “secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, or vicarious traumatization — trauma suffered when someone close to you is suffering.”

A doctor with compassion fatigue may avoid thoughts and feelings associated with a patient’s misery, become irritable and easily angered, and face physical and emotional distress when reminded of work with the dying. Compassion fatigue can lead to burnout.

In one study of 18 oncologists, published in 2008 in The Journal of Palliative Medicine, those who saw their role as both biomedical and psychosocial found end-of-life care very satisfying. But those “who described a primarily biomedical role reported a more distant relationship with the patient, a sense of failure at not being able to alter the course of the disease and an absence of collegial support,” the authors noted.

Healing the Healer

For doctors at risk of becoming overwhelmed by the stresses of their jobs, Dr. Kearney recommends adopting the time-honored Buddhist practice of “mindfulness meditation,” which involves cultivating mental techniques for stress reduction that are native to all of us but practiced by too few. He likened meditation to “learning to breathe underwater, or finding sources of renewal within work itself.”

To achieve it, a person sits quietly, paying attention to one’s breathing and whenever a distracting thought intrudes, turning one’s attention back to the sensation of breathing. This can help calm the mind and prepare it for a clearer perspective.

Dr. Kearney said this practice could help doctors “really pay attention and be tuned into their patients and what the patients are experiencing.”

“Patients, in turn,” he said, “experience a doctor who’s not just focused on a medical agenda but who really listens to them.”

He said mindfulness meditation helps doctors become more self-aware, empathetic and patient-focused, and to make fewer medical errors. It enables doctors to notice what is going on within themselves and to consider rational options instead of just reacting.

“It’s like pressing an internal pause button,” Dr. Kearney said. “The doctor is able to recognize he’s being stressed, and it prevents him from invoking the survival defense mechanisms of fight (‘Let’s do another course of chemotherapy’), flight (‘There’s nothing more I can do for you — I’ll go get the chaplain’) and freeze (the doctor goes blank and does nothing).” Such reactions can be highly distressing to a dying patient.

When a patient asks for the impossible, like “Promise me I’m not going to die,” the mindful doctor is more likely to step back and say, “I can promise you I’ll do everything I can to help you. I’m going to continue to care for you and support you as best as I can. I’ll be back to see you later today and again tomorrow,” Dr. Kearney said.

Although Dr. Kearney does mindfulness meditation for 30 minutes every morning, he said as little as 8 to 10 minutes a day has been shown helpful to practicing physicians.

In addition, doctors can factor moments of meditation into the course of the workday — say, while washing their hands, having a snack or coffee or pausing before entering the next patient room to focus on breathing.

To deal with the emotional flood that can come after a traumatic event, he suggested taking a brief timeout or calling on a friend or colleague to go for a walk.

This is the second of two columns about communication and cancer. Read the first: “When Treating Cancer Is Not an Option”

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