Mike Piazza softens stance on Dodgers' Vin Scully

PHOENIX—

— Calling Vin Scully "a class act" and saying he had "the utmost respect" for him, Mike Piazza on Monday defended what he wrote in his recently released autobiography about the Hall of Fame broadcaster.

In his book, "Long Shot," Piazza described Scully as instrumental in turning the fans of Los Angeles against him during the contract stalemate that led to his trade to the Florida Marlins in 1998. Piazza wrote that Scully "was crushing me" on the air, a charge Scully vehemently denied.

"I can't say that I have regrets," Piazza said. "I was just trying to explain the situation."

The former All-Star catcher was at the Dodgers' spring-training facility with Italy's World Baseball Classic team, for which he is a coach. Scully was also at the complex, to call the Dodgers' 7-6 victory over the Chicago Cubs.

"I'd love to see him," Piazza said.

The two didn't meet.

"I always liked him," Scully said. "I admired him. I think either he made a mistake or got some bad advice. I still think of him as a great player and I hope he gets into the Hall of Fame. I really do. Whatever disappointment I feel, I'll put aside."

Scully declined to comment further on Piazza or his book.

Piazza complimented Scully as he tried to defend what he wrote.

"Vin is a class act; he's an icon," Piazza said. "To this day, I have the utmost respect for him. But the problem is, you have to go back in time and understand that at that point in time in my career with the Dodgers was a very tumultuous time. I was more or less telling my version of the story, at least what I was experiencing. And I said at the end of the book, it's not coming from a place of malice or anger. I think anybody who remembers that time knows it was a very tumultuous time."

Piazza said his intent wasn't to blame Scully.

"I don't think anybody who read the passage from start to finish felt that way," Piazza said. "Anybody who reads it knows it wasn't me blaming. That was definitely not the only factor. There were other factors. The team made the mistake, I made the mistake, of speaking publicly."

Piazza acknowledged that he never heard Scully's broadcasts and that his impressions of them were based on what he heard from others.

"My perception was that he was given the Dodgers' versions of the negotiations, which, I feel, wasn't 100% accurate," Piazza said.

In his book, Piazza also took issue with how Scully asked him about his contract demands during a spring-training interview. Piazza said Monday that he was "taken aback" by the line of questioning because he previously hadn't talked publicly about the negotiations.

To reach the practice fields at Camelback Ranch on Monday, Piazza had to pass through a gantlet of Dodgers fans. Piazza said he wasn't nervous.

"I did a book signing a couple of weeks ago in Pasadena and the fans were really nice," he said.

Piazza denied that he hadn't returned to Dodger Stadium in recent years out of fear of being booed, as Tom Lasorda told The Times last month.

Piazza said he always associated the Dodgers with the O'Malley family, which sold the team to News Corp. in 1998.

"Since then, obviously, they've taken on a different identity," Piazza said.

Piazza was noncommittal about visiting the ballpark in the future. "We'll see," he said. "I'll never say never."

Wouldn't it be harder to return now that his portrayal of Scully has upset fans?

"I don't know," he said. "I can't answer that."

Piazza also spoke about falling short of being elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

"I definitely couldn't lie and say I wasn't a little disappointed," he said.

He is hopeful he will one day be inducted. "I trust the process," he said.

Piazza wouldn't say whether he thought Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens deserved to be in the Hall of Fame. Both players, who have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs, also were denied election.

Piazza has denied using performance-enhancing drugs and has never faced detailed allegations that he did. Asked if he was upset that the indiscretions of others might have altered others' perceptions of him, he replied, "Unfortunately, that's the way life is sometimes. I can't control and worry about what people think."

dylan.hernandez@latimes.com

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Hot Trend: Tapping the Power of Cold to Lose Weight

I’m in the fetal position at the bottom of a swimming pool. Water temperature: 60 degrees Fahrenheit. In my lap there’s a 20-pound weight anchoring me in place. All I’m wearing is a Speedo, a nose plug, goggles, and a snorkel resembling an oversize asthma inhaler. The mouthpiece connects to two 4-foot hoses feeding out of the water and into a PC-sized box next to a laptop.

After 20 minutes in the water, I’m shivering intensely. But that doesn’t bother me so much as the headache. It feels like a set of pliers is clamping the back of my neck while someone pricks my temples with icy-hot needles.

My suffering is natural, I tell myself. It could even be good for me.

Now a hand from above reaches into the water and slaps the side of the pool. It’s my torturer, Ray Cronise, signaling that time is up. A former NASA material scientist who spent 15 years overseeing experiments aboard shuttles at Marshall Space Flight Center, Cronise is putting me through a battery of tests at his home in Huntsville, Alabama. That snorkel contraption—a $30,000 piece of lab equipment—is analyzing my breathing to chart how the cold water affects my metabolism. (It tracks inhaled and exhaled carbon dioxide and oxygen, a proxy for the amount of fuel I’m burning.) Cronise believes exposing the body to cold can be a radically effective spur for losing weight. He’s doing this home-brewed research in hopes of formulating a Weight Watchers-style algorithm, app, or wearable device that can help people safely harness what he’s convinced is the transformative power of cold.

Cronise got the idea back in 2008 while watching a TV program about Michael Phelps. The coverage claimed that, while training, the Olympic swimmer ate 12,000 calories a day. At the time, Cronise was on a diet of 12,000 calories per week. (He was carrying 209 pounds on his 5’9″ frame and wanted to get back down to 180.) Something didn’t add up. Even if Phelps had an exceptionally high metabolism and swam three hours a day, he still should have turned into a blob. Then it hit Cronise: Phelps was spending hours every day in water, which was sucking heat from his body. He was burning extra calories just to maintain his core temperature of 98.6.

That fall, Cronise grew obsessed. He avoided warmth altogether: He took cool showers, wore light clothing, slept without sheets, and took 3-mile “shiver walks” in 30-degree weather wearing a T-shirt, shorts, gloves, and earmuffs. In six weeks he shed 27 pounds, nearly tripling his weight-loss rate without changing his calorie-restricted diet.

Cronise set off a full-blown weight-loss fad. In 2010, he talked about his self-experimentation in a presentation, and then the Pied Piper of body-hacking, Tim Ferriss, name-checked Cronise and prescribed 20-minute ice baths in The 4-Hour Body. When the book came out, ABC’s Nightline aired a segment on Ferriss and “thermal dieting.” Right on cue, bloggers began documenting their own cold-exposure experiences. On websites and forums like Fatburningman.com, diehards started sharing tips on making DIY ice packs. “My body,” one guy confessed after sleeping with ice-filled Ziplocs on his abs, “felt like it had been beaten with heavy sticks.” Today the trend has gone truly mass: Best-selling diet books like Six Weeks to OMG: Get Skinnier Than All Your Friends urge readers to take cold baths. On Today, Kathie Lee Gifford praised a company called FreezeAwayFat, which sells Lycra bike shorts with pockets for frozen gel packs. Her personal review: “My belt is now one notch smaller.”

Just one problem: There’s not much rigorous science behind any of this. It’s exceedingly difficult to quantify how environmental temperature affects an individual’s metabolism. Studies have shown cold exposure can boost the metabolism anywhere from 8 to 80 percent, depending on a slew of variables including the degree and duration of the exposure, whether you’re shivering, your diet, and physiological factors like age, gender, and fat mass.

Scientists are racing to separate the real science from the pseudo. They’re investigating the precise mechanisms by which the body adjusts to cold temperatures and reaching new insights into the ways our bodies burn fat. They’re even trying to come up with a new kind of weight-loss pill—a longtime ambition of the pharmaceutical industry—that can mimic those processes and make us thinner faster, with less effort.

But Cronise doesn’t have plans for a pill or institutional backing or VC funding. He’s not waiting around for peer review. He wants to see results—now. That’s why he’s got me submerged in his cold plunge pool. He’s conducting his own experiments, trying to figure out how much cold affects metabolism, how best to administer the cold, and for how long.

After 20 minutes in the pool, I emerge from the water, but I’m still breathing through the snorkel. Cronise wants to monitor me for any sustained acceleration of my metabolism for at least 30 minutes. I’m watching a firefly flicker through a lush maple tree as I sit on the deck in sticky 87-degree Southern air. I can’t stop shivering.

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Nine Inch Nails to go back on road after reinventing itself

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Industrial rock group Nine Inch Nails is planning to hit the road again for a world tour after reinventing itself and adding new musicians.

Founder Trent Reznor, who took a hiatus after the band’s “Wave Goodbye” tour in 2009, told music website Pitchfork.com on Monday that the band is “reinventing itself from scratch.”

Reznor said in a statement that bass player Eric Avery, formerly of Jane’s Addiction, King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew and Josh Eustis of electronic act Telefon Tel Aviv would join him in the revamped venture, along with previous collaborators Alessandro Cortini and drummer Ilan Rubin.

“I was working with Adrian Belew on some musical ideas, which led to some discussion on performing, which led to some beard-scratching, which (many steps later) led to the decision to re-think the idea of what Nine Inch Nails could be, and the idea of playing a show,” Reznor told Pitchfork.

He said the first shows will begin this summer, followed by a tour in the United States and worldwide dates in 2014. Details and dates were not announced.

Nine Inch Nails has featured a revolving lineup since it was formed in Cleveland, Ohio by Reznor in 1988. The band won Grammys for songs “Wish” and “Happiness in Slavery” in the 1990s.

It released its last album “The Slip” in 2008 and Reznor said in 2009 that the band was taking a break from touring.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Horse Meat in European Beef Raises Questions on U.S. Exposure

The alarm in Europe over the discovery of horse meat in beef products escalated again Monday, when the Swedish furniture giant Ikea withdrew an estimated 1,670 pounds of meatballs from sale in 14 European countries.

Ikea acted after authorities in the Czech Republic detected horse meat in its meatballs. The company said it had made the decision even though its tests two weeks ago did not detect horse DNA.

Horse meat mixed with beef was first found last month in Ireland, then Britain, and has now expanded steadily across the Continent. The situation in Europe has created unease among American consumers over whether horse meat might also find its way into the food supply in the United States. Here are answers to commonly asked questions on the subject.

Has horse meat been found in any meatballs sold in Ikea stores in the United States?

Ikea says there is no horse meat in the meatballs it sells in the United States. The company issued a statement on Monday saying meatballs sold in its 38 stores in the United States were bought from an American supplier and contained beef and pork from animals raised in the United States and Canada.

“We do not tolerate any other ingredients than the ones stipulated in our recipes or specifications, secured through set standards, certifications and product analysis by accredited laboratories,” Ikea said in its statement.

Mona Liss, a spokeswoman for Ikea, said by e-mail that all of the businesses that supply meat to its meatball maker  issue letters guaranteeing that they will not misbrand or adulterate their products. “Additionally, as an abundance of caution, we are in the process of DNA-testing our meatballs,” Ms. Liss wrote. “Results should be concluded in 30 days.”

Does the United States import any beef from countries where horse meat has been found?

No. According to the Department of Agriculture, the United States imports no beef from any of the European countries involved in the scandal. Brian K. Mabry, a spokesman for the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said: “Following a decision by Congress in November 2011 to lift the ban on horse slaughter, two establishments, one located in New Mexico and one in Missouri, have applied for a grant of inspection exclusively for equine slaughter. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (F.S.I.S.) is currently reviewing those applications.”

Has horse meat been found in ground meat products sold in the United States?

No. Meat products sold in the United States must pass Department of Agriculture inspections, whether produced domestically or imported. No government financing has been available for inspection of horse meat for human consumption in the United States since 2005, when the Humane Society of the United States got a rider forbidding financing for inspection of horse meat inserted in the annual appropriations bill for the Agriculture Department. Without inspection, such plants may not operate legally.

The rider was attached to every subsequent agriculture appropriations bill until 2011, when it was left out of an omnibus spending bill signed by President Obama on Nov. 18. The U.S.D.A.  has not committed any money for the inspection of horse meat.

“We’re real close to getting some processing plants up and running, but there are no inspectors because the U.S.D.A. is working on protocols,” said Dave Duquette, a horse trader in Oregon and president of United Horsemen, a small group that works to retrain and rehabilitate unwanted horses and advocates the slaughter of horses for meat. “We believe very strongly that the U.S.D.A. is going to bring inspectors online directly.”

Are horses slaughtered for meat for human consumption in the United States?

Not currently, although live horses from the United States are exported to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. The lack of inspection effectively ended the slaughter of horse meat for human consumption in the United States; 2007 was the last year horses were slaughtered in the United States. At the time financing of inspections was banned, a Belgian company operated three horse meat processing plants — in Fort Worth and Kaufman, Tex., and DeKalb, Ill. — but exported the meat it produced in them.

Since 2011, efforts have been made to re-establish the processing of horse meat for human consumption in the United States. A small plant in Roswell, N.M., which used to process beef cattle into meat has been retooled to slaughter 20 to 25 horses a day. But legal challenges have prevented it from opening, Mr. Duquette said. Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico opposes opening the plant and has asked the U.S.D.A. to block it.

Last month, the two houses of the Oklahoma Legislature passed separate bills to override a law against the slaughter of horses for meat but kept the law’s ban on consumption of such meat by state residents. California, Illinois, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas prohibit horse slaughter for human consumption.

Is there a market for horse meat in the United States?

Mr. Duquette said horse meat was popular among several growing demographic groups in the United States, including Tongans, Mongolians and various Hispanic populations. He said he knew of at least 10 restaurants that wanted to buy horse meat. “People are very polarized on this issue,” he said. Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, disagreed, saying demand in the United States was limited. Italy is the largest consumer of horse meat, he said, followed by France and Belgium.

Is horse meat safe to eat?

That is a matter of much debate between proponents and opponents of horse meat consumption. Mr. Duquette said that horse meat, some derived from American animals processed abroad, was eaten widely around the world without health problems. “It’s high in protein, low in fat and has a whole lot of omega 3s,” he said.

The Humane Society says that because horse meat is not consumed in the United States, the animals’ flesh is likely to contain residues of many drugs that are unsafe for humans to eat. The organization’s list of drugs given to horses runs to 29 pages.

“We’ve been warning the Europeans about this for years,” Mr. Pacelle said. “You have all these food safety standards in Europe — they do not import chicken carcasses from the U.S. because they are bathed in chlorine, and won’t take pork because of the use of ractopamine in our industry — but you’ve thrown out the book when it comes to importing horse meat from North America.”

The society has filed petitions with the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration, arguing that they should test horse meat before allowing it to be marketed in the United States for humans to eat.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated how many pounds of meatballs Ikea was withdrawing from sale in 14 European countries. It is 1,670 pounds, not 1.67 billion pounds.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the last year that horses were slaughtered in the United States. It is 2007, not 2006.

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DealBook: Confirmation Hearing for Mary Jo White Said to Be Scheduled for March

Mary Jo White appears poised to face a Senate confirmation hearing next month, a crucial step for the former federal prosecutor on her path to becoming the top Wall Street regulator.

Ms. White, whose nomination to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission has lingered for over a month, plans to testify in March before the Senate Banking Committee, three Congressional officials briefed on the matter said on Monday. The committee has not set a firm date for the confirmation hearing, the officials said, though lawmakers have tentatively scheduled her to appear the week of March 11.

At the hearing, one official said, Ms. White will most likely join Richard Cordray, who is in line to become director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In January, when the White House nominated Ms. White to the S.E.C. spot, it reappointed Mr. Cordray to a position he has held for the last year under a temporary recess appointment.

The Senate last year declined to confirm him in the face of Republican and Wall Street opposition to the newly created consumer bureau. Republicans are likely to voice similar skepticism at the hearing next month.

While some officials have quietly expressed concerns about Ms. White’s role as a Wall Street defense lawyer, her nomination is not expected to face major complications. An S.E.C. spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The timetable laid out on Monday offers Ms. White additional weeks to prepare. Over the last couple of weeks, she has received multiple briefings from agency staff members about new securities rules and the structure of the stock market, an official said. The briefings will in part prepare her for the confirmation hearing, which is expected to cover a broad scope of topics.

While Ms. White is a skilled litigator, she lacks experience in financial rule-writing and regulatory minutiae, a potential stumbling block for her nomination. Lawmakers also expect to raise questions about her movements through the revolving door that bridges government service and private practice. Some Democrats, a person briefed on the matter said, will question whether she is cozy with Wall Street.

In private practice, Ms. White defended some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Kenneth D. Lewis, a former chief of Bank of America. As the head of litigation at Debevoise & Plimpton, she also represented JPMorgan Chase and the board of Morgan Stanley. Her husband, John W. White, is co-chairman of the corporate governance practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he represents many of the companies that the S.E.C. regulates.

(Ms. White has agreed to recuse herself from many matters that involve former clients, while her husband has agreed to convert his partnership at Cravath from equity to nonequity status.)

Despite some reservations, she is expected to receive broad support on Capitol Hill. When President Obama nominated her last month, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York was one of several Democrats to praise her prosecutorial prowess, calling her “tough as nails” during stints as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn and as the first female United States attorney in Manhattan.

While she handled some white-collar and securities cases, her specialty was terrorism and organized crime. As a federal prosecutor in New York City for more than a decade, she helped oversee the prosecution of the crime figure John Gotti and directed the case against those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She also supervised the original investigation into Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

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Airlines get early jump on fare hikes in 2013

When a trade group for corporate travel managers recently predicted airfares would rise in 2013, the group probably didn't expect the hikes to be launched so quickly.

Domestic airfares are expected to jump 4.6% in 2013, while international rates will probably rise 8.3%, according to a survey of travel managers by the GBTA Foundation, an arm of the Global Business Travel Assn.

The group attributed the increase to rising demand from companies ready to take advantage of new business opportunities in a strengthening economy.

Only a week after the group issued its prediction, Delta Air Lines Inc., the nation's second-largest air carrier, initiated a fare hike of $4 to $10, specifically designed to hit business travelers who book within seven days of their flight.

By the end of last week, every major carrier had matched Delta's increase, according to FareCompare, a website that keeps track of such hikes. JetBlue Airways Corp. expanded the hike to include flights booked beyond the seven-day period.

The increase is the first of 2013 to take hold.

If the past is any indication, expect to see new hikes every two months or so. In 2012, the nation's major airlines adopted seven hikes out of 15 attempts.

For hotel guests, water pressure is key concern

Despite all the money and effort hotels put into selecting comfortable beds and soft pillows, a new study suggests that hotel guests are more likely to choose a hotel based on the water pressure in the shower.

A Boston marketing and public relations company has analyzed what people say about hotels by studying more than 18,000 online conversations for a six-month period on various social websites, blogs and forums.

The company, Brodeur Partners, used for the first time what it calls "conversational relevance" to measure how much people talk about a hotel and how much of it is positive.

What do they say?

When it came to positive overall comments, the Hilton, Marriott and Four Seasons hotel chains got the highest scores in the study.

Conversations about the rooms centered around the size, followed by discussions about connectivity and technology, the study found. When guests had conversations about what they like to see or feel in the room, most of the talk was about the shower, specifically the water pressure, surpassing talk about the bed or the sheets.

Jerry Johnson, head of planning for Brodeur Partners, said the advantage of analyzing online conversations is that "you are measuring behavior. You are hearing real honest conversations."

Hotels, he said, may respond to the study by improving whatever hotel feature guests are saying is lacking, perhaps even installing new shower heads.

Hotel chain responds to online reviews

About three years ago, the economy hotel chain Red Roof Inn tested out a new in-room feature in its Columbus, Ohio, hotel.

In addition to installing outlets near the desks in the rooms, the hotel added several outlets on the nightstand so travelers could keep their portable devices charging near the bed.

By monitoring comments on the travel review website TripAdvisor, the hotel chain found that the extra plugs were a big hit with travelers. The hotel decided to install them throughout the chain.

"It's a simple thing but it's extremely meaningful to the traveler," hotel chain President Andy Alexander said.

For the third year in a row, Red Roof Inn recently earned the highest customer satisfaction score among economy hotels in an analysis by Market Metrix, a San Francisco Bay Area hotel market research company.

Alexander attributes the chain's high score to its efforts to follow and respond to online reviews.

It's because of guest comments, he said, that Red Roof has tried other improvements, such as installing wood floors in the rooms and vessel sinks in the bathrooms.

What's next? Alexander said the hotel chain offers free wireless Internet to all guests but might consider offering higher speed Wi-Fi to members of its loyalty program.

"You can't stand still," he said.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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MasterCard MasterPass Augments Your Digital Shopping Experience

For MasterCard, the future of payments isn’t an either-or situation for traditional plastic or digital methods. MasterCard MasterPass aims to streamline your entire shopping experience while bridging the gap between real world and digital payments.

MasterPass is the next step in the company’s PayPass Wallet services, which brought NFC checkout systems to more than 700,000 merchants. The digital service, announced today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, lets consumers use NFC, QR codes, tags or mobile devices to make purchases. You can use a regular payment card or an enabled mobile device (or even your desktop PC), and MasterPass can be used online and in brick-and-mortar stores.

MasterCard is essentially negating the need for you to whip out your credit card unless that’s how you want to pay at that moment — something akin to Amazon Mobile and Amazon Prime, but without the need to purchase the product through a third party.

“As you move into a world beyond cash, you move beyond plastic. Not necessarily without it, but beyond,” Ed McLaughlin, MasterCard’s chief emerging payments officer, told Wired. Their team has asked themselves, What does digital enable you to do better? How can shopping be made more exciting, how can merchants interact with consumers better? “It’s about the new capabilities digital gives you. It’s not a replacement for something that works awfully well.”

With MasterCard MasterPass, you could be browsing store shelves at the mall, try on a shirt and decide you want to buy it. You snap a photo of a QR code code with your phone, which takes you directly to a site where you can buy it online using MasterPass. You can grab it and go, showing sales associates your digital receipt before exiting the store.

Or say they don’t have the color shirt you wanted in stock in your size. You can pay in aisle or at the register, and choose to have it shipped to your house. (Your card info and address are stored in the cloud.)

“Every device is a commerce device,” McLaughlin said. “It’s about how to pull it all together.”

Consumers in the United States can sign up for MasterPass beginning this spring.

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Hathaway, Waltz, “Amour” win as Oscars share out the honors

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Anne Hathaway won her first Oscar on Sunday and harrowing Austrian film “Amour” was voted Best Foreign Language Film as the movie industry scattered its highest honors across multiple films.

Hathaway, who starved herself and chopped off her long brown locks to play tragic heroine Fantine in “Les Miserables,” was considered the overwhelming favorite for supporting role in the screen version of the popular stage musical.

“It came true,” she said, looking at the golden statuette.

“Here’s hoping that some day in the not too distant future the misfortunes of Fantine will only be found in stories and not in real life,” Hathaway added.

All the main members of the “Les Miserables” cast sang a rousing version of “Suddenly” from the film in a telecast that was packed with musical numbers, including a show-stopping performance by ‘Dreamgirls” Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson.

“Amour,” the heart-wrenching tale of an elderly couple coping with the wife’s debilitating stroke, gave Austria the Best Foreign Language film after it had dominated awards shows in Europe and the United States for months.

“Amour” actress Emmanuelle Riva, 86, has emerged as a dark horse in the past few days in the Best Actress race that had been seen as a battle between “Zero Dark Thirty” actress Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence of “Silver Linings Playbook.”

An Oscar for Riva later on Sunday’s ceremony, would make her the oldest person ever to win an Academy Award for acting.

Presidential drama “Lincoln” went into Sunday’s three-hour plus ceremony with a leading 12 nominations, including a directing nod for double Oscar winner Steven Spielberg.

But mid-way through the show no film was in a dominant position, leaving few clues as to who might win the big four awards – Actor, Actress, Director, and Best Picture – towards the close of the ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

TARANTINO BRINGS SECOND OSCAR FOR CHRISTOPH WALTZ

Another Austrian, Christoph Waltz, was the surprise winner of the closest contest going into the ceremony. He took Best Supporting Actor honors for his turn as an eccentric dentist-turned-bounty-hunter in Quentin Tarantino‘s slavery revenge fantasy “Django Unchained.”

It was Waltz’s second Oscar, after winning one for the Tarantino movie “Inglourious Basterds” in 2010.

Seth MacFarlane, making his debut as Oscars host, turned the telecast into a running joke about whether he would be deemed the worst Oscar host ever by the media on Monday.

“I honestly cannot believe I am here. It’s an honor that everyone else said ‘no,’” said the creator of provocative edgy animated TV series “Family Guy.”

MacFarlane mixed big music and dance numbers with edgy sketches, and barbs about Hollywood A-listers.

His biggest laugh came in a reference to director Ben Affleck’s snub in the directing race for his Iran hostage thriller “Argo” about a CIA mission 30 years ago.

“The story was so top secret that the film’s director was unknown to the Academy!,” MacFarlane quipped.

“Lincoln”s front-runner Best Picture status has been dented by the six-week victory streak enjoyed at other Hollywood awards by “Argo,” and the thriller is now thought to have the edge.

If “Argo” does prevail, it will be the first movie to win Best Picture without its director even getting a nomination since “Driving Miss Daisy” in 1990.

Musical “Les Miserables,” comedy “Silver Linings Playbook,” shipwreck tale “Life of Pi,” Osama bin laden thriller “Zero Dark Thirty,” slavery Western “Django Unchained,” indie film “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” and “Amour” round out the contenders for the best film of 2012.

“Brave,” the Pixar movie about a feisty Scottish princess, took home the golden statuette for Best Animated Feature.

After several years of nominating little-seen movies, this year’s nine Best Picture contenders have pulled in more than $ 2 billion in tickets worldwide.

The Oscar winners were chosen in secret ballots by some 5,800 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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‘Bloodless’ Lung Transplants for Jehovah’s Witnesses

Eric Kayne for The New York Times

SHARING HOME AND FAITH A Houston couple hosted Gene and Rebecca Tomczak, center, in October so she could get care nearby.

HOUSTON — Last April, after being told that only a transplant could save her from a fatal lung condition, Rebecca S. Tomczak began calling some of the top-ranked hospitals in the country.

She started with Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, just hours from her home near Augusta, Ga. Then she tried Duke and the University of Arkansas and Johns Hopkins. Each advised Ms. Tomczak, then 69, to look somewhere else.

The reason: Ms. Tomczak, who was baptized at age 12 as a Jehovah’s Witness, insisted for religious reasons that her transplant be performed without a blood transfusion. The Witnesses believe that Scripture prohibits the transfusion of blood, even one’s own, at the risk of forfeiting eternal life.

Given the complexities of lung transplantation, in which transfusions are routine, some doctors felt the procedure posed unacceptable dangers. Others could not get past the ethics of it all. With more than 1,600 desperately ill people waiting for a donated lung, was it appropriate to give one to a woman who might needlessly sacrifice her life and the organ along with it?

By the time Ms. Tomczak found Dr. Scott A. Scheinin at The Methodist Hospital in Houston last spring, he had long since made peace with such quandaries. Like a number of physicians, he had become persuaded by a growing body of research that transfusions often pose unnecessary risks and should be avoided when possible, even in complicated cases.

By cherry-picking patients with low odds of complications, Dr. Scheinin felt he could operate almost as safely without blood as with it. The way he saw it, patients declined lifesaving therapies all the time, for all manner of reasons, and it was not his place to deny care just because those reasons were sometimes religious or unconventional.

“At the end of the day,” he had resolved, “if you agree to take care of these patients, you agree to do it on their terms.”

Ms. Tomczak’s case — the 11th so-called bloodless lung transplant attempted at Methodist over three years — would become the latest test of an innovative approach that was developed to accommodate the unique beliefs of the world’s eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses but may soon become standard practice for all surgical patients.

Unlike other patients, Ms. Tomczak would have no backstop. Explicit in her understanding with Dr. Scheinin was that if something went terribly wrong, he would allow her to bleed to death. He had watched Witness patients die before, with a lifesaving elixir at hand.

Ms. Tomczak had dismissed the prospect of a transplant for most of the two years she had struggled with sarcoidosis, a progressive condition of unknown cause that leads to scarring in the lungs. The illness forced her to quit a part-time job with Nielsen, the market research firm.

Then in April, on a trip to the South Carolina coast, she found that she was too breathless to join her frolicking grandchildren on the beach. Tethered to an oxygen tank, she watched from the boardwalk, growing sad and angry and then determined to reclaim her health.

“I wanted to be around and be a part of their lives,” Ms. Tomczak recalled, dabbing at tears.

She knew there was danger in refusing to take blood. But she thought the greater peril would come from offending God.

“I know,” she said, “that if I did anything that violates Jehovah’s law, I would not make it into the new system, where he’s going to make earth into a paradise. I know there are risks. But I think I am covered.”

Cutting Risks, and Costs

The approach Dr. Scheinin would use — originally called “bloodless medicine” but later re-branded as “patient blood management” — has been around for decades. His mentor at Methodist, Dr. Denton A. Cooley, the renowned cardiac pioneer, performed heart surgery on hundreds of Witnesses starting in the late 1950s. The first bloodless lung transplant, at Johns Hopkins, was in 1996.

But nearly 17 years later, the degree of difficulty for such procedures remains so high that Dr. Scheinin and his team are among the very few willing to attempt them.

In 2009, after analyzing Methodist’s own data, Dr. Scheinin became convinced that if he selected patients carefully, he could perform lung transplants without transfusions. Hospital administrators resisted at first, knowing that even small numbers of deaths could bring scrutiny from federal regulators.

“My job is to push risk away,” said Dr. A. Osama Gaber, the hospital’s director of transplantation, “so I wasn’t really excited about it. But the numbers were very convincing.”

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Haruhiko Kuroda Expected to Be Named Head of Bank of Japan

TOKYO — A financial policy expert and harsh critic of the Bank of Japan’s efforts to combat deflation is set to be the government’s choice to take over the nation’s central bank.

Toru Hanai/Reuters

Haruhiko Kuroda is a harsh critic of the Bank of Japan’s track record on deflation.

The official, Haruhiko Kuroda, a veteran of global financial circles and current head of the Asian Development Bank, will be nominated as the bank’s governor to take over next month, according to a ruling party lawmaker with knowledge of those plans.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has instructed ruling party officials to start negotiating with opposition parties to clear the way for Mr. Kuroda’s appointment, which must be approved by a divided parliament, the lawmaker said.

“This is a critical time for Japan’s economy, and we must avoid, at all costs, a failure to gain parliamentary approval for this appointment,” NHK, the public broadcaster, quoted Mr. Abe as telling ruling party executives Monday morning.

With Mr. Kuroda at its helm, the bank could take much bolder steps to kick-start economic growth. Mr. Kuroda has publicly criticized the Bank of Japan for not going far enough to fight deflation, and has urged the bank to adopt inflation targets and to expand an asset-buying program to pump more cash into the Japanese economy.

Mr. Kuroda’s global experience — as vice minister for international affairs at Japan’s powerful Finance Ministry from 1999 to 2003, and as president of the Manila-based Asian Development Bank starting in 2005 — could also help Tokyo navigate foreign criticism that its monetary policies are intended to weaken the yen to give Japanese exporters a competitive edge.

The yen has weakened by over 10 percent in the last three months as Mr. Abe laid out his monetary agenda, pushing the outgoing central bank governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, to start taking a more aggressive monetary stance. But Mr. Abe had indicated that a change at the bank’s top ranks was needed to break with the bank’s cautious past. On Monday, the yen fell to a 33-month low.

Kikuo Iwata, a professor at Gakushuin University in Tokyo and another vocal critic of the central bank, is set to be tapped for one of its two deputy governor spots, according to the lawmaker. Mr. Iwata is the author of several books, including “Stop Deflation, Now” and “Is the Bank of Japan Really Trustworthy?”

Mr. Kuroda beat out a fellow former senior Finance Ministry official, Toshiro Muto, who had strong backing among both bureaucrats and local politicians but lacks the top-level global contacts. Mr. Muto was also viewed as being more cautious than Mr. Kuroda on monetary policy.

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