ABC Chief Says Network Needs Hits, Will Abandon “All-Star” Format for “Dancing”






NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – ABC entertainment president Paul Lee summed up his fall season by saying his network has “a lot to shout about, and we also have a lot to do.”


Lee’s network finished the fall in fourth place in the key 18-49 demographic and third place in total viewers. He lamented the fall’s lack of any “big breakout hits on broadcast on any of the networks and on ABC in particular.”






NBC, which passed ABC and its other rivals to become fall’s top-rated network in 18-49, might dispute that: It has touted the new drama “Revolution” as a hit.


Lee assessed his network’s fall at a Television Critics Association panel on Thursday. He said he was particularly disappointed not to see better numbers for reality standby “Dancing With the Stars,” which adapted an “all-star” format in the fall and brought back former contestants. He said that for its spring cycle, the show would go back to recruiting fresh talent, in hopes of drawing a younger audience.


Looking for a positive spin on the disappointing ratings for the show – which still averages 16 million total viewers per episode – he said the dancing this fall may have been too good.


“It turns out people like to have bad dancing as much as they do good dancing,” he said.


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Fatally Ill, and Making Herself the Lesson





SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. — It was early November when Martha Keochareon called the nursing school at Holyoke Community College, her alma mater. She had a proposal, which she laid out in a voice mail message.




“I have cancer,” she said after introducing herself, “and I’m wondering if you’ll need somebody to do a case study on, a hospice patient.”


Perhaps some nursing students “just want to feel what a tumor feels like,” she went on. Or they could learn something about hospice care, which aims to help terminally ill people die comfortably at home.


“Maybe you’ll have some ambitious student that wants to do a project,” Ms. Keochareon (pronounced CATCH-uron) said after leaving her phone number. “Thank you. Bye.”


Kelly Keane, a counselor at the college who received the message, was instantly intrigued. Holyoke’s nursing students, like most, learn about cancer from textbooks. They get some experience with acutely ill patients during a rotation on the medical-surgical floor of a hospital. They practice their skills in the college’s simulation lab on sophisticated mannequins that can “die” of cancer, heart attacks and other ailments. But Ms. Keochareon, 59, a 1993 graduate of Holyoke’s nursing program, was offering students something unique: an opportunity not only to examine her, but to ask anything they wanted about her experience with cancer and dying.


“She is allowing us into something we wouldn’t ever be privy to,” Ms. Keane said.


So it was that a few weeks later, two first-year nursing students, Cindy Santiago, 26, and Michelle Elliot, 52, arrived at Ms. Keochareon’s tiny house, a few miles from the college. She was bedbound, cared for by a loyal band of relatives, hospice nurses and aides. Both students were anxious.


“Sit on my bed and talk to me,” Ms. Keochareon said. The students hesitated, saying they had been taught not to do that, to prevent transmission of germs. What they knew of nursing in hospitals — “I’m here to take your vitals, give you your medicine, O.K., bye,” as Ms. Santiago put it — was different, after all.


They had come with a list of questions. Ms. Keochareon was suffering from pancreatic cancer, and they had researched the disease ahead of time. They were particularly curious about why she had survived for so long. She had lived with her illness for more than six years — an extraordinary span for pancreatic cancer, which often kills within months after diagnosis.


Why, the students asked, had she managed to keep eating and keep on weight? What was she taking for the pain? How long had it taken for doctors to give her a diagnosis?


“They ask good questions,” Ms. Keochareon said one morning, her lips stained red from the liquid oxycodone she was sipping frequently between doses of other drugs. “I forget half the stuff I learned as a nurse, but I remember everything about pancreatic cancer. Because I’m living it.”


For Ms. Keochareon, this was a chance to teach something about the profession she had found late and embraced — she became a nurse at 40, after raising her daughter and working for years on a factory floor.


“When I was a nurse, it seemed like most of the other nurses were never too happy having a student to teach,” she said, lying in her bedroom lined with pictures of relatives, friends, and herself in healthier times. “I loved it.”


A Last Project


Now, her disease had left her passing the days watching Animal Planet, reading a book about heaven and calling friends — so much that her cordless phone never left her side. She also was planning meticulously for her death, down to the green wool cardigan and embroidered shirt she would be buried in. But Ms. Keochareon wanted more as she prepared to die. The project she envisioned would be not just for students, but also for her — a way to squeeze one more chapter out of life.


Spending time with the dying is not fundamental to nurse training, partly because there are not enough clinical settings to provide the experience. The End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium, a project of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, has provided training in palliative care to some 15,000 nurses and nursing instructors around the nation since 2000, focusing not just on pain management but also on how to help terminally ill patients and their families prepare for death.


In addition, some students do rotations with hospice nurses, said Pam Malloy, the project’s director. But Ms. Malloy said that nursing schools still do not focus on end-of-life care nearly as much as they should. “We live in a death-denying society, and that includes nursing,” she said. “People have begun to understand it’s important, but we’re nowhere where we need to be at this point.”


In their conversations with Ms. Keochareon, the students learned that her symptoms had included a burning sensation after eating, for which doctors prescribed an acid blocker. Then came wrenching abdominal pain, which she said doctors dismissed as psychosomatic. She also developed diabetes, another potential sign of pancreatic cancer, and itchiness, possibly from blocked bile ducts.


In 2006, after she had felt sick for several years, a doctor finally ordered a CT scan, and the cancer was diagnosed. Ms. Keochareon was 53 and working at a hospital in Charleston, S.C. She was told that she would probably die within a year or two.


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Boeing to cut 40% of jobs, space at Texas plant













Boeing job cuts


Guest are reflected in a Dreamliner fuselage at the jet's debut July 8, 2007, at the Boeing plant in Everett, Wash.
(Robert Sorbo/Reuters / January 10, 2013)



























































Boeing Co. said it will cut a little more than 40 percent of jobs, or 160 positions, at its El Paso, Texas, plant in response to planned U.S. defense budget reductions.

The company said it will trim occupied square footage 50 percent at the plant by moving from three buildings to one. The plant in Texas manufactures electronics for a variety of Boeing products.

The cuts will be completed by the end of 2014, the company said.

Boeing announced a major restructuring of its defense division in November that would cut 30 percent of management jobs from 2010 levels, close facilities and consolidate several business units.

The company's shares closed at $77.09 on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.


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Bucks' strong second half enough for victory over Bulls









New coach Jim Boylan chuckled pregame Wednesday night when asked if he discussed what happened the last time the Bucks visited the United Center.


"I don't think you want to bring up the fact you were down 27 points midway through a third quarter," Boylan said.


This time, the Bucks "only" trailed by 15 in the opening period, but the comeback carried the same weight. Preventing the Bulls from posting their first, four-game winning streak this season, the Bucks stormed back behind a scintillating performance from Brandon Jennings for a 104-96 triumph.





Jennings scored 20 of his 35 points in the third period, mocking Nate Robinson's winged airplane routine on two of his four 3-pointers in the period.


"I don't know what set (Jennings) off," Boyland said. "It's two guys (him and Robinson) who like to talk a lot. Maybe that set him off."


That the Bucks rallied despite beating the Suns at home on Tuesday while the Bulls rested made the victory all the more impressive. Boylan is 2-0 since replacing the departed Scott Skiles on Monday.


Larry Sanders posted eight blocks as the Bulls shot 29.8 percent in the second half and the Bucks, who lead the league in this department, blocked 15 shots overall. Mike Dunleavy added 16 points and four 3-pointers off the bench as the Bucks displayed a solid team effort.


"Sanders' presence around the basket is intimidating," Boylan said. "Guys go in there and are looking for him.


The Bulls' last gasp faded when Marco Belinelli missed a wide-open 3-pointer with 69 seconds left and failed to close the 100-96 deficit. Belinelli later followed with a frustration foul on Sanders, who blocked his attempt on the next possession.


Carlos Boozer led the Bulls with his sixth straight double-double of 22 points and 11 rebounds.


Jennings' high-arcing teardrop jumper with 4 minutes, 59 seconds remaining continued his torrid night.


Typically, Kirk Hinrich guards Jennings, but he missed his fifth game this season with the right elbow injury suffered in Monday's victory over the Cavaliers.


"Having Kirk out was a huge factor because of the pressure he applies to Brandon in the backcourt, which is significant," Boylan said.


Thibodeau did his typical cat-and-mouse game regarding Hinrich's replacement, not telling stadium personnel Robinson was starting until 20 minutes before tipoff despite Boylan already announcing it. But Robinson announced his presence quickly, sinking his first three 3-pointers and scoring 13 points in the opening period.


That's when things were rolling for the Bulls. That didn't last.


"We gave Jennings space," Thibodeau said. "He's going to make shots. We started off the game and had a good edge. Then we started trading buckets and they picked up steam. They got to every loose ball, made all the effort plays. You usually get what you deserve. We got what we deserve.


"If you don't play with great intensity, particularly when you have people out, you're not going to give yourself a chance to win.


kcjohnson@tribune.com


Twitter @kcjhoop





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‘Liquipod’ takes smartphone waterproofing on the road







Amid a sea of Ultra-HD TVs, smart washing machines and various other gadgets, waterproofing expert Liquipel took to CES 2013 to make two announcements. The firm, which adds an interior and exterior waterproof nanocoating to cell phones, revealed a new and improved waterproofing material that is even more effective than its first-generation solution. Liquipel also unveiled its new “Liquipod,” a portable machine that can waterproof gadgets anywhere in the world while device owners wait, according to TechCrunch. Previously, Liquipel required customers to ship their handsets to the company’s offices for treatment.


[More from BGR: iPhone 5 now available with unlimited service, no contract on Walmart’s $ 45 Straight Talk plan]






This article was originally published on BGR.com


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“Les Miserables” soundtrack tops Billboard album chart






LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The soundtrack to the big screen adaption of Broadway musical “Les Miserables” topped the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, edging out British folk rockers Mumford & Sons.


“Les Miserables” sold 92,000 albums in the week, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan, a 32 percent decline from last week for the star-studded production featuring the singing of Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman. It was the No. 2 album last week.






The soundtrack had the poorest showing for a No. 1 album since Christian hip-hop and pop artist tobyMac’s “Eye on It” topped the chart in September with 69,000 in sales.


Mumford & Sons’ “Babel” rose to the second spot from No. 8, finishing behind “Les Mis” by only a thousand albums sold. The British band’s second album was boosted by a sale price and heavy promotion on the Apple iTunes Store.


Country-pop star Taylor Swift, whose album “Red” spent the past four weeks atop the chart, dropped to third.


“American Idol” winner Phillip Phillips’ “The World from the Side of the Moon” took fourth and British boy band One Direction’s “Take Me Home” was fifth on the chart.


U.S. album sales for last week, which totaled 6.26 million, rose 8 percent compared to the same week last year.


A total of 34.53 million songs were downloaded last week, a 5 percent increase from last year.


(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Jackie Frank)


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Americans Under 50 Fare Poorly on Health Measures, New Report Says





Younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with far higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the United States.




Researchers have known for some time that the United States fares poorly in comparison with other rich countries, a trend established in the 1980s. But most studies have focused on older ages, when the majority of people die.


The findings were stark. Deaths before age 50 accounted for about two-thirds of the difference in life expectancy between males in the United States and their counterparts in 16 other developed countries, and about one-third of the difference for females. The countries in the analysis included Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Spain.


The 378-page study by a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council is the first to systematically compare death rates and health measures for people of all ages, including American youths. It went further than other studies in documenting the full range of causes of death, from diseases to accidents to violence. It was based on a broad review of mortality and health studies and statistics.


The panel called the pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the U.S. health disadvantage,” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years. American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.


“Something fundamental is going wrong,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the panel. “This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the U.S. to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse.”


Car accidents, gun violence and drug overdoses were major contributors to years of life lost by Americans before age 50.


The rate of firearm homicides was 20 times higher in the United States than in the other countries, according to the report, which cited a 2011 study of 23 countries. And though suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher.


Sixty-nine percent of all American homicide deaths in 2007 involved firearms, compared with an average of 26 percent in other countries, the study said. “The bottom line is that we are not preventing damaging health behaviors,” said Samuel Preston, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was on the panel. “You can blame that on public health officials, or on the health care system. No one understands where responsibility lies.”


Panelists were surprised at just how consistently Americans ended up at the bottom of the rankings. The United States had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease, the kind that causes heart attacks, and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades. American adults also have the highest diabetes rates.


Youths fared no better. The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries, and its young people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and deaths from car crashes. Americans lose more years of life before age 50 to alcohol and drug abuse than people in any of the other countries.


Americans also had the lowest probability over all of surviving to the age of 50. The report’s second chapter details health indicators for youths where the United States ranks near or at the bottom. There are so many that the list takes up four pages. Chronic diseases, including heart disease, also played a role for people under 50.


“We expected to see some bad news and some good news,” Dr. Woolf said. “But the U.S. ranked near and at the bottom in almost every heath indicator. That stunned us.”


There were bright spots. Death rates from cancers that can be detected with tests, like breast cancer, were lower in the United States. Adults had better control over their cholesterol and high blood pressure. And the very oldest Americans — above 75 — tended to outlive their counterparts.


The panel sought to explain the poor performance. It noted the United States has a highly fragmented health care system, with limited primary care resources and a large uninsured population. It has the highest rates of poverty among the countries studied.


Education also played a role. Americans who have not graduated from high school die from diabetes at three times the rate of those with some college, Dr. Woolf said. In the other countries, more generous social safety nets buffer families from the health consequences of poverty, the report said.


Still, even the people most likely to be healthy, like college-educated Americans and those with high incomes, fare worse on many health indicators.


The report also explored less conventional explanations. Could cultural factors like individualism and dislike of government interference play a role? Americans are less likely to wear seat belts and more likely to ride motorcycles without helmets.    


The United States is a bigger, more heterogeneous society with greater levels of economic inequality, and comparing its health outcomes to those in countries like Sweden or France may seem lopsided. But the panelists point out that this country spends more on health care than any other in the survey. And as recently as the 1950s, Americans scored better in life expectancy and disease than many of the other countries in the current study.


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Walgreen defends Express Scripts, Alliance Boots moves









Coming off a tumultuous year in which Walgreen lost millions of customers in a contract dispute with a pharmacy benefits manager, executives of the Deerfield-based pharmacy chain sought to reassure shareholders on Wednesday of better days ahead.

At its annual meeting at Navy Pier, Walgreen leaders told a lively crowd of about 2,000 that its new international footprint, a loyalty card and other initiatives, including an enhanced selection of fresh foods and a continued expansion of health care services, have positioned the company for long-term success.

Walgreen Chief Executive Greg Wasson defended its controversial decision a year ago to walk away from a contract with the pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts Holding Co., whose customers accounted for nearly 11 percent of the total prescriptions Walgreen's filled in 2011. As a result, Walgreen hemorrhaged sales throughout much of the year and its share price tanked.

Shareholders peppered Wasson about the decision, which analysts and others have said could result in the permanent loss of some of its customers.

Nonetheless, Wasson said, "I believe we're a much stronger company today ... it was absolutely the right thing for our shareholders in the long term."

Wasson also faced heat for its decision last June to shell out $6.7 billion for a 45 percent stake in a European pharmacy chain.

Investors sent Walgreen shares down more than 9 percent after the announcement that it would acquire a portion of Alliance Boots GmbH, pushing its stock price below $29, a level not seen for nearly two years.

Michael Pryce-Jones, a senior governance researcher for CtW Investment Group, an activist group that works on behalf of union pension funds, said Walgreen entered into the deal at the wrong time and paid too much.

"The fact is, this is too big a bet going on in a very troubled part of the world," Pryce-Jones said of the deal.

Pryce-Jones implored Walgreen's board to consider bringing the measure to a vote at its 2014 annual meeting, a year before the company is expected to acquire the remaining 55 percent of Alliance Boots.

Walgreen Chief Financial Officer Wade Miquelon said the company conducted "a tremendous amount of due diligence" before agreeing to the pact, which he said remains a "compelling strategic opportunity."

pfrost@tribune.com | Twitter: @peterfrost



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Attorney: Poisoned lottery winner's widow has 'nothing to hide'









The widow of a West Rogers Park man who died of cyanide poisoning weeks after winning a $1 million lottery jackpot was questioned extensively by Chicago police last month after the medical examiner's office reclassified the death as a homicide, her attorney told the Tribune on Tuesday.


Authorities investigating the death of Urooj Khan also executed a search warrant at the home he had shared with his wife, Shabana Ansari, according to Steven Kozicki, her attorney. Ansari later was interviewed by detectives for more than four hours, answering all their questions, the attorney said.


"She's got nothing to hide," Kozicki said.





The mystery surrounding Khan's death — first reported by the Tribune in a front-page story Monday — has sparked international media interest.


Cook County authorities said Tuesday that they plan to go to court in the next few days for approval to exhume Khan's remains at Rosehill Cemetery. In a telephone interview Tuesday, Medical Examiner Stephen J. Cina said he sent a sworn statement to prosecutors laying out why the body must be exhumed.


"I feel that a complete autopsy is needed for the sake of clarity and thoroughness," Cina said.


Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for the state's attorney's office, confirmed that papers seeking the exhumation would be filed soon in the Daley Center courthouse.


Khan, who owned a dry cleaning business on the city's North Side, died unexpectedly in July at 46, just weeks after winning a million-dollar lottery prize at a 7-Eleven store near his home. Finding no trauma to his body and no unusual substances in his blood, the medical examiner's office declared his death to be from natural causes and he was buried without an autopsy.


About a week later, a relative told authorities to take a closer look at Khan's death. By early December, comprehensive toxicology tests showed that Khan had died of a lethal amount of cyanide, leading the medical examiner's office to reclassify the death a homicide and prompting police and prosecutors to investigate.


While a motive has not been determined, police have not ruled out that Khan was killed because of his big lottery win, a law enforcement source has told the Tribune. He died before he could collect the winnings — about $425,000 after taxes and because he decided to take a lump-sum payment.


According to court records obtained by the Tribune, Khan's brother has squabbled with Ansari over the money in probate court. The brother, Imtiaz, raised concern that because Khan left no will, his 17-year-old daughter from a previous marriage would not get "her fair share" of her father's estate. Khan and Ansari did not have children.


Al-Haroon Husain, an attorney for Ansari in the probate case, said the money was all accounted for and the estate was in the process of being divided up by the court. Under Illinois law, the estate typically would be split evenly between the surviving spouse and Khan's only child, he said.


Kozicki, Ansari's criminal defense attorney, said his client adored her husband and had no financial interest in seeing harm come to him.


"Now in addition to grieving her husband, she's struggling to run the business that he essentially ran while he was alive," Kozicki said. "Once people analyze it, they (would) realize she's in a much worse financial position after his death than she was before."


Reached by phone Tuesday evening at the family dry cleaners, Ansari denied reports that she had fed her husband a traditional Indian meal of ground beef curry before he died. She said he wasn't feeling well after awakening in the middle of the night. She said he sat in a chair and soon collapsed. She then called 911.


Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, speaking Tuesday at an unrelated news conference, remarked that he had never seen a case like this in 32 years in law enforcement.


"So I'll never say that I've seen everything," he told reporters.


jmeisner@tribune.com


jgorner@tribune.com



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AP Exclusive: Richardson pressing NKorean test ban






PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Wednesday that his delegation is pressing North Korea to put a moratorium on missile launches and nuclear tests and to allow more cell phones and an open Internet for its citizens.


Richardson told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview in Pyongyang that the group is also asking for fair and humane treatment for an American citizen detained in North Korea.






“The citizens of the DPRK (North Korea) will be better off with more cell phones and an active Internet. Those are the three messages we’ve given to a variety of foreign policy officials, scientists” and government officials, Richardson said.


He is accompanied by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas think tank Director Jared Cohen on what Richardson has called a private, humanitarian trip. Schmidt, who is the highest-profile U.S. business executive to visit North Korea since leader Kim Jong Un took power a year ago, has not spoken publicly about the reasons behind the journey to North Korea.


The high-profile visit comes just weeks after North Korea launched a long-range rocket to send a satellite into space. Washington has condemned the launch as a banned test of missile technology.


Schmidt, who oversaw Google‘s expansion into a global Internet giant, speaks frequently about the importance of providing people around the world with Internet access and technology. Google now has offices in more than 40 countries, including all three of North Korea’s neighbors: Russia, South Korea and China, another country criticized for systematic Internet censorship.


He and Cohen have collaborated on a book about the Internet’s role in shaping society called “The New Digital Age” that comes out in April.


Using science and technology to build North Korea’s beleaguered economy was the highlight of a New Year’s Day speech by leader Kim Jong Un.


New red banners promoting slogans drawn from Kim’s speech line Pyongyang’s snowy streets, and North Koreans are still cramming to study the lengthy speech. It was the first time in 19 years for North Koreans to hear their leader give a New Year’s Day speech. During the rule of late leader Kim Jong Il, state policy was distributed through North Korea’s three main newspapers.


___


Follow AP’s bureau chief for Pyongyang and Seoul at www.twitter.com/newsjean.


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