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Mental health toll emerges among Sandy survivors

NEW YORK (AP) — The image of his brother trapped in a car with water rising to his neck, his eyes silently pleading for help, is part of a recurring nightmare that wakes Anthony Gatti up, screaming, at night.

Gatti hauled his brother out of the car just in time, saving his life at the height of Superstorm Sandy. The two men rode out the hurricane in their childhood Staten Island home and survived. But weeks afterward, Gatti still hasn’t moved on.

Now he’s living in a tent in the backyard, burning pieces of furniture as firewood, refusing to leave until the place is demolished. Day and night, he is haunted by memories of the storm.

“My mind don’t let me get past the fact that I can’t get him out of the car. And I know I did,” Gatti said, squeezing his eyes tightly shut at the memory. “But my mind don’t let me think that. My mind tells me I couldn’t save him, he dies.”

As communities battered by Sandy clear away the physical wreckage, a new crisis is emerging: the mental and emotional trauma that storm victims, including children, have endured. The extent of the problem is difficult to measure, as many people are too anxious to even leave their homes, wracked by fears of wind and water and parting from their loved ones. Others are too busy dealing with losses of property and livelihood to deal with their grief.

To tackle the problem, government officials are dispatching more than 1,000 crisis counselors to the worst-hit areas in New York and New Jersey, helping victims begin the long work of repairing Sandy’s emotional damage.

Counselors are assuring people that anxiety and insomnia are natural after a disaster. But when the trauma starts to interfere with daily life, it’s probably time to seek help. And in a pattern that played out in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, symptoms may only get worse as victims transition from the initial shock to the disillusionment phase of the recovery.

“Folks are starting to realize that they may be in this for the long haul,” said Eric Hierholzer, a commander in the U.S. Public Health Service. “And things aren’t necessarily going to get better tomorrow or next week.”

At St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, the psychiatry department has recorded a 20 percent increase in walk-in patients since the storm hit, with residents reporting the whole gamut of stress-related symptoms. Anxiety. Insomnia. Panic attacks.

Local schools have referred 25 percent more children than usual to the hospital’s outpatient mental health programs.

“The children are very, very traumatized,” said Fern Zagor, who runs the Staten Island Mental Health Society. “They have a hard time making sense of this sudden change in their world. It’s frightening to them.”

A 5-year-old girl who was pulled from floodwaters clinging to her father hasn’t been able to attend kindergarten since the storm, Zagor said, because she’s too traumatized to be parted from him now. An 11-year-old boy is working with counselors after floating in water up to his neck on the second floor of his home for several hours before being rescued.

“This child has said he worries about rain,” Zagor said. “He worries about whether he’ll ever want to swim in a swimming pool again.”

The society is among many mental health providers who are working with Project Hope, a New York crisis counseling program funded by an $ 8.2 million Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that has just begun sending counselors to local communities. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office estimates the program will help more than 200,000 people.

Project Hope Counselor Yomira Natera has been seeking out storm victims who don’t speak English as their first language.

“We’ve seen an increase in substance with folks who may have language barriers,” she said. “Who may be frustrated with the system, who find it difficult to communicate.”

At least 20,000 people have so far made contact with counselors from the New Jersey Hope and Healing Program, which has dispatched hundreds of state-trained disaster crisis response counselors into the storm zone. The state also launched a hotline for people to call and talk to a counselor.

In Union Beach, N.J., a working-class enclave on Raritan Bay, Kathy Parsells helped coordinate deliveries volunteered at a FEMA recovery center on a recent afternoon, helping to coordinate deliveries. Her daughter and grandchildren had to be rescued during the storm.

“I’m OK,” she said, stifling tears. “My grandsons have nightmares. My grandson, the first night, was screaming: ‘It’s coming up the stairs.’”

Jeannette Van Houten, who lost her home in Union Beach, said in a telephone interview that she feels like she’s going through the same stages of grief that she endured when her niece was murdered in 2008.

“I have days that I can’t put a thought together. Like you start talking and you forget what you’re saying,” said Van Houten, who sleeps just two or three hours on a good night nowadays. “And the numbness, like you look at things that are happening around you, but you’re not part of it.”

The Rev. Matthew Dowling, a pastor at the Monmouth Church of Christ in Tinton Falls, N.J., volunteered as a crisis counselor in the days after the storm and heard a lot of survivor’s remorse from people who were more fortunate than their neighbors. But there was also a great deal of frustration.

“When FEMA arrives, they think everything is going to be fixed,” Dowling said. “The reality is it’s going to take months and months to get back to normal. Just like the steps of grief there’s anger at the new normal.”

Distress calls to LifeNet, New York City’s local crisis hotline, doubled during the first few weeks after the storm hit, averaging more than 2,000 calls per week from people who were angry and worried that basic needs — food, clothing, shelter — had not been met.

Officials are now preparing for a new wave of calls from people struggling with depression and other mental health issues, said Christian Burgess, director of the Disaster Distress Helpline, a national crisis hotline run by the federal government that provides a network of trained counselors in the aftermath of a major disaster.

Coming to grips with the loss of everything she owned has been difficult for Carol Stenquist, who stood outside borough hall in Union Beach, nervously dragging on a cigarette and crying.

“I have anxiety over it. Even when I lay down at night I feel my heart palpitating with the loss of everything,” said Stenquist, whose home was destroyed. “I was there for 20 years.”

She thinks she needs to talk to a professional counselor, but hasn’t sought one out yet.

“I’m kind of afraid that the emotional stuff I feel now is just part of what I’m going to feel when it’s over,” she said. “I’ve had my breakdowns, cries, feelings of depression. I’ve had all of that.”

On Staten Island, volunteers have been quietly stopping by Anthony Gatti’s tent to check in on him during his long vigil, dropping off boxes of cereal and cans of coffee. A volunteer therapist tried to talk him into leaving, but to no avail. He spends his days patrolling the property for looters and gazing at photos of the storm’s destruction on his laptop.

“I keep trying to make him understand. It’s a lot of wood and metal and pipes, that’s all it is,” said his mother, Marge Gatti. “You’ve got to get numb. You gotta get tough. If I’m not numb, I can’t function.”

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UBS faces $1.6 billion fine over Libor rigging: paper

ZURICH (Reuters) – UBS faces a fine of 1.5 billion Swiss francs ($ 1.63 billion) to settle interest rate rigging charges, a Swiss newspaper reported on Saturday.

Citing unnamed sources, Tages-Anzeiger daily said the bank would admit 36 traders around the globe manipulated yen Libor between 2005 and 2010. A UBS spokesman declined to comment.

People familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday UBS could reach a $ 1-billion-plus settlement and admit to criminal wrongdoing by its Japanese arm, where one of its traders manipulated yen Libor and euroyen contracts.

Between 25 and 30 people have left UBS over the matter, the sources said. The Swiss bank had hoped for a softer touch from regulators by cooperating in industry-wide probes and was surprised by the size of the expected settlement, they added.

A 1.5 billion franc settlement would be the biggest ever paid by the bank, recovering from a $ 2.3-billion trading fraud by London-based trader Kweku Adoboli for which it was fined 30 million pounds ($ 48.36 million) last month.

A settlement would make UBS the second major bank to be sanctioned for its role in the Libor scandal. Britain’s Barclays paid a $ 450 million fine in June.

Libor is the rate used as a benchmark for pricing trillions of dollars worth of financial instruments and contracts around the globe. Tiny shifts in the rate, compiled from daily polls of bankers, could benefit dealers in complex products.

HEADING FOR LOSS

Tages-Anzeiger said the fine, together with restructuring charges of 500 million francs from plans to cut 10,000 staff as UBS winds down its fixed income business, would probably push the bank to a fourth-quarter loss.

UBS had already said costs related to the investment banking overhaul would lead to a fourth-quarter and full-year loss after it posted a third-quarter net loss of 2.172 billion francs. It is due to publish full-year results on February 5.

By admitting to a charge against its Japanese subsidiary, UBS would stop short of admitting wrongdoing at a group level, which could be fatal for a bank as it could lose its license.

Chairman Axel Weber, who joined UBS this year after stepping down as head of the German central bank, has been on a whirlwind diplomatic tour over the probe, the Tages-Anzeiger reported.

Swiss newspapers noted that Mark Branson, now responsible for overseeing big banks for Swiss financial markets regulator Finma, was chief executive of UBS Japan at the time of the alleged rate rigging.

A Finma spokesman said Branson had removed himself from Finma’s investigation into Libor to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest but declined to comment further.

In 2009, UBS paid $ 780 million to settle a messy U.S. investigation into tax evasion by admitting it had helped wealthy Americans evade and cheat on their taxes. ($ 1 = 0.9218 Swiss francs) ($ 1 = 0.6204 British pounds)

(Reporting by Emma Thomasson; editing by Jason Webb)

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Top Canada court upholds anti-terrorism law in unanimous ruling

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada‘s Supreme Court on Friday upheld an anti-terrorism law enacted after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, ruling unanimously that those who choose to engage in terrorism must “pay a very heavy price.”

The law’s constitutionality was challenged by Mohammad Momin Khawaja, convicted in Canada of terrorism for involvement with a British group that had plotted unsuccessfully to set off bombs in London.

It was also challenged by two men accused of terrorism by the United States for trying to buy missiles or weapons technology for the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers.

The court rejected arguments that the law’s definition of terrorism was overly broad. It upheld Khawaja’s life sentence and confirmed the orders to extradite the other two to the United States.

Khawaja, a Canadian of Pakistani descent, was the first to be convicted under the law. He was sentenced in 2008 to 10-1/2 years in prison, and his sentence was then extended to life after appeal by the government.

The trial judge noted that Khawaja referred to Osama Bin Laden as “the most beloved person to me in the … whole world, after Allah.” He was found to have participated in a terrorism training camp in Pakistan and to have designed a device dubbed the “hi fi digimonster” for detonating bombs.

“The appellant was a willing participant in a terrorist group,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in the 7-0 decision, adding that he was “apparently remorseless.”

“He was committed to bringing death on all those opposed to his extremist ideology and took many steps to provide support to the group. The bomb detonators he attempted to build would have killed many civilians had his plans succeeded.”

The law applies to any act committed for a political, religious or ideological purpose with the intention of intimidating the public by causing death or serious bodily harm, or substantial property damage, or causing serious interference with an essential service.

The court also ruled that Canada can proceed to extradite two men the United States has accused of involvement with the Tamil Tigers, which waged a bloody war for independence in Sri Lanka and is considered a terrorist organization by Washington and Ottawa.

The Canadian government declined to comment on when they would be extradited.

Piratheepan Nadarajah was alleged to have tried to purchase surface-to-air missiles and AK-47 assault rifles for the Tamil Tigers from an undercover officer posing as a black-market arms dealer on Long Island, New York.

The other man, Suresh Sriskandarajah, was alleged to have helped Tamil Tigers get electronic equipment, submarine and warship design software and communications equipment.

They surrendered to the government ahead of the court decision, their lawyers said.

BEYOND ‘LEGITIMATE EXPRESSION’

The court disagreed that the federal law’s terrorism provisions had put a chilling effect on Canadians’ freedom of expression and was disproportionately broad.

“Only individuals who go well beyond the legitimate expression of a political, religious or ideological thought, belief or opinion, and instead engage in one of the serious forms of violence – or threaten one of the serious forms of violence – listed (in the law) need fear liability under the terrorism provisions of the Criminal Code,” McLachlin wrote.

She quoted with approval the appeals court decision in the Khawaja case that faulted the Ottawa trial judge’s sentence for failing to send a “clear and unmistakable message that terrorism is reprehensible and those who choose to engage in it will pay a very heavy price.”

The original sentence of 10-1/2 years does “not approach an adequate sentence for such acts,” she concluded.

Khawaja’s lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, said it was a “terrible day” for his client and said too often people were investigated or prosecuted for their religious or political beliefs.

“It’s a … very unfortunate ruling for minorities in this country, and we’re extremely disappointed with the result,” he told reporters in the foyer of the Supreme Court.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said the decision was important as Canada was not immune to the threat of terrorism. “The court sent a strong message that terrorism will not be treated leniently in Canada,” he said.

The cases are Mohammad Momin Khawaja v. Her Majesty the Queen. (Ont) (34103); Suresh Sriskandarajah v. United States of America, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada (34009), Piratheepan Nadarajah v. United States of America, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada (34013).

(Additional reporting by Louise Egan; Editing by Jackie Frank and Xavier Briand)

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Home invasion victim gets help over Xbox headset

NORTH APOLLO, Pa. (AP) — Police say a Pennsylvania man used his Xbox headphones to call for help after being bound with duct tape and menaced with a gun during a home invasion.

Investigators say the 22-year-old suburban Pittsburgh man was playing video games in an upstairs bedroom when he heard his front door open. The man initially thought it was a family member but saw an armed man wearing a ski mask when he looked downstairs.

Authorities say the intruder bound Derick Shaffer and led him around the North Apollo home to locate valuables, then fled in Shaffer’s car. Shaffer reached a friend over his Xbox Live headset and had him call police.

The missing car was located about an hour later. Police questioned three people but are still trying to identify a suspect.

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Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps signs new first look deal with Fox

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Fox has signed a new three-year first look deal with director/producer Shawn Levy‘s 21 Laps, the production company behind “Night at the Museum” and “The Watch,” the companies announced on Wednesday.

21 Laps is already based at Fox, having supplied the studio with several comedy titles over the past few years. While its most recent, “The Watch,” disappointed at the box office, the company has otherwise provided a steady supply of hits.

The original “Night at the Museum leads the pack with $ 570 million at the global box office, while the sequel surpassed $ 400 million.

“Shawn’s boundless energy, ambition and effortless creativity make him the perfect partner,” Emma Watts, Fox’s president of production, said in a statement. “We are lucky he continues to call Fox his home.”

21 Laps has a couple of projects due for release in 2013 – “The Internship,” starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, and “The Spectacular Now,” starring Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley.

Levy directed “The Internship,” his first job since “Real Steel,” which Disney released. That film debuts June 7.

21 Laps also has several projects in development, including a third installment of “Night at the Museum” and “Project Aloha,” which Levy plans to direct from a script by Nick Stoller. It is also at work on projects beyond Fox, such as “Story of Your Life,” a sci-fi thriller that Nic Mathieu will direct.

In signing a new deal with Fox, 21 Laps also announced a series of promotions. Billy Rosenberg moves up to the Senior Vice President level from Vice President while Dan Cohen rejoins the company from Mandeville as VP.

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Roche wins EU nod for breast cancer drug Perjeta

ZURICH (Reuters) – European health regulators recommended Roche‘s breast cancer drug Perjeta for approval on Friday, cementing the company’s hopes that the drug will become the standard of care for an aggressive, incurable form of cancer.

Roche is hoping that combining Perjeta with its older drug Herceptin will become the standard treatment for women with a form of cancer known as HER2-positive, which makes up about a quarter of all breast cancers and has no cure.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide, with about 1.4 million new cases diagnosed each year and more than 450,000 women dying of the disease annually, according to the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

U.S. health regulators already granted the drug approval in June. Recommendations from the European Medicine’s Agency (EMA) are normally endorsed by the European Commission within a couple of months.

Perjeta is an effective but costly drug. A typical 18-month course of Perjeta plus Herceptin costing approximately $ 188,000.

Vontobel analyst Andrew Weiss forecasts peak sales of 2 billion Swiss francs ($ 2.15 billion) for the drug.

Roche is also developing an “armed antibody” known as TDM-1 as a treatment for HER2-positive breast cancer. TDM-1 combines Herceptin with a derivative of a powerful type of chemotherapy and is designed to reduce unpleasant side effects.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)

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Wall Street dips at open on “cliff” overhang

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks were little changed on Friday, with the Nasdaq weighed by a 3-percent drop in shares of tech giant Apple, amid investor worries about a lack of progress by politicians in ongoing fiscal negotiations.

Apple was down 2.8 percent at $ 515.11 as UBS cut its price target to $ 700 from $ 780. The stock has tumbled in recent months for a variety of reasons, including investors locking in profits ahead of scheduled capital-gains increases for next year.

President Barack Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner held a “frank” meeting Thursday to try to break an impasse in negotiations over the “fiscal cliff,” tax hikes and spending cuts set to kick in early in 2013.

“The uncertainty that (the fiscal talks) is creating is basically holding the markets hostage in the short term,” said Andres Garcia-Amaya, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, in New York.

Frustration has mounted over the lack of progress in the discussions, with market participants’ worries reflected in a 0.6 percent drop in the S&P 500 on Thursday. Investors are concerned that going over the cliff could tip the economy back into recession. While a deal is expected to ultimately be reached, a drawn-out debate – like the one seen over 2011′s debt ceiling – can erode confidence.

Still, expectations of an eventual agreement have helped the S&P 500 bounce back over the last month, and on Wednesday, the index hit its highest intraday level since late October. For the year, the S&P has advanced more than 12 percent.

“For the end of this year, I wouldn’t expect a lot of big decisions by investors,” Garcia-Amaya said. “It’s been a fairly good year for equities and for that reason a lot of people don’t want to be a hero going into the end of the year.”

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> edged up 11.05 points, or 0.08 percent, at 13,181.77. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.spx> slipped 2.49 points, or 0.18 percent, to 1,416.96. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 12.62 points, or 0.42 percent, to 2,979.54.</.ixic></.spx></.dji>

Best Buy Co Inc slid more than 15 percent to $ 11.90 after it agreed to extend the deadline for the company’s founder to make bid.

Consumer prices fell in November for the first time in six months, indicating U.S. inflation pressures were muted. A separate report showed manufacturing grew at its swiftest pace in eight months in December.

Meanwhile, data out of China was encouraging for its key trading partners, including the U.S., and for the prospects for global growth. It showed manufacturing in the world’s second-largest economy grew at its fastest pace in 14 months in December.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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UPDATE 3-Cricket-Hughes shines as Australia reach 299-4

* Hughes falls just short of century

* Clarke and Hussey combine for 101

* Welegedera takes 3-99 (Adds quotes)

HOBART, Dec 14 (Reuters) – Phil Hughes made a solid 86 on his return to test cricket before Michael Clarke and Mike Hussey took up the running and steered Australia to 299 for four at close of play on the first day of the first test against Sri Lanka on Friday.

Hughes was the only batsmen to fall in the final session, lasting only a couple of overs after lunch before being bowled through the gate by Chanaka Welegedera, giving the Sri Lankan seamer his third wicket of the day.

Clarke, who had made 70 not out, and Hussey, unbeaten on 37, batted through the remainder of the day and if the evidence of their prolific partnerships in the recent series against South Africa is anything to go by, will take some shifting.

“Overall, 299 for four puts the ball in our court,” said Hughes. “I thought we were outstanding today. It really gives us momentum going into tomorrow.”

Sri Lanka’s bowlers, dubbed this week as the worst pace attack ever to tour Australia by former test bowler Rodney Hogg, made life uncomfortable for the batsmen at times but struggled for any real penetration under cloudy skies at Bellerive Oval.

“I think we showed we can put Australia under pressure and hopefully the bowlers will be fresh in the morning and we can get them out for less than 100 additional runs,” said Welegedera, who finished with 3-99 on his return after nine months out injured.

Clarke, who passed 1,400 runs for the year, has now put on 731 runs in partnerships with Hussey in the last four tests and will be looking to plunder a few more on Saturday despite taking a couple of painful knocks to his legs.

Friday, however, belonged to Hughes.

The lefthander was recalled to the side on the back of good domestic form following the retirement of Ricky Ponting at the end of the series against the Proteas.

The 24-year-old reached his fourth test half century with a square drive for three runs and then initially accelerated towards a century, most notably with an ugly but effective slog for six off spinner Rangana Herath.

CALAMITOUS RUNOUT

On the ground where his second spell as a test batsman ended amid questions about his technique after two failures against New Zealand last year, Hughes scored eight fours and one six in his 166-ball knock before Welegedera struck with a superb ball.

“It was nice to get a few,” he said. “It would have been nice to get a few more and get into three figures.”

Australia had lost openers Ed Cowan (four) and David Warner in the opening session, the latter run out for 57 on the stroke of lunch after a calamitous misunderstanding with Hughes.

Shane Watson, dropping down to fourth in the batting order to allow Hughes to come in at number three, followed them to the pavilion for 30 shortly before tea, the victim of an exceptional diving catch in the slips by skipper Mahela Jayawardene.

That was a second wicket for Welegedera and a measure of redemption for the bowler after he had Hughes caught behind for 77 only for the umpire to call a no ball.

Welegedera had also made the early breakthrough for the tourists when Cowan tried to pull a short delivery only for the ball to catch him high on the bat and carry to mid-on where Shaminda Eranga took a simple catch.

It could have been even better for the Sri Lankans, who were only centimetres away from the perfect start to the morning after Clarke had won the toss and elected to bat.

Cowan edged the second delivery of the day from Nuwan Kulasekara to the slips but Angelo Mathews was just unable to get his hands to it, despite an athletic dive. (Editing by Peter Rutherford)

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Lidl Christmas dinner offer goes viral on Twitter

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Discount retailer Lidl faces a 200,000-euro ($ 260,000) Christmas dinner bill after an offer of chicken vol-au-vents and ice cream cake for the poor went viral.

The supermarket launched a Twitter campaign in Belgium on Monday, saying it would hand out five four-course Christmas dinners to food banks for each tweet on a hash tag.

Lidl had expected to hand out about 1,000 of the 20-euro dinner packs, consisting of tomato soup, vol-au-vents with chips, an ice-cream cake and chocolates, a spokesman for the German-based company’s Belgium unit said on Wednesday.

But local newspapers wrote about the offer and people retweeted using the hash tag – #luxevooriedereen, Dutch for “luxury for everyone”.

By the end of the 24-hour campaign, 1,500 people had tweeted, meaning Lidl has to deliver 7,500 dinners. That sparked reports the supermarket had been caught out by its campaign.

To quash such talk, Lidl rounded up the number of dinners to 10,000, and branded the campaign a success.

Lidl said it had not yet decided whether to repeat the exercise next year.

“We’ve learnt quite a few lessons over the past 48 hours, to say the least,” the spokesman said.

($ 1 = 0.7693 euros)

(Reporting By Ben Deighton. Editing By Sebastian Moffett.)

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Britney Spears, Taylor Swift are top-earning women in music

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Pop star Britney Spears edged past Taylor Swift to claim the title of top-earning woman in music after bringing in an estimated $ 58 million from her album, endorsements and a perfume in the past year, Forbes said on Wednesday.

Country-pop singer Swift, 22, was a close second with an estimated $ 57 million paycheck thanks to her tour – which made more than $ 1 million each night – a contract with CoverGirl cosmetics, her own line of fragrances and her new album “Red.”

R&B star Rihanna, 24, earned an estimated $ 53 million to put her at No. 3, two places up from last year, followed by Lady Gaga, 26, who slipped from No. 1 in 2011 to fourth place with $ 52 million.

Katy Perry, 28, the only musician other than Michael Jackson to produce five No. 1 hit singles from one album, rounded out the top five with about $ 45 million in earnings.

“I think people love the comeback story – Britney never really finished her run as a superstar,” Steve Stoute, marketing expert and author of “The Tanning of America” told Forbes.

Spears, 31, who was No. 10 last year, earned most of her money from her latest album “Femme Fatale” and her tour, according to Forbes, which compiled the list with estimated earnings from May 2011 to May 2012.

In September, Spears became a judge on the reality TV singing show “The X Factor,” reportedly for $ 15 million.

Despite their huge incomes, only eight of the top women music earners were among the 25 best-paid musicians, which Forbes attributes in part to career breaks to have children.

Madonna made the list in ninth place with an estimated $ 30 million in earnings, which did not include profits from her latest tour because it was outside the time period considered for the ranking.

Forbes compiled the list after estimating pretax income based on record sales, touring information merchandise sales and interviews with concert promoters, lawyers and managers.

The full list can be found at http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2012/12/12/the-top-earning-women-in-music-2012/

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Maureen Bavdek)

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Best Pals Paralyzed Just 2 Years Apart

Alan Brown had just wrapped up a fundraiser for his high school best friend, Danny Heumann, who had been paralyzed after he broke his back in a car accident.

“We were 18 years old, ready to live life,” said Brown, who became his friend’s caregiver, staying by his side at New York City‘s Rusk Institute after the 1985 accident.

But just six weeks after he had helped raise $ 15,000 for his friend’s new foundation, Brown himself suffered a cruel twist of fate. He, too, was paralyzed after diving into the surf on a Club Med vacation in Martinique. It was Jan. 2, 1988, a bit more than two years after Heumann’s accident.

Brown said that he quite literally “saw the light” when he shattered his neck. The undertow threw him head-first against the ocean floor.

“I heard it snap,” he said. “I was under water two or three minutes holding my breath to survive. But I thought this was it.”

He never lost consciousness and remembered from his friend’s accident not to be jostled, so he refused a ride in the bumpy ambulance until he could be airlifted to the hospital. En route, he said he quoted lines from the comedy film, “Fletch” — “It’s all ball bearings.”

Just short of his 21st birthday, he lost the use of his legs, but not his sense of humor or his drive.

Today, at 45, Brown says he is doing what he has always done best: facing a challenge.

He has pledged to raise $ 250,000 — $ 25,000 for each year he has been paralyzed — for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. His one-year campaign is aptly named the “Power of We.”

“There’s no ego here — we’re building an army,” said Brown, who is director of impact for the Reeve Foundation. “Spinal cord injuries don’t discriminate. In one split second my life changed.”

Both Heumann and Brown now sit on the board of the Reeve Foundation.

An estimated 5.6 million Americans live with some form of paralysis, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and most, like Brown, were injured when they were young.

The Reeve Foundation has become the “hub” of most of the research and advocacy for those who suffer from paralysis. It is named for the actor Christopher Reeve, who was injured in a horseback riding accident and died in 2004. His wife, Dana, worked with him and chaired the foundation; she died in 2006.

Spinal cord research is “painstakingly slow and expensive,” according to Susan Howley, executive vice-president of research at the Reeve Foundation. And there are never any quick fixes.

But this is a pivotal time in research and more is being done to improve quality of life and independence for those who are paralyzed.

“It’s actually a phenomenally interesting and exciting time in the field of spinal cord research,” said Howley. “The old dogmas haven’t really been overturned for a very long time.”

As recently as two decades ago, an injured adult was never expected to recover. Today, scientists are discovering activity-based exercise or locomotor training that can “remind” the spinal cord how to step and stand again, she said.

But being wheelchair-bound is only part of the medical, psychological and financial challenge of a spinal cord injury.

Depending on the severity of the injury, the yearly expense for treatment can be anywhere from $ 300,000 to nearly $ 1 million, according to The University of Alabama National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The lifetime cost of caring for a 25-year-old can range from $ 1.5 to $ 4 million.

Pain, Bladder and Skin Issues Plague Those With Paralysis

The secondary effects of spinal cord injuries are as challenging as the mobility issues: constant pain, bowel and bladder issues, and skin problems; shoulder and back injuries from years of strain and aging in a wheelchair.

“There are so many of them,” said Brown. “Care giving and the psychological are part of it — developing your own confidence to face the world. Some people don’t even want to leave their homes.”

Brown’s generation is the first to even survive spinal cord injuries. “There is no road map for us,” he said. “In the past, if they didn’t die, they were put away in a nursing home to die.”

Relationships are tested; Brown said his own marriage broke up.

Since the early days of treatment at Jackson Memorial in Miami and later in outpatient therapy at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, his humor has kept him going.

“They put me in a halo backwards and had to unscrew it and screw it back into my head,” said Brown. “I laughed the entire time. I laughed every day and cried every day.”

He said he learned to hold his breath so the nurses would talk to him.

Laughter has carried him through six surgeries and physical ordeals. “I am an emergency room frequent flyer,” Brown jokes.

He has 11 screws and two metal plates that were inserted after his neck was rebuilt.

“Technically I’m three people,” said Brown. “My head is screwed on, my body is in the middle and there is my soul.”

Brown has always been a giver — as a child growing up in a Jewish family in New York City, he used to help prepare dead bodies for burial — “one of the biggest mitzvahs,” he said.

“I was always a person who wanted to overcome, an overachiever,” he said. “I wasn’t a great student, but I was there by your side. I would help the elderly at Rosh Hashanah — it’s in my make-up.”

While he was still bedridden and his health was touch and go, Brown asked his rabbi what he would say in a eulogy. The rabbi told Brown he had the “spirit to help others.”

Today he says he leads a full life, helping to raise his two sons, Max, 15, and Sam, 10.

Brown uses a power wheelchair and has difficulty using his hands. He said he battles constant pain, but is able to get himself in and out of the chair and drives a car.

A former hockey player, Brown keeps fit. He participates in marathons in his wheelchair and has tried both scuba and sky diving.

Professionally, Brown has worked his entire life — at public relations, recruiting NFL players for ad campaigns and even running a radio station.

“Nothing will ever stop me,” said Brown, who has also begun a book.

He confesses he doesn’t sleep much, especially with an eye to the fundraising campaign for the Reeve Foundation.

“There totally is hope,” he said when talking about medical advances. “Cures come in different shapes and sizes. A lot of us would take just not being in pain.”

Meanwhile, Brown’s attitude and energy astound his colleagues.

“Alan lives with his injury day in and day out,” said Howley at the Reeve Foundation. “He, better than anyone else, understands what the challenges and needs are. He is so articulate and compassionate. We are very lucky. God bless him.”

For more information and to help, go to the donor page for the Alan T. Brown Power of We Campaign.

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Walmart vs. Walmart

Cindy Murray has been working at Walmart store No. 1985 in Laurel, Md., for 13 years. She’s stationed in the fitting rooms and earns $ 12.40 an hour. Murray, who’s in her fifties, says she loves her job. She thinks of herself as a model employee. She also helped start OUR Walmart, or Organization United for Respect at Walmart, the group of employees who defied one of the most powerful companies in America by holding protests at about 1,000 stores on the busiest day of the year for retailers. OUR Walmart says it has at least 4,000 members. The protests, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, involved about 500 of them, as well as many thousands of others sympathetic to their cause. Murray and her colleagues are asking Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) for more full-time jobs with predictable schedules instead of part-time work with hours that can change every three weeks—and wages that can provide their families a decent life. They also want respect.

Photograph by Christopher Leaman for Bloomberg BusinessweekOUR Walmart member Cindy Murray in Maryland

On the morning of Nov. 23, instead of going to work, Murray put on her bright green OUR Walmart T-shirt and boarded a bus provided by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has tried and failed to unionize Walmart associates for more than a decade. “Walmart isn’t on a good path, and someone needs to stand up and speak out,” says Murray. “But we always have fear inside of us, too.” They weren’t sure how many police would be present or if shoppers would support them. They weren’t sure if afterward their hours would be cut or if managers would make their lives difficult. None of them could afford to lose their jobs.

Murray was one of several hundred people, employees and activists and community leaders, who met at a store in nearby Hanover, Md. She helped lead chants, including “Stand up! Live better!” a play on Walmart’s slogan, “Pay less, live better.” They sang and marched for a couple of hours, then moved on to another store. At 7 a.m. on Saturday, she punched in for her regular shift.

Walmart is the largest private employer in the U.S., with nearly 1.4 million workers in 4,602 stores. The company operates in 26 other countries, employing an additional 780,000 people. Its efficiency, in stores and throughout its supply chain, has remade the retail industry. When Walmart decides to sell mortgages, local produce, or compact fluorescent light bulbs, the effects ripple through the economy. So do its decisions about workers’ schedules, wages, and benefits. With revenue of $ 464 billion over the past year, it’s the biggest company in the U.S.

As it has expanded, Walmart has been vilified by activists and watchdog groups who say the company’s relentless growth has come at the expense of its workers, the environment, and the law. Since 2005 it has agreed to pay about $ 1 billion in damages in six different cases related to unpaid work. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating allegations of corruption by company executives in its Mexican subsidiary, Walmart’s biggest, and a potential coverup by executives at its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Walmart says it’s cooperating with the investigations and is conducting its own internal investigation and review.

Last month more than 100 workers died in a fire at a factory in Bangladesh that was sewing clothes for several retailers, including Walmart. The company says it was unaware its supplier had sent work to the factory and has fired the firm. According to Bloomberg News, the previous year Walmart had declined to sign an agreement among retailers to pay their suppliers to improve safety conditions at Bangladeshi factories. Walmart said it would be too expensive.

Walmart has survived labor fights before. But Murray and a core group of about 100 employees—along with the largest union of retail employees in the country and a branding firm founded by a top adviser to President Obama—are the architects of what may prove to be the most potent challenge yet. Crucially, the thousands of associates who have joined OUR Walmart say they’re not agitating for legal recognition or collective bargaining rights; unlike previous efforts, they’re not trying to unionize. They say they want to make Walmart a better place to work and shop. “It’s a cause that affects every American,” says Murray.

There’s also growing financial pressure. Walmart wants to expand into big cities where its size and power are controversial. Elected officials, community leaders, and residents often see the company as a disruptive economic force and a socially dubious one as well. “A business case can be made that it would be smart for them to figure out a way to improve the situation for their workers so that OUR Walmart is an ally, not an opponent,” says Ken Jacobs, chairman of the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center. Or it could continue to dismiss OUR Walmart as a small group of disgruntled associates who speak only for themselves and their union backers. Despite the organization’s success in attracting attention to the Black Friday strikes, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the company’s U.S. workforce participated. What’s certain is that Walmart’s management is facing a new kind of unrest at a time when it’s already vulnerable. Says Julius Getman, a labor law professor at the University of Texas School of Law: “This is a battle for the soul of Walmart’s workforce.”

Walmart has been opposed to unions since Sam Walton opened his first store in Rogers, Ark., in 1962. These days, “we have human resources teams all over the country who are available to talk to associates, and we will get questions about joining a union,” says David Tovar, a spokesman for the company. “We would say: ‘Let us remind you of all that Walmart offers, and of what might go away. Quarterly bonuses might go away, vacation time might go away.’ ”

Tovar says the company is proud of the jobs it offers, that its benefits are affordable and comprehensive, and that there are plenty of opportunities for associates to advance. Walmart has more employees working full-time than its competitors do, he says, and a lower turnover rate. “The suggestion that the issues OUR Walmart is raising are widespread or representative of any sizable number of associates is ludicrous,” he says. “We know this because we have hard data. And we know this because our managers and executives are in our stores every day asking associates questions. They believe what they’re getting at Walmart is a good deal.”

In a rare public appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Dec. 11, Walmart Chief Executive Officer Mike Duke, interviewed by Bloomberg LP CEO Daniel Doctoroff, dismissed the idea of a rift between Walmart’s employees and management. “The characterization is not always accurate,” he said. “This tension for me is not a tension.”

Murray’s campaign started six years ago. Backed by the UFCW, and a coalition it called “Wake Up Walmart,” Murray tried to get workers in her store to join the union. She didn’t get far. “We knew we had to do something different this time,” she says. “The organization had to be made by associates and for associates so they would feel more free to join.”

Organizers at the UFCW felt the same way. In 2010 the union hired a veteran labor leader, Dan Schlademan, to be the director of “Making Change at Walmart,” a campaign it had just launched. “We needed to build something new,” says Schlademan. He connected with Murray and a few other Walmart employees and then turned to ASGK Public Strategies, the media and branding firm started by David Axelrod, a senior political adviser to President Obama. (Axelrod had sold his stake by 2010.) “There is a permanent political campaign around the legitimacy of Walmart on both sides,” says Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author of The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business. “Walmart hires operatives who are in and out of political campaigns. Unions enlist the hottest political consultants around.”

On its side, Walmart had Leslie Dach, who had been a strategist in several Democratic campaigns and a vice chairman at public-relations firm Edelman. Dach was hired in 2006 in part to improve the company’s reputation, especially with liberal politicians and shoppers. By 2010 the company had reduced waste and energy use, tried to offer more affordable health insurance, and had supported Obamacare. At an analysts’ meeting that October, Dach said: “I think the numbers clearly show that customers and elected officials like us better. … And that makes it easier for us to site stores, makes it easier for us to stay out of the public limelight when we don’t want to be there.”

In the fall of 2010, ASGK began conducting opinion research about how to effectively reach Walmart employees. The firm declined to comment on its work, but as a former executive described it, they realized that buying an ad on Facebook (FB) would allow them to target users who had identified themselves as Walmart employees. There were about 150,000 of them. Then ASGK asked the employees to rate themselves according to how committed they were to Walmart. It focused on the group in the middle: dedicated employees with a couple of complaints. Chief among them was that they weren’t treated with respect by their managers. Second was their pay.

“ASGK was good at getting to the heart of what really was important to people,” says Schlademan. The firm helped name the movement and craft a logo that looks like the OK hand sign. “Three employees have it tattooed on their arms,” he says.

OUR Walmart had a brand. Now it needed more leaders. Maggie Van Ness was an overnight stocker at store No. 1563 in Lancaster, Calif., when she heard about the group from a UFCW representative. In the fall of 2010, Van Ness and another employee began holding meetings at a cafe every Friday, telling their co-workers about the new movement. For a couple of months, they went to the Los Angeles union hall every other week for training. “The union was very good at teaching us what we could and couldn’t do,” says Van Ness, who left the company earlier this year for health reasons. “They stood behind us and pushed in the right direction.”

Photograph by Ryan Lowry for Bloomberg BusinessweekOUR Walmart member Mary Pat Tifft in Wisconsin

Mary Pat Tifft, from store No. 1167 in Kenosha, Wis., joined the organization in the spring of 2011 and quickly emerged as an effective spokeswoman. Tifft, who’s 57, has worked for Walmart for almost 25 years. She says she was a contented employee until 2005, when union organizers got hold of a memo from a Walmart executive to the board of directors. The memo proposed ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits without damaging Walmart’s reputation. It suggested capping pay, discouraging unhealthy people from applying, and expressed the company’s frustration that workers with seniority made more than new employees but were no more productive. “Reading that tells you how they feel about associates,” says Tifft. “It was degrading.” Tifft makes $ 19.96 an hour, the most she can earn without moving into management, which doesn’t interest her. Others in her store don’t make enough to support themselves, she says, and rely on the local food pantry that Walmart takes pride in contributing to. “Everyone always banked on the fact that Walmart would have your best interests at heart. But it’s not true,” she says.

In June 2011, OUR Walmart made its debut. At the UFCW’s expense, Murray, Van Ness, and Tifft, along with 97 other associates, traveled to Walmart’s headquarters a couple of weeks after the company’s annual shareholder meeting. They wrote a 12-point declaration that asked for wages and benefits that ensured no associate would have to rely on government assistance. They also called for dependable schedules, expanded health-care coverage, and the freedom to speak up without facing retaliation. In the parking lot, they presented the document to Karen Casey, the senior vice president for global labor relations. “It was really scary,” says Murray. “I think the executives were just as shocked as we were. Walmart heard us, but they didn’t listen.”

Photograph by Ryan LowryOUR Walmart protesters take part in a Black Friday demonstration in Chicago

The Bentonville trip was the first time many OUR Walmart members met face to face. “I was so taken aback listening to other associates’ stories,” says Tifft. “It made me want to speak louder.” The first discussion about holding protests on a Black Friday began then. At a hotel conference room, Schlademan set up computers for associates to learn how to use Facebook to stay in touch and reach other potential members.

During the next year, union organizers and employee leaders worked on recruitment. Van Ness says she signed up 25 employees at her store, about 10 percent of the staff. Murray says there are 40 members at her store, though most are silent. Monthly dues are $ 5.

OUR Walmart returned to Bentonville in June 2012 for the annual meeting, which coincided with Walmart’s 50th anniversary. The group had proposed a shareholder resolution calling for greater disclosure about incentive pay for executives, spurred by allegations in the New York Times that top executives in Bentonville covered up evidence from Walmart’s own investigation into accusations of bribery in Mexico. Schlademan had found experts to help Tifft and three others, all shareholders, craft the resolution. Then he got them a lawyer when Walmart tried to have it removed from the ballot.

In front of about 16,000 people, Proposal 6 was read aloud: “We have cut costs too far, stores are understaffed and associates cannot provide customers the service that Sam Walton built the company on and that we are proud to provide. … Sam Walton said, ‘Listen to your associates, they are your best idea generators.’… There has to be a new relationship based on honesty, based on trust, based on respect.” The auditorium was full of cheers; Tifft looked stunned. The resolution, supported by Institutional Shareholder Services, a leading proxy advisory group, won about 9 percent of the vote. The Walton family controls almost half of the shares in the company.

As the holiday shopping season approached, several dozen employees at warehouses that serve Walmart walked off the job in California and Illinois to protest what they said were poor working conditions. Then, in early October, OUR Walmart staged its first strike, in Pico Rivera, Calif. From there, some members went to Bentonville for the annual meeting for analysts. They stood in the parking lot, chanting: “We do not get enough hours. We cannot take care of our families.” Later, Colby Harris, who’s 22 and works in the produce department in a Walmart in Lancaster, Tex., led a dozen or so people to Walmart’s first store. The group collected water jugs, buckets, trash cans, cooking utensils. They found a rhythm and began chanting, “What do we want? Respect! When do we want it? Now!” Says Harris: “I think we caught the managers off guard. It was exhilarating.”

Photograph by Ryan Lowry for Bloomberg BusinessweekOUR Walmart member Colby Harris in Texas

At the meeting itself, Walmart noted how well it treats its associates. The company had already issued guidelines to store managers about how to respond to walkouts or work stoppages on Black Friday. “We wanted to ensure we provided the safest possible shopping environment for our customers,” says Walmart spokesman Tovar. The company also engaged in its own workers’ campaign. “If OUR Walmart people are in a store trying to talk to associates about joining a union, we do educate them about what it would mean,” he says.

Acknowledging their existence proved Walmart was paying attention. “That was a tactical mistake,” says Lichtenstein of UC Santa Barbara. “That ratified the importance of the protests.” Murray agrees: “It was a great recruiting tool.” She and other leaders spoke to associates afterward, explaining that despite Walmart’s assertions, their group is not trying to form a union. “Right now that’s not even a topic of conversation,” says Tifft.

On the Monday evening before Thanksgiving, Tovar told CBS News that the protests were “another union publicity stunt.” He added: “If associates are scheduled to work on Black Friday, we expect them to show up and to do their job. And if they don’t, depending on the circumstances, there could be consequences.” As encouragement, Walmart offered associates an additional 10 percent discount if they worked the full day. (They are normally entitled to a 10 percent discount.) “Some people might call that an incentive,” says Tifft. “I call it a bribe.”

On the day of the protests, Tovar issued a statement accusing the UFCW of exaggerating the scope of the demonstrations. “We had our best Black Friday ever,” he said. A week later, though, Walmart felt compelled to again counter the perception that its employees were in revolt. Michael Bender, the president of Walmart West, wrote an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle with the headline, “Our workers love their jobs.” “I want our associates to know we have their backs,” he wrote.

Cindy Boyd has been a full-time associate at a Walmart in Glendale, Calif., for the past 15 years. Her husband and son work there, too. She doesn’t support OUR Walmart. “I feel like, if they’re not happy, maybe it’s not the right fit for them,” she says. “They shouldn’t bash the company that feeds them.” Shirley Jeanine Clem says she thought the protests were silly and unnecessary. She’s been working at a Baytown (Tex.) store for nine years and was among the women reimbursed after the company found they had been paid less than men for the same work. “As a caring mother, I do not hesitate to tell my daughters to work for Walmart,” she says.

OUR Walmart’s decision to create a new kind of organization makes it a less predictable adversary than the company is used to. Yet it’s hard to assess if the group will achieve its goals without the legal protections that come with union recognition. “Walmart has the advantage of money and power, but these things can be overcome,” says Getman of the University of Texas. “The very fact that the situation is unusual gives an advantage to OUR Walmart.” The group has gotten Walmart’s attention. Beyond that, it may be years before it’s possible to assess its impact on the company.

Meanwhile, Walmart has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming OUR Walmart has been organizing without seeking union recognition. The UFCW is reviewing more than 100 violations of workers’ rights by Walmart and has promised to continue supporting OUR Walmart as long as the group needs help. “Everything will be building toward an even bigger Black Friday 2013,” says Schlademan.

“I’m pretty sure Bentonville knows that we’re here to stay,” says Murray. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not backing down.”

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Aides: Chavez in tough fight, may miss swearing-in

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Somber confidants of President Hugo Chavez say he is going through a difficult recovery after cancer surgery in Cuba, and one close ally is warning Venezuelans that their leader may not make it back for his swearing-in next month.

Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said Wednesday night that Chavez was in “stable condition” and was with close relatives in Havana. Reading a statement, he said the government invites people to “accompany President Chavez in this new test with their prayers.”

Villegas expressed hope about the president returning home for his Jan. 10 swearing-in for a new six-year term, but said in a written message on a government website that if Chavez doesn’t make it, “our people should be prepared to understand it.”

Villegas said it would be irresponsible to hide news about the “delicateness of the current moment and the days to come.” He asked Venezuelans to see Chavez’s condition as “when we have a sick father, in a delicate situation after four surgeries in a year and a half.”

Moving to prepare the public for the possibility of more bad news, Vice President Nicolas Maduro looked grim when he acknowledged that Chavez faced a “complex and hard” process after his latest surgery.

At the same time, officials sought to show a united front amid the growing worries about Chavez’s health and Venezuela’s future. Key leaders of Chavez’s party and military officers appeared together on television as Maduro gave updates on Chavez’s condition.

“We’re more united than ever,” said Maduro, who was flanked by National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, both key members of Chavez’s inner circle. “We’re united in loyalty to Chavez.”

Analysts say Maduro could eventually face challenges in trying to hold together the president’s diverse “Chavismo” movement, which includes groups from radical leftists to moderates, as well as military factions.

Tapped by the 58-year-old president over the weekend as his chosen political heir, Maduro is considered to be a member of radical left wing of Chavez’s movement that is closely aligned with Cuba’s communist government.

Cabello, a former military officer who also wields power within Chavez’s movement, shared the spotlight with Maduro by speaking at a Mass for Chavez’s health at a military base.

Just returned from being with Chavez for the operation, Cabello called the president “invincible” but said “that man who is in Havana … is fighting a battle for his life.”

After Chavez’s six-hour operation Tuesday, Venezuelan television broadcast religious services where people prayed for Chavez, interspersed with campaign rallies for upcoming gubernatorial elections.

On the streets of Caracas, people on both sides of the country’s deep political divide voiced concerns about Chavez’s condition and what might happen if he died.

At campaign rallies ahead of Sunday’s gubernatorial elections, Chavez’s candidates urged Venezuelans to vote for pro-government candidates while they also called for the president to get well.

“Onward, Commander!” gubernatorial candidate Elias Jaua shouted to a crowd of supporters at a rally Wednesday. Many observers said it was likely Chavez’s candidates could get a boost from their supporters’ outpouring of sympathy for Chavez.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chavez in the October presidential election and is running against Jaua, complained Wednesday that Chavez’s allies are taking advantage of the president’s health problems to try to rally support. He took issue with Jaua’s statement to supporters that “we have to vote so that the president recovers.”

Maduro looked sad as he spoke on television, his voice hoarse and cracked at times after meeting in the pre-dawn hours with Cabello and Ramirez. The pair returned to Venezuela about 3 a.m. after accompanying Chavez to Cuba for his surgery.

“It was a complex, difficult, delicate operation,” Maduro said. “The post-operative process is also going to be a complex and hard process.”

Without giving details, Maduro reiterated Chavez’s recent remarks that the surgery presented risks and that people should be prepared for any “difficult scenarios.”

The constitution says presidents should be sworn in before the National Assembly, and if that’s not possible then before the Supreme Court.

Former Supreme Court magistrate Roman Duque Corredor said a president cannot delegate the swearing-in to anyone else and cannot take the oath of office outside Venezuela. A president could still be sworn in even if temporarily incapacitated, but would need to be conscious and in Venezuela, Duque told The Associated Press.

If a president-elect is declared incapacitated by lawmakers and is unable to be sworn in, the National Assembly president would temporarily take charge of the government and a new presidential vote must be held within 30 days, Duque said.

Chavez said Saturday that if an election had to be held, Maduro should be elected president.

The dramatic events of this week, with Chavez suddenly taking a turn for the worse, had some Venezuelans wondering whether they were being told the truth because just a few months ago the president was running for his fourth presidential term and had said he was free of cancer.

Lawyer Maria Alicia Altuve, who was out in bustling crowds in a shopping district of downtown Caracas, said it seemed odd how Maduro wept at a political rally while talking about Chavez.

“He cries on television to set up a drama, so that people go vote for poor Chavez,” Altuve said. “So we don’t know if this illness is for that, or if it’s that this man is truly sick.”

Some Chavez supporters said they found it hard to think about losing the president and worried about the future. His admirers held prayer vigils in Caracas and other cities this week, holding pictures and singing hymns.

Chavez has undergone four cancer-related surgeries since June 2011. He has also undergone months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Throughout his treatments, Chavez has kept secret some details of his illness, including the exact location and type of the tumors.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa wished his close ally the best, while also acknowledging the possibility that cancer might end his presidency. “Chavez is very important for Latin America, but if he can’t continue at the head of Venezuela, the processes of change have to continue,” Correa said at a news conference in Quito.

___

Associated Press writer Christopher Toothaker contributed to this report.

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WebMD to cut 14 percent of workforce to reduce expenses

(Reuters) – Health information website WebMD Health Corp said it will cut around 250 jobs, or 14 percent of its workforce, to reduce costs.

The company, which had about 1700 employees according to Thomson Reuters data, said it would take a charge of about $ 6 million to $ 8 million in the fourth quarter, primarily on severance and other restructuring-related costs.

WebMD, which is a popular and long-trusted destination for checking health and disease related information, has lost its sheen for investors in recent times as it struggled to convert its growing user base into a steady revenue stream.

The company named a former Pfizer Inc executive Cavan Redmond as CEO earlier this year, entrusting the industry veteran with the task of reviving the website’s flagging business.

Its previous CEO, Wayne Gattinella, resigned after the company took itself off the auction block in January.

WebMD also said on Tuesday that it plans to streamline its operations and focus resources on increasing user engagement, customer satisfaction and innovation, and expects these efforts to reduce annualized operating expenses by about $ 45 million.

While most of the job cuts will be effective at the end of the year, other cost saving actions will be implemented in the first quarter of 2013, the company said in a statement.

The company reported a third-quarter loss in November, compared with a profit in the year-ago quarter, and said revenue fell 13 percent.

WebMD’s shares, which have lost nearly 40 percent of their value over the past six months, were down about 2 percent in premarket trade. They closed at $ 13.85 on Monday on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)

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Healthiest States in America Named

Reported by Dr. Amish Patel:

The annual America’s Health Rankings list is out, pitting U.S. states against each other in a no-holds-barred contest of health. So, how did your state fare?

For the fourth year in a row, Vermont takes the top spot as healthiest state. Applauding the state’s high rate of high school graduation and low rate of uninsured population, the report also finds that Vermont is not without its problems. Vermonters have a relatively high rate of cancer deaths and participate in binge drinking more than most states (Wisconsiners binge drink the most, Tennesseans the least). Vermont is in good company in the northeast with seven states from the region making it into the top 10.

Second place goes to Hawaii, a regular contender for first place. Since the ranking started in 1990, Hawaii has consistently ranked in the top six states. Hawaiians enjoy low rates of obesity and smoking, but have high rates of binge drinking and low birth weight babies.

Louisiana and Mississippi are tied for the least healthy state and have consistently been at the bottom of the list for the past 23 years. Both states have low rates of binge drinking, but suffer from high rates of occupational fatalities and children in poverty. These two states are in the bottom five in about half of the 24 components that make up the overall ranking, including high rates of chronic conditions like sedentary lifestyle, obesity and diabetes.

These chronic conditions are also putting the entire nation’s health most at risk. Obesity alone is the leading cause of preventable death and costs our nation about $ 200 billion each year. More than 66 million adults are obese – that’s more than one in four Americans. Colorado is the least obese and least sedentary state, in contrast to Mississippi which is the most obese and most sedentary.

“It is important to note that we are living longer, but not necessarily better,” says Jane Pennington, spokesperson from the United Health Foundation, the group responsible for the report. “Despite improvements, we still have unhealthy behavior that threatens our health status. It continues to be disappointing that we are seeing a rise in chronic illness. It doesn’t have to be that way. That is the alarm that we want to sound.”

Although smoking in the U.S. has been decreasing recently, more than 45 million Americans still smoke, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Utah has the lowest percent of its population smoking and Kentucky has the highest.

“People should care about this report,” says Dr. Anthony Shih, executive vice president for Programs at the Commonwealth Fund. “It is clear that where you live matters in terms of overall health and it should motivate action to improve.”

States should be looking at their healthier neighbors for ways to improve.

“The relatively high performance of [fourth-ranked] Massachusetts – where a law similar to the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2006 – may hopefully motivate other states to participate in Medicaid expansion and more aggressively implement the ACA within their own state. Successful implementation will likely raise the performance of most states,” according to Shih.

By having programs and policies that support better health, states can expect better rankings. If a state increases the tax on cigarettes or bans smoking in public places, for example, the number of smokers in that state should decrease, cutting deaths from cardiovascular disease and cancer deaths.

The statistics show that states can improve their ranking. Vermont was ranked 20 th in 1990, but steadily made improvements over the years to get where it is now.

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Delta buys into Virgin Atlantic

11 December 2012 Last updated at 10:24 ET

Delta Air Lines has agreed a deal to buy Singapore Airlines’ 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic for $ 360m (£224m).

Virgin Group and Sir Richard Branson will retain a 51% shareholding, and the Virgin brand will remain in place, the new partners said in a joint statement.

The deal is subject to regulatory approval in the US and Europe.

It follows a spat between Sir Richard and Willie Walsh, boss of BA-owner International Airlines Group over the future of Virgin Atlantic.

Earlier, Mr Walsh offered to wager a “knee in the groin” in a bet with Sir Richard over whether the Virgin brand would still be around in five years.

He was responding to a £1m bet offered by Sir Richard on Monday.

‘Exciting day’

Virgin and Delta said the deal would allow allow them to “overcome slot constraints” and offer more flights from Heathrow.

The carriers will operate 31 peak-day round trips between the UK and North America.

“Our new partnership with Virgin Atlantic will strengthen both airlines and provide a more effective competitor between North America and the UK, particularly on the New York-London route,” said Delta boss Richard Anderson.

Sir Richard said it was an “exciting day” in Virgin’s history.

“It signals the start of a new era of expansion, financial growth and many opportunities for our customers and our business.”

Singapore Airlines is selling its stake, which it has owned since 1999, because of increased competition in its local market.

Low-cost airlines in particular have mushroomed, threatening more traditional carriers like Singapore Airlines.

Singapore Airlines has itself launched a low-cost carrier, called Scoot, and has been putting money into its regional service, SilkAir.

BBC News – Business

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Australian prank call radio to donate profits to nurse’s family

CANBERRA (Reuters) – The Australian radio station behind a prank call to a British hospital will donate its advertising revenue until the end of the year to a fund for the family of the nurse who apparently took her own life after the stunt, the company said on Tuesday.

Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of Sydney radio station 2Day FM, said it would donate all advertising revenue, with a minimum contribution of A$ 500,000 ($ 525,000), to a memorial fund for the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who answered the telephone at the hospital treating Prince William’s pregnant wife, Kate.

The company has suspended the Sydney-based announcers, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, scrapped their “Hot 30″ programme and suspended advertising on the station in the wake of the Saldanha’s death. Southern Cross said it would resume advertising on its station from Thursday.

“It is a terrible tragedy and our thoughts continue to be with the family,” Southern Cross Chief Executive Officer Rhys Holleran said in a statement.

“We hope that by contributing to a memorial fund we can help to provide the Saldanha family with the support they need at this very difficult time.”

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Hug It Out: Public Charter and District Schools Given $25 Million to Get Along

If you need a loan, ask Bill and Melinda Gates. Or better yet, ask one of the seven cities that are splitting a new $ 25 million grant courtesy of the couple’s philanthropic foundation.

The funds are going to promote cross collaboration between charter and district schools, which have previously operated in a strict and contentious independence from one another.

The foundation announced the award this week, and the cities benefiting are Boston, Denver, Hartford (CT), New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia and Spring Branch (TX).

How did they get so lucky? They’re among a group of 16 communities that signed the Gates-sponsored “District-Charter Collaboration Compacts” pledging for an open-source collaboration between public charter and district public schools.

Communication between these two models is unusual to say the least; they’ve had a long and illustrious history of battling each other over tax dollars, students and even building space.

But when charter schools first opened 20 years ago, their original purpose was to create an experimental educational space which would then share its best methods with public district schools. Instead, the two grew into rivals and critics of each are vehemently opposed to the other.

Among the complaints, charter schools are seen as selfishly siphoning off the most motivated students from the district while upholding a rich-poor educational divide and failing to live up to the promise of a better education. Others say its district schools that are the issue for their unionized teacher complacency and a consistent inability to keep a large margin of students from falling through the cracks.

In truth, neither system is a slam-dunk, and both are experiencing closures nationwide due to underperformance.

The goal of the District-Charter Collaboration Compacts is to restore the original relationship of the two camps, effectively establishing a regular protocol of sharing their best practices, innovations and resources.

Don Shalvey, the deputy director at teh Gates Foundation told The New York Times, “It took Microsoft and Apple 10 years to learn to talk. So it’s not surprising that it took a little bit longer for charters and other public schools. It’s pretty clear there is more common ground than battleground.”

But what will this grand collaboration yield? If all goes according to plan, students from both camps will benefit from new teacher effectiveness practices, college-ready tools and supports, and innovative instructional delivery systems.

According to the Gates Foundation, only one-third of students meet the criteria of college ready by the time they graduate. And most of the kids who don’t are often minority students from lower income areas. By creating collaborative aims with charter and district, kids from all over can have access to a wider swath of teaching frameworks and curriculums. 

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Public Dollars for Private Schools? Voices from the Voucher Debate

• School Vouchers: The Debate Heats Up Across the U.S.

• Howard Fuller: One of the Most Powerful Educators in America

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A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com

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Springsteen, Lady Gaga join Stones concert in NJ

NEW YORK (AP) — Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga and The Black Keys will join the Rolling Stones on Saturday for the final concert marking the band’s 50th anniversary.

The concert will be held at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.

The band said Monday the concert will be telecast live on pay-per-view.

The Stones have played in London and New York on their “50 and Counting” tour. They will also play in Newark on Thursday.

The Stones will perform Wednesday at the “12-12-12″ concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City to raise money for victims of Superstorm Sandy.

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Online:

http://www.rollingstones.com/

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UK chooses doctor as new head of NICE

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s health ministry named a former practising doctor, David Haslam, as the preferred candidate to chair the country’s healthcare cost-effectiveness watchdog NICE on Monday.

Haslam will take over as chairman of the renamed National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) from Michael Rawlins, assuming he passes scrutiny by a committee of MPs.

Rawlins, who has chaired NICE since its creation in 1999, is due to step down in March 2013.

During his time at the helm of the agency, Rawlins has made NICE a powerful force in the pharmaceutical industry with its hard-nosed approach to deciding whether or not pricey new drugs should be used on the state health service.

Haslam, who already leads the NICE Evidence Accreditation Advisory Board, is the immediate past president of the British Medical Association.

NICE will change its official title from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence next year.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; editing by Kate Kelland)

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China Nabs Airplanes and Batteries in Latest U.S. Shopping Spree

China’s U.S. shopping spree continues.

On Dec. 9, Chinese auto parts and technology company Wanxiang Group won a bankruptcy auction to acquire lithium-ion battery-maker A123 Systems for $ 256.6 million, beating out competing bids by Johnson Controls, Siemens (SI), and NEC. And on Dec. 10, a consortium of Chinese financial firms agreed to purchase AIG’s aviation-leasing business for $ 4.26 billion, setting a new record for the value of a single U.S. deal by a Chinese acquirer.

The Wanxiang win follows an earlier unsuccessful bid that foundered in August over national security concerns in the U.S. Congress, and was followed by A123’s bankruptcy filing on Oct. 16. The Waltham (Mass.)-based company had supplied its automotive batteries to the U.S. military and had also secured a $ 249 million federal grant to build factories in the U.S.—both issues raised by U.S. congressional members at the time. Separately, a congressional report released Oct. 8 alleged that China’s two largest telecom equipment manufacturers, Huawei Technologies and ZTE, are a security threat and should be blocked from acquiring U.S. companies.

Now, Wanxiang is excluding all military contracts held by A123 from its planned purchase. Navitas Systems, a Woodridge (Ill.)-based company, instead will spend $ 2.25 million to purchase A123’s government business. The asset sales must first get court approval from a U.S. bankruptcy judge at a hearing on Dec. 11.

“We think we have structured this transaction to address potential national security concerns expressed during the review of our previous investment agreement with Wanxiang announced in August as well as to address concerns raised by the Department of Energy,” A123 Chief Executive Officer Dave Vieau said in a statement.

Wanxiang has already invested in some two dozen ailing factories, mainly in the Midwest, and has recently been putting money into cleantech. In May, it closed a deal to invest $ 1.25 billion in Great Point Energy, a company in Cambridge, Mass., that converts coal to natural gas. The U.S. is a “gold mine” of opportunities for Wanxiang, Pin Ni, the head of U.S. operations and president of Wanxiang America, told Bloomberg Businessweek in October. “Any Chinese company that wants to be a global company can’t miss out on the U.S. market.”

These latest deals could cap a record-setting year with Chinese companies spending more than $ 8 billion to acquire American companies, up almost 50 percent from 2011. Chinese investment has flowed into at least 37 states and most major cities and is diversifying beyond the big energy asset purchases that have defined it in the past, according to Thilo Hanemann, research director at Rhodium Group, a China-focused consultant. Now also popular: entertainment, aluminum production, and financial services, with Chinese companies already supporting close to 30,000 jobs in the U.S. (Not that energy deals are no longer happening: Sinopec (SNP) is spending $ 2.5 billion purchasing oil and gas assets of Devon Energy (DVN), for example.)

More China deals are likely imminent. After spending $ 2.6 billion to purchase Kansas City (Mo.)-based AMC Entertainment, with 4,865 screens in 338 multiplex theaters in the U.S., Beijing-based Wanda Group is now talking to several Hollywood studios about signing a joint production and financing agreement. Also possible: buying an international hotel firm, with $ 10 billion earmarked for investment in the U.S., Wanda’s chairman, Wang Jianlin, told Bloomberg Businessweek on Dec. 3.

Wanxiang’s planned purchase, as well as the Chinese consortium’s bid for the AIG aviation-leasing arm, must still be reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., a multi-agency group headed by the Treasury Department that vets foreign purchasers of U.S. assets for national security concerns. And despite Wanxiang’s decision to exclude government contracts from the A123 purchase, not everyone is convinced that resolves the potential security risks.

“There are no protections, assurances or carve-outs that Wanxiang could offer as part of its offer that would ensure this technology would not benefit Chinese industries and military—to the detriment of those in the United States,” wrote Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) in a Dec. 7 blog post. “The administration must review and then reject any deal involving Wanxiang. A123 Systems was born out of American innovation, and we must ensure that it stays here—for our national and economic security,” wrote Blackburn, the vice chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

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McAfee wants to return to US, ‘normal life’

BACALAR, Mexico (AP) — Software company founder John McAfee said Sunday he wants to return to the United States and “settle down to whatever normal life” he can.

In a live-stream Internet broadcast from the Guatemalan detention center where he is fighting a government order that he be returned to Belize, the 67-year-old said “I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years.”

Police in neighboring Belize want to question McAfee in the fatal shooting of a U.S. expatriate who lived near his home on a Belizean island in November.

The creator of the McAfee antivirus program again denied involvement in the killing during the Sunday Internet video hook-up, during which he answered what he said were reporters’ questions.

His comments were sometimes contradictory. McAfee is an acknowledged practical joker who has dabbled in yoga, ultra-light aircraft and the production of herbal medications.

The British-born McAfee first said that returning to the United States “is my only hope now.” But he later added, “I would be happy to go to England, I have dual citizenship.”

He was emphatic that “I cannot ever return to Belize …. there is no hope for my life if I am ever returned to Belize.”

“If I am returned,” he said, “bad things will clearly happen to me.”

He descibed the health problems that had him briefly hospitalized earlier this week after Guatemalan authorities detained him for entering the country illegally. He apparently snuck in across a rural, unguarded spot along the border.

“I did not eat for two days, I drank very little liquids, and for the first time in many years I’ve been smoking almost non-stop,” he said. “I stood up, passed out hit my head on the wall, came to,” though he now said he was feeling better.

McAfee praised the role his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend, Samantha Vanegas, played in his escape from Belize, where he claims he is being persecuted by corrupt politicians. Authorities in Belize deny that they are persecuting him and have questioned his mental state.

“Sam saved the day many times” during their escape, he said, and suggested he would take her with him to the United States if he is allowed to go there.

He confirmed that journalists from Vice magazine who accompanied him on his escape after weeks of hiding in Belize had unwittingly posted photos with embedded data that revealed his exact location.

“It was an error anyone could make,” he said, noting they were under a lot of pressure at the time.

McAfee has led an eccentric life since he sold his stake in the anti-virus software company named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.

He told The New York Times in 2009 that he had lost all but $ 4 million of his $ 100 million fortune in the U.S. financial crisis. However, a story on the Gizmodo website quoted him as describing that claim as “not very accurate at all.”

McAfee’s Guatemalan attorney, Telesforo Guerra, says that he has filed three separate legal appeals in the hope that his client can stay in Guatemala, where his political asylum request was rejected.

Guerra said he filed an appeal for a judge to make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected, an appeal against the asylum denial and a petition with immigration officials to allow his client to stay in this Central American country indefinitely.

The appeals could take several days to resolve, Guerra said. He added that he could still use several other legal resources but wouldn’t give any other details.

Fredy Viana, a spokesman for the Immigration Department, said that before the agency looks into the request to allow McAfee to stay in Guatemala, a judge must first deal with the appeal asking that authorities make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected.

“We won’t look into (allowing him to stay) until the other appeal is resolved,” Viana said. “The law gives me 30 days to resolve the issue.”

McAfee went on the run last month after Belizean officials tried to question him about the killing of Gregory Viant Faull, who was shot to death in early November.

McAfee acknowledges that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them, but denies killing Faull. Faull’s home was a couple of houses down from McAfee’s compound in Ambergris Caye, off Belize’s Caribbean coast.

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