Tough decisions await new Tribune Co. board

When the new seven-member Tribune Co. board officially convenes for the first time in the next few weeks, the group of media and entertainment executives will name the company's executive officers. Then comes the bigger job of assessing a diverse portfolio of broadcasting and publishing assets, with an eye toward maximizing the value of the Chicago-based media company.

Whether that means buying, selling or keeping the company intact is a story that will begin to unfold in 2013. But insiders say the new owners — senior creditors Oaktree Capital Management; Angelo, Gordon & Co.; and JPMorgan Chase & Co. — won't be in a rush to make those decisions after a contentious four-year journey through Chapter 11 bankruptcy left the reorganized company in strong financial shape.

"We're really looking forward to the opportunities and the possibilities with this asset base, with over $11 billion in debt removed from the balance sheet," said Ken Liang, a managing director at Oaktree and a member of the new board.

Tribune Co. plunged into bankruptcy in December 2008, saddled with $13 billion in debt from real estate investor Sam Zell's heavily leveraged buyout one year earlier. It emerged from bankruptcy Monday, relatively debt-free and generating cash.

The company owns 23 television stations, including WGN-Ch. 9; national cable channel WGN America; eight daily newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune; and other media assets, all of which the reorganization plan valued at $4.5 billion after cash distributions and new financing.

Tribune Co.'s biggest challenge has been declining revenue and cash flow as the advertisers that sustained it through the years defected to digital media alternatives. But 2012 was a slight improvement, likely boosted in part by election year ad spending in the company's broadcasting unit.

Data released Monday by the company showed that after several years of revenue declines, including a 3 percent drop to $3.1 billion in 2011, sales for the first three quarters of 2012 were flat at $2.3 billion compared with the same period a year earlier. Cash flow was even better: After dropping 12 percent in 2011 to about $370 million, cash flow increased 17 percent during the first three quarters of 2012, to $240 million.

Los Angeles-based investment firm Oaktree is the largest equity owner, with 23 percent of the company. All of Oaktree's distressed-debt holdings have a 10-year investment window, though the average is three or four years, executives said. That time frame usually includes an operating phase, which is where Tribune Co. now stands.

Some experts expect that phase to be relatively brief.

"I think they are temporary owners," said Marshall Sonenshine, chairman of New York banking firm Sonenshine Partners and a professor at Columbia University Business School. "They're not really there to be long-term shareholders of media assets."

While eventually selling the assets is part of Oaktree's distressed-debt investment strategy, it doesn't preclude a longer run, including strengthening the company through strategic acquisitions, Liang said. And with Tribune Co.'s balance sheet cleaned up, the timing of any asset sales will be at their discretion.

The new board also includes Tribune Co. CEO Eddy Hartenstein; Ross Levinsohn, who recently left as interim chief executive of Yahoo Inc.; Craig Jacobson, an entertainment lawyer; Peter Murphy, a former strategy executive at Walt Disney Co. and Caesars Entertainment; Bruce Karsh, Oaktree's president; and Peter Liguori, a former top television executive at Fox and Discovery, who is expected to be named CEO of Tribune Co.

The makeup of the board and the expected choice of Liguori as CEO suggests that broadcasting will be the operational focus for Tribune Co., according to insiders and media analysts. Priorities are expected to include developing WGN America, which lags cable networks such as FX and TBS in revenue, ratings and cash flow, analysts said.

"It's clear that, in a sense, we have a new Tribune media company, and it's going in a direction that many people thought it would be going," said media analyst Ken Doctor. "It makes the company entertainment leaning versus news leaning."

Meanwhile, in the face of digital competition and sagging industry revenue, Tribune Co.'s newspaper holdings have declined to $623 million in total value, according to financial adviser Lazard. While some analysts expect the newspapers to be bundled and delivered to an assortment of potential new owners — everyone from Rupert Murdoch to Warren Buffett has expressed interest in acquiring one or more of the nameplates — they are still profitable and may remain in the Tribune Co. fold for some time, according to insiders.

Tribune reporters Michael Oneal and Becky Yerak contributed.

rchannick@tribune.com

Twitter @RobertChannick

Read More..

Congress won't meet midnight deadline on 'fiscal cliff'

WASHINGTON - Agonizingly close to a New Year's Eve compromise, the White House and congressional Republicans agreed Monday to block across-the-board tax increases set for midnight, but held up a final deal as they haggled away the final hours of 2012 in a dispute over spending cuts.

"It appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year's tax hike is within sight," President Barack Obama said in an early-afternoon status report on negotiations. "But it's not done."

The House of Representatives may not vote on any Senate-passed "fiscal cliff" deal until after Monday's midnight EST deadline, a Republican leadership aide said.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell — shepherding final talks with Vice President Joe Biden — agreed with Obama that an overall deal was near. In remarks on the Senate floor, he suggested Congress move quickly to pass tax legislation and "continue to work on finding smarter ways to cut spending" later next year.

Democrats declined the offer, at least for the time being.

While the deadline to prevent tax increases and spending cuts was technically midnight, passage of legislation within the next 72 hours — a timetable under consideration — would eliminate or minimize any inconvenience for taxpayers.

For now, more than the embarrassment of a gridlocked Congress working through New Year's Eve in the Capitol was at stake.

Economists in and out of government have warned that a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts could trigger a new recession, and the White House and Congress have spent the seven seeks since the Nov. 6 elections struggling for a compromise to protect the economy.

Even now, with time running out, partisan agendas were evident.

Obama used his appearance to chastise Congress, and to lay down a marker for the next round of negotiations early in 2013 when Republicans intend to seek spending cuts in exchange for letting the Treasury to borrow above the current debt limit of $16.4 trillion.

"Now, if Republicans think that I will finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts alone — and you hear that sometimes coming from them ... then they've got another thing coming. ... That's not how it's going to work at least as long as I'm President," he said.

"And I'm going to be President for the next four years, I think," he added.

Officials in both parties said agreement had been reached to prevent tax increases on most Americans, while letting rates rise on individual income over $400,000 and household earnings over $450,000 to a maximum of 39.6 percent from the current 35 percent. That marked a victory for Obama, who campaigned successfully for re-election on a platform of requiring the wealthy to pay more.

Any agreement would also raise taxes on the value of estates exceeding $5 million to 40 percent, as well as extend expiring jobless benefits for two million unemployed, prevent a 27 percent cut in fees for doctors who treat Medicare patients and likely avoid a near-doubling of milk prices.

Much or all of the revenue to be raised through higher taxes on the wealthy would help hold down the amount paid to the Internal Revenue Service by the middle class.

In addition to preventing higher rates for most, any agreement would retain existing breaks for families with children, for low-earning taxpayers and for those with a child in college.

In addition, the two sides agreed to prevent the Alternative Minimum Tax from expanding to affect an estimated 28 million households for the first time in 2013, with an average increase of more than $3,000. The law was originally designed to make sure millionaires did not escape taxes, but inflation has gradually exposed more and more households with lower earnings to its impact.

To help businesses, the two sides also agreed to extend an existing research and development tax credit as well as other breaks designed to boost renewable energy production. Details on those provisions were sketchy.

Obama's remarks irritated some Republicans.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona they would "clearly antagonize members of the House."

There was no response from Speaker John Boehner, who has been content to remain in the background while McConnell did the negotiating.

Some Democratic officials said that with his comments, he was hoping to ease the concerns of liberals in his own party who feared he had given away too much in the current round of talks over taxes.

Obama campaigned on a call for higher tax rates on income over $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples, far lower than the $400,000 and $450,000 that Biden and McConnell have set.

Similarly, the pending agreement on the estate tax would allow more large estates to escape taxation than many Democrats prefer.

By late afternoon, the two sides remained separated by a stubborn dispute over spending cuts scheduled to take effect on the Pentagon and domestic programs alike.

Officials familiar with the talks said the White House has been seeking agreement to stop the cuts from taking effect, either for a period of months or a year, and wanted to count higher taxes created elsewhere in the legislation to offset the cost.

Republicans have said they are willing to delay the across-the-board cuts, but only if Obama and Democrats agree to targeted savings from government programs to take their place.

Associated Press and Reuters

 

Read More..

Sony No Longer Shipping PlayStation 2 in Japan

You may have grown up with it. Your children may have, too.

Sony‘s PlayStation 2 home game console, released in 2000, was one of the most popular game consoles of all time, rivaled in sales only by the different kinds of Nintendo DS handheld console. It continued to be sold new on store shelves until just recently, even years after Sony launched its PlayStation 3 successor.

Now, however, Sony’s sent out its last shipment of new “PS2″ consoles for the Japanese market, according to Japanese gaming news site Famitsu (as reported by Polygon’s Emily Gera). Some other regions are continuing to receive shipments for now, but the heart of the PlayStation 2 phenomenon has finally stopped beating.

A gaming legend

Japanese PlayStation fans saw thousands more titles released in their language than English-speaking players. The PlayStation 2 was especially well-known for its role-playing games, such as the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, which was designed so closely around the PS2′s capabilities that its Windows PC version uses almost entirely the same graphics and controller-based interface.

New PS2 games continue to ship; Final Fantasy XI is even getting a full-fledged, retail-boxed expansion pack this March. It’ll only support the PS2 in Japan, however, where dedicated players continue to use the original “fat” PS2 consoles with the hard drive expansion slot. Internationally, it will only support the PC and Xbox 360.

PS2 games in a post-PS2 world

The first PlayStation 3 consoles — infamous for the silence which ensued at the Sony event where their price at launch was announced to be “599 U.S. dollars” — were backwards-compatible with the vast majority of PlayStation 2 and original PSOne games. Sony achieved PS2 backwards compatibility, however, by including the PS2′s actual “Emotion Engine” and “Graphics Synthesizer” chips inside each PS3, essentially making it two game consoles in one (and helping to drive up that launch price).

A redesign bumped down the price some, but at the cost of removing the Emotion Engine chip, which caused the redesigned PS3 consoles to sometimes have bugs or fail to play certain games. Today’s PS3 consoles lack both chips, which means that while they play PSOne games just fine, they don’t support PS2 game discs at all and can’t be upgraded to do so.

The legend lives on?

Sony has made HD remakes of certain PS2 titles, and republished others for the PS3 under the “PlayStation 2 Classics” brand. Dozens of such titles have been re-released as digital downloads in the PlayStation Network store.

This method of playing a PS2 game on the PS3, however, involves essentially buying the game again (assuming that it’s even in the store), sort of like Sony’s method of playing PlayStation Portable games on the Vita. Even rebuying the games for the PS3 doesn’t ensure continued playability on modern Sony consoles; the upcoming “PlayStation 4″ (not its actual name) reportedly won’t be able to play games made for the PS3.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Sony No Longer Shipping PlayStation 2 in Japan
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Green Day to get back on road in March

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The members of Green Day said on Monday they will return to the road in March after the punk rock band canceled its fall club tour and postponed later dates as frontman Billie Joe Armstrong underwent treatment for substance abuse.

“We want to thank everyone for hanging in with us for the last few months,” the band members said in a statement on their website. “We are very excited to hit the road and see all of you again, though we regret having to cancel more shows.”

Armstrong, lead singer and guitarist for the Grammy-winning rock band, sought substance abuse treatment in September following an angry, guitar-smashing on-stage outburst in Las Vegas. The details of his addiction were never specified.

Armstrong, 40, added to the website posting with a note on Instagram, saying:

“Dear friends … I just want to thank you all for the love and support you’ve shown for the past few months. Believe me, it hasn’t gone unnoticed and I’m eternally grateful to have such an amazing set of friends and family.

“I’m getting better every day,” he said. “So now, without further ado, the show must go on. We can’t wait to get on the road and live out loud! Our passion has only grown stronger.”

The tour will begin in Chicago on March 28, with dates in Pittsburgh, New York, Toronto and other cities up through April 12 in Quebec City.

The band said it would announce additional West Coast dates in early 2013.

Tickets for the postponed shows will be honored at the new dates, Green Day said. Tickets for canceled shows will be refunded at the point of purchase.

In November the band moved up the release date of “iTré!,” part of an ambitious trilogy of albums that marks their first collection of new music since 2009, to December 11 from its original date of January 15, in part to make up for the canceled and postponed dates.

The California-based punk rock band, formed in the late 1980s, has sold more than 65 million records worldwide and won five Grammys, including best alternative album for its 1994 major-label debut, “Dookie,” and best rock album for “American Idiot” and “21st Century Breakdown.”

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Bill Trott)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Green Day to get back on road in March
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Well: Managing Diabetes, Then Told of Cancer

Nine years ago, Brenda Gray, a former schoolteacher in North Carolina, discovered she had Type 2 diabetes.

Since then, she has learned to manage the disease, diligently taking her medicine and keeping tabs on her blood sugar. But in September, she was told she had skin cancer, and her diabetes spun out of control.

Ms. Gray started an aggressive course of treatment that included radiation therapy. But the treatments weakened her and destroyed her appetite. Unable to eat, she developed dangerously low blood-sugar levels, and about two months ago, Ms. Gray’s daughter had to rush her to a hospital.

“She found me in bed shaking and sweating,” said Ms. Gray, who is 62 and lives in Durham. “When I got to the hospital, they couldn’t understand how I was still standing.”

Cancer and diabetes are two of the leading killers in America. Each can be a devastating diagnosis in its own right, but researchers are finding that the two often occur together. By some estimates, as many as one in five cancer patients also has diabetes.

In a recent joint report, the American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association noted that people with Type 2 diabetes have an increased risk of developing cancers of the liver, pancreas, colon and bladder. Researchers with the National Cancer Institute released a similar report last year, which found greater rates of cancer among diabetics, as well as an elevated risk of dying from cancer.

Experts say it is clear from accumulating clinical data that the two share some biological links. The problem results from simple demographics as well: with the rapid rise in Type 2 diabetes and a growing population of cancer survivors, the two diseases are coinciding more frequently in older patients.

“We are going to see a lot greater numbers of people with both diseases,” said Edward Giovannucci, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and an author of the joint report. “By some estimates, the link between diabetes and cancer may quantitatively become even more important than the link between smoking and cancer.”

Already, oncologists say, it is not uncommon to encounter patients struggling to balance cancer treatments with insulin shots and diabetes drugs. Because cancer is generally seen as the more lethal of the two diseases, patients often make it the priority.

“Although cancer is no longer generally a death sentence, for many patients, they see it as that no matter what you say,” said Dr. June McKoy, a geriatric oncologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Suddenly, they put their diabetes on the back burner, and they focus on the cancer.” But high blood sugar can damage kidneys and blood vessels, strain the immune system and worsen cancer prognosis.

Researchers say that the link between the two diseases is complex and driven by many factors. Typically, though, it is diabetes that sets the stage for cancer. “Most cancers don’t cause diabetes,” said Dr. Pankaj Shah, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “Mostly diabetes increases the risk of cancer.”

Type 2 diabetes is often preceded by chronically high insulin levels and high blood sugar, fertile conditions for cancer. Insulin is known to fuel cell growth, and cancer cells consume glucose out of proportion to other nutrients. The two diseases share many risk factors as well, including obesity, poor diet, physical inactivity, smoking and advanced age.

Another factor that complicates the relationship are the treatments given to patients. Diabetes drugs can have an impact on cancer prognosis and vice versa. Type 2 diabetics treated with the drug metformin, for example, develop cancer less frequently than diabetics given other medications. A number of clinical trials are now under way to see how well the drug performs as a cancer treatment.

Drugs used against cancer, on the other hand, tend to worsen diabetes. Chemotherapy can wreak havoc on blood sugar levels, and glucocorticoids, which are widely prescribed to alleviate nausea in cancer patients, promote insulin resistance, said Dr. Lorraine L. Lipscombe of Women’s College Hospital in Toronto.

Dr. Lipscombe was the lead author of a large study last month that found that breast cancer survivors were 20 percent more likely to receive a diabetes diagnosis than other women. The study found evidence that glucocorticoids and chemotherapy may hasten the onset of diabetes.

“They don’t cause diabetes in everyone, but they can bring out or unmask it in people who might already be vulnerable,” she said.

For diabetics who are used to tightly monitoring their blood sugar levels, the impact of cancer drugs can be alarming. Rigoberto Cortes, 71, a former metal worker in Chicago, has had Type 2 diabetes for over two decades. A year ago, he was told he had Stage 3 colon cancer.

“When I started chemotherapy, my sugar level was going way up and way down like never before,” he said. “I kept asking my oncologist what I should do.”

Mr. Cortes said his oncologist was not very concerned by the blood sugar swings. He eventually got a second opinion and switched doctors. He also lost weight and changed his eating habits, which helped minimize his blood sugar swings.

Although every case is different, the general strategy in treating such patients should be to get the cancer under control first, said Dr. Shah at the Mayo Clinic.

“Diabetes treatment essentially is given to prevent long-term complications,” he added.

At some hospitals, oncologists may take responsibility for managing blood sugar and other diabetes concerns in their cancer patients. But ideally, treatments should be coordinated by a team that includes a certified diabetes educator.

“They go over diet with the patient, review their medication, review their insulin,” said Dr. McKoy of Northwestern. “They can play a big role.”

For a diabetic trying to navigate the world of cancer, or a cancer patient navigating the world of diabetes, such interventions can be crucial. In a study published in October, Dr. McKoy and her colleagues looked at several years of health records for over 200,000 people with Type II diabetes who developed cancer.

Those who underwent a diabetes counseling session after their cancer diagnosis — consisting of two sessions a week for four to six weeks — were more likely to receives tests of hemoglobin A1c levels, a barometer of how well blood sugar has been controlled over time, and to take care of their blood sugar levels. As a result, they had fewer emergency room visits, fewer hospital admissions and lower health care costs.

Ms. Gray, the former schoolteacher in Durham, learned this firsthand. After her recent emergency, she worked with a diabetes educator at Duke University Hospital. Ms. Gray learned tips and strategies to balance the two diseases, including ways to keep her blood sugar normal when cancer treatments ruin her appetite.

“I came into the hospital and they got me back on track,” she said. “I was just so focused on the cancer. It changed everything. But I’ve learned how to face this.”

Read More..

Tribune Co. emerges from bankruptcy

The last day of 2012 is the first of a new era for Tribune Co.

After spending more than four years embroiled in a contentious Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, the reorganized Chicago-based media company emerged Monday under new owners and a newly appointed board, freed from its massive debt and facing an uncertain future.

Senior creditors Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are set to take control of Tribune Co.’s storied portfolio of publishing and broadcasting assets, including the Chicago Tribune, officials said.

It was an almost anticlimactic end to a long and painful chapter in Tribune Co.'s 165-year history. Late Sunday, the new Tribune Co. named its board of directors, filed notification with the Delaware bankruptcy court where the bulk of legal wrangling took place and declared its existence.

"It took a long time to get here," said Ken Liang, a managing director at Oaktree and a new member of the board. "It was a tough restructuring. We're pretty excited about the exit."

The new board also will include Tribune Co. CEO Eddy Hartenstein; Ross Levinsohn, who recently left as interim chief executive of Yahoo Inc.; Craig Jacobson, a well-known entertainment lawyer; Peter Murphy, a former strategy executive at Walt Disney Co. and Ceasars Entertainment; Bruce Karsh, Oaktree president; and Peter Liguori, a former top television executive at Fox and Discovery.

Liguori is expected to be named chief executive of Tribune Co. going forward.

Hartenstein, who is publisher of the Los Angeles Times, has been CEO of Tribune Co. since May 2011. He will remain in the role until the board convenes its first meeting in the next several weeks, where it will name the company’s executive officers, according to a company statement.

“Tribune will emerge from the bankruptcy process as a multi-media company with a great mix of profitable assets, strong brands in major markets and a much-improved capital structure,” Hartenstein said in the statement.

Tribune Co. owns 23 television stations, including WGN-Ch. 9, WGN America, eight daily newspapers and other media assets, all of which the reorganization plan valued at $4.5 billion after cash distributions and new financing. Eventually, all the assets are expected to be sold, according to the new owners.

They take the reins of a company that saw its worth essentially cut in half since 2007, when Chicago billionaire Sam Zell took it private in an $8.2 billion leveraged buyout. The rapid decline was mostly due to falling newspaper valuations in the face of digital competition. The anticipated hiring of Liguori suggests that broadcasting will be the operational focus going forward, according to several media analysts.

Los Angeles-based Oaktree, the largest shareholder, with about 23 percent of the equity, appointed two of seven board members. Both Angelo Gordon and JPMorgan have roughly a 9 percent stake and appointed one seat each. The three jointly appointed two more board members, with the final seat occupied by the chief executive.

Among the outgoing board members is Zell, whose deal was seen at the time as an alternative to the squabbles within Tribune Co. that threatened to break apart the then-publicly traded company. But the Great Recession and plummeting advertising revenues across all media, especially the struggling newspaper industry, made the company’s resulting $13 billion debt load untenable.

Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2008. Zell blamed a “perfect storm” of industry and economic forces. But the bankruptcy case turned on charges leveled by junior creditors that saddling the company with such a debt burden left it insolvent from the outset.

Led by an aggressive distressed debt fund called Aurelius Capital Management, the junior creditors pressed litigation that stretched out the case for three and a half years in a Delaware court before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey confirmed the reorganization plan in July. An emergency appeal to stay that decision was dismissed by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in September. In November, the Federal Communications Commission signed off on waivers needed to transfer Tribune Co.’s broadcast properties to the new ownership, clearing the last hurdle to its emergence from Chapter 11.

“Usually, bankruptcy cases like this take much less time and cost less money,” said Douglas Baird, a bankruptcy expert and law professor at the University of Chicago.

Baird said legal fees for most large corporate bankruptcies run 3 to 4 percent of the company’s total worth. The Tribune Co. case, which will likely cost the company more than $500 million in legal and other professional fees, was more than twice that percentage, due to both the extended litigation and the company’s declining valuation.

Before cash distributions and new financing, a 2012 analysis by financial adviser Lazard valued the broadcasting assets, including the TV stations, WGN-AM 720, CLTV and national cable channel WGN America, at $2.85 billion. Other strategic assets, such as online job site CareerBuilder and cable channel Food Network, are worth $2.26 billion.

Tribune Co.’s newspaper holdings, including the Tribune, Los Angeles Times and six other daily publications, have withered to $623 million in total value, according to Lazard. In 2006, entertainment mogul David Geffen made a $2 billion cash offer for the Los Angeles Times.

Read More..

Bears stay alive by beating Lions, need help from Packers

Jay Glazer looks ahead to coaching decisions.

The Chicago Bears did their part Sunday, beating the Detroit Lions 26-24. Now they need help from the Green Bay Packers, who must beat the Minnesota Vikings to send the Bears into the playoffs.

Coach Lovie Smith said the team would be monitoring the Packers-Vikings game closely as they made their way back to Chicago.

• Related

















• 
  
  
  







































• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Forte scores
  
  




































• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Week 17 photos: Bears 26, Lions 24
  
  




































• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  2nd quarter: Vikings 13, Packers 0
  
  
  




































• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Breaking it down: NFC playoff picture
  
  




• 
  See more stories »
  











• 
  
  Maps
  














• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Ford Field, 2000 Brush Street #200, Detroit, MI 48226, USA
  
  



• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Soldier FIELD, 1410 Museum Campus Drive, Chicago, IL 60605, USA
  
  

"We'll just keep our fingers crossed and 'go, Pack, go," Smith said.

Jay Cutler hit 18 of 31 passes for 257 yards and a touchdown, Matt Forte rushed for 103 yards on 24 carries and the Bears' defense and special teams forced four turnovers to help tame the Lions.

"We're getting turnovers again; we have to limit our turnovers and we did that today," Cutler said.

Lions receiver Calvin Johnson, who came in needing 108 yards to reach 2,000 on the season, was held to 72 on five catches.

"It's hard to shut down Calvin Johnson completely," Smith said. "We wanted to get a lot of people on him, roll the coverage up, double-team him as often as we could. So we did a pretty good job of not letting him get the big one."

The victory didn't come easily. The Lions cut the Bears' lead to 26-24 on a 9-yard Matthew Stafford pass to Brian Robiskie with 6:55 to play in the game. The nine-play, 80-yard drive was kept alive by an unnecessary roughness penalty on linebacker Lance Briggs for a hit on a sliding Stafford.

Olindo Mare's fourth field goal -- this one from 20 yards out -- boosted the Bears' lead to 26-17 with 10:47 left. It capped an 11-play, 59-yard drive that took 4:25 off the clock.

Mare's 28-yard field goal increased the Bears' lead to 23-17 with 1:50 left in the third quarter. The score was set up when safety Major Wright came up with the Lions' fourth turnover of the day, recovering a Mikel Leshoure fumble at the Detroit 13.

Detroit fought back and trimmed the Bears' once-commanding lead to 20-17 with a 10-yard TD pass from Matthew Stafford to Will Heller at the 6:35 mark of the third quarter.

The Lions cut the Bears' lead to 20-10 just before halftime, as Stafford hit Kris Durham on a 25-yard TD pass with 12 seconds to play before intermission.

Mare's 40-yard field goal extended the Bears' lead to 20-3 with 1:49 to play.

Tim Jennings made his league-high ninth interception with 2:38 left in the half to put the Bears' offense back in business inside Lions territory.

Forte's 1-yard touchdown run -- after a pass-interference call against Detroit drawn by Brandon Marshall -- gave the Bears a 17-3 lead with 3:26 to go in the first half.

The Bears' defense delivered again to set up the score. Israel Idonije knocked the ball from quarterback Matthew Stafford's hand and Julius Peppers recovered on the Lions' 10-yard line.

Mare's 33-yard field goal gave the Bears a 10-3 lead with 2:59 left in the first quarter. Joe Anderson forced a fumble on the kickoff after the Bears' first score and Eric Weems recovered, setting up Mare's kick.

Mare blew a chance to extend the lead, missing a 43-yard attempt wide right with just under five minutes remaining in the half.

The Bears grabbed a 7-3 lead when Earl Bennett caught a screen pass from Cutler and took it 60 yards for a touchdown with 4:33 left in the first quarter.

Read More..

‘The Hobbit’ stays atop box office for third week

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” continues to rule them all at the box office, staying on top for a third-straight week with nearly $ 33 million.

The Warner Bros. fantasy epic from director Peter Jackson, based on the J.R.R. Tolkien novel, has made $ 222.7 million domestically alone.

Two big holiday movies — and potential awards contenders — also had strong openings. Quentin Tarantino‘s spaghetti Western-blaxploitation mash-up “Django Unchained” came in second place for the weekend with $ 30.7 million. The Weinstein Co. revenge epic, starring Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz, has earned $ 64 million since its Christmas Day opening.

And in third place with $ 28 million was the sweeping, all-singing “Les Miserables.” The Universal Pictures musical starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway has made $ 67.5 million since debuting on Christmas.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: ‘The Hobbit’ stays atop box office for third week
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Well: Exercise and the Ever-Smarter Human Brain

Anyone whose resolve to exercise in 2013 is a bit shaky might want to consider an emerging scientific view of human evolution. It suggests that we are clever today in part because a million years ago, we could outrun and outwalk most other mammals over long distances. Our brains were shaped and sharpened by movement, the idea goes, and we continue to require regular physical activity in order for our brains to function optimally.

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind has intrigued anthropologists and gripped the popular imagination for some time. In 2004, the evolutionary biologists Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah published a seminal article in the journal Nature titled “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo,” in which they posited that our bipedal ancestors survived by becoming endurance athletes, able to bring down swifter prey through sheer doggedness, jogging and plodding along behind them until the animals dropped.

Endurance produced meals, which provided energy for mating, which meant that adept early joggers passed along their genes. In this way, natural selection drove early humans to become even more athletic, Dr. Lieberman and other scientists have written, their bodies developing longer legs, shorter toes, less hair and complicated inner-ear mechanisms to maintain balance and stability during upright ambulation. Movement shaped the human body.

But simultaneously, in a development that until recently many scientists viewed as unrelated, humans were becoming smarter. Their brains were increasing rapidly in size.

Today, humans have a brain that is about three times larger than would be expected, anthropologists say, given our species’ body size in comparison with that of other mammals.

To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientists have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps most determinatively, our early ancestors’ need for social interaction. Early humans had to plan and execute hunts as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it’s been thought, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success. According to that hypothesis, the evolution of the brain was driven by the need to think.

But now some scientists are suggesting that physical activity also played a critical role in making our brains larger.

To reach that conclusion, anthropologists began by looking at existing data about brain size and endurance capacity in a variety of mammals, including dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, mice, wolves, rats, civet cats, antelope, mongooses, goats, sheep and elands. They found a notable pattern. Species like dogs and rats that had a high innate endurance capacity, which presumably had evolved over millenniums, also had large brain volumes relative to their body size.

The researchers also looked at recent experiments in which mice and rats were systematically bred to be marathon runners. Lab animals that willingly put in the most miles on running wheels were interbred, resulting in the creation of a line of lab animals that excelled at running.

Interestingly, after multiple generations, these animals began to develop innately high levels of substances that promote tissue growth and health, including a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. These substances are important for endurance performance. They also are known to drive brain growth.

What all of this means, says David A. Raichlen, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona and an author of a new article about the evolution of human brains appearing in the January issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society Biology, is that physical activity may have helped to make early humans smarter.

“We think that what happened” in our early hunter-gatherer ancestors, he says, is that the more athletic and active survived and, as with the lab mice, passed along physiological characteristics that improved their endurance, including elevated levels of BDNF. Eventually, these early athletes had enough BDNF coursing through their bodies that some could migrate from the muscles to the brain, where it nudged the growth of brain tissue.

Those particular early humans then applied their growing ability to think and reason toward better tracking prey, becoming the best-fed and most successful from an evolutionary standpoint. Being in motion made them smarter, and being smarter now allowed them to move more efficiently.

And out of all of this came, eventually, an ability to understand higher math and invent iPads. But that was some time later.

The broad point of this new notion is that if physical activity helped to mold the structure of our brains, then it most likely remains essential to brain health today, says John D. Polk, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-author, with Dr. Raichlen, of the new article.

And there is scientific support for that idea. Recent studies have shown, he says, that “regular exercise, even walking,” leads to more robust mental abilities, “beginning in childhood and continuing into old age.”

Of course, the hypothesis that jogging after prey helped to drive human brain evolution is just a hypothesis, Dr. Raichlen says, and almost unprovable.

But it is compelling, says Harvard’s Dr. Lieberman, who has worked with the authors of the new article. “I fundamentally agree that there is a deep evolutionary basis for the relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind,” he says, a relationship that makes the term “jogging your memory” more literal than most of us might have expected and provides a powerful incentive to be active in 2013.

Read More..

Airlines' plans for 2013 up in the air

Airfares will be on the rise in 2013, and those niggling airline fees will metamorphose into optional bundles of services.

Meanwhile, onboard amenities, such as Internet access, entertainment options and refreshed interiors, will abound among U.S. carriers, but tight seating in coach probably won't improve.

And 2013 might be the year you'll finally be able to keep your smartphone, iPad or Kindle turned on during takeoffs and landings.

Those are some of the predictions airline industry experts foresee in the new year. Here's the lowdown on fares, fees and flight experience for 2013.

Higher fares forecast

Airlines pushed through six fare increases in 2012. Expect a similar number in the new year, said Rick Seaney, co-founder of FareCompare.com.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see airfares rise like they did this year, between 3 and 6 percent domestically," Seaney said. That's because airlines will succeed in properly balancing supply and demand by trimming the number of seats they offer to match "decent, but bordering on tepid, demand."

Fares are typically driven by four main factors: competition, most of all, then supply, demand and oil prices. "If you look at those drivers, they are, for the most part, on the airlines' side, which gives them pricing power," Seaney said.

That doesn't mean there won't be good airfare deals on some flights on some routes. And consumers will still see lower prices during off-peak days, such as Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday departures and off-peak seasons, such as late January and early February. Like this year, summertime fares probably will stay relatively high, he said.

Airline mergers can also affect fares, and a huge one could take place early in 2013. American Airlines and US Airways are in talks about combining.

The general consensus among consumer advocates is that airline mergers aren't good for passengers.

"Any time you have two big airlines merging, that means consumers have less choice and competition is reduced, which only translates to higher prices," said Charlie Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance.

However, a bit of new evidence bucks that conventional wisdom. Despite four mega-mergers in the U.S. airline industry during the past seven years, fares have not increased significantly, just 1.8 percent per year, according to a December report from professional services firm PwC. In fact, average domestic fares decreased 1 percent from 2004 to 2011 when inflation is factored in, the report found.

Fliers know full well, however, that the fare isn't all that counts nowadays. There are those fees.

Fees get a makeover

The most noticeable trend in recent years with airline fees is that there are more of them: fees for checked bags, aisle seats, onboard meals, among many others. 

"What we hear is that people pay their fare and get to the airport and feel they're constantly being nickeled-and-dimed to death for things that used to be included," said Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org. 

The top five U.S. carriers alone generated more than $12 billion in fees in 2011, with even more expected through 2012, according to the PwC report.

What consumers call fees, airlines call "unbundling" — making a la carte choices from services that used to be included in the fare.

A likely trend for 2013 might be called "rebundling," airlines packaging a few now-optional services and charging for a tier of service.

Read More..