'Blade Runner' Olympian Oscar Pistorius charged with murder

Double-amputee Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was arrested on Thursday, after a woman was shot dead in his home in Pretoria, South Africa. (Feb. 14)

JOHANNESBURG -- South African "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, was charged on Thursday with shooting dead his girlfriend at his home in Pretoria.

Police said they had opened a murder case after a 30-year-old woman was found dead at the track star's house after an incident in the upmarket Silverlakes gated complex on the outskirts of the capital.

"At this stage he is on his way to a district surgeon for medical examination," police brigadier Denise Beukes told reporters outside the heavily guarded residential complex.

Pistorius and his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, had been the only people in the house at the time of the shooting, Beukes, said, and witnesses had been interviewed about the incident, which happened in the early hours of the morning.

"We are talking about neighbors and people that heard things earlier in the evening and when the shooting took place," she said. Earlier, police said a 9mm pistol had been found at the scene.

"When a person has been accused of a crime like murder they look at things like testing under the figure nails, taking a blood alcohol sample and all kinds of other test that are done. They are standard medical tests," Beukes said.

Pistorius is due to appear in a Pretoria court after 1200 GMT.

Before the murder charge was announced, Johannesburg's Talk Radio 702 said the 26-year-old may have mistaken Steenkamp for a burglar.

South Africa has some of the world's highest rates of violent crime, and many home owners have weapons to defend themselves against intruders, although Pistorius' complex is surrounded by a three meter high wall and electric fence.

In 2004, Springbok rugby player Rudi Visagie shot dead his 19-year-old daughter after he mistakenly thought she was a robber trying to steal his car in the middle of the night.

VALENTINE'S DAY

Steenkamp, a model and regular on the South African party circuit, was reported to have been dating Pistorius for a year, and there had been little to suggest their relationship was in trouble.

In the social pages of last weekend's Sunday Independent she described him as having "impeccable" taste.

"His gifts are always thoughtful," she was quoted as saying.

Some of her last Twitter postings indicated she was looking forward to celebrating Valentine's Day on Thursday with him.

"What do you have up your sleeve for your love tomorrow???" she posted.

However, Beukes said the police were aware of previous incidents at the house of a "domestic nature", and recent media interviews with Pistorius revealed he kept an assortment of weapons in his home.

"Cricket and baseball bats lay behind the door, a pistol by his bed and a machine gun by a window," Britain's Daily Mail wrote in a profile published last year.

He was arrested in 2009 for assault after slamming a door on a woman and spent a night in police custody. Family and friends said it was just an accident and the charges were later dropped.

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Bosnian Roma family plays itself in stark film

BERLIN (Reuters) – When Bosnian director Danis Tanovic learned about a Roma family refused emergency medical care because they could not pay for it, he not only decided to turn their story into a film but managed to convince the couple to play themselves.

The result is “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker”, a simple, powerful tale of one man’s struggle to provide for his partner and two daughters and of a society where money is apparently more important than human life.

The fact that Nazif Mujic and his partner Senada Alimanovic are Roma adds an extra dimension of injustice and alienation, but Tanovic’s tale is more universal.

“This story happens all around Europe to Roma people,” the award-winning director told Reuters in Berlin, where his movie is in competition at the film festival.

“In my country it happens to other people too. It is probably the poorest country in Europe. So this is an unfortunate reality of many, many people who live there … It really made me angry so I just went there and did this film.”

Tanovic first read about the case of the couple and their two children in a local newspaper in 2011.

He went to visit them in their run-down home in the village of Poljice, and after several days they finally agreed to appear as themselves in a kind of docu-drama.

Mujic had no regular job, but helped strip down cars to make a few Bosnian marks from a scrap dealer. Alimanovic was pregnant with their third child when she fell ill and miscarried.

The family was told she must have emergency surgery, but when doctors discovered they had no insurance they were sent away despite Mujic’s desperate and humiliating pleas.

Told it would cost 980 marks (around 500 euros) to pay for an operation, Mujic knew he could never raise the money, and so went back to the hospital and to charities, begging for help.

“BETTER IN THE WAR”

In the end the only way to succeed was to break the law.

“I really tried and struggled to get some help for Senada from all the different state institutions, but none of them would help, so it is tough,” Mujic said in Berlin, speaking through a translator.

“My biggest ambition is to have a job and be able to support the family, but unfortunately I don’t have any illusions or hopes that I will be able to get work anyway.”

Tanovic, best known for his 2001 Academy Award-winning debut feature “No Man’s Land”, said Bosnians too often turned their backs on the poor, despite many cases he knew where people risked lives to help a stranger during the 1992-95 war.

“I wish I lived in a country that took better care of their people but it is not the case,” he said.

“So when you open Bosnian newspapers … every day you see people asking for help, people begging for money to help operate somebody or something. It is terrible.”

At one point in the unscripted film, which cost just 30,000 euros ($ 40,000) to make, Mujic tells a charity worker that life was better during the war, and Tanovic said that to some extent he agreed.

“A lot of people actually lived better in the war, because in war you don’t see rich people driving cars around, you don’t see politicians having fun … All you see is people trying to survive and you are surviving too, so you are happy when you have one meal.”

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

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: The Well Flu Quiz

What surface is the most friendly to the flu virus? Where’s the best place to stand when you’re talking to a sick person? And how are Australians curbing germs in schools? To find out these answers and more, take the Well Flu Quiz.

With contributions from Laura Geggel and Tara Parker-Pope.

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American, US Airways announce merger

CEOs Doug Parker and Tom Horton speak to the "CBS This Morning" co-hosts about the merger of American Airlines and US Airways in their first network morning interview.

AMR Corp., parent of American Airlines, and US Airways Group will merge, the companies said Thursday.

If the $11 billion merger is approved by regulators and a bankruptcy judge, it will create the world's largest airline, unseating Chicago-based United Continental Airlines. The combination is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year.

Chicago, where the two companies have little overlap, would remain a major hub for the airline.

American Airlines is the No. 2 carrier in the region, with about 27 percent of the market, 500 flights per day and 9,300 Chicago-based employees. O'Hare is American's second-largest hub, after Dallas-Fort Worth, which will be the headquarters for the merged airline.

By contrast, US Airways flights account for just 2 percent of the airline seats flying out of Chicago's airports, and the carrier has 170 employees in Chicago.
 
The combined airline will keep the American Airlines name but will be run by US Airways CEO Doug Parker, while American's CEO, Tom Horton, becomes nonexecutive chairman. The terms of the merger wwere unanimously approved Wednesday by the boards of directors of both companies.

American said the combined airline would have a strong financial foundation and robust global network, with more than 6,700 daily flights to 336 destinations in 56 countries. It also pointed to an enhanced Oneworld Alliance, of which American Airlines is a founding member.

"Our combined network will provide a significantly more attractive offering to customers, ensuring that we are always able to take them where they want to travel, when they want to go," Parker said in a statement.

However, consumer groups have been critical of the rumored merger.

"From a consumer standpoint -- individual traveler or corporate travel department -- there are few benefits to offset the negative impacts of this proposed merger that include reduced competition, higher fares and fees and diminished service to small and mid-size communities," said Business Travel Coalition Chairman Kevin Mitchell.

Charlie Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance, said the merger offered "no discernible consumer benefits."

"Antitrust regulations were created to protect consumers, not to facilitate industry consolidation," he said. "The claim that this merger will provide more destinations is hollow. Whatever new cities are added by a future [American Airlines-US Airways] network are subtracted from the current airline alliance network that US Airways enjoys with United. The net effect is that, overall, consumers are left with nothing new and no improvement to the status quo."

In Chicago, travelers would be largely shielded from those downsides, experts have said. The region's plethora of flights from O'Hare International Airport and Midway, as well as the presence of many discount airlines, should be enough to hold fares largely in check on most routes after the merger.

Customers can continue to book travel and track and manage flights and frequent flyer activity through AA.com or USAirways.com, and will continue to as usual in the AAdvantage and Dividend Miles frequent flyer programs. At first, there are no changes to the frequent flyer programs of either airline as a result of the merger agreement.

The merger is supported by American Airlines' unions.

"The new American Airlines will return to a position of industry preeminence," said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, the American Airlines pilot union.

Horton will be board chairman through the first annual meeting of shareholders. After that, Parker will take over as chairman. The board will initially be made up of 12 members, three American Airlines representatives, including Tom Horton, four US Airways representatives, including Doug Parker, and five AMR creditor representatives.

Under the terms of the merger agreement, US Airways stockholders will receive one share of common stock of the combined airline for each share of US Airways common stock then held. American Airlines stakeholders, including labor unions, would own 72 percent of the merged airline, while US Airways stakeholders would own the rest.

gkarp@tribune.com

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Obama challenges GOP to do more than just cut deficit

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama used his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to try to push past the fiscal battles that plagued his first term - and still threaten his second - as he laid out an agenda he hopes will shape his legacy.

Obama's overarching message was that other things matter beside the Republicans' seemingly all-consuming drive for deficit cutting, embodied in a looming showdown just three weeks away over automatic across-the-board spending cuts.

Those other things, he told Congress, include some traditionally liberal causes, like raising the federal minimum wage and pursuing climate initiatives, and some that have gained bipartisan support, such as immigration reform and curbing gun violence.

"Most of us agree that a plan to reduce the deficit must be part of our agenda," Obama said. "But let's be clear: deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan."

But with Washington so deeply divided, Obama's speech appeared unlikely to go far in helping the Democratic president and his Republican opponents find common ground to ease the ideological gridlock. He offered no tangible new concessions of his own.

Still, Obama's sense of urgency and frustration was almost palpable. He alternately scolded and cajoled lawmakers while expanding on his vision for a more activist government so loathed by conservatives, the same theme he struck in his second inauguration address on January 21.

"The American people don't expect government to solve every problem. They don't expect those of us in this chamber to agree on every issue. But they do expect us to put the nation's interests before party," he said, pressing Republicans to resolve budget and fiscal differences without drama.

Obama - whose first-term promise to become a transformational, post-partisan president failed to materialize in part because of struggles over the deficit - knows the clock is ticking.

The consensus among Washington insiders is that he has a limited window, possibly as little as a year and a half, to take advantage of the Republicans' post-election disarray and push through his congressional priorities before being reduced to lame-duck status.

SETTING PRIORITIES

Just three weeks after staking out a decidedly liberal philosophy at his inauguration, Obama used his State of the Union address to start fleshing out and prioritizing his goals for the rest of his presidency.

He made clear that job creation and bolstering the middle class would top the list, but he also gave due attention to immigration reform and gun control, which have moved to the forefront at the start of his second term.

Obama's renewed emphasis on pocketbook issues that dominated the 2012 campaign appears to reflect the view that advancing other legacy-shaping initiatives could hinge on how he fares with unfinished economic business from his first four years.

Many of the economic plans he presented in his State of the Union address were familiar to listeners as proposals that Republicans have blocked before, including new investment in modernizing infrastructure, boosting manufacturing, creating construction jobs and helping to ease homeowners' mortgage woes.

There is ample reason to doubt that these ideas - even in repackaged form - will gain much traction in a still-divided Congress where Republicans control the House of Representatives and will oppose almost any new spending Obama proposes.

But the biggest red flags for Republicans may be Obama's call for a hike in the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour, a traditional liberal idea, and his demand that Congress pursue a "market-based solution" to climate change - with a warning that if lawmakers do not act soon, "I will."

Obama's call for a nationwide program to expand pre-school education for the low-income families - another progressive cause - is also expected to run into Republican opposition.

There is little doubt the president is aware that many of these proposals, especially those with spending attached, may be dead-on-arrival in Congress.

But he may be counting on being able to accuse Republicans of obstructionism in the 2014 midterm elections - as he did with some success in the 2012 campaign - as his Democrats seek to win back the House.

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Lady Gaga suffering from joint inflammation, postpones shows

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop star Lady Gaga said on Tuesday she was suffering from a severe inflammation of the joints that left her temporarily unable to walk, forcing her to postpone a handful of upcoming shows on the North American leg of her world tour.

“I am completely devastated and heartsick. I’ve been hiding this injury and pain from my staff for a month, praying it would heal, but after last night’s performance, I could not walk,” the singer said in a statement.

Her condition is called synovitis, an inflammation that sometimes follows a sprain, strain or injury.

Gaga posted a similar message in a series of tweets to her 34 million Twitter followers.

“I will hopefully heal as soon as possible and be at 500 percent again, which is what you deserve,” she said.

“The Edge of Glory” singer postponed shows in Chicago on Wednesday and Thursday, in Detroit on Saturday and in Hamilton, Ontario, on Sunday.

Lady Gaga, 26, has been on the road for two years on her “Born This Way Ball” world tour. Her website showed tour dates through March 20.

The 200-plus date tour has taken the singer across six continents and was ranked as the sixth top-grossing tour of 2012 by Billboard magazine.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Osterman)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Phys Ed: Getting the Right Dose of Exercise

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

A common concern about exercise is that if you don’t do it almost every day, you won’t achieve much health benefit. But a commendable new study suggests otherwise, showing that a fairly leisurely approach to scheduling workouts may actually be more beneficial than working out almost daily.

For the new study, published this month in Exercise & Science in Sports & Medicine, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham gathered 72 older, sedentary women and randomly assigned them to one of three exercise groups.

One group began lifting weights once a week and performing an endurance-style workout, like jogging or bike riding, on another day.

Another group lifted weights twice a week and jogged or rode an exercise bike twice a week.

The final group, as you may have guessed, completed three weight-lifting and three endurance sessions, or six weekly workouts.

The exercise, which was supervised by researchers, was easy at first and meant to elicit changes in both muscles and endurance. Over the course of four months, the intensity and duration gradually increased, until the women were jogging moderately for 40 minutes and lifting weights for about the same amount of time.

The researchers were hoping to find out which number of weekly workouts would be, Goldilocks-like, just right for increasing the women’s fitness and overall weekly energy expenditure.

Some previous studies had suggested that working out only once or twice a week produced few gains in fitness, while exercising vigorously almost every day sometimes led people to become less physically active, over all, than those formally exercising less. Researchers theorized that the more grueling workout schedule caused the central nervous system to respond as if people were overdoing things, sending out physiological signals that, in an unconscious internal reaction, prompted them to feel tired or lethargic and stop moving so much.

To determine if either of these possibilities held true among their volunteers, the researchers in the current study tracked the women’s blood levels of cytokines, a substance related to stress that is thought to be one of the signals the nervous system uses to determine if someone is overdoing things physically. They also measured the women’s changing aerobic capacities, muscle strength, body fat, moods and, using sophisticated calorimetry techniques, energy expenditure over the course of each week.

By the end of the four-month experiment, all of the women had gained endurance and strength and shed body fat, although weight loss was not the point of the study. The scientists had not asked the women to change their eating habits.

There were, remarkably, almost no differences in fitness gains among the groups. The women working out twice a week had become as powerful and aerobically fit as those who had worked out six times a week. There were no discernible differences in cytokine levels among the groups, either.

However, the women exercising four times per week were now expending far more energy, over all, than the women in either of the other two groups. They were burning about 225 additional calories each day, beyond what they expended while exercising, compared to their calorie burning at the start of the experiment.

The twice-a-week exercisers also were using more energy each day than they had been at first, burning almost 100 calories more daily, in addition to the calories used during workouts.

But the women who had been assigned to exercise six times per week were now expending considerably less daily energy than they had been at the experiment’s start, the equivalent of almost 200 fewer calories each day, even though they were exercising so assiduously.

“We think that the women in the twice-a-week and four-times-a-week groups felt more energized and physically capable” after several months of training than they had at the start of the study, says Gary Hunter, a U.A.B. professor who led the experiment. Based on conversations with the women, he says he thinks they began opting for stairs over escalators and walking for pleasure.

The women working out six times a week, though, reacted very differently. “They complained to us that working out six times a week took too much time,” Dr. Hunter says. They did not report feeling fatigued or physically droopy. Their bodies were not producing excessive levels of cytokines, sending invisible messages to the body to slow down.

Rather, they felt pressed for time and reacted, it seems, by making choices like driving instead of walking and impatiently avoiding the stairs.

Despite the cautionary note, those who insist on working out six times per week need not feel discouraged. As long as you consciously monitor your activity level, the findings suggest, you won’t necessarily and unconsciously wind up moving less over all.

But the more fundamental finding of this study, Dr. Hunter says, is that “less may be more,” a message that most likely resonates with far more of us. The women exercising four times a week “had the greatest overall increase in energy expenditure,” he says. But those working out only twice a week “weren’t far behind.”

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Downtown condo market seeing rebound

Downtown Chicago's condo market is on the rebound after many moribund years, as sales volume and pricing improve in a market constrained by a lack of inventory.

It's a rare piece of good news for downtown condo owners as well as for developers pondering projects and trying to line up financing.

With a steady stream of apartment projects delivering in the next two years, the lack of new condo construction could signal opportunities for companies interested in pursuing smaller projects in key neighborhoods because the demand is there. Until those projects materialize, condo owners looking to sell face a better market than they have in several years.

Sales of existing downtown condos rose 31.2 percent last year, to 4,675 units sold, while the median sales price of $300,000 was a gain of about 2.6 percent from 2011, according to data from Appraisal Research Counselors.

Another piece of good news for current condo owners: Of the 65 downtown buildings studied by the firm, the average sales price per square foot of units sold during the second half of last year rose while the number of distressed condo sales in those buildings saw a substantial drop. Distressed sales, which accounted for  28 percent of sales since 2010, fell to 17 percent of sales during the second half of 2012.

In addition, only 1,104 newly constructed condo units remain unsold downtown.

"When we see more transactions occurring, that's a really good indication of demand," said Gail Lissner, a vice president at the firm. "The look of the condo market has changed in terms of unsold inventory."

Lissner's remarks came Tuesday during a lunchtime briefing on the local housing market.

Most of the unsold inventory, more than 500 units, is in the South Loop and the bulk of it is in the newly named and repositioned 500-unit South Loop Luxury by Related.

The three buildings, once called One Museum Park West, 1600 Museum Park and Museum Park Place 2 were taken over by New York-based Related Cos. in July have been renamed the Grant, Adler Place and Harbor View, respectively.

Since December, 40 units there are under contract, according to Related Midwest, which officially launched sales in the project Tuesday.

Other new projects reporting positive sales trends are Park Monroe Phase II, a 48-unit adaptive reuse project with 16 sales and CA3, a 40-unit building with 18 sales.

"These are all great indicators of strong sales," Lissner said. "Price stabilization has occurred in the market. You don't hear people talking about bottoming out. That was so yesterday."

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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Bears terminate contract of wide receiver Johnny Knox

CAPTIONS

Johnny Knox
Johnny Knox on the sidelines in the second quarter against the Seahawks at Soldier Field. (Jos M. Osorio, Chicago Tribune /December 2, 2012)

Tribune report

9:44 a.m. CST, February 12, 2013

The Chicago Bears have terminated the contract of  wide receiver Johnny Knox, the team said Tuesday.

Knox suffered a severe back injury in a game against the Seattle Seahawks late in the 2011 season and hasn't played since. He underwent spinal fusion surgery and was placed on the physically unable to perform list last July.

In three seasons (2009-11) with the Bears, Knox had 133 receptions for 2,214 yards and 12 touchdowns.

Details to come.

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CNN slots Jake Tapper Show, cuts length of Wolf Blitzer’s “Situation Room”

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – CNN slotted new anchor Jake Tapper‘s upcoming show for 4 p.m. on weekdays, cutting Wolf Blitzer‘s “The Situation Room” back one hour, a CNN spokeswoman told TheWrap.

Tapper, lured away from ABC News in December, was CNN boss Jeff Zucker‘s first major hire since taking charge of the network. Now, with his own show coming in March, Blitzer’s program will but cut from three hours to two as it moves to the 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. time slot.

A CNN spokeswoman told TheWrap Tapper‘s show has no specific starting date yet because it is still in development.

Last month, Turner Broadcasting posted LinkedIn job openings for a senior producer at a new daily program called “Tapper.”

And on Monday, CNN named Federico Quadrani, MSNBC’s executive producer of “Jansing and Company,” as the show’s new executive producer.

Choosing Quadrani – who served as an Emmy-winning producer for NBC’s “Today” show from 2003 to 2009 – is one of Zucker’s higher profile hires as the former “Today” producer attempts to replicate his morning show success at CNN.

After taking charge of the show in 1992, Zucker led “Today” to its ratings highs before Katie Couric‘s departure for CBS. The subsequent exit of Meredith Vieira, who replaced Couric, made it vulnerable to rival “Good Morning America.”

Late last month, CNN announced that it had bought “20/20″ anchor and former “GMA” host Chris Cuomo to lead a new morning show with Erin Burnett.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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