7 hostages reported dead in 'final assault' on Algerian refinery

CAIRO — Algerian troops raided a remote natural gas refinery Saturday, killing 11 Islamic militants but not before extremists executed seven hostages who for days had been trapped in a deepening international crisis, according to media reports.

Algerian state media described the army mission as the “final assault” to end a hostage ordeal that began in the predawn Wednesday at a gas compound on the Algerian-Libyan border. It was not clear if the hostages killed were Algerians or foreigners.

"It is over now, the assault is over, and the military are inside the plant clearing it of mines," a local source familiar with the operation told Reuters.

The fate of as many as 30 foreign hostages, including an estimated seven Americans, remained unknown. Algerian forces discovered 15 burned bodies as they swept through the compound Saturday to rout heavily armed militants. The militants threatened to blow up the facility and a number of hostages were reported earlier to have been forced to wear explosive belts.  

The Algerian government had refused to negotiate with the extremists, who were linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and appear to include Algerians, Libyans, Egyptians and at least one commander from Niger.

Algeria’s state-run media earlier reported that 12 refinery workers, including Algerians and foreigners, had been killed since a government operation to retake the plant began Thursday. Unconfirmed media reports suggested that as many as 35 foreign captives may have been killed, including some struck by gunfire from the Algerian military.

The militants, some dressed in fatigues, were armed with machine guns and rocket launchers. The compound is encircled by army tanks, troops and special forces. A Mauritanian news agency that has been in contact with the extremists said the captors were holding two American, three Belgians, one Japanese and one Briton.

The Algerian government on Friday said 573 Algerians and nearly 100 of an estimated 132 foreign hostages had been freed or had escaped. But the chaotic scene at the gas compound at In Amenas has frustrated international officials who complained they were not consulted about the Algerian military’s operations at the plant.   

The natural gas refinery at In Amenas is also jointly operated by BP; Statoil, a Norwegian firm; and Sonatrach, the Algerian national oil company.

ALSO:

Bolshoi artistic director attacked with acid

Pentagon planning to ferry more French troops, gear to Mali

Algeria: Accounts emerge as nearly 100 foreigners reported freed

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Sunset on Mars

On May 19th, 2005, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. This Panoramic Camera (Pancam) mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of the rover's 489th martian day, or sol. Spirit was commanded to stay awake briefly after sending that sol's data to the Mars Odyssey orbiter just before sunset. This small panorama of the western sky was obtained using Pancam's 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 430-nanometer color filters. This filter combination allows false color images to be generated that are similar to what a human would see, but with the colors slightly exaggerated. In this image, the bluish glow in the sky above the Sun would be visible to us if we were there, but an artifact of the Pancam's infrared imaging capabilities is that with this filter combination the redness of the sky farther from the sunset is exaggerated compared to the daytime colors of the martian sky. Because Mars is farther from the Sun than the Earth is, the Sun appears only about two-thirds the size that it appears in a sunset seen from the Earth. The terrain in the foreground is the rock outcrop "Jibsheet", a feature that Spirit has been investigating for several weeks (rover tracks are dimly visible leading up to Jibsheet). The floor of Gusev crater is visible in the distance, and the Sun is setting behind the wall of Gusev some 80 km (50 miles) in the distance.

This mosaic is yet another example from MER of a beautiful, sublime martian scene that also captures some important scientific information. Specifically, sunset and twilight images are occasionally acquired by the science team to determine how high into the atmosphere the martian dust extends, and to look for dust or ice clouds. Other images have shown that the twilight glow remains visible, but increasingly fainter, for up to two hours before sunrise or after sunset. The long martian twilight (compared to Earth's) is caused by sunlight scattered around to the night side of the planet by abundant high altitude dust. Similar long twilights or extra-colorful sunrises and sunsets sometimes occur on Earth when tiny dust grains that are erupted from powerful volcanoes scatter light high in the atmosphere.

Image: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell [high-resolution]

Caption: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell

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Schwarzenegger takes a

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking inspiration from his idol, Clint Eastwood, returns to the big screen on Friday in the action film “The Last Stand,” his first starring role since he took a seven-year break from moviemaking to serve as California governor.

In a departure from his typical superhuman roles, Schwarzenegger plays a retired Los Angeles policeman forced to protect a tiny border town from a notorious drug kingpin. The 65-year-old former bodybuilder looks every bit his age and admits in the film feeling “old” as he takes a ribbing from some of his significantly younger deputies.

As he embarks on a movie comeback in which he will star in three films over the next 12 months, Schwarzenegger is embracing his age rather than trying to relive his glory days as an action star.

He is taking his cue from the 82-year-old Eastwood – the gun-toting former macho “Dirty Harry” star who eased into more senior roles, winning plaudits for movies like last year’s “The Trouble with the Curve,” and “Million Dollar Baby” in 2004, for which he was nominated for a best-actor Oscar and won for best director.

Schwarzenegger said he was inspired by Eastwood in the 1993 film “In the Line of Fire,” where Eastwood’s character, a Secret Service agent, is short of breath after running alongside the president’s limousine.

“I thought that was so cool,” Schwarzenegger told Reuters TV recently. “I remember how smart it was to acknowledge that because it took the curse off. No one was trying to say, ‘Isn’t he too old for this job?’ That’s what I tried to do in this film since (Eastwood) is a big idol of mine and I always like to learn from him.”

Schwarzenegger said he felt great physically, but that reality had set in. “I’m not a 30-year-old action hero anymore,” he said. “I’m now 65 years old, but I’m still doing action movies. I acknowledge that it’s a different ballgame now. I’m an older guy.”

In “Last Stand,” Schwarzenegger said he agreed to play the part of Sheriff Ray Owens because “it was kind of a traditional Schwarzenegger action movie” with “big blow-ups, a great story, good drama, fight scenes and action from the beginning to the end.”

Schwarzenegger began his transformation to an aging action star in the 2010 film “The Expendables” and its 2012 sequel where he played an aging movie star in an ensemble cast that included Sylvester Stallone and other older stars.

“I was very pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction,” said Schwarzenegger, who was Republican governor of California from 2003 to 2011.

‘I-DARE-YOU ATTITUDE’

Critics have mostly embraced Schwarzenegger’s return with “Last Stand,” despite the film’s modest budget. Film critic Marshall Fine called it “shamelessly entertaining,” while The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy wrote that Schwarzenegger “still conveys the old self-confident, humorous I-dare-you attitude towards his adversaries.”

An older, wiser Schwarzenegger chose to play vintage roles in his other upcoming films as well. In September, he teams up again with Stallone in “The Tomb,” where they play aging inmates who plot a prison escape. Next January, Schwarzenegger will star in “Ten,” playing what the film’s director, David Ayer, called “a broken old drug warrior.”

In an interview with Reuters, Ayer said his No. 1 goal in working with Schwarzenegger was “transformation.” The director said he studied every frame of Schwarzenegger’s films, noting that most of the actor’s filmography had “a very specific tone, almost jocular in a sense, where it is not necessarily a psychologically realistic portrayal of a man or a character.”

“You look at all these performances, and the question is, have these characters been treated as something he can transform himself?” Ayer said. “I probably asked him to do things he wasn’t asked before. I knew I could take him someplace new. Some of these scenes required real, heavy lifting.”

In the end, Ayer believes moviegoers will be “blindsided” by what they see of Schwarzenegger on screen.

Yet even as Schwarzenegger attempts to widen his range as an actor, he is not leaving behind the genre films that made him famous.

That means going back to some of his popular franchises of the past, including a new “Conan the Barbarian” film that is expected to go into production later this year and a sequel to the 1988 action comedy “Twins” to be called “Triplets.”

“It’s important I pick projects that the fans, that the audiences like to see,” he said.

He already has another big fan in his friend Stallone, who talked him into acting in the two “Expendables” films.

“What is the definition of a star? Someone who people will wait three hours in the rain to see,” Stallone said. “And people still have their umbrellas out for him.”

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Business Briefing | Medicine: F.D.A. Clears Botox to Help Bladder Control

Botox, the wrinkle treatment made by Allergan, has been approved to treat adults with overactive bladders who cannot tolerate or were not helped by other drugs, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. Botox injected into the bladder muscle causes the bladder to relax, increasing its storage capacity. “Clinical studies have demonstrated Botox’s ability to significantly reduce the frequency of urinary incontinence,” Dr. Hylton V. Joffe, director of the F.D.A.’s reproductive and urologic products division, said in a statement. “Today’s approval provides an important additional treatment option for patients with overactive bladder, a condition that affects an estimated 33 million men and women in the United States.”

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Boeing Closer to Answer on 787s, but Not to Getting Them Back in Air

Issei Kato/Reuters

Safety inspectors looked over a 787 on Friday in Japan. The plane made an emergency landing after receiving a smoke alarm.

With 787 Dreamliners grounded around the world, Boeing is scrambling to devise a technical fix that would allow the planes to fly again soon, even as investigators in the United States and Japan are trying to figure out what caused the plane’s lithium-ion batteries to overheat.

Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, made it clear on Friday that a rapid outcome was unlikely, saying that 787s would not be allowed to fly until the authorities were “1,000 percent sure” they were safe.

“Those planes aren’t flying now until we have a chance to examine the batteries,” Mr. LaHood told reporters. “That seems to be where the problem is.”

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday took the rare step of grounding Boeing’s technologically advanced 787s after a plane in Japan made an emergency landing when one of its two lithium-ion batteries set off a smoke alarm in the cockpit. Last week at Boston’s Logan Airport, a battery ignited in a parked 787.

The last time the government grounded an entire fleet of airplanes was in 1979, after the crash of a McDonnell Douglas DC-10.

The grounding comes as the United States is going through a record stretch of safe commercial jet flying: It has been nearly four years since a fatal airline crash, with nearly three billion passengers flying in that period. The last airliner crash, near Buffalo, N.Y., came after a quiet period of two and a half years, which suggests a declining crash rate.

Investigators in Japan said Friday that a possible explanation for the problems with the 787’s batteries was that they were overcharged — a hazard that has long been a concern for lithium-ion batteries. But how that could have happened to a plane that Boeing says has multiple systems to prevent such an event is still unclear.

Given the uncertainty, it will be hard for federal regulators to approve any corrective measures proposed by Boeing. To lift the grounding order, Boeing must demonstrate that any fix it puts in place would prevent similar episodes from happening.

The government’s approach, while prudent, worries industry officials who fear it does not provide a rapid exit for Boeing.

The F.A.A. typically sets a course of corrective action for airlines when it issues a safety directive. But in the case of the 787, the government’s order, called an emergency airworthiness directive, required that Boeing demonstrate that the batteries were safe but did not specify how.

While the government and the plane maker are cooperating, there are few precedents for the situation.

“Everyone wants the airplane back in the air quickly and safely,” said Mark V. Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. “But I don’t believe there will be a corner cut to accomplish that. It will happen when all are confident they have a good solution that will contain a fire or a leak.”

Boeing engineers, Mr. Rosenker said, are working around the clock. “I bet they have cots and food for the engineers who are working on this,” he said. “They have produced a reliable and safe aircraft and as advanced as it is, they don’t want to put airplanes in the air with the problems we have seen.”

The government approved Boeing’s use of lithium-ion batteries to power some of the plane’s systems in 2007, but special conditions were imposed on the plane maker to ensure the batteries would not overheat or ignite. Government inspectors also approved Boeing’s testing plans for the batteries and were present when they were performed.

Even so, after the episode in Boston, the federal agency said it would review the 787’s design and manufacturing with a focus on the electrical systems and batteries. The agency also said it would review the certification process.

The 787 has more electrical systems than previous generations of airplanes. These systems operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. The plane also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones. To run these systems, the 787 has six generators with a capacity equivalent to the power needed by 400 homes.

Nicola Clark and Christopher Drew contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated how regulators responded to small cracks found in the wings of the Airbus A380, and when those cracks were found. Regulators required inspections, followed by fixes, last year, not two years ago; the plane was not grounded.

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Obama aides launch Organizing for Action to back his agenda

WASHINGTON -- Leaders of President Obama's reelection campaign announced Friday that they are launching a permanent advocacy organization called Organizing for Action that will enlist his supporters to fight for his policy agenda.
 
Calling it "the next phase of this movement," former campaign manager Jim Messina described the new group as an extension of Obama's successful bid for a second term, which used technology to engage volunteers at a new level in their communities.
 
"If we can take the enthusiasm and passion that people showed throughout the campaign and channel it into the work ahead of us, we will be unstoppable," Messina, who will be the chairman of the new group, wrote in an email to campaign donors early Friday morning.
 
The launch, which the Los Angeles Times wrote about Thursday, was the subject of chatter among Democratic activists and strategists, who predicted that it could upend the party's power structure.
 
If it is able to sustain the intensive volunteer effort that propelled Obama twice into the White House, Organizing for Action could outstrip the role played by traditional interest groups, such as organized labor and the environmental movement -- and challenge the party itself as a center of influence.
 
To accomplish that, however, the organization must avoid the fate of a similar effort Obama officials made in 2009 to extend his first presidential campaign into a permanent advocacy force. That project, Organizing for America, largely failed to turn grass-roots support into a political force from within its confines at the Democratic National Committee.
 
On Friday, Messina wrote that the new organization would be driven by supporters  and would hew to the campaign's principles: "respect, empower, include."
 
"We'll work on the key battles of our generation, train the next generation of grassroots organizers and leaders, and organize around local issues in our own communities," Messina wrote. "We'll continue to support the President in creating jobs and growing the economy from the middle out, and in fighting for issues like immigration reform, climate change, balanced deficit reduction, and reducing gun violence."
 
The new group is being organized under the tax code’s section 501(c)4 as a nonprofit social welfare organization, which cannot have politics as its primary purpose, limiting its ability to coordinate with the party or candidates.
 
In setting the group up as a 501(c)4, Obama aides chose the same structure as conservative advocacy groups, such as Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, which the president has lambasted for not disclosing their donors. It remains to be seen whether Organizing for Action will voluntarily reveal information about its financial backers.

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Become the Ashton Kutcher of Subscription Swag, Before He Does

If you’ve always wanted to create your own monthly subscription box, social commerce startup The Fancy will now do the hard work for you. And here’s the beauty part: They pay you a chunk of every sale.

Starting now, anyone – yes, you – can sign up to make their own Fancy subscription box. You can sign up by e-mailing myfancybox@thefancy.com and once they set you up, you get to pick from a list of popular products on The Fancy, or add anything else you like from the internet, so long as isn’t deemed inappropriate by the startup’s staff (think offensive t-shirts, weapons, or drugs). The Fancy says it is looking for all kinds of people to make boxes, says a company spokesperson. That might seem like a risky business decision, but the company won’t procure any of the products for a box until one sells.

The Fancy will take care of the rest, including packing and shipping the box, and handling the transaction. You’re expected to share your box on Facebook, Twitter, and any other social networks you use to get the word out (and bring more traffic to The Fancy). You keep half the profits from your box sales.

Fancy gained attention last year as not only a Pinterest rival, where you could save images from around the internet, but also as store that actually sold most of the products that others had shared to the site. Instead of finding a cool product on Pinterest and then hunting around to buy it online, you can easily buy that leather bicycle wine rack you fell in love with right from The Fancy. That move to turn pretty pictures into revenue helped The Fancy raise a $26 million round of funding, and spark rumors that Apple was interested in acquiring the company.

In the fall of 2012, the company jumped on the subscription services bandwagon by offering monthly boxes of goodies from the site, picked by the staff. Now its opening that service up to anyone to make their own box.

The first user-created Fancy box hails from actor and investor Ashton Kutcher, who promises to fill his boxes with “the dopest stuff on The Fancy.” Called the A+ box, the box contains $90 worth of stuff and sells for $45. From pictures of the first few A+ boxes, we see mustache bandaids, a bearded beanie, and a (probably faux) Chanel iPhone case.

Since anyone can create a new The Fancy subscription box, we’re secretly hoping a few other Silicon Valley celebrities will sign up as well. There could be the “Best Dressed Tech Billionaire” box, filled with skinny ties and Scott Morrison denim, created by Jack Dorsey, who happens to be an investor in The Fancy; the “Chic Working Mom” box with a mix of stylish kids’ toys and striped tops from Marissa Mayer; and the “Young Fast-Paced CEO” box by Box CEO Aaron Levie, with several pounds of coffee, the latest business read, and ear plugs.

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Peter Chernin wants to build the Marvel of India

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Peter Chernin wants to the build the Marvel Comics of India. CA Media, the Asian investment arm of his Chernin Group, has acquired a large minority stake in Graphic India, an Indian comic book and animation company.

Graphic India, launched in 2012 as a subsidiary of Liquid Comics, is a prominent American comic book company founded by Richard Branson and Deepak Chopra, among others. CA Media and Liquid Comics will now jointly own the company, and Liquid will contribute a substantial comic book library of Indian characters to Graphic India.

CA Media will try to help Graphic India build franchises around those characters, from new print and digital comics to animated shorts.

“Following our successful entry into the traditional media space, we are very pleased that Graphic India marks our first investment in the digital space,” Rajesh Kamat, CEO of CA Media India, said in a statement. Graphic India is a valuable addition to this mix, especially in the youth segment. We look forward to working with the company to create heroes that inspire the next generation of Indian consumers.”

Sharad Devarajan, co-founder of Graphic India, will be CEO of the company and remain executive chairman of Liquid Comics. Under his leadership, the company will launch a series of new projects in the coming year. Graphic India has already partnered with former Marvel chief Stan Lee and POW! Entertainment to create Lee’s first superhero for the Indian market, Chakra the Invincible.

Chakra is born after teenager Raju Rai develops a technology-enhanced suit that unleashes the “mystical chakras of the body.” Lee will collaborate with Indian artists and creators to develop animated clips and comics.

Graphic India will also release new digital content around some of Liquid Comics’ existing properties, such as Shekhar Kapur’s “Devi,” Gotham Chopra’s “The Sadhu” and “Ramayan 3392AD.”

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The Neediest Cases: Medical Bills Crush Brooklyn Man’s Hope of Retiring

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

John Concepcion and his wife, Maria, in their home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They are awaiting even more medical bills.

Retirement was just about a year away, or so John Concepcion thought, when a sudden health crisis put his plans in doubt.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$6,865,501

Recorded Wed.:

16,711

*Total:

$6,882,212

Last year to date:

$6,118,740

*Includes $1,511,814 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

“I get paralyzed, I can’t breathe,” he said of the muscle spasms he now has regularly. “It feels like something’s going to bust out of me.”

Severe abdominal pain is not the only, or even the worst, reminder of the major surgery Mr. Concepcion, 62, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, underwent in June. He and his wife of 36 years, Maria, are now faced with medical bills that are so high, Ms. Concepcion said she felt faint when she saw them.

Mr. Concepcion, who is superintendent of the apartment building where he lives, began having back pain last January that doctors first believed was the result of gallstones. In March, an endoscopy showed that tumors had grown throughout his digestive system. The tumors were not malignant, but an operation was required to remove them, and surgeons had to essentially reroute Mr. Concepcion’s entire digestive tract. They removed his gall bladder, as well as parts of his pancreas, bile ducts, intestines and stomach, he said.

The operation was a success, but then came the bills.

“I told my friend: are you aware that if you have a major operation, you’re going to lose your house?” Ms. Concepcion said.

The couple has since received doctors’ bills of more than $250,000, which does not include the cost of his seven-day stay at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. Mr. Concepcion has worked in the apartment building since 1993 and has been insured through his union.

The couple are in an anxious holding pattern as they wait to find out just what, depending on their policy’s limits, will be covered. Even with financial assistance from Beth Israel, which approved a 70 percent discount for the Concepcions on the hospital charges, the couple has no idea how the doctors’ and surgical fees will be covered.

“My son said, boy he saved your life, Dad, but look at the bill he sent to you,” Ms.  Concepcion said in reference to the surgeon’s statements. “You’ll be dead before you pay it off.”

When the Concepcions first acquired their insurance, they were in good health, but now both have serious medical issues — Ms. Concepcion, 54, has emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and Mr. Concepcion has diabetes. They now spend close to $800 a month on prescriptions.

Mr. Concepcion, the family’s primary wage earner, makes $866 a week at his job. The couple had planned for Mr. Concepcion to retire sometime this year, begin collecting a pension and, after getting their finances in order, leave the superintendent’s apartment, as required by the landlord, and try to find a new home. “That’s all out of the question now,” Ms. Concepcion said. Mr. Concepcion said he now planned to continue working indefinitely.

Ms. Concepcion has organized every bill and medical statement into bulging folders, and said she had spent hours on the phone trying to negotiate with providers. She is still awaiting the rest of the bills.

On one of those bills, Ms. Concepcion said, she spotted a telephone number for people seeking help with medical costs. The number was for Community Health Advocates, a health insurance consumer assistance program and a unit of Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The society drew $2,120 from the fund so the Concepcions could pay some of their medical bills, and the health advocates helped them obtain the discount from the hospital.

Neither one knows what the next step will be, however, and the stress has been eating at them.

“How do we get out of this?” Mr. Concepcion asked. “There is no way out. Here I am trying to save to retire. They’re going to put me in the street.”

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Fed Transcripts Open a Window on 2007 Crisis

WASHINGTON – Federal Reserve officials in August 2007 remained skeptical that housing foreclosures could cause a financial crisis, just days before the Fed was jolted into action, according to transcripts that the central bank published Friday.

Worries about the health of financial markets dominated a meeting of the Fed’s policy-making committee on Aug. 7, but they decided there was not yet sufficient evidence that the problems were affecting the growth of the broader economy.

Just three days later, the Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, convened an early-morning conference call to inform them that the central bank had been forced to start pumping money into a financial system that was suddenly seizing up. More than five years later, the system remains heavily dependent on those pumps.

“The market is not operating in a normal way,” Mr. Bernanke said on that August call, in a moment of historic understatement. “It’s a question of market functioning, not a question of bailing anybody out. That’s really where we are right now.”

August 2007 was the month that the Fed began its long transformation from somnolence to activism. Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues would continue to wrestle with misgivings about the extent of the Fed’s powers, and about the limits of appropriate action. At times they would hesitate or move slowly. At times they even would reverse course, most importantly in standing by as Lehman Brothers collapsed the following year. But it is now widely accepted that their efforts helped to arrest the economic chaos unleashed by the financial crisis.

Some of what followed might have been predicted by close readers of Mr. Bernanke’s work as an academic. He had long argued that the great lesson of the Great Depression was that a central bank should never allow its financial system to run short of money. Even more than its efforts to reduce borrowing costs, the Fed’s policy over the coming years would be defined by its determination to provide the funding private investors were withholding.

But in the face of an unprecedented crisis, Mr. Bernanke also would set aside his own work. He had long argued that the Fed should strive to respond to economic circumstances as transparently and predictably as possible, a break from the intuitive and unpredictable style of his predecessor, Alan Greenspan.

By the end of 2007, even as the available economic data remained fairly strong, Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues instead concluded that they could see the future, that they did not like what they saw, and that it was time to act.

“Intuition suggests that stronger action by the central bank may be warranted to prevent particularly costly outcomes,” Mr. Bernanke said in an October 2007 speech that marked the beginning of his public embrace of the need for pre-emptive action.

The Fed’s most dramatic steps did not begin until December 2007, when it created the Term Auction Facility, the first in a series of new programs intended to pump money into the financial system, and arranged to pump dollars into the European financial system in partnership with the European Central Bank.

And by January 2008, the Fed’s response to the crisis was in full swing.

The Fed began 2007 still deeply immersed in complacent disregard for problems in the housing market. Fed officials knew that people were losing their homes. They knew that subprime lenders were blinking out of business with every passing week. But they did not understand the implications for the broader economy.

”The impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained,” Mr. Bernanke said in March.

The mortgage industry was imploding by the time the Fed’s policy-making committee met on Aug. 7. American Home Mortgage, a leading subprime lender, had filed for bankruptcy the previous day. One week earlier, the investment bank Bear Stearns had liquidated a pair of mortgage-focused hedge funds. But officials did not cut interest rates. The economy, they said, “seems likely to continue to expand.” The statement did not even mention the housing market.

The transcripts show that many Fed officials at the August meeting remained deeply skeptical about the likely economic impact of those problems.

“My own bet is the financial market upset is not going to change fundamentally what’s going on in the real economy,” William Poole, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, told the committee on Aug. 7.

That was a Tuesday. The image of calm would last exactly two more days. By Thursday morning, the European Central Bank was offering emergency loans to continental banks and the Fed was following suit. And Mr. Poole and his board voted that day to ask for the Fed to reduce the interest rate on such loans, becoming the first official arm of the central bank to push for stronger action.

Two weeks later, at 6 p.m. on a Thursday, Fed officials dialed in to an emergency conference call where they agreed to adopt the St. Louis Fed’s proposal.

The central bank began to make it easier for cash-strapped financial companies to borrow money, an effort that would expand dramatically over the coming years as the crisis intensified and private investors withdrew funding.

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60 Freeway reopens after fatal accident involving 2 big-rigs

By Nicole Santa Cruz

January 17, 2013, 7:38 a.m.

The westbound 60 Freeway, which was closed for nearly three hours Thursday morning in Montebello after a fatal accident involving two big-rigs, has reopened, California Highway Patrol officials said.

The freeway was cleared at 5:40 a.m. near the off-ramp for north Garfield and Wilcox avenues, said CHP Officer Ed Jacobs.

The crash killed the driver of a car that rear-ended a big-rig around 2:50 a.m. The vehicles came to a stop, blocking a lane, and another big-rig rear-ended the car. The driver was pronounced dead at the scene.

Officers diverted traffic from the Garfield/Wilcox off-ramp. Traffic was backed up for about three miles.

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Why Lance Armstrong's Confession Should Make <em>You</em> Worry

Lance-o-Rama has broken out … again. But this time, we’re getting a confession. On air. On Oprah. Tonight.

While many people speculate about this being his first step towards redemption, a comeback, a new chapter in the doping arms race, the one thing nobody seems to be discussing right now is what L’Affair de Lance means for you.

After all, if you’re like most Americans, you watched the Tour de France for about five minutes, and cheered when Armstrong won. You know a little about his cancer charity, and that he dated a pop star. And that’s about the extent of emotional energy you’ve expended. Since I’ve written a lot about doping in sports – and delved into how anti-doping agencies like the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) conduct business – I’ve expended a lot more energy on your behalf.

So here’s the thing you need to know: The USADA takedown of Armstrong matters, and it could effect everybody. Because it will enhance the power and reach of a private, non-profit business that has managed to harness the power of the federal government in what’s quickly becoming a brand new war on drugs … with all the same pitfalls brought to you by the first war on drugs.

The USADA is a private outfit. Yet it gets taxpayer money. And it has existed in this weird legal nether world since its creation in 1999 at the instigation of the International Olympic Committee, United States Olympic Committee, and President Clinton’s White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The USADA is designated by the U.S. Congress as the company that handles anti-doping for this country, because the World Anti-Doping Treaty – a UNESCO-promulgated document that the U.S. signed with almost no discussion – obligates the U.S. to do a number of things, which includes conforming our laws to the international anti-doping code.

Nobody cared much about that treaty. And few care much now, really, because it was understood that anti-doping was about testing athletes, and mostly elite ones.

But the Armstrong case isn’t based on testing at all.

The USADA has wanted Armstrong for years. To it, and to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), Armstrong was Moby Dick: If they could kill the whale – and do it without a raft of positive tests to show Armstrong doped – a new model of anti-doping would be enshrined into practice. And that’s just what happened.

Piggy-backing on a federal investigation, the USADA was able to pressure Armstrong teammates to confess to doping and implicate Armstrong … with no positive test results. It was an FBI-style investigation spanning multiple countries, but there was no “smoking syringe” found stuck in Armstrong’s arm.

Yet this is now the main model for anti-doping. Athletes will still have to pee in cups and have blood drawn from their arms, but anti-doping agencies are using the Armstrong case to justify a tremendous expansion of their investigatory powers.

In Australia and the United Kingdom, anti-doping agencies are part of the government — and they’re beginning to look like police bodies. The U.K. agency, headed by the former chief constable of the North Yorkshire police, has promised to boost investigations. It, along with WADA, has called on governments to form alliances with the international police body Interpol.

There was no ‘smoking syringe’ found stuck in Armstrong’s arm. Yet this is now the main model for anti-doping.

The Australian Anti-Doping Agency, meanwhile, went so far as to demand private medical records from hundreds of athletes so it could fish for anything suspicious.

In an eerie echo of the tactics used by the American House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare days, the Australian agency issued a call this past November “to anyone involved with, or has information about, doping activity in the sport of cycling to come forward and talk before someone else accuses them of doping.” If you talk first, you can get credit for snitching. If you wait, well, who knows what somebody else might say about you?

All of these state-sanctioned players – the Australians, the British, the Americans, and WADA — are hyping what they call “increased intelligence.” This includes anything from spying on athletes, to fishing through their garbage — and anything they find can be shared with “real” crime enforcers like the FBI (and vice versa). All of them have used the Armstrong case as illustration number one of why such actions are justified.

USADA chief Travis Tygart — who’s been talking like anti-doping’s Eliot Ness since the Armstrong story broke — has told me he’d like his own team of investigators. Let’s keep in mind that we’re talking about sports here: not terrorism, or even industrial espionage.

So while you might wish athletes didn’t dope — I do, too — and want action taken to combat doping, you might also want to be careful about what you’re wishing for. Especially since sports is taking on a broader definition that includes amateurs, low-level marathon runners, and even your kid’s high school football team.

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In online baby shower, Shakira seeks mosquito nets, vaccines for the poor

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Singer Shakira and Spanish footballer Gerard Piqué are asking fans to donate gifts like mosquito nets and vaccines for the world’s poorest children in an online baby shower to mark the couple’s first child.

The 35-year-old Colombian pop star, who is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and the FC Barcelona center back said on Wednesday they had launched a “virtual living room” for purchase of life-saving items which will be distributed to children and communities in some of the poorest parts of the world.

The singer, who has not announced her due date but has posted recent photographs indicating the baby is likely due later in January.

“To celebrate the arrival of our first child, we hope that, in his name, other less privileged children in the world can have their basic needs covered through gifts and donations,” the couple said in an announcing the “Inspired Gifts” program.

Fans and supporters can enter the virtual shower and pay for items ranging from a $ 5 mosquito net, which protects babies from malaria or $ 10 for polio vaccines for 17 children, to the top-priced $ 110-item – therapeutic food, which is a peanut-based paste that can save an acutely malnourished child.

The virtual shower can be accessed at http://uni.cf/baby.

Shakira has also been working on her eighth studio album and will fill in for Christina Aguilera as one of the regular coaches for the next season of the U.S. singing competition “The Voice.”

Shakira first publicly confirmed her relationship with Piqué in March 2011 and revealed in September that they were expecting their first child.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud, editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Osterman)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: Officials Say Checks Won't Be in the Mail

The jig is up.

Two years ago, the Treasury Department initiated its Go Direct campaign to persuade people still receiving paper checks for their Social Security, Veterans Affairs, S.S.I. and other federal benefits to switch to direct deposit.

“At that point, we were issuing approximately 11 million checks each month,” or about 15 percent of the total, Walt Henderson, director of the campaign, told me.

After putting notices in every monthly check envelope, circulating public service announcements and putting the word out through banks, senior centers, the Red Cross, AARP and other organizations, the Treasury Department has since shrunk that number to five million monthly checks.

That means 93 percent of those getting federal benefits are using direct deposit or, if they prefer or lack a bank account, a Direct Express debit card that gets refilled each month and can be used anywhere that accepts MasterCard.

“So people have been getting the word and making the switch,” Mr. Henderson said. Now, federal officials are pushing the last holdouts to convert to direct deposit by March 1.

Although officials say the change is not optional, the jig isn’t entirely up. If you or your older relative does not respond to their pleading, “we’re not going to interrupt their payments,” Mr. Henderson said. But the department will start sending letters urging people to switch.

The major motive is financial: shifting the last paper checks to direct deposit or a debit card (only 2 percent of recipients go that route) will save $1 billion over the next decade, the department estimates.

But safety enters the picture, too. One reason some beneficiaries resist direct deposit, Mr. Henderson said, is that they fear their electronic deposits can be hacked or diverted. Having grown up in a predigital age, perhaps they feel safer with a check in their hands.

But they probably aren’t. In 2011, the Treasury Department received 440,000 reports of lost or stolen benefits checks. With direct deposit, “there’s no check lingering unattended in a mailbox,” Mr. Henderson noted.

The greater reason for sticking with paper is probably simple inertia. “It’s human nature to procrastinate,” he said.

But unless you or your relatives want a series of letters from the Treasury Department, it is probably time for the last fence-sitters to get with the program.

They don’t need to use a computer. People can switch to direct deposit, or get the debit card, at their banks or the local Social Security office. More simply, they can call a toll-free number, (800) 333-1795, and have agents walk them through the change. Or they can sign up online at www.GoDirect.org.

They will need:

1. Their Social Security number.
2. The 12-digit federal benefit number found on their checks.
3. The amount of the most recent check.
4. And, for direct deposit, a bank or credit union routing number, usually found on the front of a check. They can have direct deposit to a savings account, too.

A caution for New Old Age readers: If you think your relative has not switched because he or she is cognitively impaired and can no longer handle his finances, you can be designated a representative payee and receive monthly Social Security or S.S.I. payments on your relative’s behalf. This generally requires a visit to your local Social Security office, documentation in hand.

---

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: H.P. Said to Have Suitors for Two Units

Hewlett-Packard has received a number of inquiries from would-be buyers for its Autonomy and Electronic Data Systems units in recent weeks, though the technology company is not interested in selling at the moment, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

The calls from potential suitors and bankers picked up after H.P. filed its annual report with regulators on Dec. 28, said the person, who did not want to be identified because management deliberations were confidential.

In the securities filing, the company said, “We also continue to evaluate the potential disposition of assets and businesses that may no longer help us meet our objectives.”

That is standard legal boilerplate. But H.P. has been struggling with poor performance at both Autonomy and E.D.S., having significantly written down the value of those acquisitions.

The company has also claimed to have found accounting and disclosure issues at Autonomy, and has forwarded findings from an internal inquiry to securities regulators in the United States and the division’s home in Britain.

Shares of H.P. rose 4 percent on Wednesday after The Wall Street Journal reported news of the expressions of interest. Over the last 12 months, the shares have fallen 35 percent.

But H.P.’s management team, led by Meg Whitman, is not interested in selling what it considers to be core businesses. Instead, the company intends to focus on developing its enterprise operations, the person said.

The inquiries may also have been stoked by the sudden flurry of news coverage surrounding a potential leveraged buyout of Dell. That company still appears to be closing in on a potential deal to sell itself to a consortium that includes its founder, Michael S. Dell, and the investment firm Silver Lake, in the biggest leveraged buyout in more than five years.

Advisers to Dell and Silver Lake are still negotiating a number of elements in what is proving to be a complicated deal, though they have made advancements, according to a person briefed on the matter who did not want to be identified because the talks were private. A potential takeover may be priced around $14 a share, valuing the company at more than $24 billion.

Mr. Dell is expected to contribute his roughly 16 percent stake to a leveraged buyout. And Silver Lake has been in talks with potential partners, including sovereign wealth funds like Temasek of Singapore, about contributing additional capital, this person said.

Banks are also working on lining up the financing necessary for a deal, which could reach $15 billion. While an enormous amount of money, bankers are betting that debt investors will clamor for the financing package, hoping to reap yields that are higher than those for Treasury bonds.

Still, this person cautioned that the discussions could fall apart.

Confronting H.P. and Dell is the grinding pressure on both companies’ personal computer businesses, where profit margins have declined in the last few years as competition toughened.

The two tech companies are trying to decrease their dependence on making PCs.

That move had prompted H.P. to buy both E.D.S. and Autonomy, paying more than $20 billion for the pair.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/17/2013, on page B4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Two Units Of Hewlett Reportedly Draw Suitors.

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Helicopter crashes in central London, killing at least two people

A helicopter crash near a busy train station in London caused a huge fireball on the ground and killed two people. CBS News' Elizabeth Palmer reports.

LONDON -- A helicopter apparently crashed into a crane atop a high-rise building in central London during the morning rush hour Wednesday, falling to earth and killing at least two people, police said.

Video footage showed flaming debris on the ground where the chopper came down in the Vauxhall district of south London, close to the headquarters of MI6, Britain's spy agency.

Scotland Yard said two people were confirmed dead at the scene, with two others taken to the hospital. A fire official told the BBC that one of the dead had been aboard the helicopter. Authorities quickly cordoned off the area and shut down Vauxhall rail station.

PHOTOS: Helicopter crashes in central London

[Update, 4:26 a.m. Jan 16: Later Wednesday morning, police said one of the dead was the chopper's pilot. The other victim has not been identified, but the helicopter was not believed to be carrying passengers, police said. 

"At this stage, it appears a commercial helicopter on a scheduled flight was in collision with a crane on top of a building under construction," Scotland Yard said in a statement. 

Police said seven people were treated on the scene for minor injuries. Six people were taken to local hospitals, all for minor injuries except for one person who suffered a broken leg.

The crash occurred on a gray morning with thick clouds or fog lying low in the sky. Police did not speculate as to the cause of the crash, but the BBC reported that terrorism did not appear to be likely.

Nicky Morgan, a member of Parliament who was walking toward Vauxhall, told the broadcaster that she heard a huge explosion shortly before 8 a.m., a time when commuters and schoolchildren were going about their usual routine.

"I did wonder if it was a bomb explosion, because it was just such a loud bang," she said. "It was the thick black smoke that really meant that this is not right."

Helicopters are common in London, particularly around the city's financial district where many tall buildings are clustered.

The crash site is near the Nine Elms neighborhood south of the Thames, where the U.S. is planning to build a large new embassy.

ALSO:

Blue plaques that pay tribute to London's past may be history

Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian teen in West Bank confrontation

Egyptian lawyer gets 5 years, 300 lashes for Saudi drug conviction

 

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See a Real-Life <em>Mario Kart</em> Race Complete With RFID Bananas, Power-Ups

What Mario Kart fan hasn’t secretly dreamed of playing a real-life version of the Mario Bros-themed racing game? But while most people would be content with renting regular go-karts and using their imaginations really, really hard, two Texas engineers, Hunter Smith and Ben James, decided to make the dream a reality by creating an ingenious live-action version of the Mario Bros-themed racing game.

Where things really get amazing, however, are the RFID-embedded power-up item boxes suspended over the track by pieces of rope, which allow the player to collect items like bananas and turtle shells modeled on the original Mario Kart game — and actually affect their performance in the race. The mushroom item, for example, wirelessly activates tiny Servo motors that enable go-karts to speed up by accessing 100 percent of their throttle power.

“Ben and I grew up playing Mario Kart on Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 so we’re both big fans,” Smith, the co-founder of Austin Texas-based Waterloo Labs, told Wired. We got the idea for the real-life Mario because we work with First Robotics Competition and they use same controller, software and motors. We got a few extra kits so we asked ourselves ‘What can we do with these competition kits that would be fun?”

The system details and source code for the project are available on the Waterloo Labs website, which volunteers that while there is no permanent set-up for Real-Life Mario Kart for enthusiasts to visit, “we would be happy to help you build your own!”

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Shane Carruth self-distributing “Upstream Color” to theaters in April

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Director Shane Carruth has decided to take charge on the distribution of his second film, “Upstream Color,” which will open in New York at the IFC Center on April 5th.

His company, erbp, will follow theatrical distribution in 20 markets including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Dallas, and Chicago with digital distribution through Cable VOD, iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, Xbox, Sony Entertainment Network, VUDU and Netflix, as well as DVD/Blu-ray.

“As a filmmaker you try to make a compelling case for an audience to stick around minute by minute with what is on the screen,” Carruth said in a statement released on Tuesday. “By also crafting the marketing we’re still doing that, still storytelling, but we’re trying to make a case for an audience to show up. Hopefully for viewers, framing the film this way and staying true to the film’s intent makes it a bit more of an intimate relationship.”

The announcement comes ahead of the indie film’s January 21 U.S. Dramatic Competition debut at the Sundance Film Festival, where Carruth won the 2004 Grand Jury Prize for his first film, “Primer.”

Carruth stars alongside Amy Seimetz in “Upstream Color.” The movie’s mysterious synopsis reads: “A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Phys Ed: Exercise Can Boost Flu Shot's Potency

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

As this year’s influenza season continues to take its toll, those procrastinators now hurrying to get a flu shot might wish to know that exercise may amplify the flu vaccine’s effect. And for maximal potency, the exercise should be undertaken at the right time and involve the right dosage of sweat, according to several recent reports.

Flu shots are one of the best ways to lessen the risk of catching the disease. But they are not foolproof. By most estimates, the yearly flu vaccine blocks infection 50 to 70 percent of the time, meaning that some of those being inoculated gain little protection. The more antibodies someone develops, the better their protection against the flu, generally speaking. But for some reason, some people’s immune systems produce fewer antibodies to the influenza virus than others’ do.

Being physically fit has been found in many studies to improve immunity in general and vaccine response in particular. In one notable 2009 experiment, sedentary, elderly adults, a group whose immune systems typically respond weakly to the flu vaccine, began programs of either brisk walking or a balance and stretching routine. After 10 months, the walkers had significantly improved their aerobic fitness and, after receiving flu shots, displayed higher average influenza antibody counts 20 weeks after a flu vaccine than the group who had stretched.

But that experiment involved almost a year of dedicated exercise training, a prospect that is daunting to some people and, in practical terms, not helpful for those who have entered this flu season unfit.

So scientists have begun to wonder whether a single, well-calibrated bout of exercise might similarly strengthen the vaccine’s potency.

To find out, researchers at Iowa State University in Ames recently had young, healthy volunteers, most of them college students, head out for a moderately paced 90-minute jog or bike ride 15 minutes after receiving their flu shot. Other volunteers sat quietly for 90 minutes after their shot. Then the researchers checked for blood levels of influenza antibodies a month later.

Those volunteers who had exercised after being inoculated, it turned out, exhibited “nearly double the antibody response” of the sedentary group, said Marian Kohut, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State who oversaw the study, which is being prepared for publication. They also had higher blood levels of certain immune system cells that help the body fight off infection.

To test how much exercise really is required, Dr. Kohut and Justus Hallam, a graduate student in her lab, subsequently repeated the study with lab mice. Some of the mice exercised for 90 minutes on a running wheel, while others ran for either half as much time (45 minutes) or twice as much (3 hours) after receiving a flu shot.

Four weeks later, those animals that, like the students, had exercised moderately for 90 minutes displayed the most robust antibody response. The animals that had run for three hours had fewer antibodies; presumably, exercising for too long can dampen the immune response. Interestingly, those that had run for 45 minutes also had a less robust response. “The 90-minute time point appears to be optimal,” Dr. Kohut says.

Unless, that is, you work out before you are inoculated, another set of studies intimates, and use a dumbbell. In those studies, undertaken at the University of Birmingham in England, healthy, adult volunteers lifted weights for 20 minutes several hours before they were scheduled to receive a flu shot, focusing on the arm that would be injected. Specifically, they completed multiple sets of biceps curls and side arm raises, employing a weight that was 85 percent of the maximum they could lift once. Another group did not exercise before their shot.

After four weeks, the researchers checked for influenza antibodies. They found that those who had exercised before the shot generally displayed higher antibody levels, although the effect was muted among the men, who, as a group, had responded to that year’s flu vaccine more robustly than the women had.

Over all, “we think that exercise can help vaccine response by activating parts of the immune system,” said Kate Edwards, now a lecturer at the University of Sydney, and co-author of the weight-training study.

With the biceps curls, she continued, the exercises probably induced inflammation in the arm muscles, which may have primed the immune response there.

As for 90 minutes of jogging or cycling after the shot, it probably sped blood circulation and pumped the vaccine away from the injection site and to other parts of the body, Dr. Kohut said. The exercise probably also goosed the body’s overall immune system, she said, which, in turn, helped exaggerate the vaccine’s effect.

But, she cautions, data about exercise and flu vaccines is incomplete. It is not clear, for instance, whether there is any advantage to exercising before the shot instead of afterward, or vice versa; or whether doing both might provoke the greatest response – or, alternatively, be too much and weaken response.

So for now, she says, the best course of action is to get a flu shot, since any degree of protection is better than none, and, if you can, also schedule a visit to the gym that same day. If nothing else, spending 90 minutes on a stationary bike will make any small twinges in your arm from the shot itself seem pretty insignificant.

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DealBook: Goldman Sachs Earnings Soar

9:46 a.m. | Updated

Goldman Sachs on Wednesday reported a fourth-quarter profit of $2.89 billion, or $5.60 a share, a significant jump from the period a year earlier.

The per-share figure is after the company paid preferred dividends, and comes in well ahead of analysts’ expectations of $3.78 a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Analysts had been anticipating a fairly decent quarter for Goldman, and its results were buoyed by strong trading and investment banking results and lower compensation costs. In the fourth quarter of 2011, the bank earned $1.01 billion, or $1.84 a share.

The bank’s most recent results reflect a continued focus on cutting expenses as well as a number of investing gains, including $485 million from debt and security loans, the company said.

“While economic conditions remained challenging for much of last year, the strengths of our business model and client franchise, coupled with our focus on disciplined management, delivered solid performance for our shareholders,” Goldman’s chairman and chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, said in a news release.

The results had an immediate effect on the firm’s stock, sending it up 2.7 percent in early morning trading.

Over all, the firm produced $9.24 billion in revenue in the quarter ended Dec. 31, up 53 percent from the same quarter in 2011. That also beat analysts’ estimates of quarterly revenue of $7.91 billion.

Goldman also revealed how much it had set aside for compensation, paying out $12.9 billion in 2012, an average of $399,506 to each of its 32,400 employees. This represented 37.9 percent of Goldman’s revenue for the year.

Over the last year, Goldman has reduced its payroll by 900 people. In 2011, the bank set aside $12.22 billion, or 42.4 percent, of its 2011 net revenue to pay compensation and benefits for its employees.

Goldman partners, a small group of top managers at the firm, will learn their 2012 compensation packages on Wednesday. The vast majority of employees, however, will be told what their bonuses will be on Thursday in what is known at Goldman as compensation communication day. These bonuses are on top of annual salaries, which can range from roughly $100,000 to $2 million for executives like Mr. Blankfein.

Bonuses on Wall Street — both the size of them and how they are paid — always draw scrutiny. Goldman Sachs decided this week not to delay the payment of bonuses to its staff members in Britain, a move that would have helped investment bankers and other highly paid employees benefit from a lower income tax rate.

Goldman Sachs was already drawing attention in the United States after it distributed $65 million in stock to 10 senior executives in December instead of January, when the firm typically makes such awards. That move helped the executives avoid the higher tax rates that will now be imposed on income of $450,000 or more.

The firm’s annual return on equity was 10.7 percent, up from 2011, when it was 5.8 percent. While this is far below its performance in boom years like 2006, when its return on equity was 41.5 percent, it is an achievement that it has broken above 10 percent.

Banks continue to fight difficult economic conditions at home and abroad, and Goldman’s results are still well below what it was producing before the financial crisis. Those outsize profits, however, were fueled by borrowing on credit and selling mortgage-linked products, and they have dwindled. New regulations aimed at reining in risk-taking have also reduced the profitability of certain businesses.

Revenue from investment banking came in at $1.41 billion, up 64 percent from the year-ago period.

Net revenue in Goldman’s powerful division that trades bonds, currencies and commodities was $2.04 billion, up 50 percent from levels in the quarter a year earlier. The firm said those results reflected an increase in mortgage revenues, which were “significantly higher” when compared with 2011.

The firm’s investing and lending division also had a stronger-than-expected quarter, posting revenue of $1.97 billion, up 126 percent from year-ago levels. The firm said this unit benefited from an increase in equity prices in Asia and Europe and a number of one-time gains. For instance, it logged a gain of $334 million from its investment in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a strategic investment the firm made in 2006. It also had gains from the debt securities and loans it holds.

Goldman is one of a number of banks releasing earnings this week. JPMorgan Chase also Wednesday weighed in with its results, reporting a strong profit of $5.7 billion for the fourth quarter, up 53 percent from the previous year.

These positive results put pressure on Morgan Stanley to post good results when it releases its fourth quarter numbers on Friday. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters are expecting Morgan Stanley to report earnings of 27 cents a share, up from a loss of 14 cents in the year-ago period.

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Big rig accident closes 5 Freeway near Elysian Park

By Nicole Santa Cruz

January 15, 2013, 6:10 a.m.

All lanes of 5 Freeway near Elysian Park are expected to be closed until at least 9 a.m. as the result of a big rig crash, officials said early Tuesday.

At about 3:16 a.m., a driver lost control of a big rig, which hit the center divider and caught fire near the 2 Freeway, said Officer Ed Jacobs of the California Highway Patrol. No injuries were reported in the accident.

Traffic was backed up for miles in both directions as a result of the freeway closure. All lanes in both directions are expected to be closed for hours, Jacobs said.

Traffic is being diverted off the freeway at Fletcher Drive on the southbound side and at Stadium Way on the northbound side, officials said. Jacobs urged drivers to use an alternate route.

"You don't want to go in that area in general," he said. "It will affect traffic through the morning commute."

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$.extend(settings, options);
}

/* This is a hack to make sure the shareTip always fades back to 100% opacity */
var checkOpacity = function (){
if ( $shareTip.css('opacity') !== 1 ){
$shareTip.css({'opacity': 1});
}
};

/* Function that replaces the HTML in the shareTip with the template we defined at the top */
/* It will wipe/reset the links on the social media buttons each time the function is called */
var removeLinks = function (){
shareTip.innerHTML = templateHTML;
};

/* This is the function that makes the links for the Tweet / Share functionality */

var makeURLS = function (link, message){
/* Here we construct the Tweet URL using an array, with values passed to the function */
var tweetConstruct = [
'http://twitter.com/share?url=', link, '&text=', message, '&via=', settings.twitter_account
],
/* Then join the array into one chunk of HTML */
tweetURL = tweetConstruct.join(''),

/* Same story for Facebook */
fbConstruct = [
'http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=', link, '&src=sp'
],

fbURL = fbConstruct.join(''),

newHTML = [
''
],
shareHTML = newHTML.join('');
/* Load in our new HTML */
shareTip.innerHTML = shareHTML;
};

/* Since the shareTip will automatically fade out when the user mouses out of an element */
/* we have to specifically tell the shareTip we want it to stay put when the user mouses over it */
/* This effectively gives the user a 500 ms (or whatever) window to mouse */
/* from the element to the shareTip to prevent it from popping out */
$shareTip.hover(function(){
$shareTip.stop(true, true);
$shareTip.show();
checkOpacity();
}, function(){
$(this).fadeOut(settings.speed);
});

/* This function handles the hover action */
$(this).hover(function(){
/* remove the old links, so someone doesn't accidentally click on them */
removeLinks();

/* If there's already an animation running on the shareTip, stop it */
$shareTip.stop(true, true);

var eso = $(this),
message,
/* Store the width and height of the shareTip and the offset of the element for our calculations */
height = eso.height(),
width = eso.width(),
offset = eso.offset(),
link;


link = eso.children('a').attr('href');
message = escape( eso.find('img').attr('alt') ) || eso.attr(settings.message_attr);

if (link.search('http://') === -1){
link = 'http://www.latimes.com' + link;
}
link = encodeURIComponent(link);

/* If it's at the top of the page, the shareTip will pop under the element */
if (offset.top

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