Jovan Belcher of Kansas City Chiefs dead in suspected murder-suicide

Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs shot and killed his girlfriend, then drove to the team’s practice facility and killed himself in front of team officials, police said Saturday.

Police confirmed to the Kansas City Star the player was Belcher, 25, one of the team’s starting linebackers and a four-year veteran of the NFL.

PHOTOS: Jovan Belcher's NFL career

In a briefing outside of Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City Police Department spokesman Darin Snapp said the player shot his girlfriend “several times” at about 7:50 a.m. local time Saturday. The victim’s mother was there and reported the shooting.

By the time police arrived, Belcher was gone. Twenty minutes later, police were called to Arrowhead Stadium’s practice facility. Belcher was outside of the facility’s front doors with a gun to his head. According to the Associated Press, Chiefs Coach Romeo Crennel and General Manager Scott Pioli were there at the time and were talking to Belcher.

The player shot himself just as police arrived.

Snapp said Belcher and his girlfriend had been arguing recently, but offered no further details.

The area where Belcher shot himself was locked down briefly but has since reopened.

The Chiefs coaches called a team meeting for later in the day, Snapp said.

NFL executives and players took to Twitter after the incident.

Said NFL Players Assn. Assistant Executive Director George Atallah: “There is nothing profound or comforting to say that can help us understand or explain a situation like this. We have been in touch with players. At a time like this, we can only come together as a family and a community.”

Oakland Raiders wide receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey tweeted: “Very sad day in the NFL FAMILY. My prayers go out [to] the Chiefs and families involved.”

Louis Murphy Jr., a wide receiver with the Carolina Panthers, tweeted: “Thoughts and prayers go out to the Kansas City Chiefs players and family.”

The Chiefs  are scheduled to play the Carolina Panthers on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium. The NFL told the Panthers to continue traveling to Kansas City for Sunday’s game, the Charlotte Observer reported.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

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Geek Culture's 26 Most Awesome Female Ass-Kickers

Angelina Jolie extends her reputation as filmdom’s most compelling ass-kicker, Female Division, when Salt opens Friday. Midway through a summer freighted with testosterone, Jolie’s lithe Agent Salt is a potent reminder of the power of feminine fighters.

A minority presence in sci-fi and action realms even in 2010, women warriors remain the exception to the guy-centric rule in film, TV, videogames and comic books. But that’s changing, according to Action Flick Chick blogger Katrina Hill, who moderates the "Where Are the Action Chicks?" panel Friday at San Diego’s Comic-Con International.

"Compare the original Predator to this summer’s Predators," she said in an e-mail interview with Wired.com. "The original film was a complete boy’s club, with the only woman in the movie being a hostage. Today, Predators has a kick-ass chick mixed in as an equal amongst these other badass men. So there are steps being taken in the right direction. It just takes time."

The rise of the female fighter will be addressed at no fewer than three other female-dominated panels at this year’s Comic-Con (Thursday’s “Divas and Golden Lassoes: The LGBT Obsession with Super Heroines” and Friday’s “Girls Gone Genre: Movies, TV, Comics, Web” and “Women Who Kick Ass: A New Generation of Heroines,” which features Fringe’s Anna Torv and V’s Elizabeth Mitchell.)

Here’s a look at 26 sexy-fierce female ass-kickers who’ve relied on biceps and brains to periodically kick-start geek culture.

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Show sheds light on Handel’s hidden “Messiah” helper

LONDON (Reuters) – Anyone dusting off their copy of George Frederic Handel‘s “Messiah” in the run-up to Christmas this year might spare a thought for the unsung hero of the piece.

Without Charles Jennens, experts argue that the 18th century oratorio would never have been created, robbing Western choral music of one of its greatest works.

Handel House Museum, located in the cozy London home where the German-born composer spent much of his life, is seeking to put the record straight about a man who, for many reasons, has been passed over by history.

“The Messiah would not have been written without him,” said the museum’s director Sarah Bardwell of Jennens, who lived from 1700 to 1773.

For landowner and patron of the arts Jennens, the words to the Messiah were an expression of deeply held Protestant beliefs, and he was determined that Handel, a composer he had long championed, set it to music.

The words, famously opening with “Comfort ye”, are not Jennens’ own but carefully selected verses from the Bible as well as a small number of psalms from the Book of Common Prayer.

“If you listen to the words it’s all to do with your relationship with God as in the individual, there’s none of the big theological questions,” Bardwell told Reuters.

“Everyone can relate to the Messiah, even beyond Christianity on some level,” she added. “I think that’s why Jennens is so instrumental.”

FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR

Jennens, whose family fortune came from iron, was a friend of Handel and a major backer, subscribing to his music and providing the texts for “Saul”, “Belshazzar”, “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato” and probably “Israel in Egypt”.

So important did Handel consider Jennens that he referred to “your oratorio Messiah” in a letter to the librettist and made a detour on his way home from its premiere in Dublin to visit Jennens and tell him of its success with audiences.

The exhibition, “The Man Behind Messiah”, includes Handel’s autographed score of Saul which Jennens also annotated, suggesting changes to the composer’s work including a different entry point for the words “impious wretch”.

Yet Jennens’ name never appeared on scores, helping to explain why his contribution is largely unknown. An intensely private man, Jennens had reasons for remaining anonymous.

As a “non-juror”, or someone who did not endorse the Hanoverian royal dynasty that succeeded the House of Stuart, he was effectively barred from holding positions of authority.

And when, late in life, he published groundbreaking single-volume editions of some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, he was attacked by a rival, Shakespearean commentator George Steevens (Eds: correct), and, thus, once again overlooked.

“It’s another reason he becomes kind of cut out of history,” Bardwell explained. “It’s been a fascinating insight into how people can just be written out of history.”

Ironically, despite his fundamental role in the Messiah and some of Handel’s other great oratorios, Jennens was not the biggest fan of a work that took less than a month to compose.

“He just thought Handel maybe rushed it off too quickly,” said Bardwell. Ruth Smith, the curator of the exhibition, believes Handel had the manuscript for about 18 months before he started work on it.

“For it to be rattled off in three weeks, I think Jennens felt that maybe he hadn’t done himself justice.

“I don’t think he ever quite got over his opinion that it wasn’t as good as he had hoped it was going to be. I think that also doesn’t help his reputation. I’m not sure he ever quite recovered from that.”

The Man Behind Messiah runs until April 14, 2013.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)

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Tennis umpire Lois Goodman: 'I have always maintained my innocence'

Tennis umpire Lois Goodman thanked her friends and family for supporting her and said she is "thrilled" to get her life back after a judge agreed Friday to dismiss the murder case against her.

"I feel wonderful!" Goodman said, standing in the rain outside the courthouse, flanked by her attorneys.

"I want to thank my family and my attorneys, my friends. Their support has been wonderful. And I want to thank the D.A.'s office for doing the right thing. I have always maintained my innocence."

Her niece wiped away tears as the family exited the courtroom.

Prosecutor Alan Yochelson did not explain why the Los Angeles County district attorney's office asked the judge to dismiss the case, noting only that it was "unable to proceed." Sources, who did not want to be named because the investigation is ongoing, said experts retained by authorities said the evidence in the case could show that Alan Goodman's death was an accident.

Lois Goodman has maintained that she returned to the couple's Woodland Hills home and found her 80-year-old husband dead in bed and a bloody trail leading up the stairs to their bedroom. She told authorities she believed that he had taken a fatal fall.

Paramedics thought the scene was suspicious and left Alan Goodman's body undisturbed. But police later determined that evidence at the home supported her version of events. Alan Goodman's body was taken directly to the mortuary, without a coroner's investigator or homicide detectives visiting the home.

But three days later, a coroner's investigator visited the mortuary to sign the death certificate. He reported "deep penetrating blunt force trauma" on Alan Goodman's head and ears. Those observations launched the homicide investigation.

Defense attorney Alison Triessl declined to comment on the investigation.

"Today is not the day to assess any blame," she said. "It is an amazing day for justice and Miss Goodman. She has gone through hell with this case. She has always maintained her innocence. We have always believed that she did not do it, and we have fought every day."

At the end of the news conference, Robert Sheahen, another attorney on Goodman's defense team, joked: "We're going to Disneyland!"

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Video Tour: The Force Is Strong at Rancho Obi-Wan

Rancho Obi-Wan is an homage to all things Star Wars. Located on a ranch in Northern California, it houses the world’s largest private collection of memorabilia based on George Lucas’ sci-fi empire.

The place has everything from original film props to models and collectible lunch boxes. There’s even a bike kitted out with a Darth Vader horn and other Star Wars accessories. So far, Rancho Obi-Wan has cataloged 95,000 items, but its operators estimate they have more than 300,000 things in the massive collection.

A nonprofit, Rancho Obi-Wan gives tours to school groups, geeks and, luckily, Wired video teams. It’s all about giving back to the Star Wars community. Check out the awesome collection in our video tour led by Steve Sansweet, chief executive of Rancho Obi-Wan and the biggest Star Wars fan in the galaxy.

And if you’d like to start a collection of your own, check out this eBay auction of 1,950 Star Wars action figures. Fon Davis, a longtime model maker at Industrial Light & Magic, donated the collectibles, with the auction’s proceeds going to benefit Rancho Obi-Wan.

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No charges against Chris Brown in Fla. phone grab

MIAMI (AP) — Grammy-winning singer Chris Brown won’t be charged with a crime after a woman claimed he snatched her cell phone when she tried to take his photo outside a Miami Beach club.

A memo released Friday by the Miami-Dade County State Attorney‘s office concludes there is no evidence that Brown intended to steal the phone in February or that he deleted the photo. One or the other is necessary for him to be charged.

Prosecutors say that Brown tossed the phone from his limo and that it was picked up by security.

A felony charge against the 24-year-old might have triggered a violation of his probation for his 2009 assault on singer Rihanna, who was his girlfriend at the time. The two have recently collaborated on a new duet.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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George H.W. Bush hospitalized for bronchitis

Former President George H.W. Bush has been hospitalized with bronchitis in Houston for six days, his spokesman said. (Tom Pennington / Getty Images / March 29, 2012)

By Joe Serna

November 29, 2012, 10:10 a.m.

Former President George H.W. Bush is being treated for bronchitis in Houston’s Methodist Hospital, officials there confirmed Thursday.

Bush, 88, has been in and out of the Texas Medical Center for treatment and is scheduled to be released within the next 72 hours, his representatives said in a statement. The 41st president is listed in stable condition.

The Houston Chronicle reported Bush has been in the hospital for about a week.

The former director of the CIA has been known for his vitality in spite of his advanced age. He celebrated his 75th, 80th, and 85th birthdays by going skydiving and joined President Clinton on a humanitarian trip overseas after the 2004 tsunami and visited New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Bush suffers from vascular Parkinson’s disease and missed his first Republican National Convention in decades earlier this year.

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Frozen Water and Organic Material Discovered on Mercury

For the first time, scientists have confirmed that the planet Mercury holds at least 100 billion tons of water ice as well as organic material in permanently shadowed craters at its north pole.

The findings come from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, which has been in orbit around the solar system’s smallest and innermost planet since 2011. Researchers have suspected that ice could exist in such craters since 1992, when Earth-based radar measurements found bright areas at the planet’s polar regions. Craters in this area cast long shadows, which prevent any sunlight from reaching their floors.

Though alternative explanations had been put forward to account for the radar-bright areas, MESSENGER has provided convincing evidence for water ice on the planet closest to our sun, where surface temperatures can sometimes reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit. The results appeared in three studies Nov. 29 in Science.

MESSENGER was able to detect water ice because it carries a neutron spectrometer that looks at energetic neutrons bouncing off Mercury’s surface. Water gives off a characteristic neutron signature. The spacecraft measured the area around Mercury’s north pole and found this characteristic signature, suggesting that between 100 billion and 1 trillion tons of water ice was present somewhere in the area. But the neutron spectrometer has fairly low resolution, on the order of hundreds of miles, so it can’t definitively say if this water is inside the craters. (If it were outside, daytime temperatures would have boiled the water away.)

Because they contain no light, MESSENGER’s cameras can’t see right inside the permanently shadowed regions. But the spacecraft carries a useful workaround tool. To map its height above the surface, the probe uses an altimeter that shoots a 10-nanosecond infrared laser pulse at the ground and intercepts the returning beam.

“We can measure the energy that comes back from the laser,” said planetary scientist Gregory Neumann of NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, and lead author on one of the Science studies. Though the number of photons coming back is slight, “we could expect to see glints of brightness from surface water ice.”

Early results from MESSENGER presented a puzzle. Not only were there no bright spots in the permanently shadowed craters where radar measurements suggested ice, the surface was actually much darker than Mercury’s average color. “We were really surprised by this,” said Neumann.

The spacecraft continued to search, examining more and more craters. Finally, the laser spotted some dazzling crater floors that were two to four times brighter than the rest of Mercury’s surface. This was finally good evidence for the long-sought water ice. By modeling the temperature in and around different craters, scientists were able to determine the northernmost craters stayed cold enough over millions of years to hold onto water ice.

But what about the strange dark craters? Radar measurements suggested ice, but MESSENGER wasn’t confirming the result. The temperature models showed that these craters corresponded exactly to regions that would sometimes receive a small amount of scattered sunlight. This itsy bit of energy would heat the frozen water’s surface enough to sublimate it away. Dark organic compounds dissolved in the ice got left behind as residue and would slowly form a black cover, about 8 to 11 inches thick, which protected any remaining ice from getting vaporized by random sunbeams.

The organic material is likely made of hydrocarbons like methane and ethane, commonly found in comets and asteroids. “At room temperature it would be kind of gooey stuff, to use the technical term,” said planetary scientist Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institute, who leads the MESSENGER team. Because the layer is relatively thin, it’s invisible to radar.

The MESSENGER team now thinks they have a good story to explain how these polar cold traps work. Every once in a while, a comet or asteroid hits Mercury and gets annihilated. The vaporized material either floats out into space or gets blasted away by the sun but any that finds its way into a permanently shadowed region will settle down. Molecule by molecule, water and other compounds build up inside the craters. Those that never see a ray of sunlight contain mostly clean water ice. But if even a tiny amount of light intrudes, it may heat up the water and cause it to recede below a layer of organic material.

“These look like really good results, and I think they are very convincing,” said planetary scientist Johannes Benkhoff from the Institute of Planetary Research in Germany, who is the lead scientist on the European Space Agency’s BepiColombo mission, which is expected to orbit Mercury in 2022. MESSENGER will provide many follow-up opportunities for this later mission, which will have its own neutron spectrometer to map the water ice regions with greater resolution.

In addition to being an astounding result, the finding can help scientists better understand the history of Earth. Mercury is a terrestrial planet like our own and the ice provides evidence for geologically recent delivery of water and carbon-rich material to the inner solar system from comets and asteroids. This process very likely happened billions of years in the past, when the Earth first formed, creating our planet’s oceans and possibly seeding them with the material to produce life.

“There’s now this record on Mercury, a place where we least expected to find it, of this process,” said Solomon. “It gives us a window to understanding this delivery system.”

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Cost of Brand-Name Prescription Medicines Soaring

The price of brand-name prescription medicines is rising far faster than the inflation rate, while the price of generic drugs has plummeted, creating the largest gap so far between the two, according to a report published Wednesday by the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts.

The report tracked an index of commonly used drugs and found that the price of brand-name medicines increased more than 13 percent from September 2011 to this September, which it said was more than six times the overall price inflation of consumer goods. Generic drug prices dipped by nearly 22 percent.

The drop in the price of generics “represents low-hanging fruit for the country to save money on health care,” said Dr. Steve Miller, the chief medical officer of Express Scripts, which manages the drug benefits for employers and insurers and also runs a mail-order pharmacy.

The report was based on a random sample of six million Express Scripts members with prescription drug coverage.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade group representing brand-name manufacturers, criticized the report, saying it was skewed by a handful of high-priced specialty drugs that are used by a small number of patients and overlooked the crucial role of major drug makers.

“Without the development of new medicines by innovator companies, there would be neither the new treatments essential to progress against diseases nor generic copies,” Josephine Martin, executive vice president of the group, said in a statement.

The report cited the growth of specialty drugs, which treat diseases like cancer and multiple sclerosis, as a major reason for the increase in spending on branded drugs. Spending on specialty medicines increased nearly 23 percent during the first three quarters of 2012, compared with the same period in 2011. All but one of the new medicines approved in the third quarter of this year were specialty drugs, the report found, and many of them were approved to treat advanced cancers only when other drugs had failed.

Stephen W. Schondelmeyer, a professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of Minnesota, said the potential benefits of many new drugs did not always match the lofty price tags. “Increasingly it’s going to be difficult for drug-benefit programs to make decisions about coverage and payment and which drugs to include,” said Mr. Schondelmeyer, who conducts a similar price report for AARP. He also helps manage the drug benefit program for the University of Minnesota.

“We’re going to be faced with the issue that any drug at any price will not be sustainable.”

Spending on traditional medicines — which treat common ailments like high cholesterol and blood pressure — actually declined by 0.6 percent during the period, the report found. That decline was mainly because of the patent expiration of several blockbuster drugs, like Lipitor and Plavix, which opened the market for generic competitors. But even as the entry of generic alternatives pushed down spending, drug companies continued to raise prices on their branded products, in part to squeeze as much revenue as possible out of an ever-shrinking portfolio, Dr. Miller said.

Drug makers are also being pushed by companies like Express Scripts and health insurers, which are increasingly looking for ways to cut costs, said C. Anthony Butler, a pharmaceuticals analyst at Barclays. “I think they’re pricing where they can but what they keep telling me is they’re under significant pressure” to keep prices low, he said.

Express Scripts earns higher profits from greater use of generic medicines than brand name drugs sold through their mail-order pharmacy, Mr. Butler said. “There’s no question that they would love for everybody to be on a generic,” he said.

Dr. Miller acknowledged that was true but said that ultimately, everyone wins. “When we save people money, that’s when we make money,” he said. “We don’t shy away from that.”

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U.S. Growth Revised Up, but Year-End Slowdown Is Feared

Even as the government said that the United States economy grew faster than first estimated in the third quarter, economists warned that the rate of expansion could slow sharply before the end of the year as worries mount about the fiscal impasse in Washington.

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

An employee on the assembly line this month at Generac Power Systems in Whitewater, Wis., a maker of residential generators.

The Commerce Department said Thursday that gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30, well above the 2 percent estimate it initially made in late October. But the revision was driven by increased inventory accumulation and a jump in federal spending — factors unlikely to be repeated in the current fourth quarter, economists said.

What’s more, the revised figures show spending by businesses on equipment and software declined by 2.7 percent in the third quarter, the first decrease since the end of the recession in mid-2009 and a sign of just how cautious many companies have become amid the uncertainty in Washington and slowing growth in Asia and Europe.

“It’s a nice headline number,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, of the 2.7 percent rate, “but it exaggerates the underlying momentum in the economy. Sustainable improvements in growth are not driven by inventories.”

The two biggest growth areas in the third quarter — inventory growth and federal spending — “are likely to be minuses in the fourth quarter,” he said. Mr. Gault expects the annual rate to sink to 1 percent this quarter, hurt by a fiscal stalemate in Washington as well as the aftereffects of Hurricane Sandy.

To be sure, there were signs of optimism in Thursday’s data. Residential fixed investment rose 14.2 percent, a sign that the housing recovery is gaining steam. Indeed, a separate report Thursday from the National Association of Realtors showed pending home sales rose to a two-and-a-half-year high.

And not all economists took a pessimistic view. “The economy certainly hasn’t taken off, but it’s nowhere close to a stall,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist for JPMorgan Funds. “The economy is still underperforming its full potential, but once we get past the ‘fiscal cliff’ uncertainty, we could see stronger growth next year.”

The new estimate of growth represents a substantial increase in the level of the second quarter, when the economy grew at a rate of just 1.3 percent. It also marks the fastest rate of expansion since the fourth quarter of 2011, when the economy grew at a 4.1 percent annual pace.

This was the second of the government’s three estimates of quarterly growth. The final figure is scheduled for Dec. 20.

“Over all, it was a disappointing report,” said Michelle Meyer, senior United States economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.  The accumulation of inventories went from subtracting 0.1 percentage points from the initial estimate to adding 0.8 percentage points, she said.

    “A lot of that inventory build was unintentional, which suggests a downside risk for the fourth quarter,” she said.  “Businesses had expected stronger sales and consumer spending and were caught off guard."

    Ms. Meyer said she expected the economy to grow by 1 percent in the fourth quarter and 1 percent in the first quarter of 2013, well below the level needed to bring down the unemployment rate, which stood at 7.9 percent in October.

    On Thursday, the government also reported that first-time unemployment claims dropped by 23,000 to 393,000 last week. But Ms. Meyer cautioned that these figures were much more volatile than usual because of the Thanksgiving holiday as well as Hurricane Sandy.

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Norquist: GOP concern over tax pledge just 'impure thoughts'

Grover Norquist on Wednesday rebuffed claims that his anti-tax crusade is losing steam, calling statements from prominent Republicans hinting at their departure from his anti-tax pledge "impure thoughts."

Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, met with Politico’s Mike Allen to offer his thoughts on the looming “fiscal cliff,” and the growing narrative that Republicans, after years of tying themselves to ATR’s pledge not to raise taxes, may be ready to jump ship.

Most recently, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in a private meeting with the House Republican whip team Tuesday morning that Republicans should take the opportunity to extend President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for 98% of Americans, calling it an “early Christmas present” for taxpayers.

And on Sunday, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) joined Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) in voicing concern over continued adherence to Norquist’s pledge.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) responded to Cole on Wednesday, saying that though Cole is a friend and supporter, he disagrees entirely with his stance. “The goal here is to grow the economy and control spending. You’re not going to grow the economy if you raise tax rates on the top two rates,” Boehner said.

Though Norquist commented that Cole’s recommendation was “an interesting tactic,” he remained firm that his pledge remains viable, saying that anyone suggesting that opposing tax increases is no longer in vogue is “an idiot.”

The pledge, Norquist claimed, “takes weasel words out” of campaign promises to cut taxes, and provides voters a clear picture of a candidate's stance, a stance he said the Republican Party has built its brand upon.

Norquist said that signing the pledge is about informing voters and entrenching a preexisting policy stance, instead of an oath of fealty to ATR and its champion cause.

“They don’t need my permission to raise taxes,” he said, adding that such power lies in the hands of voters.

And he dismissed claims that the pledge’s powers extend beyond the promises tied to its concise wording.

“It doesn’t solve all of the world’s problems; it doesn’t design tax reform,” Norquist said.

But Norquist did design a general road map for Republicans to use in fiscal cliff negotiations.

“You need to have this conversation in public, you need to be online so you can have the moral higher ground,” he said, recommending that the GOP aim for a temporary extension of Bush’s tax cuts, with comprehensive tax reform to follow soon after.

“If the Republicans lose in such a way that they have their fingerprints on the murder weapon, then you have a problem,” he said, adding that public debate over the fiscal cliff would allow Republicans a chance to turn the tide against President Obama and the Democrats, so long as they maintain “credible clarity” in espousing their low-tax vision.

Norquist said he worries about conceding any ground to Democrats on tax increases.

“What the Democrats do is trickle-down taxation,” he said. “They tax the rich and then they screw everybody.”

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Stare Into the Eye of This Insane Storm on Saturn

This mind-boggling storm at Saturn’s North Pole, captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on Nov. 27, looks like it’s going to swallow you right up.

An incredible amount of detail can been seen of the magnificent storm system, with wispy clouds curling back on themselves as they swirl around the storm’s eye. Cassini captured the image in infrared wavelengths, which can peer deep into Saturn’s cloud layers. You can click on the image above to see a higher-resolution version or visit Cassini’s raw image page to gape at a few more shots of the storm.

The ringed gas giant planet is no stranger to such enormous maelstroms. During 2010 and 2011, Cassini captured the “Great Springtime Storm” on Saturn. This powerful system encircled the entire planet and was the largest storm Saturn had seen in more than 21 years, covering 2 billion square miles, or eight times the surface area of the Earth. Even after that storm calmed down, it produced the largest and hottest vortex ever seen in the solar system.

Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Adam is a Wired reporter and freelance journalist. He lives in Oakland, Ca near a lake and enjoys space, physics, and other sciency things.

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F.D.A. May Tap Experts on Energy Drinks

The Food and Drug Administration said in a letter released on Tuesday that it was likely to seek advice from outside experts to help determine whether energy drinks posed particular risks to teenagers or people with underlying health problems.

The letter appears to signal a change in the agency’s approach to the drinks, which contain high levels of caffeine.

Previously, F.D.A. officials have said that they were investigating possible risks posed by popular products like 5-Hour Energy, Monster Energy and Red Bull. But an agency spokeswoman, Shelly Burgess, said the new letter was the first time that the F.D.A. had said it might turn to outside experts.

The F.D.A. letter, which was released Tuesday by Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, follows disclosures that the agency received reports of 18 deaths and over 150 injuries that mentioned the possible involvement of energy drinks.

The filing of such reports with the F.D.A. does not prove that a product was responsible for a death or an injury. Energy drink makers have said their products are safe and were not responsible for the health problems.

The officials said a review of the drinks might be “greatly enhanced by also engaging specialized expertise” from an outside group, like the Institute of Medicine, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences.

Industry analysts said the letter indicated that the F.D.A. did not plan any immediate actions on energy drinks, an interpretation that set off a rally on Tuesday in the stock of Monster Beverage, the producer of Monster Energy. Company shares closed at $51.97, up over 13 percent. Any regulatory outcome is likely to be “benign,” Judy Hong, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, said in a note to investors, according to Bloomberg News.

In Canada, however, the use of an outside panel led to limits on caffeine levels in energy drinks.

In their letter, F.D.A. officials indicated that an outside review would focus on the possible risks posed by high levels of caffeine, a stimulant, to certain groups. They reiterated that daily consumption of significant levels of caffeine, which is found in products like coffee and tea, is safe.

“Areas of particular focus would include such matters as the vulnerability of certain populations to stimulants and the incidence and consequence of excessive consumption” of energy drinks, especially by young people, F.D.A. officials wrote.

In Canada, an expert panel made several recommendations, including arguing that such beverages be labeled “stimulant drug-containing drinks.”

Health Canada, that country’s counterpart to the F.D.A., did not adopt many of the group’s recommendations, but it has put in place new rules limiting caffeine levels in cans of energy drinks to 180 milligrams.

Some larger-size cans of energy drinks sold in the United States, like the 24-ounce can of Monster Energy and the 20-ounce can of Red Bull, have caffeine levels above that limit.

An eight-ounce cup of coffee, depending on how it is made, can contain from 100 to 150 milligrams of caffeine.

In the new letter, F.D.A. officials also said that studies that had examined other ingredients, like taurine, that are often used in energy drinks had determined those substances were safe. The agency also said that a survey suggested that energy drinks constitute a small portion of the caffeine consumed in this country, even by teenagers.

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State of the Art: Tablets Are Hot Holiday Gifts, but Which One to Buy? - Review

From left: J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times, Jim Wilson/The New York Times, Everett Kennedy Brown/European Pressphoto Agency

From left, the Kindle PaperWhite, the iPad Mini and the  Nexus 7.

The other day, I joined NPR for a segment about high-tech holiday gifts. I was ready for the calls from listeners. I’d brushed up on cameras, phones, laptops, music players and game consoles. I was prepared to talk about limiting screen time, digital addiction, cyberbullying. I knew where to get the best deals.

But all six callers had the same question: “What tablet should I get?”

There were variations, of course. “— for my kid?” “— for my elderly father?” “— just for reading?” “— for not much money?” But in general, it was clear: the gadget most likely to be found under the tree this year is thin, battery-powered and flat.

No wonder people are confused. The marketplace has gone tablet-crazy. There’s practically a different model for every man, woman and child.

There’s the venerable iPad, of course. And now the iPad Mini. There are new tablets from Google, also in small and large. There are Samsung’s Note tablets in a variety of sizes, with styluses. There are $200 touch-screen color e-book/video players. There’s a new crop of black-and-white e-book readers. There are stunningly cheap plastic models you’ve never heard of. There are tablets for children (and I don’t mean baby aspirin).

So how are you, the confused consumer, supposed to keep tabs on all these tablets? By taking this handy tour through the jungle of tablets 2012. Keep hands and feet inside the tram at all times.

DIRT-CHEAP KNOCKOFFS You can find no-name tablets for $100 or even less. You can also find mystery-brand Chinese tablets in toy stores, marketed to children.

Don’t buy them. They don’t have the apps, the features, the polish or the pleasure of the nicer ones. The junk drawer is already calling their names.

E-BOOK READERS The smallest, lightest, least expensive, easiest to read tablets are the black-and-white e-book readers. If the goal is simply reading — and not, say, watching movies or playing games — these babies are pure joy.

Don’t bother with the lesser brands; if you’re going to get locked into one company’s proprietary, copy-protected book format, you’ll reduce your chances of library obsolescence if you stick with Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Each company offers a whole bunch of models. But on the latest models, the page background lights up softly, so that you can read in the dark without a flashlight. (These black-and-white models also look fantastic in direct sun — now you get the best of both lighting conditions.)

The one you want is the Kindle PaperWhite ($120), whose illumination is more even and pleasant than the equivalent Nook’s.

Of course, plain, no-touch, no-light Kindles, with ads on the screen saver, start as low as $70. But the light and the touch-screen are really worth having.

COLOR E-READERS/PLAYERS Amazon and B.& N. each sell a seven-inch tablet that, functionally, lands somewhere between an e-book reader and an iPad. They have beautiful, high-definition touch screens. They play music, TV shows, movies and e-books. They can surf the Web. They even run a few handpicked Android apps like Netflix and Angry Birds.

They’re nowhere near as capable as full-blown, computerlike tablets of the iPad/Nexus ilk, mainly because there are so few apps, accessories and add-ons. But they cost $200; you’re paying only a fraction of the price.

The big two here are, once again, Amazon and B.& N. If you’re not already locked in to one of those companies’ books and videos because you owned a previous model, the Nook HD is the one to get. It’s much smaller and lighter than the Kindle Fire HD. It has a much sharper screen. And the $200 price includes a wall charger (the Fire doesn’t) and no ads (the Fire does). Or get the classy Google Nexus 7, also $200. Although its book/music/movie catalog is far smaller, its Android app catalog is far larger (but see “iPad versus Android,” below).

BIG COLOR READERS/PLAYERS This year, both Amazon and B.& N. have introduced jumbo-screen (9-inch) versions of their HD tablets. Here again, B.& N. offers a better value than its 9-inch Kindle Fire HD rival. For $270, the Nook HD+ offers a sharper screen, lighter weight, no ads, a memory-card slot and a wall charger.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

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Cyber Monday sales up 17% to nearly $2 billion, exceeding forecast

Cyber Monday online sales beat forecasts by nearly half a billion dollars.

ComScore on Monday predicted that Cyber Monday would generate $1.5 billion in online sales, but according to Adobe, the shopping day ended up raking in $1.98 billion, which was a 17% increase compared to last year.

That practically doubled online Black Friday sales, which topped $1 billion this year for the first time, according to ComScore.

Video chat: Finding deals on Cyber Monday

And if Cyber Monday's online sales weren't impressive enough, Adobe says that mobile shopping doubled from last year and accounted for 22% of Cyber Monday sales.

On the opposite end of that spectrum was social, which referred only a dismal 2% of total site visits on Cyber Monday. Even worse for Facebook and Twitter is the fact their number of referrals stayed the same as last year's, while Pinterest's referrals for the holiday grew 105%, accounting for 15% of social referrals.

As for what people were buying, Adobe said that toys and sporting goods led the way, followed by health and beauty. Home and auto was the third most selling category.

Adobe said you can follow its tracking of online holiday shopping with this tool, which keeps track of current sales and estimates how the rest of the holiday shopping days will fare.

ALSO:

Internet surfing while driving is on the rise

Apple's new ultra-thin iMac goes on sale Friday

Tumblr now among top 10 U.S. sites with 168 million global users

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Google Pairs Gmail, Drive for an Easy Way to E-Mail Huge Files

Google is making it easier than ever to send large files via e-mail. The company has announced a new feature that puts all your Google Drive documents just a click away from Gmail. Now you can quickly and easily attach files from Google Drive to Gmail messages.

That means you can attach files up to 10GB in size, which is some 400 times larger than what Gmail will allow you to do with typical e-mail attachments. Of course the reason files can be so large is that Google isn’t actually sending the files; it’s merely sending a link to your recipients who can then access them through Google Drive.

Gmail has a clever new feature that checks to make sure that all your recipients actually have permission to view your Drive files. The feature works a bit like Gmail’s forgotten-attachment detector — if you forgot to grant permission to one of your recipients Gmail will prompt you to do so before sending your e-mail.

Like most new features from Google, the new Google Drive integration will be rolling out to Gmail users “over the next few days.” Note that in order to get the new Google Drive attachments feature you’ll need to opt-in to the new compose window option we wrote about earlier (see that post for full details on how to get started with Gmail’s new in-window compose dialog).

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Disney Channel to debut ‘Sofia the First’ Jan. 11

NEW YORK (AP) — Disney says its animated children‘s series “Sofia the First” will premiere Jan. 11 on the Disney Channel and Disney Junior networks.

Created for kids ages 2 to 7, “Sofia the First” is about a young girl who becomes a princess and learns that honesty, loyalty and compassion are what makes a person royal.

Sofia is voiced by “Modern Family” actress Ariel Winter, and her mother is played by “Grey’s Anatomy” star Sara Ramirez.

Last week’s premiere of the “Sofia the First” animated movie drew a total audience of more than 5 million viewers. It was the year’s top-rated cable TV telecast among kids ages 2 to 5.

In the series’ debut episode, Sofia strives to become the first princess to earn a spot on her school’s flying derby team.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Books: Woe Is Syphilis, and Other Afflictions of Famous Writers

The old Irishman was a swollen, wheezing mess, blood pressure wildly out of control, kidneys failing, heart fibrillating. “What we have here,” said his new Spanish doctor, “is an antique cardiorenal sclerotic of advanced years.”

In fact, what the doctor had there was William Butler Yeats: the poet had a long list of chronic medical problems and experienced one of his regular cardiac crises while wintering in Spain. He still had three poetically productive years ahead of him before he died of heart failure in 1939, at age 73.

What makes antique case histories like Yeats’s so compelling to research, so interesting to read? Admittedly, they have educational value — medicine moves forward by looking back — but their major attraction is undoubtedly the operatic vigor of their emotional punch. As we contemplate the poor health of historic notables, we can sigh gustily at the immense suffering our ancestors considered routine, wince at the lunatic treatments they so innocently underwent, and marvel over and over again that the body, the brain and the mind can take such divergent paths.

These pleasures are present in abundance in the newest addition to the genre of medical biography, “Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough.” Dr. John J. Ross, a Harvard physician, writes that he stumbled into the field by accident while trying to enliven a lecture on syphilis with a few literary references. The discovery that Shakespeare was apparently obsessed with syphilis (and suspiciously familiar with its symptoms) hooked Dr. Ross.

The resulting collection of 10 medico-literary biographical sketches ranges from the tubercular Brontës, whose every moist cough is familiar to their fans, to figures like Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose medical stories are considerably less familiar.

Dr. Ross’s discussion of Shakespeare is unique in the collection for its paucity of relevant data: so few details are known of the playwright’s life, let alone his health, that all commentary is necessarily supposition. Dr. Ross is not the first to note that references to syphilis are “more abundant, intrusive and clinically exact” in Shakespeare’s works than those of his contemporaries. This observation, along with the apparent deterioration of Shakespeare’s handwriting in his last years, leads to the hypothesis that Shakespeare had syphilis repeatedly as a young man, and wound up suffering more from treatment than disease.

The Elizabethans dosed syphilis with a combination of hot baths (treating the disease by raising body temperature endured into the 20th century), cathartics and lavish quantities of mercury. The drooling that accompanies mercury poisoning was considered a sign of excellent therapeutic progress, Dr. Ross writes: “Savvy physicians adjusted the mercury dose to produce three pints of saliva a day for two weeks.”

And so, when Shakespeare signed his will a month before he died with a shaky hand, was his tremor not possibly a sign of residual nerve damage from the mercury doses of his sybaritic youth? No amount of scholarship is likely to confirm this theory, but details of the argument are gripping and instructive nonetheless.

The story of the blind poet John Milton runs for a while along similar lines. Much is known about the long deterioration of Milton’s vision and other particulars of his delicate health, but Dr. Ross observes that many of his problems seem to have cleared up once he actually became blind. Was he vigorously medicating himself with lead-based nostrums in hopes of forestalling what Dr. Ross argues was probably progressive retinal detachment, then recovering from lead poisoning once his vision was irretrievably gone? Another intriguing if unanswerable question.

Just as the competing injuries of disease and treatment battered the luminaries of English and American literature, so did pervasive mental illness.

Jonathan Swift was a classic obsessive-compulsive long before he succumbed to frontotemporal dementia (Pick’s disease). Poor Hawthorne, so forceful on the page, was in person a tortured shrinking violet, the embodiment of social phobia and depression. Emily Brontë’s behavior was strongly suggestive of Asperger syndrome; Herman Melville was clearly bipolar; Ezra Pound was just nuts.

Yet they all wrote on, despite continual psychic and physical torments. Perhaps the thickest medical chart of all belongs to Jack London, who survived several dramatic episodes of scurvy while prospecting in the Klondike (he was treated with raw potatoes, a can of tomatoes and a single lemon), then accumulated a long list of other medical problems before killing himself (inadvertently, Dr. Ross argues) with an overdose of morphine from his personal and very capacious medicine chest.

Dr. Ross has not written a perfect book. The fictionalized scenes he creates between some of his subjects and their medical providers should all have been excised by a kindly editorial hand, which might also have addressed more than a few grammatical errors. Frequent leaps from descriptive to didactic mode as Dr. Ross updates the reader on various medical conditions can be jarring, like PowerPoint slides suddenly deployed in a poetry reading. True literary scholars might dismiss the book as lit crit lite, a hodgepodge of known facts culled from the usual secondary sources.

But all these caveats fade into the background when Dr. Ross hits his narrative stride, as he does in chapter after chapter. Then the stories of the wounded storytellers unfold smoothly on the page, as mesmerizing as any they themselves might have told, those squinting, wheezing, arthritic, infected, demented, defective yet superlative examples of the human condition.

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News Analysis: St. Jude Medical Suffers for Redacting a Product Name

Peter Muhly for The New York Times

Dr. Ernest Lau holds a Durata lead from a St. Jude Medical Fortify ICD, an implanted heart defibrillator.

IS covering a product’s name in a public document a sign that a company has something to hide? And how should doctors, patients and investors react if the product at issue is one on which peoples’ lives and a company’s fortunes depend?

Such questions now loom over St. Jude Medical after the disclosure last week that its executives had blacked out the name of a heart device component when they released a critical federal report involving the product. The value of St. Jude has since plummeted more than $1 billion, or 12 percent. But the company’s actions may have a more lasting impact on its reputation and the health of patients, some experts say.

Last week’s incident was the latest development in a controversy involving the component, an electrical wire that connects an implanted defibrillator to a patient’s heart. St. Jude officials say the wire, which is known as the Durata, is safe. But uncertainty about the company’s statements is growing, underscored by its handling of the report, which involved a Food and Drug Administration inspection of a plant that makes the Durata.

St. Jude released that report in October as part of a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The F.D.A. provides device makers with the reports in an unaltered form, and they may contain criticisms of a company’s procedures.

But the version of the report that St. Jude filed with the S.E.C. left some doctors and analysts uncertain about which company product or products were at issue for a simple reason — St. Jude had redacted, or blocked out, all 20 references to the Durata in it.

Company executives said they had done so based on their “good faith” interpretation of how the F.D.A. would act if it publicly released the report under the Freedom of Information Act. But both an F.D.A spokeswoman and a lawyer who specializes in medical devices took exception with that view, saying that names of approved products typically do not qualify as the type of confidential business information that the F.D.A. would redact.

Among other things, F.D.A. inspectors found significant flaws in the company’s testing and oversight of the Durata. It was those revelations and the implications that the problems could lead to further F.D.A. action against St. Jude that led to the sharp fall last week in its stock price.

In 2005, Guidant, a device maker that no longer exists, also found itself under scrutiny. Back then, its executives decided not to tell doctors that one of its defibrillators could short-circuit when a patient needed an electrical jolt to save a life. The expert who brought the Guidant problem to light, Dr. Robert Hauser, a heart specialist in Minnesota, has also raised concerns about the St. Jude wires, adding that he believes that its executives have been less than forthright.

“Patients and physicians would appreciate more information,” Dr. Hauser said.

In an earlier interview, St. Jude’s chief executive, Daniel J. Starks, said the company had hidden nothing about the Durata or another heart wire named the Riata, which it stopped selling in 2010.

“We’ve been more transparent than others,” said Mr. Starks, referring to company competitors like Medtronic.

Still, some Wall Street analysts share Dr. Hauser’s view. And if one St. Jude executive can claim credit for shaping their opinion, it would be Mr. Starks.

Earlier this year, he sought, among other things, to have a medical journal retract an article written by Dr. Hauser that was critical of the Riata. The publication refused.

Now, after St. Jude’s latest misfire, Wall Street analysts, who usually agree more than disagree, are placing wildly differing bets on St. Jude, with some valuing it at $48 a share and others at $30. On Monday, St. Jude closed at $31.86 on the New York Stock Exchange.

One of those bearish analysts, Matthew Dodds of Citigroup, said he thought the Food and Drug Administration might act soon on Durata. “I believe that a lot of their actions have made the situation worse, ” he said of the company’s executives.

A St. Jude spokeswoman, Amy Jo Meyer, reiterated the company’s stance that it had interpreted agency rules in “good faith” when releasing the redacted report about the Durata. An F.D.A. spokeswoman, Mary Long, said the agency did not consider the names of approved products to be confidential. And a lawyer, William Vodra, said that while device makers try to make a confidentiality argument for product data they consider embarrassing, like injury reports, they rarely succeed.

“In my experience, the F.D.A. consistently rejects” such arguments, Mr. Vodra wrote in an e-mail.

For patients, the dilemma may become more excruciating. The company’s earlier heart wire, the Riata, has begun failing prematurely in some of the 128,000 patients worldwide who received it. And those patients and their doctors face a difficult decision: whether to leave it in place or have it surgically removed, a procedure that carries significant risks.

St. Jude executives say that the Durata, which uses a different type of insulation than the Riata, is not prone to such problems.

And with the Durata already implanted in 278,000 people, many heart specialists certainly hope they are right.

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Riordan abruptly ends bid to get L.A. pension measure on ballot

Former Mayor Richard Riordan speaks to the Los Angeles City Council on Nov. 20 about a half-cent sales tax increase. (Mark Boster /Los Angeles Times / November 26, 2012)

By David Zahniser and Kate Linthicum

November 26, 2012, 9:23 a.m.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan's push for a May ballot measure to cut pension benefits of city employees abruptly collapsed Monday, with a spokesman saying Riordan had suspended signature-gathering efforts.

Riordan's Save Los Angeles campaign had hoped to gather 300,000 signatures by Dec. 28 for a measure that would cut the pension benefits of existing employees and require new city workers to rely on a 401(k)-style retirement plan.

But according to a statement from spokesman John Schwada, "Riordan recently concluded that the Dec. 28 deadline cannot be met."

The statement said Riordan would explore other options "to accomplish the goal of pension reform."

“I ask the mayor, the city council and union heads to work with me over the next several months to save the city from bankruptcy and drastic cuts to public services," Riordan said.

The ballot measure proposal drew wide criticism from city employee unions, including the Police Protective League, which in recent weeks has sent out email blasts attacking Riordan.

Other city employee unions staged a vigil outside of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's house in protest of the proposed ballot measure.

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The 'SUV of Motorcycles' Offers Neither Sport nor Utility

Alessandro Tartarini, the son of Italjet founder Leopoldo Tartarini, has created a new category of motorcycle we didn’t know we needed. And based on the stats and those pesky laws of physics, we’re unconvinced it’s even a viable solution for the handful of potential buyers Tartarini and his company are targeting.

The design intent of the Brutus (no relation to the Brutus electric motorcycle or Caesar’s assassin) is to be a jack of all trades, handling serious off-road conditions while simultaneously being a practical long-distance cruiser. The big feature is the tires, which are 6 inches wide at the front, and 7 inches wide at the rear.

But as with any hybrid that attempts to blend the best of both worlds, the Brutus’ stats make it sound like a mis-imagined hodgepodge that won’t be good at anything.

To begin with, it weighs in at 485 pounds – about the same as 1,000cc tourers like the Ducati Multistrada. The reason tourers can’t go off road is because they’re far too heavy, which makes the Brutus overweight for dirt path duty.

Then there’s the suspension travel, which at 80mm at the front and 100mm at the rear, is far too short for hopping rocks and ripping through ruts. Most tourers have about twice that amount of travel, and use every millimeter of it.

But questionable stats aside, the Brutus is touted as “at home in any conditions” and “a valid work tool for going where other vehicles cannot.” Two dubious claims that combined with a 45bhp, 750cc single-cylinder liquid-cooled powerplant make even less of a case for Tartarini’s halved ATV.

The production model comes with an glut of options like a reverse gear, a sidecar, a winch, a generator, and even a “snow kit,” which converts the rig into a semi-snowmobile with a track out back. Look for a release next spring, although there’s no word on pricing.

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