In Venice, a new business bloom on Rose Avenue

Step inside the Rose Market near the corner of Rose and 5th avenues in Venice, and make your way to the refrigerator in the back. Small orange price stickers say that $3.50 will get you 40 ounces of Bud Light.

To pay, slide your money through a slot to a cashier who sits behind bulletproof glass.

Take 10 steps west and you're staring at a funky building that looks as if it's been covered with moon rocks. At Moon Juice, $3.50 will buy you just a two-ounce shot of a detoxifying acid mineral complex called "Liquid Light" and a bit of change for the tip jar. If you want a full glass of organic cold-pressed "Gracious Greens" juice, it'll cost you $12.

To pay, hand your money to young workers who give each other massages behind the counter while serving their customers.

Skid Rose, meet Restaurant Rose.

Urban planners say Rose Avenue is unlikely to become the next Abbott Kinney — the nearby boulevard recently dubbed "The Coolest Block in America" by GQ magazine — but the breakneck pace of change along these once shabby blocks connecting Lincoln Boulevard to Pacific Avenue suggests that the down-and-out bohemian days of this countercultural beach neighborhood are numbered.

If Rose Avenue could turn white-hot overnight, other Venice streets could soon follow.

"The tipping point," said former City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, "has been tipped."

::

When he created his "Venice-of-America" in 1905, Abbott Kinney envisioned a showcase of art and culture. Instead, said Betsy Goldman, Venice Historical Society co-founder, the public insisted on a "honky-tonk" carnival atmosphere with gondola excursions and camel rides.

For decades that carnival vibe was reincarnated: In the 1950s and '60s, Goldman said, Venice served as a gathering place for hippies, homeless people and beatnik intellectuals and musicians like Jim Morrison. Beach life and an atmosphere of permissiveness drew motorcycle gang members and drug addicts as well. Pawn shops and liquor stores sprouted.

Venice gained a reputation as a rough outpost among beach communities. Occasional violence and the presence of homeless people deterred business owners for years. By the early 1990s, police say, area crime had hit an all-time high.

But Rose Avenue rents were cheap. A few retailers thought they might draw shoppers from Santa Monica. So Alan Schniderman opened his DNA Clothing store on the block in the 1980s.

People slept in a nearby parking lot, he said. Cockroaches scuttled across the asphalt. Schniderman recalls a red curtain that marked a peep show just off Rose Avenue on Main Street.

The rehabilitation of the Venice Canals in the early 1990s made the surrounding property in the south part of the neighborhood more attractive but largely left Rose Avenue and adjoining Oakwood behind.

Schniderman was shocked when a tiny wine shop opened two blocks down in 2006.

"When they opened," he said, "I thought, 'They're never going to make it.'"

::

"Hey, hey, good to see ya!" Oscar Hermosillo shouted over the chatter, clapping a friend on the back. The owner of Venice Beach Wines couldn't even walk out the back of his wine bar one recent Friday night. The 500-square-foot space was packed tighter than standing room only.

When Hermosillo got some wiggle room, he greeted three more people on the way to the door and then stopped to chat with two men outside. A few steps away, a woman bundled in layers of shirts and jackets emerged from Rose Market with a beer and retrieved a shopping cart filled with her belongings. Two couples wrapped in peacoats and sweater vests strutted past her in the other direction.

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Supreme Court Asked to Review $222K Landmark File-Sharing Case

Infamous file-sharer Jammie Thomas-Rasset asked the Supreme Court on Monday to review a jury’s conclusion that she pay the recording industry $222,000 for downloading and sharing two dozen copyrighted songs on the now-defunct file-sharing service Kazaa.

Thomas-Rasset, the first person to defend herself against a Recording Industry Association of America file-sharing case, said the damages were unconstitutionally excessive and were not rationally related to the harm she caused to the music labels.

“Put more plainly: In a civil case, Thomas–Rasset cannot be punished for the harm inflicted on the recording industry by file sharing in general; while that would no doubt help accomplish the industry’s and Congress’s goal of deterring copyright infringement, singling out and punishing an individual in a civil case to a degree entirely out of proportion with her individual offense is not a constitutional means of achieving that goal,” the petition said.

The Supreme Court has never heard an RIAA file-sharing case and has previously declined the two other file-sharing cases brought before it.

Thomas-Rasset’s case concerns an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in September that upheld a jury’s award against Thomas-Rasset. (.pdf)

The case dates back to 2007, and has a tortuous history involving a mistrial and three separate verdicts for the same offense — $222,000, $1.92 million and $1.5 million. Under the case’s latest iteration, a jury last year awarded the RIAA the $1.5 million, which the court reduced to $54,000, ruling that the jury’s award for “stealing 24 songs for personal use is appalling.”

The convoluted decision of the appeals court in September, however, found that the original $222,000 verdict from the first case should stand, and that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Minnesota should not have declared a mistrial in the first trial over a flawed jury instruction.

In her appeal to the Supreme Court, Thomas-Rasset argues that the Copyright Act, which allows damages of up to $150,000 per infringement, is unconstitutionally excessive. But the Obama administration, which weighed in on the case when it was in the appellate courts, said the large damages award was allowed because it “is reasonably related to furthering the public interest (.pdf) in protecting original works of artistic literary, and musical expression.”

The only other file-sharer to challenge an RIAA lawsuit at trial was Joel Tenenbaum, a Massachusetts college student, whose case followed Thomas-Rasset’s. The Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear his case in May, however, letting stand a Boston federal jury’s award of $675,000 against him for sharing 30 songs.

In the third RIAA file-sharing case against an individual to go before the Supreme Court’s justices, the high court declined to review a petition that would have tested the so-called “innocent infringer” defense to copyright infringement.

Generally, an innocent infringer is someone who does not know she or he is committing copyright infringement. Such downloaders get a $200 innocent-infringer fine.

Most of the thousands of RIAA file-sharing cases against individuals have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars. In 2008, the RIAA ceased a five-year campaign it had launched to sue individual file sharers and, with the Motion Picture Association of America, has since convinced internet service providers to begin taking punitive action against copyright scofflaws, including possibly terminating their service.

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Andy Serkis plays dual role in ‘Hobbit’ – Gollum and director

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Andy Serkis reprises his role as Gollum in “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” to be released worldwide this week, but his main role this time was as a second unit director, shooting battle sequences in 3D for director Peter Jackson.

The British-born actor, 48, who rose to fame as the obsessive Gollum in Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, spoke with Reuters about playing the popular CGI character, and his role behind the camera in New Zealand for “The Hobbit.”

Q: Was it nice to get re-acquainted with Gollum after almost 10 years?

A: “Yes, but he’s never been that far away from me. Not a day goes by where I’m not reminded of Gollum by some person in the street who asks me to do his voice or wants to talk to me about him. But because ‘The Hobbit’ has been talked about as a project for many years, I knew that at some point I’d have to reengage with him.”

Q: Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins) is new to the franchise and so are many other actors. As a veteran, did they come to you for advice?

A: “It sort of manifested itself more in a way where (as a vet) you understand the scale and scope of what’s required stamina-wise. It’s a different rhythm than most movies. For a lot of the actors, you’re 12,000 miles away from home. It becomes a way of life – getting up at five in the morning, shooting every day, day in day out, for 270 days. The new cast playing the dwarves were carrying incredibly heavy weights in their suits, they sat through hours of make-up every day. So it’s quite challenging from a stamina point of view.”

Q: Playing Gollum was not your only job. You were also doing second unit directing. What did that entail?

A: “Directing was my main job this time – more than playing Gollum. I worked 200 days with a huge team shooting battle sequences, aerials. It was an amazing experience and one which I was very, very thankful to Peter for asking me to do.”

Q: How did that come about?

A: “I’d already started directing short films when we were doing ‘Lord of the Rings,’ then videogame projects. So Peter’s known that I’ve been heading towards directing for a long time. But I always thought my first outing would be a couple of people and a digital camera in the back streets of London somewhere!”

Q: Why do you think Peter let you do it?

A: “I think because the second unit was going to have a lot of principal cast, Peter wanted someone that could take care of the performances and create an atmosphere where the actors felt safe. Obviously I was briefed closely by Peter. But it was a huge challenge – mental, technological. I’d never shot with 3D. Plus the day to day logistics of dealing with such an enormous operation.”

Q: Any plans to direct again?

A: “Just before I headed off to New Zealand to work on ‘The Hobbit,’ I was in the process of setting up (my new company) The Imaginarium (with producer Jonathan Cavendish), which is a performance-capture studio and a development company. We are developing our own slate of film projects, one of which is George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm.’ It’s going to be the first film that I’ll be directing.”

Q: Where does acting fit in to your newfound career?

A: “At the moment, my trajectory isn’t to think about acting. I’m absolutely devoted to The Imaginarium, our projects and directing. And watching and enabling other actors do their thing in our studio is hugely rewarding. I expect at some point I’ll probably want to go back on stage and do some theater, because I’ve not done theater in 10 years.”

Q: With two more installments of “The Hobbit” still to come over the next few years, you’ll be the voice of Gollum for fans for many more years. Are your kids proud or embarrassed when you’re asked do his distinctive raspy voice?

A: “I’m probably running out of credits in terms of my kids enjoying me do the Gollum voice for others. Especially my older ones (Ruby, 14, Sonny, 12). It was cool when they were younger. But my youngest (Louie, 8) absolutely revels in it. He would have me do it all day long for his friends at school. So I still have great currency there!”

(Reporting By Zorianna Kit; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Nick Zieminski)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.

The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.

The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them.

Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ”

Researchers say they are not sure what is behind the declines. They may be an early sign of a national shift that is visible only in cities that routinely measure the height and weight of schoolchildren. The decline in Los Angeles, for instance, was for fifth, seventh and ninth graders — the grades that are measured each year — between 2005 and 2010. Nor is it clear whether the drops have more to do with fewer obese children entering school or currently enrolled children losing weight. But researchers note that declines occurred in cities that have had obesity reduction policies in place for a number of years.

Though obesity is now part of the national conversation, with aggressive advertising campaigns in major cities and a push by Michelle Obama, many scientists doubt that anti-obesity programs actually work. Individual efforts like one-time exercise programs have rarely produced results. Researchers say that it will take a broad set of policies applied systematically to effectively reverse the trend, a conclusion underscored by an Institute of Medicine report released in May.

Philadelphia has undertaken a broad assault on childhood obesity for years. Sugary drinks like sweetened iced tea, fruit punch and sports drinks started to disappear from school vending machines in 2004. A year later, new snack guidelines set calorie and fat limits, which reduced the size of snack foods like potato chips to single servings. By 2009, deep fryers were gone from cafeterias and whole milk had been replaced by one percent and skim.

Change has been slow. Schools made money on sugary drinks, and some set up rogue drink machines that had to be hunted down. Deep fat fryers, favored by school administrators who did not want to lose popular items like French fries, were unplugged only after Wayne T. Grasela, the head of food services for the school district, stopped buying oil to fill them.

But the message seems to be getting through, even if acting on it is daunting. Josh Monserrat, an eighth grader at John Welsh Elementary, uses words like “carbs,” and “portion size.” He is part of a student group that promotes healthy eating. He has even dressed as an orange to try to get other children to eat better. Still, he struggles with his own weight. He is 5-foot-3 but weighed nearly 200 pounds at his last doctor’s visit.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m obese for my age,’ ” said Josh, who is 13. “I set a goal for myself to lose 50 pounds.”

Nationally, about 17 percent of children under 20 are obese, or about 12.5 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines childhood obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex. That rate, which has tripled since 1980, has leveled off in recent years but has remained at historical highs, and public health experts warn that it could bring long-term health risks.

Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, creating a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Cancer Society says that being overweight or obese is the culprit in one of seven cancer deaths. Diabetes in children is up by a fifth since 2000, according to federal data.

“I’m deeply worried about it,” said Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who added that obesity is “almost certain to result in a serious downturn in longevity based on the risks people are taking on.”

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Mobile Apps for Children Fall Short on Disclosure to Parents, F.T.C. Report Says

Several hundred of the most popular educational and gaming mobile apps for children fail to give parents basic explanations about what kinds of personal information the apps collect from children, who can see that data and what they use it for, a new federal report says.

The apps often transmit the phone number, precise location or unique serial code of a mobile device to app developers, advertising networks or other companies, according to the report by the Federal Trade Commission, released Monday. Regulators said such information could be used to find or contact children or track their activities across different apps without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

The agency reviewed 400 of the most popular children’s apps available on Google and Apple platforms, and reported that only 20 percent disclosed their data collection practices.

“The survey results described in this report paint a disappointing picture of the privacy protections provided by apps for children,” the report said.

Regulators said they were investigating whether the practices of certain apps violated a federal law requiring Web site operators to get parents’ permission before collecting or sharing names, phone numbers, addresses or other personal information obtained from children under 13.

The report comes as the agency is preparing to strengthen those protections by requiring site operators to obtain parental consent before collecting many other kinds of personal information from children.

But over the last few months, the agency’s efforts have met with pushback from Apple, Facebook, Google and Viacom as well as from technology associations and marketing industry groups, who say the agency’s proposed solution is so broad that it could inhibit companies from offering sites, apps and other services for children.

In its report, the agency did not disclose the names of apps it found problems with.

“We think this is a systematic problem,” said Jessica Rich, the associate director of the F.T.C.’s division of financial practices, adding that parents should not think “if they avoid certain apps, they are home free.”

Representatives of the app industry said they had already been working with app developers to make disclosures about data collection clearer and simpler for consumers. But “the F.T.C. report is a reminder that there is more work to do,” said Jon Potter, the president of the Application Developers Alliance, an industry group.

The agency’s researchers also reported that most apps failed to tell parents when they involved interactive features like advertising, social network sharing or allowing children to make purchases for virtual goods within the app.

For instance, researchers found that 58 percent of the children’s apps contained ads, even though just 15 percent disclosed this before download. Moreover, of the 24 apps that stated they did not contain in-app advertising, 10 did contain ads, the report said.

Children’s advocates said the report’s findings reinforced the need to strengthen online privacy protections for children. The agency has not substantially revised its regulations based on the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or Coppa, since the law’s introduction more than a decade ago.

“This makes the case as to why we need major revisions,” said James Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy and education group in San Francisco that focuses on children and technology. “It shows that parents don’t have enough information to make good choices.”

The timing of the report suggests that the agency is trying to lay the groundwork for its push for broader children’s online privacy protections. In interviews, agency officials have said the protections needed to be modernized to keep pace with developments in mobile apps, voice recognition, facial recognition and comprehensive online data collection by marketers.

For example, regulators have proposed a longer list of data about children that would require parental consent for Web site operators to collect, including photos, voice recordings and unique mobile device serial numbers. Agency officials have also emphasized that they considered the precise location of a mobile device to be personal information whose collection required parental permission.

If the agency includes these changes in the final version of its updated regulations, apps would need to get parental consent for a number of data collection practices that are in widespread use.

For example, agency researchers reported that almost 60 percent of the children’s apps in the study transmitted a device’s ID number, most commonly to an advertising network or another third party. But only 20 percent of the apps disclosed information about these kinds of practices. Regulators said their concern was that marketers or other entities could use these unique device numbers to follow individual children across multiple apps over time, compiling detailed dossiers on their activities.

“The transmission of kids’ information to third parties that are invisible and unknown to parents raises concerns,” the report said.

Although state and federal regulators, along with industry groups, have been working to improve disclosures for consumers about how mobile apps collect and use their data, progress has been incremental.

Kamala D. Harris, the attorney general of California, signed an agreement this year with seven leading app platforms to make sure apps available through their stores displayed privacy policies. She also recently sent letters to 100 companies whose apps, she said, did not comply with a California law requiring them to post privacy policies.

Last week, Ms. Harris’s office sued Delta Air Lines for not warning users of its Fly Delta app that it collected personal information like a user’s full name, phone number, e-mail address, photographs and location.

App industry associations have also been working to improve transparency for consumers and parents. For instance, the Application Developers Alliance, in a joint project with the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups, has created prototype disclosure notices that apps could voluntarily display before consumers download them.

“I think the app industry continues to work with our members, companies and consumer groups to identify and eventually implement more effective ways of communicating with consumers,” said Mr. Potter, the president of the app developers’ group.

Ms. Rich of the Federal Trade Commission said she hoped the agency’s report would “light a fire” under such efforts. She added that the agency intended to conduct studies regularly on the children’s app market and publicly report its findings.

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Boehner, Obama talk 'fiscal cliff' at White House

WASHINGTON -- After days of theatrics and threats from both sides, President Obama met privately with House Speaker John A. Boehner at the White House on Sunday afternoon as the two principal negotiators stepped up discussions aimed at crafting an agreement to thwart a looming budget showdown.

Little more than three weeks remain before the nation could face widespread tax increases and massive spending reductions if they cannot produce a deal.

"This afternoon, the president and Speaker Boehner met at the White House to discuss efforts to resolve the fiscal cliff," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican. He provided no details, but added that "lines of communication remain open."

A White House official also declined to share details of the meeting. But it was the clearest sign yet that after a week of public posturing and dire warnings intended to sway public opinion, the private negotiations may be producing progress.

Obama and his allies on Capitol Hill increasingly believe they have the stronger hand over congressional Republicans in their effort to push up marginal tax rates for high-income earners.

Polls indicate the public largely agrees with the president's assertion that income tax rates for households  earning more than $250,000 a year should rise to 39.6% from 35%, as they are scheduled to do in the new year. Some key congressional Republicans have indicated the November election results left them with little leverage to stop a tax rate hike. Democrats widened their majority in the Senate and picked up seats in the GOP-controlled House.

Boehner, of Ohio, continues to press for deep spending reductions, including cuts to Medicare, Social Security and other widely popular programs, and he has said he is prepared to increase revenue by changing the tax code to lower deductions, not by raising taxes. The speaker has proposed a two-part framework that would push some decisions onto the new Congress next year.

The secretive talks Sunday occurred after a week in which Obama held several campaign-style public events aimed at highlighting the White House argument that Republicans risk damaging a fragile but recovering economy by refusing to meet his demands for higher taxes for the wealthy. The president will continue the effort Monday with a trip to the Daimler Detroit Diesel plant in Redford, Mich.

If no agreement is reached, virtually all the tax cuts passed under the George W. Bush administration would expire on Dec. 31, resulting in a $2,200 tax hike for an average family of four next year.

Economists warn that those broad tax increases, along with across-the-board deep spending cuts for virtually every government program and department, could cause the economy to contract sharply and send the nation into another recession.

Congress is expected to resume on Monday, and Republicans who control the House have changed their calendar to remain in session an additional week before the holidays as both sides try to craft a deal.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) joined Obama at the White House for a one-on-one talk Friday that lasted 40 minutes. An aide to the Democratic leader characterized it as a "good meeting."

Obama has also been in regular telephone contact with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who would be instrumental in any deal with the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Republicans have sought to shift blame for the standoff onto the White House, complaining that the president is spending more time campaigning than negotiating.

"Ask the president to come off the campaign trail," Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), the majority whip, said on "Meet the Press" Sunday. "Tomorrow he's going to Detroit. It's now time to govern. The election is over."

But Democrats insist Republicans have little choice but to compromise with the White House, or risk raising taxes on ordinary Americans.

"The American people spoke on this issue in the election," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, on "Meet the Press." "I'd say to Speaker Boehner and Congressman McCarthy, listen to what the American people said in the election; listen to the fact that two out of three Americans believe that the wealthiest should pay a little more; and listen to your own caucus."

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lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Twitter: @lisamascaroindc, @khennessey

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Star Formation in Carina

The spectacular star-forming Carina Nebula has been captured in great detail by the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. This picture was taken with the help of Sebastián Piñera, President of Chile, during his visit to the observatory on 5 June 2012 and released on the occasion of the new telescope’s inauguration in Naples on 6 December 2012.

Image: ESO. Acknowledgement: VPHAS+ Consortium/Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit [high-resolution]

Caption: ESO

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Mother of News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch dies at 103

MELBOURNE/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, matriarch of the Murdoch media empire and mother of News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch, was both an inspiration and outspoken critic of her tumultuous family and balm to some of its excesses.

A philanthropist and tireless charity worker regarded for years in her homeland as a national treasure, Murdoch died on Wednesday night at her sprawling home outside Melbourne, a city she loved for its genteel culture, aged 103.

Murdoch was a uniting force in both the community and within her family, where she would often voice concerns to her publisher son over his brand of journalism, including racy exclusives on celebrities and partisan stance on politics.

“We don’t always see eye-to-eye or agree, but we do respect each other’s opinions and I think that’s important,” she told Australian television ahead of her 100th birthday in 2009.

“I think the kind of journalism and the tremendous invasion of people’s privacy, I don’t approve of that,” she said.

Murdoch’s death comes at the end of a tumultuous year for News Corp, with the company under attack over phone hacking in Britain and amid tensions among those in line to one day replace Rupert Murdoch at the head of the company.

Harold Mitchell, a major figure in Australia‘s advertising industry who has done charity work alongside Murdoch, said Dame Elisabeth was deeply respected by her family and the community.

“I always found she was a great force in binding together many parts of the community and all people within her influence, and I’m sure she had that same affect on her family,” Mitchell told Reuters.

Equal to the zeal with which the Murdoch publishing empire has defended its news gathering methods, the far-flung Murdoch clan have also worked hard to mask their own differences, including rivalries between Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, Elisabeth, and sons James and Lachlan, over the company’s leadership and direction.

Elisabeth, 44, a prominent television businesswoman, had been critical of her brother James’s stubbornness during the phone hacking scandal, the New Yorker magazine reported this month, while Lachlan always bristled over his father’s close supervision and left News Corp in 2005.

“He moved to Australia, and although he remains on the News Corp board, he has busied himself with his own media investments. James, the youngest, became the new heir, but he has always resented that Lachlan was their father’s favorite,” the magazine said.

FAMILY FOCUS

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, with her forthright but graceful criticism and focus on family, was always able to draw warring family members back together, including after Rupert Murdoch’s much publicized divorce of Anna Murdoch and marriage to Wendi Deng in 1999.

Murdoch, who would have been 104 in January, is survived by 77 direct descendants, including three children Anne Kantor, Janet Calvert-Jones and Rupert. Her fourth and eldest child, Helen Handbury, died in 2004.

“Throughout her life, our mother demonstrated the very best qualities of true public service,” Rupert said in a statement issued by News Ltd, the Australian arm of News Corp.

“Her energy and personal commitment made our country a more hopeful place and she will be missed by many.”

Murdoch, 82, remained close to his mother despite leading a global media empire that required him to split his time between Australia, Asia, Britain, New York, and Los Angeles, among other places.

A young Melbourne socialite, Murdoch was 19 when she married Rupert’s father, Keith, in 1928. When Keith Murdoch died in 1952, Rupert took over his father’s newspaper business and set about turning it into a global media empire.

Elisabeth Murdoch was a prominent philanthropist, serving on and forming numerous institutes that promoted medical research, the arts and social welfare, and she was a supporter of more than 100 charities and organizations.

Her work earned her civil honours in both her native Australia and Britain, and she was made a Dame in 1963 for her work with a Melbourne hospital.

She believed that charity work involved being involved with people, and was more than just giving money.

She also decried the world’s obsession with materialism and wealth at the expense of personal relationships.

“I think it’s become a rather materialistic age, that worries me. Money seems to be so enormously important and I don’t think wealth creates happiness,” she told a television interviewer.

“I think it’s personal relationships which matter. And I think there’s just a bit too much materialism and it’s not good for the young.”

While her son remains a divisive figure, Elisabeth Murdoch was widely admired in Australia and her death attracted tributes from across the political divide.

“Her example of kindness, humility and grace was constant. She was not only generous, she led others to generosity,” Prime Minister Julia Gillard said as she offered condolences to the Murdoch family.

(Reporting by Adam Kerlin in New York and James Grubel and Rob Taylor in Canberra; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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A Breakthrough Against Leukemia Using Altered T-Cells

PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.

It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.

Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.

The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free, and about seven months later is still in complete remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.

Emma had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010, when she was 5, said her parents, Kari and Tom. She is their only child.

She is among just a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment, which was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Similar approaches are also being tried at other centers, including the National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June, who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania. He hopes the new treatment will eventually replace bone-marrow transplantation, an even more arduous, risky and expensive procedure that is now the last hope when other treatments fail in leukemia and related diseases.

Three adults with chronic leukemia treated at the University of Pennsylvania have also had complete remissions, with no signs of disease; two of them have been well for more than two years, said Dr. David Porter. Four adults improved but did not have full remissions, and one was treated too recently to evaluate. A child improved and then relapsed. In two adults, the treatment did not work at all. The Pennsylvania researchers were presenting their results on Sunday and Monday in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Despite the mixed results, cancer experts not involved with the research say it has tremendous promise, because even in this early phase of testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases. “I think this is a major breakthrough,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello, a cancer expert and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. John Wagner, the director of pediatric blood and marrow transplantation at the University of Minnesota, called the Pennsylvania results “phenomenal” and said they were “what we’ve all been working and hoping for but not seeing to this extent.”

A major drug company, Novartis, is betting on the Pennsylvania team and has committed $20 million to building a research center on the university’s campus to bring the treatment to market.

Hervé Hoppenot, the president of Novartis Oncology, called the research “fantastic” and said it had the potential — if the early results held up — to revolutionize the treatment of leukemia and related blood cancers. Researchers say the same approach, reprogramming the patient’s immune system, may also eventually be used against tumors like breast and prostate cancer.

To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s T-cells — a type of white blood cell — and insert new genes that enable the T-cells to kill cancer cells. The technique employs a disabled form of H.I.V. because it is very good at carrying genetic material into T-cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turn malignant in leukemia.

The altered T-cells — called chimeric antigen receptor cells — are then dripped back into the patient’s veins, and if all goes well they multiply and start destroying the cancer.

The T-cells home in on a protein called CD-19 that is found on the surface of most B-cells, whether they are healthy or malignant.

A sign that the treatment is working is that the patient becomes terribly ill, with raging fevers and chills — a reaction that oncologists call “shake and bake,” Dr. June said. Its medical name is cytokine-release syndrome, or cytokine storm, referring to the natural chemicals that pour out of cells in the immune system as they are being activated, causing fevers and other symptoms. The storm can also flood the lungs and cause perilous drops in blood pressure — effects that nearly killed Emma.

Steroids sometimes ease the reaction, but they did not help Emma. Her temperature hit 105. She wound up on a ventilator, unconscious and swollen almost beyond recognition, surrounded by friends and family who had come to say goodbye.

But at the 11th hour, a battery of blood tests gave the researchers a clue as to what might help save Emma: her level of one of the cytokines, interleukin-6 or IL-6, had shot up a thousandfold. Doctors had never seen such a spike before and thought it might be what was making her so sick.

Dr. June knew that a drug could lower IL-6 — his daughter takes it for rheumatoid arthritis. It had never been used for a crisis like Emma’s, but there was little to lose. Her oncologist, Dr. Stephan A. Grupp, ordered the drug. The response, he said, was “amazing.”

Within hours, Emma began to stabilize. She woke up a week later, on May 2, the day she turned 7; the intensive-care staff sang “Happy Birthday.”

Since then, the research team has used the same drug, tocilizumab, in several other patients.

In patients with lasting remissions after the treatment, the altered T-cells persist in the bloodstream, though in smaller numbers than when they were fighting the disease. Some patients have had the cells for years.

Dr. Michel Sadelain, who conducts similar studies at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, said: “These T-cells are living drugs. With a pill, you take it, it’s eliminated from your body and you have to take it again.” But T-cells, he said, “could potentially be given only once, maybe only once or twice or three times.”

The Pennsylvania researchers said they were surprised to find any big drug company interested in their work, because a new batch of T-cells must be created for each patient — a far cry from the familiar commercial strategy of developing products like Viagra or cholesterol medicines, in which millions of people take the same drug.

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Mobile Video Calling Spreads as Smartphones and Tablets Improve

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Tango engineers developing a cross-platform mobile voice and video, text, picture and video messaging application.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — The next competition in technology is your face — anywhere, anytime.

As the cameras and screens of smartphones and tablets improve, and as wireless networks offer higher bandwidth, more companies are getting into the business of enabling mobile video calls.

The details vary from one service to the next, but the experiences are similar: from anywhere in the world with a modern wireless network, a smartphone’s screen fills with the face of a friend or relative. The quality is about the same jerky-but-functional level as most desktop video. Sound is not always perfectly synced with the image, but it is very close. The calls start and end the same way, by pressing a button on the screen.

Mobile video calling has risen so quickly that industry analysts have not yet compiled exact numbers. But along the way, it is creating new business models, new stresses on mobile networks and even new rules of etiquette.

“All the communications — social messages, calls, texts and video — are merging fast,” said Eric Setton, co-founder and chief technology officer of Tango Mobile, whose free video calling service has 80 million active users. An additional 200,000 join daily, Mr. Setton said.

Once an interesting endeavor for a few start-ups like Tango, mobile video has caught the attention of big companies. Apple created FaceTime and made it a selling point for the iPad.

In September, the company made FaceTime available on cellular networks instead of limiting it to Wi-Fi systems, almost certainly in response to increasing consumer demand.

Last week, Yahoo purchased a video chat company called OnTheAir. And in 2011, Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for Skype, a service for both video and audio-only calls. Though most people use Skype on desktop and laptop computers, the software for the service has been downloaded more than 100 million times just by owners of phones running Google’s Android mobile operating system. Microsoft built a service for its Windows 8 mobile phone that lets people receive calls even when Skype is not on.

Google, which has more than 100 million people a month using its Google Plus social networking service, now offers more than 200 apps for its video calling feature. It says it is interested not in making money on the applications, but in learning more about them so it can sell more ads by getting people to use its free video service, called Hangouts. Hangouts can be used for two-person or group calls, or for a video conference with up to 10 people.

“On a high level, Google works better when we know who you are and what your interests are,” said Nikhyl Singhal, director of product management for Google’s real-time communications group. “Video calling is becoming a basic service across different fronts.” While Mr. Singhal is an occasional user, he said, his 4-year-old daughter “is on it every day.”

Don’t expect video calling to improve productivity. Tango uses the same technology that enables video calls to sell games that people can play simultaneously. It sells virtual decorations like balloons to drop around someone’s image during a birthday call (both parties see the festive pixels). Google says some jokey applications on Hangouts, like a feature that can put a mustache over each caller, seem to encourage people to talk longer.

Currently, popular two-way games like Words With Friends on Facebook work by one player making a move and then passing the game over to the other player, not watching moves as they are made. Another promising area is avatars, like cartoon dogs and cats, that mouth speech when a user wants to have a video call but does not want to be seen.

The prospect of having to appear on-screen at any given moment might sound like a nonstarter for people who worry about bad hair days. But in fact, using mobile devices for video calls may be less bother than it seems.

“There may be natural inhibitions to being seen, but when I’m on a mobile device I’m out and about, so I’m more likely to be presentable,” said Michael Gartenberg, a consumer technology analyst at Gartner. “How people use this remains to be seen, but they are starting to expect it.”

Yet a new etiquette for mobile video calls is already emerging. People often text each other first to see if it’s O.K. to appear on camera. Video messages sent in the text box of a phone, like snippets of a party or a child’s first steps, are also useful precursors to video conversations. Mr. Singhal said making avatars for users of Hangout would be “an extraordinarily important area” as well.

The greatest challenge for the business may not be getting more consumers to use the service, but making sure the service works. Most phones have slight variations in things like camera placement and video formatting from one model to the next. “A camera can show you upside down if you load the wrong software on it,” said Mr. Setton of Tango.

As a result, the 80 engineers among Tango’s 110 employees have adjusted their software to work on more than 1,000 types of phones worldwide. The top 20 models have more than a million customers each, but the complexity of building software for a wider range of phones has made it hard for new mobile video companies to enter the field, Mr. Setton said.

Tango’s average video call used to last six minutes, Mr. Setton said, but when the company started adding other applications to go with the videos, like games and designs that float over people, the average call length rose to 12 minutes.

Brian X. Chen contributed reporting.

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