Son of Nick Van Exel sentenced to 60 years on murder conviction

Nick Van Exel was taken 37th overall by the Lakers in the 1993 draft. (Vince Compagnone / Los Angeles Times / February 2, 2013)

By Eric Pincus

February 2, 2013, 7:06 a.m.

Sad news for a former Lakers All-Star. Nickey Maxwell Van Exel, the son of Nick Van Exel, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for murder in Texas on Friday.

The 22-year-old was found guilty Thursday of shooting Bradley Bassey Eyo in 2010.

Nick Van Exel was selected by the Lakers with the 37th overall pick in the 1993 NBA draft.

Before the arrival of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in 1996, Van Exel was the team's leader and go-to player.

Van Exel played with the Lakers until 1998, then was traded after an All-Star season for Tony Battie and the draft rights to Tyronn Lue.

He is currently on staff with the Atlanta Hawks in player development.

ALSO:

Lakers top Minnesota for first road win of 2013

Dwight Howard flying home for nonsurgical PRP procedure

Short list of players who fit within Lakers disabled player exception

Email Eric Pincus at eric.pincus@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @EricPincus.

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Apple TV Is Running Late

So, Apple‘s big plan to talk cable companies into making the iPod of the television industry thus far involves getting Time Warner to let it put HBO Go on its box (if you buy a cable subscription!), something other similar boxes already do. How very unexciting. It’s surprising that Apple TV doesn’t already offer HBO Go, since its biggest competitors Roku and Xbox 360 have had it for over a year. And it’s not like Apple has spent that time coming up with some innovative arrangement that would that would excite the cord-cutter (and cord-never) set. No, per Bloomberg’s   Edmund Lee and Adam Satariano, by mid-2013, Apple TV owners who also subscribe to cable or satellite TV can watch the premium channel through their TVs via Apple’s box. Yes, if you have an Apple TV, you can watch HBO either on it or through your cable box. The choice is yours!

RELATED: Apple Won’t Be Revolutionizing TV Anytime Soon if Cable Has Their Say

HBO Go is a modest improvement over the HBO On Demand offerings because it offers HBO’s entire library of shows, not just a select few. HBO also puts brand new episodes up right after they air, which is nice for people who forget to set or have a too-full DVR. But, cable subscribers already have access to HBO Go—on their computers. The improvement here is that existing subscribers now have another way to get those shows onto their TV screens.

RELATED: HBO Is Finally OK with Cord Cutting (In Scandinavia)

This too-late move to get Time Warner on its box surfaces a larger problem: Apple TV has very few apps so far, as AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka points out. HBO Go will bring its total outside app count up to 10, a ton fewer than Xbox and Roku. And yet, many have talked about Apple TV as the gadget that will change everything. Perhaps techies overlooked the deficit because the company has been in secret talks with cable companies to supposedly revolutionize TV for years. It’s coming, the Apple rumors promised, fending off any doubts that Apple would deliver something great. But, nothing exceptional has arrived yet, certainly nothing that sounds like the Apple TV code Steve Jobs claimed to have cracked shortly before his death. Rather, this sounds like something Apple should have done years ago. Apple, if anything, is playing catch-up. 

RELATED: Apple Might Be Making Apple TV Content Deals

But maybe Apple isn’t the place to look for the future of television. Elsewhere in TV land, something new, different, and possibly revolutionary is happening. Netflix, an entity that does not require a cable subscription, will release its first big-budget TV drama today. Unlike Apple, Netflix is trying to operate outside of the traditional cable-bundle structure in order to create an alternative for people who don’t want to pay into the old system. Instead of playing by HBO’s rules and selling its shows on its strict terms, Netflix wants to be the HBO of streaming TV, by creating premium shows that will draw people to Netflix for a premium price. Also in an attempt to do things differently, Netflix has released all the episodes at once, to appeal to our binge watching sensibilities. The experiment might not work. But at least, unlike Apple, Netflix is trying. 

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Why is Beckham sitting on the bench for nothing?

PARIS (AP) — David Beckham has won league championships in three countries on two continents, earns millions of dollars in endorsements and his name is practically synonymous with celebrity itself. He has his own cologne, for goodness sake. So why is he even bothering to sit on the bench for the Paris Saint-Germain football club?

His royal highness of football doesn't need the money — and he's said he'll donate his PSG salary to charity — but he does need to start thinking about life after the game. At 37, Beckham is practically a dinosaur for the sport, and he acknowledged in his welcoming press conference on Thursday that he probably won't be in the team's starting lineup.

Instead, Beckham may be beginning to put in place a plan for life after the final whistle. Ellis Cashmore, a sociologist who writes about sports and media culture at Staffordshire University, said that prolonged exposure is always useful to celebrities building empires. In that way, the deal with PSG does double work: It keeps his name in lights for longer and also garners extra attention for the charitable contribution.

"When he does stop playing, which is going to be quite soon, his overall brand appeal will inevitably decline because we will inevitably forget about this guy," he said. "I think he's probably thinking, I want to stay in the shop window for a bit longer."

But Cashmore also cautioned against being too cynical in assessing Beckham's motives: "The guy is an athlete. He wants to do what he loves to do."

Bruno Satin, an independent players' agent who was with IMG for a decade, also said that the move to PSG — even if it's to sit on the bench — is a step up for Beckham.

"For him, to be on the PSG team, it's a higher level than being on the Los Angeles Galaxy," he said. "For the world of football, for real football, the Los Angeles Galaxy is nothing on the map of football."

Some wondered if Beckham was trying to avoid the notoriously sticky fingers of the French state with his plans to donate his salary.

But Sandra Hodzic, a tax lawyer with Salans, said the deduction an individual can take on such contributions is limited. Instead, it would be smarter for PSG to directly donate the salary — and take a big tax break in the process.

Doing so would have an added benefit for the club: UEFA, the governing body for European football, mandates that clubs break even. The donation could allow PSG to essentially write off Beckham's entire salary — a huge help for a team notorious for mega-contracts.

Beckham, meanwhile, would be better off trying to avoid becoming a French tax resident at all. So far, Hodzic said, he is making all the right moves: His family is staying in London, he plans to live only part-time in the country for less than six months, and his primary source of income —whether or not he donates his salary — isn't being earned in France.

Beckham's agent did not return calls for comment on specifics of the contract.

Still, the charitable contribution has raised the question about what Beckham is getting out of the deal. For one, he likely is still getting a cut of rights to his image. Jerseys with his name on them were already selling out at the PSG store on the Champs-Elysees on Friday.

Cashmore, who wrote a book called "Beckham," calls him a "marketing phenomenon" and estimates that about 70 percent of Beckham's income comes from endorsement deals — with Adidas, for instance. That makes salary almost irrelevant — especially for a man estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to be worth 160 million pounds ($253 million).

But the football feeds the endorsements, Cashmore says.

"It makes an awful lot of business sense to perpetuate, to prolong his active competitive football career," he said, especially with a team that's doing fairly well this year. "It makes an awful lot of sense for him to showcase himself because it will generate more income from his various other sponsorship and licensing activities."

But certainly this move, as any at this late-stage in his playing career, is being made with an eye on what will come next. Cashmore said that when Beckham signed with the L.A. Galaxy, there was an understanding that he would eventually become an ambassador for American soccer. That plan clearly fell by the wayside — perhaps because Major League Soccer decided it was just too expensive to keep on the star after his presence on American soil failed to generate more interest in the game.

It's possible, Cashmore said, that Beckham is looking for a similar deal after his stint at PSG, which is Qatari-owned. The tiny, wealthy nation is hosting the World Cup in 2022, and Beckham's contract with PSG will establish a relationship with it; from there, a role as, say, an ambassador for the tournament would seem more natural.

"For his after-career conversion, it's important to have links with major actors in the world of sports," said Satin. And Qatar is certainly one. It has poured money into PSG, drawing major names like striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic. It also funds the satellite network Al Jazeera, which could provide Beckham with a platform. And then there's the World Cup.

In the end, though, Satin said the clue to Beckham's thinking may be as simple as the eternal draw of Paris.

"PSG has become a glamorous club, a pretty nice club in a beautiful city," said Bruno Satin, an agent. "It's just two hours on the Eurostar (train) from London."

____

AP Sports Writer Rob Harris contributed to this report from London.

____

Follow Sarah DiLorenzo at http://www.twitter.com/sdilorenzo

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Lafayette, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

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Deering Banjo in a groove

It all started with the Kingston Trio.

One day in 1963, a San Diego kid and his friends got their hands on an album by the popular folk group. Greg Deering, 12 at the time, recalls studying the musicians on the cover and thinking, "I've got to get a banjo" — not out of love for the twangy instrument but mainly because his pal already had a guitar.

Fifty years later, Greg, his wife, Janet, and daughter Jamie preside over the bestselling banjo-making business in the U.S.

From a small Spring Valley factory, the Deering Banjo Co. is having its best year ever, defying the U.S. skills gap and California's manufacturing doldrums. It has expanded and trained its own workforce and expects to top $4 million in sales for the year ending June 30.

Greg Deering, 62, is the creative force behind the banjo design and the machinery used to build them. Janet Deering, 58, handles operations. Daughter Jamie Deering, 34, might have the most fun job: liaison with the company's big-name roster of professional musician customers.

Over the company's 38-year history, it has developed a loyal following from the likes of Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, the Dixie Chicks, Steve Martin and Mumford & Sons. Artists who play Deering banjos rolled up 13 Grammy nominations this year.

Two of Deering's fans illustrate how the company has managed to ride the banjo's renaissance as an instrument that crosses several musical genres as varied as country, reggae and indie rock.

"It's great working with a family company, an American company that really cares about the artist and making top-quality banjos," said Jeff DaRosa, singer, bassist and banjo player for the Dropkick Murphys, the Boston-based Celtic punk band.

Scotty Morris, lead vocalist of the contemporary swing revival band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, called Deering Banjo "the quintessential American instrument builder."

"When I call Deering, I talk to a Deering, and I like that almost as much as I love the instruments they build," Morris said.

That kind of reputation combined with specially crafted manufacturing tools and a skilled, veteran workforce has helped the company weather the recession and cheap competition from China. Deering has been able to expand its workforce in a way that other companies have not, growing to 42 workers from 30 a year ago.

Although the nation as a whole has been adding manufacturing jobs, all California has done is reduce the rate of decline, said John Husing, principal of Redlands-based Economics and Politics Inc.

The most recent statistics available show that California ended 2012 with 1.23 million manufacturing jobs, down sharply from nearly 1.9 million in 2000 and marginally below the nearly 1.24 million in December 2011.

If you ask the Deerings what their greatest challenge has been, the answer has been running the business in California, particularly during a run-up in workers' compensation insurance premiums that began under Gov. Gray Davis.

"That nearly put us out of business. We're still paying off some of those debts," Greg Deering said, adding that the company has remained in California mostly because the family considers it home.

"And because we are stubborn. We are so stubborn," Janet Deering said.

Greg Deering credits his father, who worked in the Southern California aerospace industry, for developing his eye for design.

"He started me out on model airplanes when I was 2," Deering said. "He turned me loose on my own, making models when I was 5. At age 7, he bought me my first set of drafting tools."

But it wasn't until he was a student at San Diego State that he realized just what his father had done for him. There was an assignment to cut a board of certain dimensions from a rough block of wood. He was done with the assignment quickly and began working on a banjo. Weeks later, he realized the other students were still working on the block of wood.

"That was when it clicked for me," he said, later adding, "my father was a very intense mentor for me. He was teaching me how to be a craftsman."

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Edward Koch dies at 88; outspoken mayor led New York City comeback

Edward I. Koch, a Greenwich Village lawyer who became mayor of New York in the late 1970s and led the city out of one of its worst financial crises by stabilizing the budget and restoring its swagger, has died. He was 88.

Koch died early Friday of congestive heart failure in a Manhattan hospital, his friend and spokesman, George Arzt said. Koch had been hospitalized Monday, a day before a documentary about him, "Koch," premiered in New York City. He had complained of trouble breathing and other ailments, and it was the latest of several hospitalizations for the former mayor in recent months.

For most of his adult life, Koch had lived alone in an apartment off Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. It's where he departed the morning he rode a public bus to City Hall to be sworn in as the 105th mayor and where he returned 12 years later, at age 65, after a disastrous fourth run to keep the job he clearly relished and worked hard at. Voters had finally tired of his infatuation with himself and his racially divisive rhetoric; but far from retiring, Koch spent the rest of his life out of public office but never out of public view.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2013

He juggled almost a dozen jobs including law partner, columnist, author, radio show host, playwright, movie reviewer, public speaker and appeared relentlessly in the media, a shtick-artist with one of the most recognizable New York accents in the world. When he wasn't bellowing at opponents on political round tables, he was hawking everything from diet aids to soft drinks in advertisements and popping up in screen cameos playing always himself, the quintessential New Yorker, alongside Carrie and the girls in episodes of "Sex in the City" or with Big Bird in "The Muppets Take Manhattan."

He was pivotal in a September 2011 upset that put a Republican into the heavily Democratic congressional district that had been held by Rep. Anthony Weiner, who had been forced to resign in a "sexting" scandal. Koch helped catapult Republican Bob Turner to an unlikely victory in the special election to replace Weiner after he endorsed Turner to show his anger with President Obama's Middle East policy. "Ed Koch was enough to turn this around," Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf said after Turner's win.

For his 86th birthday, New York's current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, renamed the Queensboro Bridge linking Manhattan to Koch's home borough of Queens after him, saying the bridge – now officially known as the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge -- was like Koch: "a resilient, hard-working New York City icon."

"He was a great mayor, a great man, and a great friend," Bloomberg said in a statement Friday after Koch's death. "In elected office and as a private citizen, he was our most tireless, fearless, and guileless civic crusader. Through his tough, determined leadership and responsible fiscal stewardship, Ed helped lift the city out of its darkest days and set it on course for an incredible comeback."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo echoed the sentiment. "No New Yorker has -- or likely ever will -- voice their love for New York City in such a passionate and outspoken manner than Ed Koch," said Cuomo. "New York City would not be the place it is today without Ed Koch's leadership over three terms at City Hall."

City flags were ordered flown at half-staff.

"He was the epitome of New York--loud, funny, opinionated, smart," said Arzt, a former reporter who became Koch's spokesman in City Hall and had lunch with him every Saturday after he left, along with 10 other alumni of the administration. "Ed was very much a straight shooter, a champion of the middle class, a moderate Democrat akin to a Harry Truman. He defied categories."

In fact, Koch loved to enrage liberals by doing and saying the unthinkable--endorsing Republican politicians (John Lindsay, Rudolph Giuliani, George W. Bush) and their beliefs (the death penalty). But Koch also held fast to many liberal values. A civil libertarian, Koch made one of his first executive orders when he became mayor to add sexual preference to a citywide ban on job discrimination.

He not only never shied away from controversy, he invited it; unlike successors Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, he enjoyed confrontation. He once wrestled an egg-throwing heckler to the floor before the police could move in.

Altogether Koch wrote (mostly co-authored) 15 books, including eight autobiographies, two children's books and multiple mystery novels starring himself as the detective. He also regularly reviewed movies and restaurants, and at last count had more than 6,200 followers on Twitter (@mayoredkoch).

Really, Koch would opine to whomever, whenever, never mincing words: Movie tickets were too expensive; the United Nations, after an anti-Israel vote, was "made up of gangsters, cutthroats and piranhas"; a Puerto Rican mayoral rival was a "poverty pimp"; Sarah Palin was likable "but she scares the hell out of me." He never lost interest in his absolutely favorite subject—himself. "How'm I doin'?" was his trademark question.

The only topics that remained off limits were his heroic service as an infantryman in World War II—he was awarded two battle stars—and his sexuality. A lifelong bachelor, Koch refused to delve into rumors of his homosexuality. "I ran in a total of 24 elections and won 21," he once told the New York Times. "I will not be a coward and say I am straight or I'm gay, because it's no one's business. I got where I am today not because of sexuality or gender but because people thought I was the best at what I did...."

In recent years, though Koch appeared to mellow, seeking reconciliation with many of his former rivals, he refused to yield when it came to standards for public service. As recently as the summer of 2010, at age 85, he ginned up a campaign called "New York Uprising" to reform state government. Despite a history of heart disease that left him with two pacemakers and a degenerative spinal disorder that caused the once-strapping 6-foot-1 former mayor to be stooped in old age, he embarked in a rented Jeep on a campaign-style press tour around upstate New York to shame reluctant legislators in their home districts to signing a pledge to "clean up Albany."

"I didn't willingly take this on," he told reporters. "I was waiting for someone else to do it.... It's only after six months or a year of going to every breakfast, lunch and dinner, where all they talked about is the dysfunctional Legislature ... I'm thinking somebody is going to stand up and challenge this in some form. But nobody did. So I said to myself, 'Well, if nobody will, I will.' "

This was shortly after Koch, ever the showman, revealed he'd finalized plans for his funeral and penned his gravestone epitaph about his love of his religion, Judaism, his city and his country.

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Google moves closer to resolving EU investigation

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Google has offered to take specific steps to allay competition regulators’ concerns about its business practices, in a major move towards ending a two-year investigation and avoiding billions of dollars in fines.

The European Commission said on Friday it had received detailed proposals from the world’s most popular search engine, which has been under investigation following complaints from more than a dozen companies, including Microsoft, that Google has used its market power to block rivals.

If the commission accepts the proposals under its settlement procedure, it would mean no fine and no finding of wrongdoing against Google.

Companies found to be in breach of EU rules can be fined as much as 10 percent of global turnover, which could mean up to $ 4 billion if there is no satisfactory resolution in Google’s case.

EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told Reuters he had received Google’s submission, but declined to give details of the proposal.

“We are analyzing it,” he said.

Google spokesman Al Verney said the group continues to work cooperatively with the commission.

The company ranks first in Internet searching in Europe, with an 82 percent market share, versus 67 percent in the United States, according to research firm comScore.

Lobbying group ICOMP, whose members include complainants Microsoft, Foundem, Hot-map, Streetmap and Nextag, said any solution should include measures ensuring that rivals could compete on a level playing field with Google.

The FairSearch coalition, whose members include online travel agencies and complainants Expedia and TripAdvisor, said a third-party monitor should be appointed to ensure that Google lives up to any promises.

The commission, which acts as competition regulator in the 27-member European Union, is now expected to seek feedback from Google’s rivals and other interested parties, before launching an official market test.

Last month, Google won a major victory when U.S. antitrust regulators ended their investigation, saying the company had not manipulated its web search results to block rivals.

The commission has said Google may have favored its own search services over those of rivals, and copied travel and restaurant reviews from competing sites without permission.

The EU executive is also concerned the company may have put restrictions on advertisers and advertising to prevent them from moving their online campaigns to competing search engines.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Rex Merrifield and Hans-Juergen Peters)

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Macklemore & Ryan Lewis score unlikely hit

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The rapper Macklemore thinks there's a simple reason the hit "Thrift Shop" appears to be going viral: It dares to be different.

"There's a certain sound that has kind of flooded the mainstream airwaves as far as hip-hop music," he said a few hours after taping a performance on "Late Show with David Letterman" on Thursday night with producing partner Ryan Lewis. "The beat doesn't sound anything like that, the lyrics are kind of completely polar opposite from what you hear from most commercial rap records and it's got a hook that's very catchy. So I think that you combine those three things and it equates to an original sounding song that's refreshing to the audience that hears it."

Listeners have responded with rare enthusiasm to the song about "poppin' tags" to develop your own unique sense of swag. "Thrift Shop" sits atop the Billboard Hot 100 radio airplay chart, the Nielsen SoundScan Digital Songs chart and is the No. 1 song on Spotify for two consecutive weeks. Only one other song, Bruno Mars' "Locked Out of Heaven," has reached the top of those lists simultaneously.

The Seattle-based duo has sold 2.3 million copies so far — a million in the last month alone — and sales continue to grow week to week. Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, said he and Lewis thought the song might appeal to a "niche demographic" and didn't envision it becoming a single. The song's sense of humor is key, but Haggerty says there's also a deeper message about individuality and modern culture's obsession with expensive fashion.

"The more expensive the better is kind of the American way and if you spent $600 for a sweatshirt, then that makes it better," Haggerty said. "And I don't necessarily think that's the case. If it's a $600 sweatshirt that's fresh, that's fantastic if it looks great. But to me to just pay a ridiculous amount of money for something just because of the logo isn't creative and it's just unfortunate that people equate spending money to style."

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SciTimes Update: Recent Developments in Science and Health News

Michael Probst/Associated Press

Baby hedgehogs in Germany.

Friday in science, clues to owls’ backwardness, fresh dangers to the seas and the launch of a giant kite. Check out these and other headlines from around the Web.

Phil Marino for The New York Times

Physicists monitored data from heavy ion collisions in the control room at Brookhaven National Laboratory particle collider in 2007.

Felix Ordonez/Reuters

A snowy owl.

Hedgehog Bacteria: Sonic the Hedgehog may have a dark side. The Associated Press reports that in the last year, 20 people in the United States were infected, and 1 person died, from “a rare but dangerous” type of salmonella bacteria. All the cases, health officials said, were linked to hedgehogs that were kept as pets.

More Bad News for the Seas: National Geographic reports that buried beneath the waves are rich deposits of “gold, copper, zinc, and other valuable minerals,” and that is attracting the attention of the humans on the land above. Mining the minerals is not easy, but one company has already obtained an extraction contract for the waters off Papua, New Guinea, the magazine says.

Less Money for Science: Lean days are ahead for recipients of federal government contracts, and that knowledge is having an impact on physics research. Scientific American reports that a federal advisory panel has recommended closing a particle collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.

Spinning Heads: Owls are able to do something that parents only dream about: swivel their heads completely around to see what is going on behind them. An illustrator and a physician at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine discovered that they can do so without severing their arteries or preventing blood from reaching their brains because of holes in their neck bones, which may hold air sacks that cushion the movement of the head, and because the vertebral artery is able to expand and hold reservoirs of blood for the brain, a LiveScience video explains.

Setting Sail in Space: A new solar sail, the largest yet, will be launched by NASA in 2014. Looking very much like a gigantic kite, it will eventually reach 2 million miles from Earth (that’s a lot of string!), Popular Science reports. And besides blazing the way for further research of this type, the mission has another purpose: “Sunjammer will be carrying the cremated remains of various individuals, including the creator of Star Trek,Gene Roddenberry, and his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry. It is not exactly the Enterprise, but Sunjammer will be boldly going where no solar sailing spacecraft has gone before,” Popular Science says.

Video by NASAMarshallTV

Solar Sail Readies for Early Warning Mission

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Dow hits 14,000 for 1st time since October 2007

The Dow stock market index flirted with the 14,000 line Friday, dashing above it several times throughout the morning and bringing reminders of the last time it hit that mark -- almost a different era, before the financial crisis rocked the world economy.

After rising steadily in early trading, the Dow Jones industrial average briefly crossed 14,000 shortly after 10 a.m. EST. It lasted only a moment. Then, after 11 a.m., it started flitting above that key mark again before falling back to around 13,990. The other major stock indexes were also up, pushed higher by the U.S. jobs report and auto sales.

Crossing 14,000 is a rarefied event: The Dow has done so only 15 times in its history, and the last time was more than five years ago, on Oct. 17, 2007.

If the gains hold throughout the day and the Dow closes above 14,000, that would put it in territory even more uncommon. On just nine days has the Dow managed to stay above the 14,000 mark until the end of trading. Friday's gains also mean that the Dow is within striking distance of its all-time record of 14,164.53, which it reached on Oct. 9, 2007.

For the average investor, that was all back when the stock market still seemed like a party. Housing prices were starting to ebb but hadn't cratered. Jobs were abundant, with unemployment at 4.7 percent -- compared to 7.9 percent now. Lehman Brothers still existed. So did Bear Stearns, Wachovia and Washington Mutual.

To be sure, the Dow is only one indicator of the economy. And while crossing 14,000 would be an important psychological milestone, it wouldn't be much else.

The Dow is an index of 30 big companies, and its purpose is to represent how the broader stock market is faring. But the stock market is more a representation of how traders are feeling about the economy than the economy's underlying fundamentals. And many investors don't even think the Dow is the best way to track the market: They prefer the much bigger Standard & Poor's benchmark index, which follows 500 companies.

Joe Gordon, managing partner at Gordon Asset Management in North Carolina, wasn't celebrating. He doesn't expect the gains to hold. The fact that small investors are finally getting back in the stock market, he said, makes him think that stocks are due for a downturn. After the Dow hit its all-time record in 2007, it fell almost steadily and had lost nearly 40 percent of its value a year later.

"It is good trivia to talk about on television and the radio," Gordon said, referring to the 14,000 mark. "It's meaningless to the average professional." And for workers still unemployed by the financial crisis, he said, "it really means nothing to them."

Late morning, the Dow was up 134 points to 13,995. The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 14 to 1,512. The Nasdaq composite index was up 31 to 3,173.

Auto sales helped. Toyota, Ford, GM and Chrysler all reported double-digit gains for January.

The government jobs report that pushed stocks forward was mixed, but traders chose to focus on the positive. The U.S. said it added 157,000 jobs in January, which was in line with expectations. Unemployment inched up to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent in December. But, encouragingly, the government also reported that hiring over the past two years has been higher than it originally thought.

The jobs number is based on a survey of employers, and the unemployment rate is based on a separate survey of households, which is why they can diverge.

In Europe, tentative and incremental signs of a recovery were enough to push up stocks in France, Britain and Germany. December unemployment in the European Union was lower than analysts had feared, inflation unexpectedly fell, and a survey raised hopes of some growth in the manufacturing sector.

But there were also reminders that the debt problem is far from solved. The Netherlands was also forced to take over one of its major banks, to try to stave off a collapse. In Greece, dock workers extended a strike over the government's spending cuts.

Among companies making big moves:

-- Drugmaker Merck fell 3 percent, down $1.28 to $41.97. Its fourth-quarter profit suffered because of competition from generic medicines against its blockbuster allergy drug Singulair.

-- Insurance company MetLife rose 2 percent, or 75 cents, to $38.09, after saying it plans to buy the largest private pension fund administrator in Chile.

-- Zoetis, an animal health business that Pfizer just spun off, made its debut on the stock market. It was up 18 percent, rising $4.75 to $30.75.

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California's population to grow 39% by 2060, report says

By Chris Megerian

January 31, 2013, 10:48 a.m.

California's population will reach nearly 52.7 million by 2060, according to a new state report. 

The projection, released by Gov. Jerry Brown's Department of Finance, said the state will cross the 50 million threshold by 2049.

The report showed 39% growth in the state's population. By comparison, if there was a state made only from the difference between the California's current population and its projected population in 2060, it would be the fifth-largest state in the nation. 

California's demographics are also in for a major shift, according to the report: For the first time since California became a state, Latinos will be a plurality in early 2014. By 2060, they will be nearly half of the state's population. 

Although the state's Asian population is also growing, it will only be a little more than 13% of the state's population, the report said.

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The 7 most dedicated employees

You probably don’t want to forward this roster of tireless go-getters to your boss

Some people probably feel they deserve a medal for merely getting up and going to work every day, but only a few actually merit one. Take Deborah Ford, for example. This 64-year-old Detroit postal worker, who recently retired, didn’t use a single sick day in all of her 44 years on the job. Not a single one! For doctor’s appointments, she would take vacation days, and when she was feeling lousy she says she would just “shake it off.” At the end of her dedicated career, Ford had amassed a sick-leave balance of 4,508 hours. But before you give her the award for most dedicated employee, check out this lot:

1. Going the distance
Unless you work from home, chances are you endure a less-than-pleasant commute. But none is likely as arduous as that of Dave Givens. In 2006 the Mariposa, Calif., resident earned the unenviable award for “America’s Longest Commute” when tire company Midas set out to find the employee who trekked the most miles to work. From his ranch home in Mariposa, Givens drives 186 miles to his job at Cisco Systems, Inc., in San Jose. The electrical engineer has been making this 372-mile round trip, which equals a total of seven hours of driving, for 17 years. “I have a great job and my family loves the ranch where we live,” Givens said. “So this is the only solution.” His dedication to the horrendous commute earned Givens the grand prize of $ 10,000 and some much-needed gas money as well as an array of Midas maintenance services and products.

SEE ALSO: Today in business: 5 things you need to know

2. A life’s work
Rose Syracuse Richardone “just loves to work,” says Macy’s senior vice president Robin Hall of the 92-year-old employee. Richardone retired from Macy’s in September 2012 after working in a range of positions from her first job at the age of 17 in the accounts department — back when there weren’t credit cards and customers would set aside money in the in-store bank to pay for items — to her final position within the parade and entertainment group. To honor her 70th year with the company a few years ago, Macy’s management arranged for Richardone to cut the red ribbon that launched the iconic Thanksgiving parade. Had it not been for a broken hip, the diminutive employee might still be working today. “Life is good,” she said of her longevity. “You go on each day, you’re happy where you’re at. And people — bosses, supervisors, they appreciate you. And you stay.”

3. Hardest working unemployed man
You may not know Justin Knapp, but you’re likely familiar with his work. Knapp is a voluntary editor of the Wikipedia, and last April the 30-year-old became the first person to complete 1 million edits on the massive online, open-source encyclopedia. After coming across Wikipedia in 2003, Knapp registered as an editor in 2005 and now spends several hours per day combing, editing, and adding to Wikipedia articles. His edits can be as small as ensuring em dashes and en dashes are used properly or as substantial as building the most comprehensive George Orwell entry, which reportedly took about 100 hours. But Knapp relishes the work. “Editing these projects is relaxing and rewarding,” Knapp told Gizmodo. Knapp doesn’t get paid for his work, however plentiful, but he manages to get by financially with odd jobs while he pursues his nursing degree at Indiana University. Ultimately he feels his diligence is for the greater good. “Far be it for me to say that it’s an act of love to edit Wikipedia,” he said. “But I really do feel like that it helps other human beings. That makes me feel good — knowing that somehow I can be a small part of helping someone who I’ll never know.”

SEE ALSO: Today in business: 5 things you need to know

4. Dedicated volunteer
Don Moss is the “Energizer Bunny of volunteers.” As of 2010, the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center volunteer has clocked in more than 47,000 hours, setting a Guinness World Record for his time. For the last 28 years, Moss has worked at Wake Forest Monday through Thursday, 48 hours per week. The 63-year-old’s dedication is a personal one. In 1980, Moss was in a freak accident that landed him at Wake Forest Baptist where he spent three months in a coma with a major head injury. Doctors didn’t think he would make it and, after he woke up, specialists said he would never walk again. But Moss defied all expectations and now, after being encouraged to volunteer during his rehabilitation stint, he’s rarely idle. While working, Moss delivers letters to patients, helps out at the gift shop, and guides lost visitors to their destinations. And those free Fridays? Those are for his wife, he says: “That’s my honey-do list day.”

5. Hardest working mom
Dr. Helen Wright felt like she had it all — she loved her job as a headmistress at an exclusive British all-girls school, and she had time to enjoy her beautiful growing family. On February morning in 2010, when Wright was pregnant with her third child, she went into labor. Within an hour she had given birth to the baby, a girl named Jessica, and by lunchtime, Wright was back at work, her newborn in tow. This was nothing new for her. She had never taken maternity leave with any of her children. Her second child was born on a Friday; Wright was back at work by Monday. Given the ongoing can-women-have-it-all debate, Wright says she wants to be a role model for her students to show them that they too can have a career and a family, quite literally, in the same space. The rarely trodden path of bringing your baby to work is, Wright says, the option more women should consider. “Most women have a choice of taking maternity leave or going back to work and having their babies looked after. Why can’t there be a third way?”

SEE ALSO: Today in business: 5 things you need to know

6. Hardest working country
Do you feel like you work long hours? Well, here’s some food for thought: Employees in Asian countries have the highest proportion of employees who work more than 48 hours per week, which is considered “excessive.” Of those Asian countries, South Korea is the most overworked: According to data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, South Koreans work a whopping 2,193 hours per year. Chile comes in second with 2,068 hours, which far exceeds the average for most developing countries, which is 1,718 hours annually. The United States is just below the average with 1,695 hours. Germany and the Netherlands remain on the low end of the scale with 1,408 hours and 1,377 hours per year, respectively. Tighter labor laws in developed countries, particularly Europe, have contributed to reduced working hours, so, you know, don’t feel too bad about it, you’re just playing by the rules.

7. Hardest working American town
Columbia, Mo., managed to keep its unemployment rate of 6.0 percent throughout the worst economic downturn since the Depression with the help of its robust health-care and education sectors. The town has six hospitals and the second highest number of hospital beds per capita in the country. It’s also home to the University of Missouri-Columbia, which employs some 8,000 people, as well as six other institutions of higher education. More than 80 percent of households are dual-income, and the city ranked second on likelihood to work on the weekends, according to data compiled by Parade magazine in 2012. 

SEE ALSO: Today in business: 5 things you need to know

Sources: BBC, Daily Mail, Gizmodo, Parade, The Stir, Yahoo

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Beyonce to finally face media in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Beyonce is expected to face the media Thursday as she previews her halftime performance at the Super Bowl. But the focus will likely be on her performance at that other big event earlier this month.

The superstar hasn't spoken publicly since it was alleged that she lip-synched her rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at President Barack Obama's inauguration last week. Her critically praised performance came under scrutiny less than a day later when a representative from the U.S. Marine Band said she wasn't singing live and the band's accompanying performance was taped. Shortly after, the group backed off its initial statement and said no one could tell if she was singing live or not.

It's expected that the halftime performance will be a main focus of her afternoon press conference, even though she'd likely rather concentrate on questions about her set list for Sunday and her upcoming HBO documentary, "Life Is but a Dream." The documentary is being shown for the media just before Beyonce speaks and takes questions, as expected.

There has been plenty of speculation about Beyonce's Super Bowl performance, including reports there would be a Destiny's Child reunion with Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland (Williams has shot down such speculation). Some are also curious about whether her husband, Jay-Z, will join her onstage, as they often do for each other's shows.

Beyonce has teased photos and video of herself preparing for the show, which will perhaps be the biggest audience of her career. Last year, Madonna's halftime performance was the most-watched Super Bowl halftime performance ever, with an average of 114 million viewers. It garnered more viewers than the game itself, which was the most-watched U.S. TV event in history.

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During Trial, New Details Emerge on DuPuy Hip

When Johnson & Johnson announced the appointment in 2011 of an executive to head the troubled orthopedics division whose badly flawed artificial hip had been recalled, the company billed the move as a fresh start.

But that same executive, it turns out, had supervised the implant’s introduction in the United States and had been told by a top company consultant three years before the device was recalled that it was faulty.

In addition, the executive also held a senior marketing position at a time when Johnson & Johnson decided not to tell officials outside the United States that American regulators had refused to allow sale of a version of the artificial hip in this country.

The details about the involvement of the executive, Andrew Ekdahl, with the all-metal hip implant emerged Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court during the trial of a patient lawsuit against the DePuy Orthopaedics division of Johnson & Johnson. More than 10,000 lawsuits have been filed against DePuy in connection with the device — the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R. — and the Los Angeles case is the first to go to trial.

The information about the depth of Mr. Ekdahl’s involvement with the implant may raise questions about DePuy’s ability to put the A.S.R. episode behind it.

Asked in an e-mail why the company had promoted Mr. Ekdahl, a DePuy spokeswoman, Lorie Gawreluk, said the company “seeks the most accomplished and competent people for the job.”

On Wednesday, portions of Mr. Ekdahl’s videotaped testimony were shown to jurors in the Los Angeles case. Other top DePuy marketing executives who played roles in the A.S.R. development are expected to testify in coming days. Mr. Ekdahl, when pressed in the taped questioning on whether DePuy had recalled the A.S.R. because it was unsafe, repeatedly responded that the company had recalled it “because it did not meet the clinical standards we wanted in the marketplace.”

Before the device’s recall in mid-2010, Mr. Ekdahl and those executives all publicly asserted that the device was performing extremely well. But internal documents that have become public as a result of litigation conflict with such statements.

In late 2008, for example, a surgeon who served as one of DePuy’s top consultants told Mr. Ekdahl and two other DePuy marketing officials that he was concerned about the cup component of the A.S.R. and believed it should be “redesigned.” At the time, DePuy was aggressively promoting the device in the United States as a breakthrough and it was being implanted into thousands of patients.

“My thoughts would be that DePuy should at least de-emphasize the A.S.R. cup while the clinical results are studied,” that consultant, Dr. William Griffin, wrote.

A spokesman for Dr. Griffin said he was not available for comment.

The A.S.R., whose cup and ball components were both made of metal, was first sold by DePuy in 2003 outside the United States for use in an alternative hip replacement procedure called resurfacing. Two years later, DePuy started selling another version of the A.S.R. for use here in standard hip replacement that used the same cup component as the resurfacing device. Only the standard A.S.R. was sold in the United States; both versions were sold outside the country.

Before the device recall in mid-2010, about 93,000 patients worldwide received an A.S.R., about a third of them in this country. Internal DePuy projections estimate that it will fail in 40 percent of those patients within five years; a rate eight times higher than for many other hip devices.

Mr. Ekdahl testified via tape Wednesday that he had been placed in charge of the 2005 introduction of the standard version of the A.S.R. in this country. Within three years, he and other DePuy executives were receiving reports that the device was failing prematurely at higher than expected rates, apparently because of problems related to the cup’s design, documents disclosed during the trial indicate.

Along with other DePuy executives, he also participated in a meeting that resulted in a proposal to redesign the A.S.R. cup. But that plan was dropped, apparently because sales of the implant had not justified the expense, DePuy documents indicate.

In the face of growing complaints from surgeons about the A.S.R., DePuy officials maintained that the problems were related to how surgeons were implanting the cup, not from any design flaw. But in early 2009, a DePuy executive wrote to Mr. Ekdahl and other marketing officials that the early failures of the A.S.R. resurfacing device and the A.S.R. traditional implant, known as the XL, were most likely design-related.

“The issue seen with A.S.R. and XL today, over five years post-launch, are most likely linked to the inherent design of the product and that is something we should recognize,” that executive, Raphael Pascaud wrote in March 2009.

Last year, The New York Times reported that DePuy executives decided in 2009 to phase out the A.S.R. and sell existing inventories weeks after the Food and Drug Administration asked the company for more safety data about the implant.

The F.D.A. also told the company at that time that it was rejecting its efforts to sell the resurfacing version of the device in the United States because of concerns about “high concentration of metal ions” in the blood of patients who received it.

DePuy never disclosed the F.D.A. ruling to regulators in other countries where it was still marketing the resurfacing version of the implant.

During a part of that period, Mr. Ekdahl was overseeing sales in Europe and other regions for DePuy. When The Times article appeared last year, he issued a statement, saying that any implication that the F.D.A. had determined there were safety issues with the A.S.R. was “simply untrue.” “This was purely a business decision,” Mr. Ekdahl stated at that time.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 30, 2013

A capsule summary of an earlier version of this article described the start of the DePuy trial incorrectly. It began last week, not this week.

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Twitter says it's working to fix problem with accessing the site

If you're having trouble tweeting Thursday, you aren't alone.

Twitter has been either inaccessible, slow or not performing properly for some users Thursday morning.

The San Francisco-based social network acknowledged the problems around 7:30 a.m. PST, saying, "Some users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter."

10 tech companies to watch in 2013

The company's Status website also said that the company's engineers were working to resolve the problem.

[Updated 10:45 a.m. PST Jan. 31: Twitter says it has resolved the issues that affected its Web and mobile users from 7 a.m. to 9:50 a.m. PST.

"We apologize to users who were affected by this, and we’re working to ensure that similar issues do not occur," the company said.]

Users of the popular network took to Facebook to ask others about Twitter's problems and mocked the site when it began to work properly for some of them.

ALSO:

Facebook beats Wall Street expectations but shares fall anyway

'Temple Run 2' becomes fastest growing mobile game of all time

Apple, Samsung claim 95% of global cellphone profits, report says

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Retired barber charged in fatal shooting of Newport Beach doctor

By Nicole Santa Cruz

January 30, 2013, 10:43 a.m.

Prosecutors have filed charges against a 75-year-old man who is accused of murdering his urologist during an appointment in Newport Beach.

Stanwood Fred Elkus of Lake Elsinore has been charged with one felony count of special circumstances murder by lying in wait and a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a firearm causing death, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors say Elkus, a retired barber, arrived for an appointment at his doctor’s office Monday afternoon and waited in an exam room until Ronald Gilbert entered.

Elkus is accused of shooting Gilbert several times in the upper body, according to prosecutors and police.

Other doctors heard the shots and attempted to revive Gilbert, prosecutors said. Elkus gave his gun to a staff member in the office and was arrested without incident, they said.

Elkus, who is being held at the Orange County jail on no bail, was expected in court Wednesday.

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California police probe stunts that shut down freeways

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The California Highway Patrol is investigating two apparently unrelated stunts that jammed freeways over the weekend, including one involving hundreds of motorcyclists celebrating a marriage proposal that inconvenienced motorists east of Los Angeles.

Both events created a flurry of viral Internet videos, fueling concerns about a repeat performance by copycats.

On Interstate 10 east of Los Angeles on Sunday, up to 300 bikers stopped traffic so that one of them could propose to his girlfriend, said Officer Vince Ramirez, a Los Angeles-area spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.

Video that surfaced online of the stunt showed some bikers creating a wall of smoke by spinning their tires against the concrete. In the middle of the gathering, pink smoke could be seen wafting into the air.

As they exited the freeway, several bikers were later ticketed for reckless riding unrelated to their possible role in the freeway shutdown, Ramirez said.

He said officers were working with the Los Angeles County District Attorney‘s office to prepare additional charges against some of the bikers.

The stunt did not cause any injuries or collisions, he said.

In Oakland on Saturday, traffic ground to a halt on Interstate 880 near the city’s sports coliseum, as several sports cars did doughnuts, spinning around and filling the air with tire smoke, officials said. Stunned motorists exited their cars and watched.

Several motorists caught in the sudden traffic jam were frightened or angry, according to recordings of calls to authorities released on Tuesday.

“I can’t believe this – I have three kids in the car,” one caller told an Oakland-area dispatcher. “It scares the hell out of me.”

Authorities have not found or identified any of the drivers, said California Highway Patrol Sergeant Diana McDermott.

California Highway Patrol officers said they feared the weekend events’ popularity on social media websites could start a dangerous trend. So far, such stunts have been rare, they said.

“That’s why the investigation is expanding,” Ramirez said.

“If there are any criminal charges that can be filed as a result of this incident, they will be filed,” he said.

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis, Tom Brown and Eric Walsh)

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