Country singer Mindy McCready dead in apparent suicide






LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (Reuters) – Country music star Mindy McCready, whose albums include “Ten Thousand Angels” and “If I Don’t Stay the Night,” was found dead on Sunday of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, an Arkansas sheriff said. She was 37.


McCready’s body was found on the porch of a house in Heber Springs, Arkansas, on Sunday afternoon. She was pronounced dead at the scene “from what appears to be a single self-inflicted gunshot wound,” the Cleburne County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.






Deputies had been dispatched to the area following reports of “shots fired,” the sheriff’s office said, adding that McCready’s family had been notified.


Florida-born McCready moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to break into the country music business at the age of 18, according to allmusic.com.


She achieved early success with her 1996 debut album, “Ten Thousands Angels,” which sold a reported 2 million copies. Four other studio albums followed.


While successful in her career, McCready’s personal life had began to unravel in recent years.


In 2004 she was convicted of prescription drug fraud and placed on parole. Three years later she spent time in jail for violating her parole terms.


The sheriff’s office said McCready’s body would be taken to the Arkansas State Crime Lab for an autopsy, adding that “the matter will be fully investigated.”


(Writing by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix; Additional reporting by James B. Kelleher in Chicago; Editing by Eric Beech)


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Well: Health Effects of Smoking for Women

The title of a recent report on smoking and health might well have paraphrased the popular ad campaign for Virginia Slims, introduced in 1968 by Philip Morris and aimed at young professional women: “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Today that slogan should include: “…toward a shorter life.” Ten years shorter, in fact.

The new report is one of two rather shocking analyses of the hazards of smoking and the benefits of quitting published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine. The data show that “women who smoke like men die like men who smoke,” Dr. Steven A. Schroeder, a professor of health and health care at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in an accompanying editorial.

That was not always the case. Half a century ago, the risk of death from lung cancer among men who smoked was five times higher than that among women smokers. But by the first decade of this century, that risk had equalized: for both men and women who smoked, the risk of death from lung cancer was 25 times greater than for nonsmokers, Dr. Michael J. Thun of the American Cancer Society and his colleagues reported.

Today, women who smoke are even more likely than men who smoke to die of lung cancer. According to a second study in the same journal, women smokers face a 17.8 times greater risk of dying of lung cancer than women who do not smoke; men who smoke are at 14.6 times greater risk to die of lung cancer than men who don’t. Women who smoke now face a risk of death from lung cancer that is 50 percent higher than the estimates reported in the 1980s, according to Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto and his colleagues.

After controlling for age, body weight, education level and alcohol use, the new analysis found something else: men and women who continue to smoke die on average 10 years sooner than those who never smoked.

Dramatic progress has been made in reducing the prevalence of smoking, which has fallen from 42 percent of adults in 1965 (the year after the first surgeon general’s report on smoking and health) to 19 percent in 2010. Yet smoking still results in nearly 200,000 deaths a year among people 35 to 69 years old in the United States. A quarter of all deaths in this age group would not occur if smokers had the same risk of death as nonsmokers.

The risks are even greater among men 55 to 74 and women 60 to 74. More than two-thirds of all deaths among current smokers in these age groups are related to smoking. Over all, the death rate from all causes combined in these age groups “is now at least three times as high among current smokers as among those who have never smoked,” Dr. Thun’s team found.

While lung cancer is the most infamous hazard linked to smoking, the habit also raises the risk of death from heart disease, stroke, pulmonary disease and other cancers, including breast cancer.

Furthermore, changes in how cigarettes are manufactured may have increased the dangers of smoking. The use of perforated filters, tobacco blends that are less irritating, and paper that is more porous made it easier to inhale smoke and encouraged deeper inhalation to achieve satisfying blood levels of nicotine.

The result of deeper inhalation, Dr. Thun’s report suggests, has been an increased risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or C.O.P.D., and a shift in the kind of lung cancer linked to smoking. Among nonsmokers, the risk of death from C.O.P.D. has declined by 45 percent in men and has remained stable in women, but the death rate has more than doubled among smokers.

But there is good news, too: it’s never too late to reap the benefits of quitting. The younger you are when you stop smoking, the greater your chances of living a long and healthy life, according to the findings of Dr. Jha’s international team.

The team analyzed smoking and smoking-cessation histories of 113,752 women and 88,496 men 25 and older and linked them to causes of deaths in these groups through 2006.

Those who quit smoking by age 34 lived 10 years longer on average than those who continued to smoke, giving them a life expectancy comparable to people who never smoked. Smokers who quit between ages 35 and 44 lived nine years longer, and those who quit between 45 and 54 lived six years longer. Even quitting smoking between ages 55 and 64 resulted in a four-year gain in life expectancy.

The researchers emphasized, however, that the numbers do not mean it is safe to smoke until age 40 and then stop. Former smokers who quit by 40 still experienced a 20 percent greater risk of death than nonsmokers. About one in six former smokers who died before the age of 80 would not have died if he or she had never smoked, they reported.

Dr. Schroeder believes we can do a lot better to reduce the prevalence of smoking with the tools currently in hand if government agencies, medical insurers and the public cooperate.

Unlike the races, ribbons and fund-raisers for breast cancer, “there’s no public face for lung cancer, even though it kills more women than breast cancer does,” Dr. Schroeder said in an interview. Lung cancer is stigmatized as a disease people bring on themselves, even though many older victims were hooked on nicotine in the 1940s and 1950s, when little was known about the hazards of smoking and doctors appeared in ads assuring the public it was safe to smoke.

Raising taxes on cigarettes can help. The states with the highest prevalence of smoking have the lowest tax rates on cigarettes, Dr. Schroeder said. Also helpful would be prohibiting smoking in more public places like parks and beaches. Some states have criminalized smoking in cars when children are present.

More “countermarketing” of cigarettes is needed, he said, including antismoking public service ads on television and dramatic health warnings on cigarette packs, as is now done in Australia. But two American courts have ruled that the proposed label warnings infringed on the tobacco industry’s right to free speech.

Health insurers, both private and government, could broaden their coverage of stop-smoking aids and better publicize telephone quit lines, and doctors “should do more to stimulate quit attempts,” Dr. Schroeder said.

As Nicola Roxon, a former Australian health minister, put it, “We are killing people by not acting.”

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U. of C. Medicine's leader gears up for challenges









Nearly every morning, before 7 a.m., Dr. Kenneth Polonsky is dropped off near the Lakefront Trail on Chicago's South Side, a few steps from Lake Michigan.


He carries no briefcase, wears no suit and has no cup of coffee, the standard trappings of his executive contemporaries.


Instead — at least in the winter — he's covered in high-tech running gear, leaving only a small patch of skin around his eyes exposed to the weather. The outfit, he muses, must raise suspicions among cab drivers.





"It's 6:30 in the morning, it's dark and can be, maybe, 10 degrees outside," he says. "When I ask the driver to drop me by the side of (the road), they must think, 'What's going on with this guy? There's something funny here.'"


Twelve months a year, through heat waves, cold snaps, rain, sleet and snow, the top official at University of Chicago Medicine starts most mornings running 5 miles to work.


It's a routine that reflects lessons learned from decades of studying diabetes and treating patients with the disease and one he pairs with watching his diet "like a hawk." The daily run also is a vehicle for the cerebral 62-year-old M.D. to contemplate the challenges that lie ahead.


There are many, starting with the massive transformation of the way medical care is paid for and delivered as part of President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul.


Polonsky also faces cuts to research funding that flows to the Pritzker School of Medicine through the National Institutes of Health and growing financial pressure from Illinois' Medicaid program, the federal-state health insurance program that serves a substantial percentage of the hospital's South Side patients.


All this while christening and trying to pay for a $700 million, 1.2 million-square-foot new hospital, a 10-story, boxy, modernist structure that towers above a campus better known for its ubiquitous, early-20th-century red-roofed Gothic buildings.


The hospital, dubbed the Center for Care and Discovery in the absence of a donor willing to lay down $50 million for naming rights, is scheduled to open Saturday.


With 240 private patient rooms, 28 supersize operating rooms and seven advanced imaging rooms, the hospital will specialize in neuroscience and the treatment of cancer and gastrointestinal diseases.


But even what is supposed to be a celebratory, clink-the-glasses moment for Polonsky and the university has been sullied by controversy.


An estimated 50 protesters entered the hospital on a Sunday afternoon in January, holding placards and using a megaphone to voice their displeasure that such a costly facility was not outfitted with a trauma unit.


University police with batons were videotaped shoving protesters to the ground. Four were arrested in the melee.


Polonsky said the system is re-evaluating its role in trauma care, "a legitimate question for discussion and debate and one we are looking at again in detail."


Managing this issue will be a major test of Polonsky's leadership in 2013 and will occur against the backdrop of the largest upheaval to the health care industry in a generation.


"We're in a really vulnerable situation at the moment; there's no question about it," Polonsky said of the shift under way in health care. "But that's one of the reasons I'm interested in my job. I believe I can impact a series of big issues."


Many people, he said, go through life wondering whether what they're doing is worthwhile or significant in the big picture of things.


"I'm very fortunate to never, ever have had that problem," Polonsky said.


A boy in South Africa





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Hutchinson expected to drop out, endorse Kelly in Jackson Jr. contest








State Sen. Toi Hutchinson is expected to drop out of the 2nd District special Democratic primary on Sunday and throw her support behind former state Rep. Robin Kelly in the contest to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. in Congress, multiple sources said late Saturday.

The move, expected to be announced in a morning news release, shakes up the Democratic field just nine days before the Feb. 26 primary election.

Hutchinson recently experienced a pair of setbacks during the short campaign. A super political action committee run by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg started airing a TV attack ad backing Kelly and attacking Hutchinson and another candidate, former one-term U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson of Crete, for past support from the National Rifle Association. Gun control has loomed as a big issue in the contest.

In addition, Hutchinson had to deal with a recent news report detailing how she paid her mother as a campaign consultant. Hutchinson also was not listed as a participant in upcoming WTTW-Ch. 11 candidate forums.

Hutchinson's camp began contacting supporters tonight telling them of her intention to drop out of the contest, said two sources with knowledge of the decision. Word of Hutchinson's plan to endorse Kelly on Sunday via a news release also surfaced, according to a source familiar with the situation.

If Hutchinson exits the contest, there will be three major Democratic candidates left in a 15-candidate field: Kelly, Halvorson and 9th Ward Ald. Anthony Beale of Chicago.

Hutchinson got an early boost in the contest when Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle endorsed her instead of Kelly, who served as a top aide to Preckwinkle.


As of Feb. 6, Kelly trailed Hutchinson in cash available to spend. Kelly reported $88,820 available while Hutchinson had more than double at $199,901. Hutchinson’s campaign has engaged in a significant direct-mail campaign since that time. For the entire campaign, through Feb. 6, Hutchinson reported raising $281,106. Hutchinson has been endorsed by Preckwinkle, who gave her $1,000.


Overall, campaign disclosure reports showed Kelly has raised more than $303,725 since the start of the short campaign through Feb. 6. Campaign aides to Kelly said she has raised $417,727 for the campaign cycle through Wednesday.


Tribune reporter Bill Ruthhart contributed to this report.






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TV show with Pistorius’ dead girlfriend airs






JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Reeva Steenkamp‘s last wish for her family before she was shot dead at boyfriend Oscar Pistorius‘ home was for them to watch her in a reality TV show that went on air in South Africa on Saturday night, two days after her killing.


Sharon Steenkamp, Reeva‘s cousin, told The Associated Press that the model and law graduate was “proud of being in the show” and reminded them in their last conversation to make sure that they watched it.






The South African Broadcasting Corp. aired the “Tropika Island of Treasure” program, showing the late Steenkamp — the victim of a Valentine’s Day shooting at the home of Pistorius, the Olympic star and double-amputee athlete. She is laughing and smiling, and blowing a kiss toward the camera in Jamaica when it was filmed last year.


South Africans also saw her swimming in the ocean and watching people jump off a cliff and into the sea, shaking her head as they leaped.


SABC said it was dedicated to Steenkamp and displayed the words “Reeva Steenkamp 19 August 1983 – 14 February 2013″ between images of a rose and a candle in a short tribute before the show aired. She was also seen blowing the kiss as she sat on a Jamaican beach and her name again appeared on screen with the years of her birth and death.


The country was rocked Thursday when news broke of Steenkamp’s shooting death at the upscale house of the star athlete. Pistorius was arrested and charged with her murder and remains in custody in a police station. His family has strongly denied prosecutors’ claims that he murdered her.


Steenkamp’s family said earlier Saturday that it had not been contacted by either the SABC — South Africa’s national broadcaster — or the show’s producers for permission to air it, but were not opposed to it because Reeva wanted everyone to see it.


“Her last words to us personally were that she wants us to watch it,” Sharon Steenkamp said, hours before the program was shown.


SABC aired the reality show on its main channel, which prominently featured Steenkamp.


The show’s executive producer, Samantha Moon, said going ahead with the show “is what she would have wanted.”


Steenkamp, a 29-year-old blonde model who graduated from law school, died after suffering four gunshot wounds, police said. Officers recovered a 9-mm pistol from Pistorius’ house and quickly charged the Olympian with murder for Steenkamp’s killing.


Pistorius will appear in court Tuesday for a bail hearing, something police have said they oppose. Prosecutors also say they will pursue upgraded charges of premeditated murder against him, which means the disabled icon and double-amputee runner could face a life sentence.


Steenkamp was known in South Africa for appearing in commercials and as a bikini-clad model in men’s magazines.


Pistorius and Steenkamp met Nov. 4 at the Kyalami race track, which sits between Pretoria and Johannesburg and has been used for Grand Prix and Formula 1 races, said Justin Divaris, a mutual friend.


Divaris said his own girlfriend was a close friend to Steenkamp. Pistorius and Steenkamp immediately hit it off and decided in the spur of the moment to attend a sports award ceremony together the same night, Divaris said. At the time, Pistorius had been dating another woman and his personal life was constant fodder for gossip pages.


Later, however, problems may have started, as police have said there were previous domestic altercations at Pretorius’ home in a gated community near South Africa‘s capital, Pretoria.


A Steenkamp family spokesman said late Friday that relatives still faced a long struggle to come to terms with her killing.


“I can’t see the family getting over this shortly,” said Reeva’s uncle, Mike Steenkamp. “It’s going to be a long, long-term reconciliation with a lot of things and issues.”


Family members plan for a memorial service Tuesday for the model in Port Elizabeth, her hometown on South Africa’s southern coast. Pistorius has a court appearance scheduled in Pretoria on the same day for his lawyers to argue that he can be released on bail.


Portions released earlier Saturday of the reality show, sponsored by a milk fruit drink, feature Steenkamp laughing and smiling on the beaches of Jamaica. Another portion shows her swimming with two dolphins, which tap her on the cheek with their snouts.


“I think the way that you go out, not just your journey in life, but the way that you go out and the way you make your exit is so important,” Steenkamp says in the video. “You either made an impact in a positive or a negative way, but just maintain integrity and maintain class and just remain true to yourself.


“I’m going to miss you all so much and I love you very, very much.”


___


Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell contributed to this report.


___


Gerald Imray can be reached at http://twitter.com/GeraldImrayAP


Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Cuomo Bucks Tide With Bill to Lift Abortion Limits





ALBANY — Bucking a trend in which states have been seeking to restrict abortion, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is putting the finishing touches on legislation that would guarantee women in New York the right to late-term abortions when their health is in danger or the fetus is not viable.




Mr. Cuomo, seeking to deliver on a promise he made in his recent State of the State address, would rewrite a law that currently allows abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy only if the pregnant woman’s life is at risk. The law is not enforced, because it is superseded by federal court rulings that allow late-term abortions to protect a woman’s health, even if her life is not in jeopardy. But abortion rights advocates say the existence of the more restrictive state law has a chilling effect on some doctors and prompts some women to leave the state for late-term abortions.


Mr. Cuomo’s proposal, which has not yet been made public, would also clarify that licensed health care practitioners, and not only physicians, can perform abortions. It would remove abortion from the state’s penal law and regulate it through the state’s public health law.


Abortion rights advocates have welcomed Mr. Cuomo’s plan, which he outlined in general terms as part of a broader package of women’s rights initiatives in his State of the State address in January. But the Roman Catholic Church and anti-abortion groups are dismayed; opponents have labeled the legislation the Abortion Expansion Act.


The prospects for Mr. Cuomo’s effort are uncertain. The State Assembly is controlled by Democrats who support abortion rights; the Senate is more difficult to predict because this year it is controlled by a coalition of Republicans who have tended to oppose new abortion rights laws and breakaway Democrats who support abortion rights.


New York legalized abortion in 1970, three years before it was legalized nationally by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would update the state law so that it could stand alone if the broader federal standard set by Roe were to be undone.


“Why are we doing this? The Supreme Court could change,” said a senior Cuomo administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the governor had not formally introduced his proposal.


But opponents of abortion rights, already upset at the high rate of abortions in New York State, worry that rewriting the abortion law would encourage an even greater number of abortions. For example, they suggest that the provision to allow abortions late in a woman’s pregnancy for health reasons could be used as a loophole to allow unchecked late-term abortions.


“I am hard pressed to think of a piece of legislation that is less needed or more harmful than this one,” the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, wrote in a letter to Mr. Cuomo last month. Referring to Albany lawmakers in a subsequent column, he added, “It’s as though, in their minds, our state motto, ‘Excelsior’ (‘Ever Upward’), applies to the abortion rate.”


National abortion rights groups have sought for years to persuade state legislatures to adopt laws guaranteeing abortion rights as a backup to Roe. But they have had limited success: Only seven states have such measures in place, including California, Connecticut and Maryland; the most recent state to adopt such a law is Hawaii, which did so in 2006.


“Pretty much all of the energy, all of the momentum, has been to restrict abortion, which makes what could potentially happen in New York so interesting,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. “There’s no other state that’s even contemplating this right now.”


In most statehouses, the push by lawmakers has been in the opposite direction. The past two years has seen more provisions adopted at the state level to restrict abortion rights than in any two-year period in decades, according to the Guttmacher Institute; last year, 19 states adopted 43 new provisions restricting abortion access, while not a single significant measure was adopted to expand access to abortion or to comprehensive sex education.


“It’s an extraordinary moment in terms of the degree to which there is government interference in a woman’s ability to make these basic health care decisions,” said Andrea Miller, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York. “For New York to be able to send a signal, a hopeful sign, a sense of the turning of the tide, we think is really important.”


Abortion rights advocates say that even though the Roe decision supersedes state law, some doctors are hesitant to perform late-term abortions when a woman’s health is at risk because the criminal statutes remain on the books.


“Doctors and hospitals shouldn’t be reading criminal laws to determine what types of health services they can offer and provide to their patients,” said M. Tracey Brooks, the president of Family Planning Advocates of New York State.


For Mr. Cuomo, the debate over passing a new abortion law presents an opportunity to appeal to women as well as to liberals, who have sought action in Albany without success since Eliot Spitzer made a similar proposal when he was governor. But it also poses a challenge to the coalition of Republicans and a few Democrats that controls the State Senate, the chamber that has in the past stood as the primary obstacle to passing abortion legislation in the capital.


The governor has said that his Reproductive Health Act would be one plank of a 10-part Women’s Equality Act that also would include equal pay and anti-discrimination provisions. Conservative groups, still stinging from the willingness of Republican lawmakers to go along with Mr. Cuomo’s push to legalize same-sex marriage in 2011, are mobilizing against the proposal. Seven thousand New Yorkers who oppose the measure have sent messages to Mr. Cuomo and legislators via the Web site of the New York State Catholic Conference.


A number of anti-abortion groups have also formed a coalition called New Yorkers for Life, which is seeking to rally opposition to the governor’s proposal using social media.


“If you ask anyone on the street, ‘Is there enough abortion in New York?’ no one in their right mind would say we need more abortion,” said the Rev. Jason J. McGuire, the executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, which is part of the coalition.


Members of both parties say that the issue of reproductive rights was a significant one in November’s legislative elections. Democrats, who were bolstered by an independent expenditure campaign by NARAL, credit their victories in several key Senate races in part to their pledge to fight for legislation similar to what Mr. Cuomo is planning to propose.


Republicans, who make up most of the coalition that controls the Senate, have generally opposed new abortion rights measures. Speaking with reporters recently, the leader of the Republicans, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, strenuously objected to rewriting the state’s abortion laws, especially in a manner similar to what the governor is seeking.


“You could have an abortion up until the day the child would be born, and I think that’s just wrong,” Mr. Skelos said. He suggested that the entire debate was unnecessary, noting that abortion is legal in New York State and saying that is “not going to be changed.”


The Senate Democratic leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Yonkers, who is the sponsor of a bill that is similar to the legislation the governor is drafting, said she was optimistic that an abortion measure would reach the Senate floor this year.


“New York State’s abortion laws were passed in 1970 in a bipartisan fashion,” she said. “It would be a sad commentary that over 40 years later we could not manage to do the same thing.”


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Daley turns focus toward Gary









Richard M. Daley has kept a low profile since leaving office in 2011.


That doesn't mean he has lost interest in urban issues. The former mayor has turned his attention in a surprising direction, beyond Chicago's borders to one of the most intractable urban tragedies in America: the collapse of Gary, Ind.


"I always believe no part of America should be forgotten, and I think Gary has been forgotten," Daley said.





Daley is using his influence at the University of Chicago, where he is a distinguished senior fellow, to push a modest but growing amount of manpower toward Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson.


With guidance from Daley and Freeman-Wilson, University of Chicago graduate students are trying to figure out what to do with Gary's abandoned buildings and how to promote greater use of technology to help the city accomplish more with less, among other projects.


The hope is that the students will go on to help other cities after graduation. If successful, the U. of C.-Gary partnership could be replicated in other industrial towns grappling with decline.


Gary spans about 55 square miles, nearly a quarter of the size of Chicago. Yet the steel town's population has plummeted to an estimated 80,000, meaning the city has lost about half its people since 1960. The city's problems have mounted, including abandoned buildings and homes, sagging infrastructure and a declining budget to pay for services.


Outsiders have tried to fix Gary since at least the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Freeman-Wilson, a former Indiana attorney general, judge and Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate, has reinvigorated Gary's renewal efforts. And she's unafraid to ask for help.


Immediately after winning the 2011 Democratic primary, Freeman-Wilson called Daley for advice. They met, and Daley invited her to be the first guest speaker at his lecture series at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, where Daley has a five-year appointment.


This quarter, 11 students from the university's public policy, business and social services schools are getting course credit for working on projects for Gary.


"It was Mayor Daley's idea," Freeman-Wilson said as she rode from a meeting on Chicago's West Side to Gary. "I had always envisioned getting the support and work from (University of Chicago Law School) alums, because there were issues around codes and things of that nature. It was not until the mayor came up with the idea of using students from the (Harris) School of Public Policy that I said, 'Oh yeah, that would work. That would work very well.'"


Daley does not teach a class at the University of Chicago. He runs an occasional lecture series.


Carol Brown, his last policy chief at City Hall, leads the program and the class, which is called the "Urban Revitalization Project: City of Gary, Ind." Grants from the Chicago-based Joyce and MacArthur foundations help pay administrative costs, including Brown's salary and that of a part-time assistant.


Last quarter's class was divided into three project teams. One team is cataloging Gary's abandoned buildings, which are magnets for crime and eyesores that further depress surrounding property values. Another is trying to recruit pro bono legal and consulting services for the city. And a third is trying to craft a strategy to clean up front stoops and empty lots one block at a time. This quarter's class also is tackling untapped funding opportunities and economic development.


Freeman-Wilson said a major benefit of the partnership is the fresh ideas from students "who aren't jaded by the limitations of government, whereas a 20-year employee might say, 'Oh, no, we can't do that in government because we don't have X, Y and Z.'"


Already their work has prompted more widespread use among Gary employees of a technology that stores and analyzes geographic data. City workers are now using the technology to map potholes, fallen tree limbs and illegal dump sites. That way work crews can be dispatched to neighborhoods where the problems are most severe.


"This partnership encourages urban planners to think broadly about regions instead of cities — greater Chicago instead of the city of Chicago," said Stephen Paul O'Hara, a historian at Xavier University who wrote a book about Gary.


The students operate as consultants. They gather best practices and ideas from cities around the country and then recommend a course of action. At the end of each 10-week quarter, students present their recommendations to Daley, Freeman-Wilson and their staffs. Their grades are based on those presentations and supporting reports.


"I will tell you, it never stops getting nerve-wracking," second-year graduate student Jocelyn Hare said of presenting to Daley. "But it gets easier."


Last spring, Hare, 32, responded to an email seeking student volunteers to conduct preliminary research to test the idea of a partnership. Hare then interned for the city of Gary during the summer. The Harris school paid her $15 an hour. She then enrolled in the first class in the fall and again this winter, when it was opened to graduate students outside of Harris for the first time.





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1 dead, 3 wounded in 90 minutes Friday night








Chicago police were flagged down by a man on the street as they responded to a shots fired call Friday night and found a woman lying on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound to her upper body.


She and three others were wounded between about 5:55 p.m. and 7:20 p.m. on the South and West sides, according to Chicago police.

The woman, whose age wasn't available, was shot in the 1100 block of North Pulaski Road, just a bit south of Division Street in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood about 7:05 p.m. She was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition and was pronounced dead there.

About 7:20 p.m., two people were shot in the 7800 block of South Merrill Avenue in the South Shore neighborhood. One was shot in the knee and the other suffered a graze wound. Police didn't have any other details about that incident.

About 5:55 p.m., a man sitting in his car near his home was shot in the leg by one of three guys who approached him on foot, police said. The 29-year-old was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, where his condition had stabilized.

Earlier Friday, a 17-year-old was shot in the hand in the 7800 block of South Morgan Street in the Gresham neighborhood.

Check back for more information.

pnickeas@tribune.com
Twitter: @peternickeas

lford@tribune.com
Twitter: @ltaford






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Livestrong Tattoos as Reminder of Personal Connections, Not Tarnished Brand





As Jax Mariash went under the tattoo needle to have “Livestrong” emblazoned on her wrist in bold black letters, she did not think about Lance Armstrong or doping allegations, but rather the 10 people affected by cancer she wanted to commemorate in ink. It was Jan. 22, 2010, exactly a year since the disease had taken the life of her stepfather. After years of wearing yellow Livestrong wristbands, she wanted something permanent.




A lifelong runner, Mariash got the tattoo to mark her 10-10-10 goal to run the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10, 2010, and fund-raising efforts for Livestrong. Less than three years later, antidoping officials laid out their case against Armstrong — a lengthy account of his practice of doping and bullying. He did not contest the charges and was barred for life from competing in Olympic sports.


“It’s heartbreaking,” Mariash, of Wilson, Wyo., said of the antidoping officials’ report, released in October, and Armstrong’s subsequent confession to Oprah Winfrey. “When I look at the tattoo now, I just think of living strong, and it’s more connected to the cancer fight and optimal health than Lance.”


Mariash is among those dealing with the fallout from Armstrong’s descent. She is not alone in having Livestrong permanently emblazoned on her skin.


Now the tattoos are a complicated, internationally recognized symbol of both an epic crusade against cancer and a cyclist who stood defiant in the face of accusations for years but ultimately admitted to lying.


The Internet abounds with epidermal reminders of the power of the Armstrong and Livestrong brands: the iconic yellow bracelet permanently wrapped around a wrist; block letters stretching along a rib cage; a heart on a foot bearing the word Livestrong; a mural on a back depicting Armstrong with the years of his now-stripped seven Tour de France victories and the phrase “ride with pride.”


While history has provided numerous examples of ill-fated tattoos to commemorate lovers, sports teams, gang membership and bands that break up, the Livestrong image is a complex one, said Michael Atkinson, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who has studied tattoos.


“People often regret the pop culture tattoos, the mass commodified tattoos,” said Atkinson, who has a Guns N’ Roses tattoo as a marker of his younger days. “A lot of people can’t divorce the movement from Lance Armstrong, and the Livestrong movement is a social movement. It’s very real and visceral and embodied in narrative survivorship. But we’re still not at a place where we look at a tattoo on the body and say that it’s a meaningful thing to someone.”


Geoff Livingston, a 40-year-old marketing professional in Washington, D.C., said that since Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey, he has received taunts on Twitter and inquiries at the gym regarding the yellow Livestrong armband tattoo that curls around his right bicep.


“People see it and go, ‘Wow,’ ” he said, “But I’m not going to get rid of it, and I’m not going to stop wearing short sleeves because of it. It’s about my family, not Lance Armstrong.”


Livingston got the tattoo in 2010 to commemorate his brother-in-law, who was told he had cancer and embarked on a fund-raising campaign for the charity. If he could raise $5,000, he agreed to get a tattoo. Within four days, the goal was exceeded, and Livingston went to a tattoo parlor to get his seventh tattoo.


“It’s actually grown in emotional significance for me,” Livingston said of the tattoo. “It brought me closer to my sister. It was a big statement of support.”


For Eddie Bonds, co-owner of Rabbit Bicycle in Hill City, S.D., getting a Livestrong tattoo was also a reflection of the growth of the sport of cycling. His wife, Joey, operates a tattoo parlor in front of their store, and in 2006 she designed a yellow Livestrong band that wraps around his right calf, topped off with a series of small cyclists.


“He kept breaking the Livestrong bands,” Joey Bonds said. “So it made more sense to tattoo it on him.”


“It’s about the cancer, not Lance,” Eddie Bonds said.


That was also the case for Jeremy Nienhouse, a 37-year old in Denver, Colo., who used a Livestrong tattoo to commemorate his own triumph over testicular cancer.


Given the diagnosis in 2004, Nienhouse had three rounds of chemotherapy, which ended on March 15, 2005, the date he had tattooed on his left arm the day after his five-year anniversary of being cancer free in 2010. It reads: “3-15-05” and “LIVESTRONG” on the image of a yellow band.


Nienhouse said he had heard about Livestrong and Armstrong’s own battle with the cancer around the time he learned he had cancer, which alerted him to the fact that even though he was young and healthy, he, too, could have cancer.


“On a personal level,” Nienhouse said, “he sounds like kind of a jerk. But if he hadn’t been in the public eye, I don’t know if I would have been diagnosed when I had been.”


Nienhouse said he had no plans to have the tattoo removed.


As for Mariash, she said she read every page of the antidoping officials’ report. She soon donated her Livestrong shirts, shorts and running gear. She watched Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey and wondered if his apology was an effort to reduce his ban from the sport or a genuine appeal to those who showed their support to him and now wear a visible sign of it.


“People called me ‘Miss Livestrong,’ ” Mariash said. “It was part of my identity.”


She also said she did not plan to have her tattoo removed.


“I wanted to show it’s forever,” she said. “Cancer isn’t something that just goes away from people. I wanted to show this is permanent and keep people remembering the fight.”


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Billionaire Sears CEO reveals lower Gap stake













The chairman of Sears, Edward Lampert, will be taking over as chief executive.


Sears CEO Edward Lampert has upped his stake in Gap Inc.
(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)



























































Sears Chairman and CEO Edward Lampert has reduced his stake in The Gap Inc., according to security filings.


Lampert shed roughly 4 percent of his shares in the San Francisco-based retailer by Dec. 31, 2012, according to documents filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  He currently holds 25.3 million shares, personally and through his investment groups, ESL Partners, RBS Partners, LP and ESL Investments.


In 2012, Lampert reported that he held a 9.3 percent stake or 45.2 million shares.





Lampert is the billionaire hedge fund manager who engineered the merger of Sears and Kmart in 2005.  Since then, Sears has struggled to maintain its place with years of declining sales and executive changeover.  The company has focused on building loyalty rewards program and online business which officials said grew by 20 percent last year. 


Shares of The Gap, which also operates brands Banana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime and Athleta closed up nearly 5 percent at $32.87 on Friday, in part due to news about Lampert’s boosted interested in the retailer and on speculation that Uniqlo-owner and Japan-based Fast Retailing, Ltd.  is also interested in the retailer.


The Gap has been on an upswing beating analysts estimates with holiday and January sales.  The retailer said sales in stores open at least were up 8 percent to $1.13 billion in January. 


Lampert, who has several retail holdings including Columbus, Oh-based Big Lots Inc., also decreased his interest Fort Lauderdale-based AutoNation, Inc. by about $13.5 million to $34.5 million and purchased 844, 926 shares of Pleasanton, Calif-based Safeway Inc. 


crshropshire@tribune.com | Twitter: @corilyns





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