“Zero Dark Thirty” fails at Oscars amid political fallout

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the decade-long U.S. hunt for Osama bin Laden, has received more attention in the U.S. Congress than it did at the Oscars on Sunday, amid political fallout over its depiction of torture and alleged intelligence leaks to the movie’s makers.

The film, which has sparked outrage among both Democrats and Republicans in Washington over its depiction of torture, and allegations that the Obama administration leaked classified intelligence to help the making of the film, won no major Oscars on Sunday and only one award overall.

Just three months ago, the thriller, which culminates in Osama bin Laden’s killing by U.S. Navy Seals, was a strong contender to pick up the biggest prize of Best Picture, as well as the Best Actress and Original Screenplay awards.

By the end of Sunday night, however, it had picked up just one award – a shared Oscar for Sound Editing, which was a tie.

In recent weeks, the movie has seen a fierce backlash over its implied message that torture helped crack the bin Laden case.

Early signs of trouble came in mid-December when leading U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin, both Democrats, and John McCain, the Republicans’ 2008 presidential candidate, sent a letter to movie studio Sony Pictures, castigating the film.

They called the film “grossly inaccurate and misleading” for suggesting torture helped the U.S. track the al Qaeda leader to a Pakistani compound, where he was killed in 2011.

Three weeks later, the film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, was omitted from the Oscar’s Best Director shortlist, chosen by about 5,800 movie industry professionals who make up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Bigelow was one of only four big directors to be snubbed while the film did receive five Oscar nominations.

In January, Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan pointed the finger at Washington, writing: “Chalk up this year’s nominations as a victory for the bullying power of the United States Senate and an undeserved loss for Kathryn Bigelow.”

Even on Oscar morning, the film woke to unwelcome headlines. The relatives of a flight attendant who died in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks criticized the film for using a recording of her last call before her American Airlines plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Harry Ong, the brother of the flight attendant, Betty Ann Ong, called the film “just outrageous.”

Republicans in Washington have been particularly critical of the film, alleging that it was used to help the re-election prospects of U.S. President Barack Obama, and that it revealed national security secrets.

Other victims of the September 11 attacks have voiced support for the film as did departing U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Before Sunday’s Oscars, Rotten Tomatoes editor-in-chief Matt Atchity said: “Controversial movies suffer with Academy voters. I think ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ will have a tough time winning Best Picture because I think the Academy is going to go with less controversial choices.”

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

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‘Bloodless’ Lung Transplants for Jehovah’s Witnesses

Eric Kayne for The New York Times

SHARING HOME AND FAITH A Houston couple hosted Gene and Rebecca Tomczak, center, in October so she could get care nearby.

HOUSTON — Last April, after being told that only a transplant could save her from a fatal lung condition, Rebecca S. Tomczak began calling some of the top-ranked hospitals in the country.

She started with Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, just hours from her home near Augusta, Ga. Then she tried Duke and the University of Arkansas and Johns Hopkins. Each advised Ms. Tomczak, then 69, to look somewhere else.

The reason: Ms. Tomczak, who was baptized at age 12 as a Jehovah’s Witness, insisted for religious reasons that her transplant be performed without a blood transfusion. The Witnesses believe that Scripture prohibits the transfusion of blood, even one’s own, at the risk of forfeiting eternal life.

Given the complexities of lung transplantation, in which transfusions are routine, some doctors felt the procedure posed unacceptable dangers. Others could not get past the ethics of it all. With more than 1,600 desperately ill people waiting for a donated lung, was it appropriate to give one to a woman who might needlessly sacrifice her life and the organ along with it?

By the time Ms. Tomczak found Dr. Scott A. Scheinin at The Methodist Hospital in Houston last spring, he had long since made peace with such quandaries. Like a number of physicians, he had become persuaded by a growing body of research that transfusions often pose unnecessary risks and should be avoided when possible, even in complicated cases.

By cherry-picking patients with low odds of complications, Dr. Scheinin felt he could operate almost as safely without blood as with it. The way he saw it, patients declined lifesaving therapies all the time, for all manner of reasons, and it was not his place to deny care just because those reasons were sometimes religious or unconventional.

“At the end of the day,” he had resolved, “if you agree to take care of these patients, you agree to do it on their terms.”

Ms. Tomczak’s case — the 11th so-called bloodless lung transplant attempted at Methodist over three years — would become the latest test of an innovative approach that was developed to accommodate the unique beliefs of the world’s eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses but may soon become standard practice for all surgical patients.

Unlike other patients, Ms. Tomczak would have no backstop. Explicit in her understanding with Dr. Scheinin was that if something went terribly wrong, he would allow her to bleed to death. He had watched Witness patients die before, with a lifesaving elixir at hand.

Ms. Tomczak had dismissed the prospect of a transplant for most of the two years she had struggled with sarcoidosis, a progressive condition of unknown cause that leads to scarring in the lungs. The illness forced her to quit a part-time job with Nielsen, the market research firm.

Then in April, on a trip to the South Carolina coast, she found that she was too breathless to join her frolicking grandchildren on the beach. Tethered to an oxygen tank, she watched from the boardwalk, growing sad and angry and then determined to reclaim her health.

“I wanted to be around and be a part of their lives,” Ms. Tomczak recalled, dabbing at tears.

She knew there was danger in refusing to take blood. But she thought the greater peril would come from offending God.

“I know,” she said, “that if I did anything that violates Jehovah’s law, I would not make it into the new system, where he’s going to make earth into a paradise. I know there are risks. But I think I am covered.”

Cutting Risks, and Costs

The approach Dr. Scheinin would use — originally called “bloodless medicine” but later re-branded as “patient blood management” — has been around for decades. His mentor at Methodist, Dr. Denton A. Cooley, the renowned cardiac pioneer, performed heart surgery on hundreds of Witnesses starting in the late 1950s. The first bloodless lung transplant, at Johns Hopkins, was in 1996.

But nearly 17 years later, the degree of difficulty for such procedures remains so high that Dr. Scheinin and his team are among the very few willing to attempt them.

In 2009, after analyzing Methodist’s own data, Dr. Scheinin became convinced that if he selected patients carefully, he could perform lung transplants without transfusions. Hospital administrators resisted at first, knowing that even small numbers of deaths could bring scrutiny from federal regulators.

“My job is to push risk away,” said Dr. A. Osama Gaber, the hospital’s director of transplantation, “so I wasn’t really excited about it. But the numbers were very convincing.”

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Paroled sex offenders disarming tracking devices

SACRAMENTO — Thousands of paroled child molesters, rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in California are removing or disarming their court-ordered GPS tracking devices — and some have been charged with new crimes including sexual battery, kidnapping and attempted manslaughter.

The offenders have discovered that they can disable the monitors, often with little risk of serving time for it, a Times investigation has found. The jails are too full to hold them.

"It's a huge problem," said Fresno parole agent Matt Hill. "If the public knew, they'd be shocked."

More than 3,400 arrest warrants for GPS tamperers have been issued since October 2011, when the state began referring parole violators to county jails instead of returning them to its packed prisons. Warrants increased 28% in 2012 compared to the 12 months before the change in custody began. Nearly all of the warrants were for sex offenders, who are the vast majority of convicts with monitors, and many were for repeat violations.

The custody shift is part of Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature's "realignment" program, to comply with court orders to reduce overcrowding in state prisons. But many counties have been under their own court orders to ease crowding in their jails.

Some have freed parole violators within days, or even hours, of arrest rather than keep them in custody. Some have refused to accept them at all.

Before prison realignment took effect, sex offenders who breached parole remained behind bars, awaiting hearings that could send them back to prison for up to a year. Now, the maximum penalty is 180 days in jail, but many never serve that time.

With so little deterrent, parolees "certainly are feeling more bold," said Jack Wallace, an executive at the California Sex Offender Management Board.

Rithy Mam, a convicted child stalker, was arrested three times in two months after skipping parole and was freed almost immediately each time. After his third release, his GPS alarm went off and he vanished, law enforcement records show.

The next day, he turned up in a Stockton living room where a 15-year-old girl was asleep on the couch, police said. The girl told police she awoke to find the stranger staring at her and that he asked "Wanna date?" before leaving the home.

Police say Mam went back twice more that week and menaced the girl and her 13-year-old sister, getting in by giving candy to a toddler, before authorities recaptured him in a local park. He is in custody on new charges of child molestation.

Californians voted in 2006 to require that high-risk sex offenders be tracked for life with GPS monitors strapped to their bodies.

The devices are programmed to record offenders' movements and are intended, at least in part, to deter them from committing crimes. The devices, attached to rubber ankle straps embedded with fiber-optic cable, transmit signals monitored by a private contractor.

They are easy to cut off, but an alarm is triggered when that happens, as it is when they are interfered with in other ways or go dead, or when an offender enters a forbidden area such as a school zone or playground. The monitoring company alerts parole agents by text message or email.

Arrest warrants for GPS tamperers are automatically published online. The Times reviewed that data as well as thousands of jail logs, court documents and criminal histories provided by confidential sources. The records show that the way authorities handle violators can vary significantly by county.

San Bernardino County releases more inmates early from its cramped jails than any other county in California, according to state reports. But sex offenders who violate parole there generally serve their terms. A spokeswoman said the county closely reviews criminal histories, and those with past sex offenses are ineligible for early release.

By contrast, parole violators in San Joaquin County are often set free within a day of arrest.

A review of the county's jail logs shows that nine of the 15 sex offenders arrested for violating parole in December and January were let out within 24 hours, including seven who immediately tampered with their trackers and disappeared. One of the nine, a convicted rapist named Robert Stone, was arrested two weeks later on kidnapping charges and returned to jail, where he remains.

Raoul Leyva, a sex offender with a history of beating women, was arrested in April for fleeing parole and ordered to remain jailed for 100 days. He was out in 16 days and soon bolted again, after allowing the battery on his device to go dead, according to the documents reviewed by The Times.

Less than two weeks later, a drug dealer led police to a Stockton apartment where Leyva's girlfriend, 20-year-old Brandy Arreola, had lain for days on the floor, severely beaten and in a coma. Now brain damaged and confined to a wheelchair, Arreola spends her time watching cartoons.

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The Texas Tribune: Advocates Seek Mental Health Changes, Including Power to Detain

Matt Rainwaters for Texas Monthly

The Sherman grave of Andre Thomas’s victims.

SHERMAN — A worried call from his daughter’s boyfriend sent Paul Boren rushing to her apartment on the morning of March 27, 2004. He drove the eight blocks to her apartment, peering into his neighbors’ yards, searching for Andre Thomas, Laura Boren’s estranged husband.

Expanded coverage of Texas is produced by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization. To join the conversation about this article, go to texastribune.org.

For more articles on mental health and criminal justice in Texas, as well as a timeline of the Andre Thomas case: texastribune.org

Matt Rainwaters for Texas Monthly

Laura Boren

He drove past the brightly colored slides, swings and bouncy plastic animals in Fairview Park across the street from the apartment where Ms. Boren, 20, and her two children lived. He pulled into a parking spot below and immediately saw that her door was broken. As his heart raced, Mr. Boren, a white-haired giant of a man, bounded up the stairwell, calling out for his daughter.

He found her on the white carpet, smeared with blood, a gaping hole in her chest. Beside her left leg, a one-dollar bill was folded lengthwise, the radiating eye of the pyramid facing up. Mr. Boren knew she was gone.

In a panic, he rushed past the stuffed animals, dolls and plastic toys strewn along the hallway to the bedroom shared by his two grandchildren. The body of 13-month-old Leyha Hughes lay on the floor next to a blood-spattered doll nearly as big as she was.

Andre Boren, 4, lay on his back in his white children’s bed just above Leyha. He looked as if he could have been sleeping — a moment away from revealing the toothy grin that typically spread from one of his round cheeks to the other — except for the massive chest wound that matched the ones his father, Andre Thomas (the boy was also known as Andre Jr.), had inflicted on his mother and his half-sister as he tried to remove their hearts.

“You just can’t believe that it’s real,” said Sherry Boren, Laura Boren’s mother. “You’re hoping that it’s not, that it’s a dream or something, that you’re going to wake up at any minute.”

Mr. Thomas, who confessed to the murders of his wife, their son and her daughter by another man, was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to death at age 21. While awaiting trial in 2004, he gouged out one of his eyes, and in 2008 on death row, he removed the other and ate it.

At least twice in the three weeks before the crime, Mr. Thomas had sought mental health treatment, babbling illogically and threatening to commit suicide. On two occasions, staff members at the medical facilities were so worried that his psychosis made him a threat to himself or others that they sought emergency detention warrants for him.

Despite talk of suicide and bizarre biblical delusions, he was not detained for treatment. Mr. Thomas later told the police that he was convinced that Ms. Boren was the wicked Jezebel from the Bible, that his own son was the Antichrist and that Leyha was involved in an evil conspiracy with them.

He was on a mission from God, he said, to free their hearts of demons.

Hospitals do not have legal authority to detain people who voluntarily enter their facilities in search of mental health care but then decide to leave. It is one of many holes in the state’s nearly 30-year-old mental health code that advocates, police officers and judges say lawmakers need to fix. In a report last year, Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit advocacy organization, called on lawmakers to replace the existing code with one that reflects contemporary mental health needs.

“It was last fully revised in 1985, and clearly the mental health system has changed drastically since then,” said Susan Stone, a lawyer and psychiatrist who led the two-year Texas Appleseed project to study and recommend reforms to the code. Lawmakers have said that although the code may need to be revamped, it will not happen in this year’s legislative session. Such an undertaking requires legislative studies that have not been conducted. But advocates are urging legislators to make a few critical changes that they say could prevent tragedies, including giving hospitals the right to detain someone who is having a mental health crisis.

From the time Mr. Thomas was 10, he had told friends he heard demons in his head instructing him to do bad things. The cacophony drove him to attempt suicide repeatedly as an adolescent, according to court records. He drank and abused drugs to try to quiet the noise.

bgrissom@texastribune.org

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Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States

Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent.

With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps on interest rates.

While the banks, which include giants like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, do not make the loans, they are a critical link for the lenders, enabling the lenders to withdraw payments automatically from borrowers’ bank accounts, even in states where the loans are banned entirely. In some cases, the banks allow lenders to tap checking accounts even after the customers have begged them to stop the withdrawals.

“Without the assistance of the banks in processing and sending electronic funds, these lenders simply couldn’t operate,” said Josh Zinner, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, which works with community groups in New York.

The banking industry says it is simply serving customers who have authorized the lenders to withdraw money from their accounts. “The industry is not in a position to monitor customer accounts to see where their payments are going,” said Virginia O’Neill, senior counsel with the American Bankers Association.

But state and federal officials are taking aim at the banks’ role at a time when authorities are increasing their efforts to clamp down on payday lending and its practice of providing quick money to borrowers who need cash.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are examining banks’ roles in the online loans, according to several people with direct knowledge of the matter. Benjamin M. Lawsky, who heads New York State’s Department of Financial Services, is investigating how banks enable the online lenders to skirt New York law and make loans to residents of the state, where interest rates are capped at 25 percent.

For the banks, it can be a lucrative partnership. At first blush, processing automatic withdrawals hardly seems like a source of profit. But many customers are already on shaky financial footing. The withdrawals often set off a cascade of fees from problems like overdrafts. Roughly 27 percent of payday loan borrowers say that the loans caused them to overdraw their accounts, according to a report released this month by the Pew Charitable Trusts. That fee income is coveted, given that financial regulations limiting fees on debit and credit cards have cost banks billions of dollars.

Some state and federal authorities say the banks’ role in enabling the lenders has frustrated government efforts to shield people from predatory loans — an issue that gained urgency after reckless mortgage lending helped precipitate the 2008 financial crisis.

Lawmakers, led by Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, introduced a bill in July aimed at reining in the lenders, in part, by forcing them to abide by the laws of the state where the borrower lives, rather than where the lender is. The legislation, pending in Congress, would also allow borrowers to cancel automatic withdrawals more easily. “Technology has taken a lot of these scams online, and it’s time to crack down,” Mr. Merkley said in a statement when the bill was introduced.

While the loans are simple to obtain — some online lenders promise approval in minutes with no credit check — they are tough to get rid of. Customers who want to repay their loan in full typically must contact the online lender at least three days before the next withdrawal. Otherwise, the lender automatically renews the loans at least monthly and withdraws only the interest owed. Under federal law, customers are allowed to stop authorized withdrawals from their account. Still, some borrowers say their banks do not heed requests to stop the loans.

Ivy Brodsky, 37, thought she had figured out a way to stop six payday lenders from taking money from her account when she visited her Chase branch in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn in March to close it. But Chase kept the account open and between April and May, the six Internet lenders tried to withdraw money from Ms. Brodsky’s account 55 times, according to bank records reviewed by The New York Times. Chase charged her $1,523 in fees — a combination of 44 insufficient fund fees, extended overdraft fees and service fees.

For Subrina Baptiste, 33, an educational assistant in Brooklyn, the overdraft fees levied by Chase cannibalized her child support income. She said she applied for a $400 loan from Loanshoponline.com and a $700 loan from Advancemetoday.com in 2011. The loans, with annual interest rates of 730 percent and 584 percent respectively, skirt New York law.

Ms. Baptiste said she asked Chase to revoke the automatic withdrawals in October 2011, but was told that she had to ask the lenders instead. In one month, her bank records show, the lenders tried to take money from her account at least six times. Chase charged her $812 in fees and deducted over $600 from her child-support payments to cover them.

“I don’t understand why my own bank just wouldn’t listen to me,” Ms. Baptiste said, adding that Chase ultimately closed her account last January, three months after she asked.

A spokeswoman for Bank of America said the bank always honored requests to stop automatic withdrawals. Wells Fargo declined to comment. Kristin Lemkau, a spokeswoman for Chase, said: “We are working with the customers to resolve these cases.” Online lenders say they work to abide by state laws.

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Genetically modified foods: Who has to tell?

Consumers who believe they have a right to know whether their food contains genetically modified ingredients are pressing lawmakers, regulators and voters to require labels on altered foods. But even if they succeed, experts say there's no guarantee that labels identifying genetically engineered foods would ever appear on packages.

"People are usually surprised to learn that there is no legal right to know," said Michael Rodemeyer, an expert on biotechnology policy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

A variety of rules and regulations control the words that appear on food packages. Such rules must be balanced against companies' constitutionally protected right of commercial speech, experts said.

"It's an unsettled area in the law," said Hank Greely, director of the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences in Palo Alto. "If I were a betting man, I think the odds are good that the Supreme Court would ... strike down a GMO labeling requirement."

Consumers do have the right to know some things about foods, and it's the job of the Food and Drug Administration to enforce the various rules. Labels must carry an accurate name for the food, as well as its weight and manufacturer, a list of ingredients and, since 1990, that panel of calories and breakdown of basic nutrients that some people pore over and others blithely ignore.

And labels cannot be false or misleading. Consumers have a right to know that a product contains the nutrients they'd reasonably expect to find in a food with that name: An orange lacking vitamin C (should anyone desire to create such a thing) would have to be labeled as such.

They also have the right to know when a food contains something new that makes it materially different, such as an allergen or unexpected nutrient. Soybean varieties that are genetically engineered to contain high amounts of the monounsaturated fat oleic acid must bear labels that make that property clear, said FDA spokesperson Morgan Liscinsky.

But there is no requirement that food producers use those labels to say how they raised those oleic acid levels, according to the FDA. They could have done it through conventional breeding or by irradiating plant tissue to create mutations or by fusing cells together in a dish — or with genetic engineering.

When Flavr Savr tomatoes became the first genetically modified plants sold in supermarkets in 1994, they had stickers that informed shoppers that they were "made from genetically engineered seeds." Calgene Inc., the company that produced the tomatoes, even provided brochures and a toll-free number that consumers could call to learn more about the product, said Belinda Martineau, a geneticist at UC Davis who worked at Calgene in the 1990s.

But those labels were there only because Calgene decided to put them there. The FDA had scrutinized the process by which the company engineered the DNA in the tomatoes and decided that the technology itself didn't amount to a material change. Regulators concluded that Flavr Savr had the appearance, nutrients, flavor and texture of a tomato (although not, as it turned out, an especially tasty one).

"It was still a tomato," said Fred Degnan, a food lawyer with the firm King & Spalding in Washington, D.C., who has worked on biotechnology and labeling issues at the FDA. "They couldn't require it to be labeled in a way that implied it was different from a regular tomato."

Courts have ruled that forcing companies to label GM products violates their 1st Amendment right of free speech. In a 1996 case, a federal appeals court blocked a Vermont law that required dairy producers to label milk from cows that had been treated with a growth hormone made by genetically engineered bacteria. The hormone helped cows produce more milk, but the milk itself was the same as milk from untreated cows, the FDA determined. Because the law required labels to contain information that wasn't "material" to the product, it was unconstitutional, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 decision.

Labels can be required only if they alert consumers to a change that affects a food's composition or nutrition, its physical properties (such as shelf life), or the qualities that influence the sensory experience of smelling, tasting and eating it, the FDA says.

It is not a definition that sits well with all.

Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group Center for Food Safety, said that approach reflects "19th century science." His group has petitioned the FDA to update its rules so that any product created via genetic engineering would be considered altered enough to require a label.

Such a change would also give companies more leeway to label their products as free of genetically modified ingredients: Today they can do so only if the label doesn't imply that there's something wrong with GM foods or that GMO-free foods are superior (although many companies skirt the rules).

"We need to know we have an agency using 21st century regulations to deal with 21st century technology," Kimbrell said.

The FDA's stance on labeling genetically modified foods differs starkly from that of European regulators, who require foods with genetically engineered ingredients to bear labels. Most scientists believe that the FDA's approach is rational — but perhaps it's too rational if the goal is to encourage public acceptance of the technology, said Jennifer Kuzma, a science policy expert at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

"This is something that people want to see on labels," Kuzma said. "My view is that consumers deserve a choice when it comes to something that is important to them, even though there may not be a scientific basis for doing it."

Rodemeyer, the expert on biotechnology policy, says he thinks food producers made a tactical mistake by deciding not to label their genetically modified products voluntarily.

"When you don't label, you're always raising suspicion you're trying to hide something," he said.

Since most processed foods contain oil, sugar, syrups, emulsifiers, flour, cornmeal and protein that are derived from GM crops, virtually every product sold in the last 15 years would have carried a label. By now, those labels would have lost all meaning, Rodemeyer said: "If they would have all held their noses and jumped together, this wouldn't be an issue."

science@latimes.com

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Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth as Seen From Space

Asteroid impact craters are among the most interesting geological structures on any planet. Many other planets and moons in our solar system, including our own moon, are pock-marked with loads of craters. But because Earth has a protective atmosphere and is geologically active — with plate tectonics and volcanic eruptions, mostly relatively young oceanic crust, and harsh weathering from wind and water — impact structures don’t last long and can be tough to come by.

But on a few old pieces of continent, especially in arid deserts, the marks of asteroids have been preserved. One well-known example is our own Barringer crater, also known as Meteor Crater, in Arizona. The images here show some of the biggest, oldest and most interesting impact craters on the planet.

Aorounga crater, pictured above and below, is one of the best preserved impact craters on Earth, thanks in part to its location in the Sahara Desert in Chad. The 10 mile-wide crater is probably around 350 million years old. The stripes are alternating rock ridges and sand layers, known as yardangs, caused by persistent unidirectional wind. The image above was taken by astronauts in the International Space Station in July. The radar image below, taken from the space shuttle in 1994, reveals that Aorounga may be one of two or three craters.

Images: NASA

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Warner’s “Jack the Giant Slayer” may see soft U.S., Canada debut

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Warner Brothers‘ “Jack the Giant Slayer,” the first big-budget, special effects-filled action movie of 2013, could be headed for less than huge sales at U.S. and Canadian box offices when it opens on March 1.

Industry tracking suggests the 3D movie based on the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fairy tale will debut with $ 27 million to $ 32 million in the domestic market during its first three days, according to sources who have seen the pre-release surveys.

The projections had climbed slightly from earlier in the week and could change closer to next Friday’s opening after marketing heats up and press coverage intensifies.

“Jack the Giant Slayer” cost an estimated $ 189 million to make.

Two of last year’s films with bigger budgets flopped, Walt Disney Co’s $ 250 million Mars epic “John Carter” and the $ 209 million action movie “Battleship” from Comcast Corp’s Universal Pictures, forcing the companies to acknowledge financial losses.

Distributor Warner Brothers, part of Time Warner Inc, believes “Jack the Giant Slayer” will attract a broad family audience and hopes for a North American (U.S. and Canadian) debut above $ 30 million, said Dan Fellman, president of theatrical distribution for the studio. He said he expects the studio will make a profit on the movie.

Warner Brothers surveys showed “tremendous support” for the movie among people age 15 and younger, and the film received positive reactions from theater owners, Fellman said, noting that family audiences haven’t had a big-event film since December’s “The Hobbit.”

The first weekend in March also has proved a winner for family films, Fellman said. A year ago, animated hit “The Lorax” opened with a strong $ 70 million.

In addition, “the international side of the market will be huge,” Fellman said.

A $ 30 million domestic opening for “Jack the Giant Slayer” would be “soft” for a big-budget film, said Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible, who compiles a database to project film performance. Warner Brothers could still make back the movie’s budget, not including marketing costs, if the film opens domestically with at least $ 25 million, he said Wible.

Last year, Disney was forced to take a $ 200 million write-down for “John Carter.” And the chief financial officer of Comcast, Michael J. Angelakis, acknowledged in a call with analysts that “Battleship” was “primarily” responsible for Universal‘s $ 83 million second-quarter loss.

“Jack the Giant Slayer” was produced by Warner Brothers and Legendary Entertainment, which partnered with Warner on hits including “The Dark Knight” trilogy and “The Hangover” series.

Warner Brothers last year delayed the release of “Jack the Giant Slayer,” moving it from last summer to March 1.

The film stars Nicholas Hoult as a young farmer who ventures into the land of the giants to rescue a kidnapped princess.

The movie’s trailer suggests the studio is aiming for “Lord of the Rings” fans, said Phil Contrino, editor of Boxoffice.com, a website that tracks film comments on Facebook and Twitter.

So far, “it’s just not connecting with fantasy fans,” said Contrino, who estimates the film will take in about $ 23 million in the United States and Canada during its first three days.

The movie still has time to build more buzz and could enjoy a domestic sales boost if families turn out in force, Contrino said. Plus, “I can really see a movie like that clicking overseas,” he said.

International ticket sales can run at least twice as high as U.S. and Canadian grosses for big action movies.

(Reporting By Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Ronald Grover and Leslie Adler)

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Many States Say Cuts Would Burden Fragile Recovery

States are increasingly alarmed that they could become collateral damage in Washington’s latest fiscal battle, fearing that the impasse could saddle them with across-the-board spending cuts that threaten to slow their fragile recoveries or thrust them back into recession.

Some states, like Maryland and Virginia, are vulnerable because their economies are heavily dependent on federal workers, federal contracts and military spending, which will face steep reductions if Congress allows the automatic cuts, known as sequestration, to begin next Friday. Others, including Illinois and South Dakota, are at risk because of their reliance on the types of federal grants that are scheduled to be cut. And many states simply fear that a heavy dose of federal austerity could weaken their economies, costing them jobs and much-needed tax revenue.

So as state officials begin to draw up their budgets for next year, some say that the biggest risk they see is not the weak housing market or the troubled European economy but the federal government. While the threat of big federal cuts to states has become something of a semiannual occurrence in recent years, state officials said in interviews that they fear that this time the federal government might not be crying wolf — and their hopes are dimming that a deal will be struck in Washington in time to avert the cuts.

The impact would be widespread as the cuts ripple across the nation over the next year.

Texas expects to see its education aid slashed hundreds of millions of dollars, which could force local school districts to fire teachers, if the cuts are not averted. Michigan officials say they are in no position to replace the lost federal dollars with state dollars, but worry about cuts to federal programs like the one that helps people heat their homes. Maryland is bracing not only for a blow to its economy, which depends on federal workers and contractors and the many private businesses that support them, but also for cuts in federal aid for schools, Head Start programs, a nutrition program for pregnant women, mothers and children, and job training programs, among others.

Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, a Republican, warned in a letter to President Obama on Monday that the automatic spending cuts would have a “potentially devastating impact” and could force Virginia and other states into a recession, noting that the planned cuts to military spending would be especially damaging to areas like Hampton Roads that have a big Navy presence. And he noted that the whole idea of the proposed cuts was that they were supposed to be so unpalatable that they would force officials in Washington to come up with a compromise.

“As we all know, the defense, and other, cuts in the sequester were designed to be a hammer, not a real policy,” Mr. McDonnell wrote. “Unfortunately, inaction by you and Congress now leaves states and localities to adjust to the looming threat of this haphazard idea.”

The looming cuts come just as many states feel they are turning the corner after the prolonged slump caused by the recession. Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a Democrat, said he was moving to increase the state’s cash reserves and rainy day funds as a hedge against federal cuts.

“I’d rather be spending those dollars on things that improve our business climate, that accelerate our recovery, that get more people back to work, or on needed infrastructure — transportation, roads, bridges and the like,” he said, adding that Maryland has eliminated 5,600 positions in recent years and that its government was smaller, on a per capita basis, than it had been in four decades. “But I can’t do that. I can’t responsibly do that as long as I have this hara-kiri Congress threatening to drive a long knife through our recovery.”

Federal spending on salaries, wages and procurement makes up close to 20 percent of the economies of Maryland and Virginia, according to an analysis by the Pew Center on the States.

But states are in a delicate position. While they fear the impact of the automatic cuts, they also fear that any deal to avert them might be even worse for their bottom lines. That is because many of the planned cuts would go to military spending and not just domestic programs, and some of the most important federal programs for states, including Medicaid and federal highway funds, would be exempt from the cuts.

States will see a reduction of $5.8 billion this year in the federal grant programs subject to the automatic cuts, according to an analysis by Federal Funds Information for States, a group created by the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures that tracks the impact of federal actions on states. California, New York and Texas stand to lose the most money from the automatic cuts, and Puerto Rico, which is already facing serious fiscal distress, is threatened with the loss of more than $126 million in federal grant money, the analysis found.

Even with the automatic cuts, the analysis found, states are still expected to get more federal aid over all this year than they did last year, because of growth in some of the biggest programs that are exempt from the cuts, including Medicaid.

But the cuts still pose a real risk to states, officials said. State budget officials from around the country held a conference call last week to discuss the threatened cuts. “In almost every case the folks at the state level, the budget offices, are pretty much telling the agencies and departments that they’re not going to backfill — they’re not going to make up for the budget cuts,” said Scott D. Pattison, the executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, which arranged the call. “They don’t have enough state funds to make up for federal cuts.”

The cuts would not hit all states equally, the Pew Center on the States found. While the federal grants subject to the cuts make up more than 10 percent of South Dakota’s revenue, it found, they make up less than 5 percent of Delaware’s revenue.

Many state officials find themselves frustrated year after year by the uncertainty of what they can expect from Washington, which provides states with roughly a third of their revenues. There were threats of cuts when Congress balked at raising the debt limit in 2011, when a so-called super-committee tried and failed to reach a budget deal, and late last year when the nation faced the “fiscal cliff.”

John E. Nixon, the director of Michigan’s budget office, said that all the uncertainty made the state’s planning more difficult. “If it’s going to happen,” he said, “at some point we need to rip off the Band-Aid.”

Fernanda Santos contributed reporting.

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Gunfire and deadly crash rattle the Las Vegas Strip

LAS VEGAS — A spectacular predawn crash on the Strip — triggered when bullets fired from a black Range Rover peppered a Maserati — hit this resort city right between the eyes. In the end, three people were dead and a major intersection under lockdown during a three-state manhunt for the shooters, leaving even casino veterans used to the extraordinary scratching their heads.

The mayhem was sparked, witnesses told police, by a quarrel early Thursday at a hotel valet stand.

The two vehicles left the Aria resort hotel and were heading north on Las Vegas Boulevard at 4:20 a.m., an hour when the casino marquees shine brightly but the gambling thoroughfare is largely empty. At Harmon Avenue, occupants inside the Range Rover opened fire on the Maserati, police said.

The silver-gray sports car, which was struck several times, sped into the intersection at Flamingo Road, ramming a Yellow cab. The taxi exploded, killing the driver and a passenger. Four other vehicles in the intersection were also involved in the crash and explosion, but officers offered no details.

"Omg Omg Omg that car just blew up!" one witness tweeted shortly after the crash, posting a photo of the wreckage. "God Bless their Souls! Omg!"

The driver of the Maserati died later at a hospital, police said. A passenger in the vehicle received minor injuries and was being interviewed by investigators. At least three others were also injured.

Police in Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah were on alert for the distinctive black Range Rover SUV, described as having dark-tinted windows, black rims and out-of-state paper dealer plates.

"We are going to pursue these individuals and prosecute them," Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said at an afternoon news conference. "This act was totally unacceptable. It's not just tragic but unnecessary — the level of violence we see here in Las Vegas and across America."

Authorities had not publicly identified the dead. But a Las Vegas television station late Thursday identified the taxi driver as Michael Boldon, 62, who the station said had recently moved here from Michigan to care for his 93-year-old mother.

The victim's son, who drives a limousine, told Fox News 5 that he last talked with his father after 3 a.m., and later called his cellphone shortly after the crash to warn him to avoid the Strip. But there was no answer.

The station also identified the driver of the Maserati as Ken Cherry, a rap artist from Oakland who also is known as "Kenny Clutch." The station quoted family members identifying Cherry as the driver. An Internet video of a Cherry song called "Stay Schemin" shows two men in a vehicle on the Strip.

Police had more questions than answers.

"It began with a dispute at a nearby hotel and spilled onto the streets," said Capt. Chris Jones of the Las Vegas Police Robbery and Homicide Division.

The morning's events threw the Strip into disarray all day. The gambling boulevard's busiest and best-known intersection was cordoned off by yellow police tape until nightfall, keeping traffic and curious pedestrians away from the carnage. Even skywalks were blocked off.

While slot machines beeped and card games continued inside casinos around the accident scene — including the Bellagio, Caesars Palace and Paris Las Vegas — hotel bell captains were fielding questions from tourists who had awakened to news of the crash and the Strip shutdown. The alleys and side streets between nearby hotels were clogged with pedestrians who inched along on narrow sidewalks, past delivery doors, many making their own paths between the landscaped bushes and palm trees.

Even casino industry workers were thrown into turmoil. Hotel maids and dealers who finished their midnight shifts after dawn were left without bus service home. "I'm stranded," said Tiruselam Kefyalew, 25, a maid. "What a day to leave my cellphone at home."

Limousine drivers who normally prowl the city's gambling core improvised detours. Some said the police blockade would cost them $500 or more in lost business and tips.

"Most people understand, but you have your complainers," said Jim DeSanto, a limo driver who waited for fares outside Bally's casino. "Those people will complain, even when everything is perfect."

Well after noon, guests peered out nearby hotel windows and others leaned into the street to glimpse the crime scene.

"Hey, honey, it must have happened right here," one man told his wife as they left Caesars around noon. The tourist, who would only say that he had arrived from Tampa, Fla., the previous evening, had looked out his hotel window at 4:30 to see a vehicle in flames.

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