Corporate tax rate overhaul may be part of a 'fiscal cliff' deal

WASHINGTON — Amid the wrangling over the so-called fiscal cliff, President Obama and congressional Republicans can agree on something: They want to lower the corporate tax rate.

The U.S. has the highest overall rate of any of the world's developed economies. It took the top spot in March after Japan reduced its rate, mimicking other countries that have lowered taxes to lure new businesses and keep existing companies from leaving.

Negotiations to avert automatic income tax increases and federal spending cuts scheduled to kick in Jan. 1 could provide the impetus for U.S. policymakers to tackle an overhaul of the corporate tax code next year.

The White House wants to put a corporate tax overhaul, along with changes to the individual income tax system, on a fast track as part of any deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff."

The centerpiece of an overhaul would be slashing the 35% corporate tax rate, a goal long sought by corporate executives and lobbyists.

Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

"In the name of global competitiveness, I think that has largely been agreed to," Jim McNerney, chief executive of Boeing Co., said about how both parties view the need for major corporate tax changes.

In February, Obama proposed lowering the federal rate to 25% for manufacturing companies and to 28% for other firms. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has been pushing a plan to lower the rate to 25% for all corporations.

In both cases, the rate cuts would be accompanied by the elimination of some of the numerous tax breaks that allow many companies to pay a much lower effective tax rate — and sometimes to avoid paying any corporate taxes at all.

"The administration's position on this is very much in sync with what Republicans say they want, which is a lower rate and a broader base," said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the former chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden.

But there still are some obstacles to a deal.

Some Democrats want to use an overhaul to increase the amount of tax revenue coming from corporations, while Republicans want to keep the amount the same. The White House and congressional Republicans also differ on how the U.S. should treat money earned abroad.

And the business community itself is divided. Many small companies file taxes as individuals. They're opposed to any "fiscal cliff" deal that would raise their rates while giving corporations a rate reduction.

Analysts said the obstacles could be overcome because there is consensus around the broader point that the U.S. needs to bring its corporate tax rate in line with other developed nations.

"Regardless of your political persuasion, it is unquestionably the case that the nominal U.S. corporate tax rate is much higher than that of peer countries," said Edward Kleinbard, a USC law professor and former chief of staff of Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.

The case for corporate tax reform got a boost when the overall U.S. rate of 39.1%, which includes federal, state and local corporate taxes, became the highest this year among the 34 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Two decades ago, the U.S. was 13th.

"At one time in the '80s, we had a competitive corporate tax rate," said Dorothy Coleman, vice president of tax and domestic economic policy for the National Assn. of Manufacturers. "We've fallen behind by standing still."

Quiz: The year in business

But the rate in the tax code isn't what many companies pay because of a host of deductions and tax credits. In 2011, the effective corporate tax rate in the U.S. was 29.2%, roughly in line with the 31.9% average of the six other largest developed economies, the Obama administration said.

The White House said that parity does not mean the statutory rate shouldn't be reduced. It simply means that many tax breaks should be eliminated, allowing the rate to be lowered without adding to the deficit.

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Character actor, World War Two hero Charles Durning dies at 89

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Charles Durning, a World War Two hero who became one of Hollywood’s top character actors in films like “The Sting,” “Tootsie” and “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” has died, a New York City funeral home said on Tuesday. He was 89.

Durning, who was nominated for nine Emmys for his television work as well as two Academy Awards, died of natural causes at his New York City home on Monday, his agent told People magazine. Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan confirmed Durning‘s death to Reuters.

Durning also was an accomplished stage actor and once said he preferred doing plays because of the immediacy they offered. He gained his first substantial acting experience through the New York Shakespeare Festival starting in the early 1960s and won a Tony Award for playing Big Daddy in a 1990 Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Durning did not start amassing film and TV credits until he was almost 40 but went on to appear in more than 100 movies, in addition to scores of TV shows.

Durning’s first national exposure came playing a crooked policeman who gets conned by Robert Redford in the 1973 movie “The Sting.” He got the role after impressing director George Roy Hill with his work in the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Broadway play “That Championship Season.”

Durning had everyday looks – portly, thinning hair and a bulbous nose – and was a casting director’s delight, equally adept at comedy and drama.

Durning was nominated for supporting-actor Oscars for playing a Nazi in the 1984 Mel Brooks comedy “To Be or Not to Be” and the governor in the musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” in 1983. “Whorehouse” was one of 13 movies Durning made with friend Burt Reynolds, as well as Reynolds’ 1990s TV sitcom “Evening Shade.”

Other notable Durning movie roles included a cop in “Dog Day Afternoon,” a man who falls in love with Dustin Hoffman’s cross-dressing character in “Tootsie,” “Dick Tracy,” “Home for the Holidays,” “The Muppet Movie,” “North Dallas Forty” and “O Brother Where Art Thou?”

He was nominated for Emmys for the TV series “Rescue Me,” “NCIS,” “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “Captains and the Kings” and “Evening Shade,” as well as the specials “Death of a Salesman,” “Attica” and “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom.”

Durning was a fan of Jimmy Cagney and after returning from harrowing service in World War Two he tried singing, dancing, and stand-up comedy. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts until he was kicked out.

“They basically said you have no talent and you couldn’t even buy a dime’s worth of it if it was for sale,” Durning told The New York Times.

D-DAY INVASION

He worked a number of make-do jobs – cab driver, dance instructor, doorman, dishwasher, telegram deliveryman, bridge painter, tourist guide – all while waiting for a shot at an acting career. Occasional stage roles led him to Joseph Papp, the founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival, who became his mentor.

“Joe said to me once, ‘If you hadn’t been an actor, you would have been a murderer,’” Durning told the Times. “I don’t know what that meant. I hope he was kidding. He said I couldn’t do anything else but act.”

Durning grew up in Highland Falls, New York, and was 12 years old when his Irish-born father died of the effects of mustard gas exposure in World War One. He had nine siblings and five of his sisters died of smallpox or scarlet fever – three within a two-week period.

Durning was part of the U.S. force that landed at Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion in June 1944. A few days later he was shot in the hip – he said he carried the bullet in his body thereafter – and after six months of recovery was sent to the Battle of the Bulge.

Durning, who was wounded twice more, was captured and was one of the few survivors of the Malmedy massacre when German troops opened fire on dozens of American prisoners. In addition to three Purple Heart medals for his wounds, Durning was presented the Silver Star for valor.

At an observation of the 60th anniversary of D-Day in Washington, Durning told of the terror he felt and carnage he saw when hitting the beach on D-Day. He said he had to jettison his weapon and gear in order to swim ashore and saw mortally wounded comrades offering themselves as human shields.

“I forget a lot of stuff now but I still wake up once in a while and it’s still there,” he said. “I can’t count how many of my buddies are in the cemetery at Normandy.”

Durning was married twice and had three children.

(Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst; Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Eric Beech)

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Rumored iPad 5 to be thinner

By Chris O'Brien

1:03 p.m. CST, December 24, 2012

That iPad 3 you got last March? Forget it. It's like the eight-track tape  of tablets. (Kids: Ask your parents what that means.) Even that iPad 4 you're about to unwrap Christmas morning that you think is so darn new is about to become yesterday's news. 

At least, that is, if the latest iPad rumors are true. According to the Japanese blog Macotakara, the next iPad is due to hit in March. At which time, all previous versions of the iPad will feel like bricks.

QUIZ: What set the Internet on fire in 2012? 

The site reports that the fifth version of the iPad will be thinner and lighter than the last iPad. For those of you hoping that Apple's next version of the iPad would be heavier and clunkier, this is no doubt crushing news.

For the rest of the planet, however, this is pretty much what you'd expect from Apple. Macotakara says its sources say the next iPad will be 2 millimeters thinner and 17 millimeters narrower. 

If true, it marks a continuation of the accelerated product update cycle that kicked into gear this past year under Apple CEO Tim Cook. 

According to 9to5Mac.com, if the dimensions are correct, "The new supposed thinness would mean the next iPad is nearly as thin as the 7.2mm thin iPad mini."

Speaking of the Mini, Macotakara reports that Apple is cooking up a retina screen for the next iPad mini. 

Here's the real thing iPad owners need to fear: How long will Apple continue to support those older iPads? It already doesn't let owners of the first iPad download new versions of iOS. 

ALSO: 

Yelp's new weapon against fake reviews: User alerts

Google Maps returns to iPhone; iPad app coming soon

Scam watch: Fake news sites, smartphone viruses, BBB scam stopper

Follow me on Twitter @obrien.

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2 firefighters fatally shot in ambush at blazing NY house

WEBSTER, N.Y. -- A gunman ambushed four volunteer firefighters responding to an intense pre-dawn house fire Monday morning outside Rochester, N.Y., killing two before ending up dead himself, authorities said. Police used an armored vehicle to evacuate more than 30 nearby residents.

The gunman fired at the firefighters when they arrived shortly after 5:30 a.m. at the blaze near the Lake Ontario shore in Webster, town Police Chief Gerald Pickering said. The first Webster police officer who arrived chased the suspect and exchanged gunfire with him, authorities said.

“It does appear it was a trap” for the first responders to the fire, Pickering said at a news conference.

Authorities didn't say how the gunman died or whether anyone might have died in the fire itself.

One of the dead firefighters was also a town police lieutenant; it wasn't clear whether he returned fire. An off-duty police officer who was driving by was injured by shrapnel, Pickering said.

The fire started in one home and spread to two others and a car, officials said. The gunfire initially kept firefighters from battling the blazes. Police say four homes were destroyed and four damaged.

The West Webster Fire District learned of the fire early Monday after a report of a car and house on fire on Lake Road, on a narrow peninsula where Irondequoit Bay meets Lake Ontario, Monroe County Sheriff Patrick O'Flynn said.

The fire appeared from a distance as a pulsating ball of flame glowing against the early morning sky, flames licking into treetops and reflecting on the water, with huge bursts of smoke billowing away in a brisk wind.

Two of the firefighters arrived on a fire engine and two in their own vehicles, Pickering said. After the gunman fired, one of the wounded men managed to flee, but the other three couldn't because of flying gunfire.

A police armored vehicle was used to recover two of the men, and eventually it evacuated 33 people from nearby homes, the police chief said.

The dead men were identified as Police Lt. Michael Chiapperini, 43, the Webster Police Department's public information officer; and Tomasz Kaczowka, also a 911 dispatcher, whose age was not released.

Pickering described Chiapperini as a “lifetime firefighter” with nearly 20 years with the department, and called Kaczowka a “tremendous young man.”

The two wounded firefighters, Joseph Hofsetter and Theodore Scardino, were in guarded condition in the intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital, authorities said. Both were awake and alert and are expected to recover.

Hofsetter, also a full-timer with the Rochester Fire Department, was hit once in the pelvis, and the bullet lodged in his spine, authorities said. Scardino was hit in the chest and knee.

Monday's shooting and fires were in a neighborhood of seasonal and year-round homes set close together across the road from the lakeshore. The area is popular with recreational boaters but is normally quiet this time of year.

“We have very few calls for service in that location,” Pickering said. “Webster is a tremendous community. We are a safe community, and to have a tragedy befall us like this is just horrendous.”

O'Flynn lamented the violence, which comes on the heels of other shootings including the massacre of 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

“It's sad to see that that this is becoming more commonplace in communities across the nation,” O'Flynn said.

Webster, a middle-class suburb, now is the scene of violence linked to house fires for two Decembers in a row.

Last Dec. 7, authorities say, a 15-year-old boy doused his home with gasoline and set it ablaze, killing his father and two brothers, 16 and 12. His mother and 13-year-old sister escaped with injuries. He is being prosecuted as an adult.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed

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British retailers start online sales early

LONDON (Reuters) – British retailers have brought forward their Christmas clearance sales online in the hope that shoppers will log on to buy bargains and offset lackluster spending in stores.

Marks & Spencer launched its sale online at midday on Monday, it said on its website, while department store John Lewis said it would cut online prices when its stores close at 1700 GMT. Debenhams has already started its online sale.

Retailers in recent years have started sales online on Christmas Day, ahead of the clearances in stores from Boxing Day, but are increasingly launching their online offers before Christmas after delivery deadlines for the day have passed.

Hard-pressed shoppers have been leaving it later to buy presents in the hope that retailers would slash prices, the British Retail Consortium said.

It was forecasting that 5 billion pounds ($ 8.1 billion) would be spent in the shops on Saturday and Sunday combined, the last weekend before Christmas.

Richard Dodd, the BRC’s head of Media and Campaigns, said weekend trading had met expectations.

“Christmas, ultimately once all the final sums are done, will turn out to be acceptable but not exceptional,” he said.

He said the sector expected a modest increase in cash spending against a year go, but not necessarily any significant increase in real terms once inflation was stripped out.

Many British families‘ budgets are stretched, according to a survey from Markit that showed the biggest deterioration in household finances for seven months.

Analyst Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight said the weakening in household finances could not come at a worse time for retailers, and it highlighted why many people appeared to have been careful in their Christmas shopping this year.

“The suspicion has to be that consumers will be especially keen to take advantage of genuine major bargains in the sales to acquire items that they cannot otherwise afford or are reluctant to make at the moment,” he said.

“However, we suspect that people will likely to be more careful in buying – or reluctant to buy – items that they don’t really want or need in the sales.”

($ 1 = 0.6180 British pounds)

(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Louise Heavens)

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Quentin Tarantino unchains America’s tormented past in “Django”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Twenty years after Quentin Tarantino unveiled his first film “Reservoir Dogs,” the director has turned his eye to America’s slavery history, spinning a blood-filled retribution tale in his trademark style for “Django Unchained.”

Tarantino, 49, has become synonymous with violence and dark humor, taking on the Nazis in “Inglourious Basterds” and mobsters in “Pulp Fiction.”

In “Django Unchained,” to be released in U.S. theaters on Christmas Day, he fuses a spaghetti Western cowboy action adventure with a racially charged revenge tale set in the 19th century, before the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Jamie Foxx stars as a slave whose freedom is bought by a former dentist, played by Christoph Waltz. The two set off as bounty hunters, rounding up robbers and cattle rustlers before turning their attention to brutal plantation owners in America’s Deep South.

Tarantino is well-versed in delivering violence. But the director said he faced “a lot of trepidation” about filming the slavery scenes. He has already come under fire from some critics for the frequent use in the film of the “N-word” – a racial slur directed at blacks.

The director said he was initially hesitant to ask black actors to play slaves who are shackled and whipped, and even considered filming outside of the United States.

But a dinner with veteran Oscar-winning actor Sidney Poitier, whom Tarantino called a “father figure,” changed his mind after Poitier urged him to not “be afraid” of his film.

“This movie is a deep, deep, deep American story, and it needed to be made by an American, and it needed to star Americans. … Lots of the movies dealing with this issue have usually had Brits playing Southerners and it creates this arm’s-distance quality,” Tarantino said.

Much of the film’s more graphic slavery scenes, such as gladiator-style fights to the death and being encased naked in a metal hot box in the heat of the Southern sun, are drawn from real accounts.

“We were shooting on hallowed ground. This was the ground of our ancestors. … Their blood was in the grass, there’s still bits of flesh embedded in the bark,” Tarantino said.

The film has received good reviews from critics and is expected to add Oscar nominations in January to its five Golden Globe nods.

With the exception of Waltz, who plays eccentric German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz, the majority of the main players are not only American but from the South.

“It seemed sacred to us, and we couldn’t help but channel those emotions, everybody on the crew and on the set. … Those were very moving days,” Tarantino said.

‘DESPICABLE’ CHARACTERS

Tarantino reunited with Waltz, who won an Oscar in 2010 for his role as a menacing Nazi officer in “Inglourious Basterds,” and long-time collaborator Samuel L. Jackson, who plays slave housekeeper Stephen, a character who Tarantino described as “the most despicable black (character)” in movie history.

“Stephen might be frankly the most fascinating character in the whole piece, and it was important to deal with that whole upstairs-downstairs aspect of the Antebellum South,” he said.

The role that has people talking is Leonardo DiCaprio‘s first villainous turn as a racist plantation owner – a stark contrast from his Hollywood heartthrob “Titanic” days and roles as eccentric Americans in “The Aviator” and “J. Edgar.”

Asked how he felt to be the first director to make DiCaprio a villain, Tarantino laughed, saying he felt “pretty darn good about it.” He commended DiCaprio for turning into a “Southern-fried Caligula,” referring to the tyrannical ancient Roman emperor.

“I saw him as a petulant boy emperor. … He has nothing but hedonistic hobbies and vices to indulge him, and it’s almost as if he’s rotting from the inside,” Tarantino said.

The film’s female lead, Django’s wife Broomhilda played by Kerry Washington, moves away from Tarantino’s fierce screen women such as Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill” and Diane Kruger in “Inglourious Basterds.”

Tarantino said Broomhilda was meant to be the “princess in exile.” He said he was “annoyed” when he was asked by a friend why Broomhilda did not exact revenge on her abusers in the same way as Thurman’s “Kill Bill” character. The film, he said, is “Django’s story.”

“It invokes … that odyssey that Django goes on and gives the black slave narrative the romantic dimensions of great opera or great folklore tales,” Tarantino said.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant, Patricia Reaney and Will Dunham)

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News Analysis: Scientists to Seek Clues to Violence in Genome of Gunman in Newtown, Conn.

In a move likely to renew a longstanding ethical controversy, geneticists are quietly making plans to study the DNA of Adam Lanza, 20, who killed 20 children and seven adults in Newtown, Conn. Their work will be an effort to discover biological clues to extreme violence.

The researchers, at the University of Connecticut, confirmed their plans through a spokeswoman but declined to provide details. But other experts speculated that the geneticists might look for mutations that might be associated with mental illnesses and ones that might also increase the risk for violence.

They could look at all of Mr. Lanza’s genes, searching for something unusual like gene duplications or deletions or unexpected mutations, or they might determine the sequence of his entire genome, the genes and the vast regions of DNA that are not genes, in an extended search for aberrations that could determine which genes are active and how active they are.

But whatever they do, this apparently is the first time researchers will attempt a detailed study of the DNA of a mass killer.

Some researchers, like Dr. Arthur Beaudet, a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine and the chairman of its department of molecular and human genetics, applaud the effort. He believes that the acts committed by men like Mr. Lanza and the gunmen in other rampages in recent years — at Columbine High School and in Aurora, Colo., in Norway, in Tucson and at Virginia Tech — are so far off the charts of normal behavior that there must be genetic changes driving them.

“We can’t afford not to do this research,” Dr. Beaudet said.

Other scientists are not so sure. They worry that this research could eventually stigmatize people who have never committed a crime but who turn out to have a genetic aberration also found in a mass murder.

Everything known about mental illness, these skeptics say, argues that there are likely to be hundreds of genes involved in extreme violent behavior, not to mention a variety of environmental influences, and that all of these factors can interact in complex and unpredictable ways.

“It is almost inconceivable that there is a common genetic factor” to be found in mass murders, said Dr. Robert C. Green, a geneticist and neurologist at Harvard Medical School. “I think it says more about us that we wish there was something like this. We wish there was an explanation.”

Scientists are well aware of the fraught history behind the questions of biology and violence.

In the early 20th century, claims that criminal behavior was inherited arose during the eugenics movement and led to sterilizations of mental patients and felons.

On Christmas Day in 1965, two researchers published a paper saying men with an extra Y chromosome, the chromosome that confers maleness, were “super males” and born criminals. The hypothesis was helped along by the fact that these men “fit the classic Hollywood criminal — big, awkward, thuglike and with low I.Q.’s,” said Dr. Philip Reilly, a lawyer and clinical geneticist who has studied this history.

The idea persisted for about 15 years, Dr. Reilly said, but eventually the epidemiological evidence convinced scientists that it was wrong — that these men were no more violent than men without an extra Y chromosome.

In 1993, in a paper published in the journal Science, researchers reported that a mutation leading to a lack of the enzyme monoamine oxidase caused violence in a Dutch family. Every family member who inherited the mutation was a violent criminal; those without it had no criminal behaviors.

“It was a stunning piece of work,” said James Blair, the chief of the unit on affective cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Mental Health. But, he added, it turned out not to be generalizable. For the most part, “it was just this family,” he said.

The National Institutes of Health was embroiled in controversy about 20 years ago simply for proposing to study the biological underpinnings of violence. Critics accused researchers of racism and singling out minorities, especially black men.

Shortly after, the N.I.H. took back financing for a conference at the University of Maryland to examine genetics and criminal behavior. The conference was canceled.

But genetics has come of age in recent years with new and powerful methods to determine DNA sequences and analyze the results. Studies of people at the far end of a bell curve can be especially informative, because the genetic roots of their conditions can be stark and easy to spot, noted J. H. Pate Skene, a Duke University neurobiologist.

“I think doing research on outliers, people at an end of a spectrum on something of concern like violent behavior, is certainly a good idea,” he said, but he advised tempering expectations.

“I would call it a caution, not about whether to do this research but about what to expect,” he added.

Perhaps it will be fruitless to search for one or a few major gene mutations that always lead to extreme violence, Dr. Beaudet said. But what if a significant fraction of the shootings were linked to gene variants? What if scientists were to discover genes that were risk factors, increasing a person’s chance of violent behavior but not foreordaining it?

“If we know someone has a 2 percent chance or a 10 percent chance or a 20 percent chance of violent behavior, what would you do with that person?” Dr. Skene said. “They have not been convicted of anything — have not done anything wrong.”

But a genetic profile might play a role if someone were convicted of violent offenses, Dr. Beaudet countered. Criminals are routinely denied parole based solely on psychiatric evaluations. Perhaps a genetic test could add to the certainty of the decision, he said.

Ultimately, understanding the genetics of violence might enable researchers to find ways to intervene before a person commits a horrific crime. But that goal would be difficult to achieve, and the pursuit of it risks jeopardizing personal liberties. Some scientists shudder at the thought of labeling people potential violent criminals.

“The idea of screening with a view of preventing those kinds of incidents is basically unthinkable,” said Dr. Steven E. Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T. “You would fail. You would stigmatize.”

Some day, he added, it might be important to know the phenotypes — the characteristics — of violent killers and have their DNA, but not for the reasons many think.

“I am always happy to store DNA and phenotype information and freeze cells, thinking that one day we would have usable clues,” Dr. Hyman added. “But that would be biology, not prevention.”

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Kraft targets men, millennials

The pot pie kit comes with pouches of Velveeta cheese, biscuit topping, vegetables and seasoning. The cook sautes chicken until done, then adds milk, vegetables and seasoning, and cooks for another minute. The chicken mixture goes into a baking dish and gets topped with the cheese. Finally, the biscuit mix, to which more milk has been added, goes on the very top. The Velveeta Cheesy Casserole is ready in about 18 minutes at 425 degrees.

Then there's Oscar Mayer's pulled pork that's sold in a clear plastic tub. It's precooked, shredded and seasoned. Kraft is selling the meat without the sauce so cooks can choose their own and add as much as desired.

These and other new products are part of Kraft Foods Group's efforts to attract new customers: millennials and men. The recession disproportionately affected men, who are now doing about 40 percent of the cooking, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Northfield-based Kraft has found that both groups are cooking more and looking for flexible recipes, ways to customize their food and have fun in the kitchen. So Kraft is updating its stable of mature brands in ways that appeal to them.

Millennials, age 18 to early 30s, are beginning to cook and don't want to do things like their parents did. So Kraft is offering more products that require some effort. Just not too much effort.

A Kraft study showed younger men cooking even more than their older counterparts — 42 percent of millennial men do all the cooking in the household, while 76 percent do at least some cooking. They also like to experiment with their dishes.

"Now they'll talk about cooking like guys would talk about a hobby 20 years ago," said Barry Calpino, vice president of breakthrough innovation at Kraft. "It's an adventure, it's an experience, it's fun, they talk about 'their signature.'"

Men feel they have more latitude as cooks, according to Robin Ross, associate director of culinary at Kraft. "Women want to please their families and for everyone to like what they make,'' she said. Men, she said, tend not to feel the same pressure. "Men have more of a free hand."

Kraft Foods, a $19 billion a year packaged North American grocery business, was spun off in October from Deerfield-based Mondelez International. Kraft CEO Tony Vernon promised mid-single-digit operating income growth rates for the company, and acknowledged it needs to develop new, more modern products for its brands and increase advertising support to make customers aware of them.

While Vernon hasn't released targets for his ad budget, Kraft has lagged competitors, investing the equivalent of 3 percent of sales toward advertising and marketing, compared with 4.5 percent of sales at competitors, according to the company.

During the company's most recent earnings call, Vernon underscored double-digit sales growth for Lunchables, Velveeta, and MiO, a liquid concentrate used to flavor water, citing new products and subsequent advertising. However, he acknowledged work to do with Jell-O, to capitalize on "yogurt's explosive growth," and with Planters "to re-establish category leadership and profitable growth."

On Friday, Kraft shares closed at $45.53, up 2 percent from the Oct. 1 spinoff.

Simply being a smaller company, Calpino said, means Kraft can lavish attention on brands like Velveeta, which hadn't seen much attention in decades.

"Five or six years ago, I'm not sure we'd do innovation reviews" on Velveeta, Calpino said. "It wasn't even on the list."

Phil Lempert, a supermarket industry expert, said the millennial generation poses challenges for big food companies, which are not known for rapid change. Companies like Kraft, he said, have to "keep it fresh, keep it changing." Young people, he said, "never want to wake up and have the same meal in an entire lifetime.'' He also said that unlike their predecessors, millennials are more interested in "ethnic foods and adventure than ever before."

Lempert said a lot of millennials' tastes are "being driven by food trucks,'' serving products like tacos with a few different meats with a level of high quality and bold flavors. In turn, that has raised millennials' expectations on everything from a restaurant meal to a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Lynn Dornblaser, director of innovation and insight at Mintel International, said the fact that Kraft offers some of its new products like easy-to-use, three-pack sauce packets should be a hit because millennials love to cook, but hate to clean.

"Cleaning is a barrier to cooking from scratch," she said. It's the same for male cooks. Even making a white sauce for pasta, Dornblaser said, "you've got dishes to wash, measuring to do, steps to follow."

So products like Kraft's new Velveeta casseroles, pulled pork, Fresh Take cheese and bread crumb mixtures and Velveeta Toppers cheese sauce pouches "offer the ability for consumer to be a little creative with what they're cooking but without too much bother," she said.

Last year, Velveeta launched Cheesy Skillets dinner kits, the brand's biggest launch in more than 20 years. It's a stark departure for a brand best known for Shells & Cheese and its ability to melt over nachos. Consumers saute beef, add cheese sauce from a pouch, cook the pasta, mix, and add hamburger toppings such as shredded lettuce and diced tomato.

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2 hurt in blaze at Bronzeville senior housing building

Chicago fire department officials rescue a victim from a high-rise fire at 49th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue on Sunday morning. (Eric Clark, Photo for the Tribune / December 23, 2012)

Staff report

11:12 a.m. CST, December 23, 2012

An 85-year-old and a 67-year-old were taken to hospitals following a fire this morning at a senior housing building in the Bronzeville neighborhood.

The 85-year-old suffered burns to 25 percent of the body and was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in serious-to-critical condition and the 67-year-old was in fair condition and taken to University of Chicago Hospitals, according to the Chicago Fire Department.

The victims' genders were not available.

The fire started about 10 a.m. in an 8th-floor room of a senior building in the 4900 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue, according to the fire department.

As of 11 a.m., the fire appeared to be under control but a fire department representative could not be reached to confirm.

Six ambulances were sent to the scene when an EMS Plan I was called, according to the fire department. A still and box alarm was also in place.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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Video games and shooting: Is the NRA right?

After a week of silence following the Sandy Hook school shooting that killed 20 first graders and six staff in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association blamed the entertainment industry – specifically the producers of violent video games for inciting what has become a pattern of gun violence in the United States.

In describing the industry, NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre said, “There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.”

Mr. LaPierre faulted the news media for failing to report on “vicious, violent video games” such as “Grand Theft Auto,” “Mortal Kombat,” and “Splatterhouse” as egregious examples. He also singled out “Kindergarten Killer,” a free, fairly obscure online game.

“How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?” he asked reporters.

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Most academic research, as well as studies by the FBI and the US Secret Service, examining the link between violent video games and incident of violence does not support the gun lobby’s charge.

For example, a 2008 report by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital funded by the US Department of Justice found that violent video games may increase bullying or physical fighting in schools, but not mass gun violence.

“It’s clear that the ‘big fears’ bandied about in the press – that violent video games make children significantly more violent in the real world; that they will engage in the illegal, immoral, sexist and violent acts they see in some of these games – are not supported by the current research, at least in such a simplistic form,” the report states.

Joan Saab, director of the visual and cultural studies program at the University of Rochester in New York, says the gaming industry should share in the blame for promoting military weaponry to young people, but adds that the popularity of such games reflect the “larger culture we live in, which is heavily militarized,” in the midst of lengthy combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ms. Saab says that the NRA’s call for armed guards in schools would make that kind of military culture more pervasive for children.

“If there are more armed guards in schools, kids are exposed to more guns. That’s when fantasy and reality aren’t blurred. When there are guns in schools, it becomes real life and the day-to-day environment becomes more dangerous than the game,” she says. In Newtown, as in Aurora, Colo. and the sites of other mass shootings, the gunman was outfitted in military-style dress.

By blaming video games for gun violence, the NRA also puts itself in a vulnerable position because, as Mother Jones reports, the company partnered with gaming producer Cave Entertainment in 2006 for “NRA Gun Club,” a PlayStation 2 game that allows users to fire over 100 different brand-name handguns.

LaPierre did not specify if Congress should move forward in regulating the gaming industry, perhaps because previous attempts were not successful.

A US Supreme Court ruling in 2011 struck down a California law that made it a crime to sell or rent what it classified as violent video games to minors. The ruling said the law, signed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) in 2005, violates First Amendment protections.

In the wake of Sandy Hook, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller introduced a bill that calls for the National Academy of Sciences to examine the possible links between violent video games and violent incidents caused by children.

Overall, gun-based video games do not wholly represent total gaming industry sales, according to data from VGChartz, a UK-based research firm that tracks gaming sales. In 2011, for example, just seven of the top 20 best-selling games in the US involve warfare simulation. The other titles – “Just Dance 3,” “Kinect Adventures!” “New Super Mario Bros. Wii,” “Madden NFL 12,” and “Pokemon Black/White” – are designed around sports, dance, and children’s cartoon characters.

All of the games LaPierre mentions are more than 15 years old, with some dating back to the 1980s, with their popularity waning. For example, total unit sales in the US for the “Mortal Kombat” franchise dropped 70 percent in 2012, compared to the previous year total. The game debuted in 1992.

Gaming experts say that the majority of the games LaPierre cited do not portray gun violence – “Mortal Kombat” involves hand-to-hand combat, for example. They say they do not understand why he did not single out “first person shooter” games such as blockbuster franchises like the “Call of Duty” series, which is based on simulated gun action and is considered one of the most hyper-violent on the market. In fact, according to news reports, the game was also a favorite of Adam Lanza, the Newtown gunman who spent hours at home playing it.

“Some of those games [LaPierre mentions] are older than the [Newtown] shooter,” who was 20, says Christopher Grant, editor-in-chief of Polygon.com, an online site based in New York City that covers gaming news and trends. “I have no idea why he chose them. My theory is he didn’t want to pick anything too modern [such as ‘Call of Duty’ or ‘Doom’] that might overlap unfavorably with something their own members might enjoy.”

“Call of Duty” is known as a favorite of the military and is often credited for driving up recruitment. Activision Blizzard, the company behind “Call of Duty,” has donated thousands of copies to the US Navy; the company also created a non-profit foundation to help returning US military veterans.

According to the NPD Group, a global market research firm, retail gaming sales in the US plummeted 20 percent in the first eight months of 2012 compared to the same time period the previous year, a trend that follows years of declining sales. Between 2008 and 2011, total sales of industry software and hardware dropped 20.5 percent. According to the gaming industry website Gamasutra, 2012 sales are expected to be the lowest since 2006.

The sales drop is representative of major shifts in the gaming industry, which is slowly moving away from console-based games to those that are played via smartphones, digital tablets, and online through social networks.

The change has produced a new type of gamer: They are generally older, more ethnically and economically diverse, and they feed their gaming appetite in smaller bites and on-the-go, as opposed to the traditional gamer profile of a few years ago, which tended to be young males playing for hours in one sitting.

The Entertainment Software Association, an industry trade group based in Washington, reports that the average gamer today is 30 years old, the most frequent game purchaser is 35 years old, and that almost half (47 percent) of all gamers are women.

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