Judge: No felony for dad in Facebook posting




















Andre Curry, 22, talks about his felony conviction for posting a Facebook photo of his daughter bound and gagged with tape being reduced to misdemeanor domestic battery. (Chris Walker, Chicago Tribune)




















































A Cook County judge today reversed himself, reducing the conviction to a misdemeanor for a dad who posted a Facebook photo of his 22-month-old bound and gagged with tape.

Judge Lawrence Flood had convicted Andre Curry in November of aggravated domestic battery and aggravated battery, both felonies, and was scheduled to sentence him today when he did an abrupt about-face.


In reducing Curry’s conviction to misdemeanor domestic battery, the judge said that after reviewing the law, he found no intent to obstruct the child's breathing. He sentenced Curry to 18 months of probation and ordered him to take parenting classes.








Despite his change of heart, Flood said that Curry showed an extreme "lack of judgment."


"In your rush to show everyone how funny you were, you used...a helpless 22-month-old child who was completely dependent on you as a prop," Flood said. “This was not funny, OK? I want you to understand the gravity of your lack of judgment in this case."


Curry thanked the judge in a soft voice and apologized to his family.


"I'm sorry for everybody who’s been on the edge of their seats out there," he said. 


Curry, 22, had been free on bond since his felony conviction but had faced up to 7 years in prison before the judge changed his mind.


At trial, Flood had acquitted Curry of unlawful restraint but found him guilty of the two battery counts, saying in a brief ruling that by placing tape over the girl's mouth, he had obstructed her breathing for his own enjoyment.


"To use a child...as a toy or a prop in an odd attempt at humor is conduct of an insulting or provoking nature," Flood said at the time.


Curry told police he was playing with his daughter one night at their South Side home and used blue painter’s tape to bind her ankles and wrists and cover her mouth. He then snapped a photo and uploaded it on his Facebook page.


Across the top of the photo were the words: "This is wut happens wen my baby hits me back," according to prosecutors and police reports. The message was followed with a winking emoticon.


Family members have said that Curry is playful and the photograph was meant to be a joke.


But the image went viral on the Internet, prompting a flood of calls to police and state child-welfare authorities from Curry’s friends on Facebook and others who had seen it.


jmeisner@tribune.com






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Did Microsoft Just Announce the Next Xbox with a Countdown? Probably.






Go countdowns, saving marketing departments untold piles of cash! Microsoft’s Larry Hryb, colloquially known by his Xbox LIVE handle “Major Nelson,” just threw one up on his blog, and it’s causing precisely the sort of speculative stir the company doubtless intended.


“And it’s on…” reads the ultra-austere post, followed by a simple Flash-based timer titled “Counting down to E3 2013″ (cribbed from a generic countdown-building site).






“O rly?” as a certain memetic predator might say.


I won’t speculate past the probability of the new console itself — everything I’ve noticed about specs and pricing amounts to echo chamber gossip. If you’d rather just goof around, hop on over to NeoGAF, where gamers go mostly to make fun of each other (and everything between), and you’ll find a rollicking thread full of cracks, quips, the usual goofy/creepy animated GIFs and occasional chants of “Let’s go, Durango” (“Durango” is supposedly what the next Xbox’s development kits are codenamed).


Could the countdown be to anything but the next Xbox? At this point, much as I’d like to see Microsoft wait another year or two before introducing new hardware to give developers more time to do amazing things with the Xbox 360′s more than competent internals, and as gimmicky as countdowns are, this one’s punchline feels inexorable.


Besides, imagine the disappointment in five months if it turned out to be simply a new franchise, the next Halo or heaven forbid, a standalone “Kinect 2.”


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Actor Dempsey: Coffee chain bid appears successful






SEATTLE (AP) — Actor Patrick Dempsey said it appears his bid to buy a small coffee chain has prevailed in a bankruptcy auction that included Starbucks Corp.


Late Thursday night, Dempsey announced that his company, Global Baristas LLC, made the winning bid for Tully’s Coffee. He noted in a KOMO-TV interview that a bankruptcy judge will have the final say on Jan. 11. Still, Dempsey tweeted “We got it! Thank you Seattle!”






Dempsey’s company will pay $ 9,150,000 for Tully’s and complete the purchase later this month after the court hearing, he said in a statement.


“I’m thrilled that we won and I’m even more excited about saving Tully’s Coffee and its hundreds of jobs,” he said. “Tully’s is a great company with committed employees, and with its base in Seattle, one of the world’s greatest cities, I’m confident we will be able to successfully build the brand and help grow the economy. “


Tully’s Coffee has 47 company-owned locations in Washington and California. The company, with more than 500 employees, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October.


Dempsey, who gained the nickname “McDreamy” on the TV show “Grey’s Anatomy” set in a fictional Seattle hospital, has said he wants to rescue the chain.


Seattle has been very good to me over my career, and I am honored to have the privilege to own Tully’s and work closely with the company’s employees,” he said in his statement.


After Thursday’s auction, Starbucks spokesman Zack Hutson confirmed his company participated and “is currently in a back-up position” for some of Tully’s assets. The final certification of the winning bid won’t occur until the Jan. 11 bankruptcy court hearing, Hutson said.


“We have to wait until next week to make sure everything — I believe the 11th — to make sure it’s all finalized,” Dempsey told KOMO-TV.


The Starbucks spokesman said his company made an offer for 13 of Tully’s company-owned stores in the Puget Sound region plus 12 outlets at Boeing Co. sites. Hutson said another bidder made an offer for all other assets — and is in a back-up position for those.


Also in the running was Baristas Coffee, which operates a chain of drive-thru espresso stands featuring female employees in skimpy outfits.


Both Starbucks and Tully’s are based in Seattle.


The auction process was not public.


Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks





Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade.




Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks provide a mental and physical edge.


The drinks are now under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration after reports of deaths and serious injuries that may be linked to their high caffeine levels. But however that review ends, one thing is clear, interviews with researchers and a review of scientific studies show: the energy drink industry is based on a brew of ingredients that, apart from caffeine, have little, if any benefit for consumers.


“If you had a cup of coffee you are going to affect metabolism in the same way,” said Dr. Robert W. Pettitt, an associate professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, who has studied the drinks.


Energy drink companies have promoted their products not as caffeine-fueled concoctions but as specially engineered blends that provide something more. For example, producers claim that “Red Bull gives you wings,” that Rockstar Energy is “scientifically formulated” and Monster Energy is a “killer energy brew.” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has asked the government to investigate the industry’s marketing claims.


Promoting a message beyond caffeine has enabled the beverage makers to charge premium prices. A 16-ounce energy drink that sells for $2.99 a can contains about the same amount of caffeine as a tablet of NoDoz that costs 30 cents. Even Starbucks coffee is cheap by comparison; a 12-ounce cup that costs $1.85 has even more caffeine.


As with earlier elixirs, a dearth of evidence underlies such claims. Only a few human studies of energy drinks or the ingredients in them have been performed and they point to a similar conclusion, researchers say — that the beverages are mainly about caffeine.


Caffeine is called the world’s most widely used drug. A stimulant, it increases alertness, awareness and, if taken at the right time, improves athletic performance, studies show. Energy drink users feel its kick faster because the beverages are typically swallowed quickly or are sold as concentrates.


“These are caffeine delivery systems,” said Dr. Roland Griffiths, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has studied energy drinks. “They don’t want to say this is equivalent to a NoDoz because that is not a very sexy sales message.”


A scientist at the University of Wisconsin became puzzled as he researched an ingredient used in energy drinks like Red Bull, 5-Hour Energy and Monster Energy. The researcher, Dr. Craig A. Goodman, could not find any trials in humans of the additive, a substance with the tongue-twisting name of glucuronolactone that is related to glucose, a sugar. But Dr. Goodman, who had studied other energy drink ingredients, eventually found two 40-year-old studies from Japan that had examined it.


In the experiments, scientists injected large doses of the substance into laboratory rats. Afterward, the rats swam better. “I have no idea what it does in energy drinks,” Dr. Goodman said.


Energy drink manufacturers say it is their proprietary formulas, rather than specific ingredients, that provide users with physical and mental benefits. But that has not prevented them from implying otherwise.


Consider the case of taurine, an additive used in most energy products.


On its Web site, the producer of Red Bull, for example, states that “more than 2,500 reports have been published about taurine and its physiological effects,” including acting as a “detoxifying agent.” In addition, that company, Red Bull of Austria, points to a 2009 safety study by a European regulatory group that gave it a clean bill of health.


But Red Bull’s Web site does not mention reports by that same group, the European Food Safety Authority, which concluded that claims about the benefits in energy drinks lacked scientific support. Based on those findings, the European Commission has refused to approve claims that taurine helps maintain mental function and heart health and reduces muscle fatigue.


Taurine, an amino acidlike substance that got its name because it was first found in the bile of bulls, does play a role in bodily functions, and recent research suggests it might help prevent heart attacks in women with high cholesterol. However, most people get more than adequate amounts from foods like meat, experts said. And researchers added that those with heart problems who may need supplements would find far better sources than energy drinks.


Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.



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U.S. unemployment holds at 7.8%

CBS News business and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis talks to Norah O'Donnell and Anthony Mason about the final jobs report of 2012 to be released later today.









The pace of hiring by U.S. employers eased slightly in December, pointing to a lackluster pace of economic growth that was unable to make further inroads in the country's still high unemployment rate.

Payrolls outside the farming sector grew 155,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. That was in line with analysts' expectations and slightly below the level for November.






Gains in employment were distributed broadly throughout the economy, from manufacturing and construction to health care.

That should reinforce expectations that the economy will grow about 2 percent this year, unlikely to quickly bring down the unemployment rate or make the U.S. Federal Reserve rethink its easy-money policies, which have been propping up the recovery.

"It's not a booming economy, but it is growing," Jim O'Sullivan, an economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York, said before the data was released.

The jobless rate held steady at 7.8 percent in December, down nearly a percentage point from a year earlier but still well above the average rate over the last 60 years of about 6 percent.

The Labor Department raised its estimate for the unemployment rate in November by a tenth of a point to 7.8 percent, citing a slight change in the labor market's seasonal swings.

Most economists expect the U.S. economy will be held back by tax hikes this year as well as by weak spending by households and businesses, which are still trying to reduce their debt burdens.

Friday's data nonetheless gave signals of growing momentum in the labor market's recovery from the 2007-09 recession. Many economists had expected December's payroll gains to be padded by one-time factors like the recovery from a mammoth storm that hit the East Coast in late October.

The government had said last month the storm had no substantial impact on the November data, and many economists expected the government to recant by revising downward in Friday's report its estimate for payroll gains in November. Instead, the government revised its estimate for November payrolls upward by 15,000.

"There is some evidence that underlying jobs growth has improved," Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics in London, said before the report was released.

AUSTERITY'S BITE

Despite the signs of some momentum in hiring, a wave of government spending cuts due to begin around March loom over the economy.

Many economic forecasts assume the cuts - which would hit the military, education and other areas - will ultimately be pushed into next year as part of a deal sought by lawmakers to reduce gradually the government's debt burden.

Initially, the cuts were planned to have begun this month as part of a $600 billion austerity package that also included tax hikes. Hiring in December may have been slowed by uncertainty over the timing of the austerity, economists say.

Congress this week passed legislation to avoid most of the tax hikes and postpone the spending cuts.

Even with the last-minute deal to avoid much of the "fiscal cliff," most workers will see their take-home pay reduced this month as a two-year cut in payroll taxes expires.

That leaves the Fed's efforts to lower borrowing costs as the main program for stimulating the economy.

The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since 2008, and in September promised open-ended bond purchases to support lending further. On Thursday, however, minutes from the Fed's December policy review pointed to rising concerns over how the asset purchases will affect financial markets.

Analysts ahead of the report expected some of the strength in job creation in December would be due to the Fed's policies.

"Despite the end-of-year angst over the ‘fiscal cliff,' financial conditions remained supportive of job growth in December," economists at Nomura said in a note to clients earlier in the week.
 

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Feds drop escape charge in downtown prison break









In a surprise move, federal prosecutors today dropped an escape charge against Joseph Jose Banks, a convicted bank robber who made a daring escape from a high-rise South Loop jail by rappelling down some 15 stories with a rope fashioned from bed sheets only to be captured three days later on the North Side.

When he made the bold break for freedom from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Banks, 37, already faced up to 80 years in prison for his conviction the previous week for holding up two banks and trying to rob two others.

To try to obtain the stiffest sentence possible for Banks, prosecutors can use the escape as aggravation at his sentencing for the bank holdups.

The escape charge, by comparison, carried only a maximum of five additional years in prison on conviction.

By dropping the escape charge, prosecutors also avoid another trial for Banks.

After his indictment for the bank robberies, Banks changed his attorneys multiple times and flooded the court with motions, all serving to stall the start of the trial for nearly five years after his 2008 arrest.

Then at trial Banks represented himself and caused repeated interruptions by refusing to recognize the rules of the court and defying orders from the judge.

At one point, he was briefly restrained in a chair.

Banks’ cellmate, Kenneth Conley, also took part in the escape on Dec. 18 and remains at large.

asweeney@tribune.com



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More leaked BlackBerry Z10 pictures emerge along with new details









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Putin gives tax exile Depardieu Russian citizenship






MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted citizenship to Gerard Depardieu, the French movie star who is quitting his homeland to avoid a tax hike on the rich, the Kremlin said on Thursday.


The “Cyrano de Bergerac” actor bought a house across the border in Belgium last year to avoid a new tax rate for millionaires in France planned by Socialist President Francois Hollande but said he could also seek tax exile elsewhere.






Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Depardieu had applied for citizenship after Putin told reporters last month the actor would be welcome in Russia. “The citizenship could not have been granted to him without (such an) appeal,” Peskov added.


Russia has a flat income tax rate of 13 percent, compared to the 75 percent on income over 1 million euros ($ 1.32 million) that Hollande wants to impose in France.


Asked, whether Depardieu had plans to move to Russia, Peskov said it was up to him and was “absolutely not mandatory”. Putin did not speak to Depardieu before taking the decision, he added.


Depardieu’s publicist Francois Hassan Guerrar told Reuters he did not want to comment on the Russian announcement.


Depardieu, 63, had told friends he was considering three options to escape France’s new tax regime: settling in Belgium, relocating to Montenegro, where he has a business, or moving to Russia, French daily Le Monde reported in December.


Depardieu has also said he plans to hand in his French passport and social security card.


“Putin has already sent me a passport,” Le Monde quoted the actor as jokingly saying in December.


WELCOME IN RUSSIA


Depardieu is well-known in Russia where he has appeared in many advertising campaigns. He worked in the country in 2011 on a film about the eccentric Russian monk Grigory Rasputin.


In 2012 he was one of several Western celebrities invited to celebrate the birthday of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader.


Muscovites said they would welcome Depardieu. “He is a normal guy, he is fond of drinking too, I suppose, the Russian way, so let him come here,” said resident Lev Nikolaevich.


Putin has in the past touted good relations with France, which he visited in the summer, but the two nations have disagreed sharply on Syria and Putin is a frequent critic of the West. He had a tense summit with the EU last month and wants the bloc to move faster toward visa-free travel.


Russia does not require people to hand in their foreign passports once they acquire a Russian one. Many Russians have citizenship of other countries and travel without problems.


Depardieu could also request Belgian nationality but has not yet made such a request, said Georges Dallemagne, head of Belgium’s parliamentary committee that oversees naturalizations.


“As a Russian he could certainly remain in Belgium, he would possibly need the necessary visas but for a short period he could stay here,” said Dallemagne.


“He would need to request a residency permit for longer stays but as a Russian he should be able to get that. It depends on certain factors,” Dallemagne added.


France’s Constitutional Council last month blocked the planned 75 percent tax rate due to the way it would be applied – but Hollande plans to propose redrafted legislation which will “still ask more of those who have the most”.


(Writing by Megan Davies; Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman, Nikolai Isayev and Alexander Fedorov in Moscow, Catherine Bremer in Paris and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Belgium; Editing by Andrew Heavens)


Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Advertising: Planet Fitness Sheds Aspirational Approach





COMMERCIALS for gyms tend to feature actors who look like Calvin Klein underwear models, with physiques that most will not achieve no matter how long they spend on an elliptical machine.




Planet Fitness, a national chain of about 600 fitness clubs, is introducing a campaign that mocks fitness fanatics, especially those whose devotion infringes on others.


A new commercial opens with a slight woman who is curling small dumbbells in a drab gym as a brawny man berates her like a drill sergeant.


“If you can’t handle a big girl’s workout, the little girl’s gym is right across the street!” shouts the man, a whistle hanging around his neck and his hands balled into fists, as the woman appears to be on the brink of tears. “If you were committed to this workout the way you committed to that morning doughnut, you’d be puking out your ears right now!”


The spot cuts to a flashing light and siren and the words “Lunk Alarm,” and then to the same woman in street clothes being given a tour of a Planet Fitness facility.


“And that’s why I don’t like gyms,” she says.


“Well,” begins the employee showing her around, “we’re not a gym — we’re Planet Fitness.”


The ad closes with a voice-over, which says: “No gymtimidation. No lunks. Just $10 a month.”


The ad, by Red Tettemer & Partners in Philadelphia, will be introduced widely on Jan. 10. Three other spots in the campaign follow the same structure, opening with overbearing gym rats and closing with assurances that Planet Fitness is more laid back.


Planet Fitness will spend an estimated $10 million to $12 million on the campaign. It spent $15.8 million on advertising in the first nine months of 2012, more than the $14.9 million it spent in all of 2011, according to Kantar Media, a unit of WPP.


Rather than being just a narrative device in the spots, lunk alarms have actually been fixtures at Planet Fitness gyms. Members who exhibit lunk behavior, which the company defines on posters in its facilities as grunting, dropping weights loudly and being judgmental, are subject to a public shaming when a manager at the facility sounds the alarm.


In some cases, Planet Fitness even revokes memberships, as it did at a location in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., in 2006. Albert Argibay, a bodybuilder whose exertions were considered grunting by Planet Fitness, but which Mr. Argibay countered in news accounts as merely heavy breathing, kept lifting after he was told to leave, and was eventually escorted from the premises by police officers.


While the slogan “No Gymtimidation” is being introduced with the new campaign, the company has for years promised what it calls a “judgment-free zone.” That, in the words of the Planet Fitness Web site, “means members can relax, get in shape, and have fun without being subjected to the hard-core, look-at-me attitude that exists in too many gyms.”


Jamie Medeiros, director of marketing at Planet Fitness, said that only about 15 percent of Americans belonged to gyms, and that the company was focused not on trying to lure consumers from other facilities but on enticing those who had avoided gyms altogether.


“We go after the 85 percent who don’t belong to a gym now or who have never belonged to a gym,” Ms. Medeiros said.


While many chains sell protein powders and a wide range of supplements, Planet Fitness takes the counterintuitive approach of serving the type of food that dieters typically avoid.


Every month members are treated to pizza on the first Monday night and bagels on the second Tuesday morning, while Tootsie Rolls are handed out daily.


“The common person doesn’t have time to work out every day, and they may not aspire to the type of person who has six-pack abs and eats egg whites,” Ms. Medeiros said. “But we want to be the type of facility that people want to go to as opposed to, ‘Oh my god, I have to go to the gym today!’ ”


The company has thrived even during the economic downturn, growing to four million members today from about 3.2 million a year ago, according to Ms. Medeiros. About 60 percent of its members are women, much higher than what Ms. Medeiros said is the national average of 20 percent.


Health clubs, like cellphone carriers, tend to sell one- or two-year contracts, but Planet Fitness instead has a month-to-month plan, at $10 monthly, which the company believes knocks down a barrier to joining.


Among consumers who exercise, 71 percent agreed with the statement that fitness clubs were too expensive, according to a survey by Mintel, a market research firm. As for the atmosphere, only 27 percent said that they enjoyed the social aspects of gyms.


When brands hire celebrity endorsers and attractive models, marketers typically refer to the advertisements as aspirational, meaning that consumers do not see themselves reflected in the ad as much as an ideal to which they aspire. But Steve Red, the chief creative officer of Red Tettemer & Partners, said the aspirational approach can backfire when it comes to promoting health clubs.


“I’m never going to get to be that washboard-stomach, super-cut guy that I see in the Equinox ads,” said Mr. Red, referring to the chain of upscale gyms. “There are a ton of gym brands that are all about being cut and sinewy and having a six-pack, but I would argue that approach is not aspirational — it’s inaccessible.”


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Google puts Motorola campus on market













Motorola campus for sale


An aerial view of the Motorola Mobility headquarters in Libertyville.
(Motorola Mobility photo / January 3, 2013)



























































Google has put up for sale Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.'s 1.1 million-square-foot headquarters in Libertyville.

The asking price for the property is not being disclosed, according to a spokeswoman for Binswanger, exclusive agent on the property.

The 20-year-old corporate campus, which was used for office space and research and development labs, consists of four connected, multistory buildings and includes a daycare center, cafeteria, full-service gym and other recreational facilities. Renovations to the buildings were undertaken in 1998 through 2005. There also is parking for 3,400 vehicles.

In May, Google completed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, making it a wholly owned subsidiary. Two months later, the company announced it would move Motorola Mobility's headquarters to the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago in 2013.





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