Jewel-Osco stores to be sold to Cerberus group

Jewel-Osco stores will be sold to a consortium of investors led by Cerberus Capital Management, Jewel's parent Supervalu said Thursday.

The deal, valued at $3.3 billion, also includes the Albertsons, Acme, and Shaw stores.

The announcement ends months of speculation that all or parts of the troubled grocery chain would be sold to New York-based Cerberus, an investment firm. Supervalu acquired Jewel in 2006 as part of a larger, complex acquisition of the Albertsons company.

Supervalu also reported earnings of $16 million, or 8 cents per share, in the third quarter ended on Dec. 1, compared with a year-earlier loss of $750 million, or $3.54 per share.

Excluding an after-tax gain related to a cash settlement from credit card companies and after-tax charges primarily related to store closures, it earned $5 million, or 3 cents per share.

As part of the deal, which includes $100 million in cash and $3.2 billion in debt, the five grocery chains will be acquired by AB Acquisition, an affiliate of Cerberus. Other investors in the deal include Kimco Realty Corp, Klaff Realty, Lubert-Adler Partners and Schottenstein Real Estate Group.

Following the sale, which is expected to close in the spring, a newly formed entity called Symphony Investors, led by Cerberus, will purchase up to 30 percent of Supervalu's outstanding shares for $4 each, representing a 50 percent premium over the stock's 30-day average. If Symphony cannot acquire at least 19.9 percent of the outstanding shares at that price, Supervalu must issue additional stock.

Wall Street has long expected Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Supervalu to sell some or all of its assets.

Following the deal, Supervalu will consist of its wholesale grocery business, the Save-A-Lot discount chain, and traditional grocery chains like Cub, Shop N' Save and Hornbacher's.

In a call with investors, outgoing CEO Wayne Sales said the deal brings Supervalu "a very strong balance sheet," and the ability to focus on investments in price reductions, fresh produce, and customer experience at its remaining chains. 

The new company is smaller, "with more bandwidth and leadership" to focus on its wholesale business, Save-A-Lot, and its traditional grocery stores, he said.

Sam Duncan, 61, will replace Wayne Sales as CEO. Duncan was CEO of Office Max from 2005 to 2011, and prior to that, was CEO of ShopKo, a Midwestern grocery chain. Five unidentified board members will resign as part of the deal, making room for Duncan, Albertsons CEO Robert Miller, and three new appointees. The size of the board will shrink from 10 to seven.

Concurrent with the announcement, Supervalu announced that it has secured access to a $900 million asset-based credit facility, and a $1.5 billion loan.

This deal ends a long and difficult year for one of the country's largest grocers.

Last April, Supervalu reported a loss of $1.04 billion for fiscal 2012, which included a $519 million operating loss and $509 million in interest expense. Sales also declined 3 percent, to $27.9 billion. In July, the company said it was exploring strategic alternatives, including a sale. Soon after, the company dismissed CEO Craig Herkert, with Chairman Wayne Sales stepping in to helm the troubled grocer.

Cerberus, an investor in the deal to acquire Albertsons in 2006 was long seen as the leading candidate. Last week, rumors that Supervalu was near a deal with Cerberus sent stock soaring nearly 15 percent.

In September, Supervalu said it would 60 underperforming stores, primarily from the Save-A-Lot and Albertsons chains. No Jewel locations were identified at the time. The announcement was particularly troubling to investment community because Save-A-Lot, a hard discount chain, has been Supervalu's primary growth vehicle.

Supervalu has long acknowledged that many of its stores are not price competitive. In 2012, it homed in on Jewel-Osco and the Chicago market. Supervalu surveyed customers and lowered prices throughout the store. When the company reported results for its second fiscal quarter in September, (Supervalu CEO Wayne) Sales said that Jewel had been "competitively priced throughout the store" for about six weeks.

Sales said that the initiative had resulted in "dramatic improvement" in how consumers "think about the quality of products we sell, how they feel about the service they get in various departments" and that the company was pleased with increased unit sales.

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Baseball Hall of Fame to render verdict on Steroid Era

Jon Keller reports

By Dave van Dyck




Tribune reporter

1:02 p.m. CST, January 9, 2013

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa finally faced a jury Wednesday that would decide whether they are worthy of the Hall of Fame, and the verdict was a resounding no: For only the eighth time, no players were selected for induction.

The inclusion of the Steroids Era players on this year’s ballot overshadowed those who were thought to have the best chance of being voted into baseball’s hallowed shrine in Cooperstown: former Chicago White Sox outfielder Tim Raines, the Houston Astros’ long-time duo of Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell and All-Star pitcher Jack Morris.

Also in contention was former Chicago Cubs closer Lee Smith, who was on the ballot for the 11thtime.

This Hall of Fame eligible class has received more attention than most because of the inclusion of Bonds, who won seven MVP awards; Clemens, who won seven Cy Young awards and Sosa, the former Cub who won a National League MVP award after his famous 1998 home run duel with the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire.

McGwire, the only one of those who publicly has acknowledged using performance-enhancing drugs, has failed seven times in his Hall of Fame election bid. Former Cub Rafael Palmeiro, who tested positive for a drug, has failed three times.

The so-called Steroids Era has caused division within the electorate, comprised of 10-year members of the Baseball Writers Association. They historically have been very stingy with their votes, especially considering it takes 75 percent to be included in the summer induction ceremonies.

dvandyck@tribune.com

Twitter @davandyck

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Why bother with a Facebook phone? Facebook’s app is already on 86% of iPhones and iPads

Rumors suggesting Facebook (FB) is working on a smartphone have resurfaced a number of times over the past year. Each time, Facebook denied the various claims. Facebook may indeed still be working on its own phone but as a new report from market research firm NPD Group shows, it probably doesn’t need to.

[More from BGR: Is Samsung the new Apple?]

Facebook makes money by gathering information about its users and serving targeted ads based on that data. Allowing users to update Facebook with fresh data as often as possible is obviously beneficial to the company, and smartphones present a terrific opportunity to give users access to their Facebook accounts from anywhere. The more people using Facebook’s mobile apps, the better, and Facebook’s smartphone penetration is absolutely staggering right now.

[More from BGR: iPhone 5 now available with unlimited service, no contract on Walmart’s $ 45 Straight Talk plan]

According to data published by NPD Group on Tuesday, Facebook’s iOS application was used by 86% of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch owners as of November 2012. On the Android platform, 70% of smartphone and tablet owners used Facebook’s mobile app in November.

No other third-party app even comes close to approaching Facebook’s mobile penetration. Google’s (GOOG) YouTube app is the next most popular third-party app on iOS with 40% penetration and Amazon’s (AMZN) mobile application is the second most popular third-party Android app with just 28% penetration.

So why would Facebook bother making its own phone?

One answer — perhaps the obvious one — is that an own-brand smartphone with custom software would give Facebook access to far more personal data than it can reach using third-party applications. Considering Facebook’s track record with matters relating to privacy, however, users may be reluctant to buy a Facebook phone.

In any case, a Facebook phone certainly doesn’t seem like a necessity for the time being. Instead, focusing on ways to effectively monetize the hundreds of millions of users who interact with Facebook from a smartphone or tablet each month might be a wiser use of resources.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Oprah to interview Armstrong for Jan. 17 show

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lance Armstrong has agreed to an interview with Oprah Winfrey in which he is to address allegations he used performance-enhancing drugs during a career in which he won seven Tour de France titles.

According to Winfrey’s website on Tuesday, this will be a “no holds-barred interview.” It will be the first with Armstrong since his cycling career crumbled under the weight of a massive report by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. The report detailed accusations of drug use by Armstrong and teammates on his U.S. Postal Service teams.

It’s unclear if the interview at Armstrong’s home in Austin, Texas, has already been taped. Nicole Nichols, a spokeswoman for Oprah Winfrey Network & Harpo Studios, declined comment.

The show will be broadcast Jan. 17 at 9 p.m. EST on OWN and Oprah.com.

Armstrong has strongly denied the doping charges that led to him being stripped of his Tour de France titles, but The New York Times reported Friday he has told associates he is considering acknowledging the use of performance enhancers.

The newspaper report cited anonymous sources, and Armstrong lawyer Tim Herman told The Associated Press that night he had no knowledge of Armstrong considering a confession.

Earlier Tuesday, “60 Minutes Sports” reported the head of USADA told the show a representative for Armstrong offered the agency a “donation” in excess of $ 150,000 several years before an investigation by the organization led to the loss of Armstrong’s Tour de France titles.

In an interview for the premiere on Showtime on Wednesday night, USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said he was “stunned” when he received the offer in 2004.

“It was a clear conflict of interest for USADA,” Tygart said. “We had no hesitation in rejecting that offer.”

Herman denied such an offer was made.

“No truth to that story,” Herman wrote Tuesday in an email to the AP. “First Lance heard of it was today. He never made any such contribution or suggestion.”

Tygart was traveling and did not respond to requests from the AP for comment. USADA spokeswoman Annie Skinner said Tygart’s comments from the interview were accurate. In it, he reiterates what he told the AP last fall: He was surprised when federal investigators abruptly closed their two-year investigation into Armstrong and his business dealings, then refused to share any evidence they gathered.

“You’ll have to ask the feds why they shut down,” Tygart told the AP. “They enforce federal criminal laws. We enforce sports anti-doping violations. They’re totally separate. We’ve done our job.”

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Economic Scene: Health Care and Pursuit of Profit Make a Poor Mix

Thirty years ago, Bonnie Svarstad and Chester Bond of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered an interesting pattern in the use of sedatives at nursing homes in the south of the state.

Patients entering church-affiliated nonprofit homes were prescribed drugs roughly as often as those entering profit-making “proprietary” institutions. But patients in proprietary homes received, on average, more than four times the dose of patients at nonprofits.

Writing about his colleagues’ research in his 1988 book “The Nonprofit Economy,” the economist Burton Weisbrod provided a straightforward explanation: “differences in the pursuit of profit.” Sedatives are cheap, Mr. Weisbrod noted. “Less expensive than, say, giving special attention to more active patients who need to be kept busy.”

This behavior was hardly surprising. Hospitals run for profit are also less likely than nonprofit and government-run institutions to offer services like home health care and psychiatric emergency care, which are not as profitable as open-heart surgery.

A shareholder might even applaud the creativity with which profit-seeking institutions go about seeking profit. But the consequences of this pursuit might not be so great for other stakeholders in the system — patients, for instance. One study found that patients’ mortality rates spiked when nonprofit hospitals switched to become profit-making, and their staff levels declined.

These profit-maximizing tactics point to a troubling conflict of interest that goes beyond the private delivery of health care. They raise a broader, more important question: How much should we rely on the private sector to satisfy broad social needs?

From health to pensions to education, the United States relies on private enterprise more than pretty much every other advanced, industrial nation to provide essential social services. The government pays Medicare Advantage plans to deliver health care to aging Americans. It provides a tax break to encourage employers to cover workers under 65.

Businesses devote almost 6 percent of the nation’s economic output to pay for health insurance for their employees. This amounts to nine times similar private spending on health benefits across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, on average. Private plans cover more than a third of pension benefits. The average for 30 countries in the O.E.C.D. is just over one-fifth.

We let the private sector handle tasks other countries would never dream of moving outside the government’s purview. Consider bail bondsmen and their rugged sidekicks, the bounty hunters.

American TV audiences may reminisce fondly about Lee Majors in “The Fall Guy” chasing bad guys in a souped-up GMC truck — a cheap way to get felons to court. People in most other nations see them as an undue commercial intrusion into the criminal justice system that discriminates against the poor.

Our reliance on private enterprise to provide the most essential services stems, in part, from a more narrow understanding of our collective responsibility to provide social goods. Private American health care has stood out for decades among industrial nations, where public universal coverage has long been considered a right of citizenship. But our faith in private solutions also draws on an ingrained belief that big government serves too many disparate objectives and must cater to too many conflicting interests to deliver services fairly and effectively.

Our trust appears undeserved, however. Our track record suggests that handing over responsibility for social goals to private enterprise is providing us with social goods of lower quality, distributed more inequitably and at a higher cost than if government delivered or paid for them directly.

The government’s most expensive housing support program — it will cost about $140 billion this year — is a tax break for individuals to buy homes on the private market.

According to the Tax Policy Center, this break will benefit only 20 percent of mostly well-to-do taxpayers, and most economists agree that it does nothing to further its purported goal of increasing homeownership. Tax breaks for private pensions also mostly benefit the wealthy. And 401(k) plans are riskier and costlier to administer than Social Security.

From the high administrative costs incurred by health insurers to screen out sick patients to the array of expensive treatments prescribed by doctors who earn more money for every treatment they provide, our private health care industry provides perhaps the clearest illustration of how the profit motive can send incentives astray.

By many objective measures, the mostly private American system delivers worse value for money than every other in the developed world. We spend nearly 18 percent of the nation’s economic output on health care and still manage to leave tens of millions of Americans without adequate access to care.

Britain gets universal coverage for 10 percent of gross domestic product. Germany and France for 12 percent. What’s more, our free market for health services produces no better health than the public health care systems in other advanced nations. On some measures — infant mortality, for instance — it does much worse.

In a way, private delivery of health care misleads Americans about the financial burdens they must bear to lead an adequate existence. If they were to consider the additional private spending on health care as a form of tax — an indispensable cost to live a healthy life — the nation’s tax bill would rise to about 31 percent from 25 percent of the nation’s G.D.P. — much closer to the 34 percent average across the O.E.C.D.

A quarter of a century ago, a belief swept across America that we could reduce the ballooning costs of the government’s health care entitlements just by handing over their management to the private sector. Private companies would have a strong incentive to identify and wipe out wasteful treatment. They could encourage healthy lifestyles among beneficiaries, lowering use of costly care. Competition for government contracts would keep the overall price down.

We now know this didn’t work as advertised. Competition wasn’t as robust as hoped. Health maintenance organizations didn’t keep costs in check, and they spent heavily on administration and screening to enroll only the healthiest, most profitable beneficiaries.

One study of Medicare spending found that the program saved no money by relying on H.M.O.’s. Another found that moving Medicaid recipients into H.M.O.’s increased the average cost per beneficiary by 12 percent with no improvement in the quality of care for the poor. Two years ago, President Obama’s health care law cut almost $150 billion from Medicare simply by reducing payments to private plans that provide similar care to plain vanilla Medicare at a higher cost.

Today, again, entitlements are at the center of the national debate. Our elected officials are consumed by slashing a budget deficit that is expected to balloon over coming decades. With both Democrats and Republicans unwilling to raise taxes on the middle class, the discussion is quickly boiling down to how deeply entitlements must be cut.

We may want to broaden the debate. The relevant question is how best we can serve our social needs at the lowest possible cost. One answer is that we have a lot of room to do better. Improving the delivery of social services like health care and pensions may be possible without increasing the burden on American families, simply by removing the profit motive from the equation.

E-mail: eporter@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @portereduardo

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787 engineer: Dreamliner is '100% safe to fly'

Boeing Co.'s 787 Dreamliner jet suffered a third mishap in as many days on Wednesday, heightening safety concerns after a string of setbacks for the new aircraft.

Japan's All Nippon Airways said it was forced to cancel a 787 Dreamliner flight scheduled to from fly from Yamaguchi prefecture in western Japan to Tokyo due to brake problems. That followed a fuel leak on Tuesday that forced a 787 operated by Japan Airlines to cancel take-off at Boston's Logan International Airport, a day after an electrical fire on another 787 after a JAL flight to Boston from Tokyo.

Chicago-based Boeing said Wednesday it has "extreme confidence" in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and the plane is "100 percent safe to fly," Mike Sinnett, the chief project engineer for the 787 said during a news conference.

"Clearly there are issues," Sinnett said, adding that he won't be happy until the 787 is 100 percent reliable. However, he said, all new planes have such "teething pains," and the 787 problems are similar to incidents experienced when the Boeing 777 went into service.

"This is par for the course for any new airplane program," he said.

Asian customers rallied behind the U.S. planemaker, however, saying such teething troubles were not uncommon on new planes and confirming they had no plans to scale back or cancel orders for the aircraft, which has a list price of $207 million.

Japan is by far the biggest customer for the Dreamliner to date, with JAL and All Nippon Airways (ANA) operating a total of 24 of the 49 new planes delivered to end-December. The aircraft entered commercial service in November 2011, more than three years behind schedule after a series of production delays. Boeing has sold 848 of the planes.

JAL spokesman Kazunori Kidosaki said the carrier, which operates seven Dreamliners, had no plans to change orders it has placed for another 38 aircraft. ANA, which has 17 Dreamliners flying its colors, will also stick with its orders for another 49, spokesman Etsuya Uchiyama said.

State-owned Air India, which on Monday took delivery of the sixth of the 27 Dreamliners it has ordered, said precautionary measures were already in place and its planes were flying smoothly.

"It's a new plane, and some minor glitches do happen. It's not a cause of concern," said spokesman G. Prasada Rao. There was no immediate suggestion that the 787 Dreamliner, the world's first passenger jet built mainly from carbon-plastic lightweight materials to save fuel, was likely to be grounded as investigators looked into the fire incident.

 Air China, which sees the 787 as a way to expand its international routes, and Hainan Airlines also said they were keeping their orders for 15 and 10 of the planes.

"New airplanes more or less will need adjustments, and currently we have no plans to swap or cancel orders," said an executive at future 787 operator Hainan Airlines, who was not authorized to talk to the media and did not want to be named.

Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker, who has previously criticized technical problems or delays with Boeing or Airbus jets, said there were no technical problems with the five 787s currently in use by the Gulf carrier. "It doesn't mean we are going to cancel our orders. It's a revolutionary airplane," he said.

Other carriers already flying the Dreamliner are Ethiopian Airlines, LAN Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines and United Airlines.

- Reuters contributed to this report

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Local hospitals overwhelmed by flu

The amount of flu cases is the highest it has been in a decade. (WGN - Chicago)

Seven Chicago-area hospitals have had to send ambulances elsewhere this morning as they deal with an influx of patients with flu-like symptoms. 

As of 9:45 a.m., the hospitals remained on bypass status, which means their emergency rooms are at capacity and non-critical patients are being re-routed to other hospitals, said Melaney Arnold, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The Chicago-area hospitals included Northwestern Memorial Hospital, University of Chicago Medical Center and Swedish Covenant Hospital. Rockford Memorial Hospital was the only hospital outside of Chicago on bypass.

Arnold cautioned that number is changing hourly as hospitals go on and off bypass and shuffle around patients.

At Northwestern Memorial Hospital, which has since gone off bypass, the decision was largely driven by flu patients who did not require medical attention, said Dr. David Zich, an internal and emergency medicine physician.

"The flu in and of itself is not a reason to come to the emergency department," he said, noting an ER visit is "not necessary" unless the flu is coupled with a shortness of breath or another serious illness, such as heart disease.

Zich said going on bypass is "unusual but not extremely rare" for the hospital. He estimated it happens about 14 times a year.

The flu season — both locally and nationally — is off to its earliest and most active start in nearly a decade, health officials have said. The season typically runs from mid-December through March and peaks during the second half of January. Hospitals started seeing larger-than-expected numbers of people with the flu in early December, and officials are not sure when this season will peak.

Dr. Julie Morita, medical director for Chicago's health department, said in an email this morning that the number of flu cases in the city is still rising.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed Illinois among 29 states experiencing "high" flu activity through the last week of 2012. As of Dec. 29, the CDC categorized the illness as "widespread" in 41 states.

From Sept. 30 to the end of 2012, nearly 100 flu sufferers spent time in intensive care units of Chicago hospitals with flu-like symptoms, according to the city's Department of Public Health. Last year, only one person had been sent to the ICU with the flu in about the same time period.

The strain of influenza largely responsible for the overnight burst of hospital visits tends to be “a little more severe than others,” Arnold said.

Arnold said anyone experiencing flu-like symptoms should first contact their health care provider or local health department.

One of those people include, Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti who has come down with a case of the flu. His illness has forced him to withdraw from this week's CSO subscription concerts at Symphony Center.

psvitek@tribune.com

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Target to match some rivals’ online prices year-round

(Reuters) – Target Corp said on Tuesday it will match on a year-round basis the prices found on the websites of key rivals Amazon.com Inc, Best Buy Co Inc, Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Toys R Us, its latest tactic to hold onto shoppers focused on price.

The move extends an online price-matching program that Target introduced over the holiday season and which was supposed to last only from November 1 to December 16. It also comes after Target last week reported flat sales growth in December at stores open at least a year.

In November Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel said the retailer was not seeing a lot of price-match activity in its stores.

While shopping online has grown rapidly in recent years, it still represents a small fraction of overall shopping in the United States. Target’s policy of matching online prices differs from policies at several chains, which match only printed advertised prices for items sold at stores.

Target said that throughout the year it will match the price when a customer buys an eligible item at one of its stores and finds the same item at a lower price in the following week’s Target circular or in a local competitor’s printed ad. It will also match the price if the customer finds the same item at a lower price within a week on Target’s website or the websites of Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy and Toys R Us.

Amazon says it offers competitive prices and does not offer price matching when an item’s price drops after a customer buys it, with the exception of televisions. Walmart matches the prices of print ads from competitors. Walmart also says it checks the prices of 30,000 items at competing chains each week to make sure it has the lowest prices.

Best Buy matches the price from a local competitor’s store, a local Best Buy store or its own web site. Toys R Us matches in-store prices and certain online prices.

(Reporting By Jessica Wohl in Chicago and Phil Wahba in New York; Editing by Alden Bentley and John Wallace)

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‘Downton,’ ‘Girls,’ ‘Idol’ and more this January

NEW YORK (AP) — Where once the post-holiday schedule was a blizzard of chilly reruns, January is aburst with premieres and finales.

Already, the much-adored British miniseries “Downton Abbey” has made its much-awaited season return Sundays on PBS.

On IFC on Fridays, the hilarious “Portlandia” is back for its third season of sketch comedy poking fun at the peculiarities of Portland, Ore., starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein.

And NBC‘s mystery melodrama “Deception” has arrived on Mondays. Meagan Good stars as a detective going undercover at the home of a rich family with whom she was once friendly, to investigate a murder within the clan.

On Tuesday, PBS’ “American Experience” begins a three-week documentary miniseries, “The Abolitionists,” spotlighting Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and Angelina Grimke.

Also on Tuesday, the FX drama “Justified” is returning for its fourth season of Kentucky hill-country crime-fighting led by Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (series star Timothy Olyphant).

On Thursday, comedic action centers at the White House with the premiere of NBC‘s “1600 Penn.” Josh Gad (“The Book of Mormon”) stars as the goofball son of the incumbent U.S. president (played by Bill Pullman) who keeps the first family in a stir, yet manages to make everything turn out all right by the final fade-out.

The Gallaghers of “Shameless” are a much different family. In this dark comedy, William H. Macy stars as the boozy single father of a brood of kids who manage their ragtag Chicago homestead in spite of Dad’s overindulgences. Also starring Emmy Rossum, it returns Jan. 13 for its third season on Showtime.

Also on Jan. 13, HBO’s comedy “Girls” returns for a second season sure to be at least as ballyhooed, discussed and argued about as the first. Lena Dunham (who also writes, produces, directs and created the series) stars as one of a quartet of twentysomething gal pals in New York.

Right after “Girls,” HBO launches the second season of “Enlightened,” an affecting comedy starring Laura Dern as a confused New Age-y activist who’s bent on changing the world.

What was Carrie Bradshaw like before Sarah Jessica Parker and “Sex and the City”? Find out on “The Carrie Diaries,” which debuts on the CW on Jan. 14. AnnaSophia Robb stars as the high-school era Carrie in this likable prequel.

“American Idol” returns on Jan. 16 on Fox. Veteran judge Randy Jackson will be joined by Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban. Ryan Seacrest, as always, is the affable host.

After five seasons, Fox’s lovably inscrutable sci-fi series “Fringe” concludes its head-scratching run on Jan. 18. Stars include Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson and John Noble.

Fox’s bloody suspense drama “The Following” premieres Jan. 21. Kevin Bacon stars as a former FBI agent drafted back into service to chase a serial murderer and his vicious disciples.

My, how Spartacus‘ army has grown! Commanding thousands of freed slaves, Spartacus is primed to bring down the entire Roman Republic as the final season begins for “Spartacus: War of the Damned,” Jan. 25 on Starz. Liam McIntyre plays the rebel leader.

The world of “Dallas” will be rocked during its second season with the death of arch-villain oilman J.R. Ewing (played, of course, by Larry Hagman, who passed away in November while the series was in production). Also starring Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray, this rebooted (so to speak) version of the long-running CBS prime-time soap returns on TNT on Jan. 28.

FX weighs in with an edgy new drama “The Americans” on Jan. 30. It stars Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as two KGB agents posing as the heads of a normal American household in the 1980s, as they work tirelessly to bring down the U.S. on behalf of Mother Russia.

On Jan. 31, NBC unveils a new medical drama “Do No Harm.” Steve Pasquale (“Rescue Me”) stars as a neurosurgeon with a great bedside manner who inconveniently shares a body with his sociopathic alter ego.

The same night, NBC closes the book on the brilliant mockery of “30 Rock.” This Tina Fey comedy wraps seven seasons of making fun of pop culture, modern life and especially its own real-life broadcast network — which, like the rest of the TV universe, has even more midseason goodies in store come February.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier

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Oil Sand Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level

Todd Korol/Reuters

An oil sands mine Fort McMurray, Alberta.

OTTAWA — The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed.

For the study, financed by the Canadian government, the researchers set out to develop a historical record of the contamination, analyzing sediment dating back about 50 years from six small and shallow lakes north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the center of the oil sands industry. Layers of the sediment were tested for deposits of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, groups of chemicals associated with oil that in many cases have been found to cause cancer in humans after long-term exposure.

“One of the biggest challenges is that we lacked long-term data,” said John P. Smol, the paper’s lead author and a professor of biology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. “So some in industry have been saying that the pollution in the tar sands is natural, it’s always been there.”

The researchers found that to the contrary, the levels of those deposits have been steadily rising since large-scale oil sands production began in 1978.

Samples from one test site, the paper said, now show 2.5 to 23 times more PAHs in current sediment than in layers dating back to around 1960.

“We’re not saying these are poisonous ponds,” Professor Smol said. “But it’s going to get worse. It’s not too late but the trend is not looking good.” He said that the wilderness lakes studied by the group were now contaminated as much as lakes in urban centers.

The study is likely to provide further ammunition to critics of the industry, who already contend that oil extracted from Canada’s oil sands poses environmental hazards like toxic sludge ponds, greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of boreal forests.

Battles are also under way over the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move the oil down through the western United States and down to refineries along the Gulf Coast, or an alternative pipeline that would transport the oil from landlocked Alberta to British Columbia for export to Asia.

The researchers, who included scientists at Environment Canada’s aquatic contaminants research division, chose to test for PAHs because they had been the subject of earlier studies, including one published in 2009 that analyzed the distribution of the chemicals in snowfall north of Fort McMurray. That research drew criticism from the government of Alberta and others for failing to provide a historical baseline.

“Now we have the smoking gun,” Professor Smol said.

He said he was not surprised that the analysis found a rise in PAH deposits after the industrial development of the oil sands, “but we needed the data.” He said he had not entirely expected, however, to observe the effect at the most remote test site, a lake that is about 50 miles to the north.

Asked about the study, Adam Sweet, a spokesman for Peter Kent, Canada’s environment minister, emphasized in an e-mail that with the exception of one lake very close to the oil sands, the levels of contaminants measured by the researchers “did not exceed Canadian guidelines and were low compared to urban areas.”

He added that an environmental monitoring program for the region announced last February 2012 was put into effect “to address the very concerns raised by such studies” and to “provide an improved understanding of the long-term cumulative effects of oil sands development.”

Earlier research has suggested several different ways that the chemicals could spread. Most oil sand production involve large-scale open-pit mining. The chemicals may become wind-borne when giant excavators dig them up and then deposit them into 400-ton dump trucks.

Upgraders at some oil sands projects that separate the oil bitumen from its surrounding sand are believed to emit PAHs. And some scientists believe that vast ponds holding wastewater from that upgrading and from other oil sand processes may be leaking PAHs and other chemicals into downstream bodies of water.

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