Recipes for Health: Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

If you did a lot of cooking over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays you may have some celery hearts lingering in your refrigerator. You needed a few branches for a stew, a stock, or a soup, so you bought a whole bunch, and here it is weeks later and the rest of the celery is wilting in the produce drawer.

This doesn’t have to happen if you think of this vegetable as something more than an aromatic. I’m a big fan of celery, both raw and cooked, as the main ingredient or as one of several featured ingredients in a dish. You can do the traditional thing with raw celery and dice it up and add it to a potato, tuna or egg salad, or you can make a celery salad, slicing the branches as thin as you can get them and tossing them with herbs, radishes, oil and vinegar, and blue cheese. If you are cooking with celery, don’t stop at one branch when you make soup. The celery contributes a wonderful herbal flavor dimension. It retains its texture for a long time when you cook it, so I used it as the main vegetable in a risotto and loved the way it stood up to the creamy rice.

You always see celery listed as an ingredient in tonic juices and blender drinks. It has long been used in Chinese medicine to help control high blood pressure, which makes sense because it contains phytochemicals called phthalides that reduce stress hormones and work to relax the muscle walls in arteries, increasing blood flow. The vegetable is an excellent source of Vitamins K and C, and a very good source of potassium, folate, dietary fiber, molybdenum, manganese, and Vitamin B6. Another bonus attribute – it is very low in calories. However, it is on the high side as far as sodium goes.

Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

I make minestrones like this all the time, but I hadn’t made a version with this much celery in it until I made this one, and I loved the dimension of flavor it contributes to the mix.

1 cup lentils, rinsed

1 onion, halved

A bouquet garni made with 2 sprigs each thyme and parsley, a bay leaf, and a Parmesan rind

1 1/2 quarts water

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 medium carrot, diced

3 celery stalks, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

Salt, preferably kosher salt, to taste

1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, with liquid

Pinch of sugar

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Very thinly sliced celery, from the inner heart, for garnish

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese for serving

1. Combine the lentils, 1/2 onion and the bouquet garni with 1 quart water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, add salt to taste, cover and simmer 30 minutes.

2. Chop the remaining onion. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat and add the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is tender, about 5 minutes, and add the garlic and a pinch of salt. Stir together until fragrant, about 1 minute, and add the canned tomatoes with their liquid and the sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes, until the tomatoes have cooked down somewhat and smell fragrant.

3. Add the lentils with their broth, the tomato paste, salt to taste, an additional 2 cups water, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer 30 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings. Season to taste with freshly ground pepper, stir in the parsley and serve, garnishing each bowl with thinly sliced celery heart if you want some crunch, and passing the Parmesan at the table.

Yield: Serves 4 to 6 (4 if there are teen-agers in your house)

Advance preparation: This will keep for three or four days in the refrigerator. It may require thinning out. It’s even better the day after you make it. I have a teenage son and he just about polished off the leftovers – which should have served 3 – the day after I tested the recipe.

Variation: Shortly before serving add 2 cups baby spinach and simmer just until wilted.

Nutritional information per serving (4 servings): 276 calories; 4 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 49 grams carbohydrates; 12 grams dietary fiber; 392 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 17 grams protein

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 184 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 32 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 11 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Investigators probe 787 battery maker

U.S. and Japanese aviation safety officials investigating problems with Boeing Co.'s 787 Dreamliner visited the headquarters of the plane's battery maker on Monday, seeking clues into why one of the technologically advanced aircraft made an emergency landing last week.

A spokesman for GS Yuasa Corp., which makes batteries for the 787, said the company was fully cooperating with the investigation, and its engineers were working with the officials from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Japan's Civil Aviation Bureau (CAB) at the company's compound in Kyoto, where it makes airplane batteries.

CAB official Tatsuyuki Shimazu told reporters the investigating team had been briefed by GS Yuasa and had toured the plant, looking at battery design, production and quality. The Japanese investigation at the plant will continue on Tuesday on a more detailed level, including tracking battery batch numbers and production dates, he said.

Authorities around the world last week grounded the new lightweight Dreamliner, and Boeing halted deliveries after a problem with a lithium-ion battery prompted an All Nippon Airways 787 into the emergency landing at Takamatsu airport during a domestic flight. Earlier this month, a similar battery caught fire in a Japan Airlines' 787 parked at Boston Logan International Airport.

EXPANDED PROBE

U.S. safety investigators on Sunday ruled out excess voltage as the cause of the Boston battery fire on Jan. 7, and said they were expanding their probe to look at the battery's charger and the jet's auxiliary power unit. The battery is one part of the 787's complex electrical system, built by French company Thales SA.

“Results have shown the battery was abnormal in both the Boston and Takamatsu (incidents). They were the most damaged,” Shigeru Takano, a senior safety official at the CAB, told reporters ahead of the on-site visit to GS Yuasa. “We will look into if the work that took place, from design to manufacturing, was appropriate.”

Shares in GS Yuasa, valued at close to $1.5 billion, rose 1 percent on Monday, having dropped nearly 10 percent since the Boston fire. The benchmark Nikkei fell 1.5 percent.

The company, which employs nearly 12,300 staff, expects revenue of 288 billion yen ($3.2 billion) in the year to end-March - with only around 1 percent of that coming from its aircraft battery business. The company's batteries are used primarily in motorbikes, industrial equipment and power supply devices.

GS Yuasa, in which automaker Toyota Motor Corp has a 2.7 percent stake, reported an operating profit of around $160 million in the year to last March.

MORE FLIGHTS CANCELLED

The grounding of the Dreamliner, an advanced carbon-composite plane with a list price of $207 million, has forced ANA to cancel 151 domestic and 26 international flights scheduled for Jan. 23-28, affecting more than 21,000 passengers, the airline said on Monday.

The cancellations add to the 72 flights scheduled for Jan. 19-22 that ANA called off last week. ANA, which flies the most Dreamliners of any airline, said it will announce on Thursday its plans on flight cancellations for dates from Jan. 29.

ANA said it had not yet decided whether to seek compensation from Boeing for losses as a result of the 787's grounding. “At this point we're concentrating on getting the Dreamliner back in service, rather than considering requesting compensation,” said spokesman Ryosei Nomura.

Rival JAL said it cancelled four flights on its Tokyo-San Diego route for Jan. 27-28, adding to the 8 flights originally scheduled for Jan. 19-25 on the same route it called off last week. It said it had yet to decide changes for flights slated for Jan. 26.

“We've been able to rearrange routes originally scheduled to use the Dreamliner with alternative aircraft,” said JAL spokeswoman Sze Hunn Yap, adding there was no talk about compensation at this stage.

Japan is the biggest market to date for the Dreamliner, with JAL and ANA flying 24 of the 50 passenger jets that Boeing has delivered.
 

data by YCharts

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Obama sworn in for second term in White House ceremony

Chicago Tribune reporter Jenniffer Weigel talks with Chicago Tribune/Washington D.C. Bureau reporter Katherine Skiba about the demand for inauguration tickets and the comparison between this year and 2009. (Posted: January 20, 2013)

Washington—

President Barack Obama took the official oath for his second term on Sunday at the White House in a small, private ceremony that set a more subdued tone compared to the historic start of his presidency four years ago.

Gathered with his family in the Blue Room on the White House's ceremonial main floor, Obama put his hand on a Bible and recited the 35-word oath that was read to him by U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts.

Obama hugged his wife Michelle and said, "Thank you," after she congratulated him at the swearing-in.

Obama, who became the first African-American U.S. president four years ago, will be sworn in publicly for his second term on Monday in a much bigger ceremony before an audience of as many as 800,000 people outside the U.S. Capitol.

Sunday's ceremony was needed because the U.S. Constitution mandates that the president take office on January 20. Planners opted to go with a private ceremony on the actual date and then hold the symbolic inaugural activities the next day.

Obama will have been sworn in four times, two for each term, putting him equal to Franklin Roosevelt, who served four terms. A second swearing-in was needed in 2009 when Roberts flubbed the first one.

Obama, who won a second term on November 7 by defeating Republican Mitt Romney, opens round two facing many of the same problems that dogged his first term: persistently high unemployment, crushing debt and a deep partisan divide over how to solve the issues.

This has taken some of the euphoria out of Obama's second inauguration, but he got a boost at a rousing service at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Washington where he and his wife Michelle, who is sporting a new hair style featuring bangs, clapped and swayed to gospel music.

"Forward, forward," shouted Pastor Ronald Braxton to his congregation, echoing an Obama election campaign slogan.

Early Sunday morning, Vice President Joe Biden was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, making her the first Hispanic judge to administer an oath of office for one of the nation's two highest offices.

Obama and Biden then joined forces to lay a wreath of flowers at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in a solemn remembrance of those killed in the line of duty.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Alistair Bell and Jackie Frank)

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Galaxy S IV benchmarks may confirm 1.8GHz CPU and Android 4.2

Apple needs a new product targeting its next generation of customers which will be fueled by this newly announced product

“iPotty: Brilliant, or worst idea ever? Experts weigh in on new potty training device – Unveiled last week at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the base of the iPotty looks like a regular ol’ plastic toilet with removable bowl— but there’s an adjustable stand attached, specifically for an iPad.”

Something easy to clean which will survive toddlers dropping them into their training potty.

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Chastain bests Arnold, Wahlberg at box office

NEW YORK (AP) — Jessica Chastain easily outmuscled Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mark Wahlberg over the weekend, topping the box office with her supernatural horror film “Mama.”

According to studio estimates Sunday, “Mama” earned $ 28.1 million. Chastain held the top two spots with both “Mama” and the Osama bin Laden manhunt drama “Zero Dark Thirty,” for which she’s nominated by the best actress Oscar. In its second week of wide release, “Zero Dark Thirty” took in $ 17.6 million.

Schwarzenegger‘s post-governorship comeback got off to a poor start. His action flick “The Last Stand” opened with just $ 6.3 million, one of the worst debuts for the brawny 65-year-old star.

The Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe New York crime film “Broken City” didn’t fare much better. It premiered with $ 9.1 million.

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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Steel company forges ahead with new South Side plant

One evening during a Cubs game in 1988, A. Finkl & Sons Co. received a frantic phone call: The ballpark's lights were flickering. Could the steelmaker please turn off its furnaces to ward off a potential outage?

The anecdote illustrates one reason why Finkl is phasing out production at its century-old facility just west of the city's Lincoln Park neighborhood as it completes its move this year to 1355 E. 93rd St. on the South Side.

The new factory, equipped with the latest technology, improved production lines, better access to transportation and its own electric substation, will enable Finkl to boost its production fivefold to a half-million tons of steel a year.

"It's a huge step forward for Finkl," said John Guliana, the company's vice president of engineering and planning, explaining that workers will operate machines by pressing buttons on computer monitors. In contrast, the North Side plant, laid out over 22 acres separated by city streets, depended on manual labor, people working "with shovels and things like that," he said. Space was so tight that recycled metals and finished product sat out in the open.

So far, Finkl has spent more than $180 million on equipping buildings on the 53-acre South Side site that will house the melt, forge and machining shops, and offices as well as recycled metals and finished product. The new site is making steel and executives say it will handle 100 percent of production by the end of the year.

Finkl produces specialty steels made from recycled metals that are melted and forged into blocks. The blocks are sold to make molds, dies and large parts primarily used in the oil and gas industry.

At the old plant, those blocks sat out for up to two weeks before Finkl could load them onto rail cars, said Bruce Liimatainen, Finkl's chairman and chief executive. In that same amount of time, Finkl can now deliver steel to as far away as California, because the new plant's rail lines connect to the Norfolk Southern Railway yard just a few miles away.

"Literally, we can call them and within an hour they would be here," Liimatainen said. "It's the difference between competing overseas or not."

With its new capacity, Finkl is aiming to increase market share outside the U.S. and tap into the stainless steel market, sell bigger blocks of its specialty steels and offer roughly finished products.

Finkl's investments stand in contrast to what some other players are doing. Big steelmakers are battling declining prices and growing inventories of steel as China's economy cools and Europe continues to struggle with its own economic crisis. In December, ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steelmaker by volume, took a $4.3 billion write-down of its European businesses. Europe's economic crisis, it said, led to lower demand for its steel, which is used to build bridges, car parts and pipes.

At the end of 2012, Finkl's sales were essentially flat from the year before, Liimatainen said.

Meanwhile, future development of the company's property on the North Side could lead to debate over the future of manufacturing there. Some residents want the site cleared for housing because it has river views. To do so, however, aldermen would have to end the area's designation as a "planned manufacturing district," which protected it from encroaching residential development a quarter-century ago.

"The site is a very important site to my ward and presents us with a historic opportunity, and we are looking at it very closely," said Ald. Michele Smith, 43rd. "Certainly, we would like jobs to come from there." Finkl's factory is in Smith's ward but will become part of the 2nd Ward in 2015.

Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, said one idea is to try to attract green manufacturers, which might blend more easily with the neighborhood.

Some also have questioned Finkl's move from an upscale, predominantly white neighborhood to a predominantly black neighborhood dotted with boarded-up houses. Finkl has ringed the site with pine trees.

"What can we do now? Nothing," said Peggy Montes, president of the Bronzeville Children's Museum, located two blocks east of the new factory. She said the time to question Finkl's move has long passed. Going forward, Montes said, the conversation should be focused on how the company can help the community. "We don't have a YMCA; we are missing a lot of community-type services."

A 2008 Tribune investigation found that among Chicago factories, Finkl ranked worst for dangerous air pollution. At the time, its emissions of chromium, lead, manganese, nickel and zinc accounted for nearly a third of the city's total health risk from industrial pollution, according to the newspaper's analysis of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.

Liimatainen said equipment purchased for its new plant is the most energy-efficient on the market and therefore produces the lowest emissions. The investment, he said, makes the company more cost-competitive.

"The best way (to be environmentally conscious), is to use the lowest amount of energy," Liimatainen said.

For example, Finkl purchased a 70-ton electric arc furnace to make molten steel. The furnace's technology has reduced the time to make a batch of steel to about 40 minutes from roughly 4.5 hours.

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Ricketts asks for easing of landmark restrictions on Wrigley

Chicago Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts said Saturday the team is willing to pay for much of its renovation plan if the city will ease some of the restrictions surrounding Wrigley Field. 

“The fact is that when you look at all of the limitations that we have, whether that’s signage in the outfield, which we are not allowed to do, or what kind of stuff we do in the park or around the park, I think we’d just like a little more flexibility to have some options on that stuff,” Ricketts told the media after a question-and-answer session with fans at the Cubs Convention.

“We have an opportunity cost there that’s tremendous. Just give us some relief on some of these restrictions, and we’ll take care of (renovating) Wrigley Field.”

Ricketts said the team is looking at “other alternatives” to fund the renovations after a proposal to try and use future revenues from their amusement tax contributions fell flat.

“We’re not talking about (the plan) right now,’ he said.  “We’re looking at other things instead. One of the ways we look at it is ‘treat us like a private institution and let us go about doing our business and then we’ll take care of ourselves.”

Due to a landmarking ordinance, the Cubs have to ask for city approval for signage, which was granted for the Toyota sign in the left field bleachers.

Asked if he was aware of the landmarking restrictions when he bought the team, Ricketts replied: “When we bought the team we kind of understood some of the restrictions. What I didn’t understand was we were the only team in baseball to have these restrictions.”

Ricketts said the team has been in discussions with Mayor Rahm Emanuel and feels they’re close to an agreement after talks stalled last year. Emanuel reportedly wouldn’t return Ricketts’ calls after a New York Times report that a PAC run by family patriarch Joe Ricketts considered funding an inflammatory ad campaign against President Obama.

“I hope (we’re close),” Tom Ricketts said. “I think everyone has an incentive. We lost a year this year. We want to get the project rolling. It’s a big economic development for the city. It’s a lot of jobs. It’s something everyone should have incentive to want to get done.”

Earlier, Ricketts told fans the Cubs pay the second-highest taxes among major league teams, and an easing of restrictions would be only fair.

“Just let us run out own business,” he said. “We’re not a museum.”  

The Cubs will release their renovation plans later this afternoon at the convention.

Ricketts also told the media they’d like to open up Sheffield Avenue to a street-fest before games, as the Red Sox have with Yawkey Way outside Fenway Park.

“We think it’s a good idea,” he said. “We think it can really add to the fan experience. We’ve been to Yawkey Way and we think we can do something comparable. (Sheffield) is already closed. Why can’t we put something on it that’s nice for families or for fans coming to games?”

Regarding the decision not to invite former Cubs star Sammy Sosa to the convention, Ricketts said they will “revisit” that in the future.

“I think that, you know when we got here, there wasn’t much communication and we really haven’t focused on it,” he said. “But maybe it’s an issue we pick up this year and see what we can do about it.”

Ricketts declined to say whether the organization snubbing of Sosa has more to do with his 2004 walkout than widespread suspicions he used performance-enhancing drugs during his career.

psullivan@tribune.com

Twitter @PWSullivan

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Dotcom says new site legal, no revenge for Megaupload saga

AUCKLAND (Reuters) – Kim Dotcom, founder of outlawed file-sharing website Megaupload, said his new “cyberlocker” was not revenge on U.S. authorities who planned a raid on his home, closed Megaupload and charged him with online piracy for which he faces jail if found guilty.

Dotcom said his new offering, Mega.co.nz, which will launch on Sunday even as he and three colleagues await extradition from New Zealand to the United States, complied with the law and warned that attempts to take it down would be futile.

“This is not some kind of finger to the U.S. government or to Hollywood,” Dotcom told Reuters at his sprawling estate in the bucolic hills of Coatesville, just outside Auckland, New Zealand, a country known more for sheep, rugby and the Hobbit than flamboyant tech tycoons.

“Legally, there’s just nothing there that could be used to shut us down. This site is just as legitimate and has the right to exist as Dropbox, Boxnet and other competitors,” he said, referring to other popular cloud storage services.

His lawyer, Ira Rothken, added that launching the site was compliant with the terms of Dotcom’s bail conditions. U.S. prosecutors argue that Dotcom in a statement said he had no intention of starting a new internet business until his extradition was resolved.

CODES AND KEYS

Dotcom said Mega was a different beast to Megaupload, as the new site enables users to control exactly which users can access uploaded files, in contrast to its predecessor, which allowed users to search files, some of which contained copyrighted content allegedly without permission.

A sophisticated encryption system will allow users to encode their files before they upload them on to the site’s servers, which Dotcom said were located in New Zealand and overseas.

Each file will then be issued a unique, sophisticated decryption key which only the file holder will control, allowing them to share the file as they choose.

As a result, the site’s operators would have no access to the files, which they say would strip them from any possible liability for knowingly enabling users to distribute copyright-infringing content, which Washington says is illegal.

“Even if we wanted to, we can’t go into your file and snoop and see what you have in there,” the burly Dotcom said.

Dotcom said Mega would comply with orders from copyright holders to remove infringing material, which will afford it the “safe harbor” legal provision, which minimizes liability on the condition that a party acted in good faith to comply.

But some legal experts say it may be difficult to claim the protection if they do not know what users have stored.

The Motion Pictures Association of America said encrypting files alone would not protect Dotcom from liability.

“We’ll reserve final judgment until we have a chance to analyze the new project,” a spokesman told Reuters. “But given Kim Dotcom’s history, count us as skeptical.”

The German national, who also goes by Kim Schmitz, expects huge interest in its first month of operation, which would be a far cry from when Megaupload went live in 2005.

“I would be surprised if we had less than one million users,” Dotcom said.

A YEAR ON

Mega’s launch starts the next chapter of the Dotcom narrative, dotted with previous cyber crime-related arrests and whose twists and turns have been scrutinized by all facets of the entertainment industry, from film studios and record labels to internet service companies and teenage gamers.

The copyright infringement case, billed as the largest to date given that Megaupload in its heyday commanded around four percent of global online traffic, could set a precedent for internet liability laws and depending on its outcome, may force entertainment companies to rethink their distribution methods.

A year on, the extradition hearing has been delayed until August, complicated by illegal arrest warrants and the New Zealand government’s admission that it had illegally spied on Dotcom, who has residency status in the country.

Last January, New Zealand’s elite special tactics forces landed by helicopter at dawn in the grounds of Dotcom’s mansion, worth roughly NZ$ 30 million ($ 25.05 million) and featuring a servants’ wing, hedge maze and life-size statues of giraffes and a rhinoceros, to arrest him and his colleagues at the request of the FBI.

Police armed with semi-automatic weapons found Dotcom cowering alone in a panic room in the attic, while outside, a convoy of police cars and vans pulled up in the driveway. Around 70 officers took part in the raid.

They left with computers, files and some of Dotcom’s fleet of Rolls-Royces, Mercedes and a vintage pink Cadillac tricked with personalized license plates screaming “HACKER”, “EVIL”, and “MAFIA”.

“Every time you hear a helicopter, you automatically think, ‘Oh, another raid’, so it’s something that stays with you for a long time,” said Dotcom, who says he and his wife still panic when they hear sudden, loud noises in the house.

Dotcom was coy about the details of the launch party as builders put the finishing touches to a festival-sized concert stage in the mansion’s grounds, while two helicopters circled overhead.

But if the impromptu, Willy Wonka-styled ice cream social he threw in Auckland earlier in the week is any indication, the party could be a more wholesome affair compared with the well-documented soirees of Dotcom’s past, where nightclubs, hot tubs and scantily clad women were a common fixture.

“I had to grow up, you know, I was a big baby,” he said. “Big baby with too much money usually leads to baby craziness.

“I am going to be more of a person that wants to help to make things better and help internet innovation to take off without all these restrictions by governments. That is going to be my primary goal if this business is successful.”

($ 1 = NZ$ 1.2)

(Editing by Daniel Magnowski and Nick Macfie)

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Lance Armstrong biopic in the works from Paramount, J.J. Abrams

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Paramount Pictures and “Star Trek” producer J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot company have purchased the film rights to a forthcoming book about cyclist Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace, according to a person with knowledge of the transaction.

Armstrong, whose name and celebrity status helped build a multimillion dollar cancer foundation, admitted on Thursday that he used performance-enhancing drugs to win a record seven consecutive Tour de France championships after denying doping allegations for years.

The forthcoming book, “Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong” by New York Times reporter Juliet Macur, traces his recovery from cancer, inspirational return to cycling, and his fall to disgraced ex-champion.

The book is set for a June publication by HarperCollins.

Neither Paramount nor Bad Robot would comment on the deal, which was first reported on the Deadline Hollywood entertainment site.

Abrams, the producer and director of the forthcoming science-fiction thriller film “Star Trek into Darkness,” co-founded Bad Robot with producer Bryan Burk.

Paramount will distribute the big-budget “Star Trek,” which is scheduled for release in May. Paramount has distributed other Abrams-produced films, including 2011′s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” starring Tom Cruise.

Paramount Pictures is a subsidiary of Viacom Inc and HarperCollins is owned by News Corp.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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