Google to open retail stores this year

It started with Apple stores. Then came Microsoft stores.

Are Google stores next?

The Silicon Valley company hopes to open retail stores in time for this year's holiday shopping season, according to a report by 9to5Google, which cites an unnamed source.

According to the report, Google's leaders have decided retail stores are necessary for the eventual launch of Google Glass -- eyeglasses with capabilities similar to that of smartphone.

QUIZ: How much do you know about Google?

To attract regular consumers -- and not just hard-core tech users -- Google believes it needs to let people try out Google Glass in person, the report says. That's what Apple does with its products at its stores.

Besides Google Glass, the stores would also sell Chrome computers and Google Nexus smartphones and tablets.

The report doesn't specify where or when these stores might open, except to say they will be located in major U.S. metropolitan areas.

Google could not be reached for comment.

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Hutchinson expected to drop out, endorse Kelly

State Sen. Toi Hutchinson dropped out of the 2nd District special Democratic primary today and endorsed former state Rep. Robin Kelly in the contest to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. in Congress.

The move, announced in a morning news release, shakes up the Democratic field just nine days before the Feb. 26 primary election.

"Robin is a friend, and has captured momentum in pulling our community together. I am simply unwilling to risk playing a role going forward that could result in dividing our community at time when we need unity more than ever," Hutchinson said in the statement.

Hutchinson recently experienced a pair of setbacks during the short campaign. A super political action committee run by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg started airing a TV attack ad backing Kelly and attacking Hutchinson and another candidate, former one-term U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson of Crete, for past support from the National Rifle Association.

Gun control has loomed as a big issue in the contest and that's what Hutchinson indicated her departure from the contest was about.

"In the wake of horrendous gun related crimes all across our country, I agree with Robin that we need to stand together to fight gun violence, but Debbie Halvorson has been wrong headed in her refusal to moderate her views on banning dangerous assault weapons. President Obama needs a strong voice and a partner in Congress to win these important fights and I do not believe Debbie Halvorson would be that voice or partner," Hutchinson said in a statement.

Besides the gun control attack ad, Hutchinson had to deal with a recent news report detailing how she paid her mother as a campaign consultant. Hutchinson also was not listed as a participant in upcoming WTTW-Ch. 11 candidate forums.

Hutchinson's camp began contacting supporters Saturday night telling them of her intention to drop out of the contest, said two sources with knowledge of the decision. There are now three major Democratic candidates left in a 15-candidate field: Kelly, Halvorson and 9th Ward Ald. Anthony Beale of Chicago.

Hutchinson got an early boost in the contest when Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle endorsed her instead of Kelly, who served as a top aide to Preckwinkle. But Preckwinkle jumped to Kelly's camp today, according to the Hutchinson campaign news release.

As of Feb. 6, Kelly trailed Hutchinson in cash available to spend. Kelly reported $88,820 available while Hutchinson had more than double at $199,901. Hutchinson’s campaign has engaged in a significant direct-mail campaign since that time. For the entire campaign, through Feb. 6, Hutchinson reported raising $281,106. Hutchinson has been endorsed by Preckwinkle, who gave her $1,000.

Overall, campaign disclosure reports showed Kelly has raised more than $303,725 since the start of the short campaign through Feb. 6. Campaign aides to Kelly said she has raised $417,727 for the campaign cycle through Wednesday.

Tribune reporter Bill Ruthhart contributed to this report.

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Cuomo Bucks Tide With Bill to Lift Abortion Limits

ALBANY — Bucking a trend in which states have been seeking to restrict abortion, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is putting the finishing touches on legislation that would guarantee women in New York the right to late-term abortions when their health is in danger or the fetus is not viable.

Mr. Cuomo, seeking to deliver on a promise he made in his recent State of the State address, would rewrite a law that currently allows abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy only if the pregnant woman’s life is at risk. The law is not enforced, because it is superseded by federal court rulings that allow late-term abortions to protect a woman’s health, even if her life is not in jeopardy. But abortion rights advocates say the existence of the more restrictive state law has a chilling effect on some doctors and prompts some women to leave the state for late-term abortions.

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal, which has not yet been made public, would also clarify that licensed health care practitioners, and not only physicians, can perform abortions. It would remove abortion from the state’s penal law and regulate it through the state’s public health law.

Abortion rights advocates have welcomed Mr. Cuomo’s plan, which he outlined in general terms as part of a broader package of women’s rights initiatives in his State of the State address in January. But the Roman Catholic Church and anti-abortion groups are dismayed; opponents have labeled the legislation the Abortion Expansion Act.

The prospects for Mr. Cuomo’s effort are uncertain. The State Assembly is controlled by Democrats who support abortion rights; the Senate is more difficult to predict because this year it is controlled by a coalition of Republicans who have tended to oppose new abortion rights laws and breakaway Democrats who support abortion rights.

New York legalized abortion in 1970, three years before it was legalized nationally by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would update the state law so that it could stand alone if the broader federal standard set by Roe were to be undone.

“Why are we doing this? The Supreme Court could change,” said a senior Cuomo administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the governor had not formally introduced his proposal.

But opponents of abortion rights, already upset at the high rate of abortions in New York State, worry that rewriting the abortion law would encourage an even greater number of abortions. For example, they suggest that the provision to allow abortions late in a woman’s pregnancy for health reasons could be used as a loophole to allow unchecked late-term abortions.

“I am hard pressed to think of a piece of legislation that is less needed or more harmful than this one,” the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, wrote in a letter to Mr. Cuomo last month. Referring to Albany lawmakers in a subsequent column, he added, “It’s as though, in their minds, our state motto, ‘Excelsior’ (‘Ever Upward’), applies to the abortion rate.”

National abortion rights groups have sought for years to persuade state legislatures to adopt laws guaranteeing abortion rights as a backup to Roe. But they have had limited success: Only seven states have such measures in place, including California, Connecticut and Maryland; the most recent state to adopt such a law is Hawaii, which did so in 2006.

“Pretty much all of the energy, all of the momentum, has been to restrict abortion, which makes what could potentially happen in New York so interesting,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. “There’s no other state that’s even contemplating this right now.”

In most statehouses, the push by lawmakers has been in the opposite direction. The past two years has seen more provisions adopted at the state level to restrict abortion rights than in any two-year period in decades, according to the Guttmacher Institute; last year, 19 states adopted 43 new provisions restricting abortion access, while not a single significant measure was adopted to expand access to abortion or to comprehensive sex education.

“It’s an extraordinary moment in terms of the degree to which there is government interference in a woman’s ability to make these basic health care decisions,” said Andrea Miller, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York. “For New York to be able to send a signal, a hopeful sign, a sense of the turning of the tide, we think is really important.”

Abortion rights advocates say that even though the Roe decision supersedes state law, some doctors are hesitant to perform late-term abortions when a woman’s health is at risk because the criminal statutes remain on the books.

“Doctors and hospitals shouldn’t be reading criminal laws to determine what types of health services they can offer and provide to their patients,” said M. Tracey Brooks, the president of Family Planning Advocates of New York State.

For Mr. Cuomo, the debate over passing a new abortion law presents an opportunity to appeal to women as well as to liberals, who have sought action in Albany without success since Eliot Spitzer made a similar proposal when he was governor. But it also poses a challenge to the coalition of Republicans and a few Democrats that controls the State Senate, the chamber that has in the past stood as the primary obstacle to passing abortion legislation in the capital.

The governor has said that his Reproductive Health Act would be one plank of a 10-part Women’s Equality Act that also would include equal pay and anti-discrimination provisions. Conservative groups, still stinging from the willingness of Republican lawmakers to go along with Mr. Cuomo’s push to legalize same-sex marriage in 2011, are mobilizing against the proposal. Seven thousand New Yorkers who oppose the measure have sent messages to Mr. Cuomo and legislators via the Web site of the New York State Catholic Conference.

A number of anti-abortion groups have also formed a coalition called New Yorkers for Life, which is seeking to rally opposition to the governor’s proposal using social media.

“If you ask anyone on the street, ‘Is there enough abortion in New York?’ no one in their right mind would say we need more abortion,” said the Rev. Jason J. McGuire, the executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, which is part of the coalition.

Members of both parties say that the issue of reproductive rights was a significant one in November’s legislative elections. Democrats, who were bolstered by an independent expenditure campaign by NARAL, credit their victories in several key Senate races in part to their pledge to fight for legislation similar to what Mr. Cuomo is planning to propose.

Republicans, who make up most of the coalition that controls the Senate, have generally opposed new abortion rights measures. Speaking with reporters recently, the leader of the Republicans, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, strenuously objected to rewriting the state’s abortion laws, especially in a manner similar to what the governor is seeking.

“You could have an abortion up until the day the child would be born, and I think that’s just wrong,” Mr. Skelos said. He suggested that the entire debate was unnecessary, noting that abortion is legal in New York State and saying that is “not going to be changed.”

The Senate Democratic leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Yonkers, who is the sponsor of a bill that is similar to the legislation the governor is drafting, said she was optimistic that an abortion measure would reach the Senate floor this year.

“New York State’s abortion laws were passed in 1970 in a bipartisan fashion,” she said. “It would be a sad commentary that over 40 years later we could not manage to do the same thing.”

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Daley turns focus toward Gary

Richard M. Daley has kept a low profile since leaving office in 2011.

That doesn't mean he has lost interest in urban issues. The former mayor has turned his attention in a surprising direction, beyond Chicago's borders to one of the most intractable urban tragedies in America: the collapse of Gary, Ind.

"I always believe no part of America should be forgotten, and I think Gary has been forgotten," Daley said.

Daley is using his influence at the University of Chicago, where he is a distinguished senior fellow, to push a modest but growing amount of manpower toward Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson.

With guidance from Daley and Freeman-Wilson, University of Chicago graduate students are trying to figure out what to do with Gary's abandoned buildings and how to promote greater use of technology to help the city accomplish more with less, among other projects.

The hope is that the students will go on to help other cities after graduation. If successful, the U. of C.-Gary partnership could be replicated in other industrial towns grappling with decline.

Gary spans about 55 square miles, nearly a quarter of the size of Chicago. Yet the steel town's population has plummeted to an estimated 80,000, meaning the city has lost about half its people since 1960. The city's problems have mounted, including abandoned buildings and homes, sagging infrastructure and a declining budget to pay for services.

Outsiders have tried to fix Gary since at least the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Freeman-Wilson, a former Indiana attorney general, judge and Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate, has reinvigorated Gary's renewal efforts. And she's unafraid to ask for help.

Immediately after winning the 2011 Democratic primary, Freeman-Wilson called Daley for advice. They met, and Daley invited her to be the first guest speaker at his lecture series at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, where Daley has a five-year appointment.

This quarter, 11 students from the university's public policy, business and social services schools are getting course credit for working on projects for Gary.

"It was Mayor Daley's idea," Freeman-Wilson said as she rode from a meeting on Chicago's West Side to Gary. "I had always envisioned getting the support and work from (University of Chicago Law School) alums, because there were issues around codes and things of that nature. It was not until the mayor came up with the idea of using students from the (Harris) School of Public Policy that I said, 'Oh yeah, that would work. That would work very well.'"

Daley does not teach a class at the University of Chicago. He runs an occasional lecture series.

Carol Brown, his last policy chief at City Hall, leads the program and the class, which is called the "Urban Revitalization Project: City of Gary, Ind." Grants from the Chicago-based Joyce and MacArthur foundations help pay administrative costs, including Brown's salary and that of a part-time assistant.

Last quarter's class was divided into three project teams. One team is cataloging Gary's abandoned buildings, which are magnets for crime and eyesores that further depress surrounding property values. Another is trying to recruit pro bono legal and consulting services for the city. And a third is trying to craft a strategy to clean up front stoops and empty lots one block at a time. This quarter's class also is tackling untapped funding opportunities and economic development.

Freeman-Wilson said a major benefit of the partnership is the fresh ideas from students "who aren't jaded by the limitations of government, whereas a 20-year employee might say, 'Oh, no, we can't do that in government because we don't have X, Y and Z.'"

Already their work has prompted more widespread use among Gary employees of a technology that stores and analyzes geographic data. City workers are now using the technology to map potholes, fallen tree limbs and illegal dump sites. That way work crews can be dispatched to neighborhoods where the problems are most severe.

"This partnership encourages urban planners to think broadly about regions instead of cities — greater Chicago instead of the city of Chicago," said Stephen Paul O'Hara, a historian at Xavier University who wrote a book about Gary.

The students operate as consultants. They gather best practices and ideas from cities around the country and then recommend a course of action. At the end of each 10-week quarter, students present their recommendations to Daley, Freeman-Wilson and their staffs. Their grades are based on those presentations and supporting reports.

"I will tell you, it never stops getting nerve-wracking," second-year graduate student Jocelyn Hare said of presenting to Daley. "But it gets easier."

Last spring, Hare, 32, responded to an email seeking student volunteers to conduct preliminary research to test the idea of a partnership. Hare then interned for the city of Gary during the summer. The Harris school paid her $15 an hour. She then enrolled in the first class in the fall and again this winter, when it was opened to graduate students outside of Harris for the first time.

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Jackson family: 'We felt the impact'

Members of Jesse Jackson Jr.'s family said this morning they are struggling in the aftermath of Jackson being charged with misusing $750,000 in campaign funds.

"We felt the impact of this court," said Jonathan Jackson today outside the Rainbow PUSH Coalition's Saturday Morning Forum at the group's Chicago headquarters. "The gravity has affected our family."

He said his brother is still following a medical regime from his illness. He said his brother, mother and father are in Washington D.C. and Jonathan Jackson said he planned to join them.

Jackson's sister Santita said, "We love our brother very much."

They said Sandi and Jesse Jackson Jr.'s children were aware of the developments involving their parents.

"They are part of the Jackson family. We will take care of them," said Santita Jackson.

The family said they were thankful for the public's prayers, and Jonathan Jackson said he hoped people would remember the good things his brother had done during his political career.

Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife Sandi intend to plead guilty to federal charges alleging the former congressman misused $750,000 in campaign funds while she understated their income on tax returns for six years, their lawyers say.

Jackson Jr., 47, a Democrat from Chicago, was charged in a criminal information Friday with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, mail fraud and false statements. He faces up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and other penalties.

Sandi Jackson was charged with one count of filing false tax returns. She faces up to three years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and other penalties.

Jackson Jr. is accused of diverting $750,000 in campaign funds for personal use.

Federal authorities allege that Jackson Jr. used campaign funds to purchase a $43,350 men's gold-plated Rolex watch, $5,150 worth of fur capes and parkas, and $9,588 in children's furniture. The purchases were made between 2007 and 2009, according to the criminal information, which authorities noted is not evidence of guilt.

Other expenditures listed by prosecutors include $10,105 on Bruce Lee memorabilia, $11,130 on Martin Luther King memorabilia and $22,700 on Michael Jackson items, including $4,600 for a "Michael Jackson fedora."

The government also alleged that Jackson Jr. made false statements to the House of Representatives because he did not report approximately $28,500 in loans and gifts he received.

"He has accepted responsibility for his actions and I can confirm that he intends to plead guilty to the charge in the information," Jackson Jr.'s attorney Brian Heberlig said.

Sandi Jackson is accused of filing incorrect joint tax returns with her husband for calendar years 2006 through 2011, reporting income "substantially less than the amount of income she and her husband received in each of the calendar years," with a substantial additional tax due.

Her attorneys released a statement saying she has "reached an agreement with the U.S. attorney' office to plead guilty to one count of tax fraud."

Jackson Jr. stepped down from the House of Representatives on Nov. 21, citing both his poor health and an ongoing federal probe of his activities. In a statement then, he said he was doing his best to cooperate with federal investigators and to accept responsibility for his "mistakes."

In a statement, Jackson Jr. said:

"Over the course of my life I have come to realize that none of us are immune from our share of shortcomings and human frailties. Still I offer no excuses for my conduct and I fully accept my responsibility for the improper decisions and mistakes I have made. To that end I want to offer my sincerest apologies to my family, my friends and all of my supporters for my errors in judgment and while my journey is not yet complete, it is my hope that I am remembered for the things that I did right."

Sandi Jackson's attorneys released a statement saying she "has accepted responsibility for her conduct, is deeply sorry for her actions, and looks forward to putting this matter behind her and her family. She is thankful for the support of her family and friends during this very difficult time."

Jackson's father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., said he wanted to attend President Barack Obama's speech Friday at Hyde Park Academy in Chicago but traveled to Washington, D.C., instead, to be with family members while they waited for the federal charges to come down.

"This has been a difficult and painful ordeal for our family," the civil rights leader said.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he would "leave it up to the courts system" to determine his son's fate.

"We express our love for him as a family," he said.

nnix@tribune.com

Twitter: @nsnix87

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Passengers describe 'filth,' 'stench' on disabled cruise ship

MOBILE, Ala.—

Thousands of relieved passengers poured ashore from a stinking cruise ship on Friday after five days adrift in the Gulf of Mexico with overflowing toilets and stench filled cabins.

Exhausted passengers lined the ship's decks, waving towels and flashlights, cheering and singing "Sweet Home Alabama" as tug-boats pulled the stricken Carnival Triumph into the port of Mobile, Alabama.

Some travelers kissed the ground when they walked off, others disembarked wearing the ship's white bath robes, part souvenir and part protection against a chilly night.

With only one working elevator, it took several hours to get the more than 4,200 people off the ship, Carnival said. Passengers were greeted dockside with warm food, blankets and cell phones to call family and friends.

About 100 buses waited to carry passengers on a seven-hour bus ride to Galveston, Texas, while others buses departed for shorter rides to New Orleans, as well as hotels in Mobile, before eventually flying home.

The end of the saga, documented live on U.S. cable news stations, was another public relations disaster for cruise giant Carnival Corp. Last year, its Costa Concordia luxury liner grounded off the coast of Italy, killing 32 people.

Carnival officials said the Triumph, which entered service in 1999, would be towed to a Mobile repair facility for damage assessment.

The 893-foot vessel was returning to Galveston from Cozumel, Mexico on the third day of a four-day cruise when an engine-room fire knocked out power and plumbing across most of the ship on Sunday.

Passengers described a gut-wrenching stench on parts of the ship and complained to relatives and media by cellphone that toilets and drainpipes overflowed, soaking many cabins and interior passages in raw sewage.

"The stench was awful," said Robin Chandler, a 50-year-old from Dallas who spent her birthday on the ship. "A lot of people were crying and freaking out."

Jacob Combs, an Austin, Texas-based sales executive with a healthcare and hospice company, praised the ship's crew.

"Just imagine the filth," said Combs, 30. "People were doing crazy things and going to the bathroom in sinks and showers. It was inhuman. The stewards would go in and clean it all up. They were constantly cleaning," he said.

Debbie Moyes, 32, of Phoenix told the Los Angeles Times she was awakened Sunday by a fellow passenger banging on her door, warning people to escape.

"That was one of the only points in my life I thought I might die," the mother of four said as she stood in the parking lot.

Soon after, she said some passengers panicked.

"People were hoarding food -- boxes and boxes of cereal, grabbing cake with both hands," she said.

APOLOGY FROM CARNIVAL

Facing criticism over the company's response, Carnival Cruise Lines Chief Executive Gerry Cahill boarded the ship to personally apologize to passengers.

"I know the conditions on board were very poor," he told reporters, sounding shaken in a brief media appearance before he boarded the ship. "I know it was difficult. I want to apologize for subjecting our guests to that," he said.

"We pride ourselves with providing our guests with a great vacation experience and clearly we failed in this particular case," Cahill added.

Operated by Carnival Cruise Lines, the flagship brand of Carnival Corp, the ship left Galveston a week ago carrying 3,143 passengers and 1,086 crew. It was supposed to return on Monday.

Some passengers said conditions deteriorated rapidly on the Triumph earlier in the week, saying people were getting sick and passengers had been told to use plastic "biohazard" bags as makeshift toilets.

"It wasn't a vacation anymore it was like survival mode. Eat what you can. Snack when you can. It was awful," said passenger Tammy Garcia.

Smoke from the engine fire was so thick that passengers on the lower decks in the rear of the ship had to be permanently evacuated and slept the rest of the voyage on the decks under sheets, passengers said.

COMPENSATION OFFER

Some passengers said they tried to pass the time playing cards and organizing Bible study groups and scavenger hunts for the children on board the ship.

Cahill has issued several apologies and Carnival, the world's largest cruise company, said passengers will be reimbursed in full plus transportation expenses, a future cruise credit equal to the amount paid for this voyage, plus a payment of $500 a person to help compensate them.

Chandler, the passenger, scoffed at the compensation offer. "There are lost wages, I've got a baby sitter at home and I had to take off work," she said.

Some passengers said conditions improved on Thursday after a generator was delivered to the ship, providing power for a grill to cook hot food. Passengers said toilets began flushing again on Thursday and the ship served steaks and lobster - a relief after a steady diet of cold sandwiches of cucumber and cheese.

Carnival Corp Chairman and CEO Micky Arison was criticized in January last year for failing to travel to Italy and take personal charge of the Costa Concordia crisis. The tragedy unleashed numerous lawsuits against his company.

He has not publicly commented on the Triumph incident.

"I think they really are trying to do the right thing, but I don't think they have been able to communicate it effectively," said Marcia Horowitz, an executive who handles crisis management at Rubenstein Associates, a New York-based PR firm.

Carnival Corp shares closed down 11 cents at $37.35 in trading on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Triumph is a Bahamian-flagged vessel and the Bahamas Maritime Authority will be the primary agency investigating the cause of its engine room fire.

Earlier this month, Carnival repaired an electrical problem on one of the Triumph's alternators. The company said there was no evidence of any connection between the repair and the fire.

For all the passengers' grievances, they will likely find it difficult to sue the cruise operator for any damages, legal analysts said. Over the years, the cruise industry has put in place a legal structure that shields operators from big-money lawsuits.

Reuters and Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times

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Fat Dad: Baking for Love

Fat Dad

Dawn Lerman writes about growing up with a fat dad.

My grandmother Beauty always told me that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and by the look of pure delight on my dad’s face when he ate a piece of warm, homemade chocolate cake, or bit into a just-baked crispy cookie, I grew to believe this was true. I had no doubt that when the time came, and I liked a boy, that a batch of my gooey, rich, chocolaty brownies would cast him under a magic spell, and we would live happily ever.

But when Hank Thomas walked into Miss Seawall’s ninth grade algebra class on a rainy, September day and smiled at me with his amazing grin, long brown hair, big green eyes and Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, I was completely unprepared for the avalanche of emotions that invaded every fiber of my being. Shivers, a pounding heart, and heat overcame me when he asked if I knew the value of 1,000 to the 25th power. The only answer I could think of, as I fumbled over my words, was “love me, love me,” but I managed to blurt out “1E+75.” I wanted to come across as smart and aloof, but every time he looked at me, I started stuttering and sweating as my face turned bright red. No one had ever looked at me like that: as if he knew me, as if he knew how lost I was and how badly I needed to be loved.

Hank, who was a year older than me, was very popular and accomplished. Unlike other boys who were popular for their looks or athletic skills, Hank was smart and talented. He played piano and guitar, and composed the most beautiful classical and rock concertos that left both teachers and students in awe.

Unlike Hank, I had not quite come into my own yet. I was shy, had raggedy messy hair that I tied back into braids, and my clothes were far from stylish. My mother and sister had been on the road touring for the past year with the Broadway show “Annie.” My sister had been cast as a principal orphan, and I stayed home with my dad to attend high school. My dad was always busy with work and martini dinners that lasted late into the night. I spent most of my evenings at home alone baking and making care packages for my sister instead of coercing my parents to buy me the latest selection of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans — the rich colored bluejeans with the swan stitched on the back pocket that you had to lay on your bed to zip up. It was the icon of cool for the popular and pretty girls. I was neither, but Hank picked me to be his math partner anyway.

With every equation we solved, my love for Hank became more desperate. After several months of exchanging smiles, I decided to make Hank a batch of my homemade chocolate brownies for Valentine’s Day — the brownies that my dad said were like his own personal nirvana. My dad named them “closet” brownies, because when I was a little girl and used to make them for the family, he said that as soon as he smelled them coming out of the oven, he could imagine dashing away with them into the closet and devouring the whole batch.

After debating for hours if I should make the brownies for Hank with walnuts or chips, or fill the centers with peanut butter or caramel, I got to work. I had made brownies hundreds of times before, but this time felt different. With each ingredient I carefully stirred into the bowl, my heart began beating harder. I felt like I was going to burst from excitement. Surely, after Hank tasted these, he would love me as much as I loved him. I was not just making him brownies. I was l showing him who I was, and what mattered to me. After the brownies cooled, I sprinkled them with a touch of powdered sugar and wrapped them with foil and red tissue paper. The next day I placed them in Hank’s locker, with a note saying, “Call me.”

After seven excruciating days with no call, some smiles and the usual small talk in math class, I conjured up the nerve to ask Hank if he liked my brownies.

“The brownies were from you?” he asked. “They were delicious.”

Then Hank invited me to a party at his house the following weekend. Without hesitation, I responded that I would love to come. I pleaded with my friend Sarah to accompany me.

As the day grew closer, I made my grandmother Beauty’s homemade fudge — the chocolate fudge she made for Papa the night before he proposed to her. Stirring the milk, butter and sugar together eased my nerves. I had never been to a high school party before, and I didn’t know what to expect. Sarah advised me to ditch the braids as she styled my hair, used a violet eyeliner and lent me her favorite V-neck sweater and a pair of her best Gloria Vanderbilt jeans.

When we walked in the door, fudge in hand, Hank was nowhere to be found. Thinking I had made a mistake for coming and getting ready to leave, I felt a hand on my back. It was Hank’s. He hugged me and told me he was glad I finally arrived. When Hank put his arm around me, nothing else existed. With a little help from Cupid or the magic of Beauty’s recipes, I found love.

---

Fat Dad’s ‘Closet’ Brownies

These brownies are more like fudge than cake and contain a fraction of the flour found in traditional brownie recipes. My father called them “closet” brownies, because when he smelled them coming out of the oven he could imagine hiding in the closet to eat the whole batch. I baked them in the ninth grade for a boy that I had a crush on, and they were more effective than Cupid’s arrow at winning his heart.

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing the pan
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped, or semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs at room temperature, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
Fresh berries or powdered sugar for garnish (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grease an 8-inch square baking dish.

3. In a double boiler, melt chocolate. Then add butter, melt and stir to blend. Remove from heat and pour into a mixing bowl. Stir in sugar, eggs and vanilla and mix well.

4. Add flour. Mix well until very smooth. Add chopped walnuts if desired. Pour batter into greased baking pan.

5. Bake for 35 minutes, or until set and barely firm in the middle. Allow to cool on a rack before removing from pan. Optional: garnish with powdered sugar, or berries, or both.

Yield: 16 brownies

---

Dawn Lerman is a New York-based health and nutrition consultant and founder of Magnificent Mommies, which provides school lectures, cooking classes and workshops. Her series on growing up with a fat father appears occasionally on Well.

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Facebook's latest revenue trick: Pay to promote friends' posts

Facebook has announced its latest attempt at making money, and this time it involves letting users pay to promote their friends' posts.

The feature lets users pay to have a friend's post show more prominently in other friends' news feeds.

"If your friend is renting their apartment out and she tells her friends on Facebook, you can share the post with the people you and your friend have in common so that it shows up higher in news feed and more people notice it," the company said, citing an example of when this feature could be useful. 

PHOTOS: Tech we want to see in 2013

The feature is similar to another one that Facebook introduced last year that lets users pay to promote their own posts.

The company said Thursday that people have been using that feature to promote posts about charities and causes, publicize events, advertise items they're selling, promote important life announcements or congratulate someone else on an accomplishment.

The cost of promoting a post depends on a number of factors, including geographic location and how many people the post would reach, Facebook said.

Facebook said the ability to pay to promote a friend's post will be rolled out to all users over time.

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'Blade Runner' Olympian charged with girlfriend's murder

JOHANNESBURG -- South African "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, was charged on Thursday with shooting dead his girlfriend at his upscale home in Pretoria.

Police said they opened a murder case after a 30-year-old woman was found dead at the Paralympic and Olympic star's house in the Silverlakes gated complex on the capital's outskirts.

Pistorius, 26, and his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, had been the only people in the house at the time of the shooting, police brigadier Denise Beukes told reporters, adding witnesses had been interviewed about the early morning incident.

"We are talking about neighbors and people that heard things earlier in the evening and when the shooting took place," Beukes said outside the heavily guarded residential complex.

Police said a 9mm pistol had been found at the scene.

Beukes said police were aware of previous incidents at the Pistorius house. "I can confirm that there has previously been incidents at the home of Mr Oscar Pistorious, of allegations of a domestic nature," she said.

Pistorius, who uses carbon fiber prosthetic blades to run, is due to appear in a Pretoria court on Friday.

"He is doing well but very emotional," his lawyer Kenny Oldwage told SABC TV, but gave no further comment.

A sports icon for triumphing over disability to compete with able-bodied athletes at the Olympics, his sponsorship deals, including one with sports apparel group Nike, are thought to be worth $2 million a year.

South Africa's M-Net cable TV channel said it was pulling adverts featuring Pistorius off air immediately after blanket coverage of the arrest in a country more used to honoring Pistorius as a national hero.

"WE ARE ALL DEVASTATED"

Steenkamp's colleagues in the modeling world were distraught. "We are all devastated. Her family is in shock," her agent, Sarita Tomlinson, tearfully told Reuters. "They did have a good relationship. Nobody actually knows what happened."

Pistorius, who was born without a fibula in both legs, was the first double amputee to run in the Olympics and reached the 400-metre semi-finals in London 2012.

In last year's Paralympics he suffered his first loss over 200 meters in nine years. After the race he questioned the legitimacy of Brazilian winner Alan Oliveira's prosthetic blades, though he was quick to express regret for the comments.

South Africa has some of the world's highest rates of violent crime, and many home owners have weapons to defend themselves against intruders, although Pistorius's complex is surrounded by a three-meter high wall and electric fence.

In 2004, Springbok rugby player Rudi Visagie shot dead his 19-year-old daughter after he mistakenly thought she was a robber trying to steal his car in the middle of the night.

Before the murder charge was announced, Johannesburg's Talk Radio 702 said the athlete may have mistaken Steenkamp for a burglar.

Pistorius was arrested in 2009 for assault after slamming a door on a woman and spent a night in police custody. Family and friends said it was just an accident and charges were dropped.

OLYMPIAN UNDERGOES POLICE TESTS

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Irish composer Raymond Deane talks Achill, Alma and ABBA too

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Irish composer Raymond Deane chafes at what he sees as a lack of recognition in his homeland for classical composers in a country better known for traditional fiddling and rock supergroup U2 than for notes on staves.

“Classical music means Mozart and Beethoven and when you say Irish classical music their eyes just widen,” Deane, who recently turned 60, told Reuters over lunch at a French-style bistro in Dublin.

“Classical music doesn’t do much for the tourist industry except frighten off the tourists.”

Deane, who also is an activist who has taken up the causes of East Timorese and Palestinian human rights and campaigns to get artists to boycott Israel, described the Irish composer’s plight in the 1990s as “the honor of non-existence”.

Though he can rattle off the names of more than a half dozen Irish men and women composers of international stature, he says little has changed.

The difference is this year, Deane’s often haunting, sometimes playful chamber pieces got an airing at a birthday celebration in a Dublin church, one of his orchestral works was played at the National Concert Hall and September will see a concert staging of a new opera, “The Alma Fetish”.

The last, a collaboration with librettist Gavin Kostick, is a musical treatment of a theme that probably – actually, undoubtedly – would have been banned in Roman Catholic Ireland not too many years ago.

It is based on the love affair between composer Gustav Mahler’s widow Alma, a femme fatale for many a European intellectual, and the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka. He became so enamored of her he ordered up a life-size doll shaped, in all respects, like Alma.

Although the performance will be a concert staging, Deane said the doll will be there in some form or other, possibly in projections.

“You couldn’t not have it, because it’s absolutely central,” he said, adding that he was in part attracted to the story of Alma’s and Kokoschka’s affair because of the Olympia doll character in Offenbach’s opera “The Tales of Hoffmann”. Alma also seduced Oskar to the main theme of one of Deane’s favorite operas, Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”.

“Alma seduced Oskar to the ‘liebestod’ but in my version she sings and plays it as a Viennese waltz,” he said.

In a sign of the pan-European roots of his inspiration, Deane has quoted and used themes from composers as diverse as Mahler, Mussorgsky and Stockhausen in a musical career that began at about age 10 when his family moved from scenic but rustic Achill Island, off Ireland’s west coast, to Dublin, and Deane began writing down improvisations at the piano.

“It’s ridiculous, everyone is immature at the age of 10 but I was a particularly immature 10-year-old, and to think I’ve stood by a decision I made then, there’s really something absurd about it.”

Here’s what else he had to say about getting a musical education via the BBC’s classical station Radio 3, what he did or didn’t learn from his professors and why he makes no secret about liking ABBA‘s “Dancing Queen”:

Q: You studied under some of the musical greats of the 20th century, including the eternal enfant terrible Karlheinz Stockhausen. What did that do for you?

A: “‘Study’ in quotation marks – anybody else who would have gone through my particular curriculum vitae, studying with (composer) Gerald Bennett in Switzerland, Stockhausen in Cologne…would have made some use of them, seen them as opportunities. To a large extent I wasted all the opportunities that were offered to me by these people, quite perversely.”

Q: So where did you learn your craft, or more simply, how did you become a composer?

A: “I went to the usual university, did a degree at Maynooth (National University of Ireland), a doctorate. But my main musical education really was BBC Radio 3. When we came to Dublin in my early teens I had this old transistor radio that was really my main connection to the outer world and it wasn’t linked up to anything so the reception from the BBC was diabolical. The static was amazing and sometimes it would disappear completely. I would tune in and hear ‘tssshh’ and through this I would hear the music and then ‘tssshhh’. Sometimes it would disappear and I would try to imagine what I was missing. I think a lot of the kind of perverse quality of some of those early pieces of mine stems from that – a distant relationship and a rather distorted relationship to something.”

Q: Plus you and your composer friend Gerald Barry, in the days a quarter of a century ago before you swore off the drink, used to have some late evenings in which he’d play Rod Stewart and you’d pick ABBA, particularly “Dancing Queen”.

A: “I was a big fan of ABBA, I still have a lot of time for ABBA, I have a lot of time for the Beatles, a lot of time for Neil Young…Bruce Springsteen. My CD and record collection has a lot of non-classical stuff in it. I probably draw the line at rap.”

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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