This bus' next stop: doing good

Maybe you want to help others. Maybe you long to lend a hand. But you're not sure where and you're not sure how and you don't know who to call.

You could ask around. Or you could book a seat on the Do Good Bus.

You will pay $25. You will get a box lunch. You will put yourself in the hands of a stranger.

When the bus takes off, you will not know where you are going — only that when you get there, you will be put to work.

You find yourself on this weekday afternoon one of an eclectic group, gathered a little shyly on an East Hollywood curb.

There's a Yelp marketer, a grad student, an actor, a novelist, a Manhattan Beach mother with her son and daughter, who just got home from prep school and college.

You see a school bus pull up. You step on board. It feels nostalgic, like day camp or a field trip.

Rebecca Pontius welcomes you, wearing jeans and sneakers and a black fleece vest. She looks like the kind of person who would plunge her hands deep into dirt, who wouldn't be afraid of the worms, who could lead you boldly.

The bus takes off, and Pontius stands toward the front, sure-footed. She founded the Do Good Bus, she tells you, to 1) build awareness, 2) build community, 3) encourage continued engagement.

Oh, she says, and to 3a) have fun. Hence the element of mystery, the faux holly branches that decorate some of the rows of seats, the white felt reindeer antlers she's wearing on her head.

She smiles a wide, toothy smile that makes you automatically reciprocate.

So you go along when she asks you to play get-to-know-you games. Even though you're embarrassed, you don't object when she assigns you one of the 12 days of Christmas to sing and act out when it's your turn.

Everyone's singing and laughing as the bus fits-and-starts down the freeway.

Maids-a-milking, geese-a-laying, bus-a-exiting somewhere in South Los Angeles.

It stops outside a boxy blue building — the Challengers Boys and Girls Club — where, finally, Pontius tells you you'll be helping children in foster care build the bicycles that will be their Christmas gifts.

She did it last year, she says. It was great. And she's brought along some powder that turns into fake snow, which the kids will like.

You step inside a large gym, where nothing proceeds quite as expected.

It's the holiday season, so way too many volunteers have shown up. The singer Ne-Yo is coming to lead a toy giveaway. There's a whole roomful of presents the children can choose from, including pre-assembled bikes — which means no bikes will need to be built.

You stand and you sit and you wait. Then the kids come. You try to help where you can — making sure they get in the right lines, handing out raffle tickets.

You see their joy at getting gifts, which is nice. You're in a place you might not ordinarily be, which is interesting. And as the children head out, you offer them snow. You put the powder in their cupped hands. You add water. The white stuff grows and begins to look real. It's even cold.

It makes them go wide-eyed. It makes them laugh. And you feel such moments of simple happiness are something.

It's chilly as you wait to get back on the bus. You get in a group hug with your fellow bus riders, who seem like old friends.

On the trip back in the dark, Pontius plays Christmas music. She serves you eggnog in Mason jars.

And she says she's sorry your help wasn't more needed today.

She promises the January ride will be more hands-on.

Come or don't, she tells you. But whatever you do, find a way to do something.

nita.lelyveld@latimes.com

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Maker Mom Builds Cookie-Cutter Empire With 3-D Printers

Athey Moravetz is doing some tasty work with her 3-D printers.

The video game designer has worked on PlayStation games like Resistance Retribution and Uncharted Golden Abyss. She's also a self-described "jack-of-all-trades," skilled with 3-D modeling tools like Maya, and knows how to design compelling characters with them.

After having two children she decided to work from home, and in addition to keeping active in the computer graphics industry, she also created a wildly successful Etsy shop, where she sells 3-D printed cookie cutters based on nerd culture favorites Pokemon, Dr. Who and Super Mario Brothers.

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Crafters send mittens with a message to Newtown

“Chester Raccoon stood at the edge of the forest and cried. ‘I don’t want to go to school,’ he told his mother. ‘I want to stay home with you. I want to play with my friends. And play with my toys. And read my books. And swing on my swing. Please may I stay home with you?’” — “The Kissing Hand,” by Audrey Penn.

___

NEW YORK (AP) — Imagining the horror for Sandy Hook Elementary students when they walk into their new school for the first time, a Connecticut mom is relying on Chester of the children’s classic “The Kissing Hand” and the busy fingers of her fellow knitters to ease their way.

Kim Piscatelli of East Hampton, Conn., hit on the idea of sending a copy of the book for each of the kids and a pair of handmade mittens adorned with a heart in one palm, signifying the reassuring kiss left there by the mother of scared, sad Chester in the story written by Audrey Penn.

Piscatelli, a 40-minute drive from Newtown, sent out a call to her friends, who called on their friends. The project she thought up just Sunday spread quickly on Facebook and websites for knitters and crafters, with the first shipment of books and mittens scheduled to land in Newtown the first week of January.

“I thought, how are those families ever going to get back in a routine of sending their children to school? If there ever was a town that needed to know about that book, it was Newtown,” said an overwhelmed Piscatelli, who now has a warehouse stacked with 1,600 copies of the book and plenty of volunteers to sort, pack and ship.

Others are hurriedly making mittens, from California and Canada to Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands, in time for the start of classes in a once-shuttered school in nearby Monroe. A knitters’ group in Georgia pulled an all-night “knitathon” for the cause, Piscatelli said.

The book’s publisher, Tanglewood Press, has donated the books, along with enough copies of a sequel dealing with Chester’s loss of a playmate for teachers to read aloud.

In “The Kissing Hand,” the tearful boy is heading off to school for the first time, but he begs his mother to stay home. She spreads his tiny fingers and kisses him square in the palm and tells him “whenever you feel lonely and need a little loving from home, just press your hand to your cheek and think, ‘Mommy loves you.’”

The story was first published in 1993 by the Child Welfare League of America, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of agencies and organizations helping children at risk. Penn had tried and failed for years to get her story of Chester published, until a league official heard Penn read it and decided to take it on.

“At first, no bookstore, no wholesaler would carry it,” said Peggy Tierney, who worked at the league and took Penn with her after starting Tanglewood. “Then kindergarten teachers discovered it, word spread, people started going into stores trying to find copies, then everyone started carrying it, and by 1999 it was on the New York Times best-seller list.”

One of Piscatelli’s first stops in getting her mitten project off the ground was to contact Penn, who lives in Durham, N.C. She recalled reading the story to her own three kids when they were younger.

Penn, who lost a brother to drowning when she was 13, signed off on the combined book-mitten project as soon as Piscatelli contacted her.

“When I saw the news, my heart was just torn in half. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. Enough is enough is enough,” the writer said.

Penn’s 2009 sequel, called “Chester the Raccoon and the Acorn Full of Memories,” has Chester the boy raccoon working through the death of a friend, Skiddil Squirrel, who has an accident. Chester’s teacher tells his class Skiddil won’t return to school, so Chester and his mother venture to a butterfly pond where the squirrel loved to play to discover some acorns Skiddil left there have sprouted into young trees.

“I’ve been involved with so many parents who have lost children,” Penn said. “They just seem to reach out to me and say we love your book and your book has been a comfort.”

The writer hopes the children of Sandy Hook will “get a sense of some kind of security” from the mitten project. “They’ll have a way of keeping in tangible touch with someone at home, someone they feel very secure with.”

Meantime, Piscatelli and dozens of knitters who have contacted her through the project’s Facebook page are pressing on to get the books and mittens in the students’ hands. About 600 kids attended Sandy Hook when Lanza opened fire, but Piscatelli plans to share mittens and books with all the schoolchildren of Newtown.

“The original request was for hand-knit mittens with a heart knit in, embroidered on or sewn on,” she said. “The reality is we have people sewing polar fleece mittens, mittens made from recycled sweaters, store-bought mittens. Every pair of handmade or store-bought mittens will have a heart sewn on if it isn’t there when we receive them.”

Piscatelli has heard from other crafters who plan related Kissing Hand projects, including a group of schoolchildren in Mississippi making pillows.

“Everybody wants to help,” she said. “Everybody’s looking for some way to reach out.”

When a company called Oceanhouse Media learned of Piscatelli’s idea they released a digital version of “The Kissing Hand” early and free of cost in the iTunes app store. Piscatelli has also heard from the loved ones of grown-up volunteers on the ground in Newtown.

“I got a call from a woman who said my father is with the Red Cross,” Piscatelli said. “He’s a psychologist and is there now and I really think he needs a pair of Kissing Hand mittens.”

___

Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at https://twitter.com/litalie

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Alabama to End Isolation of Inmates With H.I.V.

Jamie Martin/Associated Press

The H.I.V. ward of an Alabama women's prison in 2008. The state was ordered to stop segregating inmates with the virus.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama to stop isolating prisoners with H.I.V.

Alabama is one of two states, along with South Carolina, where H.I.V.-positive inmates are housed in separate prisons, away from other inmates, in an attempt to reduce medical costs and stop the spread of the virus, which causes AIDS.

Judge Myron H. Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama ruled in favor of a group of inmates who argued in a class-action lawsuit that they had been stigmatized and denied equal access to educational programs. The judge called the state’s policy “an unnecessary tool for preventing the transmission of H.I.V.” but “an effective one for humiliating and isolating prisoners living with the disease.”

After the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, many states, including New York, quarantined H.I.V.-positive prisoners to prevent the virus from spreading through sexual contact or through blood when inmates tattooed one another. But most states ended the practice voluntarily as powerful antiretroviral drugs reduced the risk of transmission.

In Alabama, inmates are tested for H.I.V. when they enter prison. About 250 of the state’s 26,400 inmates have tested positive. They are housed in special dormitories at two prisons: one for men and one for women. No inmates have developed AIDS, the state says.

H.I.V.-positive inmates are treated differently from those with other viruses like hepatitis B and C, which are far more infectious, according to the World Health Organization. Inmates with H.I.V. are barred from eating in the cafeteria, working around food, enrolling in certain educational programs or transferring to prisons near their families.

Prisoners have been trying to overturn the policy for more than two decades. In 1995, a federal court upheld Alabama’s policy. Inmates filed the latest lawsuit last year.

“Today’s decision is historic,” said Margaret Winter, the associate director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the inmates. “It spells an end to a segregation policy that has inflicted needless misery on Alabama prisoners with H.I.V. and their families.”

Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections, said the state is “not prejudiced against H.I.V.-positive inmates” and has “worked hard over the years to improve their health care, living conditions and their activities.”

“We will continue our review of the court’s opinion and determine our next course of action in a timely manner,” he wrote.

During a monthlong trial in September, lawyers for the department argued that the policy improved the treatment of H.I.V.-positive inmates. Fewer doctors are needed if specialists in H.I.V. focus on 2 of the 29 state’s prisons.

The state spends an average of $22,000 per year on treating individual H.I.V.-positive inmates. The total is more than the cost of medicine for all other inmates, said Bill Lunsford, a lawyer for the Corrections Department.

South Carolina has also faced legal scrutiny. In 2010, the Justice Department notified the state that it was investigating the policy and might sue to overturn it.

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Boehner's 'fiscal cliff' plan fails

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John A. Boehner abruptly canceled a vote on his Plan B tax proposal late Thursday after failing to find enough GOP support, a stunning political defeat that effectively turned resolution of the year-end budget crisis over to President Obama and the Democrats.

The speaker had spent the last few weeks negotiating one-on-one with the president, establishing himself as the second-most powerful figure in Washington. But with his strategy imploding, Boehner conceded that he would play a lesser role.

"Now it is up to the president," he said, to work with a fellow Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, "to avert the fiscal cliff."

The proposal the speaker had hoped to bring to a vote would have prevented a year-end tax increase for all but those earning more than $1 million a year.

But the Ohio Republican said in a statement, "It did not have sufficient support from our members to pass."

The unexpected turn of events caused an immediate reaction on Wall Street, where after-hours investors began to yank money out of U.S. stocks. Futures that track the Standard & Poor's 500 fell 1.5%, and the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 1.6%.

Now, Obama faces a crucial test of his leadership, with little time left to craft a deal.

Obama's most recent offer is likely to be the starting point. He made a substantial concession: raising taxes only on household income above $400,000, rather than the $250,000 threshold he campaigned on for reelection.

As he pursues votes in Congress, the president will need to face down Democrats, particularly the liberal wing that may feel emboldened to demand that a deal be tilted toward their views — perhaps with additional spending on infrastructure or unemployment benefits.

Any compromise will need substantial Democratic support. Although the president needs the speaker to allow legislation to come to a vote in the GOP-controlled House, Boehner emerges in a weakened position and has little leverage to demand further concessions. His Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), will need to decide whether to become a final line of defense against Obama or step aside for a Democratic-led plan.

"The president's main priority is to ensure that taxes don't go up on 98% of Americans and 97% of small businesses in just a few short days," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said after Boehner canceled the vote. "The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly."

Without a compromise, most Americans will see their taxes automatically rise and spending cuts ripple across the economy in the new year. The White House and the speaker had been closing in on a broad deficit-reduction deal to steer around the coming "fiscal cliff," but Boehner suddenly changed course this week to gauge the sentiment of House Republicans.

The support expressed by top Republicans for new taxes has cracked the party's anti-tax orthodoxy and opened the door to a compromise that would have been unthinkable before the November election.

Mindful that his own job as speaker comes up for a vote in two weeks, Boehner must make a difficult choice: whether to allow a plan to come to the House floor without support from his majority, or play a key role in sending the nation over the fiscal cliff and raising taxes on most Americans.

As the speaker and his lieutenants trolled for votes earlier Thursday, buttonholing lawmakers in scenes like those in the movie "Lincoln," Carney dismissed Boehner's Plan B as a "multi-day exercise in futility."

"Instead of taking the opportunity that was presented to them to continue to negotiate what could be a very helpful large deal for the American people, the Republicans in the House have decided to run down an alley that has no exit," he said.

Late in the evening, as the time for voting neared, the House took an unscheduled recess — a sign that the tally had come up short. With Democrats almost unanimously against the bill, Boehner could afford to lose only two dozen Republican defectors.

The speaker and his top lieutenants then convened a late-night meeting of rank-and-file lawmakers and announced they were pulling the bill.

"We don't have the votes," the speaker said, according to a lawmaker in the room.

Conservatives split over Plan B, complicating Boehner's quest. He received a major assist when anti-tax stalwart Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform declared that the bill was a vote for lower taxes and did not violate the pledge most Republicans had signed not to raise taxes. But other leading conservative groups opposed it, including FreedomWorks, which is extremely influential with tea party supporters.

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Hard to Handle

The 2013 Mustang Shelby GT500 is many things: imposing, populist, expensive. It’s also the last car Carroll Shelby had a hand in building. And true to the legacy of the legendary racer and auto designer who helped define the modern sports car, the GT500 is a Mustang with more power than any sane individual needs.

Its 5.8-liter supercharged V8 puts out a massive manufacturer-claimed 662 horsepower and 631 pound-feet of torque. But as a couple independent dyno tests have proven, the torque is probably understated. Minutes after firing the Shelby up, I pulled onto the highway and, with the traction control on, I opened the throttle with moderate aggression. The tires spun in first gear, then again in second and third — the third time, at near triple digits.

Lesson one: this thing has wacky power.

Lesson one: This thing has wacky power. Lesson two: Make sure the Goodyear Eagle F1s are nice and warm before getting happy with the accelerator. In four days of driving the GT500 on the street, from highway blasts to back-road bombing runs, the car proved itself to be reliably grin-inducing. But the big Shelby never lets you forget that it always has more power than traction, and driving it well is an exercise in throttle management. Line up at the stop light next to any “fast car” you care to name, and you’ll laugh at the ease with which you blow its doors off. But just as often, you’ll be embarrassed by the fact that you went up in a cloud of smoke, unable to hook up all that torque.

Even if it’s a little too much for you to control, you’ll still be able to admire its looks. “Tough” is the adjective onlookers most often use when describing it, and the combination of the “Deep Impact Blue” paint job, the white racing stripe and the black wheels on the GT500 I steered is both handsome and assertive. Large Cobra badges grace the front quarter-panels, front intake and rear fascia, reminding everyone that this is no mere Mustang GT. The hood’s power bulge, wheel arches, rear spoiler and bisected front intakes (there is no grille) shout strength.

The muscle contained in the engine bay is ungodly. The 5.8-liter V8 has a supercharger that alone has a capacity of 2.3 liters, which is more displacement than early ’80s four-cylinder Mustangs. Torque is everywhere, with 395 pound-feet available just off idle at 1,000 rpm. Between 2,200 and 5,800, 95 percent of the 631 pound-feet is available. It all gets channeled to the Eagle F1s via a six-speed Tremec T6060 manual and limited slip differential with a carbon fiber driveshaft in between. The SVT Performance Package that equipped our test car included staggered 19-inch front and 20-inch rear wheels of forged aluminum, Bilstein adjustable dampers, higher rate rear springs and a special instrument cluster and gear shift knob.

The instrument cluster includes a digital display between the speedometer and tach which not only shows the current calculated fuel efficiency (I saw about 14 mpg average) and gauge readings (including inlet and cylinder head temps), but a cool “track apps” summary with suspension and steering settings, launch control and traction control info. Supportive, comfortable Recaro bucket seats with shoulder-belt pass-throughs and racing stripe inserts keep the driver and passenger glued down.

Otherwise, the cockpit is straight-forward Mustang, including the Shaker audio system. Ford’s Sync Bluetooth is there, but no navigation or social media displays distract you.

If you’re a Mustang fan, you likely know the numbers by now, but repeating them for anyone who asks is half the fun of owning the 2013 GT500. It achieves 60 mph in approximately 3.5 seconds. The quarter-mile mark passes in 11.6 seconds at 125.7 mph, and the Shelby will do a legit 200 mph when pushed. Big 15-inch front discs and 12-inch rear discs with six-piston Brembo calipers stop the beast quickly too, halting it from 60 mph in about 102 feet.

That’s a lot of performance. That said, a driver of some ability can keep up on back roads in a car with half the horsepower. It’s not just that a public road prevents you from unleashing all the Shelby’s fury. Rather, as assiduously as Ford has worked to tame the GT500′s live-axle, Panhard-bar rear end, it still saps confidence by skittering over mid-corner bumps with the power on and exhibiting a tendency to axle hop under hard braking. Track testing has shown those brakes fade quickly, and you sense the fade on the street as well.

Thus, keeping the GT500 between the lines at speed requires concentration and quick hands. You do get electronic help. There’s adjustable effort steering on tap, as well as cockpit–adjustable suspension settings which sharpen the Shelby’s responses somewhat. On the other hand, it’s fun knowing that driving this Mustang must feel pretty much what driving a NASCAR Nationwide Series car is like. The exhaust soundtrack is appropriate, too — it sounds like a rolling kettle drum.

If you prefer the straighter lines of drag racing, the Shelby’s launch control, which allows you to set your launch rpm, is a truly useful electronic tool. Engage the control, put her in first, floor the throttle and let the clutch out. The Advance Trac stability system and traction control limit wheel-spin as you fly off the line. Don’t forget to upshift!

Advance Trac is useful in keeping you on the path while on the street, too — particularly on cold tires. The flip-side is that it works the brakes so hard you can quickly overheat them.

And that, as I mentioned, is key. Don’t get overheated with the Shelby or it might bite you. Respect the power and you’ll have a ball.

WIRED Tugboat-level power gives you acceleration wherever you want it. Surprisingly balanced chassis and steering with crisp turn-in work. Looks like a total bully. A 200 mph Mustang.

TIRED Give it a little too much throttle with cold tires and you’ll be going up in smoke like Cheech and Chong. Enough vertical suspension movement to classify as “head-toss.” A $63,000 Mustang.

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Martha Raddatz, Hot Off Debate Performance, Promoted at ABC News

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Martha Raddatz, widely praised for her moderation of the vice presidential debate in October, has been given an expanded role as ABC News’ chief global affairs correspondent. Jonathan Karl, meanwhile, will become the network’s new chief White House correspondent, filling the void left by Jake Tapper‘s exit to CNN.

Raddatz will replace Tapper as the primary substitute for George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” and will contribute regularly to the Sunday morning show’s roundtable. Karl will also serve as a substitute and regularly appear on the roundtable.

Tapper departed ABC in part because he has long been interested in hosting “This Week” full-time, but Stephanopoulos has no plans to give up the hosting job, a person familiar with the situation told TheWrap.

ABC News President Ben Sherwood announced the new assignments for Raddatz and Karl on Thursday, soon after CNN announced Tapper’s hiring.

Karl has investigated wasteful federal spending, covered elections, and served as the network’s senior national security correspondent.

Raddatz has reported from the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and from conflict zones worldwide, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

But she has been perhaps most celebrated for keeping the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan on course after the moderator of the first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer, was accused of letting the candidates run amok.

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Stigma Fading, Marijuana Common in California

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

At a San Francisco concert in 2010, marijuana use was general while signatures were collected for a measure to decriminalize it.

LOS ANGELES — Let Colorado and Washington be the marijuana trailblazers. Let them struggle with the messy details of what it means to actually legalize the drug. Marijuana is, as a practical matter, already legal in much of California.

No matter that its recreational use remains technically against the law. Marijuana has, in many parts of this state, become the equivalent of a beer in a paper bag on the streets of Greenwich Village. It is losing whatever stigma it ever had and still has in many parts of the country, including New York City, where the kind of open marijuana use that is common here would attract the attention of any passing law officer.

“It’s shocking, from my perspective, the number of people that we all know who are recreational marijuana users,” said Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor. “These are incredibly upstanding citizens: Leaders in our community, and exceptional people. Increasingly, people are willing to share how they use it and not be ashamed of it.”

Marijuana can be smelled in suburban backyards in neighborhoods from Hollywood to Topanga Canyon as dusk falls — what in other places is known as the cocktail hour — often wafting in from three sides. In some homes in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, it is offered at the start of a dinner party with the customary ease of a host offering a chilled Bombay Sapphire martini.

Lighting up a cigarette (the tobacco kind) can get you booted from many venues in this rigorously antitobacco state. But no one seemed to mind as marijuana smoke filled the air at an outdoor concert at the Hollywood Bowl in September or even in the much more intimate, enclosed atmosphere of the Troubadour in West Hollywood during a Mountain Goats concert last week.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor, ticked off the acceptance of open marijuana smoking in a list of reasons he thought Venice was such a wonderful place for his morning bicycle rides. With so many people smoking in so many places, he said in an interview this year, there was no reason to light up one’s own joint.

“You just inhale, and you live off everyone else,” said Mr. Schwarzenegger, who as governor signed a law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Some Californians react disdainfully to anyone from out of state who still harbors illicit associations with the drug. Bill Maher, the television host, was speaking about the prevalence of marijuana smoking at dinner parties hosted by Sue Mengers, a retired Hollywood agent famous for her high-powered gatherings of actors and journalists, in an interview after her death last year. “I used to bring her pot,” he said. “And I wasn’t the only one.”

When a reporter sought to ascertain whether this was an on-the-record conversation, Mr. Maher responded tartly: “Where do you think you are? This is California in the year 2011.”

John Burton, the state Democratic chairman, said he recalled an era when the drug was stigmatized under tough antidrug laws. He called the changes in thinking toward marijuana one of the two most striking shifts in public attitude he had seen in 40 years here (the other was gay rights).

“I can remember when your second conviction of having a single marijuana cigarette would get you two to 20 in San Quentin,” he said.

In a Field Poll of California voters conducted in October 2010, 47 percent of respondents said they had smoked marijuana at least once, and 50 percent said it should be legalized. The poll was taken shortly before Californians voted down, by a narrow margin, an initiative to decriminalize marijuana.

“In a Republican year, the legalization came within two points,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who worked on the campaign in favor of the initiative. He said that was evidence of the “fact that the public has evolved on the issue and is ahead of the pols.”

A study by the California Office of Traffic Safety last month found that motorists were more likely to be driving under the influence of marijuana than under the influence of alcohol.

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Boehner Tax Plan in House Is Pulled, Lacking Votes

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio leaving a meeting Thursday with fellow House Republicans on talks over the “fiscal cliff.”

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner’s effort to pass fallback legislation to avert a fiscal crisis in less than two weeks collapsed Thursday night in an embarrassing defeat after conservative Republicans refused to support legislation that would allow taxes to rise on the most affluent households in the country.

House Republican leaders abruptly canceled a vote on the bill after they failed to rally enough votes for passage in an emergency meeting about 8 p.m. Within minutes, dejected Republicans filed out of the basement meeting room and declared there would be no votes to avert the “fiscal cliff” until after Christmas. With his “Plan B” all but dead, the speaker was left with the choice to find a new Republican way forward or to try to get a broad deficit reduction deal with President Obama that could win passage with Republican and Democratic votes.

What he could not do was blame Democrats for failing to take up legislation he could not even get through his own membership in the House.

“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement that said responsibility for a solution now fell to the White House and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader. “Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff.”

The stunning turn of events in the House left the status of negotiations to head off a combination of automatic tax increases and significant federal spending cuts in disarray with little time before the start of the new year.

At the White House, the press secretary, Jay Carney, said the defeat should press Mr. Boehner back into talks with Mr. Obama.

“The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy,” he said.

The refusal of a band of House Republicans to allow income tax rates to rise on incomes over $1 million came after Mr. Obama scored a decisive re-election victory campaigning for higher taxes on incomes over $250,000. Since the November election, the president’s approval ratings have risen, and opinion polls have shown a strong majority not only favoring his tax position, but saying they will blame Republicans for a failure to reach a deficit deal.

With a series of votes on Thursday, the speaker, who faces election for his post in the new Congress next month, had hoped to assemble a Republican path away from the cliff. With a show of Republican unity, he also sought to strengthen his own hand in negotiations with Mr. Obama. The House did narrowly pass legislation to cancel automatic, across-the-board military cuts set to begin next month, and shift them to domestic programs.

But the main component of “Plan B,” a bill to extend expiring Bush-era tax cuts for everyone with incomes under $1 million, could not win enough Republican support to overcome united Democratic opposition. Democrats questioned Mr. Boehner’s ability to deliver any agreement.

“I think this demonstrates that Speaker Boehner has a real challenge,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat. “He hasn’t been able to cut any deal, make any agreement that’s balanced. Even if it’s his own compromise.”

Representative Rick Larsen of Washington accused Republicans of shirking their responsibility by leaving the capital. “The Republicans just picked up their toys and went home,” he said.

Futures contracts on indexes of United States stock listings and shares in Asia fell sharply after Mr. Boehner conceded that his bill lacked the votes to pass.

The point of the Boehner effort was to secure passage of a Republican plan, then demand that the president and the Senate to take up that measure and pass it, putting off the major fights until early next year when Republicans would conceivably have more leverage because of the need to increase the federal debt limit. It would also allow Republicans to claim it was Democrats who had caused taxes to rise after the first of the year had no agreement been reached.

That strategy lay in tatters after the Republican implosion.“Some people don’t know how to take yea for an answer,” said Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, a Republican who supported the measure and was open about his disappointment with his colleagues.

Opponents said they were not about to bend their uncompromising principles on taxes just because Mr. Boehner asked.

“The speaker should be meeting with us to get our views on things rather than just presenting his,” said Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, who recently lost a committee post for routinely crossing the leadership.

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

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Fearful 'end of world' calls, emails flood NASA as Dec. 21 nears

If there's one government agency really looking forward to Dec. 22, it's NASA.

The space agency said it has been flooded with calls and emails from people asking about the purported end of the world — which, as the doomsday myth goes, is apparently set to take place Friday, Dec. 21.

The myth might have originated with the Maya calendar, but in the age of the Internet and social media, it proliferated online, raising questions and concerns among hundreds of people around the world who have turned to NASA for answers.

Dwayne Brown, an agency spokesman, said NASA typically receives about 90 calls or emails per week containing questions from people. In recent weeks, he said, that number has skyrocketed — from 200 to 300 people are contacting NASA per day to ask about the end of the world.

"Who's the first agency you would call?" he said. "You're going to call NASA."

The questions range from myth (Will a rogue planet crash into Earth? Is the sun going to explode? Will there be three days of darkness?) to the macabre (Brown said some people have "embraced it so much" they want to hurt themselves). So, he said, NASA decided to do "everything in our power" to set the facts straight.

That effort included interviews with scientists posted online and a Web page that Brown said has drawn more than 4.6 million views.

It also involved a video titled "Why the World Didn't End Yesterday." Though the title of the video implies a Dec. 22 release date, Brown said NASA posted the four-minute clip last week to help spread its message.

The website addresses several scenarios — the possibility of planetary alignments, total blackouts, polar shifts and "a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction" — but comes to the same conclusion.

In short, NASA says, "the world will not end in 2012."

"Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012," the website says.

The Griffith Observatory will also be trying to debunk doomsday predictions. It announced plans to stay open late Friday evening — until one minute past midnight — to "demonstrate that claims regarding the Maya calendar, planetary alignments, rogue planets, galactic beams, and other related phenomena have no basis in fact."

A few years ago, NASA suspected that it might have to create such a campaign when the idea of the world ending began "festering," Brown said. The apocalyptic action movie "2012," released in 2009, didn't help, he said.

"We kind of look ahead — we're a look-ahead agency — and we said, 'You know what? People are going to probably want to come to us' " for answers, Brown explained. "We're doing all that we can do to let the world know that as far as NASA and science goes, Dec. 21 will be another day."

As for Saturday, when the questions — not the world — end: "I wish it was tomorrow."

kate.mather@latimes.com

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This Is How You Craft 16,000 Candy Canes in a Day

It might not be Christmas every day at Kencraft Candy, but it smells like it. At the height of the season, the Utah sweets factory churns out 16,000 candy canes per day. Click through the image gallery above to see how they do it.

Cook

Sixty pounds of corn syrup, 70 pounds of sugar, and 1.5 gallons of water (above) are loaded into a vacuum cooker and simmered at 272 degrees for 20 minutes. Then cooks fold in flavors like peppermint, cranberry, or hot chocolate. They have to work fast because the mix stiffens as it cools.

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Why “Les Misérables” Looks Like a Holiday Box-Office Smash

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Moviegoers are storming online ticketing sites in advance of the Christmas release of “Les Misérables,” and the big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical has all the makings of a holiday smash.

With a cast that includes Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman, expectations are enormous, but based on advance tracking, so is the box-office potential.

The film, made for a reported $ 61 million, is poised to gross as much as $ 26 million over its opening weekend, according to BoxOffice.com.

The site predicts that the movie should pick up multiple Oscar nominations and that awards attention combined with a rabid fan base of musical theater lovers will have it beguiling moviegoers well into the new year.

Ultimately, it estimates that “Les Misérables” will rack up as much as $ 136 million at the domestic box office.

It’s well on its way. Early ticket sales at Fandango indicate that “Les Misérables” has the potential to be this holiday’s breakout smash, despite stiff competition from the likes of Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” both of which open over the next seven days.

Fandango also reports that the film has smashed records to become the company’s top advance-ticket seller among all Christmas Day releases, surpassing its previous record-holder, 2009′s “Sherlock Holmes”

It is also the largest advance-ticket seller among movie musicals in its history, supplanting 2006′s “Dreamgirls.” By mid-day Wednesday, “Les Misérables” was outpacing all other films, even current releases like “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” and was responsible for 40 percent of ticket sales at Fandango.

“There’s such a history and good will surrounding the stage musical and this is a film version people have been anticipating for such a long time, that it has turned into the movie event of the holiday season,” Dave Karger, Fandango’s chief correspondent, told TheWrap.

“We’re bullish on it,” added Phil Contrino, editor of BoxOffice.com. “Based on all the early reviews, this sounds like a crowd-pleaser. When a musical hits, it becomes a beast at the box office.”

He noted that “Mamma Mia!,” which arrived with less awards pedigree and was derived from a more dimly known stage show, grossed $ 609.8 million globally, because audiences loved the music.

Movietickets.com did not release any pre-sales information for holiday releases. However, recent surveys it performed of more than 4,000 customers indicate that there is a great deal of enthusiasm for the musical.

Of the major holiday releases, 52 percent of those polled said they were most excited to see “Les Misérables.” That was followed by 24 percent for “Django Unchained,” 16.5 percent for “Jack Reacher” and 7.5 percent for “The Guilt Trip.”

To be sure, not all of the “Les Misérables” reviews have been kind. In TheWrap, Alonso Duralde faulted the wobbly vocal talents of the leads and the director’s penchant for close-ups of his emoting stars.

“Director Tom Hooper (‘The King’s Speech’) piles one terrible decision upon another, with the result being a movie so overbearingly maudlin and distorted that it’s one of 2012′s most excruciating film experiences,” Duralde wrote.

Yet, audiences at screenings have been nearly rapturous in their response. Fandango’s Karger notes that at a recent screening for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that he attended, the crowd broke into applause at four different points during the film and gave Jackman and Hooper lusty ovations.

Given that “Les Misérables” tackles such topics as revolution, poverty and prostitution it seems like dark fare for the season, but Karger argues that the film provides enough uplift to appeal to moviegoers looking to get into the yuletide spirit.

“There are scenes of such intense suffering and despair in the movie, but at the end you are left with a profound feeling of love and that gives it a holiday feel,” Karger said. “It’s a slog through the mud to get there, but when the movie’s over you leave the theater with a wonderful sense of hope.”

If Karger is right then Universal, which is distributing “Les Misérables,” will be feeling very festive when Christmas rolls around next week.

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The New Old Age Blog: After Storm, 'Friends' Rescue a Caregiver

Tales of Hurricane Sandy survival will likely emerge for years — particularly about the sick and elderly who were trapped in their homes or forced to evacuate under harrowing circumstances. Many of those stories have happy endings, like this one of social media and neighborliness I recently heard.

It is about two ailing 90-year-olds who, because of social media, formal and informal, and the ingenuity of one of their daughters, were located amid the rubble of Long Beach, N.Y., after the storm’s initial fury, and in short order gained admission to one of the few elder care facilities in the region that could meet their divergent needs.

“The pluses of social networking really come into play in a situation like this,’’ said Alice, 66, the couple’s daughter, a social worker for senior services in the office of a New York State senator who found herself almost as flummoxed as a nonprofessional when she needed help for her own parents. “More people are willing to help others than we think, but nobody is going to help if we don’t ask.’’

Alice’s social media search, first to locate her parents and then to find them a new home, began on a Facebook page for missing persons, one of many that sprang up after the storm. Long Beach, one of the hardest-hit areas, had no phones or power and was, for the most part, inaccessible. A Facebook page, Long Beach NY Hurricane Information, was meant to help residents find free hot food, a mobile medical van, somewhere to do laundry, revised school bus routes, lists of open stores, suggestions for good contractors, warning of price-gougers and, increasingly, share tales of recovery.

“I put up a post and sure enough some wonderful man from Brooklyn got back to me,’’ Alice said (we tell Alice’s story using only her first name to protect her parents’ privacy). The man had braved the miles of dark back roads to get to his own mother, who happened to live in the same co-op building as Alice’s parents.

He volunteered to check on the old couple and their home health aide on the third floor. Alice’s father, who has dementia, is incontinent and cannot walk because of a neurological condition, and her mother, who is deaf, suffers from depression, but by comparison is the “well spouse.’’

Their personal belongings were not destroyed, although her mother’s medical records were lost when her doctor’s office was damaged. But the old building would be uninhabitable for an indeterminate time, surely too long for a pair of 90-year-olds to ever return. Still, the information that they were O.K., coming from a total stranger, “provided a night of sleep I otherwise never would have had,’’ Alice said.

The next morning, she and her younger sister, Sharon, were able to get to Long Beach and tell their mother that the evacuation would be permanent. They brought the couple to Alice’s home in Queens for a few days, then to a nearby hotel and finally to a borrowed apartment in a neighboring building.

“It is so painful for them to be uprooted all of a sudden, at this age,’’ Alice said. “But in a way this may be one of those blessings in disguise. The way they were living, it was only after we actually had them with us that we realized my mother’s description of how things were going were not exactly accurate.’’

This is the case with many elderly parents, getting by in their own apartment and putting the best face on it lest their children tell them it is time to leave. So in the short window before she and her husband left for Chicago, and Thanksgiving with their own children and grandchildren, Alice had to set in motion the next step.

Her sister and brother-in-law on Long Island would keep an eye on the old couple in the short term. But the long-term solution, Alice said, with the clear-eyes that came from seeing others in this situation day-after-day, was a senior community where her father could live in the skilled nursing section and her mother in the less restrictive assisted living area. They would see each other as often as they wished, but each would get the correct level of care.

So before leaving for Chicago, using a more informal kind of social media, Alice e-mailed 40 friends — from her synagogue, her social work circle, her Rolodex of elder care lawyers and Medicare advocates. The e-blast was a plea for help.

“Each of you on this email know me personally,’’ she wrote. “As you all know, many years of my professional life have been dedicated to helping seniors . . . . Now I find myself in the position of needing help for my mom and dad.’’ She told them the story of her parents evacuation and how “exhausted and completely stressed’’ she and her sister and both of their husbands were. Now her “biggest hurdle was to find a place that can accommodate each of their needs.’’

She essentially asked this group to put on their thinking caps, and they did. Alice and her husband left for the holiday on a Monday. That Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, she got a phone call from an admissions person from exactly the kind of facility she needed, who had been contacted by her friends. Alice was told what kind of records she would need for their application. A plan was made to reconvene by telephone the Monday after Thanksgiving.

On Friday, Nov. 30, Alice and her sister toured the place. In that same blur of a week, the sisters took turns going to Long Beach to deal with their parents’ possessions. Alice’s mother slowly moved from reconciled to relieved. When it was time to tell Alice’s father “he went from sad and crying to angry at my sister and I for not being able to take them to live with either of us.’’

Through it all, Alice kept her e-mail committee up to date. She had crowd-sourced one of the hardest problems she would ever face. She had tapped the viral nature of hastily created Facebook pages, where strangers literally “friend’’ each other, and sent e-mail blasts to the kind of friends who take no offense at receiving the same message as a bunch of people they may or may not know.

In the “new old age,” this is one of many ways of doing what nobody really knows how to do. And in all likelihood, with the paperwork almost complete, Alice’s parents will have a new home for Christmas.

---

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Obama and Boehner Split on Fiscal Plan

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Speaker John A. Boehner delivered a cutting response to President Obama on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — Hopes for a broad deficit-reduction agreement faded on Wednesday as President Obama insisted he had offered Republicans “a fair deal” while Speaker John A. Boehner moved for a House vote as early as Thursday on a scaled-down plan to limit tax increases to yearly incomes of $1 million and up, despite Senate opposition and Mr. Obama’s veto threat.

The impasse was clear as Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner separately spoke to the television cameras instead of each other, after a weekend of private negotiations amid grieving over the shootings in Newtown, Conn., had narrowed their differences enough to raise optimism about a far-reaching deal to stabilize the nation’s debt.

First Mr. Obama and then Mr. Boehner faulted the other side for the impasse, and ultimately the failure, if a year-end deal could not be reached to stop automatic tax increases and the indiscriminate spending cuts in military and domestic programs known as the “sequester.” The president, saying he had gone “at least halfway” toward Republicans’ demands, evoked Hurricane Sandy and the Newtown school massacre to prod lawmakers to compromise for the nation’s benefit.

“When you think about what we’ve gone through over the last couple months — a devastating hurricane, and now one of the worst tragedies in our memory — the country deserves us to be willing to compromise on behalf of the greater good,” he said during an appearance at the White House to discuss gun control.

“Frankly, up until a couple days ago if you looked at it, the Republicans in the House and Speaker Boehner were in a position to say, ‘We’ve gotten a fair deal,’ ” the president said.

About two hours later at the Capitol, Mr. Boehner delivered a surprisingly brief but sharp retort to Mr. Obama, after which he took no questions from reporters. He started by saying that on Thursday, the House would pass the fallback bill that he has called his Plan B, which would extend the Bush-era tax cuts, which would otherwise expire on Dec. 31, for all incomes up to $1 million — although later his leadership team was scrambling for votes.

“Then the president will have a decision to make,” he said. “He can call upon Senate Democrats to pass that bill, or he can be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history.”

The Boehner bill does hold tax benefits for those with a yearly income above $1 million. It would repeal two Clinton-era tax provisions that limit the personal exemptions and deductions that wealthy taxpayers can claim; extend the lower tax rates on inherited estates rather than allow them to revert to the pre-Bush administration level; and set a 20 percent tax rate for the dividends and capital gains of households earning at least $1 million a year.

The speaker’s package would raise about $300 billion in additional revenue over 10 years, compared with extending the Bush tax rates for all income, as Republicans long espoused. That is about $500 billion less than Mr. Boehner’s original offer for $800 billion. It is about $700 billion less than would be collected under Mr. Obama’s proposal to extend the Bush rates only for incomes below a $250,000 threshold for couples, and $200,000 for individuals. In the talks with Mr. Boehner, he moved that line to $400,000.

Mr. Boehner’s statement suggested confidence that Republican leaders would have the votes to pass his plan. But lawmakers who were counting votes for the leadership said the tally was short, and House leaders were adding provisions to the speaker’s bill to mollify dissidents.

Some Republicans, for example, objected that the plan would do nothing to prevent the automatic military cuts, about $50 billion, from taking effect in January. To satisfy Republican hawks, leaders will hold a separate vote on legislation, nearly identical to a bill passed earlier this year, that would cancel those cuts and instead shift them to domestic programs, a decision likely to amplify Democratic opposition.

Even if the House Republican majority passes the speaker’s measure, it probably faces doom in the Democratic-controlled Senate, making Mr. Obama’s threatened veto moot. Mr. Boehner’s office has countered that Congressional Democratic leaders in 2011 had supported a $1 million threshold for higher tax rates. Democrats said those proposals were largely intended to show that Republicans would not raise taxes even for millionaires.

While Mr. Boehner scrambled to unify his party, Mr. Obama faced unrest as well from liberals who said he had broken a campaign pledge to keep Social Security out of the deficit-reduction talks. Mr. Obama had given tentative support to Republicans’ demand that the government adopt a new inflation formula for calculating cost-of-living adjustments for federal benefits. The new formula would slightly reduce the growth in Social Security benefits from what it would be under the current inflation index.

Recalling his campaign, Mr. Obama countered, “What I said was that the ultimate package would involve a balance of spending cuts and tax increases. That’s exactly what I have put forward. What I have said is, in order to arrive at a compromise, I am prepared to do some very tough things, some things that some Democrats don’t want to see, and probably there are a few Republicans who don’t want to see them either.”

The president said he would continue to have discussions with Mr. Boehner and others. But on Wednesday, even the chief staff negotiators for the two leaders were not speaking.

In trying to line up votes, Republican leaders circulated word that the longtime antitax advocate Grover Norquist had blessed Mr. Boehner’s plan as compliant with his “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.” Because most Republican candidates sign the pledge not to approve any tax increase, Mr. Norquist effectively has long locked in their votes.

But Mr. Norquist seemed to bend his principles to issue the endorsement, perhaps to maintain his relevance in tax debates. Even senior Republicans lately have denounced Mr. Norquist as a deterrent to resolving the nation’s fiscal problems, given increasing bipartisan agreement that higher tax revenues are required to control debt growth.

Even so, the Club for Growth, a conservative group, said on Wednesday that it considered even Mr. Boehner’s scaled-back plan a tax increase bill and that it might work to defeat Republican lawmakers who voted for it.

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Gun lobby's grip on Congress threatened

WASHINGTON — The gun-control debate sharpened Tuesday as President Obama backed an effort to revive the assault weapons ban spearheaded by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is poised to have a powerful new role as the head of the Senate committee overseeing gun laws.

Calls for federal gun restrictions were mounting following last week's shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. — even from lawmakers who had rejected them in the past. The National Rifle Assn. and its allies have successfully kept such efforts at bay for years, but the slayings of 20 children have roiled the politics of gun control and now challenge the gun lobby's hold on Capitol Hill.

The NRA broke its four-day silence Tuesday, saying it "is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again," but offered no details. The group plans to hold a news conference Friday.

The gun lobby faces a newly empowered opponent in Feinstein, a Democrat, who is in line to succeed Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) as chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the power to call hearings and move new legislation.

Feinstein said Tuesday that on the first day of the next Congress she would introduce an updated version of the expired assault weapons ban that she helped pass in 1994. As drafted, the measure would ban the Bushmaster .223 rifle that Adam Lanza used in the Newtown slayings, which also left six school employees dead.

"This is an uphill climb," she said. "Sure, it's tough, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try."

The issue is personal for Feinstein, who became mayor of San Francisco in 1978 after then-Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot to death at City Hall. A pen President Clinton used to sign the assault weapons ban hangs prominently in her Capitol Hill office.

Feinstein has the backing of Obama, who vowed Sunday in Newtown to harness the power of his office to try to prevent future massacres.

The president put little effort into gun legislation during his first four years in the White House, despite several mass shootings — including one in Tucson that left six people dead and 13 wounded. Then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, was shot in the head and nearly killed.

On Tuesday, spokesman Jay Carney said that Obama was "actively supportive" of Feinstein's effort to reinstate the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, and that he would back support legislation to tighten sales at gun shows.

An NRA spokesman declined to comment on the calls for gun control. But the group released a statement saying it was "shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown."

"Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting," the statement continued.

The gun lobby's influence is renowned: It easily swept back efforts to toughen federal gun laws after the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, as well as the July movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., that left 12 dead and dozens wounded. Much of the NRA's power stems from its relentless lobbying and an increasingly polarized House, which is controlled by the group's Republican allies.

Few doubt the NRA will wield substantial influence in the debate, joined by even more vociferous groups, such as Gun Owners of America, which sees the NRA as too willing to compromise.

Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America, said his group wouldn't retreat an inch from its opposition to restrictions, including a ban on high-capacity magazines like those used in Newtown.

"I think it's a horrible idea," he said, saying such magazines are valuable in self-defense. Lanza used magazines that held 30 rounds each.

Hammond noted that gun-rights supporters have faced hostile political environments in the past. After the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School that left 12 students, a teacher and two gunmen dead, he said, "things looked very bleak for the 2nd Amendment community." Despite the increase in public support for gun control at the time, his group and others turned back efforts to tighten gun laws.

Still, both allies and opponents say the gun lobby faces a much steeper fight this time. Those calling for tougher gun laws include longtime NRA allies, such as Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who met Tuesday with Feinstein and spoke with Obama by phone.

Susan Ginsburg, who coordinated firearms policy at the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration, says she believes the Newtown massacre will lead to new gun restrictions.

"I don't think this is going to fade back into invisibility again," she said. "We seem to have turned a corner in which it's just not acceptable for children to be killed like that."

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The 15 Most Dangerous People in the World

There used to be an established order to the world. A structure to things. You couldn't print a gun like a term paper. It was impossible to wreck a nuclear production plant with a few lines of code. Flying robots didn't descend on you in the dead of night and kill you in your home.

But that order has been upended. Cheap videos in California help spark riots in Cairo. Lynchpins of the Middle East now rant about 'Planet of the Apes' in pubic, and Iranian generals trash-talk David Petraeus over SMS. The world has gone a little haywire — sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Here are our choices for the 15 people most responsible for making it that way.

Who did we miss? What did we get wrong? Sound off in the comments, or find us on Twitter or Facebook.

— Noah Shachtman

Above:

One day you're pitching a biography of a top general. The next you've brought down a CIA director, stalled the career of another top general and ensnared numerous federal agencies — and yourself — in a sprawling investigation-cum-media circus. Paula Broadwell didn't mean to wreck any careers, but she accomplished something that no U.S. adversary could: remove David Petraeus from the U.S. government.

Broadwell, a former Army intelligence officer, developed an unhealthy attraction to Petraeus. What started out as spinning for Petraeus' Afghanistan strategy and a florid book became a full-blown affair once Petraeus became director of the CIA. All that would have stayed between the two lovers — had Broadwell not used an anonymous e-mail account to berate Jill Kelley, a Tampa socialite whom Broadwell considered unduly flirtatious with the military brass. Kelley turned to an FBI agent she knew, Frederick W. Humphries II, to open a cyber-stalking investigation.

The feds don't usually pursue cyber-stalking cases. And this one ended without any charges filed against Broadwell — but not before uncovering poor data hygiene from Broadwell's famous paramour. Petraeus and Broadwell shared a password on an e-mail account and would pass messages to each other by saving e-mails as drafts. What's more, Broadwell got into the habit of talking openly about sensitive CIA operations, like its response to the September attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. It's unclear whether there will be any charges filed against either Broadwell or Petraeus over classified material discovered on Broadwell's computer.

Petraeus, the most celebrated general of his generation, resigned in humiliation. The FBI inquiry also turned up what the Pentagon called "flirtatious" e-mails between Gen. John Allen, the outgoing Afghanistan war commander, and Kelley, which has now blocked Allen's promotion to NATO commander. What's more, the coming reshuffle in President Obama's national security team has reopened a debate into whether the CIA should back away from Petraeus' torrid pace of drone strikes. Next time a cabinet official sleeps around, he'd better make sure his mistress keeps the affair offline.

— Spencer Ackerman

Photo: AP/Nell Redmond

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“Castle” star Nathan Fillion to preside over Writers Guild Awards show

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Pretend writer Nathan Fillion will help honor real writers on February 17, when he hosts the Writers Guild Awards West Coast show, the Writers Guild of America, West said Monday.

Fillion, who plays a mystery novelist on ABC’s “Castle,” joked that he was “confused” when he was tapped for the hosting gig.

“When I first accepted the honor of hosting the Writers Guild Awards, I was confused and actually thought I was receiving one. Since I play a writer on TV, I felt perhaps someone was under the impression I deserved an award and I wasn’t about to correct them,” Fillion said. “However, now I’m in the perfect position to present myself with whichever award I choose. Who’s going to know?”

The Writers Guild Awards West Coast show will take place February 17, 2013 at the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. Live. The East Coast show will take place simultaneously at B.B. King Blues Club in New York City.

Writers Guild Awards executive producer Cort Casady praised Fillion’s multiple talents – along with his thriving Twitter account – in the announcement.

“Not only does he play a writer brilliantly on ‘Castle,’ but also, in addition to acting, he sings, dances, is a popular voice talent, and has a great gift for comedy,” Casady said. “And with over 1.5 million Twitter followers, Nathan brings a smart, enthusiastic audience to our celebration of writing.”

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The New Old Age Blog: Older People Become What They Think, Study Shows

All of us have beliefs — many of them subconscious, dating back to childhood — about what it means to get older. Psychologists call these “age stereotypes.” And, it turns out, they can have an important effect on seniors’ health.

When stereotypes are negative — when seniors are convinced becoming old means becoming useless, helpless or devalued — they are less likely to seek preventive medical care and die earlier, and more likely to suffer memory loss and poor physical functioning, a growing body of research shows.

When stereotypes are positive — when older adults view age as a time of wisdom, self-realization and satisfaction — results point in the other direction, toward a higher level of functioning. The latest report, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that seniors with this positive bias are 44 percent more likely to fully recover from a bout of disability.

For people who care about and interact with older people, the message is clear: your attitude counts because it can activate or potentially modify these deeply held age stereotypes.

The researcher who has done more than anyone else to advance our understanding of this is Becca Levy, an associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale University.

In the mid-1990s, she began a series of experiments with older people in laboratory settings. The idea was to expose them subliminally to negative or positive stereotypes by flashing words associated with aging on a computer screen too fast for them to process consciously. Then these seniors were asked to perform a task.

Those exposed to negative words such as “decrepit” had poorer handwriting, slower walking speeds, higher levels of cardiovascular stress and a greater willingness to reject hypothetical medical interventions that could prolong their lives. Those primed with positive words such as “wisdom” did much better.

The experiments involved external stimuli, however, and Dr. Levy was interested in peoples’ subjective experience of older age. For that, she turned to a database of adults age 50 and older in Oxford, Ohio, who were followed for a period of 23 years, from 1975 to 1998.

Many had filled out questionnaires at the start of the study designed to elicit stereotypes about aging. This involved soliciting a “yes” or “no” answer to a series of statements like “things keep getting worse as I get older,” or “as you get older, you get less useful.”

When Dr. Levy looked at 660 participants, she found that those with positive age stereotypes lived 7.5 years longer than those with negative stereotypes. The research was published in The Journal of Personal and Social Psychology in 2002.

What might account for this finding? In her paper, Dr. Levy speculated that people with positive age stereotypes have a stronger will to live, and that this might affect their ability to adapt to the rigors of older age. Also, people with negative age stereotypes may have a heightened cardiovascular response to stress, with attendant ill health effects.

In other research using this data set, Dr. Levy established that people with positive age stereotypes were more likely to eat a balanced diet, exercise, limit their alcohol consumption, stop smoking and get regular physical exams, and that they had a higher level of physical functioning over time. Results were controlled for other factors like illness, gender, race and socioeconomic status.

In these papers, Dr. Levy hypothesized that positive age stereotypes are associated with a greater sense of control and that this enhanced seniors’ sense of self efficacy — their ability to remain captains of their own ship, as it were.

Her new findings about the impact of age stereotypes on older adults’ recovery from disability is an extension of this body of work. In this case, Dr. Levy and her co-authors followed 598 adults age 70 and older in New Haven, Conn., from 1998 to 2008. Disability was defined as needing help with basic activities of daily living like bathing, dressing and walking, and its onset was typically precipitated by an illness or injury.

Again, seniors with positive age stereotypes were much more likely to have good results and recover fully.

Dr. Marie Bernard, a geriatrician who serves as deputy director of the National Institute on Aging, said she found the report “quite intriguing” and that it confirmed her clinical observations in more than 30 years of medical practice. But she cautioned that it is a small study that needs to be replicated.

“What we really need to understand is the mechanism,” she said. “Is it something that is malleable and, if so, could we help people live longer, healthier lives?”

Researchers don’t have an answer to that yet. But many believe that part of the answer has to lie in tackling ageism – which is pervasive in our youth-oriented culture — early on, from earliest childhood.

“Even young kids have negative associations; they tell you that older adults are sick, slow, forgetful, no good,” said Dana Kotter-Gruehn, a visiting assistant professor in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

Also generations need to be brought together so that “people can experience what it means to be an older person” and stereotypes can be dispelled, Dr. Kotter-Gruehn said. This has been shown to help change people’s stereotypes about race and homosexuality, she noted.

Closer to home, all of us who interact with older people can “think about how to reinforce the more positive aspects of aging,” Dr. Levy said.

“If all of us became a little more aware of the implications of our communications” — the tone of voice we use with seniors, the attitude we adopt, the use of loaded phrases or expressions, the extent to which we give older adults our full, undivided attention — “that would help quite a lot.”

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DealBook: As Unit Pleads Guilty, UBS Pays $1.5 Billion Over Rate Rigging

UBS, the Swiss banking giant, announced a record settlement with global authorities on Wednesday, agreeing to a combined $1.5 billion in fines for its role in a multiyear scheme to manipulate interest rates.

In a sign that officials are increasingly taking a hard line against financial wrongdoing, the Justice Department also secured a guilty plea from the bank’s Japanese subsidiary, sending a warning shot to other big banks suspected of rate rigging. The UBS subsidiary, which agreed to plead to a single count of wire fraud, is the first unit of a big bank to agree to criminal charges in more than a decade.

The cash penalties represented the largest fines to date related to the rate-rigging inquiry. The fine is also one of the biggest sanctions that American and British authorities have ever levied against a financial institution, falling just short of the $1.9 billion payout that HSBC made last week over money laundering accusations.

The severity of the UBS penalties, authorities said, reflected the extent of the problems. The government complaints laid bare a scheme that spanned from 2005 to 2010, describing how the bank reported false rates to squeeze out extra profits and deflect concerns about its health during the financial crisis.

“The findings we have set out in our notice today do not make for pretty reading,” Tracey McDermott, the enforcement director for the Financial Services Authority of Britain, said in a statement. “The integrity of benchmarks,” she said, “are of fundamental importance to both U.K. and international financial markets. UBS traders and managers ignored this.”

The UBS case reflects a pattern of abuse that authorities have uncovered as part of a multi-year investigation into rate-rigging. The inquiry, which has ensnared more than a dozen big banks, is focused on key benchmarks like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Such rates are used to help determine the borrowing rates for trillions of dollars of financial products like corporate loans, mortgages and credit cards.

Libor Explained

In the UBS matter, the wrongdoing occurred largely within the Japanese unit, where traders colluded with other banks and brokerage firms to tinker with Yen denominated Libor and bolster their returns. During the 2008 financial crisis, UBS managers also “inappropriately gave guidance to those employees charged with submitting interest rates, the purpose being to positively influence the perception of UBS’s creditworthiness,” according to authorities.

In a series of colorful e-mails and phone calls, traders tried to influence the rate-setting process. “I need you to keep it as low as possible,” one UBS trader said to an employee at another brokerage firm in September 2008, according to the complaint filed by the Financial Services Authority. “If you do that,” the trader promised to pay “whatever you want. I’m a man of my word.”

As the employees carried out the alleged manipulation, they also celebrated the efforts, with one trader referring to a partner in the scheme as “superman.” “Be a hero today,” he urged, according the complaint by regulators.

The British and Swiss authorities released their complaints on Wednesday before the bank’s shares began trading in Switzerland. American authorities are expected to release their own complaints later Wednesday in Washington.

In a statement, UBS highlighted its cooperation with the investigation. The firm previously stated that it made provisions of 897 million Swiss francs ($975 million) to cover potential legal and regulatory fines.

“We discovered behavior of certain employees that is unacceptable,” the chief executive of UBS, Sergio P. Ermotti, said in the statement. “We deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior. No amount of profit is more important than the reputation of this firm, and we are committed to doing business with integrity.”

The UBS case provides a lens to view broader problems in the rate-setting process, which affects how consumers and companies borrow money around the world. In June, authorities scored their first Libor settlement, securing a $450 million payout from Barclays, the big British bank.

The UBS case — the product of cross-border collaboration among regulators and federal prosecutors – is more than triple the earlier fine.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Justice Department leveled about $1.2 billion in combined fines. The Financial Services Authority of Britain fined the bank $260 million. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, which does not have the power to fine, recovered $65 million in the bank’s supposed ill-gotten gains.

The Justice Department’s criminal division, which arranged the guilty plea with the Japanese subsidiary, also struck a non-prosecution agreement with the parent company. The exact total of the penalties was unclear, because the department has not yet released its settlement documents.

The Justice Department’s case is also expected to take aim at some of the bank’s traders, including 33-year-old Thomas Hayes. The Justice Department plans to announce charges against Mr. Hayes, the former UBS and Citigroup trader, who featured prominently in the investigation, according to people with knowledge of the matter. He was arrested in London last week and later released on bail. Other UBS employees have been suspended or fired following an internal investigation.

The fallout from the UBS case is expected to ratchet up the pressure on some of the world’s largest financial institutions and spur settlement talks across the banking industry.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has said it expects to pay fines before its next earnings statement in February, while Deutsche Bank has set aside an undisclosed amount to cover potential penalties. Some American institutions, including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, also remain in regulators’ crosshairs.

The UBS case has exposed the systemic problems with the rate-setting process. Over a 6-year period, UBS traders targeted the major currencies that form the Libor system, including the U.S. dollar denominated rate. The bank was also cited for attempting to manipulate other benchmarks like the Euro Interbank Offered Rate, or Euribor, and the Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate, or Tibor.

Much of the activity took place in the bank’s Japanese unit. Authorities said four UBS traders colluded to manipulate submissions to Yen Libor. The individuals made more than 1,900 requests to brokers and other banks to alter the rate, according to regulatory filings. As part of their efforts, UBS employees made quarterly payments of £15,000 ($24,000) to outside brokers involved in the rate-rigging for at least 18 months for their help, the complaint said.

To avoid arousing suspicion, UBS employees routinely made small changes to submissions, the complaint detailed. The individuals, who communicated with colleagues about the rate-setting through emails and instant messages, also altered rate submissions to benefit traders at other banks.

The Japanese unit’s guilty plea for wire fraud follows frantic last-minute negotiations last week between senior UBS officials and American authorities. The actions detailed in the complaint emboldened the Justice Department to seek the guilty plea from the Japanese unit. By forcing the plea from the firm’s Japanese subsidiary, federal authorities sent a clear message about the level of wrongdoing, but stopped far short of shutting UBS out of the American markets.

Still, the steep sanctions come as a surprise, given the bank’s cooperation with investigators.

Since first announcing that it was the subject of Libor investigations, the Swiss bank has eagerly worked with authorities in a bid for leniency. UBS, for example, had received conditional immunity from the Justice Department’s antitrust unit, a deal that did not apply to the Justice Department’s criminal division.

The case presents the latest setback for UBS.

The Swiss bank already agreed to a $780 million fine in 2009 with American authorities to settle charges that it helped American clients avoid tax. The firm also announced a $2.3 billion loss last year related to illegal trading activity by a former employee, Kweku M. Adoboli. Mr. Adoboli subsequently was sentenced to seven years, and British authorities fined UBS $47.5 million over the scandal.

UBS said it expected to report a net loss of up to $2.7 billion in the fourth quarter of the year because of the costs related to Libor and other legal matters. The figure includes around $2.3 billion of provisions of legal and regulatory costs, as well as $548 million in restructuring charges.

In the wake of the Libor scandal, UBS has been forced to beef up its compliance and rate-setting procedures, according to the Swiss regulator. The bank has also fired individuals connected to the rate-rigging.

“We are pleased that the authorities gave us credit for the important and positive changes we have already made,” the chairman of UBS, Axel Weber, said in a statement. “I have zero tolerance for inappropriate and unethical behavior of any of our staff.”

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 19, 2012

An earlier version of this post misstated a loss announced by UBS related to illegal trading activity by a former employee, Kweku M. Adoboli. It was $2.3 billion, not $2.3 million.

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Newport Beach dock renters may withhold holiday love

Marcy Cook embraces the holiday season. The tell? Start with the teddy bears dressed as Santa. More than 1,500 stand sentry around and inside her Newport Beach waterfronthome. Garland and strings of lights threaten to strangle the place like kudzu.

"We decorate a little bit, if you haven't noticed," said Cook, 69. "It's the highlight of the year for us."

Each Christmas, Newport Harbor is ablaze in lights as homeowners go to extraordinary lengths to complement the city's annual Christmas Boat Parade — an indelible tradition that renews itself Wednesday night and continues through Sunday.

But this has been a stressful season here along the tranquil waterfront lined with multimillion-dollar homes.

An increase in city rental fees for residential docks that protrude over public tidelands created a furor when it was approved last week by the City Council.

It also prompted a call to boycott the boat parade and festival of lights by a group calling itself "Stop the Dock Tax."

"It costs us thousands of dollars to voluntarily decorate our homes and boats to bring holiday smiles to nearly 1 million people," organization Chairman Bob McCaffrey wrote to the city. "This year, we are turning off our lights and withdrawing our boats in protest of the massive new dock tax we expect the City Council to levy."

Pete Pallette, a fellow boycott proponent and harbor homeowner, told city leaders the group would call off the boycott only if the council delayed voting on the rent hike. "Otherwise," he vowed, "game on."

In a place where homes come with names and mega-yachts bob in the harbor, it might appear the wealthy are wielding a weapon most often reserved for the masses. A holiday blackout, proponents say, will underscore their displeasure.

Newport's dock fee, which has stood at $100 a year for the last two decades, will now be based on a dock's size. The city says rents will increase to about $250 for a small slip to $3,200 annually for a large dock shared by two homeowners.

"People have been paying $8 a month all these years to access what is public waters," said Newport Beach City Manager Dave Kiff. "That's a pretty good deal. The City Council didn't think the increase it approved was too extreme."

Many did.

They packed council meetings when the hike was discussed, accusing the city of an excessive money grab.

They brushed aside the city's rationale: Statelawmandates cities charge fair market rents for the private use of public lands, and Newport Beach was only now catching up.

And they were unmoved by arguments that the extra revenue will go exclusively to badly needed repairs to a harbor that, despite outward appearances, needs a lot of work.

The city's five-year plan for the harbor calls for $29 million in long-overdue maintenance. Its silt-filled channels haven't been fully dredged since the Great Depression. Ancient, leaky sea walls protecting neighborhoods need to be repaired or replaced.

"We have the makings of a perfect storm like they did on the East Coast" during Superstorm Sandy, said Chris Miller, the city's harbor resources manager. "The sea walls are nearing the end of their useful life."

Even with the rent increases, Newport's dock owners will contribute a tiny fraction of that cost — the rest coming from the federal government and the city's general operating fund.

As dock owners fumed over having to pay more, others recoiled at the proposed boycott of the boat parade, which dates to 1908 when a single gondola led eight canoes illuminated by Japanese lanterns around the harbor. It has now swelled to a decent-sized armada of dozens of boats — some carrying paying customers — that circle past the decorated harbor-front homes.

"The boycott is ridiculous," said Shirley Pepys, whose frontyard on Balboa Island has been taken over by a family of penguins dressed for a Hawaiian luau.

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