Jersey Shore town OKs deal to rebuild boardwalk

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J. (AP) — The boardwalk where generations of families and teens got their first taste of the Jersey Shore and where the MTV reality show of the same name was filmed is about to be rebuilt following its destruction in Superstorm Sandy.

Seaside Heights on Wednesday night was awarded a $ 3.6 million contract to have the boardwalk rebuilt in time for Memorial Day weekend.

The walkway, one of the most popular and heavily used at the Jersey Shore, was destroyed in the late October storm, the state’s worst natural disaster. Officials say it is the centerpiece of the borough’s tourism industry, which funds 75 percent of its budget.

“A lot of people love Seaside and want to see what’s happening this year,” Mayor William Akers said. “If they don’t come back, we don’t eat.”

Florence Birban, a 47-year resident, said the boardwalk means a lot to homeowners.

“We need a boardwalk here to bring in the revenue and keep our taxes from going up, hopefully,” she said. “It just looks wrong without a boardwalk. I look up the street, and I don’t see one, and it’s not right.”

The work should be done by May 10.

Seaside Heights was famous for generations as a summer destination for families, teens and young adults. It took on a new level of fame in recent years when MTV set its “Jersey Shore” reality show on the boardwalk, where a tipsy Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi tottered unsteadily and Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino flexed his abs as cameras whirred.

The contract approved Wednesday just covers replacement of the boards and the substructure beneath it. Akers said a future contract will include ramps, railings and a protective sea wall.

Borough Administrator John Camera said the entire length of the mile-long boardwalk will be rebuilt.

That was good news for Sue Poane, another longtime resident concerned about the town’s financial future and its quality of life.

“We need the people to spend their money here; we need the boardwalk back for the businesses,” she said. “My husband and I walk the boardwalk every Sunday afternoon. We have our supper at our special place — they have the best seafood in the world! — and then we sit and people-watch.”

Seaside Heights is the second major boardwalk to see rebuilding begin; Belmar started work on its walkway last week. Spring Lake also has started fixing its boardwalk, as has Point Pleasant Beach.

On Thursday in Seaside Heights, the private owners of the Jet Star roller coaster plan to solicit bids from companies interested in removing the remains from the Atlantic Ocean, Akers said. They have been there since the roller coaster plunged off a collapsing pier during the storm.

Town officials are anxious to have it removed. Last week, a man sailed a small boat to the coaster, climbed to the top of it and affixed a flag to it before being talked down and arrested by police. Officials and some residents are worried about liability for the coaster if someone is injured on or near it. The beachfront remains off-limits and is guarded by police and state troopers.

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Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

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Some With Autism Diagnosis Can Recover, Study Finds

Doctors have long believed that disabling autistic disorders last a lifetime, but a new study has found that some children who exhibit signature symptoms of the disorder recover completely.

The study, posted online on Wednesday by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, is the largest to date of such extraordinary cases and is likely to alter the way that scientists and parents think and talk about autism, experts said.

Researchers on Wednesday cautioned against false hope. The findings suggest that the so-called autism spectrum contains a small but significant group who make big improvements in behavioral therapy for unknown, perhaps biological reasons, but that most children show much smaller gains. Doctors have no way to predict which children will do well.

Researchers have long known that between 1 and 20 percent of children given an autism diagnosis no longer qualify for one a few years or more later. They have suspected that in most cases the diagnosis was mistaken; the rate of autism diagnosis has ballooned over the past two decades, and some research suggests that it has been loosely applied.

The new study should put some of that skepticism to rest.

“This is the first solid science to address this question of possible recovery, and I think it has big implications,” said Sally Ozonoff of the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the research. “I know many of us as would rather have had our tooth pulled than use the word ‘recover,’ it was so unscientific. Now we can use it, though I think we need to stress that it’s rare.”

She and other experts said the findings strongly supported the value of early diagnosis and treatment.

In the study, a team led by Deborah Fein of the University of Connecticut at Storrs recruited 34 people who had been diagnosed before the age of 5 and no longer had any symptoms. They ranged in age from 8 to 21 years old and early in their development were in the higher-than-average range of the autism spectrum. The team conducted extensive testing of its own, including interviews with parents in some cases, to gauge current social and communication skills.

The debate over whether recovery is possible has simmered for decades and peaked in 1987, when the pioneering autism researcher O. Ivar Lovaas reported that 47 percent of children with the diagnosis showed full recovery after undergoing a therapy he had devised. This therapy, a behavioral approach in which increments of learned skills garner small rewards, is the basis for the most effective approach used today; still, many were skeptical and questioned his definition of recovery.

Dr. Fein and her team used standardized, widely used measures and found no differences between the group of 34 formerly diagnosed people and a group of 34 matched control subjects who had never had a diagnosis.

“They no longer qualified for the diagnosis,” said Dr. Fein, whose co-authors include researchers from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; the Institute of Living in Hartford; and the Child Mind Institute in New York. “I want to stress to parents that it’s a minority of kids who are able to do this, and no one should think they somehow missed the boat if they don’t get this outcome.”

On measures of social and communication skills, the recovered group scored significantly better than 44 peers who had a diagnosis of high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

Dr. Fein emphasized the importance of behavioral therapy. “These people did not just grow out of their autism,” she said. “I have been treating children for 40 years and never seen improvements like this unless therapists and parents put in years of work.”

The team plans further research to learn more about those who are able to recover. No one knows which ingredients or therapies are most effective, if any, or if there are patterns of behavior or biological markers that predict such success.

“Some children who do well become quite independent as adults but have significant anxiety and depression and are sometimes suicidal,” said Dr. Fred Volkmar, the director of the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine. There are no studies of this group, he said.

That, because of the new study, is about to change.

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FAA grounds Dreamliners in U.S.

Federal officials say they are temporarily grounding Boeing's 787 Dreamliners until the risk of possible battery fires is addressed. (Jan. 16)

With its new plane ordered to stay on the ground, Boeing Co. confronts a full-fledged crisis as it struggles to regain the confidence of passengers and the airline customers who stood by the 787 Dreamliner during years of cost overruns and delivery delays.

A second major incident involving "a potential battery fire risk'' prompted the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday to temporarily ground all 787s operated by U.S. carriers until it is determined that the lithium-ion batteries on board are safe.

The order affects United Airlines, which is the first U.S. customer. The FAA gave no indication how soon the plane could resume flying.

The decision came the same day Japanese airlines grounded their 787s after an emergency landing and five days after the FAA and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood declared that the flying public is safe on Dreamliners. When it offered those assurances Friday, however, the FAA also announced a comprehensive review of the 787's design, manufacture and assembly.

The grounding represents a significant setback for Chicago-based Boeing, which is marketing the fuel-efficient, mainly carbon-composite jetliner as a vision of the future of commercial passenger aviation. The development of the plane was marred by long production and delivery delays, but it is selling well and has customers around the world.

"We stand behind its overall integrity. We will be taking every necessary step in the coming days to assure our customers and the traveling public of the 787's safety and to return the airplanes to service," Jim McNerney, Boeing's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. He said Boeing is working with the FAA to find answers as quickly as possible.

Chicago-based United Airlines has six 787s, but it has been flying only one on flights between O'Hare International Airport and Houston. The airline said Wednesday night that it will accommodate customers on other planes. The domestic 787 flights were to end in late March, when United's first 787s were to begin serving international routes. 

United said it "will work closely with the FAA and Boeing on the technical review as we work toward restoring 787 service."

Foreign carriers are not affected by the FAA order, but LOT Polish Airlines canceled its inaugural flight celebration at O'Hare on Wednesday night, even before the flight landed from Warsaw.

"We just think it would be inappropriate to go ahead with the activities," said Frank Joost, regional sales director of the Americas for LOT. He described the FAA grounding of 787 flights as a "surprise."

LOT also canceled the Dreamliner's return flight to Warsaw. Passengers hoping to depart on the 9:55 p.m. flight said they were disappointed. Many were rebooked on Lufthansa through Munich.

Suzy Zaborek, 27, of Chicago was at Chicago O'Hare on Wednesday night waiting for her father to arrive from Poland aboard the 787. He came home early specifically to ride on the inaugural flight.

Zaborek had not been following the Dreamliner woes in recent weeks and the dramatic groundings on Wednesday.

"I'm glad I didn't know because I wouldn't have let him get on on of those," she said.

The FAA decision to ground all U.S.-registered 787s was the direct result of an in-flight incident involving a battery earlier in the day in Japan, FAA officials said. It followed another 787 battery fire that occurred Jan. 7 on the ground in Boston.

Both failures resulted in the release of flammable materials, heat damage, smoke and the potential for fire in the electrical compartments, the FAA said.

"Before further flight, operators of U.S.-registered Boeing 787 aircraft must demonstrate to the FAA that the batteries are safe," the regulatory agency said. The statement said the FAA will work with Boeing and airlines "to develop a corrective action plan to allow the U.S. 787 fleet to resume operations as quickly and safely as possible."

The FAA said it took drastic action because it determined that battery failures are "likely to exist or develop" in other planes.

Lithium-ion batteries can catch fire if they are overcharged, and the fires are difficult to extinguish, Boeing has previously said. Still, lithium-ion is the right choice for the 787, Boeing officials said.

Earlier Wednesday, Japan's two largest airlines grounded their fleets of 787s after one of the jets made an emergency landing and passengers were evacuated via emergency slides.

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Japanese airlines ground Boeing 787s after emergency landing

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's two leading airlines grounded their fleets of Boeing 787s on Wednesday after one of the Dreamliner passenger jets made an emergency landing, the latest and most serious in a series of incidents to heighten safety concerns over a plane many see as the future of commercial aviation.

All Nippon Airways Co said instruments aboard a domestic flight indicated a battery error, triggering emergency warnings to the pilots. It said the battery in the forward cargo hold was the same lithium-ion type as one involved in a fire on another Dreamliner at a U.S. airport last week.

The carrier grounded all 17 of its 787s, and Japan Airlines Co suspended its 787 flights scheduled for Wednesday. ANA said its planes could be back in the air as soon as Thursday once checks were completed. The two carriers operate around half of the 50 Dreamliners delivered by Boeing to date.

Wednesday's incident, described by a transport ministry official as "highly serious" - language used in international safety circles as indicating there could have been an accident - is the latest in a line of mishaps - fuel leaks, a battery fire, wiring problem, brake computer glitch and cracked cockpit window - to hit the world's first mainly carbon-composite airliner in recent days.

"I think you're nearing the tipping point where they need to regard this as a serious crisis," said Richard Aboulafia, a senior analyst with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia. "This is going to change people's perception of the aircraft if they don't act quickly."

The 787, which has a list price of $207 million, represents a leap in the way planes are designed and built, but the project has been plagued by cost overruns and years of delays. Some have suggested Boeing's rush to get planes built after those delays resulted in the recent problems, a charge the company strenuously denies.

Both the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said they were monitoring the latest incident as part of a comprehensive review of the Dreamliner announced late last week.

ALARM TRIGGERED

ANA flight 692 left Yamaguchi Airport in western Japan shortly after 8 a.m. local time (2300 GMT Tuesday) bound for Haneda Airport near Tokyo, a 65-minute flight. About 18 minutes into the flight, at 30,000 feet, the plane began a descent, cutting its altitude to 20,000 feet in about four minutes. It made an emergency landing 16 minutes later, according to flight-tracking website Flightaware.com.

A spokesman for Osaka airport authority said the plane landed at Takamatsu at 8:45 a.m. All 129 passengers and eight crew evacuated via the plane's inflatable chutes. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said five people were slightly injured.

At a news conference - where ANA's vice-president Osamu Shinobe bowed deeply in apology - the carrier said a battery in the forward cargo hold triggered emergency warnings to the pilots, who decided on the emergency action.

"There was a battery alert in the cockpit and there was an odd smell detected in the cockpit and cabin, and (the pilot) decided to make an emergency landing," Shinobe said.

Passengers leaving the ANA flight told local TV there was an odor like burning plastic on the plane as soon as it took off. "There was a bad smell as soon as we started and before we made the emergency landing there was an announcement and the stewardess' voice was shaking, so I thought this was serious," one passenger told TBS TV.

Shigeru Takano, a senior safety official at the Civil Aviation Bureau, said that an emergency light indicating a malfunction had gone off in the cockpit, followed by another warning light indicating smoke. Checks showed a battery error and smoke was smelled in the cockpit, he added.

One man told a local broadcaster there was a burning smell in the plane. "There was a strong, burning smell, but the smoke appeared after they opened the emergency doors, after we landed," he said.

Marc Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, told Reuters: "We've seen the reports, we're aware of the events and are working with our customer."

UNDER REVIEW

In Asia, only the Japanese and Air India have the Dreamliner in service, but other airlines are among those globally to have ordered around 850 of the new aircraft.

Australia's Qantas Airways said its order for 15 Dreamliners remained on track, with its Jetstar subsidiary due to take delivery of the first of the aircraft in the second half of this year.

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Apple scoops PBS on “Downton Abbey” episodes, but PBS is cool with it

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Apple is making the entire third season of “Downton Abbey” available on iTunes before every episode airs on PBS – and that’s just fine with PBS.

Fans who buy a season pass on iTunes beginning January 29 will get to see three episodes before they air on PBS. The Season 3 finale airs February 17.

But PBS CEO Paula Kerger isn’t worried that viewers will watch the show online, then tune out PBS. In fact, she says, Apple isn’t the only place Americans can see “Downton” before they can see it on her network.

“You can also buy the DVD sets. They’re being shipped at the end of January, and the DVD sets and Apple are going up at the same time,” Kerger told TheWrap. “I think that for people who are really passionate and want to have it, it’s a great thing.”

Kerger says she hopes more viewers will discover “Downton” on whatever format they like best – and then watch it on PBS next season.

“At the end of the day, my interest is just in seeing it get to the widest possible audience, and there are people that would pick it up on Apple that may not pick it up anywhere else,” she said.

The first episode of the third season premiered to a record 7.9 million viewers earlier this month. Many of those viewers, no doubt, caught up on the previous seasons online or through DVD viewing.

“Downton” airs in the U.K. in the fall but on PBS in January, which means PBS viewers must shield themselves from spoilers. That has led to some grumbling from American fans.

But Kerger said airing the show in January allows the show to get more attention domestically than it might otherwise receive in the crowded fall season.

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Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Oshima dies aged 80

(Reuters) – Japanese film director Nagisa Oshima, best known for the sexually explicit film “In the Realm of the Senses” and “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence“, has died from pneumonia, aged 80.

The Hollywood Reporter said Oshima died on Tuesday in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo, where he had been living since retiring from making movies.

The British Film Institute described Oshima as one of the major directors of the new wave of Japanese cinema in the 1960s whose politically charged films contrasted starkly with the stylistic conservatism of classical Japanese filmmaking.

A law graduate, he began his filmmaking career at the age of 26 with the 1959 movie “A Town of Love and Hope”.

But his international notoriety was ensured in 1976 with “In the Realm of the Senses,” a graphic portrayal of insatiable sexual desire between a hotel owner and one of his maids in 1930s Japan.

The film contained scenes of unsimulated sexual activity and had to be registered as a French production to bypass Japanese censorship laws. Its uncensored version remains unavailable in Japan.

Oshima won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978 for his film “Empire of Passion,” another erotic tale.

He teamed up with British actor/singer David Bowie on the 1983 film “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” based on author Laurens van der Post’s experiences as a prisoner of war in Japan during World War Two.

Oshima suffered a stroke in 1996 but recovered enough to return briefly to filmmaking, making his final film “Taboo” in 1999, a movie about gay samurai.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Osterman)

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Well: Boosting Your Flu Shot Response

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

As this year’s influenza season continues to take its toll, those procrastinators now hurrying to get a flu shot might wish to know that exercise may amplify the flu vaccine’s effect. And for maximal potency, the exercise should be undertaken at the right time and involve the right dosage of sweat, according to several recent reports.

Flu shots are one of the best ways to lessen the risk of catching the disease. But they are not foolproof. By most estimates, the yearly flu vaccine blocks infection 50 to 70 percent of the time, meaning that some of those being inoculated gain little protection. The more antibodies someone develops, the better their protection against the flu, generally speaking. But for some reason, some people’s immune systems produce fewer antibodies to the influenza virus than others’ do.

Being physically fit has been found in many studies to improve immunity in general and vaccine response in particular. In one notable 2009 experiment, sedentary, elderly adults, a group whose immune systems typically respond weakly to the flu vaccine, began programs of either brisk walking or a balance and stretching routine. After 10 months, the walkers had significantly improved their aerobic fitness and, after receiving flu shots, displayed higher average influenza antibody counts 20 weeks after a flu vaccine than the group who had stretched.

But that experiment involved almost a year of dedicated exercise training, a prospect that is daunting to some people and, in practical terms, not helpful for those who have entered this flu season unfit.

So scientists have begun to wonder whether a single, well-calibrated bout of exercise might similarly strengthen the vaccine’s potency.

To find out, researchers at Iowa State University in Ames recently had young, healthy volunteers, most of them college students, head out for a moderately paced 90-minute jog or bike ride 15 minutes after receiving their flu shot. Other volunteers sat quietly for 90 minutes after their shot. Then the researchers checked for blood levels of influenza antibodies a month later.

Those volunteers who had exercised after being inoculated, it turned out, exhibited “nearly double the antibody response” of the sedentary group, said Marian Kohut, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State who oversaw the study, which is being prepared for publication. They also had higher blood levels of certain immune system cells that help the body fight off infection.

To test how much exercise really is required, Dr. Kohut and Justus Hallam, a graduate student in her lab, subsequently repeated the study with lab mice. Some of the mice exercised for 90 minutes on a running wheel, while others ran for either half as much time (45 minutes) or twice as much (3 hours) after receiving a flu shot.

Four weeks later, those animals that, like the students, had exercised moderately for 90 minutes displayed the most robust antibody response. The animals that had run for three hours had fewer antibodies; presumably, exercising for too long can dampen the immune response. Interestingly, those that had run for 45 minutes also had a less robust response. “The 90-minute time point appears to be optimal,” Dr. Kohut says.

Unless, that is, you work out before you are inoculated, another set of studies intimates, and use a dumbbell. In those studies, undertaken at the University of Birmingham in England, healthy, adult volunteers lifted weights for 20 minutes several hours before they were scheduled to receive a flu shot, focusing on the arm that would be injected. Specifically, they completed multiple sets of biceps curls and side arm raises, employing a weight that was 85 percent of the maximum they could lift once. Another group did not exercise before their shot.

After four weeks, the researchers checked for influenza antibodies. They found that those who had exercised before the shot generally displayed higher antibody levels, although the effect was muted among the men, who, as a group, had responded to that year’s flu vaccine more robustly than the women had.

Over all, “we think that exercise can help vaccine response by activating parts of the immune system,” said Kate Edwards, now a lecturer at the University of Sydney, and co-author of the weight-training study.

With the biceps curls, she continued, the exercises probably induced inflammation in the arm muscles, which may have primed the immune response there.

As for 90 minutes of jogging or cycling after the shot, it probably sped blood circulation and pumped the vaccine away from the injection site and to other parts of the body, Dr. Kohut said. The exercise probably also goosed the body’s overall immune system, she said, which, in turn, helped exaggerate the vaccine’s effect.

But, she cautions, data about exercise and flu vaccines is incomplete. It is not clear, for instance, whether there is any advantage to exercising before the shot instead of afterward, or vice versa; or whether doing both might provoke the greatest response – or, alternatively, be too much and weaken response.

So for now, she says, the best course of action is to get a flu shot, since any degree of protection is better than none, and, if you can, also schedule a visit to the gym that same day. If nothing else, spending 90 minutes on a stationary bike will make any small twinges in your arm from the shot itself seem pretty insignificant.

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City prepared to pay $33 million in two cop misconduct cases

Chicago Tribune reporter David Heinzmann on news that Mayor Rahm Emanuel seeks to settle two notorious cases of alleged police misconduct. (Posted Jan. 14th, 2013)

Nearly seven years after Christina Eilman wandered out of a South Side police station and into a catastrophe, her tragic entanglement with the Chicago Police Department began to come to an end Monday — with a proposed $22.5 million legal settlement that may be the largest the city ever offered to a single victim of police misconduct.

Though the settlement is a staggering sum on its own, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration has placed a second eight-figure police settlement on Tuesday's City Council Finance Committee agenda. A $10.2 million settlement is proposed for one of the victims of notorious former police Cmdr. Jon Burge, bringing to nearly $33 million the amount aldermen could vote to pay victims of police misconduct in a single day.

The latest Burge settlement would be for Alton Logan, who spent 26 years in prison for a murder he did not commit and who alleged in a federal lawsuit that Burge's team of detectives covered up evidence that would have exonerated him — a departure from previous cases that documented torture used by Burge's team to extract false confessions. The Logan case would bring the tab on Burge cases to nearly $60 million when legal fees are counted. Burge is serving 41/2 years in federal prison for lying about the torture and abuse of suspects.

The settlement in the Eilman case would avert a trial detailing the events of May 2006, when the then-21-year-old California woman was arrested at Midway Airport in the midst of a bipolar breakdown. She was held overnight and then released at sundown the next day without assistance several miles away in one of the city's highest-crime neighborhoods.

Alone and bewildered by her surroundings, the former UCLA student was abducted and sexually assaulted before plummeting from a seventh-floor window. She survived but suffered a severe and permanent brain injury, a shattered pelvis, and numerous other broken bones and injuries.

Her lawyer and family declined to comment Monday. The case, which has dragged in the courts for six years, was set to begin trial next week. Pretrial litigation had produced scathing rebukes from federal judges of the city's behavior toward Eilman — both on the street and in court.

The city's argument that it was not responsible for her injuries because she was assaulted by a gang member was blasted in a ruling from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this year. a ruling from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this year. Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook described the Police Department's release of Eilman, who is white, into a high-crime, predominantly African-American neighborhood by saying officers "might as well have released her into the lion's den at the Brookfield Zoo."

While Emanuel's Law Department endured some criticism for delays in the Eilman case since the mayor took office in 2011, he has noted repeatedly that the police misconduct highlighted in these and many other cases are legacies from the Richard M. Daley administration that he — and taxpayers — are stuck with.

The mayor's office referred calls to the city Law Department, but a spokesman there declined to comment.

If approved, the Eilman settlement would surpass the $18 million settlement paid to the family of LaTanya Haggerty, who was mistakenly shot and killed by police in 1999. It is frequently referred to as the city's biggest single-victim settlement.

Ald. Howard Brookins Jr., 21st, said city officials have not taken a hard enough line against police misconduct for years, and now taxpayers are footing the bill.

"We've known this was going to bust our budget, and here we are," Brookins said. "The administration (under Daley) should have made police conduct and behavior a higher priority. They didn't, and now we're seeing these costly settlements over and over, to pay for officers mistreating people."

The Logan case was set to go to trial last month, but on the first day of jury selection, city lawyers decided to settle the case. Logan's attorney Jon Loevy said the settlement includes about $1.5 million in legal fees.

Logan sat in prison for 26 years until a stunning 2008 revelation after another man, convicted murderer Andrew Wilson, died. Wilson had told his attorneys in 1982 that he committed the murder in which Logan was accused, but the lawyers said the attorney-client privilege kept them from going public with the admission until after Wilson's death.

Although relieved the city settled the case instead of battling on, Loevy said his client would gladly give up the $8.7 million to have nearly three decades of his life back.

"I don't know who would take that much money to lose their 20s, 30s and 40s," Loevy said. "From his perspective, no amount of money can make him whole and he'd rather have his life back."

While Logan lost the middle chunk of his life, Eilman dwells in a childlike mental state and feels as though she has lost the rest of her life, her family has told the Tribune.

Hobbled by a brain injury that has permanently impaired her cognitive function, she lives with her parents in suburban Sacramento. She requires constant medical treatment and therapy. Doctors have said she will not get better.

Eilman came to Chicago on May 5, 2006, at a time when her bipolar condition was worsening. When she tried to catch a return flight from Midway to California a couple of days later, she was ranting and screaming and appeared to be out of her mind.

Police officers eventually arrested her and took her to the Chicago Lawn district near Midway. Court records and depositions in the case show that officers were alarmed by Eilman's behavior.

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Can We Trust CNET Again After a Scandal This Shady?

CNET, one of the Internet’s first and most influential authorities on gadgets and tech news, watched its editorial integrity spiral out of control Monday, with staffers quitting and editors left to explain themselves in the wake of explosive new charges over its annual Consumer Electronics Show awards — a scandal, it would appear, that goes all the way to the top of its corporate umbrella, and could shake the entire ecosystem of online tech journalism.

RELATED: CBS Puts CNET in an Ethically Questionable Spot at CES

Contrary to an already controversial move first reported last Friday, CNET parent company CBS didn’t just asked the site to remove Dish’s Slingbox Hopper from consideration for its Best of CES Awards amidst a lawsuit between CBS and Dish; the removal came after executives learned the gadget would take the top award, and that request came down from CBS CEO Leslie Moonves himself, sources tell The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky. Now, CNET’s corporate responsibilities appear to have made the long trusted site bend at will and, despite desperate pushback from some of its writers and editors, it appears CNET may have moved to cover up the series of events that led to the removal of the award.

RELATED: Following Time and CNN, The Washington Post Suspends Zakaria

For CNET, all of this looks very bad. How can readers trust the site for its famously unbiased reviews and industry news coverage if a media-conglomerate overlord is insisting that some things just “can’t exist”? The events that have unfolded since the scandal broke wide open haven’t exactly restored anyone’s faith. Greg Sandoval, a seven-year veteran of the site, announced his resignation Monday morning on Twitter, citing a lack of “editorial independence” from CBS as his motivation. In a separate tweet, he called CNET’s dishonesty about its parent company‘s involvement with Dish “unacceptable.” Since, both CNET and CBS have released not-too-convincing statements. 

RELATED: Does The Times’ Public Editor Regret Its Adventures in Social-Media Babysitting?

Following the Verge report and Sandoval’s resignation, CNET Editor in Chief Lindsay Turrentine explained how CNET editors did everything in their power to fend off corporate insistence on its editorial decisions, but found the power of a pending deal between two bigger media companies too intimidating. So the editors gave in, and waited. “We were in an impossible situation as journalists,” Turrentine wrote, adding that she thought about resigning. “I decided that the best thing for my team was to get through the day as best we could and to fight the fight from the other side.” 

RELATED: What Kind of David Brooks Hater Are You?

Speaking for many a media and tech pundit, Reuters’s Megan McCarthy questioned the front side of the internal debate: 

CNET’s editor-in-chief’s explains why she caved to CBS. Why didn’t she just refuse to award the Best in Show? : news.cnet.com/8301-30677_3-5…

— Megan McCarthy (@Megan) January 14, 2013

For her part, Turrentine seems to have one major regret: “I wish I could have overridden the decision not to reveal that Dish had won the vote in the trailer.” That doesn’t exactly scream editorial independence, as The Verge’s Sean Hollister pointed out on Twitter.

CNET doesn’t get it either. “I wish I could have overridden the decision not to reveal” is NOT editorial independence. cnet.co/VWBv5o

— Sean Hollister (@StarFire2258) January 14, 2013

Turrentinge went on to say that if she had to face this “dilemma” again, she would not quit. Meaning, if this turns into more than a one-time incident, she wouldn’t have a problem bending to CBS again? 

RELATED: Did Cops Target Journalist’s Wife’s Spa with Prostitution Raid as Payback?

CBS’s statement to The Verge hasn’t calmed the critics, either. “In terms of covering actual news, CNET maintains 100% editorial independence, and always will. We look forward to the site building on its reputation of good journalism in the years to come,” reads the CBS reply. But when you’re dealing with angry tech readers, their nerdfest of the year, and the corporate responsibilities  therein, 100 percent of trust is tough to build back.

While CNET struggles to emerge from this mess, the situation appears to be threatening the entire ecosystem of the technology press, which has a history of reinventing its standards on bias in product reviews. A number of gadget and tech-news sites fall under larger corporate umbrellas: AOL owns Engadget; NewsCorp owns The Wall Street Journal and its influential tech coverage; BuzzFeed FWD has to answer to its investors, who put money in all sorts of tech ventures; IAC invests in companies like Aereo but owns The Daily Beast. Turns out this wasn’t just a family feud — the CNET and CBS scandal at CES could set a precedent for years to come.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Almacenamiento en nubes crecerá y permanecerá por años

(Paquete Tecnológico)

México, 13 Ene. (Notimex).- Ante el crecimiento de la industria de almacenamiento en nubes híbridas abiertas y ampliables, se prevé que esta tendencia se mantenga por muchos años más, anticipó Red-Hat.

Lo anterior debido al crecimiento de este sector en los últimos años, como consecuencia de la demanda en la aparición de datos no estructurados e implementaciones de nubes híbridas abiertas.

Durante 2013 el panorama de la industria informática no sólo cambiará, sino que la innovación en estos espacios surgirá al ritmo que los clientes necesiten y no al paso que imponen los proveedores, estimó la compañía de soluciones de código abierto (open source).

Para ello, prevé el surgimiento de soluciones de almacenamiento que ofrezcan un enfoque unificado para la obtención, el aprovisionamiento y la gestión de los datos de las empresas.

Explicó que estas deberán ser independientes de la clase de datos, tales como de archivos, objetos, bloques y datos semi-estructurados o no estructurados.

Al implementar estas soluciones, las empresas obtendrán grandes beneficios que se traducirán en menores gastos y en mayores niveles de servicio para sus usuarios finales, expuso la firma tecnológica.

Asimismo, consideró que el uso de software de almacenamiento de código abierto por parte de las empresas en lugar de software de almacenamiento propietario gravitará hacia el enfoque de código abierto para resolver los desafíos de almacenamiento de dicho sector.

Destacó que el rol del administrador de almacenamiento cambiará radicalmente con las implementaciones de nubes híbridas abiertas y se enfocarán en asegurar que el almacenamiento en el centro de datos funcione de manera óptima.

NTX/ILC/MDT

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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