Small News

‘Argo’ wins Producers Guild Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Argo” continues to shake up the Oscar race by taking the top honor at the Producers Guild Awards on Saturday.

Ben Affleck, coming off winning Golden Globe Awards for best motion picture drama and director for the real-life drama, received the award handed out at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I’m still working as an actor,” he said in his acceptance speech.

Affleck also stars in “Argo” as the CIA operative who orchestrated a daring rescue of six American embassy employees during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. George Clooney and Grant Heslov share the producer award with Affleck as “Argo” beat out the Civil War saga “Lincoln,” which has a leading 12 Academy Awards nominations.

Other nominees in the PGA movie category were “Les Miserables,” ”Zero Dark Thirty,” ”Beasts of the Southern Wild,” ”Django Unchained,” ”Life of Pi,” ”Moonrise Kingdom,” ”Silver Linings Playbook,” and Skyfall.”

Along with honors from other Hollywood professional groups such as actors, directors and writers guilds, the producer prizes have become part of the preseason sorting out contenders for Academy Awards.

The big winner often goes on to claim the best-picture honor at the Oscars on Feb. 24.

Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph” won the guild’s animation category, beating “Brave,” ”Frankenweenie,” ”ParaNorman” and “Rise of the Guardians.”

“Searching for Sugar Man” took the documentary prize, beating “A People Uncounted,” ”The Gatekeepers,” ”The Island President,” and “The Other Dream Team.”

Showtime’s “Homeland” won the producer’s award for television drama series, which beat out “Breaking Bad,” ”Downton Abbey,” ”Game of Thrones,” and “Mad Men.”

The ABC sitcom “Modern Family” took the prize for best comedy series for the third straight year, beating “30 Rock,” ”The Big Bang Theory,” ”Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and “Louie.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

Label: Health

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

J. Richard Hackman, an Expert in Team Dynamics, Dies at 72

Label: Business

J. Richard Hackman, a Harvard psychology professor whose fieldwork sometimes took him to the cockpit of an airliner to observe the crew in a nearly five-decade quest to determine the dynamics of teamwork and effective leadership, died on Jan. 8 in Boston. He was 72.

The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Judith Dozier Hackman, said.

Dr. Hackman, the author or co-author of 10 books on group dynamics, was the Edgar Pierce professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard.

In one of his best-known books, “Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances” (2002), he replaced the popular image of the powerful “I can do it all” team leader with that of someone who, as he wrote, had the subtle skills “to get a team established on a good trajectory, and then to make small adjustments along the way to help members succeed.”

The conditions for a successful team effort — among them “a compelling direction, an enabling team structure, a supportive organizational context and expert team coaching” — “are easy to remember,” Dr. Hackman wrote.

“The challenge,” he continued, “comes in developing an understanding of those conditions that is deep and nuanced enough to be useful in guiding action, and in devising strategies for creating them even in demanding or team-unfriendly organizational circumstances.”

Besides tracking the interplay of pilots, co-pilots and navigators aboard civilian and military planes, Dr. Hackman observed corporate boards, sports teams, orchestra players, telephone-line repair crews, hospital workers and restaurant kitchen staff members.

And in recent years, for his 2011 book, “Collaborative Intelligence,” he was allowed to observe interactions within the American intelligence, defense, law-enforcement and crisis-management communities.

“Although my main aspiration has been to provide guidance that will be useful to team leaders and members,” he wrote, “there are no ‘one-minute’ prescriptions here — creating, leading and serving on teams is not that simple.”

Anita Woolley, a professor of organizational behavior and theory at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said, “The key thing about Dr. Hackman’s work is that it stands in contrast to some of the more popular models of leadership that focused very much on style or how leaders behave, versus what they do.”

Rather than viewing pay as a prime motivator for good performance, she continued, “he focused on features of people’s jobs that made them more intrinsically satisfied: the freedom to determine how they conduct their work, having a variety of tasks, having knowledge of the ultimate outcomes of their work, knowing how their work affects or is received by other people.”

He also liked to overturn some of the received wisdom about teamwork. In a 2011 article for The Harvard Business Review, Dr. Hackman listed “Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork.” Among them was this:

“Misperception No. 2: It’s good to mix it up. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. Without them, members risk becoming complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members’ misbehavior.

“Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. As unreasonable as this may seem, the research evidence is unambiguous. Whether it is a basketball team or a string quartet, teams that stay together longer play together better.”

John Richard Hackman was born in Joliet, Ill., on June 14, 1940, the only child of J. Edward and Helen Hackman. His father was an oil pipeline engineer, his mother a schoolteacher.

Dr. Hackman received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., in 1962, and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1966. He soon joined the psychology and administrative sciences department faculties at Yale, where he taught until 1986, when he moved to the psychology and business departments at Harvard.

Besides his wife, who is an associate dean at Yale, he is survived by two daughters, Julia Beth Proffitt and Laura Dianne Codeanne, and four grandchildren.

After Dr. Hackman died, The Harvard Crimson wrote that for years he had “devoted countless hours to improving one team in particular — the Harvard women’s basketball squad, for which he volunteered as an honorary coach.”

China's smog taints economy, health

Label: World

BEIJING — When a thick quilt of smog enveloped swaths of China earlier this month, it set in motion a costly chain reaction for the world's No. 2 economy.

Authorities canceled flights across northern China and ordered some factories shut. Hospitals were flooded with hacking patients.

A fire in an empty furniture factory in eastern Zhejiang province went undetected for hours because the smoke was indistinguishable from the haze. In coastal Shandong province, most highways were closed for fear that low visibility would cause motorists to crash. And in Beijing, the local government urged residents to remain indoors and told construction sites to scale back activity.

Photos: Smog in China

"These are emergency measures that have the same economic impact as a strike or severe weather," said Louis Kuijs, a Hong Kong-based economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland and formerly of the World Bank. "They're very painful."

Residents in the capital have taken to mocking their famously filthy air and its attendant health hazards with the expression "Beijing cough." Meanwhile, Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau has introduced a cartoon mascot to communicate daily air quality on its website: a pig-tailed girl who bursts into tears when smog reaches hazardous levels.

But economists say China's smog is no joke. As air pollution continues to obscure China's cities, the cost to the nation in lost productivity and health problems is soaring. The World Bank estimates sickness and early death sapped China of $100 billion in 2009, or just under 3% of gross domestic product. China is now home to seven of the 10 most-polluted cities in the world, according to a report by the Asian Development Bank and Beijing's Tsinghua University.

A study by Greenpeace and Peking University's School of Public Health put the cost of healthcare to treat pollution-related ailments in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xian at more than $1 billion last year.

Beijing resident Zhang Jian takes his 2-year-old son to a doctor regularly to treat the toddler's chronic sinus infection.

"It's definitely related to the pollution," said Zhang, 35, who wore a disposable mask at an overcrowded children's hospital recently. "My son snores and his nose is blocked constantly. It's a problem because he's too young to clear his nose like adults."

The doctor's visit and treatment cost Zhang about $320 — nearly a week's pay for the IT professional.

The Beijing government says it's considering a host of emergency measures to clear the air. Among them: limiting vehicle usage, spraying building sites to reduce dust and restricting outdoor barbecue grills.

Even China's next premier, Li Keqiang, weighed in recently on the issue. "This is a problem accumulated over a long period of time, and solving the problem will also require a long time. But we need to take action."

China's smog crisis is not unlike those experienced in London and Los Angeles in the 1950s. Public outcry ultimately led to cleaner air and tougher environmental regulations.

Environmental activists hope the same happens in China. The official response in recent weeks has raised optimism that authorities will begin addressing pollution more openly.

Until recently, state media was loathe to use the word "pollution," opting instead for the euphemism "fog."

But popular pressure is building, making it harder for policymakers to ignore the foul air in many of China's largest cities.

After the staggeringly bad bout of air pollution in the middle of this month, micro-bloggers took to posting pictures of themselves online wearing masks.

Some held handwritten signs that read, "I don't want to be a human vacuum cleaner."

The phrase became the top-trending topic on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo, attracting several million hits.

4 tips for creating a successful Twitter parody account

Label: Technology

The guy behind @GowanusDolphin learned his lesson the hard way

A chorus of Twitter elite got really angry on Friday when an opportunistic user decided to register @GowanusDolphin, a horrible account that premised itself on a dolphin trapped in New York‘s murky Gowanus Canal.

Not sure how I feel about parody account @gowanusdolphin. Poor guy. Don’t find funny at all.

SEE MORE: Connecticut massacre suspect: How the media IDed the wrong guy [Updated]

— Craig Kanalley (@ckanal) January 25, 2013

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this @gowanusdolphin account is far worse than the Holocaust.

— Joel Johnson (@joeljohnson) January 25, 2013

It’s because we all laughed at the fake Rahm Emanuel guy that these fucking things exist. We brought @gowanusdolphin on ourselves.

SEE MORE: The 17 most memorable tweets of 2012

— Cord Jefferson (@cordjefferson) January 25, 2013

The offender, who has since apologized for being a jerk, learned his lesson the hard way. Don’t let the same fate befall you. Here, four helpful tips for creating a successful* Twitter parody account should the opportunity ever arise again:

1. Don’t use animals
Remember @BronxZooCobra fondly? Neither do we. Predicating your shiny new Twitter handle on a headline-grabbing animal is difficult for two reasons: (a) Animals don’t talk. You’re creating its voice from scratch; and (b) People tend to like animals more than they like other people, so as a rule of thumb, you should probably be making fun of actual human beings.

SEE MORE: Social media masters, ninjas, and gurus: How Twitter pros describe themselves

2. Don’t base it on news
When a mild 5.9-magnitude earthquake rattled New York in 2010, Twitter exploded with parody accounts. (“Boom!” and “Whoa!” and that sort of nonsense.) None of them were funny. None of them were sustainable. Take a lesson from Bloomberg social media director (and the web’s leading voice in parody account hatred) Jared Keller:

If you create a parody account within fifteen minutes of a news event you are the worst person on the planet and I hate you.

SEE MORE: Instagram vs. Twitter: Why their beef is bad news for you

— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) January 25, 2013

3. Be funny
Ha ha, you have to actually be funny, which is easier said than done. And “humor,” as we all know, is 100 percent subjective and varies from person to person, NOT TO MENTION it requires constant mental dexterity that 99.99 percent of the population simply isn’t cut out for. So make it easy for yourself. Self-impose some parameters and employ a weird spin like @NYTOnIt or @__MICHAELJ0RDAN. Maybe you’ll even get a book deal! (Probably not.)

4. You probably shouldn’t make a parody account
Ignore everything I just said. Don’t make one. Sorry.

SEE MORE: Should Twitter be forced to reveal racist users?

*Just kidding.

View this article on TheWeek.com Get 4 Free Issues of The Week

Fox orders futuristic cop drama pilot from J.J. Abrams, J.H. Wyman

Label: Lifestyle

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Fox has given the green light to a police drama pilot from “Fringe” executive producers J.H. Wyman and J.J. Abrams, the network said Friday.

Described as an “action-packed buddy cop show,” the untitled project takes place “in the near future, when all LAPD officers are partnered with highly evolved human-like androids.”

Wyman is writing and executive-producing the one-hour drama project, along with Abrams.

Abrams’s Bad Robot Productions is producing in association with Warner Bros. Television. Bad Robot’s Bryan Burk is also executive-producing, with the company’s Kathy Lingg serving as co-executive producer.

Abrams, who’s been tapped to direct the maiden installment of the revived “Star Wars” movie franchise, sold a comedy pilot, “Adulting,” to Fox late last year. That project, a single-camera, half-hour comedy, is based on the Kelly Williams Brown book “Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 387 Easy(ish) Steps.”

“Fringe,” which was also on Fox, wrapped up its series run with a two-hour finale earlier this month.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Diner’s Journal Blog: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

Label: Health

PepsiCo announced on Friday that it would no longer use an ingredient in Gatorade after consumers complained.

The ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, which was used in citrus versions of the sports drink to prevent the flavorings from separating, was the object of a petition started on Change.org by Sarah Kavanagh, a 15-year-old from Hattiesburg, Miss., who became concerned about the ingredient after reading about it online. Studies have suggested there are possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones.

The petition attracted more than 200,000 signatures, and this week, Ms. Kavanagh was in New York City to tape a segment for “The Dr. Oz Show.” She visited The New York Times on Wednesday and while there said, “I just don’t understand why they can’t use something else instead of B.V.O.”

“I was in algebra class and one of my friends kicked me and said, ‘Have you seen this on Twitter?’ ” Ms. Kavanagh said in a phone interview on Friday evening. “I asked the teacher if I could slip out to the bathroom, and I called my mom and said, ‘Mom, we won.’ ”

Molly Carter, a spokeswoman for Gatorade, said the company had been testing alternatives to the chemical for roughly a year “due to customer feedback.” She said Gatorade initially was not going to make an announcement, “since we don’t find a health and safety risk with B.V.O.”

Because of the petition, though, Ms. Carter said the company had changed its mind, and an unidentified executive there gave Beverage Digest, a trade publication, the news for its Jan. 25 issue.

Previously, a spokesman for PepsiCo had said in an e-mail, “We appreciate Sarah as a fan of Gatorade, and her concern has been heard.”

Brominated vegetable oil will be replaced by sucrose acetate isobutyrate, an emulsifier that is “generally recognized as safe” as a food additive by the Food and Drug Administration. The new ingredient will be added to orange, citrus cooler and lemonade Gatorade, as well Gatorade X-Factor orange, Gatorade Xtremo citrus cooler and a powdered form of the drink called “glacier freeze.”

Ms. Carter said consumers would start seeing the new ingredient over the next few months as existing supplies of Gatorade sell out and are replaced.

Health advocates applauded the company’s move. “Kudos to PepsiCo for doing the responsible thing on its own and not waiting for the F.D.A. to force it to,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Mr. Jacobson has championed the removal of brominated vegetable oil from foods and beverages for the last several decades, but the F.D.A. has left it in a sort of limbo, citing budgetary constraints that it says keep it from going through the process needed to formally ban the chemical or declare it safe once and for all.

Brominated vegetable oil is banned as a food ingredient in Japan and the European Union. About 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain it, including Mountain Dew, which is also made by PepsiCo; some flavors of Powerade and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

PepsiCo said it had no plans to remove the ingredient from Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew, both of which generate more than $1 billion in annual sales.

Heather White, executive director at the Environmental Working Group, said of PepsiCo’s decision, “We can only hope that other companies will follow suit.” She added, “We need to overhaul how F.D.A. keeps up with the latest science on food additives to better protect public health.”

Ms. Kavanagh agreed. “I’ve been thinking about ways to take this to the next level, and I’m thinking about taking it to the F.D.A. and asking them why they aren’t doing something about it,” she said. “I’m not sure yet, but I think that’s where I’d like to go with this.”

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 26, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the 15-year-old who started a petition on Change.org to end the use of brominated vegetable oil in Gatorade. She is Sarah Kavanagh, not Kavanaugh.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/26/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: PepsiCo Will Halt Additive Use In Gatorade.

Diner’s Journal Blog: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

Label: Business

PepsiCo announced on Friday that it would no longer use an ingredient in Gatorade after consumers complained.

Because of the petition, though, Ms. Carter said the company had changed its mind, and an unidentified executive there gave Beverage Digest, a trade publication, the news for its Jan. 25 issue.

Previously, a spokesman for PepsiCo had said in an e-mail, “We appreciate Sarah as a fan of Gatorade, and her concern has been heard.”

Ms. Carter said consumers would start seeing the new ingredient over the next few months as existing supplies of Gatorade sell out and are replaced.

PepsiCo said it had no plans to remove the ingredient from Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew, both of which generate more than $1 billion in annual sales.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 26, 2013

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/26/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: PepsiCo Will Halt Additive Use In Gatorade.

Obama to name new White House chief of staff

Label: World

President Barack Obama has chosen trusted adviser and national security expert Denis McDonough as his fifth chief of staff.

By Kathleen Hennessey

January 25, 2013, 7:37 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- President Obama will name Denis McDonough as the new White House chief of staff and announce other changes to his staff Friday afternoon, a White House official said.

McDonough is deputy national security advisor and a trusted advisor to the president, particularly on matters of foreign policy. He joined the Obama team during the 2008 presidential campaign after years as a Capitol Hill aide.

The new job will broaden McDonough’s role in the White House beyond diplomacy and foreign affairs. He coordinated the president’s policy to scale back the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan and was involved in the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. He also dealt with political fallout after the U.S. diplomatic mission was attacked in Libya.

McDonough will replace Jacob Lew, Obama’s nominee to lead the Treasury Department.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s second inauguration

McDonough, a Minnesota native, graduated from St. John's University and earned a master's degree in foreign service from Georgetown University. He worked as foreign policy advisor for Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle and was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, before serving as a foreign policy advisor on Obama's first presidential campaign.

Obama will announce the new appointments at shortly after noon in the East Room of the White House.

Rob Nabors, the White House legislative liaison, will be named deputy White House chief of staff for policy. Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer will be named senior advisor, while Jennifer Palmieri will take Pfeiffer's title, the official said.

Staff writer Christi Parsons contributed to this report.

PHOTOS: A look ahead at 2013’s political battles

Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook

Kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Twitter: @khennessey

Al Shabaab says enemies closed its Twitter account

Label: Technology

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Al Shabaab on Friday said its Christian enemies had closed its Twitter account, which the Somali militant group used to parade hostages, mock rivals and claim responsibility for bombings and assassinations.

The group’s official Twitter account, which has thousands of followers, was offline on Friday with a message saying “Sorry, that user is suspended”.

It was not immediately clear why the account, which was created in 2011 under the HSM PRESS Twitter handle, was suspended. The account was still unavailable as of 1233 GMT.

On Wednesday the al Qaeda-aligned rebels used the social media site to threaten to kill several Kenyan hostages and on January 17 announced the execution of a captive French agent after a French commando mission to rescue him failed.

“The enemies have shut down our Twitter account,” al Shabaab‘s most senior media officer, who refused to be named, told Reuters.

“They shut it down because our account overpowered all the Christians’ mass media and they could not tolerate the grief and the failure of the Christians we always displayed (online).”

Al Shabaab wants to impose their strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, across Somalia. However, it has lost significant territory in the southern and central parts of the country in the face of an offensive by African Union troops.

Twitter said it does not comment on individual accounts and the Kenyan government denied it had filed any request for the account to be taken down.

“It’s an emphatic no. We would not try to negotiate or have anything to do with the Al Shabaab. We didn’t even know the account was suspended,” said government spokesman Muthui Kariuki.

Al Shabaab posted on the account on Wednesday a link to a video of two Kenyan civil servants held hostage in Somalia, telling the Kenyan government their lives were in danger unless it released all Muslims held on “so-called terrorism charges” in the country.

“Kenyan government has three weeks, starting midnight 24/01/2013 to respond to the demands of HSM if the prisoners are to remain alive,” the group said.

Despite the closure of the Twitter account, al Shabaab said it would continue to “display the loss and grief of Christians no matter what means we use,” al Shabaab’s spokesman said.

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Archive

‘Argo’ wins Producers Guild Awards

Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

J. Richard Hackman, an Expert in Team Dynamics, Dies at 72

China's smog taints economy, health

4 tips for creating a successful Twitter parody account

Fox orders futuristic cop drama pilot from J.J. Abrams, J.H. Wyman

Diner’s Journal Blog: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/26/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: PepsiCo Will Halt Additive Use In Gatorade.

Diner’s Journal Blog: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/26/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: PepsiCo Will Halt Additive Use In Gatorade.

Obama to name new White House chief of staff

Al Shabaab says enemies closed its Twitter account

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