Intel bets big on thin PCs and phones at Las Vegas show

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Top chipmaker Intel Corp on Monday announced shipments of a new low-power chip and showed off next-generation ultra thin laptops and convertible tablets in its latest bid to prove that the struggling PC industry still has a bright future.

At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas , Intel said new energy-efficient processors for tablets and laptops are available now, and it outlined features like voice recognition and drastically improved battery life on future PCs.

“Absolutely all-day battery life where you just don’t have to bring your power brick at all anymore,” Kirk Skaugen, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group, said of laptops built with the company’s upcoming Haswell processor.

While macroeconomic troubles have weighed on sales for several quarters, the growing popularity of tablets and smartphones is seen as an existential threat to the PC industry.

Anxious to breathe new life into PCs and prove a recent slump in sales is not permanent, Intel and PC manufactures in Las Vegas this week will display a range of ultra thin laptops, dubbed Ultrabooks, and hybrid devices that convert into tablets.

On a stage flanked by dozens of tablets and laptops with rotatable and detachable screens, Skaugen said Intel’s newly available chip based on its current Ivy Bridge architecture sips just 7 watts of energy, more efficient than a previously planned 10 watts of power.

NO-EXCUSES PHONE

The Santa Clara, California-based company has long been king of the PC chip market, particularly through its historic “Wintel” alliance with Microsoft Corp, which led to breathtakingly high profit margins and an 80 percent market share.

But it has struggled to adapt its powerful PC processors for battery-powered smartphones and tablets, a fast-growing market led by Qualcomm Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, ARM Holdings Plc and others.

Mike Bell, who co-heads Intel’s mobile and wireless business, introduced a new processor platform, code named Lexington, targeted at low-priced smartphones in emerging markets like Latin America and Asia.

“It’s designed to be a no-excuses multimedia phone,” he said.

Acer, Safaricom and Lava have already agreed to use the new chips in future phones, Bell said.

A handful of manufacturers and telecom carriers in Europe and Asia have already launched smartphones using Intel’s Medfield processors this year. Google’s Motorola Mobility in September launched the Razr i in Europe and Latin America as the first handset of a multi-device agreement between the two groups.

But Intel is fighting an uphill battle in a market where chips made using technology from ARM Holdings have become ubiquitous. Intel also has yet to release a chip for 4G telephone networks, keeping it out of the running for major smartphone design wins in the United States.

Sales of smartphone processors soared 58 percent in the third quarter, but Intel had just 0.2 percent of that market, according to a recent report from Strategy Analytics.

By comparison, worldwide PC shipments fell 8.6 percent in the third quarter, according to IDC.

Intel said 3D cameras would be integrated in future Ultrabooks to allow consumers to use gestures and facial recognition to control their devices. Upcoming Ultrabooks will also include voice interaction, Skaugen said.

“We’re basically going to give the PC the same human senses we’ve all had,” he said.

Intel and other tech companies are increasingly looking for ways to let PCs and other devices use cameras, GPS chips, microphones and other kinds of sensors to predict their users’ needs.

“It’s this combination of computer devices doing things before you ask them to do it, in that they’re smart enough to know based on their sensors,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

(Reporting By Noel Randewich; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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“Downton Abbey” sets PBS record with 7.9 million viewers

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – British period drama “Downton Abbey” scored rave reviews and a record 7.9 million viewers for public broadcasting channel PBS as viewers tuned in to watch a wedding and financial calamity during the award-winning show’s third season U.S. premiere on Sunday.

Fans witnessed the wedding of Matthew and Lady Mary Crawley, after two seasons in which viewers were kept wondering if they would ever tie the knot.

According to PBS, the ratings for season 3 quadrupled the average viewings for PBS primetime shows, which usually is 2 million viewers, and nearly doubled the premiere of the second season, which kicked off with 4.2 million viewers in January 2012.

The joy over the wedding was offset by news that Lord Grantham, the owner of the grand estate, had lost his fortune to bad investments.

American actress Shirley MacLaine debuted in the role of the feisty Martha Levinson, the mother of Lord Grantham’s American wife Cora. She entertained viewers with her witty exchanges with Downton matriarch Violet Crawley, played by Maggie Smith.

“Downton Abbey,” created by British screenwriter Julian Fellowes, has become both a critical success and a cult favorite among its many U.S. fans.

It has won seven Emmy awards and will be going into Sunday’s Golden Globe awards with three nominations in major television categories including best drama series.

Vanity Fair, which live-tweets humorous comments during the show, leads a strong online following of fans who discuss aspects of the show ranging from dresses and dances to the dramatic twists.

“The Subcommittee on Preventing Edith’s Happiness resolves to kill off her boyfriend, put thumbtacks in her evening shoes,” the magazine tweeted, referring to the unlucky-in-love Lady Edith Crawley.

PBS said that the show garnered nearly 100,000 tweets during its Sunday premiere.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Eric Walsh)

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Oil Sand Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level

Todd Korol/Reuters

An oil sands mine Fort McMurray, Alberta.

OTTAWA — The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed.

For the study, financed by the Canadian government, the researchers set out to develop a historical record of the contamination, analyzing sediment dating back about 50 years from six small and shallow lakes north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the center of the oil sands industry. Layers of the sediment were tested for deposits of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, groups of chemicals associated with oil that in many cases have been found to cause cancer in humans after long-term exposure.

“One of the biggest challenges is that we lacked long-term data,” said John P. Smol, the paper’s lead author and a professor of biology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. “So some in industry have been saying that the pollution in the tar sands is natural, it’s always been there.”

The researchers found that to the contrary, the levels of those deposits have been steadily rising since large-scale oil sands production began in 1978.

Samples from one test site, the paper said, now show 2.5 to 23 times more PAHs in current sediment than in layers dating back to around 1960.

“We’re not saying these are poisonous ponds,” Professor Smol said. “But it’s going to get worse. It’s not too late but the trend is not looking good.” He said that the wilderness lakes studied by the group were now contaminated as much as lakes in urban centers.

The study is likely to provide further ammunition to critics of the industry, who already contend that oil extracted from Canada’s oil sands poses environmental hazards like toxic sludge ponds, greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of boreal forests.

Battles are also under way over the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move the oil down through the western United States and down to refineries along the Gulf Coast, or an alternative pipeline that would transport the oil from landlocked Alberta to British Columbia for export to Asia.

The researchers, who included scientists at Environment Canada’s aquatic contaminants research division, chose to test for PAHs because they had been the subject of earlier studies, including one published in 2009 that analyzed the distribution of the chemicals in snowfall north of Fort McMurray. That research drew criticism from the government of Alberta and others for failing to provide a historical baseline.

“Now we have the smoking gun,” Professor Smol said.

He said he was not surprised that the analysis found a rise in PAH deposits after the industrial development of the oil sands, “but we needed the data.” He said he had not entirely expected, however, to observe the effect at the most remote test site, a lake that is about 50 miles to the north.

Asked about the study, Adam Sweet, a spokesman for Peter Kent, Canada’s environment minister, emphasized in an e-mail that with the exception of one lake very close to the oil sands, the levels of contaminants measured by the researchers “did not exceed Canadian guidelines and were low compared to urban areas.”

He added that an environmental monitoring program for the region announced last February 2012 was put into effect “to address the very concerns raised by such studies” and to “provide an improved understanding of the long-term cumulative effects of oil sands development.”

Earlier research has suggested several different ways that the chemicals could spread. Most oil sand production involve large-scale open-bit mining. The chemicals may become wind-borne when giant excavators dig them up and then deposit them into 400-ton dump trucks.

Upgraders at some oil sands projects that separate the oil bitumen from its surrounding sand are believed to emit PAHs. And some scientists believe that vast ponds holding wastewater from that upgrading and from other oil sand processes may be leaking PAHs and other chemicals into downstream bodies of water.

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American Delegation Arrives in North Korea on Controversial Private Trip

David Guttenfelder/Associated Press

Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, arrived in Pyongyang on Monday.

SEOUL, South Korea — Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, led a private delegation including Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, to North Korea on Monday, a controversial trip to a country that is among the most hostile to the Internet.

Kim Kwang Hyon/Associated Press

Bill Richardson with journalists on Monday after arriving in Pyongyang, North Korea. Mr. Richardson, who has visited the North several times, called his trip a private humanitarian mission.

Mr. Richardson, who has visited North Korea several times, called his four-day trip a private humanitarian mission and said he would try to meet with Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-old South Korean-born American citizen who was arrested on charges of “hostile acts” against North Korea after entering the country as a tourist in early November.

“I heard from his son who lives in Washington State, who asked me to bring him back,” Mr. Richardson said in Beijing before boarding a plane bound for Pyongyang. “I doubt we can do it on this trip.”

In a one-sentence dispatch, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency confirmed the American group’s arrival in Pyongyang, calling it “a Google delegation.”

Mr. Richardson said his delegation planned to meet with North Korean political, economic and military leaders, and to visit universities.

Mr. Schmidt and Google have kept quiet about why Mr. Schmidt joined the trip, which the State Department advised against, calling the visit unhelpful. Mr. Richardson said Monday that Mr. Schmidt was “interested in some of the economic issues there, the social media aspect,” but did not elaborate. Mr. Schmidt is a staunch proponent of Internet connectivity and openness.

Except for a tiny portion of its elite, North Korea’s population is blocked from the Internet. Under its new leader, Kim Jong-un, the country has emphasized science and technology but has also vowed to intensify its war against the infiltration of outside information in the isolated country, which it sees as a potential threat to its totalitarian grip on power.

Although it is engaged in a standoff with the United States over its nuclear weapons and missile programs and habitually criticizes American foreign policy as “imperial,” North Korea welcomes high-profile American visits to Pyongyang, billing them as signs of respect for its leadership. It runs a special museum for gifts that foreign dignitaries have brought for its leaders.

Washington has never established diplomatic ties with North Korea, and the two countries remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce.

But Mr. Richardson’s trip comes at a particularly delicate time for Washington. In the past weeks, it has been trying to muster international support to penalize North Korea for its launching last month of a long-range rocket, which the United States condemned as a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions banning the country from testing intercontinental ballistic missile technology.

North Korea has often required visits by high-profile Americans, including former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, before releasing American citizens held there on criminal charges. Mr. Richardson, who is also a former ambassador to the United Nations, traveled to Pyongyang in 1996 to negotiate the release of Evan Hunziker, who was held for three months on charges of spying after swimming across the river border between China and North Korea.

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Critics slam Chuck Hagel's likely nomination as Defense secretary

WASHINGTON—

— With former Sen. Chuck Hagel's nomination as Defense secretary imminent, conservatives denounced his views on Israel and Iran as out of step with mainstream foreign policy, underscoring the difficulty he is likely to face winning Senate confirmation.

An administration official said Sunday that Hagel — a decorated Vietnam veteran, a Republican and a former two-term senator from Nebraska — would be nominated Monday to succeed Leon E. Panetta. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House planning.

The nomination is likely to set up a bruising confirmation fight. Critics on all sides already have been complaining about Hagel, with Republicans leading the charge.

Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) predicted that Hagel would be "the most antagonistic secretary of Defense toward the state of Israel in our nation's history" and called it an "in-your-face nomination."

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume described the choice as "very peculiar," saying on "Fox News Sunday" that Hagel did not have "a particularly distinguished record."

And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), while promising Hagel would get a "fair hearing," said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he would get "tough questions" in a confirmation process.

Hagel is viewed with suspicion by many in his party for past comments he has made calling on Israel to negotiate with Palestinians and for his opposition to some sanctions aimed at Iran. Since his possible nomination was floated late last year, he has come under attack by conservatives.

He also has been criticized on the left for a remark he made in 1998 that a Clinton administration nominee for ambassador was "openly, aggressively gay." Hagel recently apologized for that comment and pledged support for lesbian and gay military families.

Hagel, an Army veteran with two Purple Hearts, said in a recent interview with the history magazine Vietnam: "I'm not a pacifist. I believe in using force, but only after a very careful decision-making process. ... I will do everything I can to avoid needless, senseless war."

In the Senate, Hagel voted to give the George W. Bush administration authority to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but later he harshly criticized the conduct of both wars, irritating fellow Republicans and making him popular with Democrats critical of those wars.

Critics have focused on his calls for direct negotiations with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that the U.S. and Israel refuse to deal with directly, and his votes against some Iran sanctions.

And Hagel rankled many with comments he made in a 2006 interview with author and former State Department Mideast peace negotiator Aaron David Miller. "The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here," Hagel said, but "I'm a United States senator. I'm not an Israeli senator."

Graham told CNN on Sunday, "Quite frankly, Chuck Hagel is out of the mainstream of thinking, I believe, on most issues regarding foreign policy."

He added, "This is an in-your-face nomination by the president to all of us who are supportive of Israel."

Miller, who had interviewed Hagel for a book he was writing on Mideast peace negotiations, wrote recently that attempts to use his comment about the "Jewish lobby" to paint Hagel as anti-Semitic were "shameful and scurrilous." He noted that in the same interview, Hagel emphasized "shared values and the importance of Israeli security."

Backers say Hagel showed his support for Israel by voting repeatedly to provide it with military aid and by calling for a comprehensive peace deal with Palestinians that should not include any compromise regarding Israel's Jewish identity and that would leave Israel "free to live in peace and security."

They note that he also supported three major Iran sanctions bills: the Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act of 1998, the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 and the Iran Freedom Support Act of 2006.

When Hagel left the Senate four years ago, McConnell praised his "clear voice and stature on national security and foreign policy," ABC's George Stephanopoulos reminded the Senate minority leader on "This Week."

But McConnell declined to reiterate that view Sunday.

"He's certainly been outspoken in foreign policy and defense over the years," he said. "The question we will be answering, if he's the nominee, is: Do his views make sense for that particular job? I think he ought to be given a fair hearing, like any other nominee, and he will be."

matea.gold@latimes.com

Christi Parsons in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

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Alarm in Albuquerque Over Plan to End Methadone for Inmates

Mark Holm for The New York Times

Officials at New Mexico’s largest jail want to end its methadone program. Addicts like Penny Strayer hope otherwise.

ALBUQUERQUE — It has been almost four decades since Betty Jo Lopez started using heroin.

Her face gray and wizened well beyond her 59 years, Ms. Lopez would almost certainly still be addicted, if not for the fact that she is locked away in jail, not to mention the cup of pinkish liquid she downs every morning.

“It’s the only thing that allows me to live a normal life,” Ms. Lopez said of the concoction, which contains methadone, a drug used to treat opiate dependence. “These nurses that give it to me, they’re like my guardian angels.”

For the last six years, the Metropolitan Detention Center, New Mexico’s largest jail, has been administering methadone to inmates with drug addictions, one of a small number of jails and prisons around the country that do so.

At this vast complex, sprawled out among the mesas west of downtown Albuquerque, any inmate who was enrolled at a methadone clinic just before being arrested can get the drug behind bars. Pregnant inmates addicted to heroin are also eligible.

Here in New Mexico, which has long been plagued by one of the nation’s worst heroin scourges, there is no shortage of participants — hundreds each year — who have gone through the program.

In November, however, the jail’s warden, Ramon Rustin, said he wanted to stop treating inmates with methadone. Mr. Rustin said the program, which had been costing Bernalillo County about $10,000 a month, was too expensive.

Moreover, Mr. Rustin, a former warden of the Allegheny County Jail in Pennsylvania and a 32-year veteran of corrections work, said he did not believe that the program truly worked.

Of the hundred or so inmates receiving daily methadone doses, he said, there was little evidence of a reduction in recidivism, one of the program’s main selling points.

“My concern is that the courts and other authorities think that jail has become a treatment program, that it has become the community provider,” he said. “But jail is not the answer. Methadone programs belong in the community, not here.”

Mr. Rustin’s public stance has angered many in Albuquerque, where drug addiction has been passed down through generations in impoverished pockets of the city, as it has elsewhere across New Mexico.

Recovery advocates and community members argue that cutting people off from methadone is too dangerous, akin to taking insulin from a diabetic.

The New Mexico office of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes an overhaul to drug policy, has implored Mr. Rustin to reconsider his stance, saying in a letter that he did not have the medical expertise to make such a decision.

Last month, the Bernalillo County Commission ordered Mr. Rustin to extend the program, which also relies on about $200,000 in state financing annually, for two months until its results could be studied further.

“Addiction needs to be treated like any other health issue,” said Maggie Hart Stebbins, a county commissioner who supports the program.

“If we can treat addiction at the jail to the point where they stay clean and don’t reoffend, that saves us the cost of reincarcerating that person,” she said.

Hard data, though, is difficult to come by — hence the county’s coming review.

Darren Webb, the director of Recovery Services of New Mexico, a private contractor that runs the methadone program, said inmates were tracked after their release to ensure that they remained enrolled at outside methadone clinics.

While the outcome was never certain, Mr. Webb said, he maintained that providing methadone to inmates would give them a better chance of staying out of jail once they were released. “When they get out, they won’t be committing the same crimes they would if they were using,” he said. “They are functioning adults.”

In a study published in 2009 in The Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, researchers found that male inmates in Baltimore who were treated with methadone were far more likely to continue their treatment in the community than inmates who received only counseling.

Those who received methadone behind bars were also more likely to be free of opioids and cocaine than those who received only counseling or started methadone treatment after their release.

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Looking Ahead: Economic Reports for the Week of Jan. 7

ECONOMIC REPORTS Data to be released this week includes consumer credit for November (Tuesday); weekly jobless claims and wholesale trade inventories for November (Thursday); and the trade deficit for November and import prices for December (Friday).

CORPORATE EARNINGS Companies scheduled to release quarterly earnings reports include Monsanto and Alcoa (Tuesday); Constellation Brands (Wednesday); and Wells Fargo (Friday).

IN THE UNITED STATES On Tuesday, the Consumer Electronics Show begins in Las Vegas and will run through Friday, and the JPMorgan Health Care Conference starts in San Francisco and will take place through Thursday.

On Thursday, Herbalife executives will respond to accusations by the investor William A. Ackman that their company operates a pyramid scheme.

On Friday, the Agriculture Department will issue its monthly crop report.

OVERSEAS On Tuesday, the European Union statistics office will report on euro area unemployment.

On Thursday, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England will issue decisions about interest rates, and the United Nations will release its global food price index for December.

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Fraud allegations swirl around firm run by two L.A. candidates

Two would-be candidates for the Los Angeles school board have accused a campaign consulting firm — run by two contenders for city office — of botching their efforts to get on the ballot for the March primary election.

One of the school board aspirants, Scott Folsom, filed a complaint with the district's attorney's office last month alleging fraud and possible forgery. Franny Parrish, the other would-be candidate, said she would comply with any probe into the firm, Henry, Law & Associates. The two say they hired the company to gather the signatures of registered voters for petitions that would qualify them for the ballot.

James T. Law, a principal in the firm, acknowledged that he accepted work from Folsom and Parrish. He denied wrongdoing and blamed his clients for failing to make the ballot. Law is the only challenger against incumbent Joe Buscaino to represent City Council District 15. Analilia Joya, who works closely with Law, is one of six candidates for the open job of city controller. She did not respond to requests for comment.

Candidates typically hire firms to gather the 500 registered voters' signatures required for the ballot. Those voters must live in the area a candidate hopes to represent. It is time-consuming, often difficult work — it involves knocking on doors and approaching people outside shopping centers or grocery stores. People sometimes give false information or refuse to sign.

In a letter to authorities and in interviews, Folsom said he hired the signature gatherers in response to a solicitation from a man who identified himself as David Johnson.

Folsom agreed to pay Johnson $2,000 up front and $1,500 plus expenses on the back end, according to the contract, which Folsom provided to The Times and included in his letter to the district attorney. Parrish said she agreed to pay a flat fee of $2,100 for at least 500 valid signatures, although she also was gathering some signatures herself. She provided scans of checks made out to Law.

In a series of text messages that Folsom saved, Johnson kept pushing back delivery and postponing appointments. Folsom saved a telephone message from Johnson and another from a woman who identified herself as Joya, about signing a form for the work. Folsom said the woman met him at a Denny's near the city's election office on the deadline day, Dec. 5, to assure him that her associate was on the way with the petitions.

Johnson was late but did turn over petitions, Folsom said. The city later determined, however, that of 704 signatures, 289 were not from the right district, 93 were not of registered voters, 85 had invalid addresses and 31 had other problems.

According to the contract, Law's company guaranteed between 500 and 1,000 valid signatures; only 206 passed muster.

Several attempts by The Times to reach Law failed, but responses then came via text message, from the cell number that Johnson had given as his own to Folsom and Parrish.

In these text messages, someone identifying himself as Law blamed the disappointed candidates.

"The allegations are not true," he wrote. "It's slander and harassment. My company worked very hard for those two candidates. Out of six candidates my company helped out, those two are the only one[s] that did not make the ballot. Mr. Folsom gave us the wrong ZIP Codes and Franny did not hand me her work until the last four days left."

He wouldn't name the other four candidates, citing "disclosure agreements."

Folsom said he was never asked to provide ZIP Codes.

Law also said that he collected 767 signatures for Parrish and that she failed to meet his worker at an agreed upon location.

Parrish said she waited in vain for Johnson on the deadline day at the election office, where, she said, he'd promised to show up after postponing other meetings. Her account was confirmed by Folsom and another witness, who were with Parrish in the election office when Johnson allegedly called and texted to say he was on his way. She also forwarded those text messages to The Times.

Parrish added that she hired Johnson two weeks before the deadline.

Law and Joya gathered enough signatures to qualify themselves for the ballot — a task that Law allegedly delegated to another signature contractor, Vernon Van. Van claims Law didn't pay him. Law, in turn, claims that Van "ripped me off."

The address of Henry, Law & Associates is a private mailbox in Torrance, rented Oct. 27, according to a manager. The firm made one monthly payment of $15 and recently lost the box for failing to pay rent.

Even though both are on the city ballot, neither Law nor Joya is currently a registered voter in L.A. County, records show. And Law's listed residence is in Torrance. Either issue would disqualify a successful candidate from taking office. The Torrance address is associated with several businesses: Open Door Christian Lifestyle; the United States of America Kingdom of Tzedakah Charitys; and Titus Landscaping.

In election filings, Joya describes herself as an employee of Open Door Christian Lifestyle.

The person behind the Torrance business entities appears to be named Titus Henry. The relationship between Henry, Law and Johnson is unclear. The former school board candidates and Van said that based on descriptions they exchanged, they are convinced that at least two of the three are the same person.

When asked to sort out these identities, Law declined to respond.

The L.A. County district attorney's office would confirm only that "an allegation of fraud regarding petition signatures" is under review.

Without Folsom and Parrish, the dynamics of two pivotal school board races were altered.

Folsom was among the candidates endorsed by the teachers union in District 2, where the union hopes to push school board President Monica Garcia into a runoff. Four challengers remain in that race. Folsom served for years on an important school bond oversight committee, and both he and Parrish were longtime PTA leaders.

Parrish had hoped to represent District 4, in which two candidates remain: incumbent Steve Zimmer and challenger Kate Anderson. Zimmer is backed by the teachers union. Parrish works as a library aide, advocated for disabled students and served as a negotiator in her union's contract negotiations.

howard.blume@latimes.com

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We Salute the First Baby Senator

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: Claire McCaskill and How to Attack the Opponent You’re Rooting For

Here’s our suggestion to improve the (already pretty hilarious) swearing-in process for U.S. Senators: Each new member of Congress must bring a cute baby.

RELATED: Rand Paul Doesn’t Want You to Go to Jail for Smoking Pot

RELATED: Larry David’s Two-Minute Guide to Etiquette

Apparently the BBC has decided to market a line of lunch boxes specifically made for hungry polar bears. They are still working out the kinks: 

RELATED: Homer Simpson, Fox News Pundit; Books After Dark

RELATED: Bo Obama Stays On Message; Sarah Palin Can See HBO in Her House

The Golden Globes will be bittersweet this year. Don’t get us wrong — we’re really excited to watch Amy Poehler and Tina Fey entertain us. But we’ll also be also really sad when this thing is over because it means the end of these promos:

And finally, it’s Friday. And it’s time to dance. Enjoy your weekend. 

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Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.

Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.

The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.

New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.

The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.

Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.

The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.

Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.

“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.

Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.

“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.

As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.

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