L.A. County coroner changes Natalie Wood's cause of death

Through three decades of fevered tabloid speculation and whispers of a deeper story, the official account never changed: Natalie Wood drowned accidentally. The 43-year-old star of "West Side Story," who couldn't swim, had been drinking the night before she was found floating face-down in frigid waters off Santa Catalina Island.

When the L.A. County Sheriff's Department reopened the case in November 2011, around the 30th anniversary of her death, skeptics questioned the timing and doubted whether there was anything new to be learned.

Instead of quieting speculation, however, the investigation has raised fresh — and probably unanswerable — questions about one of Hollywood's most enduring puzzles.

PHOTOS: Natalie Wood | 1938-1981

In a report released Monday, the coroner, Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, questioned the original 1981 findings and changed Wood's cause of death from "accidental drowning" to "drowning and other undetermined factors."

The coroner's report cited unexplained fresh bruising on the actress' right forearm, left wrist and right knee, along with a scratch on her neck and a superficial scrape on her forehead. Officials said the wounds open the possibility that she was assaulted before drowning.

"This Examiner is unable to exclude non-accidental mechanism causing these injuries," the report said, adding that evidence suggested the bruising occurred before Wood entered the water.

Sheriff's investigators said that the Wood case remains open but that detectives have reached an impasse. One law enforcement source who has worked on the case said detectives may never have a conclusive answer given that "evidence is stale — with fading memories and incomplete forensics."

The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing, said there was not enough evidence to classify the case a crime, much less a homicide.

Experts said it was highly unusual for coroners to contradict the autopsy findings performed by their own office. Michael Baden, a former New York examiner and noted trial expert witness, said that although both examinations of Wood's body looked at the same evidence, the new report found the bruising to be far more significant — enough to change the cause of death.

"Sathyavagiswaran knows by issuing this opinion that he will unleash criticism on his predecessor and questions over how it handled a celebrity death three decades ago," Baden said. "He knows in saying this he has criticized [former coroner] Dr. [Thomas] Noguchi and the office back in 1981."

Noguchi did not return calls for comment.

The new report noted "conflicting statements" about when Wood disappeared, and whether she had argued with her husband, actor Robert Wagner, who — along Christopher Walken, her co-star in the film "Brainstorm" — were aboard the 60-foot yacht where she was last seen alive Nov. 28, 1981.

Hours before her death, authorities said, the three actors had had dinner at Doug's Harbor Reef restaurant and then returned to the yacht, called the Splendour, where they drank and an argument ensued between Walken and Wagner.

According to the new autopsy report, Wood went missing about midnight, and an analysis of her stomach contents placed her death around that time. The report said Wagner placed a radio call to report her missing at 1:30 a.m.

Roger Smith, the L.A. County rescue boat captain who helped pull Wood's body from the water, said he did not receive a call to look for her until after 5 a.m.

The original investigators believed Wood sustained her bruises after falling off the yacht and struggling to pull herself from the water into a rubber dinghy, whose starboard side bore scratch marks that seemed consistent with that theory.

But in his report, Sathyavagiswaran noted that investigators did not take nail clippings from Wood's body to determine whether she had made the scratch marks, and the dinghy was no longer available to be examined. The coroner believes Wood died soon after entering the water.

In an interview Monday, Smith said he wondered whether Wood might have been found alive if the rescue effort had gotten underway sooner. "There's no question in my mind that he just delayed calling for us," Smith said, referring to Wagner.

Smith said he and a deputy examined Wood's body but saw no bruises."We went over her very closely," said Smith, 68. "When we looked at her, we didn't see any bruises. We were looking for needle marks or anything like that — we didn't see anything."

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TSX off 10-month high, energy weakness offsets RIM jump

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index finished short of a 10-month high on Monday as investor optimism for Research In Motion Ltd shares over the upcoming launch of its BlackBerry 10 devices was offset by falling energy shares.

Weakness in the materials sector, which includes mining stocks, also added pressure, while volatile oil prices were a drag on the energy sector. The two heavyweight sectors kept an otherwise positive index in check.

RIM shares extended a 13-percent gain made on Friday. The stock added 10.44 percent to C$ 14.70 and helped the information technology sector gain 2.48 percent.

“The investor confidence is brought about simply because of hope, and hope that the new BlackBerry 10 is going to be an answer to their prayers,” said Fred Ketchen, director of equity trading at ScotiaMcLeod.

“There has been some talk that this is a revival of RIM. We’ll have to wait and see,” he added.

The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> finished little changed, up a 0.91 of a point, or 0.01 percent, at 12,603.09. Earlier, it touched 12,636.68, its highest since March 5, 2012.</.gsptse>

The index, which marked its fifth consecutive day of gains, swung back and forth between positive and negative territories in choppy trade.

“There’s a lot of indecisiveness out there. People don’t really know which way to go and you’re getting these markets that aren’t really doing much of anything,” said Julie Brough, vice president at Morgan Meighen & Associates.

Investors kept a close watch on the U.S. debt ceiling talks, seen as a significant catalyst for the markets, with hopes that a compromise will be reached. “There is reasonable optimism that it would be resolved,” Brough said.

The energy sector was down 0.5 percent, with Canadian Natural Resources Ltd slipping 1.81 percent to C$ 29.26 and Talisman Energy Inc falling 2.64 percent to C$ 11.78. Oil prices were volatile, with Brent crude rising to $ 112 on supply concerns.

Encana Corp shares dropped 2.31 percent to C$ 19.05 after the surprise resignation of the chief executive officer of Canada’s largest natural gas producer.

The three energy companies were the three biggest drags on the index.

Materials stocks, home to mining firms, was down 0.3 percent amid a slew of deals within the sector.

Miner Alamos Gold Inc said it will buy Aurizon Mines Ltd for about C$ 780 million ($ 793 million) in cash and stock to get access to Aurizon’s only operating gold mine, Casa Berardi, in northern Quebec. Aurizon shares jumped 34 percent to C$ 4.57, while Alamos Gold fell 11.94 percent to C$ 14.90.

Russia’s state uranium firm agreed to pay $ 1.3 billion to take Canada’s Uranium One Inc private, as the successor to the Soviet Union’s nuclear industry seeks to strengthen its grip on supplies. Uranium One’s stock rose 14.52 percent to C$ 2.76.

In other company news, shares of Harry Winston Diamond Corp rose 4.41 percent to C$ 14.90 on the company’s plans to sell its high-end watches-to-necklaces division to Swatch Group in a $ 750 million cash deal that expands the Swiss watchmaker’s luxury offering and lets the Canadian group concentrate on its diamond mines.

(Additional reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by James Dalgleish and Nick Zieminski)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Jodie Foster Kicks Open the Closet Door – What It Means for Gays in Hollywood

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Jodie Foster spoke frankly about her life as a lesbian Sunday night in a Golden Globes speech that thrust her into the center of the gay rights debate whether she likes it or not.

By deciding to address the subject of her sexuality in a spectacularly public setting, while also articulating a defense of personal privacy, she upended the casual way that other gay movie and music stars have been revealing their orientation in recent years.

They chose to nudge the closet door ajar by dropping the “g” word in interviews – like “The Big Bang Theory” star Jim Parsons – or by tweeting pictures of their significant others lounging on a couch, as “Kyle XY” actor Matt Dallas did last week.

But Foster made coming out a big deal again, shattering her glass closet, while never actually saying the words, “I’m gay.”

“When she decided to address her sexuality last night, however indirectly she did it, she was talking about gay rights at a critical moment,” Dustin Lance Black, the openly gay screenwriter behind “Milk,” said. “There is a case in that will be in front of the Supreme Court soon that will decide if gay and lesbian people will be allowed to marry. By coming out she sends a message to the country that we are everyone and everywhere. We’re your friends, your neighbors and we’re the people who have been entertaining you for the last 47 years.”

The speech itself was fascinating, because it was raw, but also grudging. Some gay activists have long agitated for Foster to speak frankly about being a lesbian and at various points, her speech seemed to be a challenge to any group who would seek to exploit her celebrity for its own ends. My life belongs to me, she seemed to be saying.

“I hope you’re not disappointed that there won’t be a big coming-out speech tonight because I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age, in those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family and co-workers and then gradually, proudly to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met,” Foster said, as her two sons, Charles, 14, and Kit, 12, looked on from the audience. “But now I’m told, apparently that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a prime-time reality show.”

Foster turned 50 last November and her discomfort with addressing her orientation may have been entangled in a different era in which being openly gay was a barrier that prevented actors and actresses from getting A-list roles. Over the past half century, acceptance of gays and lesbians has accelerated dramatically.

In a Pew survey conducted last October, 49 percent of respondents favored gay marriage, up from 39 percent four years earlier.

This greater tolerance has left stars like Foster and to a lesser extent people like CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who acknowledged that he was gay last summer after years of internet speculation, in an awkward position.

“It catches people like Jodie Foster in a bind,” said Larry Gross, the author of “Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing” who is also vice dean at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. “What happens to them is at a certain point the culture moved past them and they find themselves standing out there in a semi-opaque glass closet. Everybody in the world knew that she was gay and it was becoming an embarrassment.”

Foster tried to explain her hesitancy while accepting the Cecil B. DeMille career achievement award Sunday by saying that it was related to issues of personal privacy. She noted that she has been in the spotlight for half a century, but also implied that she was uncomfortable with the tabloid coverage of celebrities and their obsession to open their private lives to scrutiny in everything from prime time interviews to personal Twitter streams.

“If you had been a public figure from the time that you were a toddler, if you’d had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe you too might value privacy above all else,” she said. “Privacy. Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was.”

For the most part, the reaction among prominent members of the gay community has been positive, but there are some who insinuate that the relative safety in which Foster chose to address the issue had been fought and paid for by earlier generations of gay performers who opened up about their homosexuality at a time when their professional lives could have been snuffed out.

Wilson Cruz, the openly gay star of the 1990s drama “My So Called Life” and now a strategic giving officer at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said he was heartened by Foster’s remarks, but also conscious of her place in the history of the gay rights movement.

“I applaud anybody who opens up like that in a way that will effect million of people’s lives for the better,” he said. “One thing I did take umbrage with for personal reasons, is that I like to remember people who came out before it was safe. People like Harvey Fierstein, Ian McKellen and John Gielgud who risked their careers and their lives to do so.”

To that end, activists and public relations experts say that they do not anticipate Foster will be riding the main float at Gay Pride festivals anytime soon. Instead, they expect that after Sunday’s air-clearing, the actress will remain fiercely protective of her privacy – something she had done since John W. Hinckley Jr. said that he had tried to assassinate former President Ronald Reagan to impress her while she was still a college student.

“I don’t expect her to be the cover girl for gay and lesbian causes,” Howard Bragman, vice chairman of Reputation.com, and a publicist who has helped over a dozen actors with their coming out announcements, said. “She may show up to a few events, but I don’t think she will be that involved, and that’s fine.”

Bragman said that on the scale of coming out announcements, Foster’s ranked as a “duh.” Though she had never been explicit about her orientation, she hadn’t pretended to be a heterosexual. In fact, she had thanked her former partner Cydney Bernard as far back as 2007 at the Women in Entertainment Breakfast.

An industry awards gathering, though, is not the same thing as coming out on national television to an audience of 14.8 million viewers. Reaction to Foster’s statements erupted almost immediately on Twitter and on other social media sites, with some griping about her decision to couple her speech about her “modern family” with a plea for privacy.

To Bil Browning, a gay activist and the editor-in-chief of The Bilerico Project, that misses the point. Given Foster’s iconic roles in films like “The Silence of the Lambs,” not to mention her long-standing refusal to address the gay rumors, she had no choice but to command a global platform when the time came for her big reveal.

“Jodie Foster is somebody the gay community has always wanted to be an icon and she came out in a big way and now some people still aren’t satisfied,” Browning said. “Would they have been satisfied if she had just posted a picture of her girlfriend on Instagram? Given her status, I don’t think she would ever have been allowed to just come out casually.”

Gay activists and chroniclers of the movement say that the “coming out” process that has so bedeviled public figures like Foster may soon be an anachronism. As younger actors step into the spotlight, they will do so having grown up in a society that allows gays to serve openly in the military and is weighing the legality of permitting them to marry. The novelty of simply saying, “I’m gay,” could soon seem quaint.

“We’re on the verge of crossing or erasing what was an uncrossable line,” Gross said. “There’s a younger generation of actors, who have been out all their lives and can’t imagine the enforced rigmarole of going on fake dates and ducking questions about their sexuality, who are coming on the stage. Like the Berlin Wall, the barrier is crumbling in front of our eyes.”

Or as Foster herself said in her Golden Globes speech last night, “Change, you gotta love it.”

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Personal Best: Training Insights From Star Athletes

Of course elite athletes are naturally gifted. And of course they train hard and may have a phalanx of support staff — coaches, nutritionists, psychologists.

But they often have something else that gives them an edge: an insight, or even an epiphany, that vaults them from the middle of the pack to the podium.

I asked several star athletes about the single realization that made the difference for them. While every athlete’s tale is intensely personal, it turns out there are some common themes.

Stay Focused

Like many distance swimmers who spend endless hours in the pool, Natalie Coughlin, 30, used to daydream as she swam laps. She’d been a competitive swimmer for almost her entire life, and this was the way she — and many others — managed the boredom of practice.

But when she was in college, she realized that daydreaming was only a way to get in the miles; it was not allowing her to reach her potential. So she started to concentrate every moment of practice on what she was doing, staying focused and thinking about her technique.

“That’s when I really started improving,” she said. “The more I did it, the more success I had.”

In addition to her many victories, Ms. Coughlin won five medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, including a gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke.

Manage Your ‘Energy Pie’

In 1988, Steve Spence, then a 25-year-old self-coached distance runner, was admitted into the United States Long Distance Runner Olympic Development Program. It meant visiting David Martin, a physiologist at Georgia State University, several times a year for a battery of tests to measure Mr. Spence’s progress and to assess his diet.

During dinner at Dr. Martin’s favorite Chinese restaurant, he gave Mr. Spence some advice.

“There are always going to be runners who are faster than you,” he said. “There will always be runners more talented than you and runners who seem to be training harder than you. The key to beating them is to train harder and to learn how to most efficiently manage your energy pie.”

Energy pie? All the things that take time and energy — a job, hobbies, family, friends, and of course athletic training. “There is only so much room in the pie,” said Mr. Spence.

Dr. Martin’s advice was “a lecture on limiting distractions,” he added. “If I wanted to get to the next level, to be competitive on the world scene, I had to make running a priority.” So he quit graduate school and made running his profession. “I realized this is what I am doing for my job.”

It paid off. He came in third in the 1991 marathon world championships in Tokyo. He made the 1992 Olympic marathon team, coming in 12th in the race. Now he is head cross-country coach and assistant track coach at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. And he tells his teams to manage their energy pies.

Structure Your Training

Meredith Kessler was a natural athlete. In high school, she played field hockey and lacrosse. She was on the track team and the swimming team. She went to Syracuse University on a field hockey scholarship.

Then she began racing in Ironman triathlons, which require athletes to swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 miles and then run a marathon (26.2 miles). Ms. Kessler loved it, but she was not winning any races. The former sports star was now in the middle of the pack.

But she also was working 60 hours a week at a San Francisco investment bank and trying to spend time with her husband and friends. Finally, six years ago, she asked Matt Dixon, a coach, if he could make her a better triathlete.

One thing that turned out to be crucial was to understand the principles of training. When she was coaching herself, Ms. Kessler did whatever she felt like, with no particular plan in mind. Mr. Dixon taught her that every workout has a purpose. One might focus on endurance, another on speed. And others, just as important, are for recovery.

“I had not won an Ironman until he put me on that structure,” said Ms. Kessler, 34. “That’s when I started winning.”

Another crucial change was to quit her job so she could devote herself to training. It took several years — she left banking only in April 2011 — but it made a huge difference. Now a professional athlete, with sponsors, she has won four Ironman championships and three 70.3 kilometer championships.

Ms. Kessler’s parents were mystified when she quit her job. She reminded them that they had always told her that it did not matter if she won. What mattered was that she did her best. She left the bank, she said, “to do my best.”

Take Risks

Helen Goodroad began competing as a figure skater when she was in fourth grade. Her dream was to be in the Olympics. She was athletic and graceful, but she did not really look like a figure skater. Ms. Goodroad grew to be 5 feet 11 inches.

“I was probably twice the size of any competitor,” she said. “I had to have custom-made skates starting when I was 10 years old.”

One day, when Helen was 17, a coach asked her to try a workout on an ergometer, a rowing machine. She was a natural — her power was phenomenal.

“He told me, ‘You could get a rowing scholarship to any school. You could go to the Olympics,’ ” said Ms. Goodroad. But that would mean giving up her dream, abandoning the sport she had devoted her life to and plunging into the unknown.

She decided to take the chance.

It was hard and she was terrified, but she got a rowing scholarship to Brown. In 1993, Ms. Goodroad was invited to train with the junior national team. Three years later, she made the under-23 national team, which won a world championship. (She rowed under her maiden name, Betancourt.)

It is so easy to stay in your comfort zone, Ms. Goodroad said. “But then you can get stale. You don’t go anywhere.” Leaving skating, leaving what she knew and loved, “helped me see that, ‘Wow, I could do a whole lot more than I ever thought I could.’ ”

Until this academic year, when she had a baby, Ms. Goodroad, who is 37, was a rowing coach at Princeton. She still runs to stay fit and plans to return to coaching.

The Other Guy Is Hurting Too

In 2006, when Brian Sell was racing in the United States Half Marathon Championships in Houston, he had a realization.

“I was neck-and-neck with two or three other guys with two miles to go,” he said. He started to doubt himself. What was he doing, struggling to keep up with men whose race times were better than his?

Suddenly, it came to him: Those other guys must be hurting as much as he was, or else they would not be staying with him — they would be pulling away.

“I made up my mind then to hang on, no matter what happened or how I was feeling,” said Mr. Sell. “Sure enough, in about half a mile, one guy dropped out and then another. I went on to win by 15 seconds or so, and every race since then, if a withering surge was thrown in, I made every effort to hang on to the guy surging.”

Mr. Sell made the 2008 Olympic marathon team and competed in the Beijing Olympics, where he came in 22nd. Now 33 years old, he is working as a scientist at Lancaster Laboratories in Pennsylvania.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 15, 2013

An earlier version of this post misstated the year in which Steve Spence competed in the Olympic marathon, finishing 12th. It was 1992, not 2004. It also misidentified the institution at which he is a coach. It is Shippensburg University, not Shippensburg College.

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DealBook: The Banker Who Put His Faith in Armstrong

When Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey about his suspected use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs is broadcast on Thursday, an investment banker will most likely be watching it very carefully (and nervously): Thomas Weisel.

Mr. Weisel is a legend in finance and Silicon Valley. He was the banker behind Yahoo’s public offering and some of the biggest deals during the dot-com bubble. He famously sold the firm he ran, Montgomery Securities, for $1.2 billion in 1997. And he sold his next firm, Thomas Weisel Partners, for $300 million to Stifel Financial in 2010.

But it is Mr. Weisel’s extracurricular activity that connects him to the news of the moment: he was Mr. Armstrong’s biggest financial backer and the single individual most responsible for the money machine that propelled Mr. Armstrong’s career.

Depending on what Mr. Armstrong says in the interview about his purported doping, Mr. Weisel, who was a co-owner of the United States Postal Service Pro Cycling Team through a cycling management firm that he helped found called Tailwind Sports, could be subject along with his partners to lawsuits from corporate sponsors seeking millions of dollars. Already, there is a False Claims Act case contending that Mr. Armstrong and the team defrauded the Postal Service.

Perhaps more anxiety-producing is what Mr. Weisel may have known, or should have known, about a team that for years ran “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen,” according to the United States Anti-Doping Agency.

Its report last year did not name Mr. Weisel, but did say that Mr. Armstrong was assisted by a “small army of enablers, including doping doctors, drug smugglers, and others within and outside the sport and on his team.”

Mr. Armstrong is expected to admit to doping in an effort to persuade officials to lift his lifetime ban from Olympic sports. To do so, however, he would probably need to lay out in explicit detail how the program worked and implicate those who were part of it.

Mr. Weisel is currently not talking. When I called Mr. Weisel seeking a comment, his assistant told me: “He’s not commenting. And he’s not returning any calls.”

For a glimpse of the way Mr. Weisel thinks about performance-enhancing drugs in cycling, here’s what he had to say about the matter four years ago: “Handle the problem below the surface and keep the image of the sport clean,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “In the U.S. sports — baseball, basketball, football — most fans couldn’t care less.”

For Mr. Weisel, the team and Mr. Armstrong were an all-consuming passion. He would go every year to the Tour de France and at times travel in the team’s pacer car, occasionally yelling instructions to Mr. Armstrong over the radio system. He rode the team’s bus, ate meals with them and ultimately celebrated each year’s victory. On the wall of his office in San Francisco, he displayed Mr. Armstrong’s yellow jerseys.

Always the consummate banker, Mr. Weisel even tried to help Mr. Armstrong raise funds to buy the Tour de France itself. (The effort never went anywhere.)

Mr. Weisel’s name has occasionally come up in connection with accusations of doping on the team.

The wife of the famed cyclist Greg LeMond, Kathy, reportedly testified under oath in a deposition in 2006 that she had been told by one of Mr. Armstrong’s mechanics that Mr. Weisel, along with Nike, paid $500,000 though a Swiss bank account to the honorary president of the International Cycling Union to silence a drug test Mr. Armstrong purportedly failed in 1999.

Nike has vehemently denied the contention. So far, Mr. Weisel has not commented publicly.

When Floyd Landis, one of Mr. Armstrong’s former teammates, tested positive in 2006, he denied using performance-enhancing drugs under pressure from Mr. Armstrong. Soon after, Mr. Weisel set up the Floyd Fairness Fund with some of Tailwind’s co-owners to help pay his legal bills. Mr. Landis later confessed to doping in 2010.

Mr. Weisel, a longtime athlete who was a champion speed skater as a teenager, became a cycling enthusiast in the 1980s and took up racing himself. Sports dominated his life: he often said that he liked to hire athletes to work for him at the bank because of their competitive instincts. He was also the chairman of the United States Ski Team Foundation. In 1987, while still working as a banker, he started Montgomery Sports, to begin his first cycling team. In the early 1990s the team was called Subaru-Montgomery; it later became Montgomery-Bell (Bell Sports was a client that he took public) and then was renamed for the Postal Service. (Yahoo, another client, was also a sponsor of the team.)

According to a biography of Mr. Weisel, “Capital Instincts: Life as an Entrepreneur, Financier and Athlete,” he invested more than $5 million in the early teams and lost money on the investment. Mr. Armstrong was one of Mr. Weisel’s early riders for the Subaru-Montgomery team. He later left the team to join the Motorola team. After his bout with cancer, Mr. Armstrong joined what was the Postal Service team in 1998.

Tyler Hamilton, another former teammate of Mr. Armstrong, told “60 Minutes” that the team was pushing performance-enhancing drugs on its cyclists long before Mr. Armstrong battled cancer and then in 1998 rejoined the team.

“I remember seeing some of the stronger guys in the team getting handed these white lunch bags,” Mr. Hamilton said on “60 minutes” about when he joined the team in 1995. “So finally I, you know, started puttin’ two and two together and you know, basically there were doping products in those white lunch bags.”

Given how widespread the doping now appears to have been on the Postal Service team based on testimony of 11 teammates, and charges against the team’s director and several of its doctors, you wonder how much due diligence its founding banker did on the most prominent deal of his career.

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Live updates: 'Argo,' 'Les Miserables' win big at Golden Globes; Jodie Foster talks it up

The musical “Les Miserables” picked up three Golden Globes on Sunday night, including for best musical or comedy, lead actor for Hugh Jackman and supporting actress for Anne Hathaway.

Jackman’s win for playing Jean Valjean in the epic musical based on Victor Hugo's novel was seen as something as an upset, because Bradley Cooper was seen as a favorite for his role as a bipolar young man in the quirky romantic comedy “Silver Linings Playbook.” 

Daniel Day-Lewis won lead actor for playing the nation’s 16th president in “Lincoln.” Steven Spielberg’s historical epic went into the ceremony leading with seven nominations. Until Day-Lewis, the historical epic has been shut out.

PHOTOS: Nominees & winners | Red carpet

Jessica Chastain won for her role as a CIA operative who helps track down Osama bin Laden in “Zero Dark Thirty.” Earlier in the evening, Ben Affleck won a standing ovation, and a Golden Globe, for directing “Argo” — a bit of vindication, perhaps, for being overlooked for an Oscar nomination for the film about a CIA plot to rescue Americans trapped in Iran in 1980.

Since he was snubbed by the movie academy last week, he has won the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for best director for the film as well.

Affleck followed Jodie Foster, who took to the stage to give a ... retirement speech? A coming-out speech? It was hard to tell. She was receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement when she ramped up to confess that she was single ...  and seemed to sidestep directly addressing any questions about her sexual orientation.

Her acceptance speech at the 70th annual awards was also a rant in favor of privacy that brought many people to its feet. Foster noted that she has lived virtually her entire life in the public eye yet wanted to keep some things private. “I have given everything up there from the time I was 3 years old,” she said. “That is reality enough.” (Memo to Foster: Nothing will destroy an attempt at privacy like telling the world you want to keep your life private.)

PHOTOS: Golden Globes 2013 red carpet

She did thank her ex-partner and co-parent, Cydney Bernard, and suggested that she was embarking on Act 2 of her career. In some ways in sounded like a retirement speech. She seemed to say that from now on, she will only take projects that tap into her creativity.

Earlier in the evening, maverick filmmaker Quentin Tarantino was a surprise screenplay winner for “Django Unchained,” his controversial spaghetti Western set during the slavery era, beating out such favorites as the writers of “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Lincoln,” “Argo,” and “Silver Linings Playbook.”
“Wow, I wasn’t expecting this,” said an effusive Tarantino. “I'm happy to be surprised.”

Tarantino’s win meant one more loss for Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” which had gone into the ceremony leading with seven nominations. So far, the historical epic has been shut out.

Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway sang her way to a Golden Globe for supporting actress in a movie as the tragic Fantine in the musical “Les Miserables.”

With her pixie haircut and tasteful white gown, Hathaway was reminiscent of a young Audrey Hepburn, charming viewers as she thanked her co-stars, family and friends — and had a special thanks for Sally Field, nominated in the same category for “Lincoln.” She noted that Field forged a career that resisted typecasting — something Hathaway has struggled with as well. Field had played the Flying Nun on TV but went on to play Norma Rae and, more recently, Mary Todd Lincoln.

PHOTOS: Moments from the show

"Thank you for this lovely blunt object," Hathaway told the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.  “I'll forever use it as a weapon against self-doubt.”

Earlier in the evening, the movers and shakers of Hollywood leaped to their feet Sunday night to welcome former U.S. President Bill Clinton on stage at the 70th annual Golden Globe Awards as he introduced the clip for the best dramatic picture nominee “Lincoln.”

Clinton, whose appearance was a well-kept secret, noted the challenges the 16th president faced as he toiled to end the Civil War and slavery. “We’re all here tonight because he did it,” Clinton said.

Golden Globes 2013: Live updates | List | Red Carpet | Winners | Ballot | Show moments | Quotes

“Wow,” exclaimed co-host Amy Poehler as Clinton left the stage. “That was Hillary Clinton’s husband! That was exciting!”

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Iowa man, sister reunite thanks to Facebook, boy

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa man has been reunited with his sister 65 years after the siblings were separated in foster care thanks to a 7-year-old friend who searched Facebook.

Clifford Boyson of Davenport met his sister, Betty Billadeau, in person on Saturday. Billadeau drove up from her home in Florissant, Mo., with her daughter and granddaughter for the reunion at a hotel in Davenport.

Boyson, 66, and Billadeau, 70, both tried to find each other for years without success. They were placed in different foster homes in Chicago when they were children.

Then 7-year-old Eddie Hanzelin, who is the son of Boyson‘s landlord, got involved.

Eddie managed to find Billadeau by searching his mom’s Facebook account with Billadeau’s maiden name. He recognized the family resemblance when he saw her picture.

“Oh, my God,” Boyson said when he saw and hugged Billadeau.

“You do have a sister,” Billadeau said.

“You’re about the same height Mom was,” Boyson said.

Billadeau’s daughter, Sarah Billadeau, 42, and granddaughter, Megan Billadeau, 27, both wiped away tears and smiled during the reunion.

“He didn’t have any women in his life,” Sarah said. “We’re going to get that straightened out real fast.”

Boyson said he’s looking forward to visiting Billadeau near St. Louis and meeting more family.

“I’m hoping I can go and spend a week or two,” he said. “I want to meet the whole congregation. I never knew I had a big family.”

Eddie, who enjoys messing around with his family’s iPad, said he’s glad he was able to assist in making the reunion happen and that he learned about helping others at school.

“Clifford did not have any family, and family’s important,” the boy said.

Near the end of their tearful reunion Boyson and Billadeau presented Eddie with a $ 125 check in appreciation of his detective work.

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Christoph Waltz, Adele among early Golden Globe winners

BEVERLY HILLS (Reuters) – Austrian actor Christoph Waltz and Adele notched early wins at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, while “Lincoln” and Iran hostage thriller “Argo” were in a close race for the top honor, best movie drama.

Waltz carried off the Golden Globe for best supporting movie actor for his role as a dentist-turned-bounty hunter in Quentin Tarantino‘s quirky slavery Western “Django Unchained.”

“Let me gasp!” said Waltz. “It’s extraordinary … Quentin, my indebtedness and gratitude to you know no words.”

British Grammy-winning singer Adele, in her first major public appearance since giving birth in October, shared the trophy for performing and co-writing the best original song, “Skyfall,” for the James Bond movie of the same name.

Comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, hosting the Globes for the first time, got the ceremony off to a rollicking start with jokes about some of the top Hollywood stars in the audience, and impersonations of Johnny Depp and Julianne Moore.

Pointing out “Zero Dark Thirty” director Kathryn Bigelow at the glitzy dinner, Poehler said she had not been closely following the controversy over the torture scenes depicted in the thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

But, she added, “when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron,” Poehler quipped, to roars from the audience. Bigelow is the former wife of Cameron, director of blockbusters “Avatar” and “Titanic.”

“Meryl Streep is not here. I hear she has the flu, and I’m told she is amazing in it,” Poehler joked about the esteemed actress.

The Golden Globes, handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, has become the entertainment industry’s second-biggest awards show after February’s Oscars, or Academy Awards.

But its influence on the Academy Awards has been somewhat sapped this year because Oscar nominations were announced three days ago, instead of a week after the Globes awards show.

TV HONORS FOR ‘HOMELAND’

Unlike the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes also honor television dramas and comedies.

On Sunday they chose Showtime terrorism thriller “Homeland” as best drama series, and the show’s Damian Lewis as best actor for his role as a Marine returning from Iraq who is turned by Muslim extremists.

HBO’s drama “Game Change” about Sarah Palin’s 2008 run for U.S. vice president won best TV film, while Moore won for her portrayal of the polarizing former Alaska governor.

In the movie category, “Lincoln,” Spielberg’s account of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s battle to end slavery, went into the evening with a leading seven nominations.

But it faces strong competition from “Argo,” and “Django Unchained,” which started the evening with five nominations.

“Zero Dark Thirty” and visually arresting shipwreck tale “Life of Pi” round out the best dramatic film contest.

The Golden Globes also hand out prizes for best comedy or musical, where the lavish screen version of hit stage musical “Les Miserables” is facing strong competition from comedy “Silver Linings Playbook.”

Jennifer Lawrence won the award for best actress in a comedy movie for her role as a young widow in “Silver Linings Playbook.”

“Les Miserables” stars Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway hoped to take home a Golden Globe later on Sunday.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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Pharmacies Pressed to Meet High Demand for Flu Vaccine

Pharmacies around the city struggled to meet the demand for flu vaccinations on Sunday, a day after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared a public health state of emergency in response to a drastic increase in the number of flu cases this year.

Andrew Kelly/Reuters

People lining up for influenza vaccines at a New York drugstore.

In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Harlem and places in between, pharmacists were turning away people looking for the last line of defense against a virus that appears to be stronger than ever.

“Just to let you know, I can only take one more on the line,” said Carlos Collazo, a pharmacy intern who was called in to work at a Rite Aid in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on his day off. Those who missed the cut, like Tamika Louissaint and her sister, Doris, had to look elsewhere in the neighborhood or put off the injection at least another day, while drugstores waited for more shipments.

“I was a little bit nervous because of the warning,” Doris Louissaint said, referring to Mr. Cuomo’s declaration. “I’ll go someplace else with her.” The sisters walked away.

The city Health Department said it could not provide data on the availability of vaccines. There were shortages in some areas but they were not pervasive, a spokesman for the department said. Yet an informal telephone survey of a dozen drugstores in neighborhoods across the city found that all but three had run out of the vaccine. Most that had exhausted their supplies said they expected to replenish them by Monday.

The governor’s emergency declaration on Saturday temporarily suspended a state law that prohibits pharmacists from vaccinating children.

There have been nearly 20,000 cases of influenza reported across the state so far this season, according to state health officials. That is four times the number of positive laboratory tests reported last season.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said that the flu had reached epidemic levels nationwide, and local health officials said that was true for New York City as well.

At Mr. Collazo’s store, on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifth Street, more than 30 people had signed up for shots by early Sunday afternoon and nearly 60 had signed up on each of the two days before that. The number of vaccinations on a normal day is five.

People who get vaccinated every year joined newcomers prompted, or frightened, into action by the recent warnings.

“It has been insane,” Mr. Collazo said, adding that most people whom he turned away were polite and understanding.

Lucas Watkins missed his usual vaccination in the fall but decided to get the shot when his girlfriend’s boss came down with the flu. When he was turned away from the Rite Aid in Park Slope, his second failed attempt that day, he simply pivoted and left for another drugstore down the way, joining many others on the same parade.

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‘South Park’ Creators to Start Company, Important Studios

The creators of “South Park” are branching out beyond the underpants business.

Araya Diaz/Getty Images for Pantages Theater

From left, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Casey Nicholaw and Robert Lopez at the Los Angeles opening of “The Book of Mormon.”

Taking after the Gnomes on the animated series who ardently practice American capitalism, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have wooed investors and raised money to form their own production studio, which they plan to announce on Monday.

The new company is to be called Important Studios and hopes to be just that. With an estimated value of $300 million built on revenue from “South Park,” now in its 16th season on Comedy Central, and the Broadway megahit “The Book of Mormon,” the studio will have the power and money to approve television, movie and theater projects, including a big-screen version of “The Book of Mormon.”

On Friday, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone were putting together the final news release to announce their studio. They settled on this quip: “Having worked with several different studios over the years, we came to realize that our favorite people in the world are ourselves.”

The pair will join a short line of Hollywood players who have formed their own studios as a way to gain control over the creative, production and distribution process.

Merv Griffin created a television empire that he parlayed into real estate and other ventures. Dick Clark created Dick Clark Productions, which continued after his death last year. In 2006, the “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest created Ryan Seacrest Productions, which produces reality shows including “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and related spinoffs.

Lately, those independent studios have become ripe for acquisition as media conglomerates look to expand their library of intellectual property and consumer products. In October, Disney said it would pay $4.05 billion in cash and stock for Lucasfilm, the production studio created by George Lucas, and the company that produced “Star Wars” and its lineup of lucrative sequels and prequels.

Mr. Stone initially said he hoped Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks or Mr. Lucas’s Lucasfilm could serve as a model for Important Studios, then paused for a moment. “In some ways it’s a stupid comparison because they are gargantuan,” he said. “We want to be a smaller, more humble version of that.”

He continued: “If DreamWorks is Walmart, we are over here knitting sweaters.”

The “South Park” creators have made millions and attracted both fans and detractors in satirizing everything from Christmas (celebrating the holiday with singing fecal matter) to Islamist extremism (depicting Muhammad in a bear suit) and race relations (naming one of the only black characters on the series Token).

Important Studios will incorporate revenue from “South Park” and “The Book of Mormon,” as well as revenue from future projects. “The Book of Mormon,” one of the highest-grossing Broadway musicals in recent years, received nine Tony Awards in 2011 and has grossed more than $200 million.

That amount continues to grow because the New York production makes $1.6 million a week, according to the producers. A touring version of the show makes about $1.6 million a week, and another production in Chicago grosses $1.5 million a week. And the show is about to go into production in London.

Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker, who created the musical, are the largest shareholders in “The Book of Mormon,” followed by the film producer Scott Rudin and others. Among the first projects that Important Studios is likely to develop is a movie version of the musical.

Mr. Stone said he and his partner had been considering forming an independent studio for almost two years. “At first we thought we’d get some money from a hedge fund or a Russian oligarch or something,” Mr. Stone said, seemingly half-joking.

Instead, they teamed with a nascent Hollywood oligarch. Through their relationship with Ariel Z. Emanuel at the talent agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, they met Joseph Ravitch. Mr. Ravitch heads the Raine Group, a boutique merchant bank that focuses on entertainment, digital media and sports. (William Morris is an investor in Raine.)

Mr. Ravitch, a former Goldman Sachs banker who advised on the sale of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and helped the N.B.A. set up its business in China, hit it off with the two men. Raine invested about $60 million in Important Studios in exchange for a stake of just under 20 percent. Mr. Stone called Raine “big brains with big Rolodexes” and said “the money has some intellect with it.”

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