Fontana school police are armed with semiautomatic rifles

Police officers in the Fontana Unified School District were armed recently with semiautomatic rifles, drawing sharp criticism and sparking an effort to ban such weapons on school campuses.

The Colt military-style rifles, which cost about $1,000 each, are kept in safes when officers are on campus and will be used only in "extreme emergency cases" like the massacre in Newtown, Conn., Supt. Cali Olsen-Binks said.

The district purchased the rifles in October and received them in December, before the tragedy in Newtown, where a gunman killed 26 people — 20 of them children — at an elementary school. The shooting sparked debate on whether armed school guards could prevent these types of tragedies.

The purchase was not spurred by a specific event, Fontana Unified School District police Chief Billy Green said. The rifles are designed to increase shooting accuracy and provide the 14 officers with more effective power against assailants wearing body armor, Green said, adding that those capabilities are necessary for officers to stop a well-armed gunman.

"If you know of a better way to stop someone on campus that's killing children or staff members with a rifle, I'd like to hear it," he said. "I don't think it's best to send my people in to stop them with just handguns."

"I hope we would never have to use it," Green said. "But if we do, I'd like them to be prepared."

Several other school districts have similar weapons but policies differ on whether they are brought on campus or left in patrol car trunks or administration buildings.

Fontana school police bought the guns for about $14,000, which fell below the threshold that requires school board approval. School board members were not informed until after the purchase.

Board member Leticia Garcia said the police chief and superintendent should have alerted the five-member board and held a public hearing on the issue. She said arming officers with such weapons is a policy matter and should have been decided by the entire school district community, especially in light of the ongoing debate around the country.

Garcia, whose son attends Fontana High School, said she is working with local state legislators to draft a bill that would keep school police departments from taking these types of weapons onto campuses.

"We're turning our schools into a militarized zone," she said.

But the Fontana school superintendent said she believes it's a necessary evil to have the guns on campus to keep the 40,000-plus students and staff members safe. Officers have gone through training for the weapons, Olsen-Binks said.

"It balances providing that community-oriented openness at schools without compromising any kind of security for students and employees," she said.

Although she stopped short of saying the matter should have been put before the board, Olsen-Binks said doing so might have helped ease concerns.

"Having an opportunity for more community discussion is always a good thing," she said.

The rifles are kept either in the trunk of the police officer's vehicle or in a safe on campus.

Still, Garcia worries that bringing such a weapon on campus could lead to it falling into the wrong hands. An officer could be overtaken or someone could gain access to the safe, she said.

"Teenagers can get creative," Garcia said.

Green, however, dismissed that concern as unrealistic.

The Los Angeles Unified School District's police department has issued "patrol rifles" to officers on an as-needed basis, the district said in a statement. The department does not disclose the number of rifles given to officers.

Most San Diego Unified School District police officers have AR-15 rifles, Lt. Joe Florentino said. But the department did not buy the weapons; rather, officers were allowed to purchase their own — which many did, he said.

The rifles are kept in the trunk of the officer's vehicle and are not brought into school buildings. Although there is no policy yet, bringing the rifles into buildings is something the department is looking at, Florentino said.

"From a safety standpoint, we have police officers that want the weapons close by," he said. "If we keep them in the vehicle trunk, they would have to run to the car and grab it if they need it."

stephen.ceasar@latimes.com

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Apple’s iPhone disappointment fans doubt on growth

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc missed Wall Street’s revenue forecast for the third straight quarter after iPhone sales came in below expectations, fanning fears that its dominance of the mobile industry was slipping.

Shares of the world’s largest tech company fell 10 percent to $ 463 in after-hours trade, wiping out some $ 50 billion of its market value – nearly equivalent to that of Hewlett-Packard and Dell, combined.

On Wednesday, Apple said it shipped a record 47.8 million iPhones in the December quarter, up 29 percent from the year-ago period. But that lagged the 50 million that analysts on average had projected.

Expectations heading into the results had been subdued by news of possible production cutbacks by some component suppliers in Asia, triggering fears that demand for the iPhone, which accounts for half of Apple‘s revenue, and the iPad could be slowing.

But many investors clung to hopes for a repeat of years of historical outperformance, analysts said.

“It’s going to call into question Apple‘s dominance in the space. It’s still one of the strong players, the others being Samsung and Google. It’s still a two-horse race, but Android continues to grow rapidly,” said Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu.

“If you step back a bit, it’s clear they shipped a lot of phones. But the problem is the high expectations that investors have. Apple‘s conservative guidance highlights the concerns over production cuts coming out of Asia recently.”

Apple projected revenue of $ 41 billion to $ 43 billion in the current, second fiscal quarter, lagging the average Wall Street forecast of more than $ 45 billion.

Fiscal first quarter revenue rose 18 percent to $ 54.5 billion, below the average analyst estimate of $ 54.73 billion, though earnings per share of $ 13.81 beat the Street forecast of $ 13.47, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Apple also undershot revenue targets in the previous two quarters, and these results will prompt more questions on what Apple has in its product pipeline, and what it can do to attract new sales and maintain its growth trajectory, analysts said.

Net income of $ 13.07 billion was virtually flat with $ 13.06 billion a year earlier on higher manufacturing costs. The year-ago quarter also had an extra week compared to this year.

Gross margins consequently slid to 38.6 percent, from 44.7 percent previously.

“You can’t just keep rolling out iPhones and iPads and think that everybody needs a new one,” said Jeffrey Gundlach, who runs DoubleLine Capital LP, the $ 53 billion bond firm. “The mini? What is that all about? It is a slightly smaller iPad — so what? So that is our new definition of innovation?”

“There are plenty of competitors like Samsung and other legitimate competitors like them,” added Gundlach, one of the highest-profile Apple bears. He maintains a $ 425 price target.

Shares of several of Apple‘s suppliers crumbled. Chip suppliers Skyworks and Cirrus Logic both fell more than 6 percent. Qualcomm Inc slipped 1.8 percent.

CHINA IS NEXT BIG GROWTH DRIVER

Apple shares are down nearly 30 percent from a record high in September, in part on worries that its days of hyper growth are over and its mobile devices are no longer as popular.

Intense competition from Samsung‘s cheaper phones – powered by Google’s Android software – and signs that the premium smartphone market may be close to saturation in developed markets have also caused a lot of investor anxiety.

Meanwhile, sales of the iPad came in at 22.9 million in the fiscal first quarter, roughly in line with forecasts.

On the brighter side, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer told Reuters that iPhone sales more than doubled in greater China – a region that Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has vowed to focus on as its next big growth driver.

The company will begin detailing results from that country going forward. Revenue from the region totaled $ 7.3 billion, up 60 percent from the year-ago December quarter.

“These results were OK, but they definitely raised a few questions,” said Shannon Cross, analyst with Cross Research. “Gross margin trajectory looks fine so that’s a positive and cash continues to grow. But I think investors are going to want to know what Apple plans to do with growing cash balance.”

“And other questions are going to be around innovation and where the next products are coming from and what does Tim Cook see in the next 12 to 18 months.”

ADDRESSING PRODUCTION RUMORS

In an unusual move for Apple, which typically does not respond to speculation, Cook addressed the production cutback rumors at length on the conference call and questioned the accuracy of rumors about its plans.

Media reports earlier this month said the company is slashing orders for iPhone 5 and iPad screens and other components from its Asian suppliers.

“Even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to accurately interpret the data point as to what it meant for our overall business, because the supply chain is very complex,” he said, adding that Apple has multiple sources for components.

“Yields might vary. Supplier performance can vary. The beginning inventory positions can vary. There’s just an inordinately long list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what’s going on,” he said.

Apple‘s initial iPhone and iPad mini sales were hurt by supply constraints, but Cook expects supply to balance demand for the iPad mini this quarter. He also acknowledged that iPad was cannibalizing its high-margin Macintosh computers, but said it was a huge opportunity for the company.

“On iPad in particular, we have the mother of all opportunities here, because the Windows market is much, much larger than the Mac market is,” he said. And I think it is clear that it’s already cannibalizing some.”

In another departure from tradition, Apple intends to tweak the way it both reports results and publishes forecasts.

Apart from breaking out results from China, the company also will no longer provide a single revenue or gross margin outlook. From Wednesday, it began providing the range it expects to hit, rather than the often-ludicrously conservative estimates that Apple was once notorious for.

The new policy took many by surprise.

“Before people could always ignore the guidance,” said Dan Niles, Chief Investment Officer of AlphaOne Capital Partners, LLC. “Apple is telling investors that they need to pay attention to the guidance and you can’t ignore it, which is basically what we all did in the past.”

(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr and Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Jennifer Ablan in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr and Edwin Chan)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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“Thrift Shop” bests Timberlake’s “Suit & Tie” on Billboard chart

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Justin Timberlake’s first single in five years – “Suit & Tie” – fell short of sales expectations for its first week and was kept from the top spot on the Billboard digital songs chart by a novelty rap act.

“Suit & Tie,” which features rapper Jay-Z, sold 314,000 downloads, according to figures released on Wednesday by Nielsen SoundScan.

Industry experts had expected about 350,000 downloads for Timberlake’s widely publicized single, which precedes a new album later in 2013 – his first since 2006.

But Timberlake, 31, who has been focused on building a Hollywood acting career, was dressed down on the digital chart by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop” featuring rapper Wanz, which sold some 341,000 downloads in the week ending on January 20.

It was the second consecutive week atop the digital songs chart for the novelty rap song about eschewing designer clothes for a second-hand look.

Timberlake will perform his first concert in five years during a private Super Bowl-related event in New Orleans on February 2, DirectTV announced on Wednesday. The invitation-only concert will not be shown on TV, the satellite providers said.

On the Billboard 200 album chart, rapper A$ AP Rocky’s debut album “Long.Live.A$ AP” entered at the top spot, selling about 139,000 units last week.

The New York rapper outpaced the child-focused compilation “Kidz Bop 23,” also in its first week, that features children performing recent pop hits.

“Kidz Bop 23″ sold 78,000 units last week and the series of albums have sold some 13.3 million albums since its 2001 debut.

TOMLIN TUMBLES

The soundtrack to musical-film “Pitch Perfect” landed at the No. 3 spot on the Billboard 200 and was followed by country-pop starlet Taylor Swift’s “Red” and singer Bruno Mars’ “Unorthodox Jukebox” in the top five.

The soundtrack to the stage-to-screen adaptation of musical “Les Miserables” fell to sixth from third, failing to capitalize on three big wins at the Golden Globe Awards, Hollywood’s second-biggest prize to the Oscars, on January 13.

Last week’s top album, “Burning Lights” by Christian singer-songwriter Chris Tomlin, tumbled to No. 22 on the chart. The album’s sharp fall was expected as opening week sales were largely boosted by pre-orders through churches and a national Christian convention, Billboard said.

Album sales for the past week totaled 4.97 million, down 2 percent from the same week last year, but year-to-date album sales were up 2 percent from 2012, totaling 16.32 million so far in 2013.

Some 27.82 million songs were downloaded last week, which was flat compared with the same week last year. A total of 91.17 million songs have been downloaded in 2013, a rise of 2 percent.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Mohammad Zargham)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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Media Decoder Blog: A Resurgent Netflix Beats Projections, Even Its Own

6:14 p.m. | Updated For all those who have doubted its business acumen, Netflix had a resounding answer on Wednesday: 27.15 million.

That’s the number of American homes that were subscribers to the streaming service by the end of 2012, beating the company’s own projections for the fourth quarter after a couple of quarters of underwhelming results.

Netflix’s growth spurt in streaming — up by 2.05 million customers in the United States, from 25.1 million in the third quarter — was its biggest in nearly three years, and helped the company report net income of $7.9 million, surprising many analysts who had predicted a loss.

The results reflected just how far Netflix has come since the turbulence of mid-2011, when its botched execution of a new pricing plan for its services — streaming and DVDs by mail — resulted in an online flogging by angry customers. Investors battered its stock price, sending it from a high of around $300 in 2011 to as low as $53 last year.

“It’s risen from the ashes,” said Barton Crockett, a senior analyst at Lazard Capital Markets. “A lot of investors have been very skeptical that Netflix will work. With this earnings report, they’re making a strong argument that the business is real, that it will work.”

Investors, cheered by the results, sent Netflix shares soaring more than 35 percent in after-hours trading Wednesday. The stock had ended regular trading at $103.26.

Netflix’s fourth-quarter success was a convenient reminder to the entertainment and technology industries that consumers increasingly want on-demand access to television shows and movies. Streaming services by Amazon, Hulu and Redbox are all competing on the same playing field, but for now Netflix remains the biggest such service, and thus a pioneer for all the others.

“Our growth and our competitors’ growth shows just how large the opportunity is for Internet TV, where people get to control their viewing experience,” Netflix’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, said in a telephone interview Wednesday evening.

Questions persist, though, about whether Netflix will be able to attract enough subscribers to keep paying its ever-rising bills to content providers, which total billions of dollars in the years to come. The company said on Wednesday that it might take on more debt to finance more original programs, the first of which, the political thriller “House of Cards,” will have its premiere on the service on Feb. 1. Netflix committed about $100 million to make two seasons of “House of Cards,” one of five original programs scheduled to come out on the service this year.

“The virtuous cycle for us is to gain more subscribers, get more content, gain more subscribers, get more content,” Mr. Hastings said in an earnings conference call.

The company’s $7.9 million profit for the quarter represented 13 cents a share, surprising analysts who had expected a loss of 12 cents a share. The company said revenue of $945 million, up from $875 million in the quarter in 2011, was driven in part by holiday sales of new tablets and television sets.

Netflix added nearly two million new subscribers in other countries, though it continued to lose money overseas, as expected, and said it would slow its international expansion plans in the first part of this year.

The “flix” in Netflix, its largely forgotten DVD-by-mail business, fared a bit better than the company had projected, posting a loss of just 380,000 subscribers in the quarter, to 8.22 million. The losses have slowed for four consecutive quarters, indicating that the homes that still want DVDs really want DVDs.

On the streaming side, Netflix’s retention rate improved in the fourth quarter, suggesting growing customer satisfaction.

Asked whether the company’s reputation had fully recovered after its missteps in 2011, Mr. Hastings said, “We’re on probation at this point, but we’re not out of jail.”

He has emphasized subscriber happiness, even going so far as to say on Wednesday that “we really want to make it easy to quit” Netflix. If the exit door is well marked, he asserted, subscribers will be more likely to come back.

The hope is that original programs like “House of Cards” and “Arrested Development” will lure both old and new subscribers to the service. Those programs, plus the film output deal with the Walt Disney Company announced in December, affirm that Netflix cares more and more about being a gallery — with showy pieces that cannot be seen anywhere else — and less about being a library of every film and TV show ever made.

“They’re morphing into something that people understand,” said Mr. Crockett of Lazard Capital.

Mr. Hastings said this had been happening for years, but that it was becoming more apparent now to consumers and investors.

Mr. Hastings’s letter to investors brought up the elephant in the room, the activist investor Carl C. Icahn, who acquired nearly 10 percent of the company’s stock last October. Mr. Icahn, known for his campaigns for corporate sales and revampings, stated then that Netflix “may hold significant strategic value for a variety of significantly larger companies.”

Netflix subsequently put into place a shareholder rights plan, known as a poison pill, to protect itself against a forced sale by Mr. Icahn.

The company said on Wednesday, “We have no further news about his intentions, but have had constructive conversations with him about building a more valuable company.”

Factoring in the stock’s 30 percent rise since November and the after-hours action on Wednesday, Mr. Icahn’s stake has now more than doubled in value, to more than $700 million from roughly $320 million.

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Potential jurors questioned for Bell corruption trial

A lingering venom spilled out on questionnaires given to potential jurors for the trial of six former Bell city leaders charged with raiding the treasury in the small, working-class town.

"My mind is made up, I can't be impartial. I'm disgusted by the behavior," wrote one juror, who was excused Tuesday by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge.

Another potential juror described being "riveted and repulsed by the greed and audacity" and had a "negative description of the case from news reporting."

The woman wrote that the ex-city officials had "raped constituents" and filled their own pockets. Whenever she heard the word "Bell," she wrote, she felt nauseated.

"Normally I think I can be a fair and impartial juror but as soon as I heard the judge mention Bell, I couldn't help forming opinions already."

One potential juror pumped her fist when she was excused.

But as jury selection wore on, and potential jurors were pressed about their recollection of the small-town scandal, memories seemed to fade, details rendered unclear.

The jury selection process is the warm-up act to a trial that has its roots in a municipal corruption case that exploded more than two years ago when investigators alleged that elected leaders and ranking administrators had been using the city's treasury as their "personal ATMs" by paying themselves extravagant salaries, loaning out city money and imposing illegal taxes on a small, largely immigrant town.

Former council members Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal are charged with drawing annual salaries of nearly $100,000, paychecks they allegedly fattened by drawing stipends for serving on boards and commissions that rarely, if ever, met. Former administrators Robert Rizzo and Angela Spaccia will stand trial at a later date.

About 150 potential jurors were asked to fill out questionnaires last week, and on Tuesday, nearly 65 had been dismissed. Attorneys said they expect the trial to begin Thursday.

According to Mirabal's attorney, the six defense attorneys had met with a jury consultant and spent the previous day going over the questionnaires together.

"It helped us weed out people who admitted they were predisposed to guilt," Alex Kessel said.

On Tuesday attorneys pooled their individual time to question jurors and attempted to gauge any preconceived notions about the case. Some jurors said they knew nothing about the defendants and the charges against them, while others said they were only vaguely familiar with the city of Bell. Few had a good understanding of the case.

"When I read about this it was a really long time ago and I don't really know all the details," said one woman. She said she had been outraged by Rizzo and felt city officials had neglected to do their duty, but couldn't remember much else.

"I don't know the names and I don't remember the details so, no, I don't have an opinion of the people sitting here," the potential juror said.

Those who said they had read news accounts of the defendants were pressed for their reaction.

"I thought oh my God, they did something wrong," said one woman when asked about her initial response.

Cole's attorney Ronald Kaye replied, "That's the media, that's the L.A. Times. Do you think the L.A. Times got it right?"

"Not always," the woman said.

The questionnaire had asked jurors about their main source of news and if they had an opinion of the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the case.

Some people who had worked in local government or with government officials said they couldn't help but contrast the defendants with their own colleagues who they couldn't imagine would even be accused of such a crime.

Although one man said he been a public employee for nearly three decades and had an "extremely negative, emotional response" to the news about Bell, nearly all the jurors said they had the ability to be impartial.

One woman seemed to sum up jurors' sentiments:

"To be honest I haven't paid very much attention," she said. "I just kind of dismissed it and, lo and behold, here I am."

corina.knoll@latimes.com

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FTC study taking aim at online marketing of booze

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans this summer to recommend ways that the alcoholic beverage industry can better protect underage viewers from seeing its advertisements online.

Distillers, brewers and wineries pour millions of dollars into brand promotion on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, and industry critics contend they are not doing enough to prevent young consumers from receiving these messages.

“We’re doing a deep dive on how they’re using the Internet and social media,” said Janet Evans, a lawyer with the FTC, which is conducting a year-long study due to be released by early summer. “We’re focusing on underage exposure.”

She would not elaborate on any potential recommendations that might come out of the study, which began in April 2012.

The FTC is reviewing data from 14 big producers, Evans said, including Beam Inc, the maker of Jim Beam, Diageo Plc, home to Johnnie Walker, and Constellation Brands Inc, which makes Robert Mondavi and Ravenswood wines.

The FTC report “is something we take seriously and place at high priority,” said Karena Breslin, director for digital marketing at Constellation.

The FTC has made two requests for information since the study began, she said.

The regulatory agency has not said it intends to impose restrictions on liquor company social media advertising but it can make recommendations to the industry.

The FTC is empowered to file suit to ensure consumers are protected from deceptive marketing practices, Evans said, but she stressed that studies of this nature are meant to promote better self-regulation, not provide a basis for a case.

Industry executives say alcohol makers and distributors voluntarily adhere to the same industry-set standard for marketing to underage viewers on social media sites that the industry set for its ads on TV and other media. That requires that at least 71.6 percent of an audience consists of adults 21 and older.

“No one in their right mind would want to advertise to people who can’t legally buy their product,” said Frank Coleman, senior vice president for Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the trade group that sets the industry’s advertising codes.

Coleman also cited recent data showing the audiences for Facebook and Twitter are skewed heavily towards viewers who are above the legal drinking age.

“According to Nielsen’s latest data, the demographic audience for Facebook is 83.5 percent 21 years and older, and for Twitter it is 85 percent,” Coleman said.

In June 2011, DISCUS revised its code upwards to 71.6 percent from 70 percent, after the FTC recommended it review the standard to better reflect U.S. Census population data.

Industry critics, including David Jernigen, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns Hopkins University, and Sarah Mart, research director of the advocacy group Alcohol Justice, contend the industry didn’t go far enough and should raise the standard further.

Jernigen said it needs to be at least 85 percent to effectively protect youth, so there would be no more than 15 percent exposure to the underage drinking population.

“The industry says its self-regulating but it’s ineffective and social media opens up a whole new set of problems because their ads are everywhere,” said Mart.

Coleman said the group now requires members to install age-checking tools via instant messaging as a gateway to Twitter feeds and other branded Web platforms that ask the user for a birth date before admitting them.

In the first nine months of 2012, beer, wine and spirits manufacturers spent an estimated $ 35 million for paid Web display advertising, but industry executives estimate many millions more were spent on website creation, video production for platforms like Google’s YouTube and social media marketing efforts.

“We’ve significantly adjusted more money to digital for online video, websites, Facebook and Twitter content,” said Kevin George, global chief marketing officer for Jim Beam, which spends 30 percent of its media spend for online outlets, up from 10 percent in 2008, he said.

Many companies are expanding their digital staff. Wine maker Constellation hired Breslin three years ago to initiate digital marketing and now has a team of five reporting to her.

Many alcoholic beverage companies flocked to Facebook because it requires users to post their birth dates when signing up.

Last year Twitter partnered with Buddy Media to offer a screening tool that sends a direct message to fans who click on an alcoholic brand. The message sends the fan a link to a site that asks for date of birth.

Salesforce.com bought Buddy Media last June, which is now folding the platform into its marketing cloud portfolio.

Health advocates and industry critics are crying foul. “Facebook and other interactive platforms are poorly monitored and not well age-protected,” said Jernigen of Johns Hopkins University. “Anyone can say they’re 21 and click yes.”

(Reporting by Susan Zeidler; Editing by Ron Grover, Alden Bentley and Phil Berlowitz)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Walhberg: Boy band union is strong for summer tour

NEW YORK (AP) — For Donnie Wahlberg it’s not a matter of why now, rather “why not?”

The recording artist-turned-actor was referring to the news of a major tour with his New Kids on the Block, who’ll be joined this summer on “The Package Tour” by 98 Degrees and Boyz II Men.

“The state of the boy band union is strong,” Wahlberg joked Tuesday. “Even though technically we’re not really boy bands, but we’re OK with that, so we’ll accept it.”

The three bands sold millions of records in the 1980s and ’90s and helped usher in a wave of vocal groups that continues today.

The Boston-based NKOTB formed in 1984 and amassed ten Top 20 hits. They broke up in 1994 but got back together after a 14-year hiatus. Wahlberg said he feels the break coincided with the maturation of their fan base.

“They needed time to have families and husbands and children and get jobs and live their life,” Wahlberg said.

But now he sees his band’s music as a complement to the fans’ adult lives.

“We created an outlet for them to feel good about themselves and tap into that youthfulness that had been put to bed for a long time … you may be 40, but the euphoria of it makes you feel 14 all over again,” Wahlberg said.

The band also announced a new single, “Remix (I Like The),” which will be released Jan. 28, and a new album, “10,” which is out April 2.

That music will be a bit more mature than some of the band’s previous material, member Joey McIntyre said.

“It is about the decisions that a grown man makes and goes through, as opposed to singing songs like ‘Popsicle,’” he said.

Nathan Morris, one of the members of Boyz II Men, known since the early 1990s for such hits as “I’ll Make Love to You” and “End of the Road,” said the tour is going to be all about performing.

“If the boy band thing is attached, it’s wonderful, but for all of us in here, we’re ready to get out there and sing and perform,” he said. “That’s just what we do.”

Though 98 Degrees is the youngest group on the bill, it has been apart the longest, 12 years.

“So we’re excited to get back together and doing what we do,” member Nick Lachey said. “We feel reinvigorated by our bond and by our group, so we’re very excited by that.”

Wahlberg, who stars as Detective Danny Reagan on the CBS television series “Blue Bloods,” said the boy bands’ tour, kicking off May 31 in Uncasville, Conn., and continuing into July with more than 30 dates, is going to be “great.”

“You have three acts that have lots of records, lots of fans,” he said. “Fans that are anxious to sing those records and anxious to sing other bands’ records, too.”

___

John Carucci covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://www.twitter.com/jcarucci_ap

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Well: Have a Health Question? Ask Well

The Well section of The New York Times is starting a new online featured called Ask Well. If you have a question about fitness, nutrition, illness or family health, the staff of The New York Times Health section is ready to help you find the answer.

How do you solve the problem of back pain caused by sitting in an office chair all day? Do you still need the flu shot even if you’ve had the flu? What’s the best way to heal tennis elbow? Those are some of the questions we’ve already answered in Ask Well.

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Tara Parker-Pope speaks about Ask Well.

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All questions submitted to Ask Well will be reviewed by the health staff. We’ll post selected questions and let readers vote on those they would most like to see answered. You can ask a question, vote for your favorites and read answered questions on the Ask Well Questions Page.

While Ask Well is not a source for personal medical advice (only your doctor can give you that), we can offer readers health information from the experts and guide you to various resources to help you make informed decisions. So let’s get started. Tell us what’s on your mind, and Ask Well will provide the answers.

Ask Well

Your health questions answered by Times journalists and experts.

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DealBook: Allergan to Buy MAP Pharmaceuticals for $958 Million

Allergan has agreed to pay nearly $1 billion to acquire MAP Pharmaceuticals and gain full control of its experimental treatment for migraine headaches, the two companies announced Tuesday night.

The purchase price of $25 a share in cash is a 60 percent premium over MAP’s closing price on Tuesday of $15.58 a share. The deal, worth $958 million in total, suggests that Allergan has great faith that MAP’s new migraine treatment will win regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration by the agency’s deadline of April 15.

The two companies said the deal had been unanimously approved by the boards of both companies and was expected to close in the second quarter.

Allergan already had the rights to help market the migraine drug, known as Levadex, in the United States and Canada, but after an acquisition it would have control of all the profits and costs globally.

Allergan is most known for Botox, a form of the botulinum toxin, which is used for cosmetic purposes as well as medical ones, including to treat chronic migraines with the goal of reducing the frequency of headaches. By contrast, Levadex is meant to treat migraines after they occur, making it complementary to Botox, Allergan said.

Levadex is actually a new form of an old drug, known as dihydroergotamine, or DHE, which has been used to treat severe migraine attacks for decades. DHE is typically given by intravenous infusion, requiring patients to get to a hospital at a time when many would rather remain in a dark quiet room.

Levadex, by contrast, is breathed into the lungs using an inhaler similar to one used for asthma, allowing people to use it at home.

The Food and Drug Administration declined to approve Levadex last March, though MAP said the rejection was related to manufacturing and questions about use of the inhaler, not the safety and efficacy of the drug. It resubmitted its application, with additional data and answers to questions from the F.D.A., in October.
Levadex would be the first approved product for MAP, which is based in Mountain View, Calif.

Allergan said that if Levadex is approved by April, the transaction will be dilutive to earnings per share by about 7 cents in 2013 and become accretive in the second half of 2014.

Allergan was advised by Goldman Sachs and the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. MAP was advised by Centerview Partners and the law firm Latham & Watkins.

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