Whitney Houston's mother has words for Bobby Brown

NEW YORK (AP) — Cissy Houston has a few words, and a few more, for Bobby Brown.

In "Remembering Whitney," the mother of the late Whitney Houston writes that from the start she had doubted whether Brown was right for her daughter. And she thinks that Whitney might not have ended up so "deep" into drugs had they not stayed together.

"I do believe her life would have turned out differently," Houston writes. "It would have been easier for her to get sober and stay sober. Instead she was with someone who, like her, wanted to party. To me, he never seemed to be a help to her in the way she needed."

"Remembering Whitney" came out Tuesday, two weeks short of the first anniversary of Houston's death. She drowned in a hotel bathtub in Beverly Hills, Calif., at age 48. Authorities said her death was complicated by cocaine use and heart disease.

During a recent telephone interview, Houston said she has no contact with Brown and didn't see any reason to, not even concerning her granddaughter, Bobbi Kristina. She reaffirmed her comments in the book that Whitney Houston would have been better off without him. "How would you like it if he had anything to do with your daughter?" she asked.

Houston said she wanted the book published so the world would not believe the worst about her daughter. Cissy Houston, herself an accomplished soul and gospel singer who has performed with Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin, describes Whitney as a transcendent talent and vivacious and generous person known affectionately by her childhood nickname, "Nippy." But she acknowledges in the book that her daughter could be "mean" and "difficult" and questions at times how well she knew her.

"In my darkest moments, I wonder whether Nippy loved me," she writes. "She always told me she did. But you know, she didn't call me much. She didn't come see me as much as I hoped she would."

But, "almost always," Whitney Houston was "the sweetest, most loving person in the room."

Brown is portrayed as childish and impulsive, hot tempered and jealous of his wife's success. Cissy Houston describes a 1997 incident when Whitney sustained a "deep cut" on her face while on a yacht with Brown in the Mediterranean. Whitney insisted it was an accident; Brown had slammed his hand on a table, breaking a plate. A piece of china flew up and hit Whitney, requiring surgery to cover any possible scar.

The injury was minor, the effects possibly fateful.

"She seemed sadder after that, like something had been taken away from her," Houston writes.

For years, Whitney's drug problems had been only a rumor to her mother, who writes that concerns expressed by record executive Clive Davis were kept from her by her daughter and others. But by 2005 she had seen the worst. Houston remembers a horrifying visit to the Atlanta home of Brown and Houston, where the walls and doors were spray-painted with "big glaring eyes and strange faces." Whitney's face had been cut out from a framed family picture, an image Cissy Houston found "beyond disturbing." The next time Houston came to the house, she was joined by two sheriff's deputies who helped her take Whitney to the hospital.

"She was so angry at me, cursing me and up and down," she writes. "Eventually, after a good long while, Nippy did stop being angry at me. She realized that I did what I did to protect her, and she later told people that I had saved her life."

Brown and Whitney Houston divorced in 2007, after 15 years of marriage. When she learned that her daughter was leaving Brown, Cissy Houston was "extremely relieved" and "thanking God so much I'm sure nobody else could get a prayer in to Him."

Houston has no doubt that if Whitney were alive she would still be singing and making records. Houston said during her interview that she has seen "Sparkle," a remake of the 1970s movie that came out last summer and featured Whitney as the mother of a singing group struggling with addiction. Although Cissy Houston doesn't like movies about "drugs and all that kind of stuff," she was impressed by "Sparkle."

"I thought she was great in it and all the kids were great," says Houston, who adds that the "whole movie was hard to get through."

The book, too, was painful and her grief continues. She writes that sometimes she hears a doorbell ring and thinks it's Whitney, or sees a vase in a different place and wonders if her daughter is around. Some nights, Cissy Houston wakes up crying, not sure at first where she is.

"But then I get up out of bed, wipe my eyes, wash my face, and lie back down to my sleep. Because that is all I can do," she writes. "I am so grateful to God for giving me the gift of 48 years with my daughter. And I accept that He knew when it was time to take her."

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Well: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

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Jane Brody speaks about hypertension.

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¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

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How to Measure Your Blood Pressure

Mistaken readings, which can occur in doctors’ offices as well as at home, can result in misdiagnosis of hypertension and improper treatment. Dr. Samuel J. Mann, of Weill Cornell Medical College, suggests these guidelines to reduce the risk of errors:

¶ Use an automatic monitor rather than a manual one, and check the accuracy of your home monitor at the doctor’s office.

¶ Use a monitor with an arm cuff, not a wrist or finger cuff, and use a large cuff if you have a large arm.

¶ Sit quietly for a few minutes, without talking, after putting on the cuff and before checking your pressure.

¶ Check your pressure in one arm only, and take three readings (not more) one or two minutes apart.

¶ Measure your blood pressure no more than twice a week unless you have severe hypertension or are changing medications.

¶ Check your pressure at random, ordinary times of the day, not just when you think it is high.

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Estate in Woodside sells for $117.5 million

An estate has sold in the wealthy northern California community of Woodside for $117.5 million, making it one of the highest-priced residential sales ever in the U.S.

Woodside is known for its striking equestrian neighborhoods and billionaire Silicon Valley homeowners, among them Oracle Corp. chief Larry Ellison. It also is the site of Filoli, a landmark country estate designed by Willis Polk, with 16 acres of gardens and another 654 acres of grounds used in the filming of "Heaven Can Wait."

The seller was Tully Friedman, chief executive of Friedman, Fleischer and Lowe, a San Francisco-based private equity firm. The property was purchased in the name of SV Projects LLC.

The neoclassical-style house, built in 2005 and designed by architect Allan Greenberg, has 360-degree mountain views from its hilltop perch of nearly 9 acres. A swimming pool with a pool house, a tennis court and formal gardens surround the main house, which is featured in the book "Extraordinary Homes California: An Exclusive Showcase of the Finest Architects, Designers and Builders in California." Features include an ellipse-shaped garden room with a domed roof and several sets of double French doors.

Public records show the building size is 8,930 square feet and calculate the sale price at $13,158 per square foot.

The sale tops that of a mansion purchased by Russian investor Yuri Milner in 2011 for $100 million in nearby Los Altos Hills.

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Follow me @LATHotProperty

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Deadly nightclub fire in Brazil may have been started by flare

SAO PAULO, Brazil -- A fire at a nightclub in southern Brazil may have been caused by a flare lit on stage by a live band, according to witnesses to the blaze, which killed at least 231 people early Sunday.

[Updated: 10:55 a.m. PST, Jan. 27: Authorities now put the death toll at 232.]

The flare, which may have been part of an on-stage pyrotechnics display, caused the roof of the nightclub to catch fire, witnesses said. Most of the victims died from asphyxiation and smoke inhalation, police said.

Authorities in the southern city of Santa Maria spent the morning rescuing survivors and wading through the tragic aftermath of one of the most deadly fires in a decade. Earlier reports had placed the death toll higher. There were indications that it could still rise.

"There are so many bodies that we couldn't get all the way to the back of the nightclub," Lieutenant Moisés da Silva Fuchs told local media, referring to the now-destroyed Kiss club in Santa Maria, near the Uruguayan and Argentine borders.

The country awoke to troubling images of firefighters and civilians pulling people from the smoking building, and the news has shocked the country.

A tearful President Dilma Rousseff announced she had canceled plans to attend a summit in Chile and would be traveling instead to Santa Maria.

"I'd like to tell the population of our country, and of Santa Maria, that we are all together in this moment," Rousseff said.

Many of the victims were students at local universities, according to witnesses. Fire officials told the Globo television station that the main door was locked when the fire started, but that was denied by Lucas Cauduro Peranzoni, also known as DJ Bolinha, the resident DJ at the club.

"Everyone was pushing one another," Paranzoni said. "I breathed in some of that smoke and I felt woozy. I collapsed at the door and the security guards pulled me out."

At nightclubs in Brazil, it's common for patrons to accumulate a bar tab throughout the night, which they pay in order to be able to exit.

Several of the worst fires around the world in recent decades have been at nightclubs.

A welding accident reportedly set off a Dec. 25, 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.

At least 194 people died at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2004.

A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out on Dec. 5, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches, killing 152.

A nightclub fire in Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.

[For the Record, 10:55 a.m. PST, Jan. 27: A previous version of this post carried a Rio de Janeiro dateline. The post was filed from Sao Paulo.]

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More deaths of Afghan police; toll rises to 21

Key city in Mali reportedly falls to French military

Prison riot continues in Venezuela with 55 reported dead

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Guild gold: Actors gather for SAG's big night

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A puzzling Academy Awards season will sort itself out a bit more on Sunday with the Screen Actors Guild Awards, where top performers gather to honor their own in what often is a prelude for who'll go home with an Oscar.

Among nominees for the 19th annual guild awards are Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones for the Civil War epic "Lincoln"; Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway for the Victor Hugo musical adaptation "Les Miserables"; and Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Oscar recipient Robert De Niro for the oddball romance "Silver Linings Playbook."

De Niro and Jones are in an exclusive supporting-actors group where all five nominees are past Oscar winners. The others are Alan Arkin for the Iran hostage-crisis thriller "Argo," Javier Bardem for the James Bond adventure "Skyfall" and Philip Seymour Hoffman for the cult drama "The Master."

Honors from the actors union, next weekend's Directors Guild of America Awards and Saturday night's Producers Guild of America Awards — whose top honor went to "Argo" — typically help to establish clear favorites for the Oscars.

But Oscar night on Feb. 24 looks more uncertain this time after some top directing prospects, including Ben Affleck for "Argo" and Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty," missed out on nominations. Both films were nominated for best picture, but a movie rarely wins the top Oscar if its director is not also in the running.

Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" would seem the Oscar favorite with 12 nominations. Yet "Argo" and Affleck were surprise best-drama and director winners at the Golden Globes, and then there's Saturday's Producers Guild win for "Argo," leaving the Oscar race looking like anybody's guess.

The Screen Actors Guild honors at least should help to establish solid front-runners for the stars. All four of the guild's individual acting winners often go on to receive the same prizes at the Academy Awards.

Last year, the guild went just three-for-four — with lead actor Jean Dujardin of "The Artist" and supporting players Octavia Spencer of "The Help" and Christopher Plummer of "Beginners" also taking home Oscars. The guild's lead-actress winner, Viola Davis of "The Help," missed out on the Oscar, which went to Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady."

The guild also presents an award for overall cast performance, its equivalent of a best-picture honor. The nominees are "Argo," ''The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," ''Les Miserables," ''Lincoln" and "Silver Linings Playbook."

Yet the cast prize has a spotty record at predicting the eventual best-picture recipient at the Oscars. Only eight of 17 times since the guild added the category has the cast winner gone on to take the best-picture Oscar. "The Help" won the guild's cast prize last year, while Oscar voters named "The Artist" as best picture.

Such past guild cast winners as "The Birdcage," ''Gosford Park" and "Inglourious Basterds" also failed to take the top Oscar.

Airing live on TNT and TBS, the show features nine television categories, as well.

The SAG ceremony also includes awards for film and TV stunt ensemble. The film stunt nominees are "The Amazing Spider-Man," ''The Bourne Legacy," ''The Dark Knight Rises," ''Les Miserables" and "Skyfall."

Receiving the guild's life-achievement award is Dick Van Dyke, who presented the same prize last year to his "The Dick Van Dyke Show" co-star, Mary Tyler Moore. Van Dyke's award will be presented by his 1960s sitcom's creator and co-star, Carl Reiner, and Alec Baldwin.

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Online:

http://www.sagawards.com

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Brain Aging Linked to Sleep-Related Memory Decline

Scientists have known for decades that the ability to remember newly learned information declines with age, but it was not clear why. A new study may provide part of the answer.

The report, posted online on Sunday by the journal Nature Neuroscience, suggests that structural brain changes occurring naturally over time interfere with sleep quality, which in turn blunts the ability to store memories for the long term.

Previous research had found that the prefrontal cortex, the brain region behind the forehead, tends to lose volume with age, and that part of this region helps sustain quality sleep, which is critical to consolidating new memories. But the new experiment, led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, is the first to directly link structural changes with sleep-related memory problems.

The findings suggest that one way to slow memory decline in aging adults is to improve sleep, specifically the so-called slow-wave phase, which constitutes about a quarter of a normal night’s slumber.

Doctors cannot reverse structural changes that occur with age any more than they can turn back time. But at least two groups are experimenting with electrical stimulation as a way to improve deep sleep in older people. By placing electrodes on the scalp, scientists can run a low current across the prefrontal area, essentially mimicking the shape of clean, high-quality slow waves.

The result: improved memory, at least in some studies. “There are also a number of other ways you can improve sleep, including exercise,” said Ken Paller, a professor of psychology and the director of the cognitive neuroscience program at Northwestern University, who was not involved in the research.

Dr. Paller said that a whole array of changes occurred across the brain during aging and that sleep was only one factor affecting memory function.

But Dr. Paller said the study told “a convincing story, I think: that atrophy is related to slow-wave sleep, which we know is related to memory performance. So it’s a contributing factor.”

In the study, the research team took brain images from 19 people of retirement age and from 18 people in their early 20s. It found that a brain area called the medial prefrontal cortex, roughly behind the middle of the forehead, was about one-third smaller on average in the older group than in the younger one — a difference due to natural atrophy over time, previous research suggests.

Before bedtime, the team had the two groups study a long list of words paired with nonsense syllables, like “action-siblis” and “arm-reconver.” The team used the nonwords because one type of memory that declines with age is for new, previously unseen information.

After training on the pairs for half an hour or so, the participants took a test on some of them. The young group outscored the older group by about 25 percent.

Then everyone went to bed — and bigger differences emerged. For one, the older group got only about a quarter of the amount of high-quality slow-wave sleep that the younger group did, as measured by the shape and consistency of electrical waves on an electroencephalogram machine, or EEG. It is thought that the brain moves memories from temporary to longer-term storage during this deep sleep.

On a second test, given in the morning, the younger group outscored the older group by about 55 percent. The estimated amount of atrophy in each person roughly predicted the difference between his or her evening and morning scores, the study found. Even seniors who were very sharp at night showed declines after sleeping.

“The analysis showed that the differences were due not to changes in capacity for memories, but to differences in sleep quality,” said Bryce A. Mander, a postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley and the lead author of the study. His co-authors included researchers from the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco; the University of California, San Diego; and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The findings do not imply that medial prefrontal atrophy is the only age-related change causing memory problems, said Matthew P. Walker, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Berkeley and a co-author of the study.

“Essentially, with age, you lose tissue in this prefrontal area,” Dr. Walker said. “You get less quality deep sleep, and have less opportunity to consolidate new memories.”

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Rules to simplifying life come up short

Los Angeles-area author Matthew E. May has hit upon an attractive theme in his recent book, "The Law of Subtraction: 6 Simple Rules for Winning in the Age of Excess Everything" published by McGraw-Hill.

Who does not yearn for a guide to simplifying, synthesizing and subtracting some of the clutter, overload and demands of the "Age of Excess Everything"?

He has also cleverly subtracted from his own workload by inviting others, mostly authors and consultants like him, to contribute about a third of the material for his six laws for doing more with less in the form of summaries of their views.

Mind you, it took fellow author Daniel Pink to point out the appeal of the subject. "Subtraction is your meme. It's out there; it's growing," he told May just before he took the stage at a corporate conference, urging him to "own" it. "Best. Advice. Ever," writes May.

This exchange is itself a little guide to what the book is like. Not only is it full of people talking in a slightly artificial, visionary way about common sense objectives, it is also filled with contradictions. "Subtraction is growing" is only the first.

The book does contain good examples of the less-is-more theme, some well-known, some less so. May's opener (illustrating Law No. 1: "What isn't there can often trump what is") is the FedEx logo, featuring an arrow created by the blank space between the E and X. Lindon Leader, its designer, explains how he "didn't overplay it, didn't mention it" when pitching the idea. (He makes up for that here.)

May, who lives in Westlake Village, also provides a brief history of how Lockheed Corp. put a team of design engineers in a circus tent next to a foul-smelling plastics factory to design a jet fighter: the secret Skunk Works became a byword for how to foster innovation. (Law No. 5: "Break is the important part of breakthrough.")

He cites J.K. Rowling, who was inspired for the idea for Harry Potter on a long, boring train journey, in support of Law No. 6. ("Doing something isn't always better than doing nothing.").

My favorite came from contributor Bob Harrison, a retired police chief, who introduced an "unplan" to withdraw officers directing traffic after a July 4 fireworks display and discovered everyone got home more quickly. (Law No. 2: "The simplest rules create the most effective experience.")

But I find every subtractive success story has an additive counterweight, some of which are explicit in May's examples.

It is true that "creativity thrives under intelligent constraints" (Law No. 4), but Michelangelo — ordered to work on a fresco for the Sistine Chapel, not a sculpture, his preferred medium — then "expanded the job's scope," covering the walls as well as the ceiling.

Steve Jobs was a great simplifier, who "handed control to us" as users of Apple devices. But he was also a control freak when it came to designing the same artifacts, supervising fine detail, adding features and forcing his team to work all hours, rather than giving them time for "purposeful daydreaming," as May advocates elsewhere in his book.

"The Artist," the silent, black-and-white film that provides May with the book's coda, was a worthy Oscar winner — but so was 2008's "Slumdog Millionaire," with its cast of thousands and Bollywood-style excess.

May does not avoid these contradictions, but he does not really address them, either. He prefers to list examples of his six laws rather than explore how employers or their staff could reconcile the daily conflict between constraints and freedom, perspiration and inspiration.

In the interests of "owning" his Zen-inspired meme, May subtracts these complexities. Instead he offers tips, such as his invitation to take "long, languid showers" — No. 8 on a list of ways to relax the mind. This point "needs no explanation," May writes, "which is good, because I could find no research on the subject."

For most people at most companies, where the pressure to add customers, revenue and value is intense, it is as difficult to "subtract" as it is for most grown-ups to follow the advice of one of the book's contributors and live out of a suitcase in a near-empty apartment.

It is a pity, given the need to simplify many business processes, that May adds so little to the sum of knowledge about how to do it.

Hill is the management editor of the Financial Times of London, in which this review first appeared.

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Prison riot continues in Venezuela with 55 reported dead

Relatives of inmates pray outside the Uribana prison in Venezuela as a riot in the facility continued Saturday. (Leo Ramirez / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images / January 26, 2013)

By Mery Mogollon and Chris Kraul

January 26, 2013, 11:07 a.m.

CARACAS, Venezuela -- The unofficial death toll rose to 55 on Saturday from a ongoing prison riot as human-rights critics urged the government to improve Venezuela's overcrowded jails, described as some of the worst in Latin America.
 
National Guard members and police at midday were still trying to quell the riot at the Uribana prison in the western city of Barquisimeto, where violence broke out Thursday night when authorities began a search of cells for hidden weapons. 
 
The prison is one of many severely overcrowded jails in Venezuela. It is reputed to be dominated by gangs whose tentacles extend to criminal enterprises across the country, including the sale of drugs and control of buildings and farms occupied by squatters.
 
Although the government has not released totals of dead and wounded, Raul Medina, director of Central Hospital of Barquisimeto, told reporters early Saturday that the toll was 55 dead. Other sources reported that 93 people had been wounded.

Many of the victims were disfigured and only 12 have been identified, Medina said.
 
Iris Varela, minister for penitentiary services, was scheduled to hold a news  conference later Saturday, but issued a statement Friday in which she blamed local Barquisimeto media for announcing the prison search in advance. She also said many of the deaths were a “settling of scores” among rival prison gangs.
 
The Uribana jail has a long history of violence and appalling conditions. In a joint statement Friday, two human rights groups noted that the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in 2007 called on the government of President Hugo Chavez to take immediate steps to alleviate overcrowding and “avoid the loss of life” at the facility.
 
“Even then the court was asking the government to seize arms that were in the possession of the prisoners,” said the Venezuelan Prison Observatory and Federation of Colleges of Attorneys in their statement. Not just prisoners but guards and inmates’ families were unnecessarily at risk, the statement said.
 
The watchdog groups went on to criticize the abortive prison search for “excessive force” and for “not having been coordinated nor performed with the experts and methods called for.”

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Smartphone 4Q sales rise 36 pct led by Samsung

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Smartphone shipments rose 36 percent worldwide in the fourth quarter as the sleek devices supplanted personal computers and other gadgets on holiday shopping lists, according to a report released Friday.

The findings from the research firm International Data Corp. are the latest sign of the technology upheaval being wrought by the growing popularity of smartphones that can perform a wide variety of tasks, including surfing the Web and taking high-quality photos.

Companies whose fortunes are tied to the PC industry have been particularly hard hit by the shift to smartphones and tablet computers.

While some smartphone models were in short supply during the holiday season, fourth-quarter PC shipments fell by 6 percent from the previous year, according to another IDC report released earlier this month.

IDC estimates 219 million smartphones were shipped during the final three months of last year. That compares with nearly 161 million in the same 2011 period. Smartphones accounted for about 45 percent of all mobile phone shipments in the fourth quarter, the highest percentage recorded by IDC.

Samsung Electronics Co. retained its bragging rights as the smartphone leader, shipping nearly 64 million devices for a 29 percent share of the global market.

Apple Inc. ranked second with nearly 48 million iPhones shipped during the fourth quarter, translating into a market share of 22 percent.

For all of 2012, IDC estimated nearly 713 million smartphones were shipped worldwide, a 44 percent increase from the previous year. Meanwhile, annual PC shipments fell 3 percent from 2011, IDC said. It was the first annual decline since 2001.

Entering 2012, Apple held a slight edge over Samsung in the smartphone market. But Samsung sprinted past Apple during the year as it introduced an array of models, most of which run on Google Inc.‘s free Android software. Samsung’s top-selling line, the Galaxy, boasts larger display screens than the iPhone and other features.

Apple alleges Samsung’s devices illegally ripped off the iPhone’s innovations. After a high-profile trial in federal court, a jury in San Jose, Calif. sided with some of the patent infringement claims last August and decided Samsung should pay more than $ 1 billion in damages. Samsung has been trying to overturn the verdict.

Lower-priced smartphones from Samsung and other device makers also have hurt Apple, whose slowing iPhone growth has contributed to a $ 250 billion decline in its market value since its stock price peaked in late September.

IDC says Huawei Technologies Ltd.‘s emphasis on less expensive handsets helped it become the third largest smartphone maker with a market share of 5 percent at the end of the fourth quarter.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Kutcher takes on tech idol Steve Jobs in 'jOBS'

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Ashton Kutcher says playing Steve Jobs on screen "was honestly one of the most terrifying things I've ever tried to do in my life."

The 34-year-old actor helped premiere the biopic "jOBS" Friday, which was the closing-night film at the Sundance Film Festival.

Kutcher plays the Apple Inc. founder from the company's humble origins in the 1970s until the launch of the first iPod in 2001. A digital entrepreneur himself, Kutcher said he considers Jobs a personal hero.

"He's a guy who failed and got back on the horse," Kutcher said. "I think we can all sort of relate to that at some point in life."

Kutcher even embodied the Jobs character as he pursued his own high-tech interests off-screen.

"What was nice was when I was preparing for the character, I could still work on product development for technology companies, and I would sort of stay in character, in the mode of the character," he said. "But I didn't feel like I was compromising the work on the film by working on technology stuff because it was pretty much in the same field."

But playing the real-life tech icon who died in 2011 still felt risky, he said, because "he's fresh in our minds."

"It was kind of like throwing myself into this gauntlet of, I know, massive amounts of criticism because somebody's going to go 'well, it wasn't exactly...,'" Kutcher said.

While the filmmakers say they tried to be as historically accurate as possible, there was also a disclaimer at the very end of the credits that said portions of the film might not be completely accurate.

Still, realism was always the focus for Kutcher, who watched "hundreds of hours of footage," listened to Jobs' past speeches and interviewed several of his friends to prepare for the role.

The actor even adopted the entrepreneur's "fruitarian diet," which he said "can lead to some serious issues."

"I ended up in the hospital two days before we started shooting the movie," he said. "I was like doubled over in pain, and my pancreas levels were completely out of whack, which was completely terrifying, considering everything."

Jobs died of complications from pancreatic cancer.

Still, Kutcher was up to the challenge of playing Jobs, in part because of his admiration for the man who created the Macintosh computer and the iPod.

"I admire this man so much and what he's done. I admire the way he built things," Kutcher said. "This guy created a tool that we use every day in our life, and he believed in it when nobody else did."

The film also shows Jobs' less appealing side, withholding stock options from some of the company's original employees and denying child support to the mother of his eldest child.

Kutcher still found the man inspiring. Jobs had a singular focus, Kutcher said, and felt like anyone could change the world.

"I don't know if there's ever been an entrepreneur who's had more compassion and care for his consumer than Steve Jobs," Kutcher said. "He wanted to put something in your hand that you could use and you could use it easily... and he really cared about that."

___

AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy.

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