Beyonce lets others do talking on lip-synch drama

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Beyonce‘s lips remained sealed on Wednesday over her headline-making rendition of the U.S. national anthem at President Barack Obama‘s inauguration, leaving others to do the talking over whether she lip-synched to a pre-recorded track.

Celebrity magazine Us Weekly quoted a source saying the Grammy-winning artist was disappointed by the controversy she stirred by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Monday’s solemn ceremony using a backing track – and drew a comparison to late Italian opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.

As some of America’s singing stars offered sympathy and understanding, an inaugural official, who declined to be identified, told CNN that Beyonce “did not sing live.”

“Because she didn’t have time to rehearse with the U.S. Marine Band, she decided to use her recording with the Marine Band,” the official told CNN on Wednesday.

The U.S. Marine band said in a statement on Tuesday that no one in the band “is in a position to assess whether it was live or pre-recorded.”

Us Weekly meanwhile quoted a different, also unidentified source, as saying “She did sing, but used a track.”

“She didn’t think there was anything wrong with it,” the source told the celebrity magazine‘s website on Wednesday.

“Pavarotti has done it! It was freezing out, and if she messed up just one note, that would have been the story … Everybody uses these tracks, and the music director advised it,” the Us Weekly source added.

Pavarotti lip-synched his last performance, at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, because of the bitter weather and his failing health, according to orchestra conductor Leone Magiera in a 2008 book. The Italian tenor died in 2007 of pancreatic cancer at age 71.

Beyonce‘s publicist has declined to comment on the furor, but Aretha Franklin and Jennifer Lopez chimed in with their support.

“When I heard the news … that she was pre-recorded I really laughed,” Franklin, 70, who sang live at Obama‘s first inauguration in 2009, told ABC News.

“I thought it was funny because the weather down there was about 46 or 44 degrees and for most singers that is just not good singing weather … she did a beautiful job with the pre-record … next time I’ll probably do the same.”

Lopez told Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” on Tuesday that many performers resort to using pre-recorded tracks.

“You know, sometimes it happens,” Lopez said. “When you’re in certain stadiums and in certain venues, they do pre-record things because you’re going to have that terrible slapback.”

Beyonce, 31, was giving her first major public performance since giving birth to a baby in January 2012. On Sunday, she had posted on Instagram photo of herself in a recording studio holding the sheet music for “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

She is due to take the spotlight again next month by performing, live, at the February 3 Super Bowl halftime show.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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The N.T.S.B. Sees Lengthy Inquiry Into 787 Dreamliner

Deborah A.P. Hersman, chairwoman of the board, said a battery that caught fire in a 787 parked at a gate at Logan Airport in Boston showed signs of short-circuiting and of a “thermal runaway,” in which a chemical reaction begins to overheat the battery and speeds up as the temperature increases. But Ms. Hersman described these as “symptoms,” and pointedly declined to say whether those problems were the cause of the incident, which, combined with a similar event in Japan, has led to the grounding of all 50 of the planes in service.

     “These are all symptoms that something’s  wrong,” she said. “Understanding what came first and what triggered the next thing, that’s information we are working to identify.”

     While there were no deaths or injuries, she said, “These events should not happen.”

“There are multiple systems to prevent against a battery event like this,” she said. “Those systems did not work as intended. We need to understand why.”

Ms. Hersman highlighted the seriousness of the problems more bluntly than other officials have, and her comments made clear that Boeing will not be able to get its planes back in the air anytime soon.

The battery damage was so significant, she said, that investigators are having difficulty retrieving information from the battery control system.

Japanese aviation authorities are leading the investigation into the second battery incident, which occurred earlier this month on a 787 flown by All Nippon Airways. It made an emergency landing in Japan after its pilot reported a burning smell in the cockpit while smoke alarms rang.

Ms. Hersman’s briefing, the first by the safety board on the batteries, fleshed out some of the questions facing the forensic engineers but did not identify any cause as particularly likely, or rule any out. And some of the tests on the design of the battery take a week to conduct, she said.

With 50 airplanes grounded and Boeing’s marquee new product in limbo, engineers working for Boeing, its suppliers and government agencies in this country and in Japan are scrambling to determine what happened. But Ms. Hersman was not making any promises.

“It is really very hard to tell at this point how long the investigation will take,” she said. “What I can tell you is we have all hands on deck. We are working hard to determine what the failure mode here is and what actions have to be taken.”

“Lithium-ion” is a vague term that is used in the battery industry to describe a variety of chemistries. This particular battery was built specifically for the 787 and, according to the safety board on Thursday, used an aluminum strip coated in lithium cobalt oxide in its positive electrode. That is an older technology and is more prone to thermal runaway; it also generates oxygen as it heats, making combustion more likely.

 

Hiroko Tabuchi in Tokyo contributed reporting, and Christopher Drew and Jad Mouawad in New York.

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Panetta opens combat roles to women

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta speaking during a news conference in London. Panetta has removed US military ban on women in combat, opening thousands of front line positions. (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press / January 19, 2013)

From the Associated Press

January 23, 2013, 12:36 p.m.

Senior defense officials say Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is removing the military's ban on women serving in combat, opening hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war.

The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overturns a 1994 rule prohibiting women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. Panetta's decision gives the military services until January 2016 to seek special exceptions if they believe any positions must remain closed to women.

A senior military official says the services will develop plans for allowing women to seek the combat positions. Some jobs may open as soon as this year. Assessments for others, such as special operations forces, including Navy SEALS and the Army's Delta Force, may take longer.

The official said the military chiefs must report back to Panetta with their initial implementation plans by May 15. The announcement on Panetta's decision is not expected until Thursday, so the official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Panetta's move expands the Pentagon's action nearly a year ago to open about 14,500 combat positions to women, nearly all of them in the Army. This decision could open more than 230,000 jobs, many in Army and Marine infantry units, to women.

In recent years the necessities of war propelled women into jobs as medics, military police and intelligence officers that were sometimes attached - but not formally assigned - to units on the front lines.

Women comprise 14 percent of the 1.4 million active military personnel.

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Instructables, The App, Comes to iOS

DIY website Instructables released its first mobile app today, an iPhone tool that lets users view and create project how-tos from anywhere.

“A lot of people don’t have a true camera in their pocket,” says Instructables founder and CEO Eric Wilhelm. “They’ve got their phone. And so we just wanted to be right there.”

Wilhelm has plenty of first-hand experience, with 142 projects to his name. He was frustrated by the workflow, having to upload each picture to the website through his computer’s web browser after the project was complete, rather than as he snapped the photos.

“On our editor on the site, I end up creating a whole bunch of steps and uploading these images step by step,” says Wilhelm. “And I spend a lot of time organizing the images, in iPhoto, or Picasa, getting them into the steps before I then go to upload them.”

“It’s been fun developing for the constraints of the phone, because it’s forced us to rethink the editor,” he says. “We’ve learned a lot on making the flow of editing much better, and that’s going to translate to the website as well.”

The app’s drag-and-drop feature lets users select photos from their phones, bypassing digital cameras in favor of the accessibility of a smartphone. But Wilhelm is also aware that typing up instructions on a phone is less than ideal. So Instructables lets you save on your phone and access on the web, and vice versa. And it lets you see all of Instructables 90,000 user-submitted projects, so you can bring directions or supply lists with you.

Instructables contests are on the app, but the community section isn’t yet accessible. The Android version, still in beta testing, is not officially available yet either. iPad users can access the app, but it’s the same one, just larger — although Wilhelm says that interest from the community could lead to the team exploring a dedicated version for tablets.

Even without those upcoming modifications, Wilhelm is excited about the iOS app’s  potential to increase the accessibility of sharing DIY plans.

“Our authors are using multiple devices in multiple places,” says Wilhelm. “We just want to give them the ability to author wherever they are.”

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Shia LaBeouf’s “Charlie Countryman” finds love in gritty Romania

Park City, Utah (Reuters) – Shia LaBeouf and Evan Rachel Wood spin a twist on classic fairytales in their new film “The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman,” a modern day love story that swaps castles in the sky for the underbelly of Romania’s capital, Bucharest.

The film, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival this week, is a dark story of love unfolding between two unlikely people against the backdrop of a violent and crime-filled eastern European city.

Charlie (LaBeouf), an American, finds himself on a journey of self-discovery that takes him to Bucharest, where he meets the mysterious and captivating Gabi (Evan Rachel Wood), and puts his life on the line for love.

“Love is always the easiest answer, but somehow it’s the hardest place to get for some people. I love the contrast of this world, which is filled with violence and hatred and crime, and above all there’s love,” Wood said.

Director Fredrick Bond picked Bucharest because he was looking for a place that has not been captured in film prominently, and would compliment the complex nature of Charlie and Gabi’s story.

“Charlie has to go through quite a tough journey and a very romantic journey, so I needed a city that had an edge,” he said.

Wood, 25, said the connection that Charlie and Gabi feel the moment they meet resonated with her because that is what she felt for her husband, actor Jamie Bell, when they first met at Sundance and started dating in 2005.

“It’s almost this karmic connection, this kindred spirit, this soulmate of some sort, where he looks at her and he immediately falls in love. He’s never said a word to her – that really happens. That’s how I met my husband,” Wood said.

“We fell in love immediately, because it was almost meant to be, it was fate.”

FINDING TRUTH IN LOVE

“Charlie Countryman” is the feature film debut from Swedish director Bond, an award-winning creator of commercials. Bond said he was eager to work with LaBeouf and Wood, calling them the “most talented young actors of their generation.”

“They have such a sense of truthfulness,” Bond said. “It’s a wild, crazy journey, I needed actors who could ground their performances … Evan and Shia are about truth.”

LaBeouf, a former child star who became a box office staple as the lead in the “Transformers” franchise, has been taking on grittier roles more recently, such as a bootlegger in gangster drama “Lawless.”

The 26-year-old actor said he had been drawn to the role of Charlie when he read the script three years ago.

“It spoke honestly to me, it was really original. It had a Zsa Zsa Gabor narrative and it just read like ‘The Graduate’ with a bloody nose,” he said.

Wood, who shot to fame as the troubled young lead of teen drama “Thirteen” in 2003, said she had wanted to work with LaBeouf for a long time.

For the role of Gabi, a complex Romanian cellist who has a penchant for bad boys, Wood had to perfect a Romanian accent without the help of a dialect coach, turning to her surroundings in Bucharest to draw inspirations.

“It’s very stressful because you want to do it justice, and I wanted it to be spot-on because a lot of times, it can be very distracting. You can overdo the accent,” the actress said.

The film co-stars Mads Mikkelsen and Til Schweiger as Romanian mobsters, with British actors Rupert Grint, best known as Ron Weasley in the “Harry Potter” movies, and James Buckley as Charlie’s errant friends.

Bond said the biggest filming challenges were the action-packed fight scenes, especially because LaBeouf did his own stunts.

“Shia wants to do everything for real, so he takes hits for real … which is fantastic, because it gives a reality to it, but you also have only so many takes, you have to be really well prepared to do it,” Bond said.

“Charlie Countryman” may defy the archetype of a traditional love story with its fierce characters in a harsh yet beautiful setting, but LaBeouf and Wood said they hoped audiences would take away messages of honesty in love from the film.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Mohammad Zargham)

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Phys Ed: Is There an Ideal Running Form?

In recent years, many barefoot running enthusiasts have been saying that to reduce impact forces and injury risk, runners should land near the balls of their feet, not on their heels, a running style that has been thought to mimic that of our barefoot forebears and therefore represent the most natural way to run. But a new study of barefoot tribespeople in Kenya upends those ideas and, together with several other new running-related experiments, raises tantalizing questions about just how humans really are meant to move.

For the study, published this month in the journal PLoS One, a group of evolutionary anthropologists turned to the Daasanach, a pastoral tribe living in a remote section of northern Kenya. Unlike some Kenyan tribes, the Daasanach have no tradition of competitive distance running, although they are physically active. They also have no tradition of wearing shoes.

Humans have run barefoot, of course, for millennia, since footwear is quite a recent invention, in evolutionary terms. And modern running shoes, which typically feature well-cushioned heels that are higher than the front of the shoe, are newer still, having been introduced widely in the 1970s.

The thinking behind these shoes’ design was, in part, that they should reduce injuries. When someone runs in a shoe with a built-up heel, he or she generally hits the ground first with the heel. With so much padding beneath that portion of the foot, the thinking went, pounding would be reduced and, voila, runners wouldn’t get hurt.

But, as many researchers and runners have noted, running-related injuries have remained discouragingly common, with more than half of all runners typically being felled each year.

So, some runners and scientists began to speculate a few years ago that maybe modern running shoes are themselves the problem.

Their theory was buttressed by a influential study published in 2010 in Nature, in which Harvard scientists examined the running style of some lifelong barefoot runners who also happened to be from Kenya. Those runners were part of the Kalenjin tribe, who have a long and storied history of elite distance running. Some of the fastest marathoners in the world have been Kalenjin, and many of them grew up running without shoes.

Interestingly, when the Harvard scientists had the Kalenjin runners stride over a pressure-sensing pad, they found that, as a group, they almost all struck the ground near the front of their foot. Some were so-called midfoot strikers, meaning that their toes and heels struck the ground almost simultaneously, but many were forefoot strikers, meaning that they landed near the ball of their foot.

Almost none landed first on their heels.

What the finding seemed to imply was that runners who hadn’t grown up wearing shoes deployed a noticeably different running style than people who had always worn shoes.

And from that idea, it was easy to conjecture that this style must be better for you than heel-striking, since presumably it was more natural, echoing the style that early, shoeless cavemen would have used.

But the new study finds otherwise. When the researchers had the 38 Daasanach tribespeople run unshod along a track fitted, as in the Harvard study, with a pressure plate, they found that these traditionally barefoot adults almost all landed first with their heels, especially when they were asked to run at a comfortable, distance-running pace. For the group, that pace averaged about 8 minutes per mile, and 72 percent of the volunteers struck with their heels while achieving it. Another 24 percent struck with the midfoot. Only 4 percent were forefoot strikers.

When the Daasanach volunteers were asked to sprint along the track at a much faster speed, however, more of them landed near their toes with each stride, a change in form that is very common during sprints, even in people who wear running shoes. But even then, 43 percent still struck with their heels.

This finding adds to a growing lack of certainty about what makes for ideal running form. The forefoot- and midfoot-striking Kalenjin were enviably fast; during the Harvard experiment, their average pace was less than 5 minutes per mile.

But their example hasn’t been shown to translate to other runners. In a 2012 study of more than 2,000 racers at the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon, 94 percent struck the ground with their heels, and that included many of the frontrunners.

Nor is it clear that changing running form reduces injuries. In a study published in October scientists asked heel-striking recreational runners to temporarily switch to forefoot striking, they found that greater forces began moving through the runners’ lower backs; the pounding had migrated from the runners’ legs to their lumbar spines, and the volunteers reported that this new running form was quite uncomfortable.

But the most provocative and wide-ranging implication of the new Kenyan study is that we don’t know what is natural for human runners. If, said Kevin G. Hatala, a graduate student in evolutionary anthropology at George Washington University who led the new study, ancient humans “regularly ran fast for sustained periods of time,” like Kalenjin runners do today, then they were likely forefoot or midfoot strikers.

But if their hunts and other activities were conducted at a more sedate pace, closer to that of the Daasanach, then our ancestors were quite likely heel strikers and, if that was the case, wearing shoes and striking with your heel doesn’t necessarily represent a warped running form.

At the moment, though, such speculation is just that, Mr. Hatala said. He and his colleagues plan to collaborate with the Harvard scientists in hopes of better understanding why the various Kenyan barefoot runners move so differently and what, if anything, their contrasting styles mean for the rest of us.

“Mostly what we’ve learned” with the new study, he said, “is how much still needs to be learned.”

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DealBook: Q. & A. on Wall Street's Untouchables

3:12 p.m. | Updated

On Tuesday, “Frontline” investigated why the leaders of Wall Street had escaped prosecution for their role in the country’s financial crisis.

Peter Eavis of DealBook moderating a conversation with the show’s producer, Martin Smith. Watch the show above and review the Q. and A. below.

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From the jury pool: Former Bell officials 'raped constituents'

Dozens of jurors were waiting to be questioned Tuesday in a Los Angeles courtroom as defense lawyers and prosecutors began selecting a jury to hear the corruption case against six former Bell council members.

The former part-time council members 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.

By midmorning, 25 potential jurors -- all who had filled out juror questionnaires -- had been bounced.

"My mind is made up, I can't be impartial. I'm disgusted by the behavior," wrote one juror, who was then excused.

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

The potential juror wrote that the ex-city officials had "raped constituents" and filled their own pockets. Whenever she heard the word “Bell,” she wrote, she felt nauseous.

"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."

She also was dismissed.

Another would-be juror suggested that former Bell administrator Robert Rizzo was “a ringleader” but that council members must have known what was going on. Though she said she would try to be fair, she was dismissed.

One potential juror pumped her fist when she was excused.

"It seems that those with money can hire amazing lawyers to get them out of anything, especially if you're a celebrity," another potential jurors wrote.

At that point, Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy turned to the prosecutor and six defense attorneys and said: "We'll have to find out if any of you are amazing lawyers."

On trial are George Cole, George Mirabal, Oscar Hernandez, Luis Artiga, Victor Bello and Teresa Jacobo.

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Mozilla's First Firefox OS Phones Are Here, and You Can't Have One

The first two official Firefox phones are here, but the odds are you’ll never get your hands on one. They’re for developers only.

On Tuesday, Mozilla and Spanish phone-maker Geeksphone announced the first two Firefox OS developer preview handsets — the Keon and the Peak. Both models, which will be sold only to developers, fall in line with what Mozilla says the Firefox OS is being built for — low-power, low-cost hardware for first-time smartphone buyers in emerging markets. These aren’t built to be iPhone, or even Nokia Windows Phone, rivals.

The Keon, which was shown off with a bright orange chassis, is powered by Qualcomm’s 1Ghz Snapdragon S1 processor — a chipset that made its debut in 2008. It also features 512MB of RAM and 4GB of included storage, though there is a microSD card slot for expanded strorage. The handset, which has a 3.5-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 480×320 pixels, will run on 2G and 3G networks. There’s also a 3-megapixel rear camera but no front-facing camera.

The Peak is a bit more up market, with a 4.3-inch 960×540 pixel display, Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon S4 processor, 3G and 2G connectivity, an 8-megapixel camera out back and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. It’s got the same paltry 4GB of storage, with a microSD card slot, and RAM is stuck at 512MB.

Mozilla hasn’t said when the phones will be shipped to developers or just what they’ll cost. Geeksphone said in a tweet that more info will be available soon.

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Walters expects to leave hospital soon

NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Walters says she expects to be home from the hospital soon after taking a spill at a Saturday night party at the British ambassador’s home in Washington.

The veteran ABC newswoman thanked people who expressed concern in a statement read Monday on “The View.”

She says she’s running a low-grade fever and doctors don’t want to release her until her temperature is normal. She says things are going in the right direction and she expects to be home soon.

Her colleagues at “The View” wished her well on the air, although comic Joy Behar couldn’t resist a joke.

Behar urged Walters to get well and to “lay off the Grey Goose” vodka.

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