Exclusive: Verizon eyes roughly $100 billion bid for Vodafone's wireless stake

By Soyoung Kim and Kate Holton

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc has hired advisers to prepare a possible $100 billion bid to take full control of Verizon Wireless from its partner Vodafone Group Plc, two people familiar with the matter said.

Verizon is contemplating a roughly 50:50 cash and stock bid for the 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless it does not already own, an asset it has long coveted, the sources said. It has not put a proposal to Vodafone yet but has hired banking and legal advisers for a possible offer, the sources said late Wednesday.

There are no guarantees that Vodafone will be interested in a deal or that any bid will materialize, the sources said. But they said Verizon was ready to push aggressively and hoped to start discussions with Vodafone soon for a friendly agreement. Verizon is also prepared to take a bid public if the British company does not engage in talks, one of the sources said.

A Verizon spokesman declined to comment. Vodafone declined to comment. Verizon Wireless was not available for comment.

Shares in Vodafone, the world's second-largest mobile operator, rose 1.6 percent in London, while Verizon shares were up 2.5 percent in New York.

Verizon, which has made little secret of its wish to buy out its British partner in the biggest U.S. mobile operator, has ramped up the pressure in recent months, saying that it believed it could buy the asset in a tax-efficient way. The company's move to hire advisers and the sources' revelation of a price range highlight the company's seriousness about doing a deal.

At $100 billion, a deal would be the third-largest acquisition ever, according to Thomson Reuters data, and would come amid a new round of industry consolidation.

DEAL FUNDING

Investors say the conditions for a deal have improved as a result of Verizon's strong results, its share price gains, and low interest rates. Verizon shares are valued at 17.9 times forward earnings, compared with a multiple of m11.8 for Vodafone.

"It would depend on how the deal is structured and what the cost of financing is. But we think the deal at $100 billion would be viable for Verizon to do," said Louis Cimino, portfolio manager at Reaves Asset Management in New Jersey, which owns about 1.8 million Verizon shares. He said he would support a deal even if the price rose to $120 billion.

The sources said Verizon is confident it can raise about $50 billion of bank financing to fund a deal. Market demand for investment-grade debt is proving almost limitless in the current environment, and Verizon could expect a warm welcome from investors, even with a fund-raising as big as $50 billion, bankers told Reuters.

"This is a good time for both sides to think seriously about a transaction. Vodafone's probably never going to get a better multiple than now," New Street analyst Jonathan Chaplin said. "The growth rate (for Verizon Wireless) probably has to slow over time, particularly as Sprint and T-Mobile USA and AT&T improve."

Several challenges remain, however.

Analysts and Vodafone investors said the roughly $100 billion figure contemplated by Verizon was too low and likely more of an opening gambit to bring the British firm to the table. Most analysts had put the value of the Vodafone holding at nearer $120 billion.

One top-40 Vodafone investor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was "absolutely no way" it will be $100 billion, but that $135 billion would suffice.

TAX STRUCTURE

A key obstacle to a deal so far has been the expectation that Vodafone could incur a hefty tax bill of around $20 billion if it sells its holding, meaning Verizon would have to pay up to make it worthwhile for the British company.

But the sources who spoke to Reuters late on Wednesday said any deal would be structured such that the eventual tax bill would likely be $5 billion or less.

Under the deal structure, Verizon would buy Vodafone's U.S. holding company, which owns the British group's Verizon Wireless interest as well as some other assets in countries such as Germany and Spain, the sources said. This structure would allow Verizon to take advantage of a provision in British tax law called substantial shareholder exemption, they said.

Chaplin said the tax bill estimate of $5 billion was consistent with his calculations.

Vodafone Chief Executive Vittorio Colao has said he has an open mind on whether to sell the group's 45 percent stake, which has come to make up around 75 percent of the firm's value in recent years as its core European business suffered.

Analysts have said a sale of Verizon Wireless would enable Vodafone to return cash to shareholders, purchase fixed-line assets in Europe, or potentially make the company an attractive takeover target for other telecom giants such as AT&T Inc.

One of Vodafone's 15 largest investors said the company should look to return to shareholders a large portion of the proceeds from a sale, while retaining a small amount to reduce debt and fund bolt-on deals.

Shares in Vodafone have risen 26 percent this year on speculation that it could finally be ready to sell its stake.

Verizon's board is expected to discuss details of a potential Verizon Wireless buyout next week at a regularly scheduled meeting being held ahead of the company's annual shareholder meeting, one of the sources said.

Taking full ownership of Verizon Wireless would give Verizon, which is reliant on the unit for growth, a lot more flexibility with the cash generated from the wireless business.

In a research note, Chaplin said a deal at $100 billion would boost Verizon's earnings per share in 2014 by 33 percent.

Verizon's shares have risen about 20 percent this year as Verizon Wireless has been easily outperforming its smaller rivals in terms of profitability and customer growth, and on rising hopes of a buyout.

TELECOM DEALS

Any deal now, if it were to happen, would come at a time when the telecommunications industry is undergoing a fresh round of consolidation. MetroPCS Communications Inc shareholders voted Wednesday to approve a merger with T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG.

An attempt by Deutsche Telekom to sell T-Mobile to AT&T for $39 billion in 2011 was blocked by U.S. antitrust regulators. Verizon would be unlikely to face any such obstacles in a Verizon Wireless buyout.

Meanwhile, Dish Network Corp, the No. 2 U.S. satellite TV provider, last week offered to buy wireless service provider Sprint Nextel Corp for $25.5 billion in cash and stock, challenging a proposed deal between Sprint and Japan's SoftBank Corp.

(Reporting By Soyoung Kim and Sinead Carew in New York, Kate Holton, Sinead Cruise and Chris Vellacott in London and Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by Paritosh Bansal, Martin Howell, Will Waterman and John Wallace)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-verizon-eyes-roughly-100-billion-bid-verizon-015353243--sector.html

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Dow Chemical profit beats estimates as sales of farm products jump

(Reuters) - Dow Chemical Co's first-quarter earnings beat analysts' estimates, helped by higher demand for its seeds and crop-protection chemicals in the Americas.

Sales at its agriculture science business, which supplies seeds, oils and farm chemicals, jumped 14 percent in the quarter, the highest growth among its business units.

Net income rose about 33 percent to $550 million, or 46 cents per share, in the first quarter from $412 million, or 35 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, earnings were 69 cents per share.

Revenue fell 2 percent to $14.4 billion.

Analysts on average expected earnings of 61 cents per share on revenue of $14.88 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

(Reporting by Garima Goel in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dow-profit-jumps-strong-sales-seeds-crop-chemicals-110946761.html

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Earth's cooling came to sudden halt in 1900, study shows

An international study used tree rings and pollen to build the first?record of global climate change, continent by continent, over 2,000 years.

By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / April 23, 2013

Emperor penguins walk across sea ice near Ross Island, Antarctica, in this 2012, photo released by Thomas Beer. The continent's pristine habitat provides a laboratory for scientists studying the effects of climate change.

Courtesy Thomas Beer/AP/File

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A reconstruction of 2,000 years of global temperatures shows that a long-term decline in Earth's temperatures ended abruptly about 1900, replaced by a warming trend that has continued despite the persistence into the 20th century of the factors driving the cooling, according to a new study.

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Indeed, for several continents, the increase in global average temperatures from the 19th century to the 20th was the highest century-to-century increase during the 2,000-year span, the study indicates. It's the first study to attempt building a millennial-scale climate history, continent by continent.

The research wasn't designed to identify the cause of the warming trend, which climate researchers say has been triggered by a buildup of greenhouse gases ? mainly carbon dioxide ? as humans burned increasing amounts of fossil fuel and altered the landscape in ways that released CO2.

Still, it's hard to explain 20th-century warming without including the influence of rising CO2 levels, because the factors driving the cooling were still present, notes Darrell Kaufman, a researcher at Northern Arizona University and one of the lead authors on the paper formally reporting the results in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The study, five years in the making, drew on the work of 87 scientists in 24 countries as part of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. One goal of the 27-year-old program is to gain a deeper understanding of Earth's climate history and the factors that contribute to climate variability.

The study used nature's proxies for thermometers ? tree rings, pollen, and other natural temperature indicators ? to build continent by continent a coordinated record of temperature changes during the past two millenniums.

Scientists use this proxy approach to reach farther into the climate's temperature history than the relatively short thermometer record allows. Such efforts aim to put today's climate into a deeper historical context as well as to identify the duration and possible triggers for natural swings that the climate undergoes over a variety of time scales.

Last March, for instance, a team led by Shaun Marcott at Oregon State University used climate proxies to build a global temperature record reaching back 1,200 years ? one that also noted the pre-1900 cooling trend.

Until now, however, the proxy approach has been used to reconstruct changes in global-average and hemisphere-wide temperatures, Dr. Kaufman explains.

"There was very little information about past climate variability at the regional scale," he says. Yet the team notes that no one lives in a global-average world. People live in specific regions where geography plays a vital role in shaping the climate patterns they experience.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/s_CQlowEYIE/Earth-s-cooling-came-to-sudden-halt-in-1900-study-shows

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ALS trial shows novel therapy is safe

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

An investigational treatment for an inherited form of Lou Gehrig's disease has passed an early phase clinical trial for safety, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Massachusetts General Hospital report.

The researchers have shown that the therapy produced no serious side effects in patients with the disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The phase 1 trial's results, available online in Lancet Neurology, also demonstrate that the drug was successfully introduced into the central nervous system.

The treatment uses a technique that shuts off the mutated gene that causes the disease. This approach had never been tested against a condition that damages nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.

"These results let us move forward in the development of this treatment and also suggest that it's time to think about applying this same approach to other mutated genes that cause central nervous system disorders," says lead author Timothy Miller, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at Washington University. "These could include some forms of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and other conditions."

ALS destroys nerves that control muscles, gradually leading to paralysis and death. For treatment of the disease, the sole FDA-approved medication, Riluzole, has only a marginal effect.

Most cases of ALS are sporadic, but about 10 percent are linked to inherited mutations. Scientists have identified changes in 10 genes that can cause ALS and are still looking for others.

The study focused on a form of ALS caused by mutations in a gene called SOD1, which account for 2 percent of all ALS cases. Researchers have found more than 100 mutations in the SOD1 gene that cause ALS.

"At the molecular level, these mutations affect the properties of the SOD1 protein in a variety of ways, but they all lead to ALS," says Miller, who is director of the Christopher Wells Hobler Lab for ALS Research at the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders at Washington University.

Rather than try to understand how each mutation causes ALS, Miller and his colleagues focused on blocking production of the SOD1 protein using a technique called antisense therapy.

To make a protein, cells have to copy the protein-building instructions from the gene. Antisense therapy blocks the cell from using these copies, allowing researchers to selectively silence individual genes.

"Antisense therapy has been considered and tested for a variety of disorders over the past several decades," Miller says. "For example, the FDA recently approved an antisense therapy called Kynamro for familial hypercholesterolemia, an inherited condition that increases cholesterol levels in the blood."

Miller and colleagues at the University of California-San Diego devised an antisense drug for SOD1 and successfully tested it in an animal model of the disease.

Merit Cudkowicz, MD, chief of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, was co-PI of the phase I clinical safety trial described in the new paper. Clinicians at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Methodist Neurological Institute in Houston gave antisense therapy or a placebo to 21 patients with SOD1-related ALS. Treatment consisted of spinal infusions that lasted 11 hours.

The scientists found no significant difference between side effects in the control and treatment groups. Headache and back pain, both of which are often associated with spinal infusion, were among the most common side effects.

Immediately after the injections, the researchers took spinal fluid samples. This let them confirm the antisense drug was circulating in the spinal fluid of patients who received the treatment.

To treat SOD1-related ALS in the upcoming phase II trial, researchers will need to increase the dosage of the antisense drug. As the dose rises, they will watch to ensure that the therapy does not cause harmful inflammation or other side effects as it lowers SOD1 protein levels.

"All the information that we have so far suggests lowering SOD1 will be safe," Miller says. "In fact, completely disabling SOD1 in mice seems to have little to no effect. We think it will be OK in patients, but we won't know for sure until we've conducted further trials."

The therapy may one day be helpful in the more common, noninherited forms of ALS, some of which may be linked to problems with the SOD1 protein.

"Before we can consider using this same therapy for sporadic ALS, we need more evidence that SOD1 is a major contributor to these forms of the disorder," Miller says.

###

Washington University School of Medicine: http://www.medicine.wustl.edu

Thanks to Washington University School of Medicine for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127890/ALS_trial_shows_novel_therapy_is_safe

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EPA on Keystone XL: Significant Climate Impacts from Tar Sands Pipeline

In a draft assessment of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, consultants for the U.S. State Department judged that building it would have no significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Why? Because the analysts assumed the tar sands oil would find a way out with or without the new pipeline.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not agree. Keystone XL's ability to carry an additional 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day is vital to expanded production of the tarry crude in Alberta. The EPA contends that the analysis by State got the economics all wrong. In particular the consultants were too optimistic about the ease with which the oil could be moved by railroad--an alternative already in use. But such tar sands oil transportation alternatives can more than triple the cost of moving crude. State's report also neglected to consider the potential for congestion on the railroads with an uptick in oil transport, EPA contends. Of course, from a greenhouse gas perspective, transport by pipeline results in fewer emissions than transport by rail, truck or barge. The bottom line, from a climate perspective: "oil sands crude is significantly more [greenhouse gas] intensive than other crudes, and therefore has potentially large impacts," wrote EPA's Cynthia Giles about the State Department's attempts to assess the full implications of Keystone. "Lifecycle emissions from oil sands crude could be 81 percent greater than the average crude refined in the U.S.," a difference that can grow "depending on the assumptions made." The EPA also cited its experience from cleaning up after the spill of tar sands oil from a pipeline near the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. This pipeline, smaller than Keystone XL, managed to spill some 20,000 barrels in 2010, much of which ended up at the bottom of the river. Despite three years of clean up effort, the river will have to be dredged because the oil sands crude "will not appreciably biodegrade," Giles wrote. In other words, the kind of microbes that chewed up the oil from BP's blown out Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico could find no purchase on diluted bitumen from Alberta. Such heavy oil results in the tarballs ubiquitous along the Gulf Coast and, apparently, a layer of tar at the bottom of the Kalamazoo River. All of that experience suggests that would-be pipeline operator TransCanada should be required to prepare for such submerged oil in the event of a leak from Keystone XL as well as having equipment in place to deal with a spill before it happens, the EPA suggests. That's a particular concern because, despite a re-routing around ecologically sensitive regions in Nebraska, the Keystone XL pipeline would still cross over the nation's largest freshwater aquifer: the Ogallala. All of that leads the agency to object to the State Department's analysis on the grounds of "insufficient information" and "significant" environmental objections. What impact, if any, that has on the approval or disapproval of the pipeline by the Obama administration remains to be seen but the impact of Keystone XL on climate change is clear. Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/epa-keystone-xl-significant-climate-impacts-tar-sands-001100447.html

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Hearsay Social Brings Its Social Media Tools To Europe With New London Office

Hearsay Social, a Sequoia- and NEA-backed company that helps large organizations manage their social media presence across local branches and sales teams, is announcing that it has opened an office in London. Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Steve Garrity said it is the first step in the company's European expansion. The new office will be led by Peter Caryotis, who previously managed IBM?s Northern Europe Platform Computing business. The company says it has also updated its products to support German, French, and Spanish.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/aJpKCXSGheA/

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Boston Bombing Suspect Exhibited Extremism at Local Mosque (Voice Of America)

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Panasonic launches $500 Lumix DMC-LF1 enthusiast compact with WiFi, NFC

Panasonic's just unveiled the 12-megapixel Lumix DMC-LF1 compact for fans of high-end compacts like Canon's S110 who may not want to snap with a smartphone camera. But the social set will still be able to share images to their handset or tablet thanks to the LF1's built-in WiFi with NFC pairing and included app. Meanwhile, most cellphones definitely can't compete with the 1/1.7-inch, 12-megapixel CMOS sensor and 28-200mm equivalent f2.0-5.9 Leica zoom lens. Other specs include 1,920/60i video with AVCHD and MP4 recording, POWER OIS, a 200K EVF, a variety of shooting modes like panorama, and full manual control. There's no set arrival date, but it'll run a hefty $500 or so -- perhaps a hard sell against certain photo-clever handsets.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/24/panasonic-DMC-LF1-enthusiast-compact/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Long-lost giant fish from Amazon rediscovered

Apr. 22, 2013 ? A professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse, N.Y., has put aside nearly a century and a half of conventional wisdom with the rediscovery of a species of giant Amazonian fish whose existence was first established in a rare 1829 monograph only to be lost to science some 40 years later.

Dr. Donald Stewart, a fisheries professor at ESF, found evidence in the monograph of a second species belonging to the genus Arapaima, air-breathing giants that live in shallow lakes, flooded forests and connecting channels in the Amazon River basin. For 145 years, biologists have thought that Arapaima consisted of a single species whose scientific name is A. gigas. But Stewart rediscovered a second species that he describes in the March issue of the journal Copeia, published by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.

"In a sense, this forgotten fish has been hiding in plain sight in this old monograph but that monograph is so rare that it now resides only in rare book collections of a few large museums," Stewart said. "I was truly surprised to discover drawings that revealed a fish very different from what we consider a typical Arapaima."

Part of the apparently rare fish's story remains a mystery, however, as scientists don't know if it still exists in the wild. "Scientists have had the impression that Arapaima is a single species for such a long time that they have been slow to collect new specimens. Their large size makes them difficult to manage in the field and expensive to store in a museum," Stewart said.

Arapaima can grow to three meters in length (about 10 feet) and weigh as much as 200 kilograms (440 pounds).

This different species was originally named A. agassizii in 1847 by a French biologist but a catalog published in 1868 considered it to be the same species as A. gigas. That second opinion was widely accepted and, since then, no scientist has questioned that view.

But Stewart has had doctoral students studying the conservation of Arapaima in both Brazil and Guyana. For those studies, it was important to be clear about the taxonomy of the fishes being studied in each country. In an effort to determine if they were really all one species, Stewart began to review taxonomic literature from the early 1800s, including the monograph that was published the year Andrew Jackson was inaugurated as the seventh president of the United States.

"What is remarkable is that this fish was not re-discovered swimming in the Amazon but, rather, on the pages of a rare monograph from 1829 that described its anatomy in great detail," Stewart said.

The fish described in the monograph had been collected in the Brazilian Amazon about 1819 and carried to Munich, Germany, as a dried skeleton. There the Swiss biologist Louis Agassiz, who was just beginning his career and later became a professor of zoology at Harvard University, supervised a technical illustrator in drawing the complete skeleton in great detail. At that time, however, he applied the name Sudis gigas to the drawings. That rare skeleton was in a museum in Germany until World War II, when it was destroyed by a bomb dropped on the museum. "To this day, we do not know the precise locality where the fish was collected because the German scientist who collected it died before indicating where he found it, and nobody has found a second specimen," Stewart said. "So, all that exists to know the status of A. agassizii is the original drawings of its bones."

Stewart said those drawings reveal numerous distinctive features that leave little doubt it should be considered a valid species. Those features include details related to the fish's teeth, eyes and fins.

The previously recognized Arapaima species is known by the common names "pirarucu" in Portuguese and "paiche" in Spanish. Because they rise to the surface to breathe every 5 to 15 minutes, they are easy to locate and fishermen harpoon them to sell their valuable meat or to feed their families. That combination of high value and vulnerability has led to widespread depletion of their populations and they are now listed as endangered.

The mystery surrounding the recently rediscovered fish's current status is not surprising, Stewart said, because there are still vast areas of Amazon basin where no specimens of Arapaima have been collected for study.

He expects the diversity of the genus to increase further with additional studies. Two more previously described species -- A. arapaima from Guyana and A. mapae from northeastern Brazil but outside the Amazon basin -- also should be recognized as valid. He is working on redescriptions of those species. He also has another paper due to be published soon that describes a new species of Arapaima from the central Amazon. That latter paper will bring the total number of Arapaima species to five. He anticipates that more species could be discovered as biologists working in South America begin to make new collections in unstudied areas.

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Journal Reference:

1. Donald J. Stewart. Re-description of Arapaima agassizii (Valenciennes), a Rare Fish from Brazil (Osteoglossomorpha: Osteoglossidae). Copeia, March 2013, Vol. 2013, No. 1, pp. 38-51 [link]

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/tQx80ynG988/130422111110.htm

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Fire official: 2 trapped N.C. children likely dead

DENVER, N.C. (AP) ? Two young children trapped when dirt fell on them at a home construction site Sunday were not expected to be found alive and crews expected to work through the night to recover their bodies, a fire official said.

A father of one of the children called 911 at about 6 p.m. to report what happened, said Lincoln County Emergency Services public information officer Dion Burleson. Crews were on the scene in minutes, but couldn't get to the 7-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl, Burleson said.

Crews used shovels and climbing gear trying to get to the children at the Denver neighborhood. Emergency personnel from several places, including nearby Charlotte, were on the scene late Sunday.

Video from WSOC-TV shows backhoes scooping dirt from a deep hole surrounded by dirt. Equipment surrounded the hole. Burleson said it is hard to estimate how far down the children might be.

The man who called was the father of at least one of the children, Burleson said. Neighbors told WBTV that the children were cousins.

This is "devastating for both the family members and responders who are on the scene," Burleson said. "This is a tragic night in Denver."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fire-official-2-trapped-nc-children-likely-dead-021803356.html

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J.C. Penney board comes under fire for CEO switch

By Ben Berkowitz

(Reuters) - The board of J.C. Penney Co Inc is facing scathing criticism from investors and corporate governance experts after ousting Chief Executive Ron Johnson and replacing him with his own embattled predecessor, Myron Ullman.

Hours after the switch was announced on Monday, there was at least one call for the entire board to resign, while others suggested shareholders might vote out current directors at the company's next annual meeting.

"It was the wrong thing for the board to do to get rid of Johnson here. With the board firing Johnson now, at this stage in the game, they should tender their own resignation as well," said Brian McGough, managing director and head of the retail group at research firm Hedgeye Risk Management.

Though the board may not face serious legal challenges to the decision, shareholders may question whether the move to replace Johnson with Ullman, who Johnson himself replaced in late 2011, is good for them.

More than 16 hours after the change, Penney's website still listed Johnson as CEO.

J.C. Penney shares lost half their value during Johnson's tenure after having shed 15 percent during Ullman's time as CEO from 2004 to 2011. The stock slid further Monday night after the retailer said Ullman was returning, as analysts blamed him for creating the problems that Johnson was supposed to fix.

Shares tumbled 10.3 percent at $14.23 in early Tuesday trading.

Whether Ullman is the right man for the job or not, some said ultimate responsibility for the retailer's future now lies with the remaining 10 members of the board of directors, four of whom joined in the last five years.

LIMITED EXPERIENCE

That board reflects the company's Texas roots more than its retail operations. Four directors are or were executives of Texas-based institutions. Aside from Ullman, only one board member has direct retail experience - Leonard Roberts, the former CEO of electronics chain RadioShack Corp. The rest come from consumer products, airlines, media and manufacturing sectors, among others.

The board said in a statement it picked Ullman because he was well-positioned to move quickly and improve sales, but Ullman himself conceded in an interview that the change was so new he did not yet have a plan. He said the board only approached him last weekend.

Governance experts said it was unlikely the board would face legal repercussions for the change.

"That's a classic board decision," said Charles Elson, a professor of finance at the University of Delaware. "It's called business judgment. It's up to them."

J.C. Penney Chairman Tom Engibous said in a statement the company felt fortunate to have Ullman's help. Through a company spokeswoman, the board declined further comment.

ABRUPT ABOUT-FACE

Board member Bill Ackman, the hedge fund manager whose Pershing Square is J.C. Penney's largest shareholder, might also take heat for his role in the CEO debacle.

Ackman handpicked Johnson to replace Ullman, and in May 2012 said the company had been "chronically mismanaged" during Ullman's tenure. Ackman could not be reached for comment, but said last Friday that criticism of Johnson "is deserved."

David Tawil, whose hedge fund Maglan Capital had bet that J.C. Penney's stock would fall further, likened the change in management to an abrupt about-face.

"This is like Elon Musk announcing that Tesla (the maker of electric cars) is changing gears and will now focus on gas-powered vehicles," Tawil said.

Whether the board gets to make the same mistakes again will be entirely up to shareholders, said Paul Hodgson, an independent corporate governance analyst in Camden, Maine.

"When you get a board that keeps making errors like that, then you start to lose faith not just in the CEO, but in the board as well," said Hodgson. "I think at the next annual meeting, the shareholders will be registering their dissatisfaction with the board."

ANALYSTS DISAPPOINTED

One question Ullman has to address quickly is the company's cash position. Penney ended the last fiscal year with less than $1 billion in cash, and there is a sense that the retailer needs to do something to bolster cash.

"We expect first-quarter performance to be very weak, and that Penney's financial risk profile will remain 'highly leveraged,'" Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said on Tuesday. While S&P said the CEO change would not affect the company's credit rating, it did note an expectation that Penney would seek more capital.

While many on Wall Street were clamoring for Johnson's ouster, analysts warned Ullman's return was not a cure-all as he tries to win back shoppers, mollify worried vendors and decide whether to forge ahead with some aspects of Johnson's strategy.

"Ullman makes sense in the interim given the urgent cash situation. Ullman is also a known partner to the vendors," UBS analyst Michael Binetti wrote in a note on Tuesday.

(Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld and Phil Wahba in New York, Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston, Jessica Wohl in Chicago and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by Edward Tobin, Mary Milliken, Matt Driskill and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/j-c-penney-ousts-ceo-mike-ullman-returns-012655151--sector.html

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Link between obesity and polycystic ovary syndrome may be exaggerated

Public release date: 8-Apr-2013
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Contact: Toni Baker
tbaker@gru.edu
706-721-4421
Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University

AUGUSTA, Ga. The relationship between obesity and polycystic ovary syndrome may be exaggerated, likely because the women who actively seek care for the condition tend to be heavier than those identified through screening of the general population, researchers report.

PCOS affects about 10 percent of women and is characterized by excess male hormone, irregular ovulation and menstruation as well as increased risk of metabolic diseases often associated with being overweight.

The study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism looked at what have long been considered indicators of the disease, including obesity, high testosterone levels and excess body hair, in women actively seeking care for PCOS as well as those identified with PCOS through a general pre-employment health screening.

They found that the women with PCOS identified through the screening had about the same obesity rates as those who didn't have PCOS, said Dr. Ricardo Azziz, reproductive endocrinologist and PCOS expert at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. However, obesity rates in patients actively seeking treatment were about 2.5 times higher than in women identified with PCOS through the screening of the general population.

"The women actively seeking care had higher male hormones, more hair growth, more severe ovulation problems, which was not surprising because patients who have a more severe condition are more apt to seek medical care," said Azziz, the study's corresponding author. "What is surprising to us is that the rate of obesity in women with PCOS who we found in the general population is nowhere near as high as we expected from studying women with PCOS who did seek care."

"This finding indicates that while obesity is a major problem for everyone who has it, we should treat obesity as obesity and probably not try to link obesity as a sign of PCOS," Azziz said. He notes that obesity has been considered a hallmark of the condition since it was first described in 1932 and that the ongoing association likely is perpetuated by a bias resulting from patients who self-refer for care.

A more accurate picture of PCOS likely would emerge if studies of the condition also included patients identified through screening the general population, Azziz said. "A lot of patients believe PCOS leads to obesity and we really don't have strong data to support that. In fact, our evidence suggests that is not the case."

"We do know that the more fat you have, the more metabolic dysfunction you have, regardless of whether you have PCOS," Azziz said. Growing evidence also suggests that regardless of how much they have the fat in women with PCOS behaves differently.

Fat, a huge organ even in thin individuals and a literal hormone factory, is a major site where the body uses insulin to convert glucose consumed in food to energy. Azziz and his colleagues reported in another recent study in the journal Diabetes differences in the fat of women with PCOS, showing that several tiny RNA molecules, called microRNA, were overexpressed in the fat of those who also were insulin-resistant, resulting in decreased expression of GLUT4, a key protein that regulates fat's use of glucose for energy.

The new studies were done on 64 women being treated for PCOS and 688 women seeking pre-employment physicals at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Uche Ezeh, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Center for Androgen-Related Disorders at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, is the study's first author. Dr. Bulent O. Yidiz, Department of Internal Medicine and the Endocrinology and Metabolism Unit, Hacettepe University School of Medicine in Turkey, is co-author.

###

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and Helping Hand of Los Angeles, Inc.

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 8-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Toni Baker
tbaker@gru.edu
706-721-4421
Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University

AUGUSTA, Ga. The relationship between obesity and polycystic ovary syndrome may be exaggerated, likely because the women who actively seek care for the condition tend to be heavier than those identified through screening of the general population, researchers report.

PCOS affects about 10 percent of women and is characterized by excess male hormone, irregular ovulation and menstruation as well as increased risk of metabolic diseases often associated with being overweight.

The study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism looked at what have long been considered indicators of the disease, including obesity, high testosterone levels and excess body hair, in women actively seeking care for PCOS as well as those identified with PCOS through a general pre-employment health screening.

They found that the women with PCOS identified through the screening had about the same obesity rates as those who didn't have PCOS, said Dr. Ricardo Azziz, reproductive endocrinologist and PCOS expert at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. However, obesity rates in patients actively seeking treatment were about 2.5 times higher than in women identified with PCOS through the screening of the general population.

"The women actively seeking care had higher male hormones, more hair growth, more severe ovulation problems, which was not surprising because patients who have a more severe condition are more apt to seek medical care," said Azziz, the study's corresponding author. "What is surprising to us is that the rate of obesity in women with PCOS who we found in the general population is nowhere near as high as we expected from studying women with PCOS who did seek care."

"This finding indicates that while obesity is a major problem for everyone who has it, we should treat obesity as obesity and probably not try to link obesity as a sign of PCOS," Azziz said. He notes that obesity has been considered a hallmark of the condition since it was first described in 1932 and that the ongoing association likely is perpetuated by a bias resulting from patients who self-refer for care.

A more accurate picture of PCOS likely would emerge if studies of the condition also included patients identified through screening the general population, Azziz said. "A lot of patients believe PCOS leads to obesity and we really don't have strong data to support that. In fact, our evidence suggests that is not the case."

"We do know that the more fat you have, the more metabolic dysfunction you have, regardless of whether you have PCOS," Azziz said. Growing evidence also suggests that regardless of how much they have the fat in women with PCOS behaves differently.

Fat, a huge organ even in thin individuals and a literal hormone factory, is a major site where the body uses insulin to convert glucose consumed in food to energy. Azziz and his colleagues reported in another recent study in the journal Diabetes differences in the fat of women with PCOS, showing that several tiny RNA molecules, called microRNA, were overexpressed in the fat of those who also were insulin-resistant, resulting in decreased expression of GLUT4, a key protein that regulates fat's use of glucose for energy.

The new studies were done on 64 women being treated for PCOS and 688 women seeking pre-employment physicals at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Uche Ezeh, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Center for Androgen-Related Disorders at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, is the study's first author. Dr. Bulent O. Yidiz, Department of Internal Medicine and the Endocrinology and Metabolism Unit, Hacettepe University School of Medicine in Turkey, is co-author.

###

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and Helping Hand of Los Angeles, Inc.

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/mcog-lbo040813.php

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Alcoa's 1Q profit rises, beats expectations

NEW YORK (AP) ? Alcoa Inc. kicked off earnings season Monday by reporting a larger first-quarter profit than analysts expected, helped by strong demand for aluminum used to make airplanes and automobiles.

The company still sees demand for aluminum growing 7 percent in 2013, with gains cutting across many industries.

Alcoa is the first company in the Dow Jones industrial average to report first-quarter results. Because its products wind up in so many things, from cars and buildings to soda cans, investors study Alcoa's results for hints about earnings at companies in other industries.

Alcoa said net income in the first quarter was $149 million, or 13 cents per share, compared with $94 million, or 9 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding special items, the company said it would have earned 11 cents per share, beating analysts' forecast of 8 cents per share, according to FactSet.

Revenue fell to $5.83 billion from $6.01 billion a year earlier and was below the $5.91 billion that analysts predicted. Alcoa blamed lower aluminum prices and curtailed production in its European primary metals business.

Over the past decade, Alcoa has shifted more of its business away from mining and refining and into the production of parts for industry. The company is benefiting as airplanes and autos get lighter for better fuel efficiency by using more aluminum parts.

Airlines have been ordering new planes to reduce their spending on fuel, the largest cost for many of them. That trend should continue for several years, making aerospace a growing aluminum market, chairman and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld said in a conference call with analysts.

U.S. auto sales are booming, too, as customers who put off purchases during the recession trade in their aging vehicles. In March, sales hit 1.45 million vehicles, the highest total since August 2007, according to Autodata Corp.

Alcoa believes that government fuel standards and customer demand for better mileage will push car makers to use more lighter materials like aluminum. Some drivers think heavy vehicles are safer in a crash ? truck sales were a major factor in the strong March figures ? but Kleinfeld argued that lighter cars can brake to a stop faster, potentially avoiding accidents.

Sales of aluminum for nonresidential construction is finally recovering in North America and will grow much faster in China, Kleinfeld said.

Alcoa released its earnings after the markets closed. Its shares rose 15 cents to close at $8.39 in the regular session. They fell 12 cents in after-hours trading.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/alcoas-1q-profit-rises-beats-expectations-202205051--finance.html

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Jim Carrey Responds to Gun Control Critics: Calm Down!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/jim-carrey-responds-to-gun-control-critics-calm-down/

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Despite free health care, household income affects chronic disease control in kids

Public release date: 4-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: William Raillant-Clark
w.raillant-clark@umontreal.ca
514-343-7593
University of Montreal

Even in Canada, the glycated hemoglobin levels of diabetic kids (type 1) are correlated with household income

Researchers at the University of Montreal have found that the glycated hemoglobin levels of children with type 1 diabetes followed at its affiliated Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital (CHU Sainte-Justine) is correlated linearly and negatively with household income. Glycated hemoglobin is the binding of sugar to blood molecules over time, high blood sugar levels lead to high levels of glycated hemoglobin, which means that it can be used to assess whether a patient properly controls his or her blood glucose level. "Our study highlights a marked disparity between the rich and the poor in an important health outcome for children with type 1 diabetes, despite free access to health care", explained Dr. Johnny Deladoy, who led the study.

The researchers used statistics collected from 1,766 children who had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at CHU Sainte-Justine between 1980 and 2011. They estimated their household income by using the median for their postal code as reported by Statistics Canada and standardized their glycated hemoglobin levels (HbA1c) in order to undertake the study. "We know that there are a variety of socio-economic factors that affect metabolic control in diabetic children, but it is difficult to compare studies as researchers look at these factors in different ways", Deladoy said. "However, median household income is a good proxy for these factors taken together". In addition, all studies on this subject have come from countries where users must pay to consult a health care professional whereas the present study is the first to look at this in the context of free health care. A study from Ontario, published simultaneously in another journal, reports similar findings.

Because there are so many factors influencing the treatment of this disease, the researchers were not surprised by their results. "These confirm our clinical impression that the most important factor correlated with the treatment of type 1 diabetes is household income", Deladoy said. Importantly, the researchers found that the difference in glycated hemoglobin levels in kids from the poorest and the richest neighbourhoods corresponds to a doubling of the risk of damage to the eyes (diabetes is a leading cause of blindness in adulthood). "Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease requiring multiple daily insulin injections and blood tests throughout the individual's life. Our study suggests that there should be greater support to children with type 1 diabetes who live in low income areas; this could include, for instance, increasing the number and length of visits from social workers", Deladoy explained.

###

About this study:

Johnny Deladoy, Mlanie Henderson and Louis Geoffroy published "Linear association between household income and metabolic control in children with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus despite free access to healthcare" in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism on March 28, 2013. All three authors are affiliated with the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Montreal and the Endocrinology and Diabetes Service at its affiliated Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital. The University of Montreal and Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital are known officially as Universit de Montral and Centre hospitalier universitaire Sainte-Justine, respectively. The study was supported by Girafonds of the Fondation du CHU Sainte-Justine.

---

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?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 4-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: William Raillant-Clark
w.raillant-clark@umontreal.ca
514-343-7593
University of Montreal

Even in Canada, the glycated hemoglobin levels of diabetic kids (type 1) are correlated with household income

Researchers at the University of Montreal have found that the glycated hemoglobin levels of children with type 1 diabetes followed at its affiliated Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital (CHU Sainte-Justine) is correlated linearly and negatively with household income. Glycated hemoglobin is the binding of sugar to blood molecules over time, high blood sugar levels lead to high levels of glycated hemoglobin, which means that it can be used to assess whether a patient properly controls his or her blood glucose level. "Our study highlights a marked disparity between the rich and the poor in an important health outcome for children with type 1 diabetes, despite free access to health care", explained Dr. Johnny Deladoy, who led the study.

The researchers used statistics collected from 1,766 children who had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at CHU Sainte-Justine between 1980 and 2011. They estimated their household income by using the median for their postal code as reported by Statistics Canada and standardized their glycated hemoglobin levels (HbA1c) in order to undertake the study. "We know that there are a variety of socio-economic factors that affect metabolic control in diabetic children, but it is difficult to compare studies as researchers look at these factors in different ways", Deladoy said. "However, median household income is a good proxy for these factors taken together". In addition, all studies on this subject have come from countries where users must pay to consult a health care professional whereas the present study is the first to look at this in the context of free health care. A study from Ontario, published simultaneously in another journal, reports similar findings.

Because there are so many factors influencing the treatment of this disease, the researchers were not surprised by their results. "These confirm our clinical impression that the most important factor correlated with the treatment of type 1 diabetes is household income", Deladoy said. Importantly, the researchers found that the difference in glycated hemoglobin levels in kids from the poorest and the richest neighbourhoods corresponds to a doubling of the risk of damage to the eyes (diabetes is a leading cause of blindness in adulthood). "Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease requiring multiple daily insulin injections and blood tests throughout the individual's life. Our study suggests that there should be greater support to children with type 1 diabetes who live in low income areas; this could include, for instance, increasing the number and length of visits from social workers", Deladoy explained.

###

About this study:

Johnny Deladoy, Mlanie Henderson and Louis Geoffroy published "Linear association between household income and metabolic control in children with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus despite free access to healthcare" in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism on March 28, 2013. All three authors are affiliated with the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Montreal and the Endocrinology and Diabetes Service at its affiliated Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital. The University of Montreal and Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital are known officially as Universit de Montral and Centre hospitalier universitaire Sainte-Justine, respectively. The study was supported by Girafonds of the Fondation du CHU Sainte-Justine.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/uom-dfh040313.php

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You Never Forget Your First Cell Phone

On April 3, 1973 Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first ever call?on the first ever truly portable telephone. But it wasn't until ten years later, in 1983, that Motorola sold its cellular phones commercially?and at $3,500, well, some might call that prohibitively?expensive, even and especially adjusted for inflation. So it wasn't really until the cell phone's rebellious '90s phase that it really went mass market; mobile communications reached a "tipping point" with 46 percent penetration around 1999. It was in and around and just before that time that much of The Atlantic Wire staff got its hands on Cell Phone No. 1. In honor of today's 40th anniversary, we take a collective?and very fond, if clunky, and sometimes fuzzy?look back:

RELATED: Nokia Forgot to Tell You Its New Ad Is Faking It

The Family Cell Phone?For some of our staff, early cell phones were something of a collective luxury. "I think my first cell phone was one my family shared for car rides," remembers J.K. Trotter. In addition, many of us convinced our parents to let us have our own phones for "safety reasons." Matt Sullivan's folks got him a beeper and a cell phone when he went off to a "big-bad fancy all-boys private middle school," even if two devices ended up cheaper than one his early family Verizon bill: "My mom was freaking out that I'd run off down Park Avenue somewhere." I convinced my parents to get me a phone for a spring break trip to visit my brother in college while I was still in high school. The phone, arguably, would keep me safe from all that evil partying. (My parents had no problem sending me off for a weekend of college partying. The cell phone was the issue.)?

RELATED: Your Stolen Cellphone's Records Are Going Straight to the Cops

...and Getting a Nokia Rip-Offs Instead?While all the cool kids had the Nokia brick, some of us had the knock-off version. My parents would only let me get the free phone included with a brand-new (and what would become life-long) Verizon contract, so I got a Kyocera version of the little guy. Even though it didn't have Snake, it still reached a certain bar of cool, as my fellow one-time Kyocera owner and colleague Zuckerman confirms: "I just remember I really wanted a really tiny non-flip phone for my first phone," she recalls. It's unclear why, exactly, these open-faced phones trumped the more compact, more protected ones earlier on. It probably had something to do with the "snake game" and the fact that those black Motorola StarTACs were regarded as parent phones.

RELATED: Nokia Maps for iPhone Has (Almost) Everything Apple Maps Doesn't

The RAZR and Its Flip-Phone Clones?"The RAZR was a huuuuuuuge deal," notes Connor Simpson, who did not have the shiny, slim Motorola device, but a lesser flip-phone. It was the first gadget that understood a cell phone's capability as both a fashion accessory and status symbol.?"The rich kids had the Motorola Razr. Maybe a Nokia. But mostly Razrs," adds Sullivan, who had neither. While the knock-offs lacked all the style and finesse of Motorola's condensed bundle, they tried. "LG (or whichever company, maybe Motorola) tried really hard to make it look like the phone was made out of metal, with like, painted plastic," notes Trotter when remember his first ?very own cell phone, an unmemorable LG product. In other words: It was no RAZR.

Just about a year and a half ago, a good chunk of the Atlantic Wire staff owned what we now affectionately refer to as "dumbphones." Even then, those old-fashioned few were luddites, clutching to earlier times, and outdated gadgets. Since, even the most stubborn of us have upgraded to a full-fledged smart phone. But you never forget your first. For the most part.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/never-forget-first-cell-phone-163557762.html

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George Heymont: Suffer The Children

Although the plots of many musicals have been built around love stories and comic devices, a growing number can be identified as "message" musicals. Whether commenting on religious persecution, racism, controversial medical issues, interfaith, interracial, and same-sex relationships, the creative teams for many shows have given their audiences new opportunities to discuss the political issues of the day. Here's Rose Marie Jun (known primarily for her role as Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show) performing Harold Rome's "Sing Me A Song With Social Significance" from 1937's Pins and Needles, a musical revue performed by members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU).

On August 1, 2001, the DREAM Act was introduced by Senators Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch. Since then, immigration reform has faced a rough and rocky uphill battle.

• Less than six weeks after the bill's introduction, the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon sent the nation into a tailspin of paranoia, xenophobia, and most particularly, Islamophobia.
• As the United States launched wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States Armed Forces offered many immigrants a path to citizenship (according to Wikipedia, in 2009 an estimated 29,000 members of the military were foreign-born immigrants who were not yet American citizens).
• On April 23, 2010, Governor Jan Brewer signed Arizona's controversial SB1070 into law, making it a state misdemeanor for an alien to be in Arizona without carrying the necessary identification documents on his person.
• Although the House of Representatives passed the DREAM Act on December 8, 2010, it failed in the Senate.
• In July of 2011, the California DREAM Act provided access to private college scholarships for state schools to students who were illegal immigrants.
• In August of 2011, the state of Illinois authorized a similar plan for legal as well as illegal children of immigrants.
• During a Republican Presidential primary debate on January 23, 2012, Mitt Romney concisely described his plan for dealing with illegal immigration using the politically loaded term "self deportation."
• During 2012, Glenn Beck tried to stoke conservative outrage with frequent references to the phenomenon of anchor babies.

On June 15, 2012, President Obama made the following statement about immigration reform.

Barely six weeks into 2013, Bay area audiences witnessed the world premiere of a fascinating new musical that deals with immigration reform. How did the project come about?

Following passage of the California DREAM Act, the Marsh Youth Theatre in San Francisco embarked on creating a new piece of musical theatre which focused on undocumented students living in the Bay area who lived under the constant threat of deportation. Using the methodology and techniques of the Voice of Witness Education Program, members of MYT's Teen Troupe gathered oral histories for In and Out of Shadows from people in their own social circles as well as those referred to them through community organizations such as:

• AB540 Clubs at City College of San Francisco
• SOMCAN (South of Market Community Action Network)
• Leadership Public Schools in Richmond
• ASPIRE (Asian Students Promoting Immigration Reform and Education)

J. Adan Ruiz as Juan in the Marsh Youth Theatre's production
of In and Out of Shadows (Photo by: Katia Fuentes)

Backed by additional funding from NALAC (National Association of Latino Arts and Culture) and the Creative Work Fund, the show's musical score (composed by MYT Director Emily Klion and George Brooks) was inspired by the sounds of jazz, hip hop, and Mexican mariachi music. As director Cliff Mayotte notes: "For many of the performers in this production, these stories are not disembodied tales, but accurate reflections of their day-to-day experiences. There is real power in being able to tell your own story and real power in bearing witness to the person telling it."

Bianca Catalan and Angelina Orrelanos are two of the
teenagers in In and Out of Shadows (Photo by: Katia Fuentes)

Playwright/poet Gary Soto was tasked with transforming the oral histories collected by the students into a piece of theatre about the experiences of undocumented teens living in the East Bay communities of Richmond and Pinole. As he recalls:

"As a Mexican-American author of 40-plus books, I have a large readership among Latino youth (arguably the largest in the country) and have visited more than 400 schools during the last 20 years. Elementary through college, students know something about my writing. The focus of my visits has been schools in the San Joaquin Valley (which houses a large undocumented workforce in rural labor). I've also visited lots of schools in the Los Angeles basin and am aware of the struggles among urban youth. For several years I was a board member of the CHA House, an educational program that brings youth from their small hometowns (Coalinga, Huron, and Avenal) to study at UC Berkeley. I have never asked, but I suspect that about half of the parents of these children are undocumented.

In and Out of Shadows is not dumbed-down theatre; it's really clever theatre. There's music, there's dance, we have a squirt gun incident, and we'll be throwing candy into the audience. It was worrisome to me that some groups weren't represented because they wouldn't come forward (not one Chinese student was interviewed). There may be risk, but we don't think La Migra (the border patrol) would show up to gather up some of the kids and parents in the audience."

Playwright, poet, and author Gary Soto

In and Out of Shadows is filled with stories about kids who didn't want to change their name when they snuck across the border, teens who went on vacation in Mexico and were stopped by immigration authorities when they tried to reenter the United States, and those whose families consist of documented and undocumented immigrants. From the hard-working Filipino-American mother who is arrested and threatened with deportation after her employer is investigated for failure to pay his taxes to the affable jock from British Columbia, the evening is peppered with Tagalog, Spanish, Spanglish and other languages commonly heard in the Bay area.

Louel Senores and Deanna Palaganas (Photo by: Katia Fuentes)

Whether one focuses on the young man with no skills (other than his abundant charm) or the girl who wants to become a doctor; whether one looks at the pair of boys who want to become DJs or the Indonesian girl who tells her friends about her native country, as the students struggle to prepare their personal statements for an AB 540 conference at UC Berkeley, they share what it was like to have to be sedated with cough syrup or crawl through sewers in order to enter the United States.

And what do these children look like when they become adults? Here's the founder of Define American, Jose Antonio Vargas (who, in 2008, was part of the Washington Post's team of Pulitzer prize-winning journalists who covered the shootings at Virginia Tech), as he recently testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

In an op-ed piece published in The New York Times, Vargas stressed that:

"There are no words to describe just how much stress and heartbreak my immigration status, and my choice to go public with it, has caused my grandmother. Because of her I almost did not speak out about being undocumented. But it was also because of her -- and my grandfather, who died in 2007, and my mother, whom I have not seen in almost 20 years -- because of all their sacrifices, that I will be able to speak in Congress. I am here because of them."

To read more of George Heymont go to My Cultural Landscape

?

Follow George Heymont on Twitter: www.twitter.com/geoheymont

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-heymont/suffer-the-children_b_3003779.html

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