'Girls,' 'Sugar Man' earn Directors Guild honors

LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Girls" star Lena Dunham has won the TV comedy directing prize from the Directors Guild of America, while the musical portrait "Searching for Sugar Man" earned the documentary award.

Dunham won Saturday for directing the pilot of the show, which focuses on the lives of a group of girls in their 20s.

"It is such an unbelievable honor to be in the company of the people in this room, who have made me want to do this with my life," Dunham said.

Malik Bendjelloul won the documentary award for "Sugar Man," his study of the fate of critically acclaimed but obscure 1970s singer-songwriter Rodriquez. The film also is nominated for best documentary at the Feb. 24 Academy Awards.

Among other early TV winners:

— Musical variety: Glenn Weiss, "The 66th Annual Tony Awards."

— Daytime serial: Jill Mitwell, "One Life to Live."

— Children's program: Paul Hoen, "Let It Shine."

The Directors Guild honors continued Hollywood's strange awards season, which could culminate with a big Oscar win for Ben Affleck's "Argo." The guild's prize for best director typically is a final blessing for the film that goes on to win best-picture and director at the Academy Awards.

Affleck can go only one-for-two at the Oscars, though. He's up for the film honor at the Directors Guild, and "Argo" is looking like the best-picture favorite at the Oscars. But the director's branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences overlooked him and several other key filmmakers for an Oscar directing slot.

The guild and Oscar directing lineups usually match up closely, but they have little in common this season, with only Steven Spielberg for "Lincoln" and Ang Lee for "Life of Pi" nominated at both shows.

Along with them and Affleck, the guild nominated Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty" and Tom Hooper for "Les Miserables." At the Oscars, Spielberg and Lee are joined in the directing category by Michael Haneke for "Amour," David O. Russell for "Silver Linings Playbook" and Benh Zeitlin for "Beasts of the Southern Wild."

Director Norman Jewison, the guild's 2010 lifetime-achievement prize winner, presented Bigelow with her nomination plaque and noted the incongruity of the Oscar best-picture field, which has nine nominees, while there are only five directing slots.

"So apparently, there were four films that were directed by themselves," Jewison said.

With 12 Oscar nominations, Spielberg's Civil War saga initially looked like the Oscar favorite over such other potential favorites as "Argo," ''Les Miserables" and "Zero Dark Thirty," since films generally have little chance of winning best picture if they are not nominated for best director. Only three films have done it in 84 years, most recently 1989's best-picture champ "Driving Miss Daisy," which failed to earn a directing nomination for Bruce Beresford.

But Affleck's "Argo," in which he also stars as a CIA operative who hatches a bold plan to rescue six Americans during the hostage crisis in Iran, has swept up all the major awards since the Oscar nominations. "Argo" won best drama and director at the Golden Globes and top film honors from the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild of America.

Many of the same film professionals who vote in guild awards also cast ballots for the Oscars. If Affleck wins at the Directors Guild awards, it will be a strong sign that "Argo" has the inside track for the best-picture Oscar.

Affleck may have a bit of newcomer's edge at the guild, where he's the only first-time nominee. Spielberg has won the guild prize a record three times, for "The Color Purple," ''Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan." Lee has won twice, for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Brokeback Mountain," while Bigelow won three years ago for "The Hurt Locker" and Hooper won two years ago for "The King's Speech."

A win for Affleck would nick the guild's record as a strong forecast for the eventual directing recipient at the Oscars. Only six times in the 64-year history of the guild awards has the winner there failed to follow up with an Oscar. It would be No. 7 if Affleck wins Saturday, since he's not up for best director at the Oscars.

Peer loyalty might play in Affleck's favor at the Oscars. The acting branch in particular, the largest block of the academy's 5,900 members, might really throw its weight behind "Argo" because of Affleck's directing snub. Actors love it when one of their own moves into a successful directing career, and Affleck — who's rarely earned raves for his dramatic chops — also delivers one of his best performances in "Argo."

Affleck has had no traction in acting honors this season, and he's joked that no one considered it a snub when he wasn't nominated for best actor. So a best-picture vote for "Argo" might be viewed as making right his omission from the directing lineup and acknowledging what a double-threat talent he's become in front of and behind the camera.

A best-picture prize also would send Affleck home with an Oscar. The award would go to the producers of "Argo": George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Affleck.

But it's not as though Affleck has never gotten his due at Hollywood awards before. He and Matt Damon jump-started their careers with 1997's "Good Will Hunting," for which they shared a screenplay Oscar.

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AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen contributed to this report.

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Concerns About A.D.H.D. Practices and Amphetamine Addiction

Before his addiction, Richard Fee was a popular college class president and aspiring medical student. "You keep giving Adderall to my son, you're going to kill him," said Rick Fee, Richard's father, to one of his son's doctors.

VIRGINIA BEACH — Every morning on her way to work, Kathy Fee holds her breath as she drives past the squat brick building that houses Dominion Psychiatric Associates.

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

MENTAL HEALTH CLINIC Dominion Psychiatric Associates in Virginia Beach, where Richard Fee was treated by Dr. Waldo M. Ellison. After observing Richard and hearing his complaints about concentration, Dr. Ellison diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed the stimulant Adderall.

It was there that her son, Richard, visited a doctor and received prescriptions for Adderall, an amphetamine-based medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It was in the parking lot that she insisted to Richard that he did not have A.D.H.D., not as a child and not now as a 24-year-old college graduate, and that he was getting dangerously addicted to the medication. It was inside the building that her husband, Rick, implored Richard’s doctor to stop prescribing him Adderall, warning, “You’re going to kill him.”

It was where, after becoming violently delusional and spending a week in a psychiatric hospital in 2011, Richard met with his doctor and received prescriptions for 90 more days of Adderall. He hanged himself in his bedroom closet two weeks after they expired.

The story of Richard Fee, an athletic, personable college class president and aspiring medical student, highlights widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D., doctors and other experts said.

Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors who skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.

Richard Fee’s experience included it all. Conversations with friends and family members and a review of detailed medical records depict an intelligent and articulate young man lying to doctor after doctor, physicians issuing hasty diagnoses, and psychiatrists continuing to prescribe medication — even increasing dosages — despite evidence of his growing addiction and psychiatric breakdown.

Very few people who misuse stimulants devolve into psychotic or suicidal addicts. But even one of Richard’s own physicians, Dr. Charles Parker, characterized his case as a virtual textbook for ways that A.D.H.D. practices can fail patients, particularly young adults. “We have a significant travesty being done in this country with how the diagnosis is being made and the meds are being administered,” said Dr. Parker, a psychiatrist in Virginia Beach. “I think it’s an abnegation of trust. The public needs to say this is totally unacceptable and walk out.”

Young adults are by far the fastest-growing segment of people taking A.D.H.D medications. Nearly 14 million monthly prescriptions for the condition were written for Americans ages 20 to 39 in 2011, two and a half times the 5.6 million just four years before, according to the data company I.M.S. Health. While this rise is generally attributed to the maturing of adolescents who have A.D.H.D. into young adults — combined with a greater recognition of adult A.D.H.D. in general — many experts caution that savvy college graduates, freed of parental oversight, can legally and easily obtain stimulant prescriptions from obliging doctors.

“Any step along the way, someone could have helped him — they were just handing out drugs,” said Richard’s father. Emphasizing that he had no intention of bringing legal action against any of the doctors involved, Mr. Fee said: “People have to know that kids are out there getting these drugs and getting addicted to them. And doctors are helping them do it.”

“...when he was in elementary school he fidgeted, daydreamed and got A’s. he has been an A-B student until mid college when he became scattered and he wandered while reading He never had to study. Presently without medication, his mind thinks most of the time, he procrastinated, he multitasks not finishing in a timely manner.”

Dr. Waldo M. Ellison

Richard Fee initial evaluation

Feb. 5, 2010

Richard began acting strangely soon after moving back home in late 2009, his parents said. He stayed up for days at a time, went from gregarious to grumpy and back, and scrawled compulsively in notebooks. His father, while trying to add Richard to his health insurance policy, learned that he was taking Vyvanse for A.D.H.D.

Richard explained to him that he had been having trouble concentrating while studying for medical school entrance exams the previous year and that he had seen a doctor and received a diagnosis. His father reacted with surprise. Richard had never shown any A.D.H.D. symptoms his entire life, from nursery school through high school, when he was awarded a full academic scholarship to Greensboro College in North Carolina. Mr. Fee also expressed concerns about the safety of his son’s taking daily amphetamines for a condition he might not have.

“The doctor wouldn’t give me anything that’s bad for me,” Mr. Fee recalled his son saying that day. “I’m not buying it on the street corner.”

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Deering Banjo in a groove

It all started with the Kingston Trio.

One day in 1963, a San Diego kid and his friends got their hands on an album by the popular folk group. Greg Deering, 12 at the time, recalls studying the musicians on the cover and thinking, "I've got to get a banjo" — not out of love for the twangy instrument but mainly because his pal already had a guitar.

Fifty years later, Greg, his wife, Janet, and daughter Jamie preside over the bestselling banjo-making business in the U.S.

From a small Spring Valley factory, the Deering Banjo Co. is having its best year ever, defying the U.S. skills gap and California's manufacturing doldrums. It has expanded and trained its own workforce and expects to top $4 million in sales for the year ending June 30.

Greg Deering, 62, is the creative force behind the banjo design and the machinery used to build them. Janet Deering, 58, handles operations. Daughter Jamie Deering, 34, might have the most fun job: liaison with the company's big-name roster of professional musician customers.

Over the company's 38-year history, it has developed a loyal following from the likes of Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, the Dixie Chicks, Steve Martin and Mumford & Sons. Artists who play Deering banjos rolled up 13 Grammy nominations this year.

Two of Deering's fans illustrate how the company has managed to ride the banjo's renaissance as an instrument that crosses several musical genres as varied as country, reggae and indie rock.

"It's great working with a family company, an American company that really cares about the artist and making top-quality banjos," said Jeff DaRosa, singer, bassist and banjo player for the Dropkick Murphys, the Boston-based Celtic punk band.

Scotty Morris, lead vocalist of the contemporary swing revival band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, called Deering Banjo "the quintessential American instrument builder."

"When I call Deering, I talk to a Deering, and I like that almost as much as I love the instruments they build," Morris said.

That kind of reputation combined with specially crafted manufacturing tools and a skilled, veteran workforce has helped the company weather the recession and cheap competition from China. Deering has been able to expand its workforce in a way that other companies have not, growing to 42 workers from 30 a year ago.

Although the nation as a whole has been adding manufacturing jobs, all California has done is reduce the rate of decline, said John Husing, principal of Redlands-based Economics and Politics Inc.

The most recent statistics available show that California ended 2012 with 1.23 million manufacturing jobs, down sharply from nearly 1.9 million in 2000 and marginally below the nearly 1.24 million in December 2011.

If you ask the Deerings what their greatest challenge has been, the answer has been running the business in California, particularly during a run-up in workers' compensation insurance premiums that began under Gov. Gray Davis.

"That nearly put us out of business. We're still paying off some of those debts," Greg Deering said, adding that the company has remained in California mostly because the family considers it home.

"And because we are stubborn. We are so stubborn," Janet Deering said.

Greg Deering credits his father, who worked in the Southern California aerospace industry, for developing his eye for design.

"He started me out on model airplanes when I was 2," Deering said. "He turned me loose on my own, making models when I was 5. At age 7, he bought me my first set of drafting tools."

But it wasn't until he was a student at San Diego State that he realized just what his father had done for him. There was an assignment to cut a board of certain dimensions from a rough block of wood. He was done with the assignment quickly and began working on a banjo. Weeks later, he realized the other students were still working on the block of wood.

"That was when it clicked for me," he said, later adding, "my father was a very intense mentor for me. He was teaching me how to be a craftsman."

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Marmot researchers raise a toast for Groundhog Day

For most Americans, Groundhog Day is a quaint oddity or a movie starring Bill Murray. For Punxsutawney Phil Sowerby, the Pennsylvania critter who'll be dragged out of his burrow Saturday by men in top hats to look for his shadow, the day must be a supreme annoyance.

But for UCLA biologist Dan Blumstein, today's midwinter observance has become a reason to throw a party in honor of a creature that scientists have studied for decades.

Groundhogs are marmots — and through marmots, scientists hope to gain insight into the social behavior of animals, how they communicate and how their interactions influence the size of their population.

And so on Friday afternoon, Blumstein and a group of 30 or so fellow "marmotophiles" gathered in a spare hallway in the university's Life Sciences building and toasted groundhogs with cans of soda as a jazz mix played in the background.

"This is really the only holiday about animal behavior," Blumstein said.

Cat-sized, sharp-toothed groundhogs have a large range — from the Southeast up into the East Coast and Midwest, across Canada and even as far north as Alaska. Also known as woodchucks, they're the largest of the 14 or 15 marmot species (scientists are still debating the precise number).

Marmots are great animals for scientists to study, Blumstein said, because they're awake during the day and they "have an address," living in burrows that researchers can stake out over time. Blumstein, who has also studied the behavior of kangaroos, wallabies, hermit crabs, sea anemones, lizards, birds and people, has spent more than 13 years observing the colonies of yellow-bellied marmots who live at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Crested Butte, Colo.

During summers in the field, he and colleagues have trapped marmots live using horse chow as bait, tagged them with "earrings," taken samples of their blood, and recorded the size of colonies as they waxed and waned. During winter, Blumstein has held a hibernating marmot in a lab, its body temperature just a couple of degrees above freezing. "It's like a hairy rock," he said.

A groundhog roused from hibernation that appears to be "looking for his shadow" is probably displaying a typical pattern, Blumstein said. Marmots rouse periodically during the winter to urinate, and near the end of the season they start to emerge from their burrows and scope out their territory for potential mates. Males typically wake before females.

Over the years, the scientists' observations have helped them understand how certain behaviors translate into success, or failure, for the colonies. Lately, they've focused on how the higher temperatures brought on by climate change might improve, or hinder, the marmots' reproductive success.

As recently as 2010, earlier springs seemed to be helping the marmots in Colorado by increasing the length of time they could eat. But then a longer-than-usual winter caused the population to crash.

Blumstein and his team are curious to see how the marmots will fare this spring after a winter that produced less early-season snow. That snow acts as a blanket for the animals; without it, their burrows may not have maintained the right temperature for healthy hibernation.

"We want to understand the limits of their flexibility," Blumstein said. "At some point, there may be too little snow to keep them warm over the winter."

One of Blumstein's students said she was studying gene expression in the Colorado marmots. Another student, from South America, was studying how marmots react to climate. They don't have marmots — or Groundhog Day — in South America, she noted.

Matthew Petelle, a graduate student, said he was interested in "marmot personality." Some are bold and others are shy, he said, and he's trying to figure out why the shy ones survive and thrive.

"We're the enthusiasts," he said of the partygoers at the science building, admitting that he'd probably be talking about marmots even in the absence of Groundhog Day.

Behind Petelle glowered Two-Buck Chuck, a groundhog Blumstein spied near a Kansas road more than 15 years ago.

"I was trying to study it and I was thinking it was alive," he said. "Then I realized, it's really not moving."

The animal had been hit by a car and had crawled off the road to die. Blumstein brought the body back to his lab and stuffed it, with help from his wife.

Other examples of groundhog kitsch were on display as well. There was a photograph of an obese yellow-bellied marmot eating Lay's potato chips in a Utah woman's kitchen and a page from the News of the World tabloid headlined "ATTACK OF THE 100 FT MARMOT."

"We made that into T-shirts," Blumstein said.

The jovial professor said he got the idea for the annual shindigs from his mentor, Kenneth Armitage, a University of Kansas behavioral ecologist who led the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory marmot project for 41 years.

Armitage, now retired, said he always promised his guests he'd serve groundhog at the parties.

As in "ground hog," or sausage.

"They'd kind of look at you funny, at first," he said of his grad students. "Then you'd see this big flash of relief."

eryn.brown@latimes.com

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BlackBerry 10 installed base to reach 20 million in 2013, Windows Phone to reach 45 million

Despite showing clear promise and being a tremendous upgrade compared to earlier BlackBerry software, BlackBerry 10 didn’t receive the warmest welcome when it was unveiled earlier this week. At least one leading market research firm thinks BlackBerry (RIMM) has done enough to gain some good traction in 2013, however. ABI Research released new estimates this week projecting that the BlackBerry 10 installed base will reach 20 million by the end of 2013. The firm also says Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone platform, which struggled to garner interest in its early days, will see its installed base climb to 45 million by the end of the year.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry doesn’t need to catch up with Android and iOS overnight, it needs to live to fight another day]

“2013 should be seen as relative success for both Microsoft and BlackBerry,” ABI analyst Aapo Markkanen said. ”For the end of the year, we expect there to be 45 million Windows Phone handsets in use, with BlackBerry 10 holding an installed base of close to 20 million. Microsoft will also have 5.5 million Windows-powered tablets to show for it.”

[More from BGR: GS: Ignore the chatter, BlackBerry rebound is coming]

According to ABI, these figures will be “enough to keep developers interested” as the two companies battle for the No.3 spot in the smartphone war.

“The greatest fear for both Microsoft and BlackBerry is that the initial sales of their smartphones will disappoint and thereby kill off the developer interest, which then would effectively close the window of opportunity on further sales success. Our view is that the installed bases of this scale would be large enough to keep these two in the game,” Markkanen noted. ”It will definitely also help that both firms have actively kept the developers’ interest in mind while designing and rolling out their platforms.”

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Washington wins 3 trophies at NAACP Image Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kerry Washington was a triple threat at the NAACP Image Awards.

The star of ABC's "Scandal" picked up a trio of trophies at the 44th annual ceremony: outstanding actress in a drama series for "Scandal," supporting actress in a motion picture for "Django Unchained" and the President's Award, which is given in recognition of special achievement and exceptional public service.

"This award does not belong to me," said Washington, who plays a slave separated from her husband in "Django Unchained," as she picked up her first trophy of the evening for her role in the film directed by Quentin Tarantino. "It belongs to our ancestors. We shot this film on a slave plantation, and they were with us along every step of the way."

Washington, who plays crisis management consultant Olivia Pope on "Scandal," serves on President Barack Obama's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Don Cheedle was awarded the outstanding actor in a comedy series trophy for his role as a slick management consultant in Showtime's "House of Lies."

"This doesn't belong just to me, but I am taking it home tonight," joked Cheedle.

A few winners weren't present at the Shrine Auditorium to pick up their trophies, including Denzel Washington for outstanding actor in a motion picture for "Flight," Viola Davis for outstanding actress in a motion picture for "Won't Back Down" and Omar Epps for supporting actor in a drama series for Fox's "House."

"Red Tails," the drama about the Tuskegee Airmen, was honored as outstanding motion picture.

"Look! I beat Quentin Tarantino," beamed "Red Tails" executive producer George Lucas as he accepted the award.

LL Cool J, who was honored as outstanding actor in a drama series for CBS' "NCIS: Los Angeles," dedicated his trophy to fellow nominee Michael Clarke Duncan, "The Green Mile" and "The Finder" actor who died last year.

"I wish his family well," said LL. "Let's give it up for him."

Gladys Knight sang during the in memoriam segment, but the beginning of her performance wasn't heard on the live NBC broadcast because of a technical glitch.

Sidney Poitier presented Harry Belafonte with the Spingarn Award, which honors outstanding achievement by an African American. His honor was followed by a serenade from Wyclef Jean and Common.

Other winners at the ceremony hosted by talk show host Steve Harvey included Loretta Devine as supporting actress in a drama series for "Grey's Anatomy," Cassi Davis as outstanding actress in a comedy series and Lance Gross as outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series for TBS' "Tyler Perry's House of Payne."

The Image Awards are presented annually by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the group's members select the winners.

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Online:

http://www.naacpimageawards.net

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Lafayette, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

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Gordon Brush plant owner bristles at red tape tying up expansion

Ken Rakusin is frustrated.

You would be too.

Since 2009, the owner of Gordon Brush Manufacturing Co. has been trying to expand his 51,000-square-foot City of Commerce factory by 20,000 square feet. That would mean a larger factory floor, more office space for the engineers who work with customers to design new products, conference rooms, a spacious cafeteria.

It would mean room to expand beyond Rakusin's current workforce of 85. More sales. Higher payroll. More property tax, sales tax, income tax. A $1.5-million investment in construction alone.

Four years on, and he's still trying. "I've almost given up," Rakusin, 61, told me one day recently as we toured the plant. "For the life of me, I can't understand it. If I rented out the building and moved to Nevada, they'd welcome me there with open arms."

The glitch apparently has something to do with a provision of the Los Angeles County building and fire code that would be affronted by Rakusin's construction plan. Before we get to the details, let's recognize that his experience underscores a major flaw in California's business development program, such as it is. Call it the missing middle: No one has the responsibility to mediate among various code and regulatory agencies in cases where it might make sense to work around the rules in a rule book to enable a California manufacturer to remain in place and even expand.

In the case of Gordon Brush, the City of Commerce and the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. have each taken a crack at finding a way around the fire code. "I've asked every question possible, and the answers come back every time: 'Nope,'" Rakusin says.

He echoes other small-business owners in observing that California isn't even organized to clue them in on the pro-business programs it does offer. Rakusin recalls that at an industry conference during the depths of the 2008 recession, a brush maker from Missouri told him about that state's innovative "workshare" program, through which the state paid some of the wages of skilled workers to tide companies over the slump and keep layoffs to a minimum.

Rakusin wondered if California had a similar program, only to discover that it did — and had pioneered the concept! "But nobody knew about it here," he says. "How come I had to learn about it from someone from Missouri?" (The California program helped Rakusin keep some workers through the most recent recession that the company could not afford to lose for the long term.)

What's at risk is a distinguished Southern California business with a veteran force of skilled workers earning as much as $20 an hour, plus medical benefits and a 401(k) plan. Gordon Brush was founded in 1951 in Los Angeles and acquired in 1974 by William Loitz, a McDonnell Douglas engineer who had helped put a man on the moon and figured that was capstone enough to anyone's aerospace career, as Rakusin recalls.

By 1989 the business was in trouble. Rakusin was an executive at Xerox in El Segundo looking for a new challenge, but when he first met with Loitz he was doubtful. "I think you'll be able to fix this," Loitz told him. Rakusin thought at first, "I belong at Xerox," then decided he'd be a fool to turn down the gamble of a new career. In a year he had doubled Gordon's profit and by 2010 he had bought out the last of the Loitz family's interest. The company moved to its Commerce location in 1998.

You may think the brush business is simple and low-tech, but that's not true even if all you know about it is paintbrushes. There are cheap paintbrushes and expensive ones, brushes for house painters and portrait artists, all requiring different shapes, sizes and bristles. There are cheap cosmetic brushes made from white goat hair and artist's brushes made from blue squirrel fur, which costs $5,000 a pound.

"We've sent brushes to the moon and Mars," Rakusin told me, describing a contract from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to equip the Mars and lunar rovers with stainless steel brushes for sweeping clean their collection scoops. "A guy came over from JPL and said, 'We need three — one to go up and two for testing.'" His finished products were nestled like precious jewels or sensitive explosives in a suitcase with foam padding so they wouldn't be jostled on their way to La Cañada Flintridge.

The factory floor is studded with huge half-million-dollar, computer-driven machines from Germany, Italy and Belgium. But despite what you may have heard, robots aren't perfect. Often there's no substitute for a human eye and hand to put the finishing touches on a product or to fix a flaw.

The bestselling brush Gordon makes is a hand-held, all-purpose one made of wood veneer, which the factory can turn out at the rate of 30,000 a day. It uses robot machines to drill holes in the 8-inch handles and fill them with tufts of wire, watched over by a single operator per shift. ("This is how I compete with China," Rakusin says.)

At the other end of the scale are custom and one-off items that Gordon Brush makes for NASA, for the semiconductor industry, for the Pentagon — you'd be amazed at who needs a brush with a unique design. For example, the Army: As Rakusin tells the story, it was discarding the gun barrels of its Abrams tank after their bores got too encrusted with soot.

"They were throwing them away at $150,000 each, until somebody said, 'Can't we clean them instead?'" The Pentagon had three teams of engineers working with three brush companies to come up with a solution. Gordon won the contract with a bulbous design made of heavy plastic with ranks of short wire bristles — $150 each to save gun barrels worth a thousand times as much.

Rakusin's decision to expand the plant in 2009 came as the economic recovery got underway. His idea was to add a two-story annex on one side of the factory, with room for an expanded employee cafeteria and more office space. That would free up as much as 20,000 square feet for manufacturing. He would also push his loading docks out into his parking lot for an additional 4,500 square feet of warehouse.

In the beginning, things moved fast. The Commerce planning commission gave zoning approval in January 2011, the county fire department asked for some minor changes in February, then electrical approvals followed, as well as assents from Southern California Edison and the railroads whose infrastructure abuts the property.

Then, in May 2011, the county fire marshals objected that the proposed expansion violated fire code provisions governing the size of a building relative to its lot.

And that was that.

"You're dealing with absolutes," says Alex Hamilton, the City of Commerce's top business development official. "It's a building and fire code issue."

He says the project sailed through the city's planning process — "from a zoning perspective it looked fine" — but the fire code was out of the city's jurisdiction. Hamilton says fire officials tried to find a way around the code restrictions but couldn't. "This received attention at the highest levels," he says. (Fire Department officials didn't return my calls.)

The L.A. County Economic Development Corp. ran into the same roadblock, says Barbara Levine, the LAEDC's regional officer for the City of Commerce. Rakusin "was talking to the right people," she says. He just wasn't getting the right answers.

It's conceivable that the fire code provision at issue in Rakusin's expansion has such important safety implications that what it says goes. But it's also possible that the problem is that every agency sees his issue from within its own sandbox, because no one in state or local government is entrusted with the power to bring them together and make a beach.

Rakusin says he receives "one letter a week" from economic development agencies in other states. They don't tell him anything he doesn't already know. He owns a factory in Wisconsin, where the purchase of factory equipment is exempt from sales tax; in Commerce, a $1-million machine will cost him an extra $90,000 in state and local levies.

Throughout his ordeal, Rakusin got the strong impression that things might have gone a little better if he was seriously threatening to leave the state. That's a dangerous impression to give a business owner, especially a manufacturer already sensitive about being ignored.

"Manufacturing gets no attention, but it's the most consistent job creator there is," he says, "and this is already the most expensive place to do it." Are these the businesses California should be taking for granted?

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.

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Mahony stripped of public church duties

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez  on Thursday announced dramatic actions in response to the priest abuse scandal, saying that Cardinal Roger Mahony would no longer perform public duties in the church and that Santa Barbara Bishop Thomas J. Curry has stepped down.

Gomez said in a statement that Mahony -- who led the L.A. archdiocese from 1985 to 2011 -- "will no longer have any administrative or public duties."

Gomez also announced the church has released a trove of confidential church files detailing how the Los Angeles archdiocese dealt with priests accused of molestation.

Gomez wrote in a letter to parishioners that the files would be disturbing to read.

"I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed," he wrote. "We need to acknowledge that terrible failure today."

Gomez's statement came a week after the release of internal Catholic church records. The records showed 15 years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Mahony and Curry discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement. Those records represent just a fraction of the files the church released Thursday. The Times is now reviewing those files.

DOCUMENT: Los Angeles Archdiocese priest abuse files

The records released last week offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation's largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders' own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.

The records contain memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Curry, then the archdiocese's chief advisor on sex abuse cases. In the confidential letters, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they had abused young boys.

Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent the priests from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators. Mahony, who retired in 2011, has apologized repeatedly for errors in handling abuse allegations.

Gomez's letter detailed changes in the status of Curry and Mahony in the church.

"Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry has also publicly apologized for his decisions while serving as Vicar for Clergy. I have accepted his request to be relieved of his responsibility as the Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara,” Gomez wrote in a letter.

[Updated
at 9:44 p.m.: An archdiocese spokesman, Tod Tamberg, said that beyond cancelling his confirmation schedule, Mahony's day-to-day life as a retired priest would be largely unchanged. He resides at a North Hollywood parish, and Tamberg said he would remain a “priest in good standing” and continue to celebrate Mass there.]

The records were released hours after a judge signed an order requiring the church to do so.

In a written order, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Emilie H. Elias gave the church a Feb. 22 deadline to turn over about 30,000 pages of internal memos, psychiatric reports, Vatican correspondence and other documents.

“Let’s just get it done,” Elias said in court Thursday.

Her order brought to a close five and a half years of legal wrangling and delays and set the stage for a raft of new and almost certainly embarrassing revelations about the church’s handling of pedophile priests.

DOCUMENT: Los Angeles Archdiocese priest abuse files

The files Elias ordered released are the final piece of a landmark 2007 settlement between the archdiocese and about 500 people who said clergy abused them. As part of that $660-million settlement, the archdiocese agreed to hand over the personnel files of accused abusers. Victims said the files would provide accountability for church leaders who let pedophiles remain in the ministry; law enforcement officials said the records would be important investigative tools.

But the release was delayed for years by appeals and the painstaking process of reading and redacting 89 files, some hundreds of pages long. A private mediator in 2011 ordered the church to black out the names of victims and archdiocese employees not accused of abuse, saying he wanted to avoid “guilt by association.”

Earlier this month, at the urging of the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press, Elias ordered the names restored, saying the public had a right to know what Mahony and others in charge did about abuse. The church complained about the cost of restoring the redactions and suggested to the judge earlier this week that generic cover sheets for the files listing top officials and their dates of service should suffice.

After criticism from attorneys for the victims and the media, the church abandoned that plan and its lawyers said in court Thursday “anybody in a supervisory role” would be named in the documents. Elias’ order specified that the names of the archbishop, the vicar who handled clergy abuse, bishops and the heads of Catholic treatment centers for pedophiles be included.

Here is Gomez's full letter:

My brothers and sisters in Christ,

This week we are releasing the files of priests who sexually abused children while they were serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

These files document abuses that happened decades ago. But that does not make them less serious.

I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.

We need to acknowledge that terrible failure today. We need to pray for everyone who has ever been hurt by members of the Church. And we need to continue to support the long and painful process of healing their wounds and restoring the trust that was broken.

I cannot undo the failings of the past that we find in these pages. Reading these files, reflecting on the wounds that were caused, has been the saddest experience I’ve had since becoming your Archbishop in 2011.

My predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has expressed his sorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care. Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry has also publicly apologized for his decisions while serving as Vicar for Clergy. I have accepted his request to be relieved of his responsibility as the Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara.

To every victim of child sexual abuse by a member of our Church: I want to help you in your healing. I am profoundly sorry for these sins against you.

To every Catholic in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, I want you to know: We will continue, as we have for many years now, to immediately report every credible allegation of abuse to law enforcement authorities and to remove those credibly accused from ministry. We will continue to work, every day, to make sure that our children are safe and loved and cared for in our parishes, schools and in every ministry in the Archdiocese.

In the weeks ahead, I will address all of these matters in greater detail. Today is a time for prayer and reflection and deep compassion for the victims of child sexual abuse.

I entrust all of us and our children and families to the tender care and protection of our Blessed Mother Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of the Angels.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

RELATED:

L.A. church molestation records spark call for criminal inquiry

Steve Lopez: It's too late for Cardinal Roger Mahony's apologies

--  Harriet Ryan, Hector Becerra, Ashley Powers and Victoria Kim

Photo: Cardinal Roger Mahony in the entrance processional for the Mass for the Reception of Coadjutor Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez. Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

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Sony ignites talk of PS4 unveil with Playstation meeting

TOKYO (Reuters) – Sony Corp will this month host its first major Playstation meeting in two years, sparking a flare-up in online speculation the Japanese consumer electronics giant is preparing to unveil the successor to its 70 million-selling PS3 games console.

Sony declined to say whether it would release a new product at the meeting in New York on February 20. “We will be talking about the Playstation business,” spokesman Masaki Tsukakoshi said on Friday. A Google search for “Sony Feb 20 Playstation” returned more than 7 million hits.

The last time Sony held a Playstation event, in January 2011, it presented a protoype of its handheld Vita console. Before that, it convened a gathering in 2005 two months after it first demonstrated the PS3 concept. A meeting in 1999 revealed designs for the PS2.

It has been more than six years since Sony launched the PS3 home console, a longer gap than between it and its PS2 predecessor, adding to the anticipation that it will soon disclose its next gaming concept.

Since Sony’s last home console launch, the games market has been transformed by the boom in smartphones and tablet computers that have wooed players with free or cheap games.

Sony and other console makers Nintendo Co Ltd and Microsoft Corp now have to contend with competition from hand-held devices made by Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics and others.

Analysts expect that tablets and other mobile devices will match the power and graphics of today’s games consoles within a few years.

Struggling under competitive pressure, Nintendo on Wednesday cut its sales target for the Wii U, successor to its 100 million-selling Wii, to 4 million machines by the end of March from its launch in November, compared with an earlier forecast for 5.5 million.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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