Jenni Rivera jet linked to troubled company and executive

So far, this much is clear: Jenni Rivera, one of the most celebrated artists in the Latin world, died when her private jet went into a dive. The plane plummeted nose-first, 28,000 feet in 30 seconds, leaving its wreckage — and the remains of Rivera and six others — splayed across the side of the mountain like a wash of pebbles.

The investigation at the remote Mexican crash site is now in full swing, and authorities have not said whether they suspect maintenance problems or pilot error. But scrutiny has fallen on the plane and its pilots, one of whom was 78 years old. Interviews and documents link the jet to a troubled company — and an executive who was once imprisoned for faking the safety records of planes he bought from the Mexican government and sold to private pilots in the United States.

According to federal aviation records, the Learjet 25 carrying Rivera from a performance in Monterrey, Mexico, was built in 1969 and was owned by a Las Vegas company called Starwood Management LLC.

A Starwood executive, Christian E. Esquino Nunez, was accused of conspiring with associates in the 1990s and 2000s to falsify records documenting the history of planes they bought and sold — tail numbers, inspection stamps and logbooks. Esquino's "fraudulent business practices ... put the flying public at risk," federal authorities argued in documents obtained by The Times.

"We had a forewarning that this is what he is," Timothy D. Coughlin, an assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego, said. "Essentially they would manufacture the records ... that would indicate that maintenance was up to date. They would create them out of whole cloth." Once Esquino brought the planes across the border for sale, "it was open season," Coughlin said.

Coughlin prosecuted the case against Esquino in 2005, resulting in a guilty plea that sent Esquino to a federal prison in Lompoc, Calif., for two years.

After his release from prison, Esquino was deported from Southern California to his native Mexico, where he lives today.

For 20 years, Esquino has been embroiled in a briar of legal allegations, many involving airplanes — a bankruptcy and a restraining order, criminal indictments and civil judgments, cocaine-distribution charges, even a role in an alleged conspiracy to airlift relatives of the late Moammar Kadafi out of Libya.

On Wednesday, Esquino told The Times by telephone from Mexico City that the flight was not a charter as authorities have said. Rather, Rivera was in the final stages of buying the plane from Starwood for $250,000; the flight was offered as a free "demo."

Esquino, 50, described himself as Starwood's operations manager, and said he understood why his past would place him under scrutiny in the wake of the accident.

"Obviously my past — there is a story to it," he said. "It's unavoidable that they are going to look at my past.... I think it's fair to bring it up right now and question it."

However, he said, the jet was perfectly maintained. He said the only conceivable explanation for the crash was that pilot Miguel Perez Soto suffered a heart attack or was incapacitated in some way, and that a younger co-pilot, Alejandro Torres, was unable to save the plane. (Authorities stressed that they have not determined a cause of the crash or whether the plane had any problems.)

"We're all grieving," Esquino said. "I'm definitely very sorry that this happened."

Esquino said it was not a mistake to put a 78-year-old pilot at the helm of the flight. Perez had a valid license to fly in Mexico, authorities said Wednesday, but U.S. aviation sources said that in the United States, Perez was licensed to fly only under conditions that didn't require the use of instruments and was not allowed to carry passengers for hire.

Esquino said he had known and trusted Perez for 30 years. "I couldn't think of anyone more qualified," he said.

Rivera, 43, a famed Mexican American performer, mother of five and master of a growing international business empire, was killed Sunday when the private jet carrying her and four members of her entourage crashed near Iturbide, Mexico.

Rivera had sold 20 million albums, lived in a massive estate in Encino, was preparing to make her American network television debut and was at the height of her career.

The same plane, according to U.S. aviation records, sustained "substantial" damage in 2005 when a fuel imbalance left one wing tip weighing as much as 300 pounds more than the other. The unnamed pilot, despite having logged more than 7,000 hours in the air, lost control while landing in Amarillo, Texas, and struck a runway distance marker. No one was injured.

Esquino called that accident "minor" and said the plane had flown without issue for 1,000 hours since then.

Starwood formed in March 2007, two months after Esquino was released from prison. He probably knew, federal officials said Wednesday, that he would be unable to receive a license to buy and sell U.S.-registered aircraft following the federal charges and his deportation. Nevada employment records list Esquino's sister-in-law, Norma Gonzalez, as the sole corporate officer of Starwood. But according to allegations contained in court documents, it was Esquino — who has operated at times under the name Eduardo "Ed" Nunez — who was actually running the show.

Read More..

Fandango launches Oscar-themed web series with Dave Karger

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Fandango is elbowing into the Oscar horse race.

The movie-ticket seller launched its first original digital video series Wednesday, “The Frontrunners,” which will cover the major contenders for the top awards. The show will feature conversations with a star-studded group of Oscar hunters that includes Richard Gere (“Arbitrage”), Amy Adams (“The Master”), Hugh Jackman (“Les Miserables”) and Ben Affleck (“Argo”).

During the broadcasts, actors and directors will deconstruct key scenes from their movies, explaining how they crafted a moment of domestic conflict, in the case of Gere, or decided to intercut between a Hollywood script reading and the Iranian Hostage Crisis, as with Affleck.

However, commerce will be mixed in along with the art. Fandango will offer ticketing information along with the digital videos, with the hopes that the clips will inspire users to check out the movie being discussed.

The show, shot at Soho House in Los Angeles, will be hosted by Fandango’s Chief Correspondent Dave Karger, the movie guru the company lured over from Entertainment Weekly in September. It’s part of a bold bet that Fandango is making on original content.

To that in end, the company tapped former Disney digital executive Paul Yanover to serve in the newly created role of president and tasked him with creating a suite of programming for Fandango and its 41 million unique visitors.

“Our goal with Fandango is to make it the definitive movie-going brand across all platforms,” Nick Lehman, the president of digital for NBC Universal Entertainment Networks & Interactive Media, told TheWrap in October. “We want to continue expanding in ways that entertain and inform and video is key to that strategy. Advertisers are clamoring for it because there is a dearth of high quality original video content on the web.”

As TheWrap reported exclusively in October, Karger is also planning programs that will center on box office contenders and one program that will boast both A-List actors and below-the-line talent.

New episodes of “The Frontrunners” will air weekly through the Academy Awards on February 24, 2013. The first three installments will be available Wednesday

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Familiar names line up for Golden Globe noms

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — A familiar lineup of Hollywood awards contenders are expected among Golden Globe nominations, whose prospects include past Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis, Helen Mirren, Robert De Niro and Sally Field.

Nominations come out Thursday morning for the 70th Globes ceremony, Hollywood's second-biggest film honors after the Academy Awards.

Among potential contenders are two-time Oscar winners Day-Lewis and Field for Steven Spielberg's Civil War saga "Lincoln," whose Globe possibilities also include past Oscar recipient Tommy Lee Jones.

Two-time Oscar winner De Niro is in the running for the lost-soul romance "Silver Linings Playbook," along with the film's lead performers, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

The field of contenders is loaded with other Oscar recipients such as Mirren and Anthony Hopkins for "Hitchcock," Philip Seymour Hoffman for "The Master," Helen Hunt for "The Sessions," Marion Cotillard for "Rust and Bone," Russell Crowe for "Les Miserables" and Alan Arkin for "Argo."

One of the year's big action hits, the James Bond adventure "Skyfall," could bring the latest Globe nomination for past Oscar winner Javier Bardem, who elevates his super-villain role into one of the year's most entertaining performances.

Presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a relatively small group of about 90 reporters covering Hollywood for overseas outlets, the Globes sometimes single out newcomers to Hollywood's awards scene. Hilary Swank's Globe win for 1999's "Boys Don't Cry" helped put her on the map on the way to winning her first Oscar.

The possibilities this time include veteran French performers Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, who star as an elderly couple in "Amour," and first-time actors Quvenzhane Wallis and Dwight Henry for the low-budget critical darling "Beasts of the Southern Wild."

Globe acting winners often go on to receive the same prizes at the Oscars. All four Oscar winners last season — lead performers Meryl Streep of "The Iron Lady" and Jean Dujardin of "The Artist" and supporting players Octavia Spencer of "The Help" and Christopher Plummer of "Beginners" — won Globes first.

The Globes have a spotty record predicting which films might go on to earn the best-picture prize at the Academy Awards, however.

The Globes feature two best-film categories, one for drama and one for musical or comedy. Last year's Oscar best-picture winner, "The Artist," preceded that honor with a Globe win for best musical or comedy.

But in the seven years before that, only one winner in the Globe best-picture categories — 2008's "Slumdog Millionaire" — followed up with an Oscar best-picture win.

Along with 14 film prizes, the Globes hand out awards in 11 television categories.

Jodie Foster, a two-time Oscar and Globe winner for "The Accused" and "The Silence of the Lambs," will receive the group's Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the Jan. 13 ceremony.

Tina Fey, a two-time Globe TV winner for "30 Rock," and Amy Poehler, a past nominee for "Parks and Recreation," will host the show, which airs live on NBC.

Fey and Poehler follow Ricky Gervais, who was host the last three years and rubbed some Hollywood egos the wrong way with sharp wisecracks about A-list stars and the foreign press association itself.

With stars sharing drinks and dinner, the Globes have a reputation as one of Hollywood's loose and unpredictable awards gatherings. Winners occasionally have been off in the restroom when their names were announced, and there have been moments of onstage spontaneity such as Jack Nicholson mooning the crowd or Ving Rhames handing over his trophy to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon.

___

Online:

http://www.goldenglobes.org

Read More..

‘How to Survive a Plague’ Provides a Silver Lining on AIDS

Stephanie Diani for The New York Times

The director David France in Los Angeles last week.

LAST Wednesday night, David France, the director of the documentary “How to Survive a Plague,” made his way to the Open Society Institute in Columbus Circle for a question-and-answer session and a screening of his film, which is about the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Afterward, he was mobbed by well-wishers and advice-seekers.

First came a woman named Naomi Schegloff, who explained that she was a director of a project called the Graying of AIDS, aimed at helping older people with H.I.V. “Can we do the card-trade thing?” she asked Mr. France, who was wearing a gray blazer over a sweater and a pair of jeans.

Of course they could.

Next up was a man in his 50s, who said he was making a self-financed film about “cannabis prohibition” and “the war on drugs.”

“Your piece is fabulous,” the man said, before requesting a card exchange as well. “Really important.”

After that was another fellow who wanted to take the movie to South Africa to screen for local activists and people working in medical care, and suggested the third weekend in February.

“That sounds good,” said Mr. France, 53, before correcting himself.

“So we know we’re busy on the 23rd,” he said. “We’re hoping we’re going to be busy on the 24th, too.”

After all, that is Oscars weekend, perhaps the culmination of an already-heady awards season.

First came prizes from the Gotham Independent Film Awards and the Boston Society of Film Critics, both of which recently voted “How to Survive” the best documentary of 2012.

Then, on Nov. 27, Mr. France received word that the Independent Spirit Awards, given out the day before the Oscars, had nominated his film for Best Documentary. On Dec. 3, the documentary wing of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that the film had made its shortlist as well, pulling in front of roughly 100 other eligible films and now in contention with 14 filmmakers for the coveted 5 slots. (The final list of nominees will be announced in January.)

Pretty good, given that until fairly recently, Mr. France’s main connection to the entertainment industry was via his partner of 18 years, Jonathan Starch, a producer at “Law & Order: SVU.”

But in 2008, Mr. France wrote a jaw-dropping piece for New York magazine about a promising young doctor named Gabriel Torres, who ran the AIDS ward at St. Vincent’s Manhattan Hospital for much of the ’90s, then descended into drug addiction shortly after antiretrovirals came onto the market.

In the article, Mr. France found not an anomaly, but a textbook case of a person who had battled the worst years of the epidemic, only to find himself lost and confused about where to go and what to do once the crisis abated.

“I think just about everybody who lived through that is wounded,” said Mr. France, smoking a cigarette and walking over to a bar in the Hudson Hotel for a chat after the crowd at the Open Society Institute dispersed. “It’s especially true of the people who were on the medical front lines. Because the work they were doing was life and death.”

Moreover, to Mr. France’s additional dismay, little credit had been given to the activists who worked tirelessly throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, in many cases laying down in the streets to try to bring attention and money to the disease.

So he set out with a small film crew and began collecting video footage from the era. He also met with more than a dozen prominent activists and veterans of the movement who appear in the film, which charts the journey of the disease from the first days, when a rare skin cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma began mysteriously appearing on the bodies of gay men all over New York, until the advent of antiretrovirals 15 years later.

Among those interviewed are Larry Kramer, the playwright and co-founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis; David Barr, a founding member of the Treatment Action Group and the Act Up/New York Treatment and Data Committee; Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Garance Franke-Ruta, who helped found Countdown 18 Months, a group that pressured pharmaceutical companies to speed up the process of developing AIDS drugs.

“I think it’s very difficult for anything to capture the awfulness of those years, but this movie comes close,” said Ms. Franke-Ruta, now an editor at The Atlantic.

Then, when the film was done and edited, Mr. France took it to Sundance, where buzz followed almost immediately.

As the fledgling filmmaker tells it, he could not save those who had fallen, but he at least thought he could honor them. And certainly, Mr. France knew their stories well. He came to New York in 1981 from Kalamazoo, Mich., which at the time was hostile to gay men and lesbians, he said. Then, within a week of his arrival and move to the East Village, the first report of AIDS hit the pages of this newspaper.

“I came to New York to be free, and that’s what met me,” said Mr. France, now sitting in the bar and sipping a glass of wine.

Read More..

Software pioneer John McAfee returns to U.S.

Anti-virus software company founder John McAfee arrived in the U.S. late Wednesday after being deported from Guatemala, where he had sought to evade police questioning in the killing of a man in neighboring Belize.

The American Airlines commercial jet carrying McAfee landed in Miami shortly before 4 p.m. Pacific time, said Miami International Airport spokesman Greg Chin.

A short time later, a posting on McAfee's website announced that he was at a hotel in Miami's upscale South Beach neighborhood. He said he arrived by taxi after a group of customs or immigration agents, he didn't know which, escorted him to an airport taxi stand. McAfee has frequently communicated through the website.

"I have no phone, no money, no contact information," the post said. Reached by telephone at the hotel, the 67-year-old McAfee told the Associated Press that he couldn't talk because he was waiting for a call from his girlfriend, 20-year-old Belizean Samantha Vanegas.

Vanegas had accompanied him when he was on the run, but did not go with him to the U.S.

On a blog he has been posting for the last two weeks, McAfee wrote, "I have been forcibly separated from Sam," but he said she would be coming to the United States later.

McAfee sat in a coach-class seat on the flight, which took off at midafternoon from Guatemala City, according to the airline.

An FBI spokesman in Miami, James Marshall, told the AP in an email that the agency was not involved with McAfee's return to the U.S.

Authorities from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals office and the U.S. attorney's office did not immediately respond to questions about whether McAfee would be questioned or detained in the U.S. They said there was no active arrest warrant for McAfee that would justify taking him into custody.

His expulsion from Guatemala marked the last chapter in a strange, monthlong odyssey to avoid police questioning about the November killing of American expatriate Gregory Viant Faull, who lived a couple of houses away from McAfee's compound on Ambergris Caye, off Belize's Caribbean coast.

McAfee has acknowledged that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them days before some of the dogs were poisoned, but denies killing Faull.

He was in hiding in Belize for weeks after police pronounced him a person of interest in the killing. Belizean authorities have urged him to show up for questioning, but have not lodged any formal charges against him. McAfee has said he feared he would be killed if he turned himself in to Belizean authorities.

Read More..

Ravi Shankar, sitar master, dies at 92

Ravi Shankar was already revered as a master of the sitar in 1966 when he met George Harrison, the Beatle who became his most famous disciple and gave the Indian musician-composer unexpected pop-culture cachet.

Suddenly the classically trained Shankar was a darling of the hippie movement, gaining widespread attention through memorable performances at the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock and the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.

Harrison called him "the godfather of world music," and the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin once compared the sitarist's genius to Mozart's. Shankar continued to give virtuoso performances into his 90s, including one in 2011 at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

PHOTOS: Ravi Shankar | 1920 - 2010

Shankar, 92, who introduced Indian music to much of the Western world, died Tuesday at a hospital near his home in Encinitas. Stuart Wolferman, a publicist for his record label Unfinished Side Productions, said Shankar had undergone heart valve replacement surgery last week.

Well-established in the classical music of his native India since the 1940s, he remained a vital figure on the global music stage for six decades. Shankar is the father of pop music star Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar, his protege and a sitar star in her own right.

Before the 1950s, Indian classical music — with its improvised melodic excursions and complex percussion rhythms — was virtually unknown in America. If Shankar had done nothing more than compose the movie scores for Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray's "Apu" trilogy in the 1950s, he "would be remembered and revered," Times music critic Mark Swed wrote last fall.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012

Shankar was on a path to international stardom during the 1950s, playing the sitar in the Soviet Union and debuting as a soloist in Western Europe and the United States. Two early albums also had considerable impact, "Three Classical Ragas" and "India's Master Musician."

During his musical emergence in the West, his first important association was with violinist Menuhin, whose passion for Indian music was ignited by Shankar in 1952. Their creative partnership peaked with their "West Meets East" release, which earned a Grammy Award in 1967. The recording also showed Shankar's versatility — and the capacity of Indian music to inspire artists from different creative disciplines.

He presented a new form of classical music to Western audiences that was based on improvisation instead of written compositions. Shankar typically played in the Hindustani classical style, in which he was accompanied by a player of two tablas, or small hand drums. Concerts in India that often lasted through the night were generally shortened to a few hours for American venues as Shankar played the sitar, a long-necked lute-like stringed instrument.

At first, he especially appealed to fans of jazz music drawn to improvisation. He recorded "Improvisations" (1962) with saxophonist Bud Shank and "Portrait of a Genius" (1964) with flutist Paul Horn, gave lessons to saxophonist John Coltrane (who named his saxophone-playing son Ravi), and wrote a percussion piece for drummer Buddy Rich and Alla Rakha.

On the Beatles' 1965 recording "Norwegian Wood," Harrison had played the sitar and met Shankar the next year in London.

Shankar was "the first person to impress me," among the impressive people the Beatles met, "because he didn't try to impress me," Harrison later said. The pair became close and their friendship lasted until Harrison's death in 2001.

Harrison was instrumental in getting Shankar booked at the now legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. They partnered in organizing the Concert for Bangladesh and were among the producers who won a Grammy in 1972 for the subsequent album. They toured together in 1974, and Harrison produced Shankar's career-spanning mid-1990s boxed set, "In Celebration."

But Shankar came away from his festival appearances with mixed feelings about his rock generation followers. He expressed hope that his performances might help young people better understand Indian music and philosophy but later said "they weren't ready for it."

"All the young people got interested … but it was so mixed up with superficiality and the fad and the drugs," Shankar told The Times in 1996. "I had to go through several years to make them understand that this is a disciplined music, needing a fresh mind."

When Shankar was criticized in India as a sellout for spreading his music in the West, he responded in the early 1970s by lowering his profile and reaffirming his classical roots. He followed his first concerto for sitar and orchestra in 1971 with another a decade later.

"Our music has gone through so much development," Shankar told The Times in 1997. "But its roots — which have something to do with its feelings, the depth from where you bring out the music when you perform — touch the listeners even without their knowing it."

In the 1980s and '90s, Shankar maintained a busy performing schedule despite heart problems. He recorded "Tana Mana," an unusual synthesis of Indian music, electronics and jazz; oversaw the American premiere of his ballet, "Ghyanshyam: The Broken Branch"; and collaborated with composer Philip Glass on the album "Passages."

Read More..

Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar dies at 92

NEW DELHI (AP) — With an instrument perplexing to most Westerners, Ravi Shankar helped connect the world through music. The sitar virtuoso hobnobbed with the Beatles, became a hippie musical icon and spearheaded the first rock benefit concert as he introduced traditional Indian ragas to Western audiences over nearly a century.

From George Harrison to John Coltrane, from Yehudi Menuhin to David Crosby, his connections reflected music's universality, though a gap persisted between Shankar and many Western fans. Sometimes they mistook tuning for tunes, while he stood aghast at displays like Jimi Hendrix's burning guitar.

Shankar died Tuesday at age 92. A statement on his website said he died in San Diego, near his Southern California home with his wife and younger daughter by his side. The musician's foundation issued a statement saying that he had suffered upper respiratory and heart problems and had undergone heart-valve replacement surgery last week.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also confirmed Shankar's death and called him a "national treasure."

Labeled "the godfather of world music" by Harrison, Shankar helped millions of classical, jazz and rock lovers discover the centuries-old traditions of Indian music.

"He was legend of legends," Shivkumar Sharma, a noted santoor player who performed with Shankar, told Indian media. "Indian classical was not at all known in the Western world. He was the musician who had that training ... the ability to communicate with the Western audience."

He also pioneered the concept of the rock benefit with the 1971 Concert For Bangladesh. To later generations, he was known as the estranged father of popular American singer Norah Jones.

His last musical performance was with his other daughter, sitarist Anoushka Shankar Wright, on Nov. 4 in Long Beach, California; his foundation said it was to celebrate his 10th decade of creating music. The multiple Grammy winner learned that he had again been nominated for the award the night before his surgery.

"It's one of the biggest losses for the music world," said Kartic Seshadri, a Shankar protege, sitar virtuoso and music professor at the University of California, San Diego. "There's nothing more to be said."

As early as the 1950s, Shankar began collaborating with and teaching some of the greats of Western music, including violinist Menuhin and jazz saxophonist Coltrane. He played well-received shows in concert halls in Europe and the United States, but faced a constant struggle to bridge the musical gap between the West and the East.

Describing an early Shankar tour in 1957, Time magazine said. "U.S. audiences were receptive but occasionally puzzled."

His close relationship with Harrison, the Beatles lead guitarist, shot Shankar to global stardom in the 1960s.

Harrison had grown fascinated with the sitar, a long-necked string instrument that uses a bulbous gourd for its resonating chamber and resembles a giant lute. He played the instrument, with a Western tuning, on the song "Norwegian Wood," but soon sought out Shankar, already a musical icon in India, to teach him to play it properly.

The pair spent weeks together, starting the lessons at Harrison's house in England and then moving to a houseboat in Kashmir and later to California.

Gaining confidence with the complex instrument, Harrison recorded the Indian-inspired song "Within You Without You" on the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," helping spark the raga-rock phase of 60s music and drawing increasing attention to Shankar and his work.

Shankar's popularity exploded, and he soon found himself playing on bills with some of the top rock musicians of the era. He played a four-hour set at the Monterey Pop Festival and the opening day of Woodstock.

Though the audience for his music had hugely expanded, Shankar, a serious, disciplined traditionalist who had played Carnegie Hall, chafed against the drug use and rebelliousness of the hippie culture.

"I was shocked to see people dressing so flamboyantly. They were all stoned. To me, it was a new world," Shankar told Rolling Stone of the Monterey festival.

While he enjoyed Otis Redding and the Mamas and the Papas at the festival, he was horrified when Hendrix lit his guitar on fire.

"That was too much for me. In our culture, we have such respect for musical instruments, they are like part of God," he said.

In 1971, moved by the plight of millions of refugees fleeing into India to escape the war in Bangladesh, Shankar reached out to Harrison to see what they could do to help.

In what Shankar later described as "one of the most moving and intense musical experiences of the century," the pair organized two benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden that included Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr.

The concert, which spawned an album and a film, raised millions of dollars for UNICEF and inspired other rock benefits, including the 1985 Live Aid concert to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia and the 2010 Hope For Haiti Now telethon.

Ravindra Shankar Chowdhury was born April 7, 1920, in the Indian city of Varanasi.

At the age of 10, he moved to Paris to join the world famous dance troupe of his brother Uday. Over the next eight years, Shankar traveled with the troupe across Europe, America and Asia, and later credited his early immersion in foreign cultures with making him such an effective ambassador for Indian music.

During one tour, renowned musician Baba Allaudin Khan joined the troupe, took Shankar under his wing and eventually became his teacher through 7 1/2 years of isolated, rigorous study of the sitar.

"Khan told me you have to leave everything else and do one thing properly," Shankar told The Associated Press.

In the 1950s, Shankar began gaining fame throughout India. He held the influential position of music director for All India Radio in New Delhi and wrote the scores for several popular films. He began writing compositions for orchestras, blending clarinets and other foreign instruments into traditional Indian music.

And he became a de facto tutor for Westerners fascinated by India's musical traditions.

He gave lessons to Coltrane, who named his son Ravi in Shankar's honor, and became close friends with Menuhin, recording the acclaimed "West Meets East" album with him. He also collaborated with flutist Jean Pierre Rampal, composer Philip Glass and conductors Andre Previn and Zubin Mehta.

"Any player on any instrument with any ears would be deeply moved by Ravi Shankar. If you love music, it would be impossible not to be," singer Crosby, whose band The Byrds was inspired by Shankar's music, said in the book "The Dawn of Indian Music in the West: Bhairavi."

Shankar's personal life, however, was more complex.

His 1941 marriage to Baba Allaudin Khan's daughter, Annapurna Devi, ended in divorce. Though he had a decades-long relationship with dancer Kamala Shastri that ended in 1981, he had relationships with several other women in the 1970s.

In 1979, he fathered Norah Jones with New York concert promoter Sue Jones, and in 1981, Sukanya Rajan, who played the tanpura at his concerts, gave birth to his daughter Anoushka.

He grew estranged from Sue Jones in the 80s and didn't see Norah for a decade, though they later re-established contact.

He married Rajan in 1989 and trained young Anoushka as his heir on the sitar. In recent years, father and daughter toured the world together.

The statement she and her mother released said, "Although it is a time for sorrow and sadness, it is also a time for all of us to give thanks and to be grateful that we were able to have him as part of our lives."

When Jones shot to stardom and won five Grammy awards in 2003, Anoushka Shankar was nominated for a Grammy of her own.

Shankar himself won three Grammy awards and was nominated for an Oscar for his musical score for the movie "Gandhi." His album "The Living Room Sessions, Part 1" earned him his latest Grammy nomination, for best world music album.

Despite his fame, numerous albums and decades of world tours, Shankar's music remained a riddle to many Western ears.

Shankar was amused after he and colleague Ustad Ali Akbar Khan were greeted with admiring applause when they opened the Concert for Bangladesh by twanging their sitar and sarod for a minute and a half.

"If you like our tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing more," he told the confused crowd, and then launched into his set.

___

Ravi Nessman reported from Bangkok. Associated Press writer Julie Watson in San Diego contributed to this report.

Read More..

Well: Why Afternoon May Be the Best Time to Exercise

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Does exercise influence the body’s internal clock? Few of us may be conscious of it, but our bodies, and in turn our health, are ruled by rhythms. “The heart, the liver, the brain — all are controlled by an endogenous circadian rhythm,” says Christopher Colwell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles’s Brain Research Institute, who led a series of new experiments on how exercise affects the body’s internal clock. The studies were conducted in mice, but the findings suggest that exercise does affect our circadian rhythms, and the effect may be most beneficial if the exercise is undertaken midday.

For the study, which appears in the December Journal of Physiology, the researchers gathered several types of mice. Most of the animals were young and healthy. But some had been bred to have a malfunctioning internal clock, or pacemaker, which involves, among other body parts, a cluster of cells inside the brain “whose job it is to tell the time of day,” Dr. Colwell says.

These pacemaker cells receive signals from light sources or darkness that set off a cascade of molecular effects. Certain genes fire, expressing proteins, which are released into the body, where they migrate to the heart, neurons, liver and elsewhere, choreographing those organs to pulse in tune with the rest of the body. We sleep, wake and function physiologically according to the dictates of our body’s internal clock.

But, Dr. Colwell says, that clock can become discombobulated. It is easily confused, for instance, by viewing artificial light in the evening, he says, when the internal clock expects darkness. Aging also worsens the clock’s functioning, he says. “By middle age, most of us start to have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep,” he says. “Then we have trouble staying awake the next day.”

The consequences of clock disruptions extend beyond sleepiness. Recent research has linked out-of-sync circadian rhythm in people to an increased risk for diabetes, obesity, certain types of cancer, memory loss and mood disorders, including depression.

“We believe there are serious potential health consequences” to problems with circadian rhythm, Dr. Colwell says. Which is why he and his colleagues set out to determine whether exercise, which is so potent physiologically, might “fix” a broken clock, and if so, whether exercising in the morning or later in the day is more effective in terms of regulating circadian rhythm.

They began by letting healthy mice run, an activity the animals enjoy. Some of the mice ran whenever they wanted. Others were given access to running wheels only in the early portion of their waking time (mice are active at night) or in the later stages, the equivalent of the afternoon for us.

After several weeks of running, the exercising mice, no matter when they ran, were found to be producing more proteins in their internal-clock cells than the sedentary animals. But the difference was slight in these healthy animals, which all had normal circadian rhythms to start with.

So the scientists turned to mice unable to produce a critical internal clock protein. Signals from these animals’ internal clocks rarely reach the rest of the body.

But after several weeks of running, the animals’ internal clocks were sturdier. Messages now traveled to these animals’ hearts and livers far more frequently than in their sedentary counterparts.

The beneficial effect was especially pronounced in those animals that exercised in the afternoon (or mouse equivalent).

That finding, Dr. Colwell says, “was a pretty big surprise.” He and his colleagues had expected to see the greatest effects from morning exercise, a popular workout time for many athletes.

But the animals that ran later produced more clock proteins and pumped the protein more efficiently to the rest of the body than animals that ran early in their day.

What all of this means for people isn’t clear, Dr. Colwell says. “It is evident that exercise will help to regulate” our bodily clocks and circadian rhythms, he says, especially as we enter middle age.

But whether we should opt for an afternoon jog over one in the morning “is impossible to say yet,” he says.

Late-night exercise, meanwhile, is probably inadvisable, he continues. Unpublished results from his lab show that healthy mice running at the animal equivalent of 11 p.m. or so developed significant disruptions in their circadian rhythm. Among other effects, they slept poorly.

“What we know, right now,” he says, “is that exercise is a good idea” if you wish to sleep well and avoid the physical ailments associated with an aging or clumsy circadian rhythm. And it is possible, although not yet proven, that afternoon sessions may produce more robust results.

“But any exercise is likely to be better than none,” he concludes. “And if you like morning exercise, which I do, great. Keep it up.”

Read More..

Michigan puts limits on unions

NEW YORK —- Labor relations in the Midwest reached a new level of acrimony as Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder abruptly signed legislation placing limits on unions, setting up a bitter political battle that could resonate nationwide.

It's a stunning development for a blue state that's been known as a place friendly to labor, where autoworkers and their families from Detroit to Saginaw have benefited from generous union contracts. An estimated 15,000 workers descended on the state Capitol in Lansing on Tuesday to protest against the bills, scuffling at times with police and conservatives who also set up shop at the Capitol.

House members passed two bills that would make Michigan a "right to work" state, essentially prohibiting union security agreements, which make union membership or fees a condition of employment. The bills, which covered private sector and public sector employees, had passed the state Senate last week.

Snyder, a Republican, signed both bills in private Tuesday afternoon, hailing the legislation as a victory for Michigan workers and a way to bring more jobs to the state.

"This is a major day in Michigan's history," he said at a news conference. "This is an opportunity for unions to step up and say how they can provide the best value to workers in our state."

The legislation comes as workplace tensions grow across the country.

While employees making low wages at companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and McDonald's Corp. are protesting to demand higher wages, businesses are increasing the number of lockouts they impose on workers. And in the last two years, union supporters have converged on state capitols in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio to oppose bills that restricted their power.

Now, labor groups from around the country are watching what happens in Michigan, where labor groups have vowed to overturn the law and vote Snyder out of office by 2014. If Michigan, which voted for President Obama over native son Mitt Romney by 8 percentage points, becomes a right-to-work state permanently, others could follow suit.

"Michigan could prove defining," said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at UC Berkeley. "What happens here, given the role of unions historically in Michigan, and the larger political implications of right-to-work, could mean a lot."

The bills came as a surprise to many in labor, especially after recent victories at the ballot box. Gov. Snyder had initially said he was not interested in pursuing right-to-work laws, because they affected a relatively small number of Michiganders.

But he said that Proposal 2, a labor-backed referendum on the November ballot, "triggered the dialogue" about labor issues and led him to ultimately support anti-union legislation. The proposal would have enshrined collective bargaining rights in the state's constitution, but it was rejected by voters by a large margin.

"I asked labor leaders not to move forward with the ballot proposal because I knew it could trigger a discussion that could lead to right-to-work being a divisive issue," he said. "Unfortunately, they moved forward, it became divisive, and it was time to step up and take a leadership position."

It's unlikely the Legislature would have had enough votes to pass the bills in January, when the Legislature will still be in Republican control but more moderate, said Roland Zullo, a research scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Labor and Industrial Relations. The legislative approval, and Snyder's backing, signal that the partisan discord paralyzing the federal government is present on a local level too.

"There's retribution on many levels here," Zullo said. "It would have been easy for the current political party to walk away and say it is done, but instead, during this lame duck session when they feel they have the votes, they're pushing through a right-to-work law, allowing no debates."

Even before the legislation passed Tuesday, labor leaders were brainstorming ways to reverse the bills. The right-to-work legislation is attached to appropriations bills, so it can't simply be reversed in a referendum. But it could be reversed in a citizen's initiative in 2014, the same year that Snyder would be running for reelection.

"While it was disappointing that Snyder rammed this divisive 'tea party' legislation through we are considering all options that are on the table," said Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the labor-funded Workers' Voice. "Whether it is the available ballot initiative option, or Snyder's reelection itself, he will strongly hear the voices of Michiganders in 2014."

Unions have had mixed results overturning the slate of anti-labor laws that have been passed in the last two years. In Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill limiting collective bargaining for public sector employees, the law is still being challenged in various courts. An effort to recall Walker failed.

Labor had more success in Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich signed a bill in early 2011 that restricted collective bargaining rights for public employees. Unions were able to repeal the bill through a referendum in November 2011.

Anger against Kasich and Ohio Republicans may have helped President Obama win in Ohio in November.

Unions are popular in some parts of Michigan, where they had guaranteed pensions, benefits and high wages for decades in the auto industry. Although they were blamed by some for bankrupting the auto industry during the recession, they have regained trust by agreeing to a number of concessions with the Big Three automakers, said Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor and industry group for the Center for Automotive Research.

"A lot of people are currently benefiting from the United Auto Workers' bargaining, or have in the past," Dziczek said.

Conservative groups hailed the passage of the bills as an economic boon for Michigan, which was plagued by some of the highest unemployment rates in the nation during the recession.

"In addition to greater freedom for Michigan's workers, the right-to-work law will provide significant economic benefits for the state's workers and small businesses," Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, said in a statement.

Michigan probably won't see the repercussions of the bills for a few years. That's because the right-to-work legislation only goes into effect when unions renegotiate contracts with management. For many autoworkers, that won't happen until 2015.

alana.semuels@latimes.com

Read More..

Obama and Boehner get along fine; politics is the problem

WASHINGTON — In summer 2011, negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner over raising the debt ceiling featured plenty of drama.

There were private grumbles, a very public round of golf, a phone call from the White House that went unreturned and, overall, a lost opportunity to secure a "grand bargain" on spending and taxes.

Now, as high-stakes talks between Obama and Boehner rev up again, the lessons of that summer appear to be producing a new steadiness and comfort level between the two men.

After weeks of private phone calls and public posturing, the Ohio Republican quietly ducked into the White House on Sunday for his first one-on-one meeting with the president since mid-2011. The goal this time: forging a deal to avoid $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set to take effect in early January.

The face-to-face session came and went without a flood of leaks or post-meeting spin by either camp. The two sides even issued identical brief statements saying "lines of communication remain open," a far cry from Boehner's public complaint last Friday that prospects for compromise were "nowhere."

Obama had greased Sunday's meeting by giving Boehner a bottle of fine Italian wine — a Brunello di Montalcino — for his birthday on Nov. 17. Red wine was the speaker's drink of choice during the tense talks last year to raise the federal debt ceiling.

Boehner, for his part, didn't just call the president to wish him happy birthday. The son of a barkeeper sang him the first verse of the "Boehner Birthday Song," a three-sentence chant that ends with a Polka-style "Hey!"

"Personality has never been a roadblock to an agreement," said Brendan Buck, a Boehner spokesman. "The two men get along very well."

White House spokesman Jay Carney returned the sentiment: "The president likes and respects Speaker Boehner and looks forward to continuing to work with him."

If a deal falls apart, it probably will be a matter of politics, not personalities.

Members of the Republican right flank are all but certain to revolt if Boehner agrees to the president's proposal to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. And Obama will take heavy flack from left-leaning Democrats if he agrees to spending cuts sought by the GOP in Medicare, Social Security and other popular entitlement programs.

For weeks, the president has tried to build public pressure on Republicans. He kept the campaign up on Monday at a diesel engine plant near Detroit, where he suggested he was the one seeking a middle ground.

"I've said I will work with Republicans on a plan for economic growth, job creation and reducing our deficits and that has some compromises between Democrats and Republicans," Obama said. "I understand people have a lot of different views."

But Obama has not tried to go around or embarrass Boehner by seeking support from other Republican lawmakers. Boehner, in turn, has made a concerted effort to tone down the conservative critics in his ranks.

Obama had little one-on-one contact with Boehner, then the House Republican leader, in the first two years of his presidency. As the debt ceiling battle escalated in June 2011, the two men staged their first notable meeting on neutral territory: the golf course at Andrews Air Force Base. Obama and Boehner played on the same team, beating Vice President Joe Biden and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

"They really made an effort with the theatrics with the golf game, for example, to show a message of reassurance that these people were not blood enemies," said Ross Baker, a professor of American politics at Rutgers University.

The game was followed by secret meetings, and they began to hammer out a $4-trillion "grand bargain" deficit-cutting deal. The talks were torpedoed and resuscitated throughout July. They came to an acrimonious end on July 22, with Boehner accusing Obama of moving the goal posts on new tax revenue.

Obama, appearing on television, groused about being "left at the altar" for the second time that month. Aides said Boehner had not returned the president's phone call.

Instead of a historic bargain, Congress passed a smaller deficit reduction bill at the 11th hour, including automatic across-the-board spending cuts now at play in the "fiscal cliff" talks.

Neither man seems to be holding a grudge — for now.

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

melanie.mason@latimes.com

Lisa Mascaro and Michael A. Memoli in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

Read More..