Prominence Treatment Center Brings Hope to the Holidays

Malibu-Based drug & alcohol rehabilitation center announces a one-of-a-kind promotion to help patients fight drug and alcohol abuse.

Malibu, CA (PRWEB) December 20, 2012

The holidays can be stressful for the 23 million Americans who suffer from substance abuse. To help struggling patients and their families, Prominence Treatment Center is offering 10% off drug and alcohol rehab programs. While addiction knows no holiday, Prominence is committed to helping patients live healthier and more meaningful lives.

“This is the first year that Prominence has ever run this promotion,” said the Center’s CEO John Navab. “We know that the holidays can be very tough. Between family, financial strain, and end-of-year stress, substance abuse may feel like an escape. Drugs and alcohol may ‘take the edge off.’ It may feel easier to ‘escape’ than deal with your problems head-on.”

With the chaos of the holidays in full swing, substance abusers may be struggling to find the right time to get help. Rather than waiting until later, now is the right time to make a change.

“There is no better gift that you can give your family,” Navab said. “Get help while you still have a chance at recovery. So many addicts get DUIs, harm themselves, destroy their relationships, and overdose around the holidays. People with a history of depression become more depressed this time of year.”

What patients need most is a healthy and stable environment. Prominence eases the transition to recovery by providing the right atmosphere. Especially over the holidays, comfort and care are what set Prominence apart.

“The staff is supportive and provides tender loving care,” Navab said. “Most programs out there can feel like boot camp, but Prominence takes a different approach. Treatment is not about punishment. Patients who are addicted to drugs and alcohol punish themselves enough. While our program is structured, it is not overly structured.”

Prominence ensures that patients achieve balance in their lives. Even if you start in-patient treatment tomorrow, you’ll stay connected with your family over the holidays. You’ll be able to celebrate the season by keeping in close contact with your loved ones.

“Prominence allows regular cell phone usage so that patients can stay connected to friends and family,” Navab said. “Most rehab centers only allow two 15 minute calls per week.”

Prominence understands that the recovery process is hard work. It takes time, and it’s stressful. For that reason, substance abusers need an environment that truly embraces family values and supports the journey to recovery.

“Recovery takes time,” Navab said. “Be patient with each other. For parents who do not want to enter treatment because they have kids, you are teaching your children young and old the wrong lessons. You can’t take care of your problems by pretending they’re not there. We are never going to feel like going to treatment. We have to work against our feelings and go even if we do not feel like it. Action-oriented steps are what give us motivation. No matter what, do not give up.”

If you or a loved one needs help, contact our intake specialists at Prominence Treatment Center by calling (888) 394-2558. Mention this article, and get 10% off your treatment.

Jason Thomas
Xivic Inc.
888-394-2558
Email Information

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NY appeals court takes up Cameron Douglas case

NEW YORK (AP) — The Douglas name — first with patriarch Kirk and later with son Michael — has always meant gold for Hollywood. But drama for the third generation of the Douglas family has occurred mostly off-screen, where Cameron Douglas has battled drug addiction and legal troubles.

In papers submitted for appeals court arguments Wednesday, prosecutors and a lawyer for Cameron Douglas have retold in greater detail than before how a man who seemed to have so many advantages in life could land in prison for a decade on a drug conviction.

The dispute is over Manhattan Judge Richard M. Berman‘s decision to double Douglas’ five-year prison term after he committed several new drug infractions, including convincing a lawyer-turned-love interest to sneak drugs into prison for him in her bra on three or four occasions.

Berman said he had not “ever encountered a defendant who has so recklessly and wantonly and flagrantly and criminally acted in as destructive and (as) manipulative a fashion as Cameron Douglas has.”

In his brief, Douglas’ lawyer Paul Shechtman called the additional sentence “shockingly long,” saying it “may be the harshest sentence ever imposed on a federal prisoner for a drug possession offense.”

Douglas, 34, was originally accused of distributing and conspiring to distribute more than 4.5 kilograms of methamphetamine and 20 kilograms of cocaine from August 2006 until his July 28, 2009, arrest at a Manhattan hotel. At the time, he was so visibly high on heroin that he was taken first to a hospital before he was brought to court, and it was later learned he had been shooting heroin five to six times a day for five years, Shechtman noted.

He was released from custody on the condition that he remain under “house arrest” with a private security guard at his mother’s apartment, Shechtman said. Within days, he persuaded his girlfriend, Kelly Sott, to smuggle heroin to him, hidden in an electric toothbrush. Once discovered, his bail was revoked and he was incarcerated. Sott pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in a plea deal and was sentenced to the seven months she had already served.

Still, Douglas gained leniency from what otherwise could have been a mandatory 10-year prison sentence by cooperating with the government, contacting his suppliers by telephone and text messages as law enforcement agents watched. As a result, two drug suppliers were arrested and convicted. Douglas testified at the trial of one supplier.

Douglas was sentenced to five years in prison for a Jan. 27, 2010, guilty plea to narcotics distribution charges even before his cooperation was completed.

At sentencing, Berman noted that the Douglas family had staged interventions for Douglas that he had refused and that two decades of drug addiction treatment had been unsuccessful. He said it appeared incarceration had produced the longest period of sobriety for Douglas since he was 13.

However, it was learned afterward that even prior to the April 20, 2010, sentencing, Douglas had persuaded one of his attorneys — a 33-year-old associate at a law firm with whom lawyers said he also had a romantic relationship — to smuggle Xanax pills to him in prison. Shechtman said she “apparently became enamored of Cameron during frequent visits.”

He admitted that he had shared the 30 Xanax pills with other inmates and that he had also smoked cigarettes, gambled, snorted substances and committed other infractions while in prison.

Shortly after testifying at the Oct. 3, 2011, trial of a drug supplier, prison staff caught Douglas with the opioid dependence medication Suboxone and a white powdery substance believed to be heroin. The prison punished him with disciplinary segregation for 11 months and canceled nearly three months of his good conduct time.

On Oct. 20, 2011, Douglas again pleaded guilty to drug possession, agreeing in a plea deal that the sentencing range should be an additional 12 to 18 months in prison. Prosecutors say that within a week of the plea, the government learned from a cooperating defendant in another case that Douglas had misled the government about how he obtained heroin while in prison.

Douglas had claimed he got it in a television room or at a church service or that he obtained the heroin by chance, picking it up off the floor after another inmate dropped it, the government said. But prosecutors say the cooperator revealed he had brought Douglas the drugs directly to his cell.

In court papers, Shechtman blamed Cameron Douglas’ long history of substance abuse and growing up with little parental support.

“While still a young teenager, he drank heavily and began selling drugs after his father sharply limited snorting cocaine,” he said. “He used illegal drugs to self-medicate — to ward off depression and panic attacks.”

He began using intravenous cocaine at age 20 and then started using heroin so that by age 25, “his life revolved around heroin,” Shechtman said.

His friends were fellow users, who gravitated to him because of his access to family money, which supported their habits, the lawyer said. His drug habit led him to be fired from a movie in which he had a minor role in 2006.

“Exasperated, his father gave him an ultimatum: enter a drug rehabilitation program or have his access to family money sharply limited. Cameron declined to enter treatment; his father carried out his threat; and Cameron turned to drug dealing to support his habit,” Shechtman wrote.

Shechtman argued that the judge had gone too far with Cameron Douglas, punishing an addict for something beyond his control.

“While we recognize that many of the words that the district court used to describe Cameron’s conduct — ‘reckless,’ ‘manipulative,’ ‘destructive,’ — were apt, the simple truth is that Cameron Douglas is a heroin addict who has yet to shake his habit,” he said.

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Rush to boost safety sparks flurry of ideas

(Reuters) - They began calling on Friday morning, even before confirmation of the death toll at Sandy Hook Elementary. Principals, district administrators, school police chiefs all asked the same pleading questions: What can we do? How do we stop this? How can we keep our children safe?

Michael Dorn, phone to his ear until 2 a.m., gave them all the same advice: Slow down.

Every horrific school shooting sets off a rush to bolster security, and Dorn, a widely respected school safety consultant, says he has seen hundreds of millions of dollars wasted in the frenzy to upgrade.

Principals spend lavishly on emergency response software, not realizing how impractical it is to fumble with a log-in during a crisis. Districts buy pricey metal detectors, only to switch them off because they cannot afford to deploy staff to do pat-downs and search book bags.

"People are frightened. They're trying so hard," said Dorn, a former schools police chief who runs the nonprofit consulting network Safe Havens International in Macon, Georgia. "But you want to build something that will last decades. Focus on making quality improvements rather than doing it quickly."

The horrific toll in Newtown has prompted administrators across the U.S. to reassess their safety protocols. Some have found obvious deficiencies that will take money to fix, such as classroom doors that don't lock. Bu t in many cases, security experts say districts can strengthen safety on campus without big spending.

In a survey conducted by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009 -- the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings -- fully a third of educators admitted they sometimes propped open doors to their schools, potentially giving intruders easy access. And almost 40 percent acknowledged they weren't training staff adequately in emergency response.

School safety consultants said such lapses remained common until the Newtown tragedy snapped administrators out of their complacency. "We tend to let our guard down as memories fade," said Paul Timm, president of RETA Security Inc, a consulting firm in Lemont, Illinois.

He and others said schools could greatly improve safety with a series of inexpensive measures: Keep all exterior doors shut and locked. Equip recess monitors with walkie-talkies to report signs of trouble. Regularly review emergency plans and practice for a variety of scenarios, not just an active shooter. Train all adults on campus to recognize behavior patterns that could indicate that a student is planning mischief or malice.

Hundreds of school districts and colleges across the U.S. have also adopted a more controversial approach to safety: teaching staff -- and students -- to fight back in the face of danger.

The ALICE protocol, developed a decade ago by a former police officer in response to a series of school shootings, rejects as inadequate the traditional response to an armed intruder, which prompts teachers and students to lock themselves in their classroom, turn out the lights and hide as best they can.

Greg Crane, the retired police officer who developed ALICE, says rather than fall back on that response, students and teachers must develop the confidence that allows them to think on their feet.

If they can escape the building quickly, through a window perhaps, why huddle in a darkened classroom? And if an intruder enters the classroom, why remain passive; why not run around, scream, throw books and desks at the gunman, even try to tackle him, Crane asks.

"If a predator tried to snatch a child off the street, what part of our advice is for him to remain quiet, static, passive?" Crane asked. "We want you throwing things, yelling, trying to get out of there," he said. The same should hold in a classroom, he said, arguing that even 5- and 6-year-olds can cause enough distraction to confuse a gunman and perhaps buy a few minutes for escape.

"Chaos is not a bad thing," Crane said. "We want to see chaos. That makes it very difficult for the shooter to operate."

The ALICE program -- it stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate -- has sparked concern in some communities, with parents protesting that terrified children can't be asked to confront crazed gunmen or make snap decisions about escape routes.

But Crane said his company, Response Options, which is based in Burleson, Texas, has been flooded with calls since Friday from officials eager to sign up for his $400 training workshop, which prepares participants to teach ALICE to students and teachers in their communities.

While the tragedy at Sandy Hook focused attention on the danger of armed intruders, safety consultants cautioned that schools must also remain vigilant about internal threats from students who may feel alienated or may be struggling with mental illness.

"The ultimate in safety is caring about one another and kids trusting you with information," said Bill Bond, a security consultant with the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Bond was the principal at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, in 1997, when a student opened fire on a morning prayer circle, killing three girls. He advocates programs that connect children with adult mentors.

Such connections are harder to maintain in an era of tight budgets, however. There is just one school counselor for every 471 students in the U.S.; a few years ago, the ratio was 1 to 457, according to the American School Counselor Association. Faced with tight budgets, some districts have asked every adult connected with the school, including bus drivers, custodians and cafeteria workers, to pitch in with mentoring and monitoring kids.

"People want to be able to say, if we just do X, Y and Z in every school in America, we'll stop these," said Dorn, the security consultant in Georgia. There is no such solution, he said. Each school, and each threat, is too different.

But Dorn said he understands why the school officials who call him up are so eager to do something, anything, at once. "I have a 4-year-old. I took him to school this morning," Dorn said. "I understand the fear." (Reporting By Stephanie Simon. Editing by Douglas Royalty)

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NBC’s Engel, TV crew escape abduction in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — NBC‘s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said Tuesday he and members of his network crew escaped unharmed after five days of captivity in Syria, where more than a dozen pro-regime gunmen dragged them from their car, killed one of their rebel escorts and subjected them to mock executions.

Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, an unshaven Engel said he and his team escaped during a firefight Monday night between their captors and rebels at a checkpoint. They crossed into Turkey on Tuesday.

NBC did not say how many people were kidnapped with Engel, although two other men, producer Ghazi Balkiz and photographer John Kooistra, appeared with him on the “Today” show. It was not confirmed whether everyone was accounted for.

Engel said he believes the kidnappers were a Shiite militia group loyal to the Syrian government, which has lost control over swaths of the country’s north and is increasingly on the defensive in a civil war that has killed 40,000 people since March 2011.

“They kept us blindfolded, bound,” said the 39-year-old Engel, who speaks and reads Arabic. “We weren’t physically beaten or tortured. A lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings,” he added.

“They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government,” Engel said. He said the captors were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, but he did not elaborate.

There was no mention of the kidnapping by Syria’s state-run news agency.

Both Iran and Hezbollah are close allies of the embattled Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, who used military force to crush mostly peaceful protests against his regime. The crackdown on protests led many in Syria to take up arms against the government, and the conflict has become a civil war.

Engel said he was told the kidnappers wanted to exchange him and his crew for four Iranian and two Lebanese prisoners being held by the rebels.

“They captured us in order to carry out this exchange,” he said.

Engel and his crew entered Syria on Thursday and were driving through what they thought was rebel-controlled territory when “a group of gunmen just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road.”

“There were probably 15 gunmen. They were wearing ski masks. They were heavily armed. They dragged us out of the car,” he said.

He said the gunmen shot and killed at least one of their rebel escorts on the spot and took the hostages into a waiting truck nearby.

Around 11 p.m. Monday, Engel said he and the others were being moved to another location in northern Idlib province.

“And as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn’t expected. We were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan,” he said. “The kidnappers saw this checkpoint and started a gunfight with it. Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them.”

Engel and his crew crossed back into neighboring Turkey on Tuesday.

The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.

NBC sought to keep the disappearance of Engel and the crew secret for several days while it investigated what happened to them. Major media organizations, including The Associated Press, adhered to a request from the network to refrain from reporting on the issue out of concern it could make the dangers to the captives worse. News of the disappearance did begin to leak out in Turkish media and on some websites on Monday.

Syria has become a danger zone for reporters since the conflict began.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria is by far the deadliest country for the press in 2012, with 28 journalists killed in combat or targeted for murder by government or opposition forces.

Among the journalists killed while covering Syria are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain’s Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

The Syrian government has barred most foreign media coverage of the civil war in Syria. Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Many foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers and travel with rebel escorts or drivers.

Engel joined NBC in 2003 and was named chief foreign correspondent in 2008. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, including during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He has lived in the Middle East since graduating from Stanford University in 1996.

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Instagram tests new limits in user privacy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Instagram, which spurred suspicions this week that it would sell user photos after revising its terms of service, has sparked renewed debate about how much control over personal data users must give up to live and participate in a world steeped in social media.

In forcefully establishing a new set of usage terms, Instagram, the massively popular photo-sharing service owned by Facebook Inc, has claimed some rights that have been practically unheard of among its prominent social media peers, legal experts and consumer advocates say.

Users who decline to accept Instagram’s new privacy policy have one month to delete their accounts, or they will be bound by the new terms. Another clause appears to waive the rights of minors on the service. And in the wake of a class-action settlement involving Facebook and privacy issues, Instagram has added terms to shield itself from similar litigation.

All told, the revised terms reflect a new, draconian grip over user rights, experts say.

“This is all uncharted territory,” said Jay Edelson, a partner at the Chicago law firm Edelson McGuire. “If Instagram is to encourage as many lawsuits as possible and as much backlash as possible then they succeeded.”

Instagram’s new policies, which go into effect January 16, lay the groundwork for the company to begin generating advertising revenue by giving marketers the right to display profile pictures and other personal information such as who users follow in advertisements.

The new terms, which allow an advertiser to pay Instagram “to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata)” without compensation, triggered an outburst of complaints on the Web on Tuesday from users upset that Instagram would make money from their uploaded content.

The uproar prompted a lengthy blog post from the company to “clarify” the changes, with CEO Kevin Systrom saying the company had no current plans to incorporate photos taken by users into ads.

Instagram declined comment beyond its blog post, which failed to appease critics including National Geographic, which suspended new posts to Instagram. “We are very concerned with the direction of the proposed new terms of service and if they remain as presented we may close our account,” said National Geographic, an early Instagram adopter.

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

Consumer advocates said Facebook was using Instagram’s aggressive new terms to push the boundaries of how social media sites can make money while its own hands were tied by recent agreements with regulators and class action plaintiffs.

Under the terms of a 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook is required to get user consent before personal information is shared beyond their privacy settings. A preliminary class action lawsuit settlement with Facebook allows users to opt-out of being included in the “sponsored stories” ads that use their personal information.

Under Instagram’s new terms, users who want to opt-out must simply quit using the service.

“Instagram has given people a pretty stark choice: Take it or leave, and if you leave it you’ve got to leave the service,” said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Internet user right’s group.

What’s more, he said, if a user initially agrees to the new terms but then has a change of mind, their information could still be used for commercial purposes.

In a post on its official blog on Tuesday, Instagram did not address another controversial provision that states that if a child under the age of 18 uses the service, then it is implied that his or her parent has tacitly agreed to Instagram’s terms.

“The notion is that minors can’t be bound to a contract. And that also means they can’t be bound to a provision that says they agree to waive the rights,” said the EFF’s Opsahl.

BLOCKING CLASS ACTION SUITS

While Facebook continues to be bogged in its own class action suit, Instagram took preventive steps to avoid a similar legal morass.

Its new terms of service require users with a legal complaint to enter arbitration, rather than take the company to court. It prohibits users from joining a class action lawsuit unless they mail a written “opt-out” statement to Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park within 30 days of joining Instagram.

That provision is not included in terms of service for other leading social media companies like Twitter, Google, YouTube or even Facebook itself, and it immunizes Instagram from many forms of legal liability, said Michael Rustad, a professor at Suffolk University Law School.

Rustad, who has studied the terms of services for 157 social media services, said just 10 contained provisions prohibiting class action lawsuits.

The clause effectively cripples users who want to legally challenge the company because lawyers will not likely represent an individual plaintiff, Rustad argued.

“No lawyers will take these cases,” Rustad said. “In consumer arbitration cases, everything is stacked against the consumer. It’s a pretense, it’s a legal fiction, that there are remedies.”

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends. Facebook acquired Instagram in September for $ 715 million.

Instagram’s take-it-or-leave-it policy pushes the envelope for how social networking companies treat user privacy issues, said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“I think Facebook is probably using Instagram to see how far it can press this advertising model,” said Rotenberg. “If they can keep a lot of users, then all those users have agreed to have their images as part of advertising.”

(Additional reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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Los suplementos de soja no mejoran la calidad de vida en la menopausia

NUEVA YORK, 18 dic (Reuters) – En un estudio de Estados

Unidos, las mujeres menopáusicas que tomaron suplementos de soja

durante dos años no detectaron diferencias en su calidad de

vida.

Es posible que la soja pueda aportar algún beneficio en la

menopausia, según opinó la autora principal, doctora Paula

Amato, de Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, “pero

las mujeres con características similares a las participantes no

mejorarían su calidad de vida si usan los suplementos”.

En el estudio publicado en Menopause, el equipo de Amato no

se concentró en síntomas específicos, sino en la calidad de vida

de un grupo de mujeres saludables, de entre 50 y 60 años, y con

seis o más años desde la menopáusica.

Los autores les pidieron a varios cientos de mujeres que

tomaran suplementos de soja en píldoras tres veces por día

durante dos años; 126 de ellas recibieron una versión placebo

(sin extracto de soja), 135 tomaron píldoras con 80 mg/día de

proteína de soja y 123 ingirieron 120 mg/día.

Al inicio del estudio, al año y a los dos años, las

participantes respondieron un cuestionario sobre calidad de

vida, que incluía preguntas sobre la salud mental, física y

sexual, y los sofocos. En cada relevamiento, los tres grupos

obtuvieron resultados similares.

“A partir del estudio y la literatura médica disponible,

surge que el uso de suplementos de soja después de la menopausia

no mejora la calidad de vida”, dijo Amato. “Realmente, no

podemos recomendárselos a nuestras pacientes”, agregó.

Mark Messina, presidente de Nutrition Matters y profesor

adjunto de Loma Linda University, California, aconsejó no

interpretar que los ingredientes claves de los suplementos de

soja, las isoflavonas, carecen de efecto alguno en los sofocos.

Explicó que, por un lado, los niveles de un tipo de

isoflavona, la genisteína, utilizados en el estudio fueron más

bajos que en otros estudios que le habían atribuido beneficios a

los extractos de soja. Además, señaló que el objetivo original

del estudio era conocer los efectos de los extractos en la salud

ósea, por lo que el equipo no convocó mujeres con sofocos o con

alteraciones de la calidad de vida.

“De modo que, en mi opinión, el estudio no aporta

información útil sobre las isoflavonas y los sofocos”, dijo

Messina, que habitualmente asesora a las empresas que producen o

venden productos de soja.

Esas empresas comercializan los suplementos, que cuestan

unos 17 dólares por cada 90 píldoras de 50 mg, como productos

que “potencialmente” alivian los cambios asociados con la

menopausia.

Amato coincidió en que el estudio tiene algunas limitaciones

y dijo que los resultados no pueden generalizarse a todas las

formas de soja en todo tipo de mujeres.

FUENTE: Menopause, online 3 de diciembre del 2012.

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“Silver Linings Playbook” sweeps Satellite Awards

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Silver Linings Playbook” was the big winner at Sunday night’s Satellite Awards, a show produced by and voted on by the International Press Academy and held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Beverly Hills.

The David O. Russell comedy, which has been overshadowed in the awards picture by more recent films like “Les Miserables” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” won five awards, including Best Motion Picture. Rusell won the award for directing, while stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence were named best actor and actress. The film also won for editing.

Supporting actor and actress awards went to Anne Hathaway for “Les Miserables” and Javier Bardem for “Skyfall.”

Mark Boal won the original-screenplay award for “Zero Dark Thirty,” while David Magee won the adapted-screenplay honor for “Life of Pi.”

Other winners: “Rise of the Guardians,” best animated film; “Chasing Ice,” best documentary; and a tie between “The Intouchables” and “Pieta” for best foreign film.

Proving that the IPA is a body of voters inclined toward sweeps, the television series “Homeland” and “The Big Bang Theory” each won three awards in the TV categories, picking up honors as best drama and comedy series, respectively, and also winning the actor and actress awards.

The awards:

FILM AWARDS

Motion picture: “Silver Linings Playbook”

Director: David O. Russell, “Silver Linings Playbook”

Actor: Bradley Cooper, “Silver Linings Playbook”

Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”

Supporting actor: Javier Bardem, “Skyfall”

Supporting actress: Anne Hathaway, “Les Miserables”

Original screenplay: Mark Boal, “Zero Dark Thirty”

Adapted screenplay: David Magee, “Life of Pi”

Motion picture, animated or mixed media: “Rise of the Guardians”

Motion picture, documentary: “Chasing Ice”

Motion picture, international: (tie) “The Intouchables,” “Pieta”

Cinematography: Claudio Miranda, “Life of Pi”

Editing: Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers, “Silver Linings Playbook”

Score: Alexandre Desplat, “Argo”

Song: “Suddenly” from “Les Miserables”

Sound (editing and mixing): Andy Nelson, John Warhurst, Lee Walpole, Simon Hayes, “Les Miserables”

Visual effects: Michael Lantieri, Kevin Baillie, Ryan Tudhope, Jim Gibbs, “Flight”

Art direction & production design: Rick Carter, Curt Beech, David Crank, Leslie McDonald, “Lincoln”

Costume design: Manon Rasmussen, “A Royal Affair”

TELEVISION AWARDS

Miniseries or movie made for television: “Hatfields & McCoys”

Actor in a miniseries/movie made for television: Benedict Cumberbatch, “Sherlock

Actress in a miniseries/movie made for television: Julianne Moore, “Game Change”

Supporting actor in a miniseries/TV movie: Neal McDonough, “Justified”

Supporting actress in a miniseries/TV movie: Maggie Smith, “Downton Abbey”

Drama series: “Homeland”

Genre series: “Walking Dead”

Actor in a drama: Damian Lewis, “Homeland”

Actress in a drama: Claire Danes, “Homeland”

Comedy or musical series: “The Big Bang Theory”

Actor in a comedy: Johnny Galecki, “The Big Bang Theory”

Actress in a comedy: Kaley Cuoco, “The Big Bang Theory”

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

Outstanding contribution to the entertainment industry: Terence Stamp

Nikola Tesla Award: Walter Murch

Auteur Award: Paul Williams

Honorary Satellite Award: Bruce Davison

Newcomer Award: Quvenzhane Wallis, “Beasts of the Southern Wild”

Humanitarian Award: Benh Zeitlin, “Beasts of the Southern Wild”

Motion picture ensemble: “Les Miserables”

Television ensemble: “Walking Dead”

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Newtown students to return to classes in wake of school massacre

NEWTOWN, Connecticut (Reuters) - The schools of Newtown, which stood empty in the wake of a shooting rampage that took 26 of their own, will again ring with the sounds of students and teachers on Tuesday as the bucolic Connecticut town struggles to return to normal.

But among the normal sounds of a school day - teachers reading to children, the scratch of pencil on paper - students will hear new ones, including the murmur of grief counselors and the footsteps of police officers.

Four days after 20-year-old Adam Lanza strode into Sandy Hook Elementary school and gunned down a score of 6- and 7-year-olds, in addition to six faculty and staff, that school will remain closed. It is an active crime scene, with police coming and going past a line of 26 Christmas trees that visitors have decorated with ornaments, stuffed animals and balloons in the school colors of green and white as a memorial to the victims.

The massacre - one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history - shocked Americans, prompting some lawmakers to call for tighter restrictions on guns and causing school administrators around the country to assess their safety protocols.

Newtown police plan to have officers at the six schools scheduled to reopen on Tuesday, trying to offer a sense of security to the students and faculty, many of whom spent the weekend in mourning. Newtown Police Lieutenant George Sinko acknowledged it may be difficult to ease the worries of the roughly 4,700 returning students and their families.

"Obviously, there's going to be a lot of apprehension. We just had a horrific tragedy. We had babies sent to school that should be safe and they weren't," Sinko said. "You can't help but think ... if this could happen again."

DAY FOR 'HEALING'

Newtown High School Principal Charles Dumais, in an e-mail to parents, said schools in the district would open two hours later than usual, with counselors available to students and their families.

"This is a day to start healing," Dumais said.

While school officials have not yet decided when Sandy Hook students will resume their studies, the building that they will move into - the unused Chalk Hill School in the nearby town of Monroe - already showed signs of preparation.

On a fence opposite the building, a green sign with white lettering proclaimed "Welcome Sandy Hook Elementary!"

In Washington, the massacre prompted U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday to call a White House meeting with advisors to discuss ways to respond, a first step toward fulfilling the pledge he made a day earlier in Newtown. The administration's plans to curb violence include but are not limited to gun-control measures, a spokesman said.

Police have warned it could take months for them to finish their investigation into the attack, which started when Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy, at home, before driving to the school armed with a Bushmaster AR 15 rifle and two handguns. After shooting 26 people at the school, he turned his gun on himself when he heard police approaching.

In total, 28 people died in the incident.

Many of the students and faculty of Sandy Hook and its neighbors will still have funerals to attend.

The first two victims, Noah Pozner and Jack Pinto, both 6, were buried on Monday, with the boys' bodies laid out in white coffins. Jack was dressed in a New York Giants jersey with his favorite player's number, while mourners left a teddy bear outside Noah's service.

More funerals were expected on Tuesday, for victims including James Mattioli and Jessica Rekos. Each was 6 years old.

"It's still not real that my little girl, who was so full of life and who wants a horse so badly and who's going to get cowgirl boots for Christmas isn't coming home," Krista Rekos, Jessica's mother, told ABC News on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Peter Rudegeair and Edward Krudy; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jackie Frank)

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N. Korea displays Kim Jong Il a year after death

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea unveiled the embalmed body of Kim Jong Il, still in his trademark khaki jumpsuit, on the anniversary of his death Monday as mourning mixed with pride over a recent satellite launch that was a long-held goal of the late authoritarian leader.

Kim lies in state a few floors below his father, national founder Kim Il Sung, in the Kumsusan mausoleum, the cavernous former presidential palace. Kim Jong Il is presented lying beneath a red blanket, a spotlight shining on his face in a room suffused in red.

Wails echoed through the chilly hall as a group of North Korean women sobbed into the sashes of their traditional Korean dresses as they bowed before his body. The hall bearing the glass coffin was opened to select visitors — including The Associated Press — for the first time since his death.

North Korea also unveiled Kim’s yacht and his armored train carriage, where he is said to have died. Among the personal belongings featured in the mausoleum are the parka, sunglasses and pointy platform shoes he famously wore in the last decades of his life. A MacBook Pro lay open on his desk.

North Koreans paid homage to Kim and basked in the success of last week’s launch of a long-range rocket that sent a satellite named after him to space.

The launch, condemned in many other capitals as a violation of bans against developing its missile technology, was portrayed not only as a gift to Kim Jong Il but also as proof that his young son, Kim Jong Un, has the strength and vision to lead the country.

The elder Kim died last Dec. 17 from a heart attack while traveling on his train. His death was followed by scenes of North Koreans dramatically wailing in the streets of Pyongyang, and of the 20-something son leading ranks of uniformed and gray-haired officials through funeral and mourning rites.

The mood in the capital was decidedly more upbeat a year later, with some of the euphoria carrying over from last Wednesday’s launch. The satellite bears one of Kim Jong Il’s nicknames, Kwangmyongsong, or “Lode Star,” a moniker given to him at birth according to the official lore.

Cameras were not allowed inside the mausoleum, and state media did not release any images of Kim Jong Il’s body.

With the death anniversary came a hint that Kim Jong Un himself might soon be a father.

His wife, Ri Sol Ju, was seen on state TV with what appeared to be a baby bump as she walked slowly next to her husband at the mausoleum, where they bowed to statues of Kim’s father and grandfather.

There is no official word from Pyongyang about a pregnancy. In addition, Ri is shown wearing a billowing traditional Korean dress in black that makes it difficult to know for sure.

North Koreans are reluctant to discuss details of the Kim family that have not been released by the state. Still there are rumors even in Pyongyang about whether the country’s first couple is expecting.

To honor Kim’s father, North Koreans stopped in their tracks at midday and bowed their heads as the national flag fluttered at half-staff along streets and from buildings.

Pyongyang construction workers took off their yellow hard hats and bowed at the waist as sirens wailed across the city for three minutes.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans gathered in the frigid plaza outside, newly transformed into a public park with lawns and pergolas. Geese flew past snow-tinged firs and swans dallied in the partly frozen moat that rings the vast complex in Pyongyang’s outskirts.

“Just when we were thinking how best to uphold our general, he passed away,” Kim Jong Ran said at the plaza. “But we upheld leader Kim Jong Un. … We regained our strength and we are filled with determination to work harder for our country.”

Speaking outside the mausoleum, renamed the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the military’s top political officer, Choe Ryong Hae, said North Korea should be proud of the satellite, calling it “a political event with great significance in the history of Korea and humanity.”

Much of the rest of the world, however, was swift in condemning the launch, which was seen by the United States and other nations as a thinly disguised cover for testing missile technology that could someday be used for a nuclear warhead.

The test, which the U.N. Security Council said violated a ban on launches using ballistic missile technology, underlined Kim Jong Un’s determination to continue carrying out his father’s hardline policies even if they draw international condemnation.

Washington said Monday it has no option but to seek to isolate Pyongyang further.

“What’s left to us is to continue to increase pressure on the North Korean regime and we are looking at how to best to do that, both bilaterally and with our partners going forward until they (North Korea) get the message. We are going to further isolate this regime,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Some outside experts worry that Pyongyang’s next move will be to press ahead with a nuclear test in the coming weeks, a step toward building a warhead small enough to be carried by a long-range missile.

Despite inviting further isolation for his impoverished nation and the threat of stiffer sanctions, Kim Jong Un won national prestige and clout by going ahead with the rocket launch.

At a memorial service on Sunday, North Korea’s top leadership not only eulogized Kim Jong Il, but also praised his son. Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of North Korea’s parliament, called the launch a “shining victory” and an emblem of the promise that lies ahead with Kim Jong Un in power.

The rocket’s success also fits neatly into the narrative of Kim Jong Il’s death. Even before he died, the father had laid the groundwork for his son to inherit a government focused on science, technology and improving the economy. And his pursuit of nuclear weapons and the policy of putting the military ahead of all other national concerns have also carried into Kim Jong Un’s reign.

In a sign of the rocket launch’s importance, Kim Jong Un invited the scientists in charge of it to attend the mourning rites in Pyongyang, according to state media.

The reopening of the mausoleum on the anniversary of the leader’s death follows tradition. Kumsusan, the palace where his father, Kim Il Sung, served as president, was reopened as a mausoleum on the anniversary of his death in 1994.

___

Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report. Follow Jean Lee, AP’s bureau chief for Pyongyang and Seoul, at www.twitter.com/newsjean.

Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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