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Demi Moore-Ashton Kutcher divorce could get ugly

Label: Business

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, whose divorce timing may be about money, an expert says.

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

Ashton Kutcher's move to file for divorce from Demi Moore last week more than a year after they announced their split could be a matter of money or taxes, a veteran divorce attorney said.

In the divorce papers filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Kutcher cited irreconcilable differences. He did not seek any spousal support, nor did he ask that Moore be denied any.

Christopher Melcher, a veteran California divorce attorney who has represented Katie Holmes and other celebrities, said that when a filing occurs late in December, it is because the couple wants to terminate the marriage before the end of the year for tax reasons.

"A case has to be filed before the court can enter a judgment," he said.

Moore allegedly netted $90 million in her divorce from Bruce Willis. It is unclear whether she will seek a lucrative settlement from Kutcher, who is Hollywood's highest paid TV actor and has made several investments in start-up tech companies. During their marriage, Moore, once Hollywood's highest paid actress, has also made money producing several successful movies.

It is unclear if the couple had a prenuptial agreement.

Moore announced the split in November 2011. "It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I have decided to end my six-year marriage to Ashton," Moore said in a statement in November 2011. "As a woman, a mother and a wife there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life."

In recent weeks, Kutcher has been seen with his former TV costar Mila Kunis in her hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

[For the record, 2:30 p.m. Dec. 24: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Christopher Melcher represented Tom Cruise. He represented Katie Holmes.]

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Photo: Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore in February 2009. Credit: Hermann J. Knippertz / Associated Press

In Aiding Quake-Battered Haiti, Lofty Hopes and Hard Truths

Label: World

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Vegetable vendors worked recently amid rubble in Port-au-Prince, three years after an earthquake devastated the city. More Photos »

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A few days after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, Reginald Boulos opened the gates of his destroyed car dealership to some 14,000 displaced people who settled on the expansive property. Seven months later, eager to rebuild his business, he paid the families $400 each to leave Camp Boulos and return to their devastated neighborhoods.

At the time, Dr. Boulos, a physician and business magnate, was much maligned for what was portrayed as bribing the homeless to participate in their own eviction. But eventually, desperate to rid public plazas of squalid camps, the Haitian government and the international authorities adopted his approach themselves: “return cash grants” have become the primary resettlement tool.

This represents a marked deflation of the lofty ambitions that followed the disaster, when the world aspired not only to repair Haiti but to remake it completely. The new pragmatism signals an acknowledgment that despite billions of dollars spent — and billions more allocated for Haiti but unspent — rebuilding has barely begun and 357,785 Haitians still languish in 496 tent camps.

“When you look at things, you say, ‘Hell, almost three years later, where is the reconstruction?’ ” said Michèle Pierre-Louis, a former prime minister of Haiti. “If you ask what went right and what went wrong, the answer is, most everything went wrong. There needs to be some accountability for all that money.”

An analysis of all that money — at least $7.5 billion disbursed so far — helps explain why such a seeming bounty is not more palpable here in the eviscerated capital city, where the world’s chief accomplishment is to have finally cleared away most of the rubble.

More than half of the money has gone to relief aid, which saves lives and alleviates misery but carries high costs and leaves no permanent footprint — tents shred; emergency food and water gets consumed; short-term jobs expire; transitional shelters, clinics and schools are not built to last.

Of the rest, only a portion went to earthquake reconstruction strictly defined. Instead, much of the so-called recovery aid was devoted to costly current programs, like highway building and H.I.V. prevention, and to new projects far outside the disaster zone, like an industrial park in the north and a teaching hospital in the central plateau.

Meanwhile, just a sliver of the total disbursement — $215 million — has been allocated to the most obvious and pressing need: safe, permanent housing. By comparison, an estimated minimum of $1.2 billion has been eaten up by short-term solutions — the tent camps, temporary shelters and cash grants that pay a year’s rent.

“Housing is difficult and messy, and donors have shied away from it,” said Josef Leitmann, manager of the Haiti Reconstruction Fund.

Benefactors and Dysfunction

Beyond the numbers, the sluggish reconstruction has been the latest dispiriting chapter in the chronically dysfunctional relationship between Haiti and its benefactors.

After the earthquake, with good will and money pouring into Haiti, international officials were determined to use the disaster as a catalyst for transforming not only the intractably poor country but the world’s ineffectual strategies for helping it.

Bill Clinton, the United Nations special envoy for Haiti, invoked the “build back better” mantra he had imported from his similar role in South Asia after the tsunami. And Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cautioned donors to stop working around the government and instead work with it, and to stop financing “a scattered array of well-meaning projects” rather than making “deeper, long-term investments.”

But an examination by The New York Times shows that such post-disaster idealism came to be undercut by the enormousness of the task, the weakness and volatility of the Haitian government, the continuation of aid business as usual and the limited effectiveness of the now-defunct recovery commission that had Mr. Clinton as co-chairman.

André Paultre and Damon Winter contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 24, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the date of the earthquake. It was on Jan. 12, 2010, not Jan. 10.

Sarah Drew: Baby Micah Might Be a Musician

Label: Lifestyle

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

12/21/2012 at 02:00 PM ET

Sarah Drew Micah Loves Music
Michael Buckner/Getty

She may shine as an actress on television, but off screen, Sarah Drew is a singing sensation — at least around the holidays.

“Every year we do caroling, we love music so we do a big Christmas caroling party,” the Grey’s Anatomy star, 32, told PEOPLE at the March of Dimes Celebration of Babies luncheon on Dec. 7 at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“We bring a bunch of people into our home and we rehearse and have four-part harmonies and go out and around the block.”

But while Drew and her husband Peter Lanfer have plans to continue on the annual tradition, there will be a new caroler among their crowd: 11-month-old son Micah Emmanuel.

“He’s super vocal. We have him in music classes and … he has every different kind of instrument you can imagine, like a xylophone, and drums and shakers,” Drew says. “It’s really fun. I just want him to appreciate music. He doesn’t need to be a star.”

Other than belting out his little lungs, Micah has been busy meeting all of his milestones, including “almost” perfecting his wobbly walk.

“He’s toddling along, he’s cruising. He pulls himself up on everything and cruises along,” Drew shares.

But, if left up to her baby boy, the first-time mom admits her son would much rather prefer to hitch a ride courtesy of Drew. “We just got him this tricycle that he is obsessed with,” she says. “That’s all he wants to do, ride his tricycle.”

– Anya Leon with reporting by Melody Chiu

Predicting who's at risk for violence isn't easy

Label: Health

CHICAGO (AP) — It happened after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colo., and now Sandy Hook: People figure there surely were signs of impending violence. But experts say predicting who will be the next mass shooter is virtually impossible — partly because as commonplace as these calamities seem, they are relatively rare crimes.

Still, a combination of risk factors in troubled kids or adults including drug use and easy access to guns can increase the likelihood of violence, experts say.

But warning signs "only become crystal clear in the aftermath, said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminology professor who has studied and written about mass killings.

"They're yellow flags. They only become red flags once the blood is spilled," he said.

Whether 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who used his mother's guns to kill her and then 20 children and six adults at their Connecticut school, made any hints about his plans isn't publicly known.

Fox said that sometimes, in the days, weeks or months preceding their crimes, mass murderers voice threats, or hints, either verbally or in writing, things like "'don't come to school tomorrow,'" or "'they're going to be sorry for mistreating me.'" Some prepare by target practicing, and plan their clothing "as well as their arsenal." (Police said Lanza went to shooting ranges with his mother in the past but not in the last six months.)

Although words might indicate a grudge, they don't necessarily mean violence will follow. And, of course, most who threaten never act, Fox said.

Even so, experts say threats of violence from troubled teens and young adults should be taken seriously and parents should attempt to get them a mental health evaluation and treatment if needed.

"In general, the police are unlikely to be able to do anything unless and until a crime has been committed," said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a Columbia University professor of psychiatry, medicine and law. "Calling the police to confront a troubled teen has often led to tragedy."

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry says violent behavior should not be dismissed as "just a phase they're going through."

In a guidelines for families, the academy lists several risk factors for violence, including:

—Previous violent or aggressive behavior

—Being a victim of physical or sexual abuse

—Guns in the home

—Use of drugs or alcohol

—Brain damage from a head injury

Those with several of these risk factors should be evaluated by a mental health expert if they also show certain behaviors, including intense anger, frequent temper outbursts, extreme irritability or impulsiveness, the academy says. They may be more likely than others to become violent, although that doesn't mean they're at risk for the kind of violence that happened in Newtown, Conn.

Lanza, the Connecticut shooter, was socially withdrawn and awkward, and has been said to have had Asperger's disorder, a mild form of autism that has no clear connection with violence.

Autism experts and advocacy groups have complained that Asperger's is being unfairly blamed for the shootings, and say people with the disorder are much more likely to be victims of bullying and violence by others.

According to a research review published this year in Annals of General Psychiatry, most people with Asperger's who commit violent crimes have serious, often undiagnosed mental problems. That includes bipolar disorder, depression and personality disorders. It's not publicly known if Lanza had any of these, which in severe cases can include delusions and other psychotic symptoms.

Young adulthood is when psychotic illnesses typically emerge, and Appelbaum said there are several signs that a troubled teen or young adult might be heading in that direction: isolating themselves from friends and peers, spending long periods alone in their rooms, plummeting grades if they're still in school and expressing disturbing thoughts or fears that others are trying to hurt them.

Appelbaum said the most agonizing calls he gets are from parents whose children are descending into severe mental illness but who deny they are sick and refuse to go for treatment.

And in the case of adults, forcing them into treatment is difficult and dependent on laws that vary by state.

All states have laws that allow some form of court-ordered treatment, typically in a hospital for people considered a danger to themselves or others. Connecticut is among a handful with no option for court-ordered treatment in a less restrictive community setting, said Kristina Ragosta, an attorney with the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national group that advocates better access to mental health treatment.

Lanza's medical records haven't been publicly disclosed and authorities haven't said if it is known what type of treatment his family may have sought for him. Lanza killed himself at the school.

Jennifer Hoff of Mission Viejo, Calif. has a 19-year-old bipolar son who has had hallucinations, delusions and violent behavior for years. When he was younger and threatened to harm himself, she'd call 911 and leave the door unlocked for paramedics, who'd take him to a hospital for inpatient mental care.

Now that he's an adult, she said he has refused medication, left home, and authorities have indicated he can't be forced into treatment unless he harms himself — or commits a violent crime and is imprisoned. Hoff thinks prison is where he's headed — he's in jail, charged in an unarmed bank robbery.

___

Online:

American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry: http://www.aacap.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

Husband sets wife on fire during fight with child nearby, police say

Label: Business

A Fresno man was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and domestic violence after he allegedly set his common-law wife on fire Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

The 21-year-old man apparently "became emotional" while discussing his relationship with the woman in a car in southeast Fresno, police Sgt. Steve Crawford told the Fresno Bee. The man allegedly threw gasoline on the woman and lighted her on fire.

When police arrived, Crawford said, the woman was rolling on the ground to put out the flames. The vehicle was also on fire.

The woman was taken to an area hospital with minor injuries, Crawford said. The couple's 2-year-old boy, who was near the car when the fire began, was not hurt.

The suspect's name has not been released by authorities.

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As Egypt Constitution Passes, New Fights Lie Ahead

Label: World

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Egyptian women walk into a polling station. Millions went to the polls to pass judgment on an Islamist-backed constitution, whose passage represented an important milestone in Egypt’s chaotic two-year transition to democracy. More Photos »

CAIRO — - Egyptians approved an Islamist-backed constitution, state news media said Sunday, and the headlines made clear that the political brawl around it set off has only begun.

“The People Sided With Democracy,” the flagship state newspaper Al Ahram declared.

“Wholesale violations,” ran the headline in the largest independent daily Al Masry Al Youm.

Passage of the constitution begins what its supporters call the first experiment in Islamist democracy and its results will be watched across the Arab world. Its approval is a victory for President Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, who had sought to temporarily suspend the authority of the Egyptian courts in order to stop them from rulings he feared might block the referendum.

But a backlash against Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies over their authoritarian tactics has now imposed new pressure to rebut charges that they intend to exploit loopholes in the charter to move Egypt toward theocracy.

In a press conference Sunday, opposition leaders called the charter illegitimate and vowed to use any peaceful means available to tear it down. “This is a constitution that lacks the most important prerequisite for a constitution: consensus,” Hamdeen Sabahi, a populist firebrand, declared. “This means we can’t build our future based on this text at all.”

But at the same time Mr. Sabahi and other political leaders said they planned to channel their movement against the charter into campaigns for the upcoming parliamentary elections, suggesting that at least for now to work with the process spelled out by the charter.

Amr Hamzawy, a political scientists and liberal political leader, said the size of the vote against the charter measured the opposition’s growing clout. “We have a majority than isn’t big and a minority that isn’t small. This means there is an evident division in society,” he said, adding, “We feel we’ve made a major achievement.”

About 64 percent of voters in the two-day referendum approved the new charter, Egyptian state media reported Sunday, citing preliminary local results. About 56.5 percent voted yes in last weekend’s first phase, which included Cairo, where a similar majority voted no. And in the more rural precincts that voted on Saturday more than 70 percent voted yes, mapping out Egypt’s cultural divide.

The turnout across both rounds remained low, at just over 30 percent of eligible voters, according to the preliminary figures. A referendum on a plan for the transition after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak drew about 41 percent of eligible voters.

The opposition leaders argued violations of voting procedures had compromised the results and demanded that election authorities rule on the allegations before issuing official results, expected Monday.

But the ballots were cast into transparent boxes and counted on the spot under the supervision of independent monitors, reducing opportunities for fraud. And the margin of the approval, by 4.5 million out of 16.2 million ballots, meant that rigging the results would have required systematic fraud.

International experts said that the constitution itself does not significantly alter the role of religion in Egyptian law. But it raised the stakes for future contests over who will interpret it.t Although the new charter preserves an article from the old constitution declaring the principles of Islamic law a main source of legislation, it adds a new arcticle, #219, broadly defining those principles in accord with established Sunni Muslim scholarship.

Zaid al-Ali (CQ), a researcher at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an intergovernmental organization, said the constitution’s principle defects were not about religion. The biggest problem, he said, was that the charter protects the Egyptian military from legal and parliamentary oversight, engraving its autonomy in the constitution. Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood had said privately for months that they were willing to provide the military such constitutional protections in order to ease the handover of power from the generals who assumed control from Mr. Mubarak.

A second problem, Mr. Ali said, was the failure to decentralize decision making. While most of the world has shifted power closer to the local level, he said, the Arab states have resisted out of a historic fear of fragmentation. “Because of the centralization in the Arab region, as soon as you step out of the capital you are in different universe,” Mr. Ali said. “It is an ineffectual way to meet people’s needs and services aren’t delivered.”

Meanwhile, a small group of President Morsi’s Islamist supporters on Sunday continued a sit-in outside the constitutional court, still determined to discourage it from any ruling that might interfere with the referendum before the results are official.

[[[Sectarian animosities continued to surround the vote. The Coptic Church pulled its representatives from the constitutional assembly in a dispute over the role of Islamic law in Egyptian jurisprudence, and before the vote many Christians said it was axiomatic that everyone of their faith would vote against the charter.

On Sunday, opposition leaders charged that in some precincts Islamists had intimidated Christians or blocked their access to the polls. But the allegations could not be confirmed.]]]

-v-

Video games and shooting: Is the NRA right?

Label: Technology

After a week of silence following the Sandy Hook school shooting that killed 20 first graders and six staff in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association blamed the entertainment industry – specifically the producers of violent video games for inciting what has become a pattern of gun violence in the United States.

In describing the industry, NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre said, “There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.”

Mr. LaPierre faulted the news media for failing to report on “vicious, violent video games” such as “Grand Theft Auto,” “Mortal Kombat,” and “Splatterhouse” as egregious examples. He also singled out “Kindergarten Killer,” a free, fairly obscure online game.

“How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?” he asked reporters.

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Most academic research, as well as studies by the FBI and the US Secret Service, examining the link between violent video games and incident of violence does not support the gun lobby’s charge.

For example, a 2008 report by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital funded by the US Department of Justice found that violent video games may increase bullying or physical fighting in schools, but not mass gun violence.

“It’s clear that the ‘big fears’ bandied about in the press – that violent video games make children significantly more violent in the real world; that they will engage in the illegal, immoral, sexist and violent acts they see in some of these games – are not supported by the current research, at least in such a simplistic form,” the report states.

Joan Saab, director of the visual and cultural studies program at the University of Rochester in New York, says the gaming industry should share in the blame for promoting military weaponry to young people, but adds that the popularity of such games reflect the “larger culture we live in, which is heavily militarized,” in the midst of lengthy combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ms. Saab says that the NRA’s call for armed guards in schools would make that kind of military culture more pervasive for children.

“If there are more armed guards in schools, kids are exposed to more guns. That’s when fantasy and reality aren’t blurred. When there are guns in schools, it becomes real life and the day-to-day environment becomes more dangerous than the game,” she says. In Newtown, as in Aurora, Colo. and the sites of other mass shootings, the gunman was outfitted in military-style dress.

By blaming video games for gun violence, the NRA also puts itself in a vulnerable position because, as Mother Jones reports, the company partnered with gaming producer Cave Entertainment in 2006 for “NRA Gun Club,” a PlayStation 2 game that allows users to fire over 100 different brand-name handguns.

LaPierre did not specify if Congress should move forward in regulating the gaming industry, perhaps because previous attempts were not successful.

A US Supreme Court ruling in 2011 struck down a California law that made it a crime to sell or rent what it classified as violent video games to minors. The ruling said the law, signed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) in 2005, violates First Amendment protections.

In the wake of Sandy Hook, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller introduced a bill that calls for the National Academy of Sciences to examine the possible links between violent video games and violent incidents caused by children.

Overall, gun-based video games do not wholly represent total gaming industry sales, according to data from VGChartz, a UK-based research firm that tracks gaming sales. In 2011, for example, just seven of the top 20 best-selling games in the US involve warfare simulation. The other titles – “Just Dance 3,” “Kinect Adventures!” “New Super Mario Bros. Wii,” “Madden NFL 12,” and “Pokemon Black/White” – are designed around sports, dance, and children’s cartoon characters.

All of the games LaPierre mentions are more than 15 years old, with some dating back to the 1980s, with their popularity waning. For example, total unit sales in the US for the “Mortal Kombat” franchise dropped 70 percent in 2012, compared to the previous year total. The game debuted in 1992.

Gaming experts say that the majority of the games LaPierre cited do not portray gun violence – “Mortal Kombat” involves hand-to-hand combat, for example. They say they do not understand why he did not single out “first person shooter” games such as blockbuster franchises like the “Call of Duty” series, which is based on simulated gun action and is considered one of the most hyper-violent on the market. In fact, according to news reports, the game was also a favorite of Adam Lanza, the Newtown gunman who spent hours at home playing it.

“Some of those games [LaPierre mentions] are older than the [Newtown] shooter,” who was 20, says Christopher Grant, editor-in-chief of Polygon.com, an online site based in New York City that covers gaming news and trends. “I have no idea why he chose them. My theory is he didn’t want to pick anything too modern [such as ‘Call of Duty’ or ‘Doom’] that might overlap unfavorably with something their own members might enjoy.”

“Call of Duty” is known as a favorite of the military and is often credited for driving up recruitment. Activision Blizzard, the company behind “Call of Duty,” has donated thousands of copies to the US Navy; the company also created a non-profit foundation to help returning US military veterans.

According to the NPD Group, a global market research firm, retail gaming sales in the US plummeted 20 percent in the first eight months of 2012 compared to the same time period the previous year, a trend that follows years of declining sales. Between 2008 and 2011, total sales of industry software and hardware dropped 20.5 percent. According to the gaming industry website Gamasutra, 2012 sales are expected to be the lowest since 2006.

The sales drop is representative of major shifts in the gaming industry, which is slowly moving away from console-based games to those that are played via smartphones, digital tablets, and online through social networks.

The change has produced a new type of gamer: They are generally older, more ethnically and economically diverse, and they feed their gaming appetite in smaller bites and on-the-go, as opposed to the traditional gamer profile of a few years ago, which tended to be young males playing for hours in one sitting.

The Entertainment Software Association, an industry trade group based in Washington, reports that the average gamer today is 30 years old, the most frequent game purchaser is 35 years old, and that almost half (47 percent) of all gamers are women.

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It's a Wonderful Life Was a Winter Wonderland - in July

Label: Lifestyle

By Stephen M. Silverman

12/23/2012 at 01:30 PM EST

Jimmy Stewart, as Harry Bailey, on the set of It's a Wonderful Life, in 1946

Martha Holmes/Time & Life Pictures/Getty

It's the sentimental family favorite that easily induces tears for its heartfelt final scenes, but when it came to creating a winter wonderland for his 1946 It's a Wonderful Life, producer-director Frank Capra was one tough taskmaster.

He wanted real snow – not the painted corn flakes Hollywood was accustomed to passing off as the white stuff – to blanket his setting, the town of Bedford Falls, reports Life.com in its special feature with never-before-seen on-set photos from the holiday classic.

To achieve his goal, Capra – who trained as an engineer as a student at Cal Tech before becoming the talkies' first true stylist, as an Oscar-winning director for Columbia Pictures – collaborated with RKO studio's special effects expert Russell Sherman.

Together they created a product that quelled the crunch of cornflakes and replaced it with their own gentle falling (and sounding) snow to cover the fictional town where James Stewart's Harry Bailey helped affect the lives of everyone around him.

Their recipe? Mixing Foamite, a material used in fire extinguishers, with sugar and water – or, say some accounts, with soap flakes.

It's a Wonderful Life Was a Winter Wonderland – in July| Life, It's a Wonderful Life, Christmas, Frank Capra, Jimmy Stewart

The Bedford Falls movie set of It's a Wonderful Life covered in snow

Martha Holmes / Time & Life Pictures / Getty

As for the Bedford Falls set, according to Life.com: "It covered four acres of the RKO ranch [in Encino, Calif.] and included 75 stores and buildings, a tree-lined center parkway with 20 fully grown oak trees, a factory district and residential areas. Main Street was 300 yards long, or three full-length city blocks."

Most surprising of all, the snow scenes were shot on a series of 90-degree days in June and July 1946.

Still when It's a Wonderful Life first opened, it didn't set the box office on fire, or even warm the hearts of critics. Subsequent TV showings made it the hit with audiences it is today.

As Capra, who died in 1991, said about the picture in his 1971 autobiography, just as the reputation of his movie was being revived: "I didn't give a film-clip whether critics hailed or hooted Wonderful Life. I thought it was the greatest film I had ever made. Better yet, I thought it was greatest film anybody ever made … my kind of film for my kind of people."