Damon ‘hijacks’ Kimmel’s ABC show

NEW YORK (AP) — Matt Damon had his revenge.

The butt of a long-running joke on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the actor opened Thursday night’s show as a kidnapper who tied Kimmel to a chair with duct tape and gagged him with his own tie.

“There’s a new host in town and his initials are M.D.,” Damon said. “That’s right, the doctor is in.”

For years, Kimmel has joked at the end of his show that he ran out of time and was unable to bring Damon on as a guest. Kimmel was the silent one Thursday, watching from the back of the stage as Damon did his job.

Damon tormented Kimmel by bringing on a succession of big-name guests. Robin Williams stopped by to finish the monologue. Ben Affleck had a walk-on role. Sheryl Crow was the bandleader and performed her new single. Nicole Kidman, Gary Oldman, Amy Adams, Reese Witherspoon and Demi Moore all crowded the talk show’s couch.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long, long time,” Damon said. “This is like when I lost my virginity, except this is going to last way longer than one second.”

Damon’s guest hosting turn came at a key time for Kimmel. ABC earlier this month moved the show to 11:35 p.m. ET and PT after a decade of airing it a half hour later, putting him in direct competition with Jay Leno and David Letterman.

Thursday’s special program aimed for the same water-cooler status as a memorably lewd short film Damon made for the show a few years ago with Kimmel’s then-girlfriend, Sarah Silverman. It went viral and remains probably the best-known skit in the show’s history.

To twist the knife even further, Damon brought Silverman on as his final guest Thursday night, with Kimmel looking on forlornly as she likened their five-year relationship to an unfortunate trip to a hot dog vendor.

“Is there anything you’d like to say to Jimmy?” Damon asked.

“No, I’m good,” Silverman replied.

Then came the sweetest revenge of all, with Damon promising to ungag Kimmel in the show’s final minutes.

“Wait,” he said. “I’m sorry. We’re out of time.”

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HCA Must Pay Kansas City Foundation $162 Million

HCA, the nation’s largest profit-making hospital chain, was ordered on Thursday to pay $162 million after a judge in Missouri ruled that it had failed to abide by an agreement to make improvements to dilapidated hospitals that it bought in the Kansas City area several years ago.

The judge also ordered a court-appointed accountant to determine whether HCA had actually provided the levels of charitable care that it agreed to at the time.

The ruling came in response to a suit filed in 2009 by a community foundation that was created when HCA acquired the hospitals. Among other things, the foundation was responsible for ensuring that HCA met the obligations outlined in the deal.

The dispute in Kansas City is the second time in recent years that HCA has come under legal fire from officials in communities that sold troubled nonprofit community hospitals to HCA.

In another dispute in New Hampshire in 2011, a judge ruled in HCA’s favor, deciding that Portsmouth Regional Hospital would remain part of HCA after community leaders tried to regain control. During testimony in a 2011 trial, a former hospital official claimed he had difficulties getting HCA to pay for what he and others described as critical equipment and facility upgrades.

In an e-mailed statement, a spokesman for HCA said the company was disappointed in the court’s ruling and intended to appeal. He also added that the two cases were “rare exceptions” and that the company had enjoyed positive relationships with communities across the country.

The suit is among several problems for HCA. The company disclosed last year, for example, that the United States attorney’s office in Miami had subpoenaed documents as part of an inquiry to determine whether unnecessary cardiology procedures had been performed at HCA hospitals in Florida and elsewhere. At stake in that case is whether HCA inappropriately billed Medicare and private insurers for the procedures. HCA has denied any wrongdoing.

Financially, Thursday’s judgment is a slap on the wrist for HCA, which posted net income of $360 million in just the third quarter of last year. But the ruling may reverberate beyond HCA as communities across the country put their troubled nonprofit hospitals up for sale.

In many cases, the buyers with the deepest pockets have been profit-making hospital chains that want to convert the community hospitals to profit status, typically agreeing to spend money to fix them and to maintain certain levels of charitable care in the community.

In 2011, for instance, Vanguard Health Systems, which went public that year and has as its largest shareholder the private equity firm Blackstone Group, bought eight hospitals in Detroit. As part of that deal, Vanguard Health agreed to spend $850 million over five years to fix and maintain the hospitals.

The trouble in the Kansas City area began a year after HCA acquired a dozen hospitals from Health Midwest in 2003 for $1.125 billion. As part of the deal, HCA agreed to make $300 million in capital improvements in the first two years and an additional $150 million in the following three. The hospital chain also agreed to maintain the levels of care that had been provided to low-income individuals and families in the area for 10 years.

But when the members of the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, a nonprofit created from the proceeds of the sale of the hospital, received their first report from HCA in 2004 they discovered the hospital was already way behind.

Of the $300 million it was supposed to spend in the first two years, its own documents showed it had spent only about $50 million, according to Mark G. Flaherty, one of the founding members of the foundation and its general counsel.

HCA’s reports to the foundation also indicated that the level of charitable care it provided at the system’s large inner-city hospital had fallen while charitable care provided at the more affluent suburban hospital had risen sharply, Mr. Flaherty said.

“That was a big red flag to us,” he said.

After repeatedly asking HCA executives for explanations but receiving none, the foundation sued HCA in 2009. The case went to trial for several weeks in 2011.

HCA argued in the trial that it had met its obligation to spend money on hospital facilities by building two new hospitals at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than repairing older facilities. But Judge John Torrence of Jackson County Circuit Court ruled that the agreement called for improvements to existing hospitals.

He said HCA still owed $162 million of the $300 million it had agreed to spend between 2003 and 2005. He then named a court-appointed forensic accountant to determine whether HCA had met its other capital commitments and whether it provided the charitable care it had said it would.

HCA’s own written statements claimed “differing amounts,” the judge wrote in his ruling. One HCA report said it provided $48 million in charitable care to the area in 2009 while another report on its Web site said it provided more than $87 million. The annual report to the foundation claimed it provided $185 million in uncompensated and charity care that year, the judge wrote.

During the trial, when asked about the widely differing numbers, the president of HCA’s Midwest division and other HCA executives had no explanation.

The money will be paid to the foundation, which will use it to create grants to provide care for uninsured or underinsured families in the area. It is unclear whether the spending on improvements will occur.

Depending on what the court-appointed accountant discovers, HCA may owe even more money, said Paul Seyferth of Seyferth Blumenthal & Harris, which represents the foundation.

“We think they’re going to have a tremendously difficult time convincing anybody that they spent what they claim they spent,” Mr. Seyferth said.

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NTSB: Dreamliner grounding indefinite

Boeing 787 Dreamliners will remain flightless birds for some time, it appears.

Federal investigators said Thursday they are still early in their probe of a Dreamliner battery fire in Boston Jan. 7. That fire, along with a subsequent 787 battery problem in Japan, led to groundings of Boeing's breakthrough plane model in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The revelation at a news conference Thursday afternoon that investigators still have not found a cause may suggest grounded Dreamliners, including six owned by Chicago-based United Airlines, won't be airborne anytime soon.

"We are early in our investigation. We have a lot of activity to undertake," said National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman, pointing to one upcoming forensic test that alone takes a week. "There is a lot more work to be done before we can identify what caused this event."

The NTSB is the lead investigator of the battery fire in Boston aboard a Japan Airlines 787 aircraft.

Despite many aviation experts calling the 787's numerous mechanical glitches "teething pains" that all new airplane models go through, Hersman emphasized the gravity of fires on planes.

"This is an unprecedented event. We are very concerned. ... We do not expect to see fire events on board aircraft," she said. "This is a very serious air safety concern."

Nobody was hurt in the fire on the 787 in Boston or in an emergency landing in Japan after battery-related smoke and fumes on a different 787 were discovered.

The NTSB investigation will try to explain why multiple backup protections in the battery and the electronics systems aimed at preventing a fire failed, Hersman said.

"These events should not happen," she said. "As far as the design of the aircraft, there are multiple systems to protect against a battery event like this. Those systems did not work as intended. We need to understand why."

Besides fire, NTSB investigators found evidence of short circuits in the charred eight-cell, 63-pound battery and "thermal runaway," essentially uncontrolled spreading of heat. But those were symptoms, not necessarily causes, Hersman said. The batteries were made in Japan by Kyoto-based GS Yuasa Corp.

News that the NTSB investigation may be protracted -- longer than the few days some had predicted -- is bad news for Chicago-based Boeing.

Boeing last week halted deliveries of new 787s, until the FAA lifts the flight ban. However, Dreamliner production continues. Boeing is working to double monthly output in 2013 to help shrink a backlog of about 800 orders that swelled during multiple delays to the jet's debut, which came in late 2011.

Deliveries are important because that's when planemakers get large bulk payments on the purchase price of a jet. The 787's list price starts at about $207 million, but airlines typically buy at discount.

In a statement Thursday, Boeing said it is assisting in multiple investigations in the U.S. and Japan.

"The company has formed teams consisting of hundreds of engineering and technical experts who are working around the clock with the sole focus of resolving the issue and returning the 787 fleet to flight status," Boeing said.

Earlier Thursday, Boeing received a vote of confidence from United Airlines, the only U.S. airline  to own the new jet, during an earnings call with United Continental Holdings CEO Jeff Smisek. "History teaches us that all new aircraft types have issues, and the 787 is no different," Smisek said. "We continue to have confidence in the aircraft and in Boeing's ability to fix the issues, just as they have done on every other new aircraft model they've produced."

United had been using a Dreamliners on a route between Chicago and Houston. After the grounding, the route has been flown with a different aircraft.

Dreamliners in the U.S., Japan, Europe and elsewhere have been grounded since Jan. 16, after a 787 operated by All Nippon Airways made an emergency landing in Japan because battery-related smoke and fumes. That followed the fire in Boston that the NTSB is investigating.

The Dreamliner grounding was the first since the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 had its airworthiness certificate suspended following a deadly crash in Chicago in 1979.

Boeing has sold about 850 of its new aircraft, with 50 delivered to date. The plane is half made of a composite material, leading some to call it a "plastic plane." It makes greater use of electronics, powered by batteries, rather than heavy hydraulics. That makes the plane lighter and helps improve fuel efficiency, which is a big deal for airlines.

Boeing has said in statements that it is confident the 787 is safe, and it stands by the plane's integrity. It is cooperating with investigations in the U.S. and abroad.

Because of the groundings, LOT Polish Airlines scrapped its inaugural flight from O'Hare International Airport to Warsaw Jan. 16, just hours after the FAA grounded the plane. LOT officials said they would seek compensation from Boeing for having its two Dreamliners grounded. It will take delivery of the three more due in March only if the problems are resolved, the airline said.

After Thursday, it's clear nobody knows just when that might be.

"There is a tremendous amount of work going on all around the world," Hersman said. "We actually have two shifts of employees both here and in Japan who really are working around the clock to try to solve this."

gkarp@tribune.com

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Bulls rally to beat Pistons 85-82

As the United Center rocked and the Bulls celebrated Marco Belinelli's go-ahead, three-point play with 7.5 seconds left, Joakim Noah remained down in the photographer's pit along the baseline, cameras and cheerleaders all around him.

"I didn't really see the play," Noah said. "I had the cheerleaders' pom-poms in my face."

His teammates saw it, which is why they were celebrating the shot that sealed the Bulls' stirring 85-82 comeback over the Pistons, their 17th straight victory in this series. It marked the second time in just more than a month the Bulls erased a 17-point deficit against the Pistons to prevail.

And yet Noah, who had authored, really, the play of the season — one that defines the heart and hustle that has the Derrick Rose-less Bulls on pace for 50 victories now that the midway point has been reached — remained down.

"We were over there celebrating and he was still knocked over by the cheerleaders," said Nate Robinson, who kick-started the rally with nine straight points early in the fourth. "We were like, 'Oh, yeah, we have to go help him up.' But that play shows how hard Jo works. He never gives up."

Noah smiled, clearly relishing the opportunity to tweak his teammates.

"Damn, it took forever, right?" he said of the delay.

All's well that ends well, right?

But make sure to find a replay of Noah's hustle, which came off Belinelli's bricked jumper. As Noah tumbled into cameras and cheerleaders, Belinelli cut to the basket, grabbed the fruit of Noah's effort and laid it in as Rodney Stuckey fouled him.

"I scored, but the credit goes to Jo," said Belinelli, who scored his second game-winner in four games.

Coach Tom Thibodeau just shook his head.

"Quite frankly, I don't know he got to it," Thibodeau said. "It was an incredible play."

The Bulls then watched tying 3-point attempts from Tayshuan Prince and Stuckey rim out as time expired.

"I stayed with the play," Noah said. "The basketball gods were on our side. It's not really a great play because if Detroit gets it, it's a four-on-five fast break the other side. Fortunately, we got it. "

Robinson's boundless energy can delve into extracurricular emotion, but there's no denying he jump-started the comeback. Robinson keyed a 12-2 run to open the fourth with nine straight points and a dish for a fast-break dunk from Butler, who tied his career-highs with 18 points and nine rebounds.

Butler, starting again for the injured Luol Deng, played all but 91 seconds and overcame a 1-for-8 start. He also hit a huge 3-pointer — the Bulls missed their first 10 and made just 3 of 14 — for an 82-80 lead before Jason Maxiell tied the game with 29.4 seconds left off a defensive breakdown.

"Jimmy just kept working the game," Thibodeau said. "He never got down. He kept battling and battling."

Robinson finished with 11 points.

"That's Nate. He made a lot of big-time plays for us," Thibodeau said. "He's not afraid. I respect that about him.

"The group that started the fourth quarter played with energy, got some stops and got us going.

Noah played 45 minutes with 10 points and 18 rebounds.

"We just kept saying, 'We're going to rally together,'" Butler said. "That's what this team is all about."

kcjohnson@tribune.com

Twitter @kcjhoop

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Siri was supposed to be a key feature on Verizon’s DROID lineup until Apple swooped in

Since the release of the iPhone 4S, Apple (AAPL) has touted its intelligent voice assistant Siri as a key feature of the iOS ecosystem. The startup company behind the app originally launched Siri as standalone program on the App Store and had plans to release Android and BlackBerry versions in the future. Siri was quickly acquired by Apple, however, and plans to expand the app were cancelled.

[More from BGR: Apple reports Q1 results: $ 13.1 billion profit beats estimates, iPhone sales and Q2 guidance miss big]

According to a report from The Huffington Post, Verizon (VZ) had actually signed a deal with the creators of Siri to feature the voice assistant on its DROID line of smartphones several months before the company was approached by Apple. The wireless carrier even created commercials touting the unique feature, although they never saw the light of day.

[More from BGR: As data gets cheaper for Verizon to transmit, customers are paying more]

After two months of availability on the App Store, Apple acquired Siri in 2010 and the rest is history.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Broadway’s “Spider-Man” producers, Taymor, near settlement, again

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark” and Julie Taymor, the musical’s ousted director, are once again ready to settle their long-running court case, a court filing showed on Wednesday.

“We anticipate notifying the Court within the next week that a final settlement agreement has been executed,” attorney Charles T. Spada, who represents Taymor, wrote in a January 22 letter to U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan.

The letter comes less than two weeks after the parties resumed litigation after failing to reach a final settlement of Taymor‘s copyright infringement lawsuit, court records show.

The latest development comes five months after Taymor had reached a settlement in principle with 8 Legged Productions, the producer, in the copyright infringement case

“Spider-Man,” which became a hit, got off to a disastrous start in 2010 with opening night delays, injured actors and the firing of Taymor, who won a Tony Award for her work on “The Lion King.” She sued 8 Legged Productions in November 2011.

Any settlement is conditioned on 8 Legged Productions coming to terms with Marvel Entertainment, a unit of Walt Disney Co, to extend its license to produce the musical in other venues, Spada wrote in a December 19 letter to the judge.

In Wednesday’s letter, Spada said an agreement between the producer and Marvel to amend the license is likely within days.

Taymor and 8 Legged Productions intend to execute their agreement at the same time, the letter said.

“We are moving closer to finalizing the settlement,” Dale Cendali, a lawyer for 8 Legged Productions, said in an email.

A spokesperson for Marvel didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case is Julie Taymor et al v. 8 Legged Productions et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 11-cv-8002.

(Reporting By Karen Freifeld; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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U. of I. to launch tech research center in Chicago

Plans to launch a University of Illinois-affiliated technology research center in Chicago will be unveiled Thursday — the latest regional effort to stem an exodus of high-tech brainpower and entrepreneurship to the coasts.

A private, not-for-profit company, to be called UI Labs, is expected to open offices in or near the Loop to foster collaboration between the region's scientists and engineers from academia, industry and government.

The project, expected to be financed by private donations, corporate partnerships and federal grants, will be outlined for U. of I. trustees Thursday. The goal is to raise $20 million for first-year operations.

The aim is build a research and engineering powerhouse that will attract a range of industries to Chicago, along the lines of what the former Bell Labs did for the East Coast. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will offer up its vast tech resources, including the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and its Blue Waters supercomputer. It is anticipated other local universities and national research centers will participate.

"I was in India last week, talking with firms that were thinking of coming to Illinois to engage with university scientists," said U. of I. President Robert Easter. "And they say, 'We have a presence in Chicago or we're thinking of having a presence in Chicago, and it would be much more convenient if we could work with you there.'"

Or as project adviser James Duderstadt, president emeritus of the University of Michigan, put it, the U. of I. is among the top five universities in the nation in such high-tech fields as computer science and engineering, "but it's down there in the cornfields."

"All the pieces are there, but some of the things Chicago is lacking are things Urbana-Champaign has," he said.

The idea is to marry the two, helping Chicago attain the sort of direct scientific underpinnings that long have fostered tech hotbeds in Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area.

"This is an opportunity to essentially build some of the glue and connective tissue … and that's needed to keep students from leaving and, frankly, to grow some companies in Chicago," said Lesa Mitchell, vice president of innovation and networks for the Kansas City, Mo.-based Kauffman Foundation, which focuses on entrepreneurship.

Chicago faces intense competition nationwide, as many cities aim for technological prowess and growth. The start of the year brought the launch of a Cornell NYC Tech campus, for instance, a graduate program in applied sciences that will turn out high-level scientists in New York City.

In Illinois, the challenge is retaining talent. One telling statistic: 32 percent of computer science graduates from the U. of I. in Urbana-Champaign get jobs in California, said Larry Schook, the university's vice president for research.

Among U. of I. grads who made their names out West are Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape; software entrepreneur Thomas Siebel, a major U. of I. donor; and Ray Ozzie, who recently retired as chief software architect for Microsoft Inc.

The goal of this project, supported by Gov. Pat Quinn and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is to retain the next generation of Illinois-trained innovators.

The University of Illinois will have an affiliation agreement with the lab that would outline the flow of personnel, resources and services between them. The goal is to attract 250 faculty fellows during the first three years. Additionally, more than 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students are expected to participate in UI Labs training and entrepreneurial programs during the first five years.

"Some students and researchers prefer the city to a smaller community … so this could increase the quality of the faculty," said Bruce Rauner, a prominent Chicago venture capitalist who has worked on the development of this plan. "This can drive better research."

The intent is to develop a "junior year abroad program" as well, with the aim of attracting top students from overseas.

The UI Labs project will start within the next month or so, Schook said, with the naming of board members and a director search.

"We'd love to have … the smartest tech students in the world come to participate and stay here to create companies," Schook said.

Rauner, who made his fortune as co-founder of private equity firm GTCR and heads venture firm R8 Capital Partners, said he intends to participate in fundraising and to donate millions personally. Ultimately, to bring the center to world-class status, it may be necessary to raise a $300 million endowment, he said.

The University of Illinois has programs aimed at linking businesses to applicable academic research, including the University of Illinois at Chicago's Innovation Center and research parks at Chicago and Urbana. While those attempt to match faculty research with companies that could use it, the UI Labs model would aim for even deeper collaborative brainstorming, Easter said.

"A company struggling with a problem related to its technology could come in and sit with faculty who do theoretical work to see if those principles could lead to a solution," he said. "Out of that will come innovation, and that will drive economic growth."

kbergen@tribune.com

Twitter @kathy_bergen

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Massive blaze engulfs vacant Bridgeport warehouse

One-third of the Chicago Fire Department's on-duty personnel responded to a 5-11 alarm fire that engulfed a warehouse building, causing parts of it to collapse and endangering nearby buildings in the Bridgeport neighborhood Tuesday night.

A four-story building caught fire after 9 p.m., endangering another building, according to the Chicago Fire Department. Extra alarms, bringing more fire equipment, firefighters and paramedics were called soon after firefighters arrived. The fire in the former Harris Marcus Group building, 3757 S. Ashland Ave., was declared under control, though still burning, as of about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Firefighters had to contend with frozen hydrants and ice caused by overspray, Fire Department Commissioner Jose Santiago said. One firefighter suffered a back injury and was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in serious condition, said Chicago Firefighter Meg Ahlheim, a department spokeswoman.

The fire climbed into the sky and sent ashes down on cars below. The warmth from the blaze could be felt blocks away. A Chicago Fire Department helicopter was called into service to provide an "aerial visual," but after firefighters arrived, they were able to keep the blaze from spreading to nearby businesses, Santiago said.

Still, anyone who looked out an upper-floor window from buildings across the city could see the fire, with many sending photographs out over social media. Ashes fell far from the fire scene.

"You could see the embers from the highway," said Darcy Benedict, a 28-year-old UIC medical school student. "I could see blue flames rising up."

Benedict and her boyfriend saw the fire from Interstate 55 and got off to get a better look. 

A crowd of at least 40 adults and children stood behind police tape, bundled up in the freezing weather, taking videos with cellphones.

Several others at the scene expressed doubt that the fire could be contained, as dozens of hoses could be seen in the distance spraying high and low onto the enormous blaze.

The commander at Tuesday's fire used two 'special alarms' to call for additional equipment beyond what a 5-11 alarm calls for, calling in special equipment needed to fight the massive blaze, Santiago said.

“I’m looking at the south side of the main fire building and there’s a big portion of exterior wall and roof collapse,” said Chicago Firefighter Meg Ahlheim, a Chicago Fire Department spokeswoman.

There was “extreme fire” throughout the buildings. Nobody has been reported injured.

The fire in the second building was mostly extinguished as of about 10:25 p.m. but the first building is "still involved," Ahlheim said.

Special alarms are called beyond the fifth, though they are "extremely rare," according to the fire department.

Commissioner Santiago said it was the first time a 5-11 with two special alarms was called since 2006 - apparently fire a fire that gutted the historic Wirt Dexter Building in the South Loop. That fire broke out before 3 p.m. on a weekday, snarled downtown traffic and forced the CTA to stop service on Loop L tracks.

Santiago said a Fire Department chief was driving past the warehouse when he saw smoke, turned around and called the fire in, bringing the first response, which was quickly elevated to an extra-alarm.

The alarms normally escalate one at a time beyond a normal fire response up to a fifth alarm, though the scene commander skipped a fourth alarm once the fire jumped to another building.

There was also a 5-11 fire in 2012 - in Avondale on the Northwest Side. That burned for hours but didn't required the special alarms called for Tuesday night's fire. About 200 firefighters and paramedics responded to that fire.

Santiago described the warehouse as "old," with lots of timber throughout the building. Firefighters are expected to be at the blaze for several hours, he said. As the water poured on the fire starts to freeze, more portions of the timber-and-brick construction building are likely to collapse under the weight of the ice, he said.

Check back for more information.

lford@tribune.com
Twitter: @ltaford

pnickeas@tribune.com
Twitter: @peternickeas

ehirst@tribune.com
Twitter: @ellenjeanhirst

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FTC study taking aim at online marketing of booze and kids

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans this summer to recommend ways that the alcoholic beverage industry can better protect underage viewers from seeing its advertisements online.

Distillers, brewers and wineries pour millions of dollars into brand promotion on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, and industry critics contend they are not doing enough to prevent young consumers from receiving these messages.

“We’re doing a deep dive on how they’re using the Internet and social media,” said Janet Evans, a lawyer with the FTC, which is conducting a year-long study due to be released by early summer. “We’re focusing on underage exposure.”

She would not elaborate on any potential recommendations that might come out of the study, which began in April 2012.

The FTC is reviewing data from 14 big producers, Evans said, including Beam Inc, the maker of Jim Beam, Diageo Plc, home to Johnnie Walker, and Constellation Brands Inc, which makes Robert Mondavi and Ravenswood wines.

The FTC report “is something we take seriously and place at high priority,” said Karena Breslin, director for digital marketing at Constellation.

The FTC has made two requests for information since the study began, she said.

The regulatory agency has not said it intends to impose restrictions on liquor company social media advertising but it can make recommendations to the industry.

The FTC is empowered to file suit to ensure consumers are protected from deceptive marketing practices, Evans said, but she stressed that studies of this nature are meant to promote better self-regulation, not provide a basis for a case.

Executives say alcohol makers and distributors voluntarily adhere to the same industry-set standard for marketing to underage viewers on social media sites that the industry set for its ads on TV and other medium. That requires that at least 71.6 percent of an audience consists of adults 21 and older.

“No one in their right mind would want to advertise to people who can’t legally buy their product,” said Frank Coleman, senior vice president for Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the trade group that sets the industry’s advertising codes.

In June 2011, DISCUS revised its code upwards to 71.6 percent from 70 percent, after the FTC recommended it review the standard to better reflect U.S. Census population data.

Industry critics, including David Jernigen, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns Hopkins University, and Sarah Mart, research director of the advocacy group Alcohol Justice, contend the industry didn’t go far enough and should raise the standard further.

Jernigen says it needs to be at least 85 percent to effectively protect youth, so there would be no more than 15 percent exposure to the underage drinking population.

“The industry says its self-regulating but it’s ineffective and social media opens up a whole new set of problems because their ads are everywhere,” said Sarah Mart, research director for the San Rafael, Calif.-based group Alcohol Justice.

The industry group’s Coleman said the group now requires members to install age-checking tools via instant-messaging as a gateway to Twitter feeds and other branded Web platforms that ask the user for a birth date before admitting them.

In the first nine months of 2012, beer, wine and spirits manufacturers’ spent an estimated $ 35 million for paid Web display advertising, but industry executives estimate many millions more were spent on Web site creation, video production for platforms like Google’s YouTube and social media marketing efforts.

“We’ve significantly adjusted more money to digital for online video, Web sites, Facebook and Twitter content,” said Kevin George, global chief marketing officer for Jim Beam, which he says spends 30 percent of its media spend for online outlets, up from 10 percent in 2008.

Many companies are expanding their digital staff. Wine maker Constellation hired Breslin three years ago to initiate digital marketing and now has a team of five reporting to her.

Many alcoholic beverage companies flocked to Facebook because it requires users to post their birth dates when signing up. Last year Twitter partnered with Buddy Media to offer a more effective screening tool that sends a direct message to fans who click on a brand. The message sends the fan a link to a site that asks for date of birth, which has allowed Twitter to grab some more of the sector marketing. Salesforce.com bought Buddy Media last June, which is now folding the platform into its marketing cloud portfolio.

Health advocates and industry critics are crying foul. “Facebook and other interactive platforms are poorly monitored and not well age protected,” said Jernigen of Johns Hopkins University. “Anyone can say they’re 21 and click yes.”

(Reporting By Susan Zeidler; Editing by Ron Grover and Alden Bentley)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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