| 'Pod People
New eras can reveal themselves in the oddest ways. A revelation came to me at a recent Los Angeles screening of an animated feature for kids. As soon as the lights went down and the first sequence filled the screen -- a huge curved expanse in one of the city's last remaining single-screen movie palaces -- a young mother sitting with two kids near me pulled out a pair of earbuds, stuck them in her ears and started watching her own show on her iPhone. I couldn't tell what it was because her screen was so small, but it didn't matter. Watching her fixated by whatever wee spectacle it was, I thought I could see the death knell -- can you see a knell? In this case yes -- of theatrical exhibition as we know it. The YouTube generation has already begun to lose the theatergoing habit, this mother's semipresence notwithstanding, and has embraced the notion of video on iPods and cellphones, as well as on computers.
Business Briefs
GREENVILLE — The head of Michelin North America for the past decade will retire this year to work as a consultant for the company and others in the state, Michelin said Tuesday. Jim Micali, 60, became chairman and president of Michelin North America in 1996. His retirement will be effective Aug. 15, the company said. Micali will be succeeded by Dick Wilkerson, the tire maker's executive vice president for personnel since 2006. Michelin North America has more than 22,500 employees and operates 19 major manufacturing plants. AT&T to offer free Wi-Fi to its broadband users SAN ANTONIO — AT&T said Wednesday it will make its 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots free to nearly all its broadband Internet customers starting next week. Only subscribers to AT&T's premium broadband services previously had free access to its hotspots, leaving out the majority of high-speed users.
More snow, skiers and snowmobilers makes for more deaths by avalanche
Forest Service National Avalanche Center in Ogden, Utah, eight deaths this winter were in Washington, five in Colorado, four each in Wyoming and California, three each in Montana and Utah, and one each in North Dakota, New Hampshire, and Wyoming.
Nine were snowmobilers, eight skiers, six climbers or hikers, five snowboarders, one snowshoer, and one was shoveling off a roof.
Doug Abromeit, director of the National Avalanche Center, has no solid figures on how many people ski and snowmobile in avalanche country, but figures the number is rising, because manufacturers are selling more gear, trailhead parking lots are full, and there are new magazines dedicated to backcountry skiing.
So what's driving the boom?
"These days you are lucky to get one untracked line at a major ski area," Abromeit said.
How towns are redesigned as gyms
Stairs for cardio training. Wider footpaths instead of treadmills. To fight obesity, the towns we live in are being redesigned so we exercise without noticing. Our forebears didn't need advice to exercise for 20 minutes a day, five times a week. Physical activity was part of everyday life - walking to work, wringing mangles and promenading in the park on Sundays. .
Investors Look Ahead To Consumer Price Index, FOMC Minutes Next Week ...
Economists had expected housing starts to fall to a 1.150 million unit rate. Highlighting Wednesday's reports is the release of the FOMC minutes from January's meeting, where a decision was made to lower the federal funds rate 50 basis points to 3 percent. The vote was not unanimous, with Dallas Fed Bank President Richard Fischer dissenting in favor of no change.
Thursday data on weekly jobless claims will be made public along with the relatively unimportant leading indicators for January. There are no economic reports scheduled for Friday, leaving Thursday's Philadelphia Fed survey for February to round out the week.
Last month it was revealed that activity in the Philadelphia-area manufacturing sector contracted sharply in the month of January. The Philly Fed Index came in well below expectations, with the report showing that the index of current activity fell to a negative 20.9 in January from a negative 1.6 in December, with a negative reading indicating a contraction in the sector.
Co-defendant's sentence gives hope to Corrales' kin
But he has warned Shore not to talk with them unless he is at his side, and he said his client would invoke the Fifth Amendment to protect against facing new charges. "They could offer him clemency, but I don't know how much clemency they can give him," Waddington said. "If they came to him and said, 'We will wipe out his federal conviction,' he's still going to say what he remembers. I don't honestly see any kind of clemency. I don't see anything like that coming down." Corrales' civilian lawyer, Frank Spinner, said the division's commander could grant clemency to Shore if he agrees to be a prosecution witness. Spinner, a St. Mary's University School of Law graduate, didn't know whether Waddington and his client would accept a plea deal but said he would focus on the premeditated murder charge, explaining, "If I take care of that, I think the others will take care of themselves." Shore told an investigative hearing last fall that Corrales shot the prisoner after ordering his troops to kill all the military-age males they encountered during a raid in Shaheed, near Kirkuk.
Father testifies about slain 10-year-old
The father of a slain 10-year-old testified Tuesday that he had warned his daughter to be careful of strangers before her mutilated body was found in their neighbor's apartment.</p><p>"I told her you can't be trusting people and do not go into anyone's apartment," Curtis Bolin testified Tuesday in the murder trial of Kevin Underwood, 28, who is accused of killing Jamie Rose Bolin in a cannibalistic plot.</p><p>Bolin, an auto mechanic, testified that he gave her this warning after she told him she had met Underwood and knew that he had a pet rat.</p><p>Assistant District Attorney Susan Caswell asked Bolin if he thought his daughter understood the warning.</p><p>"I thought she did," he said, his voice trembling.</p><p>Prosecutors allege Underwood, a quiet grocery store stocker with no prior criminal record, used the pet rat to lure Jamie into his apartment after she arrived home from school on April 12, 2006.</p><p>Once inside, prosecutors say Underwood sneaked up behind the girl while she was watching television, beat her over the head with a wooden cutting board and then suffocated her while she fought for her life.</p><p>Bolin testified that he grew increasingly nervous on April 12, 2006, when his daughter failed to return home after school, and called police.
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