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Hundreds pay tribute to legendary Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar

ENCINITAS, California (Reuters) – Ravi Shankar‘s daughters, Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar, along with the wife of late Beatle George Harrison said their final goodbyes to the Indian sitar virtuoso on Thursday at a public memorial service in Encinitas, California.

The legendary musician and composer, who helped introduce the sitar to the Western world through his collaboration with The Beatles, died on December 11 in Southern California. He was 92.

About 700 people joined Shankar’s wife, Sukanya, and family at the service held at a spiritual center in the coastal town about 25 miles north of San Diego.

Olivia Harrison, the widow of Beatles guitarist George Harrison, told Reuters the three-time Grammy winner who formed a musical and spiritual bond with The Beatle “expressed music at its deepest level.”

“As a person he was just sweet and seemed to know everything,” she added. “He was a true citizen of the world.”

Shankar is credited with popularizing Indian music through his work with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and The Beatles beginning in the mid-1960s, inspiring George Harrison to learn the sitar and the British band to record songs like “Norwegian Wood” (1965) and “Within You, Without You” (1967).

“He completely transformed (George’s) musical sensibilities,” a tearful Harrison told the crowd. “They exchanged ideas and melodies until their hearts and minds were intertwined like a double helix.”

‘LITTLE CRUMB’

His friendship with Harrison led him to appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock pop festivals in the late 1960s and the 1972 Concert for Bangladesh. He became one of the first Indian musicians to become a household name in the West.

His influence in classical music, including on composer Philip Glass, was just as large. His work with Menuhin on their “West Meets East” albums in the 1960s and 1970s earned them a Grammy, and he wrote concertos for sitar and orchestra for both the London Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.

“I always felt like a little crumb in his presence,” Zubin Mehta, a former music director of the New York Philharmonic and collaborator with Shankar, said at the service.

Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock also attended the service along with “Anna Karenina” director Joe Wright, the husband of Shankar’s daughter Anoushka.

Shankar, who had lived in Encinitas for the past 20 years, had suffered from upper respiratory and heart issues over the past year and underwent heart-valve replacement surgery last week at a hospital in San Diego.

The surgery was successful but he was unable to recover.

Shankar’s final concert was on November 4 in Long Beach, California, with his Grammy-winning sitarist daughter Anoushka, who spoke giving thanks to those who came. Jones, the third Grammy-winner in the family, did not speak at the service.

(Writing by Eric Kelsey; editing by Philip Barbara)

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The Neediest Cases: The Daughter of a Sick Woman Falls Prey to a Craigslist Scam

Label: Health

Sitting side by side on their living room sofa, Patricia Morales and her daughter, Katherine, could be any mother-daughter duo. Both have dark hair, dark eyes and welcoming, infectious smiles.

Librado Romero/The New York Times

Patricia Morales, 62, at home in the Bronx. Her treatment for ailments like rheumatoid arthritis and hepatitis C led to depression.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$3,375,394

Recorded Wednesday:

182,251

*Total:

$3,557,645

Last year to date:

$3,320,812

*Includes $709,856 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

The Youngest Donors

If your child or family is using creative techniques to raise money for this year’s campaign, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line on Facebook or talk to us on Twitter.

But the ties that bind them go beyond their genes, beyond the bodies they were born with.

“It’s called a neck ring. It’s a silver curved barbell, one inch,” Katherine, 20, said as she swept aside her shoulder-length black hair to show the piercing in the back of her neck, a show of solidarity with her mother. She had it done when she was 16. “I wanted to know what it felt like for my mom.”

Her mother then turned around and outlined with her finger two lengthy scars that run down her back.

“I’ve had a lot of physical problems,” Ms. Morales, 62, said. Shaking her head at her daughter’s piercing, she added, “I’ve had rods put in my upper and lower spine, but I could never do that.”

The rods were surgically planted to treat herniated discs, the result of having a cruel combination of osteoporosis, hepatitis C, fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis. Ms. Morales contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion she received in 1972 after the birth of her only son, she said.

“I didn’t even know about it until 10 years ago,” she said. “My liver blood count was a little high.”

Since the diagnosis, Ms. Morales, a former schoolteacher, has ridden the arduous highs and lows common to patients with hepatitis C. Her treatments for the disease, which debilitates the liver over time, have included pills and injections that can cause depression. Ms. Morales, a single parent, found an unforgiving salve in alcohol.

“I was depressed; I was totally drunk,” she said. “I didn’t want to live anymore.”

Then, about a year ago, she reached a turning point when visiting her hepatitis C specialist.

“I was 210 pounds,” she said. “The doctor said: ‘You have to stop drinking. You have to lose weight.’ ”

To help combat the depression, her doctor referred her to Jewish Association Serving the Aging, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. She began weekly counseling sessions with a social worker and started taking an antidepressant medication. The federation drew about $600 from the fund in May so that Ms. Morales could buy a mattress.

“I had a horrible bed,” she said. “I felt like I was sleeping on rocks, and with rods in my back, I was waking up every hour.”

After several months of therapy and starting a diet, Ms. Morales was on her way to losing 60 pounds. Today, she weighs 148.

Light was starting to show itself again when the family took an unexpected financial hit this summer. While taking time off from attending Hostos Community College, Katherine Morales looked for work on Craigslist.

“I saw my mom, and I realized I needed to get a job,” Katherine said shyly. “This guy asked me to be his personal assistant, and he asked me to wire money.”

Offering $400 a week, the man requested help transferring almost $2,000 from what he said was his wife’s account. He transferred the money to Katherine’s account, asking her to wire it to a bank account in Malaysia.

Shortly after she wired the money, the bank froze the account, which Katherine and her mother shared. It was then that Katherine realized she had been the victim of a scam. The money transferred into her account turned out to have been stolen, and she was responsible for repaying it.

Katherine went to detectives immediately with more than 20 pages of evidentiary e-mails, but found that she was unable to file a complaint.

“They told me it wasn’t enough,” she said. “These things happen all the time.”

They lost almost $2,000.

Ms. Morales lives on a fixed income. She receives just over $700 a month from Social Security and $200 month in food stamps. The rent for the apartment she shares with her daughter in the Throgs Neck neighborhood of the Bronx is $230, and Ms. Morales has a monthly combined phone and cable bill of $140. Ms. Morales has a son, but he is unable to help the family.

Falling behind on her bills, Ms. Morales turned once again to JASA for help paying a combined phone and cable bill of nearly $200, a grant the agency drew from the Neediest Cases Fund.

“It was terrible, because my intention was to help my mom,” said Katherine, who has since found a part-time job at a vitamin shop.

Ms. Morales has been feeling much better, but she is nervous about an appointment with her hepatitis C specialist in January.

“I’m taking things one day at a time, but I’m looking forward to someone taking care of me,” she said. “I want to live a little bit longer, but not that long.”

“Why are you putting a time limit on it?” Katherine said, jokingly. “Seventy’s the new 20!” she added, nudging her mother in the side. “Remember, the doctor said you wouldn’t live past your late 50s, but you did.”

Emanuel explores Midway privatization

Label: Business

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration will explore the possibility of privatizing Midway Airport but will take a shorter-term, more tightly controlled approach than was employed by former Mayor Richard Daley's team on the city's first go-round.

Chicago's last try, a 99-year lease that would have brought in $2.5 billion, died in 2009 when the financial markets froze up.

The city's latest intentions are expected to be formally announced Friday, ahead of a Dec. 31 deadline for deciding whether to retain a slot for Midway in the Federal Aviation Administration's airport privatization pilot program. The city put off this decision several times previously.

The move, preliminary as it is, is sure to be politically charged, given the anger over the way Daley's 75-year parking meter privatization deal has played out, with proceeds used to plug operating deficits and meter rates rising sharply.

With that historical backdrop, Emanuel is suggesting a more conservative approach. It includes a shorter-term lease of less than 40 years; a "travelers' bill of rights" aimed at ensuring any changes will benefit passengers; and a continuing stream of revenue for the city, giving it a shot to capture some growth.

And unlike the parking meter and Chicago Skyway lease deals, a new Midway transaction would not allow proceeds to be used to plug operating deficits or to pay for operations in any way, Emanuel said in an interview Thursday.

"I will not let the city use it as a crutch to not make the tough decisions on the budget," he said.

But while a shorter lease and greater city control may play well locally, those sorts of terms may not appeal to investors, experts said in interviews this month.

"The shorter the lease term, the lower the bid prices are going to be — that's just the math," said Steve Steckler, chairman of the Infrastructure Management Group, a Bethesda, Md.-based company that advises infrastructure owners and operators. "I'd be shocked if investors offered more than $2 billion for a 40-year lease," Steckler said.

Emanuel said: "Nobody knows until you talk to people. … I'm the mayor and I'm not agreeing to … 99 years. I'm saying it's either 40 years or less." His office has not offered an estimate of what such a deal could bring in, saying it would be premature.

"No final decisions have been made, but we can't make a decision until we evaluate fully if this could be a win for Chicagoans," Emanuel said.

A private operator would take over management of such revenue-producing activities as food, beverage and car rental concessions and parking lots. The FAA would continue to provide air traffic control, while the Transportation Security Administration would continue to provide security operations. The city would retain ownership.

Few details were provided about how privatization would affect travelers and Midway employees. Emanuel said specifics will emerge over time.

By year's end, the city will send the FAA a preliminary application, a timetable and a draft "request for qualification," a document the city will put out early next year to identify qualified bidders for the project. A review of the potential bidders will be conducted in the spring.

Last year, Emanuel expressed hesitation in pursuing a private lease for Midway unless a careful vetting process was in place, saying taxpayers were correct to be wary, given the city's history.

The evaluation process will be deliberate and open to public view, he said Thursday.

He pledged to create a committee of business, labor and civic leaders that will provide updates to the public on a regular basis and that will select an independent adviser to vet the transaction. The committee will deliver a report to the City Council, and there will be a 30-day review period before any vote.

"I set up a different process and a different set of principles that stand in stark contrast to what was discussed or done in the past," Emanuel said.

The FAA pilot program frees cities from regulations that require airport revenue to be used for airport purposes. It allows money to be withdrawn for other uses.

3 charged with murder in Indianapolis house explosion

Label: World

INDIANAPOLIS -- Prosecutors have charged a homeowner, her boyfriend and his brother with murder after causing a massive house explosion last month that killed an Indianapolis couple and decimated their neighborhood.

Marion County prosecutor Terry Curry says Monserrate Shirley and the others were arrested Friday morning and charged with felony murder.

Shirley's attorney has said she and her boyfriend were away at a southern Indiana casino when the explosion happened Nov. 10 in the Richmond Hill subdivision on the city's far south side.

Authorities have said they believed the explosion was intentional and caused by natural gas.

The explosion killed Jennifer and John Longworth, who lived next door to Shirley's home. Five houses were destroyed and about 90 houses in the subdivision were damaged, costing an estimated $4.4 million.

"We have to acknowledge that we are helpless to alleviate the pain and anguish of such innocent victims and their families," Curry said. "However, what we as a public safety community can do and must do is devote our best efforts to see that justice is served on behalf of those victims. As with any matter filed by our office, we are absolutely committed to see that justice is done on behalf of all who have been victimized by the Richmond Hill explosion."

Authorities determined the home was filled with natural gas for six to eight hours prior to the explosion. Investigators believe a microwave, which can be set on a timer, was the source of ignition, stating it “exploded from the inside out.”

Curry also said that Shirley and Leonard attempted to cause damage to their home the weekend prior to the explosion but their attempt failed. Curry stated their actions the weekend before mirrored the actions taken the weekend of Nov. 10, including going to a casino for the night, boarding their pet cat and leaving their daughter at a babysitter’s house.

Associated Press and Fox 59

Investors shed shares of Blackberry maker

Label: Technology

NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Blackberry maker Research in Motion slumped more than 16 percent Friday with future revenue coming into question and a declining number of subscribers.

RIM’s stock jumped initially Thursday when the Canadian company released better-than-expected third-quarter results and a stronger cash position.

Shares reversed course during a conference call later, when executives said that the company won’t generate as much revenue from telecommunications carriers once it releases the new BlackBerry 10.

RIM’s stock had been on a three-month rally in which the stock more than doubled from levels not previously seen since 2003.

“Despite a solid quarter, the stock is trading down due to the introduction of a lower enterprise service tier and fears that RIM will not receive monthly services revenues for consumer BB10 subscribers,” said Jefferies analyst Peter Misek. He thinks RIM has offered carriers a lower-priced option in exchange for a bigger purchase commitment for the new device. He kept his “Hold” rating.

Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu kept maintained a “Neutral” rating on the stock, but lowered his earnings estimates, saying he continued to be concerned about RIM’s ability to compete with Apple and Google.

Shares of Research in Motion Ltd. fell $ 2.29 to $ 11.83 in morning trading.

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Moroccan road film subverts Hollywood stereotypes

Label: Lifestyle

DUBAI (Reuters) – When director John Slattery first visited Morocco, the familiarity was jarring – and as removed from the images of an exotic Orient conjured up by Hollywood as possible.

That dichotomy between the representation and the reality of Morocco drives Slattery‘s charming paean to a country he clearly loves and makes “Casablanca, Mon Amour” a thoughtful rejoinder to U.S. popular culture.

Two young Moroccans spend three weeks travelling their native country, filming what they see on a digital camera while passing by studios and locations that have formed the backdrop for many Hollywood blockbusters, an industry Morocco has cultivated.

The film is spliced with shots of endearingly bemused or nervous ordinary people giving their thoughts to the camera about Hollywood and its global stars, as well as clips from classics such as “Casablanca” featuring off-the-cuff anti-Arab slurs like “you can’t trust them” and “they all look alike”.

“We had the idea of going on this trip and to be this stupid American film crew going to make this traditional movie using Morocco, but we wanted to subvert that,” Slattery said after a screening at the Dubai international film festival this week.

“There was not really a script but the trip was their trip and so wherever they went we followed them. So that way they were really directing the film.”

Shot by Hassan, who narrates the road trip in French, the images shift from scenes of daily life caught on camera, to his comically testy relationship with his travelling companion Abdel, to a troupe they stumble upon in Meknes that plays traditional Moroccan “malhoun” music.

Hassan, a real-life film school student at the time, is using the road trip for a class project, while Abdel wants to visit a dying uncle on the other side of the country.

Slattery includes footage from Moroccan television from the Marrakech film festival in which comic actor Bashar Skeirej declares that “a country without its own art will never have a history”.

It’s a subtle suggestion that the government should do more to promote domestic film rather than just rent out landscapes for Hollywood misrepresentation.

Morocco has formed the backdrop for a fictionalized Orient in “Ishtar”, doubled as Abu Dhabi in the “Sex in the City 2″ and been various distant planets in Star Wars films.

“National cinemas in many countries are being destroyed or have been destroyed because of this massive power of marketing that is Hollywood,” said Slattery, a California-based American of Irish origin. “They destroy little films, they destroy the possibility for little stories.”

The film, a labor of love that took Slattery seven years to complete, borrows from the book “Reel Bad Arabs”, author Jack Shaheen’s study of Hollywood’s anti-Arab stereotypes. Its title references Alain Resnais’s 1959 French New Wave classic “Hiroshima, Mon Amour”.

“(When) I would say ‘Morocco’, people would say ‘were you scared’, or a polite ‘what was that like?’,” Slattery said, recounting reactions in the United States when he would talk about his first experiences as a peace corps volunteer.

“There was that whole category of fear in the responses, or ‘Morocco, you must have seen Lawrence of Arabia’, or ‘Blackhawk Down’! – all these film titles. That stuck with me, this fear and movies were the two references for Morocco.”

Yet Slattery‘s first day in the North African country could not have been more mundane, he said.

A colleague whisked him off to a rural home near Rabat where he met farmers who reminded him of Ireland.

“This guy opens (his door) in a tweed jacket that was all torn up. This is how these old farmers dress in Ireland, and his hands were all calloused and dirty. It just felt very familiar to me,” Slattery said.

“His grandmother had a television hooked up to a car battery for electricity. I spent the weekend there, hanging out with these people, cutting hay and stuff, and I just thought ‘this is Ireland’.”

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Op-Ed Contributor: Labs, Washed Away

Label: Health

BEDPAN ALLEY is the affectionate name given to a stretch of First Avenue in Manhattan that is packed with more hospitals than many cities possess. This stretch also happened to be right in the flood zone during Hurricane Sandy. Water damage and power failures closed down all three of the New York University teaching hospitals — Bellevue Hospital, Tisch Hospital and the Manhattan V.A. Two months later, they are still not admitting patients, though two are on schedule to begin doing so shortly.

The harrowing evacuation of hundreds of patients made headlines nationwide. The disruption of regular medical care for tens of thousands of outpatients was a clinical nightmare that is finally easing. And the education of hundreds of medical students and residents is being patched back together.

All academic medical centers, however, rest on a tripod — patient care, education and research. The effect of the hurricane on the third leg of that tripod — research — has gotten the least attention, partly because rescuing cell cultures just isn’t as dramatic as carrying an I.C.U. patient on a ventilator down flights of stairs in the dark.

But, of course, there is an incontrovertible link between those cell cultures and that patient. For every medication that a patient takes, someone researched the basic chemistry of the drug, someone designed the clinical trial to test its efficacy, and of course a volunteer stepped forward to be the first to take the pill. Scientific research has engineered the impressive advancements of medical treatment, and every patient is a beneficiary.

When the hospitals were hit by Hurricane Sandy, hundreds of experiments were obliterated by the loss of power. Precious biological samples carefully frozen over years were destroyed. Temperature-sensitive reagents and equipment were ruined. Medications and records for patients in clinical trials were rendered inaccessible. And sadly, many laboratory mice and rats perished (though 600 cages of animals were rescued during the night by staff members who used crowbars on inaccessible doors and carried the cages out through holes cut in the ceiling).

On a slushy, rainy day earlier this month, I sat in on a meeting of N.Y.U.’s research community. Hundreds of scientists packed the chilly lecture hall to discuss what the future might hold. It was clear that the damage to laboratories and samples would not be amenable to easy repair. Some 400 researchers were being relocated to a patchwork of temporary sites so that they could restart their work.

But scientists can’t just walk in to a new space with a lab coat and a notebook; they need centrifuges, deep-freezes, lab animals, electron microscopes, incubators, autoclaves, gamma counters, PET scanners. They come with graduate students, lab techs, post-docs and collaborating investigators. For clinical researchers, there are also the patients enrolled in their clinical trials, with their medications and voluminous records.

Even beyond their eagerness to get back to work, researchers felt a sense of loss, not just in time, money, momentum, samples and grants, but of a part of their lives. Some senior scientists lost decades of archived samples. Others lost irreplaceable mice with genetic mutations for studying how coronary plaques resolve, the role of inflammation in lymphoma and the development of neural networks. At the other end of the spectrum were post-docs whose nascent careers were suddenly up in the air. Some were in tears.

Walking down First Avenue after the meeting, I passed a young researcher pushing a cart laden with cages, transporting lab rats to their new home. There was a blanket over the cages to protect them from the rain, but it kept slipping. She slogged up the wet avenue, one hand pushing the cart, the other struggling to keep the cover over her charges.

The logistical efforts to relocate and reignite such a vast research enterprise are staggeringly complicated. But the administration has cataloged each person’s research needs to match them with available space elsewhere, and hundreds of researchers have successfully rekindled their investigations despite the prodigious challenges.

Bellevue and Tisch are returning to their clinical operations and will be able to admit patients shortly. But even after the hospital wards and clinics are bustling at full capacity, the ribbon won’t feel ready to snip until the researchers are restored to their homes as well. For many patients, the thrum of research within a medical center is invisible. But it is an integral — and very human — part of a hospital. When a hurricane disrupts research, it is a loss that resonates well beyond the laboratories.

Danielle Ofri, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine, is the editor of the Bellevue Literary Review and the author, most recently, of “Medicine in Translation: Journeys With My Patients.”