Soprano Bartoli: My voice has more colors, shadow

LONDON (Reuters) – Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has released a year-end blockbuster that is part mystery story, part research project and shows off a voice which only seems to improve with age.

Bartoli’s latest deluxe-packaged album “Mission” (Decca) is devoted to the music of the late 17th-century Italian composer, diplomat and perhaps spy, Agostino Steffani.

Steffani may have been a bit overlooked as a result of his appearance at the end of the Renaissance and at the beginning of the Baroque periods – until Bartoli’s interest alighted on him.

“The variety is amazing in the music of Steffani, the slow arias have very beautiful melodic lines, they are unbelievable, it’s quite hypnotic music,” Bartoli said in a telephone interview from Paris.

Since she burst upon the world in the 1990s, specializing mostly in Mozart and Rossini, Bartoli has gone from strength to strength, not only in digging up unusual repertoires, including another deluxe compilation in 2009 devoted to music sung by castrati, but also vocally.

Here’s what else Bartoli had to say about Steffani and his possible career as a spy, why she goes for the anti-diva look on her recent album covers, and what she calls a Fellini-esque experience at La Scala with conductor Daniel Barenboim:

Q: Is it true, then, that the voice improves with time?

A: “I think this is a very good time because of the maturity of the technique. When you are young, of course, you have to have a beautiful voice. This is a gift you receive, but you don’t have enough technique or experience. So this is a very good time because I can really paint with my voice with so many colors, like a painter. I love painting with the voice and I’m of an age when I do this definitely better than 20 years ago.”

Q: So this bit about Steffani being a spy, surely that was dreamt up by the Decca marketing department?

A: “He had an incredible life as a priest, a missionary and a diplomatic mission to arranging weddings between the royal princes of that period. And also he was a kind of spy, in fact he was a Catholic priest in the north of Germany, in the Protestant area, and he spent lots of years in that area – it was very unusual, very strange. Maybe he also had the mission to convert (people) to Catholicism, who knows? We have lots of speculation about him, all the mysterious things about this man. There’s still mystery.”

Q: There’s no mystery though that the cover for this album, showing you bald-headed and wielding a crucifix, is “non-diva” – like the cover on the “Sacrificium” album of castrati music, with your head superimposed on the torso of a male statue.

A: “The idea was to have a cover related to the project and it was a bit against the cliche of a diva who has to look beautiful all the time. In a project like ‘Sacrificium’, when at the beginning of the 18th century 3,000-4,000 boys were castrated every year in Italy…how can I make a CD project about this and make a cover with a beautiful, glamorous Vanity Fair picture? This would be more embarrassing…People realize there is a real story here to tell, it’s not a compilation of arias which you do for Christmas. And ‘Sacrificium’ was a huge success.”

Q: Your concert recital earlier this month singing Handel, Rossini and Mozart with Daniel Barenboim conducting at La Scala in Milan, with a chorus of boos and whistles in the second half, was perhaps less of a success?

A: “This story is repeating what happened to Carlos Kleiber, one of the greatest conductors of our lives, also to (Maria) Callas, (Luciano) Pavarotti. The concert was magnificent – Handel, Mozart, Rossini – and then I believe at the very end there was a very Fellinian situation. You think these things don’t happen anymore, that they only happen in the movies of (Federico) Fellini but actually, no, this is happening. And it seemed like a parody but the next morning I opened the newspaper and (Silvio) Berlusconi is back (in Italian politics). And so I said, ‘Yes, of course.’

I think living in Italy is difficult but living without Italy is impossible.”

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Measles: Measles Epidemic Is Spreading in Central Africa

Jehad Nga for The New York Times

An internally displaced persons camp in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In addition to recent violence in the country, a spreading measles epidemic is further endangering the lives of thousands of children there.

A large measles epidemic is spreading in Central Africa, endangering the lives of thousands of children, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders warned last week.

Since October, the charity has vaccinated more than 226,000 children in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The organization has also treated nearly 13,000 Congolese for the effects of the disease.

Measles is very contagious. In places where many children are malnourished and vitamin-deficient, it kills 1 percent to15 percent of those who don’t receive medical care, Doctors Without Borders estimated. (Even in the United States in the 1990s, although cases were rare, the fatality rate was 0.3 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In AIDS patients, the rate is 30 percent.)

The eastern Congo basin has serious shortages of medical workers and of drugs. While there is no treatment for measles itself, antibiotics can save those who develop pneumonia, meningitis or other secondary infections. Measles can also cause blindness by scarring the eyeball.

The outbreak is taking place despite enormous success against the disease worldwide. According to a study released earlier this year, deaths from measles have dropped by almost 75 percent since 2000.

Most of the lives saved were in Africa and India. Measles shots are often cited as one of the chief reasons that deaths of children under age 5 around the world have fallen steadily.

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Toyota to pay big to settle suits

Toyota Motor Corp., moving to put years of legal problems behind it, has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle dozens of lawsuits relating to sudden acceleration.

The proposed deal, filed Wednesday in federal court, would be among the largest ever paid out by an automaker. It applies to numerous suits claiming economic damages caused by safety defects in the automaker's vehicles, but does not cover dozens of personal injury and wrongful-death suits that are still pending around the nation.

The suits were filed over the last three years by Toyota and Lexus owners who claimed that the value of their vehicles had been hurt by the potential for defects, including floor mats that could cause the vehicles to surge out of control.

ROAD TO RECALL: Read The Times' award winning coverage

In addition, Toyota said it is close to settling suits filed by the Orange County district attorney and a coalition of state attorneys general who had accused the automaker of deceptive business practices. The costs of those agreements would be included in a $1.1-billion charge the Japanese automaker said it will take against earnings to cover the actions.

"We concluded that turning the page on this legacy legal issue through the positive steps we are taking is in the best interests of the company, our employees, our dealers and, most of all, our customers," Christopher Reynolds, Toyota's chief counsel in the U.S., said in a statement.

Toyota's lengthy history of sudden acceleration was the subject of a series of Los Angeles Times articles in 2009, after a horrific crash outside San Diego that took the life of an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer and his family.

Under terms of the agreement, which has not yet been approved in court, Toyota would install brake override systems in numerous models and provide cash payments from a $250-million fund to owners whose vehicles cannot be modified to incorporate that safety measure.

In addition, the automaker plans to offer extended repair coverage on throttle systems in 16 million vehicles and offer cash payments from a separate $250-million fund to Toyota and Lexus owners who sold their vehicles or turned them in at the end of a lease in 2009 or 2010. The total value of the settlement could reach $1.4 billion, according to Steve Berman, the lead plaintiff attorney in the case.

The lawsuits, filed over the last several years, had been seeking class certification.

News of the agreement comes scarcely a week after Toyota agreed to pay a record $17.35-million fine to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for failing to report a potential floor mat defect in a Lexus SUV. Those come on top of almost $50 million in fines paid by Toyota for other violations related to sudden acceleration since 2010.

The massive settlement does not, however, put Toyota's legal woes to rest. The automaker still faces numerous injury and wrongful death claims around the country, including a group of cases that have been consolidated in federal court in Santa Ana, and other cases awaiting trial in Los Angeles County.

The first of the federal cases, involving a Utah man who was killed in a Camry that slammed into a wall in 2010, is slated for trial in mid-February.

The California cases are set to begin in April, among them a suit involving a 66-year-old Upland woman who was killed after her vehicle allegedly reached 100 miles per hour and slammed into a tree.

Edgar Heiskell III, a West Virginia attorney who has a dozen pending suits against Toyota, said he is preparing to go to trial this summer in a case that involved a Flint, Mich., woman who was killed when her 2005 Camry suddenly accelerated near her home.

"We are proceeding with absolute confidence that we can get our cases heard on the merits and that we expect to prove defects in Toyota's electronic control system," he said.

Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said the settlement would have no bearing on the personal injury cases.

"All carmakers face these kinds of suits," he said. "We'll defend those as we normally would."

The giant automaker's sudden acceleration problems first gained widespread attention after the August 2009 crash of a Lexus ES outside San Diego.

That accident set off a string of recalls, an unprecedented decision to temporarily stop sales of all Toyota vehicles and a string of investigations, including a highly unusual apology by Toyota President Akio Toyoda before a congressional committee. Eventually Toyota recalled more than 10 million vehicles worldwide and has since spent huge sums — estimated at more than $2 billion, not including Wednesday's proposed settlement — to repair both its automobiles and public image.

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One of Chicago's most feared mobsters dies in prison

Frank Calabrese Jr., ex-mobster and author of the book Family Secrets, speaks to the Chicago Tribune's John Kass on March 14, 2011, at Bella Luna cafe in Chicago. (Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune, March 14, 2011)

Convicted mob hitman Frank Calabrese Sr. has died in a federal prison in North Carolina.

Calabrese died on Christmas at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, where he had been serving a life sentence, according to a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons. He was 75.

Calabrese, one of Chicago’s most feared mobsters, was convicted in 2007 during the Operation Family Secrets trial.

A federal jury held Calabrese and two other aging mobsters -- Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo and James Marcello -- responsible for 10 murders after a trial that exposed the seedy inner workings of organized crime in Chicago.

Calabrese,  a portly, bearded loan shark who according to witnesses doubled as a hit man, was found responsible for seven mob murders. Witnesses, including his brother Nicholas Calabrese, said he strangled victims with a rope, then cut their throats to make sure they were dead.

Marcello, described by prosecutors as a top leader of the Chicago Outfit, was held responsible for the June 1986 murder of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, the Chicago mob's longtime man in Las Vegas and the inspiration for the Joe Pesci character in the movie "Casino."

The Family Secrets trial was the biggest organized crime case in Chicago in years. The defendants were convicted of operating the Chicago Outfit as a racketeering enterprise.

They allegedly squeezed "street tax," similar to protection money, out of businesses, ran sports bookmaking and video poker operations as well as engaged in loan sharking. And they allegedly killed many of those who they feared might spill mob secrets to the government -- or already were doing so.

The cases went unsolved for decades.

Calabrese’s attorney in the Family Secrets trial, Joseph “Shark” Lopez, said Calabrese had been in ill health.

“Last I spoke with him a little over a year ago, he was a sick man,” Lopez said. “He was on about 17 different medications. But always a strong-willed individual.”

After spending hundreds of hours together while Calabrese was on trial, Lopez said the two developed a relationship.

“Sure he was difficult at times because he was used to getting his way, but I only saw one side of him and that was the good side,” Lopez said. “He was a pleasure to deal with and a pleasure to talk to. We’d talk about cooking, restaurants, history, you name it.”

“He was quick-witted, smart and street-savvy,” Lopez said. “Always very upbeat; nothing could keep Frank down.”

Lopez said Calabrese was very religious, making his Christmas day death feel “odd.”

“He always talked about how much he loved spending Christmas with his family. It was his favorite holiday of the year,” he said.

Lopez said he thinks there will be mixed feelings in Chicago about Calabrese’s death.

“I’m sure there are some people really sad and some people really happy,” Lopez said. “I’m sad for his family.”

Calabrese's body was taken to the medical examiner's office, where it will be examined this afternoon, according to Kevin Gerity, autopsy manager for the office. Gerity said an autopsy or an external examination will be conducted.

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Ticket rush: Film fans hand Hollywood record cash

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The big deal for Hollywood is not the record $ 10.8 billion that studios took in domestically in 2012. It’s the fact that the number of tickets sold went up for the first time in three years.

Thanks to inflation, revenue generally rises in Hollywood as admission prices climb each year. The real story is told in tickets, whose sales have been on a general decline for a decade, bottoming out in 2011 at 1.29 billion, their lowest level since 1995.

The industry rebounded this year, with ticket sales projected to rise 5.6 percent to 1.36 billion by Dec. 31, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. That’s still well below the modern peak of 1.6 billion tickets sold in 2002, but in an age of cozy home theater setups and endless entertainment gadgets, studio executives consider it a triumph that they were able to put more butts in cinema seats this year than last.

“It is a victory, ultimately,” said Don Harris, head of distribution at Paramount Pictures. “If we deliver the product as an industry that people want, they will want to get out there. Even though you can sit at home and watch something on your large screen in high-def, people want to get out.”

Domestic revenue should finish up nearly 6 percent from 2011′s $ 10.2 billion and top Hollywood‘s previous high of $ 10.6 billion set in 2009.

The year was led by a pair of superhero sagas, Disney’s “The Avengers” with $ 623 million domestically and $ 1.5 billion worldwide and the Warner Bros. Batman finale “The Dark Knight Rises” with $ 448 million domestically and $ 1.1 billion worldwide. Sony’s James Bond adventure “Skyfall” is closing in on the $ 1 billion mark globally, and the list of action and family-film blockbusters includes “The Hunger Games,” ”The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part Two,” ”Ice Age: Continental Drift,” ”Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” ”The Amazing Spider-Man” and “Brave.”

Before television, movies were the biggest thing going, with ticket sales estimated as high as 4 billion a year domestically in the 1930s and ’40s.

Movie-going eroded steadily through the 1970s as people stayed home with their small screens. The rise of videotape in the 1980s further cut into business, followed by DVDs in the ’90s and big, cheap flat-screen TVs in recent years. Today’s video games, mobile phones and other portable devices also offer easy options to tramping out to a movie theater.

It’s all been a continual drain on cinema business, and cynics repeatedly predict the eventual demise of movie theaters. Yet Hollywood fights back with new technology of its own, from digital 3-D to booming surround-sound to the clarity of images projected at high-frame rates, which is being tested now with “The Lord of the Rings” prelude “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” shown in select theaters at 48 frames a second, double the standard speed.

For all of the annoyances of theaters — parking, pricy concessions, sitting next to strangers texting on their iPhones — cinemas still offer the biggest and best way to see a movie.

“Every home has a kitchen, but you can’t get into a good restaurant on Saturday night,” said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros. “People want to escape. That’s the nature of society. The adult population just is not going to sit home seven days a week, even though they have technology in their home that’s certainly an improvement over what it was 10 years ago. People want to get out of the house, and no matter what they throw in the face of theatrical exhibition, it continues to perform at a strong level.”

Even real-life violence at the movie theater didn’t turn audiences away. Some moviegoers thought twice about heading to the cinema after a gunman killed 12 people and injured 58 at a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Colorado last summer, but if there was any lull in attendance, it was slight and temporary. Ticket sales went on a tear for most of the fall.

While domestic revenues inch upward most years largely because of inflation, the real growth areas have been overseas, where more and more fans are eager for the next Hollywood blockbuster.

Rentrak, which compiles international box office data, expects 2012′s foreign gross to be about $ 23 billion, 3 percent higher than in 2011. No data was yet available on the number of tickets sold overseas this past year.

International business generally used to account for less than half of a studio film’s overall receipts. Films now often do two or even three times as much business overseas as they do domestically. Some movies that were duds with U.S. audiences, such as “Battleship” and “John Carter,” can wind up being $ 200 million hits with overseas crowds.

Whether finishing a good year or a bad one, Hollywood executives always look ahead to better days, insisting that the next crop of blockbusters will be bigger than ever. The same goes this time as studio bosses hype their 2013 lineup, which includes the latest “Iron Man,” ”Star Trek,” ”Hunger Games” and “Thor” installments, the Superman tale “Man of Steel” and the second chapter in “The Hobbit” trilogy.

Twelve months from now, they hope to be talking about another revenue record topping this year’s $ 10.8 billion.

“I’ve been saying we’re going to hit that $ 11 billion level for about three years now,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. “Next year I think is the year we actually do it.”

___

Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

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Well: Exercise and the Ever-Smarter Human Brain

Anyone whose resolve to exercise in 2013 is a bit shaky might want to consider an emerging scientific view of human evolution. It suggests that we are clever today in part because a million years ago, we could outrun and outwalk most other mammals over long distances. Our brains were shaped and sharpened by movement, the idea goes, and we continue to require regular physical activity in order for our brains to function optimally.

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind has intrigued anthropologists and gripped the popular imagination for some time. In 2004, the evolutionary biologists Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah published a seminal article in the journal Nature titled “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo,” in which they posited that our bipedal ancestors survived by becoming endurance athletes, able to bring down swifter prey through sheer doggedness, jogging and plodding along behind them until the animals dropped.

Endurance produced meals, which provided energy for mating, which meant that adept early joggers passed along their genes. In this way, natural selection drove early humans to become even more athletic, Dr. Lieberman and other scientists have written, their bodies developing longer legs, shorter toes, less hair and complicated inner-ear mechanisms to maintain balance and stability during upright ambulation. Movement shaped the human body.

But simultaneously, in a development that until recently many scientists viewed as unrelated, humans were becoming smarter. Their brains were increasing rapidly in size.

Today, humans have a brain that is about three times larger than would be expected, anthropologists say, given our species’ body size in comparison with that of other mammals.

To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientists have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps most determinatively, our early ancestors’ need for social interaction. Early humans had to plan and execute hunts as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it’s been thought, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success. According to that hypothesis, the evolution of the brain was driven by the need to think.

But now some scientists are suggesting that physical activity also played a critical role in making our brains larger.

To reach that conclusion, anthropologists began by looking at existing data about brain size and endurance capacity in a variety of mammals, including dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, mice, wolves, rats, civet cats, antelope, mongeese, goats, sheep and elands. They found a notable pattern. Species like dogs and rats that had a high innate endurance capacity, which presumably had evolved over millenniums, also had large brain volumes relative to their body size.

The researchers also looked at recent experiments in which mice and rats were systematically bred to be marathon runners. Lab animals that willingly put in the most miles on running wheels were interbred, resulting in the creation of a line of lab animals that excelled at running.

Interestingly, after multiple generations, these animals began to develop innately high levels of substances that promote tissue growth and health, including a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. These substances are important for endurance performance. They also are known to drive brain growth.

What all of this means, says David A. Raichlen, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona and an author of a new article about the evolution of human brains appearing in the January issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society Biology, is that physical activity may have helped to make early humans smarter.

“We think that what happened” in our early hunter-gatherer ancestors, he says, is that the more athletic and active survived and, as with the lab mice, passed along physiological characteristics that improved their endurance, including elevated levels of BDNF. Eventually, these early athletes had enough BDNF coursing through their bodies that some could migrate from the muscles to the brain, where it nudged the growth of brain tissue.

Those particular early humans then applied their growing ability to think and reason toward better tracking prey, becoming the best-fed and most successful from an evolutionary standpoint. Being in motion made them smarter, and being smarter now allowed them to move more efficiently.

And out of all of this came, eventually, an ability to understand higher math and invent iPads. But that was some time later.

The broad point of this new notion is that if physical activity helped to mold the structure of our brains, then it most likely remains essential to brain health today, says John D. Polk, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-author, with Dr. Raichlen, of the new article.

And there is scientific support for that idea. Recent studies have shown, he says, that “regular exercise, even walking,” leads to more robust mental abilities, “beginning in childhood and continuing into old age.”

Of course, the hypothesis that jogging after prey helped to drive human brain evolution is just a hypothesis, Dr. Raichlen says, and almost unprovable.

But it is compelling, says Harvard’s Dr. Lieberman, who has worked with the authors of the new article. “I fundamentally agree that there is a deep evolutionary basis for the relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind,” he says, a relationship that makes the term “jogging your memory” more literal than most of us might have expected and provides a powerful incentive to be active in 2013.

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Corporate tax rate overhaul may be part of a 'fiscal cliff' deal

WASHINGTON — Amid the wrangling over the so-called fiscal cliff, President Obama and congressional Republicans can agree on something: They want to lower the corporate tax rate.

The U.S. has the highest overall rate of any of the world's developed economies. It took the top spot in March after Japan reduced its rate, mimicking other countries that have lowered taxes to lure new businesses and keep existing companies from leaving.

Negotiations to avert automatic income tax increases and federal spending cuts scheduled to kick in Jan. 1 could provide the impetus for U.S. policymakers to tackle an overhaul of the corporate tax code next year.

The White House wants to put a corporate tax overhaul, along with changes to the individual income tax system, on a fast track as part of any deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff."

The centerpiece of an overhaul would be slashing the 35% corporate tax rate, a goal long sought by corporate executives and lobbyists.

Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

"In the name of global competitiveness, I think that has largely been agreed to," Jim McNerney, chief executive of Boeing Co., said about how both parties view the need for major corporate tax changes.

In February, Obama proposed lowering the federal rate to 25% for manufacturing companies and to 28% for other firms. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has been pushing a plan to lower the rate to 25% for all corporations.

In both cases, the rate cuts would be accompanied by the elimination of some of the numerous tax breaks that allow many companies to pay a much lower effective tax rate — and sometimes to avoid paying any corporate taxes at all.

"The administration's position on this is very much in sync with what Republicans say they want, which is a lower rate and a broader base," said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the former chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden.

But there still are some obstacles to a deal.

Some Democrats want to use an overhaul to increase the amount of tax revenue coming from corporations, while Republicans want to keep the amount the same. The White House and congressional Republicans also differ on how the U.S. should treat money earned abroad.

And the business community itself is divided. Many small companies file taxes as individuals. They're opposed to any "fiscal cliff" deal that would raise their rates while giving corporations a rate reduction.

Analysts said the obstacles could be overcome because there is consensus around the broader point that the U.S. needs to bring its corporate tax rate in line with other developed nations.

"Regardless of your political persuasion, it is unquestionably the case that the nominal U.S. corporate tax rate is much higher than that of peer countries," said Edward Kleinbard, a USC law professor and former chief of staff of Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.

The case for corporate tax reform got a boost when the overall U.S. rate of 39.1%, which includes federal, state and local corporate taxes, became the highest this year among the 34 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Two decades ago, the U.S. was 13th.

"At one time in the '80s, we had a competitive corporate tax rate," said Dorothy Coleman, vice president of tax and domestic economic policy for the National Assn. of Manufacturers. "We've fallen behind by standing still."

Quiz: The year in business

But the rate in the tax code isn't what many companies pay because of a host of deductions and tax credits. In 2011, the effective corporate tax rate in the U.S. was 29.2%, roughly in line with the 31.9% average of the six other largest developed economies, the Obama administration said.

The White House said that parity does not mean the statutory rate shouldn't be reduced. It simply means that many tax breaks should be eliminated, allowing the rate to be lowered without adding to the deficit.

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Lake-effect snow brings white Christmas to some

Brandon Diaz rides on a plastic sled as his dog Domino frolics about in the snow at Cricket Hill near Montrose Harbor in Chicago. (John J. Kim, Chicago Tribune / December 25, 2012)

By Heywood Hoffman




Tribune reporter

2:41 p.m. CST, December 25, 2012

Lake-effect snow late this morning brought a heavy coating of snow to much of the North Side, providing a white Christmas to some.

As of about 11 a.m., 1 to 2 inches of snow coated the ground, mostly north of Belmont Avenue reaching from the lakefront to past Western Avenue.

Roadways were slick and some cars were seen spinning out, including on Lake Shore Drive, although south of Belmont the roads were mostly just wet.

The lake-effect snow showers could last throughout the day and into tomorrow, although they will be spotty and large amounts of accumulation are not expected.

Temperatures were expected to reach the low 30s on Christmas and only 31 on Wednesday, with overnight temps into the low 20s.

For the latest radar, conditions and forecasts, go to chicagoweathercenter.com.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com
Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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10 Talented Dogs Playing the Piano

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Queen delivers 1st Christmas message in 3D

LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II has hailed the holidays in a new dimension, delivering her Christmas message for the first time in 3D.

In the annual, prerecorded broadcast, the monarch paid tribute to the armed forces, “whose sense of duty takes them away from family and friends” over the holidays, and expressed gratitude for the outpouring of enthusiasm for her Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

The queen said she was struck by the “strength of fellowship and friendship” shown by well-wishers to mark her 60 years on the throne.

“It was humbling that so many chose to mark the anniversary of a duty which passed to me 60 years ago,” she said as footage showed crowds lining the Thames River in the rain earlier this year for a boat pageant. “People of all ages took the trouble to take part in various ways and in many nations.”

The queen also reflected on Britain’s hosting of the Olympic games in 2012, praising the “skill, dedication, training and teamwork of our athletes” and singling out the volunteers who devoted themselves “to keeping others safe, supported and comforted.”

Elizabeth’s message aired shortly after she attended a traditional church service at St. Mary Magdelene Church on her sprawling Sandringham estate in Norfolk.

Wearing a turquoise coat and matching hat, the monarch rode to church in a Bentley, accompanied by granddaughters Beatrice and Eugenie. Her husband, Prince Philip, walked from the house to the church with other members of the royal family.

Three familiar faces were missing from the family outing. Prince William is spending the holiday with his pregnant wife Kate and his in-laws in the southern England village of Bucklebury. Prince Harry is serving with British troops in Afghanistan.

After the church service, the royals usually gather to watch the queen’s prerecorded television broadcast, a tradition that began with a radio address by King George V in 1932.

The queen has made a prerecorded Christmas broadcast on radio since 1952 and on television since 1957. She writes the speeches herself and the broadcasts mark the rare occasion on which the queen voices her own opinion without government consultation.

Her switch to 3D was not the only technological leap for prominent British figures this Christmas.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York chose to tweet their sermons for the first time, in order to bring Christmas to a new digital audience.

In his speech, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said he has been inspired by meeting victims of suffering over the past decade while leading the world’s 80 million-strong Anglican Communion.

Delivering his final Christmas Day sermon from Canterbury Cathedral, Williams also acknowledged how a vote against allowing women to become bishops has damaged the credibility of the church.

Still, he said, it was “startling” to see after the vote how many people “turned out to have a sort of investment in the church, a desire to see the church looking credible and a real sense of loss when — as they saw it — the church failed to sort its business out.”

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