A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Nov. 20

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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International Emmys honor Lear, Alda, South American shows

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Television legend Norman Lear and veteran actor Alan Alda received special honors at the International Emmy Awards on Monday, while programming from South America dominated the competition, with Argentina and Brazil each winning two Emmys.

Lear, best known as creator of the ground-breaking 1970s hit comedy “All in the Family,” which premiered during a time of social upheaval and tackled issues such as race and women’s rights, said “the world will, and needs to, come together through the arts” as he accepted the honor.

The producer and writer received a special 40th anniversary Founders Award from the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, as did Alda, star of the long-running Korean-war set comedy, M*A*S*H* about doctors on the front lines.

Alda paid tribute to “the men and women in the hospital tents,” referring to real-life medical personnel who struggle to treat war injured, who he noted usually go unmentioned at award shows.

“Glee” creator Ryan Murphy received the annual International Founders Award, which was presented by Oscar-winner Jessica Lange, a star of his current series “American Horror Story.”

Argentina won both acting categories, with honors going to actress Cristina Banegas for the dramatic series “Television x La Inclusion,” in which she plays the mother of an ailing child waging battle with health insurers; while Dario Grandinetti picked up the best actor award for his performance as a racist taxi driver in the same series.

It marked the first time both honors were won by actors from the same program.

Brazil scored wins for comedy series for “The Invisible Woman,” while “The Illusionist” was named outstanding telenovela.

In bestowing its prizes, the Emmys, which honor television produced outside the United States, extended their reach after years of domination and even sweeps by the United Kingdom, which this year won two, for best TV movie or miniseries “Black Mirror” and best documentary “Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die.”

France, Germany and Australia each won one Emmy.

France took the best drama series prize for “Braquo season 2,” while Germany’s “Song of War” won for outstanding arts programming. The Australian franchise of the adventure competition “The Amazing Race” won the award for non-scripted, or reality, television.

The International Emmy directorate award went to Korean Broadcasting System president and CEO Dr. Kim In-Kyu.

Presenters at the ceremony, hosted by recently retired talk show host Regis Philbin, also included Victor Garber, Donnie Wahlberg, Cheyenne Jackson, Telenovela actress Edith González, German TV personalities Joko and Klaas and Indian actress Prerna Wanvari.

(Editing by Chris Michaud and Todd Eastham)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Responding to Illnesses Manifesting Amid Recovery From Storm

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Dr. Aaron Gardener, center, attended to a patient at an ad hoc medical unit in Long Beach, N.Y. Many people have coughs, rashes and other ailments.

Day and night, victims of Hurricane Sandy have been streaming into ad hoc emergency rooms and relief centers, like the MASH-type medical unit on an athletic field in Long Beach, and the warming tent in the Rockaways the size of a small high school gym.

They complain of rashes, asthma and coughing. They need tetanus shots because — house-proud and armed with survivalist instincts — they have been ripping out waterlogged boards and getting poked by rusty nails. Those with back pain from sifting through debris receive muscle relaxants; those with chest pain from overexertion are hooked up to cardiac monitors.

“I’ve been coughing,” said Gabriel McAuley, 46, who has been working 16-hour days gutting homes and hauling debris in the Rockaways since the storm hit. “I’ve never felt a cough like that before. It’s deeper down.”

It is impossible to say how many people have been sickened by what Hurricane Sandy left behind: mold from damp drywall; spills from oil tanks; sewage from floodwater and unflushable toilets; tons upon tons of debris and dust. But interviews with hurricane victims, recovery workers, health officials and medical experts over the last week reveal that some of the illnesses that they feared would occur, based on the toxic substances unleashed by the storm and the experience of other disasters, notably Hurricane Katrina, have begun to manifest themselves.

Emergency rooms and poison control centers have reported cases of carbon monoxide exposure — and in New Jersey, several deaths have been attributed to it — from the misuse of generators to provide power and stoves to provide heat.

In Livingston, N.J., the Burn Center at St. Barnabas Medical Center had 16 burn cases over about six days, three times as many as usual, from people trying to dispel the cold and darkness with boiling water, gasoline, candles and lighter fluid.

Raw sewage spilled into homes in Baldwin and East Rockaway, in Nassau County, when a sewage plant shut down because of the surge and the system could not handle the backup. Sewage also spilled from a huge plant in Newark. “We tried to limit our presence in the house because the stink was horrible,” said Jennifer Ayres, 34, of Baldwin, who has been staying temporarily in West Hempstead. She said that she felt ill for several days, that her son had a scratchy throat, and that her mother, who lives in the house, had difficulty breathing, all problems she attributed to the two days they spent inside their house cleaning up last week. “I had stomach problems. I felt itchy beyond itchy on my face.”

Coughing — locally known as the Rockaway cough — is a common symptom that health officials said could come from mold, or from the haze of dust and sand kicked up by the storm and demolitions. The air in the Rockaways is so full of particles that the traffic police wear masks — though many recovery workers do not, worrying people who recall the fallout of another disaster.

“It’s just like 9/11,” said Kathy Smilardi, sitting inside the skeleton of her gutted home in Broad Channel, wrapped in a white puffy jacket, her breath visible in the afternoon cold. “Everyone runs in to clean up, and they’re not wearing masks. Are we going to wait 20 years to figure out that people are dying?”

Health officials and experts say the risks are real, but are cautioning against hysteria. Some coughing could be due to cold, damp weather. Lasting health effects from mold, dust and other environmental hazards generally require long-term, continuous exposure, they said. And the short-term effects can be mitigated by taking precautions like wearing masks, gloves and boots and removing mold-infested wallboard. “The reality is that cleaning up both muck and sewage and spills and removing walls and reconstruction and dealing with debris all do in fact pose concerns,” Daniel Kass, New York City’s deputy commissioner for environmental health, said Friday. “Are they vast or uncontrollable? No. But they depend on people doing work correctly and taking basic precautions.”

The Katrina cough was found to be temporary, said Roy J. Rando, a professor at Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Felicia Rabito, an epidemiologist at the school, said that healthy children exposed to mold after Hurricane Katrina showed no lasting respiratory symptoms when they moved back to new or renovated homes.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, lead levels in New Orleans’s soil dropped after the top layers of dirt, where lead from paint and gasoline can accumulate, were washed away. But in the two years afterward, soil testing found extremely high lead levels, Dr. Rabito said, which she theorized came from renovating old homes. “That’s a cautionary tale,” she said. Lead in soil can be tracked into homes and pose a health hazard to children playing inside or outside.

Though at least one outbreak of norovirus, a contagious gastrointestinal virus, occurred in a Brooklyn high school that was used as a shelter, New York and New Jersey health officials said they had not seen any significant spike in respiratory or gastrointestinal diseases related to the storm.

In Broad Channel, most homes on Noel Road, where Ms. Smilardi lives, have outdoor oil tanks that were overturned by the storm. The innards of many homes, built when asbestos was used, lie spilled among major and minor roads.

Ominous red spots covered both sides of Paul Nowinski’s burly torso. After the storm, Mr. Nowinski, a musician, waded into the basement of his childhood home on Beach 146th Street in the Rockaways to try to salvage records, books and instruments. He was up to his chest in water, which he thinks might have been contaminated with sewage. He said that he did not know the cause of the red marks; and that he had been too busy “schlepping” to go to the doctor.

Angela Macropoulos contributed reporting.

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Election, Storm and Shaky Economy Affect Holiday Shopping

Many retailers have more than the usual riding on sales beginning this Thanksgiving weekend.

The presidential election pushed holiday shopping later than usual because some toy and game makers held off on their big introductions for maximum attention. The aftereffects of Hurricane Sandy have included logistics problems and merchandise delivery delays. And some retailers, trying to keep inventory lean during uncertain economic times, have given themselves little room for error: shipments of holiday toys, for instance, are down 13 percent this year, to the lowest level since 2007, according to the global trade research firm Panjiva.

All of that makes for a particularly strange holiday season, retailers and analysts say.

“The election sucks all of the oxygen out of the room in terms of attention,” said Eric Hirshberg, the chief executive of Activision Publishing, the video game company. “A lot of the best media inventory goes to the candidates. It gets more expensive because there’s this premium demand from the candidates.”

Hasbro is adding more shades of its Furby toy through the end of the year, and Mattel last week introduced a new Monster High video game. Last year, Activision introduced its big Call of Duty release in early November. This year, though, it did not release Call of Duty: Black Ops II until Nov. 13.

“We were also worried that if we released Call of Duty before the election, no one would show up to vote,” Mr. Hirshberg said. (He was speaking facetiously, but given that the game’s retail sales were more than $500 million in the first 24 hours after it made its debut, he may have a point.)

And while retailers were expecting the election to delay some shopping, they were not expecting a storm. RetailNext, which tracks shopper traffic, said that store visits and sales in the Northeast were down about 25 percent during the storm and afterward.

Major retailers have said the election and Hurricane Sandy affected sales. Saks and Target said the beginning of November was choppy, and Macy’s said that the storm seemed to have pushed sales later into the season.

“Some of it is lost, most is postponed,” Karen M. Hoguet, Macy’s chief financial officer, said of demand. “It’s a question of timing.” And Kohl’s chief executive, Kevin Mansell, said the company typically experienced sales slowdowns pre-election and postelection, “and then the business kind of accelerates.”

The late introductions and delayed shopping put toy companies, in particular, in a difficult position: they were under pressure to make hit toys, largely via preorders and layaway, months before people would actually be buying them. Retailers and toy companies started trying to gauge demand early, looking for preliminary data on which items were unpopular and which ones were stars.

Walmart started layaway a month earlier this year versus last year, and Toys “R” Us also started holiday layaway earlier, giving the stores a jump on things. Amazon and other e-commerce sites are promoting tools like preorders, wish lists and gift registries — anything that can give them a sense of what people will buy as the Christmas season churns on.

Preorders are “an important tool to gauge customer demand, and get some feedback from our customers earlier in the process,” said John Alteio, director of toys and games for Amazon. Product introductions later in the year “can be challenging in the toy industry, so we have to draw some comparisons when we can and make the best estimate.”

Paul Solomon, co-chief executive of Moose Toys, which makes Micro Chargers and The Trash Pack, said preorders and layaway were becoming increasingly important. “It’s giving us a good read, early, as to how things are performing, and it’s even more crucial now to make a lot of noise about the brand earlier than in previous years,” he said.

“Preorders are kind of a cottage industry for games like Call of Duty,” Mr. Hirshberg, the Activision chief, said. The company began promoting the game in March, when it ran spots during the NBA playoffs.

In May, it released an ad featuring Oliver North, the national security aide at the heart of the Iran-contra affair and a consultant on the game, talking about the future of warfare. It accepted preorders starting in May. Through the summer, Activision revealed different facets of the game at various conferences, and this month it began running international television, outdoor, digital and mobile ads.

“There’s not a clean math equation that says this many preorders equals this many sales, but it’s confidence-building for us in terms of orders, in terms of production,” Mr. Hirshberg said.

John Barbour, the chief executive of LeapFrog, learned the value of early promotion after last year, when the children’s tablet LeapPad1 became a surprise hit. “It was very hard for me to gauge how successful it would be. Everyone took their best shots,” he said. By November and December, the LeapPad was selling out, and Mr. Barbour had to pay a premium to source tablet screens, and paid for airplanes to fly in extra inventory.

This year, he focused on early promotions that would translate into preorders and layaway, so toy retailers could accurately adjust their orders in time for the holidays. A good response early on means not just bigger orders from retailers, he said, but also more promotional support and more shelf space: it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“For retailers, it’s phenomenal. It brings demand forward, and they get a better read on what they’re going to need,” he said. When the LeapPad2 became available for preorders in August, it sold as much in two days of preorders as it did in its first week on sale last year, Mr. Barbour said.

He is being careful not to get too jubilant, though. “The penalties for having too much inventory are greater than the penalties for being a little bit short,” he said.

Still, some brands were ignoring the strange events of this holiday season and proceeding as usual. Stephen Bebis, the chief executive of Brookstone, said some products were becoming available in the final months of the year, but that was because of production delays, not strategy.

“People are still going to have to buy gifts for Christmas no matter who’s the president,” he said.

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Israeli strike kills 9 members of Gaza family

GAZA CITY — An Israeli airstrike Sunday killed at least nine members of the same family — mostly women and children — in the deadliest single attack and worst civilian tragedy since the fighting in the Gaza Strip began last week.

Though Israel has expressed pride over its five-day military campaign for limiting civilian casualties, the strike against the Dalu home in Gaza City was likely to test the limits of international support it has received in the battle to stop militants from firing rockets at Israeli cities.

Yet despite immediate condemnation by Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, the tragedy did not appear to derail cease-fire negotiations underway in Cairo, where Israeli and Palestinian representatives are meeting. In fact, the high civilian death toll from Sunday's attack only increased the international pressure on both sides to end hostilities, coming on a day both President Obama and British officials raised concerns about the conflict expanding into a ground war.

Israeli military officials said they were targeting a Hamas militant in his home, but provided no further information. The Dalu family was believed to have links to Hamas' military wing and had been targeted by Israel before.

But there were conflicting reports about whether the strike killed the home's owner, Jamal Dalu, or his son Mohamed. Hamas' Health Ministry put the death toll at 11, which may include two neighbors. More than 20 people were injured.

On its website, the military wing of Hamas said that the attack on the family "will not go unpunished" and that the group had begun firing rockets at Israel in response. By Sunday night, Gaza militants had fired 114 rockets at southern Israel during the day, hitting buildings in Beersheba, Sderot and Ashdod. Five people were injured by shrapnel from a rocket in Ofakim, near the Gaza border.

The Israeli missile strike was so strong it destroyed the Dalu family's three-story building, blowing out windows blocks away and sending a charred mattress flying into the street.

For hours panicked neighbors and rescue workers clung to hope of finding survivors. While a bulldozer pulled apart pieces of the collapsed walls, volunteers in orange vests scrambled over the wreckage and searched for signs of life.

In a grim, heart-wrenching scene that played out over 90 minutes, the bodies of four children were pulled out one after another.

Each time they found a body, some of the men would yell excitedly and wave their hands at the bulldozer's driver to stop digging, while others would climb down to retrieve the child. As mobs of onlookers chanted "God is great," a rescue worker would race toward a waiting ambulance with a limp, dust-covered child.

"This is a massacre," shouted a distraught Nasser Dalu, 56, a cousin and neighbor, as he watched his relatives being pulled from debris. "What did these children do?"

Israel Defense Forces said it has launched more than 1,000 airstrikes over the last five days, mostly targeting weapons caches and military compounds, in an attempt to put an end to rocket and mortar attacks on communities in southern Israel.

It expanded its targets to include the homes of Hamas leaders; Gaza officials said 17 homes were attacked on Sunday alone. About the same time that the Dalu house was hit, Israel said it targeted Yiyhe Abia, the head of Hamas' rocket-firing squad, in his home nearby.

Sunday's airstrikes brought the death toll in Gaza to 69 people since Wednesday, including at least 24 civilians, hospital officials said. More than 660 Palestinians have been wounded.

Three Israelis were killed when a projectile fired from Gaza hit their apartment complex Thursday.

The strike on the Dalu home inflamed much of Arab world and within hours "aldalumassacre" had become a Twitter hashtag. Some compared the attack to the 2009 shelling of the Samouni house, when 21 members of the family were killed during the previous Israeli assault on Gaza.

The Dalu strike came at a delicate time in the Gaza conflict, as Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has been trying to broker a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas. Despite the heated rhetoric and escalating violence, talks continued behind the scenes Sunday night, Hamas officials said.

Without an agreement soon, many fear Israel will launch a ground invasion. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that Israel is "prepared for a significant expansion of the operation."

At a news conference in Bangkok, Thailand, Obama urged both sides to resolve their differences "without further escalation of violence in the region."

While repeating his previous statements that Israel has a right to press for an end to attacks on its people, Obama said, "If that can be accomplished without a ramping-up of military activity in Gaza, that's preferable. That's not just preferable for the people of Gaza, it's also preferable for Israelis, because if Israeli troops are in Gaza, they're much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded."

British Foreign Secretary William Hague shared Obama's concerns, telling Sky News television that "a ground invasion of Gaza would lose Israel a lot of the international support and sympathy that they have in this situation."

In addition to hitting the homes of Hamas officials, Israel expanded its targets to include buildings used by communications services, leaving several journalists injured early Sunday.

A 1:30 a.m. strike against one building destroyed the 11-floor offices of Al Quds television, a Hamas-affiliated network. Several journalists were seriously wounded, including one whose leg had to be amputated, witnesses said.

Cameraman Mohamed Akhras, 23, said he was working the night shift in case of any breaking stories and had just fallen asleep when the blast buried him and a colleague under furniture and debris.

"Israel targeted us because we are revealing the truth about their crimes," Akhras said, half his face dotted with small shrapnel cuts.

Israeli military officials defended the attacks against the Al Quds site and another Hamas-run communications facility, saying they were trying to destroy rooftop antennas used by militants to communicate.

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Nov. 19

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

Read More..

Justin Bieber dominates at American Music Awards

America proved its Bieber Fever was strong: The teen singer dominated the American Music Awards on Sunday night.

Bieber‘s wins included the show’s top award, artist of the year. His mom joined him onstage as he collected the trophy, beating out Rihanna, Maroon 5, Katy Perry and Drake.

“I wanted to thank you for always believing in me,” Bieber said, looking to his mom.

The 18-year-old also won the honor in 2010. He said it’s “hard growing up with everyone watching me” and asked that people continue to believe in him.

Bieber and Nicki Minaj performed together — and separately — at the AMAs, and were both multiple winners.

But another collaboration was the night’s most colorful performance: Korean rapper PSY and MC Hammer. Hammer joined the buzzed-about pop star for his viral hit “Gangnam Style.” PSY rocked traditional “Hammer” pants as they danced to his jam and to Hammer’s “Too Legit to Quit.”

Bieber won favorite pop/rock male artist in the first award handed out at Sunday’s show and gave a shout-out to those who didn’t think he would last on the music scene.

“I want to say this is for all the haters who thought I was just here for one or two years. I feel like I’m going to be here for a very long time,” he said.

He also won favorite pop/rock album for his platinum-selling third album, “Believe.” He gave a stripped down, acoustic performance of “As Long As You Love Me,” then transitioned to the dance-heavy “Beauty and a Beat,” where Minaj joined him onstage, grinding with the teen for a few seconds.

Minaj, who wore three different wigs and four outfits throughout the night, repeated her AMAs wins from last year, picking up trophies for favorite rap/hip-hop artist and album for “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded.” She was in an all-white get-up, including fur coat and pink hair when she performed her new song “Freedom.” The scene was ghostly and snowy, as a choir — also in white — joined her onstage. One background singer stole the performance, belting semi-high notes as Minaj looked on.

As Bieber won his second award, he was kissed on the neck by Jenny McCarthy, who presented the award.

“Wow. I feel violated right now,” he said, laughing.

“I did grab his butt,” McCarthy said backstage. “I couldn’t help it. He was just so delicious. So little. I wanted to tear his head off and eat it.”

Bieber‘s red and black outfit seemed to be the night’s theme, as Taylor Swift and Usher wore similar ensembles.

Usher kicked off the three-hour show with green laser lights beaming onstage as he performed a medley of songs, including “Numb,” ”Climax” and “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop,” which featured a smoky floor and a number of backup dancers, as Usher jammed in all black, with the exception of his red shoes. He won favorite soul/R&B male artist.

Swift won her fifth consecutive award for favorite country female artist.

“This is unreal. I want to thank the fans. You guys are the ones who voted on this,” she said.

Swift gave a masquerade-themed performance of the pop song “I Knew You Were Trouble.” She sang onstage in a light dress while dancers wore mostly black. But then she changed into a red corset and black skirt, matching their dark mood. She even danced and sang on the floor as lights flickered throughout the performance.

Dick Clark, who created the AMAs, was remembered by Ryan Seacrest and an upbeat performance by Stevie Wonder.

“What a producer he was,” said Seacrest, as Wonder sang his hits, including “My Cherie Amour.”

Carly Rae Jepsen, who performed early in the night, won favorite new artist.

“I am floored. Wow,” she said, thanking Bieber and his manager, Scooter Braun.

Party girl Ke$ ha was glammed up on the red carpet, rocking long, flowy blonde hair and a light pink dress. She switched to her normal attire when she performed her hit single “Die Young.” It was tribal, with shirtless dancers in skin-tight pants, silver hair and skeleton-painted faces, who also played the drums. Ke$ ha was pants-less, rocking knee-high boots and rolling on the floor as she finished up the song.

Minaj and Christina Aguilera were blonde bombshells, too: Minaj’s hair was busy and full of volume and she sported a neon strapless gown to accept her first award. Aguilera wore a blonde bob in a purple dress that matched her eyeshadow.

Aguilera performed a medley of material from her new album and joined Pitbull onstage.

Kelly Clarkson also hit the stage, making a nod to her “American Idol” roots with a number on her dress and three judges looking on as she sang “Miss Independent.” Then she went into “Since U Been Gone,” ”Stronger” and “Catch My Breath.” It’s worth noting that “Idol” judge Randy Jackson introduced Clarkson, the first-ever winner of the show. He also advised people to donate through Red Cross for Superstorm Sandy victims.

Fellow “Idol” winner Carrie Underwood won best favorite country album and performed, hitting the right notes while singing “Two Black Cadillacs.” She talked about singing competition shows backstage.

“These people that go on these shows are so talented, you know? And I would love to see if so many of the other artists that are out there today would go back and try out for these shows, because they might get their behinds kicked by some of the contestants,” she said.

Luke Bryan won favorite country male artist and Lady Antebellum favorite country group.

American Music Awards nominees were selected based on sales and airplay, and fans chose the winners by voting online. At this award show, even the stars were fans: Pink said on the red carpet that she’d like to collaborate with Lauryn Hill. Cyndi Lauper said her musical playlist includes Pink and Minaj. Boy band The Wanted said they were excited to see PSY and Colbie Caillat wanted to watch No Doubt.

“What makes the American Music Awards special is the fans choose the winning artists,” said Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, who won favorite alternative rock artist and performed “Burn It Down,” as Brandy sang along and Gwen Stefani, Usher and Phillip Phillips bobbed their heads.

David Guetta won the show’s first-ever electronic dance music award. Non-televised awards went to Katy Perry for pop/rock female artist, Beyonce for soul/R&B female artist, Adele for adult contemporary artist and Shakira for Latin artist.

Along with Rihanna, Minaj was the top nominee with four nominations.

___

AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

___

Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin

___

Online:

http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/american-music-awards

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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MaleSurvivor Conference Examines Sexual Abuse in Sports

It was the summer before high school, and Christopher Gavagan, then 13, was preparing to leave the safe familiarity of the friends he had known during his boyhood. With a plan to excel at ice hockey, he began training on inline skates, moving through his New York City neighborhood, up and down the streets until, he said, “I turned down the wrong street.”

Gavagan, now a filmmaker, was one of eight panelists who participated Friday in a discussion about young athletes who have been sexually assaulted or abused by their coaches. The panel was part of the MaleSurvivor 13th International Conference, held this year at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The conference brought together men who have been sexually abused, as well as psychologists, social workers, academics and members of the legal community.

A dour procession of stories about sexual misconduct by coaches toward their male charges has come to light in recent months. Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State, was sentenced in October to 30 to 60 years in prison on 45 counts of child molesting. Sugar Ray Leonard wrote in his autobiography last year that he was sexually molested by an Olympic boxing coach. The N.H.L. players Theo Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy were sexually abused as teenagers by their hockey coach Graham James.

The prevalence of sexual abuse among all boys 17 and under has been variously estimated to be as low as 5 percent and as high as 16 percent. For some of the millions of children who participate in sports nationwide, and their parents, sexual assault in a sports context has its own dynamic.

“Sports is a place where parents send their boys to learn skills, to learn how to be teammates and how to work together — to make boys stronger and healthier,” said Dr. Howard Fradkin, author of “Joining Forces,” a book about how men can heal from sexual abuse. “It’s the place where we send our boys to grow up. The betrayal that occurs when abuse occurs in sports is damaging because it destroys the whole intent of what they started out to do.”

When Gavagan, now 38, turned down that fateful street, and stepped briefly into the house of a man recommended as a hockey coach by a couple of female acquaintances, what greeted him, he said, was “a young boy’s dream come true.”

The dream Gavagan glimpsed was embodied in the trophy room of the house.

“It was everything I wanted to be right there,” recalled Gavagan, who is working on a feature-length documentary on sexual abuse in youth sports, in which he interviews other sexual-abuse victims and his own attacker, against whom he has never pressed charges. In addition to the shiny relics that seemed to give testimony to the man’s coaching prowess, Gavagan said, the trophy room had pictures of hockey teams the man had coached and workout equipment — the physical tools promising the chance to get bigger and stronger.

“To a skinny 13-year-old, it was like winning the lottery,” Gavagan said.

Christopher Anderson, the executive director of MaleSurvivor, said sexual abuse — basically nonconsensual touching or sexual language — is devastating under any circumstance, but coach and player often have a special relationship.

“Especially as you progress higher and higher, the coach can become just as important in some ways to an athlete as the relationship with his parents might have,” Anderson said. “In some cases, it’s a substitute for parents.”

He added: “There’s also a fundamentally different power dynamic. When you’re a young star, the coach can literally make or break your career as an athlete.”

But caution has to extend beyond coaches who guide future Olympians, Gavagan said, noting that his coach was not of that caliber.

“The entire grooming process was so subtle,” Gavagan said. “It’s not like when I first went into his house that he tried to grope me.”

First, Gavagan said, the coach said it was all right to curse in that house. On another visit it was fine to have a beer, which led on another day to Playboy magazine and on subsequent days to harder pornography and harder liquor. It was six months before the coach laid an explicitly sexual hand on him, Gavagan said.

“I didn’t feel like a sudden red line had been crossed — the line had been blurred,” Gavagan said, explaining that he avoided his parents when he returned home with liquor on his breath by telling them he was exhausted and going straight to his room. (Unlike many sexual-abuse victims, Gavagan said his parents, with whom the coach had ingratiated himself, were supportive of their son, and his was a loving family. He said that if he had approached them about the coach, they would have listened.)

Another aspect of sexual abuse in sports is the environment, which emphasizes a kind of macho ethic.

“What is most different about abuse is the sports culture itself,” Fradkin said. “It is a culture that promotes teamwork and teaches boys to shrug it off. When a boy or man is abused, he risks being thrown off the team if he should speak the truth because he’ll be seen as being disloyal — and weak.”

At 17, after four years with his coach, Gavagan said he “aged out” of his coach’s target age.

“At the time I had no idea of how it would impact my life, but the unhealthy lessons about relations, trust and the truth set a time bomb that would detonate my relationships for the next 10 years,” Gavagan said.

As a word of caution, Anderson said the lesson for parents should not be that sports are dangerous.

“It should be that there are sometimes dangerous people who gravitate to sporting organizations and our safeguards aren’t good enough yet to adequately protect our children,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that we should be pulling our kids from soccer and baseball and basketball. What it means is that parents need to be vigilant.”

He added: “They need to be proactive with athletic organizations to make sure that policies are in place — such as doing criminal background checks on staff and having a procedure where young athletes can complain about inappropriate behavior — that make sure children are protected.”

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Which Tablet to Buy Among Dozens Confuses Shoppers

Holiday shoppers with a tablet computer on their gift list this year might be forgiven for feeling a little panicked.

Look at the tablets available online or at a consumer electronics store and it can be dizzying to choose from among the dozens of slim rectangles with touch screens — each with various sizes, features, prices and applications.

Tablets were supposed to be a simple alternative to the bloated personal computer market. And when “tablet” was synonymous with “iPad,” that was true.

But this is the first holiday season in which the iPad faces competitors that have built up a solid footing in the market. Amazon and Google introduced tablets just in time for the shopping rush. As a result, many consumers and analysts say, the new market of keyboardless computers is quickly becoming as confusing as that of the old-school PC.

“What’s different about this holiday season is that consumers have not just more choice, but really good choices,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, who studies consumer computing trends at Forrester. “There have been many iPad wannabes but no real quality alternatives, and now there are several.”

While choice is a good thing for consumers, she said, it also makes shopping “confusing and complicated.”

For the companies that make tablets, the choice means everything. The stakes are much higher than the sale of individual devices. Each company is trying to snag lifelong customers for their other products — like music, apps, e-books, movies, Web search or word-processing software.

While Apple has dominated the market until now, selling more tablets than any other company, its perch is being threatened by the newcomers.

“Apple left a lot of room for rivals to grow,” said Tero Kuittinen, an independent mobile analyst.

By keeping its tablet prices so high, he said, Apple could lose its place as the biggest tablet seller, just as it did with smartphones when it lost the first-place position to Samsung, which makes less expensive phones using Google’s Android software. The iPad still dominates the market with a 50 percent share, according to third-quarter figures from the research firm IDC, but that is down from 60 percent a year ago. Samsung is in second place with an 18 percent share, Amazon is third with 9 percent, and Asus, which makes Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, is in fourth with 8.6 percent of the market.

But Google, which makes the vast majority of its revenue on Web ads, still lags in the tablet market, even though sales of its Nexus 7 tablet are approaching one million a month, according to Asus. About 98 percent of Web traffic from tablets comes from iPads, according to Onswipe, a digital publishing company. Google would like more of that traffic, as well as more buyers for apps and media from its Google Play store, as would Amazon and Microsoft.

“The first decision you make is what ecosystem am I in, do I want the Android Play store and content or some other?” said Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s vice president for engineering for Android. “So the importance of the ecosystem can’t be overstated.”

But the decisions after that are still complex.

Say, for example, that you want a tablet that runs Google’s Android operating system. There is the Nexus 7, a seven-inch tablet made by Asus, and the Nexus 10, a 10-inch tablet made by Samsung. Then there are the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (not to be confused with the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, a 5.5-inch smartphone). And that’s not to mention the dozens of Android tablets made by Lenovo, Toshiba and others.

This year, Microsoft also has a tablet, called Surface. Amazon has the Kindle Fire and Fire HD, and Barnes & Noble has the Nook HD and HD+. Once shoppers choose one, they have more choices to make, like whether they want to pay $15 more for the privilege of not seeing ads on the Kindle Fire.

Even Apple, which has always prided itself on having simple product lines, now offers the new iPad, the older iPad 2 and the iPad Mini. If you factor in the various amounts of storage and the choice of cellular data or just Wi-Fi, there are essentially 14 iPad models to choose from.

Complicating the decision on hardware, different tablets connect to different online stores for apps, music and video. If you have built your music and app collection on Apple devices, an Android tablet may mean starting from scratch, and vice versa.

The proliferation of products is nothing new for a mature market, as anyone who has stood in front of a wall of televisions at Best Buy or in a parking lot of Priuses at a Toyota dealership knows.

But some consumer electronics companies that have given their customers too many options have run into trouble, said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee. They include Motorola Mobility, which is trying to rescue its cellphone business by paring its lineup of 27 devices, and Research in Motion, which offers a perplexing matrix of BlackBerrys with confusing names, like the BlackBerry Torch 9810, 9850 and 9860.

Google in particular runs this risk, said Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst at Gartner, because it gives away its Android operating system to any device manufacturer that wants to use it, resulting in an uncontrolled array of Android devices running different versions of the software. Some apps will work only with particular versions, making it difficult to know exactly what you are getting.

Google has tried to address this problem in recent months. It gave its line of Nexus products names corresponding to their screen size and began selling them in its Play store. (Google teams up with manufacturers to build the Nexus devices.) It began running ads for the tablets online, on billboards, in print and on television, which had been rare for the company, and assigned a public relations employee to focus on selling hardware to consumers.

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Russia vows tough response to U.S. human rights legislation

MOSCOW — Russian officials are promising a tough response to U.S. legislation that would impose sanctions on Russian officials if Congress finds them responsible for violating human rights.

The U.S. House on Friday passed a bill that establishes permanent normal trade relations with Russia, repealing the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which had imposed limits on trade because of the Soviet Union's treatment of Jews. It had been waived annually since 1989, two years before the Soviet Union collapsed.

But a provision of the legislation named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky also would impose sanctions on officials responsible for human rights violations.

Magnitsky was a 37-year-old lawyer representing the Britain-based Hermitage Capital Management company in 2008 when he blew the whistle on alleged fraud involving Russian tax officials and police officers. Magnitsky said a tax refund scam had cost Russia about $200 million.

But Magnitsky himself was arrested on charges of organizing tax evasion for Hermitage Capital executives. He was allegedly tortured and denied proper medical treatment, and died in a Moscow prison on Nov. 16, 2009.

The circumstances of his death as well as the purported multimillion-dollar fraud have never been properly investigated, human rights activists say.

If the legislation passed by the House on Friday, the third anniversary of Magnitsky's death, also passes the Senate and is signed by President Obama, U.S. officials will be obligated within 120 days to compile and publish a list of Russian officials involved in Magnitsky's persecution and death, and other violations of human rights in Russia.

The officials on the so-called Magnitsky list will be denied U.S. visas and current visas will be revoked. Their financial assets in the United States will be frozen.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the legislation could damage relations with the United States.

"The passage of the Magnitsky Act is another attempt of flagrant politicizing the issue of human rights," the ministry's envoy on human rights, Konstantin Dolgov, said Saturday in an interview with Voice of Russia radio station. "The American side over and over again attempts to accuse Russia of violating human rights in [Sergei] Magnitsky's case, ignoring the exhaustive explanations about the course of the case's investigation."

Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, said late Friday that the legislation would elicit an "equally tough response."

Lilia Shevtsova, a senior researcher with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said there was little left of the U.S.-Russia relationship to be damaged by the latest dispute.

"Moscow however may take advantage of it to more actively play the role of the spoiler in respect to America in global politics," Shevtsova said. "The Kremlin will try to use the situation to intensify its ongoing crackdown on the opposition inside the country."

Pavel Palazhchenko, senior advisor to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, said he was puzzled by Russia's tough reaction.

"My guess is that the authorities, including the Foreign Ministry, misjudged the internal dynamics in the U.S., betting that the administration, which never likes Congress micromanaging foreign policy, would object to the Magnitsky Act," he said.

Palazhchenko said Russia was rapidly using up any goodwill left in the West, but he predicted that Obama would do some damage control before his planned visit to Moscow next year.

sergei.loiko@latimes.com

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